Both wings sit shaking their heads, clicking their tongues:
“Urusov—naked. Hard to believe!”
“There you go! Turned Moscow topsy-turvy!”
“He shone in His Majesty’s favor.”
“He stirred things up, shuffled people around.”
“Drove three Rolls-Royces.”
It’s true—Urusov had three Rolls-Royces: gold, silver, and platinum.
“So what’s he gonna drive now?” Yerokha asks.
“A lame electric goat!” Zamosya answers.
We chuckle.
“Well, that’s not the last bit of news,” says Batya, standing up naked.
“He’s coming here. To the baths. To take the steam and ask for our protection.”
Those standing sit down again. This is too much! Urusov—coming to see Batya? On the other hand, if you think about it rationally, where else does he have to hide, now that he’s naked? His Majesty kicked him out of the Kremlin, businessmen will flee from him, the departmentals as well. As a fornicator, the Patriarch won’t shelter him. To Buturlin? They can’t stand each other. To Her Highness? Her stepdaughter despises her for “debauchery,” she hates her stepdaughter and her stepdaughter’s husband, even though he’s already a former one, all the more. The road to China is closed for the count: Zhou Shen Min is a friend of His Majesty and won’t go against his will. What can the count do? Sit in his estate and wait for us to roll up with our brooms? So, out of desperation, he decides to pay obeisance to Batya. That’s the right thing to do! For a naked man the road can lead only to the bathhouse.
“So that’s the way the cookie crumbles and the chips fly,” Batya sums up. “And now—to the baths!”
Batya is the first to enter. Naked, like Adam, we follow him. Batya’s bathhouse is rich: the ceilings are vaulted and abutted by columns; the floor is marble mosaic; the pool is large; the lounge chairs comfortable. The aroma of bread is already coming from the steam room—Batya likes to use kvass for his steam.
He immediately commands:
“Right wing!”
Batya is commander in chief in his bathhouse. We rush to the steam room. Ivan is already waiting there in his felt cap and gloves, with two bunches of twigs—birch and oak. The carousel begins: we lie down on the sweating shelves, deaf Ivan starts the kvass steam, grunts, and chants an unusually loud jokey jingle as he begins to lash the oprichniks with the birch brooms.
I lie there, my eyes closed. I wait my turn, breathing in the steam. Then the waiting is over: whisk, whisk, whisk—on my back, my ass, my legs. Ivan is so experienced in bath whipping it’s unbelievable—he doesn’t stop until you’re steam-cleaned. But at Batya’s you shouldn’t steam too long, for other pleasures lie in store. Even in the steam room my heart grows cold in anticipation.
Ivan steams away, chanting:
“Hark, hark,
Grind beans and bark
Yurop to gas
With oprichnik ass.
“Ass bone white,
Works day and night,
Smear it with lard,
Show Yurop what’s hard!”
Ivan’s little ditty is old, and he’s not too young himself: there’s no one in Europe to show a Russian ass to anyway. No decent people remain beyond the Western Wall, only Arab cyberpunks crawling over the ruins. Europe or an ass, it’s all the same to them.
Oak branches rustle on the nape of my neck, and birch branches tickle my heels.
“Ready!”
I climb off the shelf and fall into Zufar’s strong hands: now it’s his turn. He grabs me like a sack of potatoes, hoists me over his back, and lugs me out of the steam room. Taking a running start, he chucks me into the pool. Oh, I feel good! Everything is top-notch at Batya’s—the steam is hot and the water ice-cold. It goes straight to the bone. I swim, and wake up. But Zufar doesn’t give you a breather—he pulls me up, tosses me onto the futon, jumps on my back, and starts walking on me. My vertebrae crack. His Tatar feet walk along a Russian spine. They walk skillfully—they do no harm, won’t destroy, won’t bruise…His Majesty knows how to join all the peoples of the Russian land under his mighty wing: the Tatars and Mordovians, Bashkir, Jews, Chechens, Ingush, Cheremis, the Evenki and Yakuts, the Marii, Karelians, Buriats, Urdmurts, the simple-hearted Chukchi, and many, many others.
Zufar pours water over me and gives me to Cao. And now I’m reclining in the washroom, looking at the painted ceiling, and the Chinese Cao is washing me. His soft, quick fingers slip over my body, rub fragrant foam into my hair, pour aromatic oils on my stomach; he runs his fingers through my toes, and massages my calves. No one can wash you like a Chinese. They know how to handle the human body. On the ceiling there’s a scene of a heavenly garden; birds and beasts, heeding the voice of God. Man isn’t in this garden yet—he hasn’t been created. It’s lovely to look at the garden of paradise when you’re being washed. Something long-ago forgotten awakens in your soul, something drawn out by the lard of time…
Cao splashes cool water on me from the lime flower washtub, and helps me to stand. You feel heartened and ready after a Chinese bath. I walk into the main hall. Gradually, everyone joins, passing through the Russian-Tatar-Chinese conveyor. Clean, rosy bodies plop down on the lounge beds, swigging nonalcoholic drinks, chatting. Uzh, Shelet, and Samosya have already been through the steam room; Mokry just got wet; Vosk collapsed on the lounge with a grunt; and Yerokha is oohing and aahing in gratitude. Chapyzh and Buben down the kvass greedily, coming to their senses. Great is the brotherhood of the bathhouse. Everyone is equal here—the right and the left, the old and the young. Gilded forelocks have gotten wet and tousled. Tongues have loosened:
“Samosya, so where d’ya hit that colonel anyway?”
“I smashed his side at the turn from Ostozhenka. That Streltsy idiot chickened out, wouldn’t get out of the car. Then their people came with a square, a hand, the duty policeman folded, I didn’t pass for a good guy, and I didn’t want to butt heads with a cudgel…”
“Brothers, listen, a new joint opened on Maroseika Street—called Kissel Shores. Pretty expensive: twelve kinds of kissel, vodka made from lime-tree buds, hare in noodles, girls singing…”
“For Shrovetide His Majesty is giving presents to athletes: a hydrogen Mercedov apiece; gorodki players get a fat-tailed motorcycle, the women archers a viviparous fur coat…”
“In short, the SOBs locked themselves in, and Batya forbade us to use fireworks—the house wasn’t in disgrace. Couldn’t use gas or lasers either. So we did things the old way—in the lower quarter: this and that, the enemies are upstairs. We asked them statesmanlike, officially, they came out with suitcases and icons, we singed them, began to smoke the upstairs ones out. We thought they’d open up, but they jumped out the window. The elder landed on the fence—the spike went straight through his liver—the younger broke his leg but survived, and then he gave evidence…”