The Great Glass Sea

by Josh Weil

  Her shoes had long ago dried out. He’d knocked the dusty mud from their soles, stuffed them in his rucksack, would have to fight the press around him to get it off his shoulders before she got to him—coming through the crowd, collecting money, checking passes, tearing tickets. When she handed his torn stub back, he’d take the shoes out, give them to her.

  But as the tram rocked along he realized it was too packed for her to move. Instead, coins came towards her on a current of passing hands, tickets flowing back like flotsam on a tide going out. He reached in his pocket, felt out a ten-rouble piece, started to pass it forward. His hand jerked, stopped; someone had grabbed his wrist. He swiveled his neck. Behind him, the man who’d gotten stuck in the doors gave a little nod. They were so close his chin touched Dima’s shoulder. He was a short man, old, eyes blurry behind greasy glasses, fingers gripping tight as a rubber band doubled on Dima’s wrist.

  “Allow me,” the man said. “Please.”

  By the time Dima realized what he meant, the old man was already passing forward a twenty-rouble bill.

  “I listen to you on the statue,” the old man explained, his breath blowing the beardhair on Dima’s turned cheek. He smelled like jam.

  “Thank you,” Dima told him, “but I don’t do it for money.”

  “No, no,” the old man said.

  “I don’t need the money.” Turning away, Dima saw the man’s bill reach her, saw her glance up to see from where it had come, saw her see him. He lifted his chin a little. She looked away. The gray light leaking through the rain-streaked window had been too weak for him to see the color of her eyes.

  “What do you need?” It was the man behind him, again. “A new coat? Some warm food?”

  “Nothing,” Dima said, this time without turning around. He kept his gaze on the girl, waiting for her to lift her eyes again, but she just handed the tickets to someone in the crowd, turned away. The whole time it took for the tickets to come back, he watched her refuse to look at him, and when he finally reached to take them, the old man’s arm shot past Dima’s face, snagged the tickets.

  “A gift,” the old man said, handing one to him.

  “Thank you.”

  “No, no. I want to give you a gift.” The old man smiled. “Maybe a haircut? A shave?” His teeth were full of poppy seeds.

  “I don’t need—”

  But the tram squealed, the crowd leaned forward in a wave, leaned back, the doors opened, a stream of passengers rushed out, the doors closed, the tram was moving, and the man was saying, “I know what you need.” His black-speckled smile. “You know what you need?”

  “No.”

  “No?” The smile spread to show Dima the wedges of poppy seeds mashed into the man’s gums. “That’s because,” the man said, “you don’t have to stand here with your nose smashed up against your neck.”

  Dima nodded, as if he knew what that meant, looked back at the girl; she looked away.

  “Don’t be offended,” the man said. “Don’t take it the wrong way, my friend.” The man leaned in close enough his stubble scratched Dima’s neck. “Comrade”—the tram lurched, the man grabbed Dima’s shoulder—“Comrade, let me treat you to a bath. A nice hot bath. Who doesn’t need a good hot banya on a day like this?”

  “A banya?” someone said.

  Another, packed close by: “Who’s got time for a banya?”

  “There aren’t any,” a third said, talk bubbling up around them. “Not anymore.”

  “Maybe in his apartment.”

  “His tub.”

  “Come on,” the old man said, taking hold again of Dima’s wrist, “this is our stop.”

  The brakes started their squeal. Dima yanked his wrist free just as the tram jerked, almost fell forward into the person in front who was reaching a hand back to him. In the hand: a piece of paper. A tram ticket.

  The doors opened. The cold wet air. “Come on,” the old man said again.

  The hand shook the ticket at him. Dima glanced around to see who it was meant for, heard the man who was holding it tell him, “She said to give it to you.”

  A tug at his back: the old man grabbing his coat. Next to him, the people getting off shoved by. She had written something on it. He held it up, squinted at it, sensed behind it, in the distance, that she was looking at him. She was. She shook her head, gave it jerk, as if she wanted him gone, looked away again.

  Pvilsk rail yard, car #38, tomorrow, 21.00, don’t be seen

  By the time he had read it, the doors had shut, the tram was pulling away, there was the clacking of the contactors on the wires as it disappeared down the street.

  The iron fence was more rust than paint, the courtyard it guarded all weeds, the same few strains of night-blind scrub spread wild in the stead of photoperiodic flowers, grasses too confused to produce seeds. Over them, a past life’s evergreens were exploded with root-sprung branches, strange shapes of trees trying to replace their winter-burned boughs farther up. Between them a path buckled towards the bathhouse door, the black-cracked pink of the flaking stucco walls, the entranceway an arch below a plastic picture of V. I. Lenin—red star and wheat sheaves and hammer and sickle and all—that trailed a long electric cord as if harboring a hope of one day lighting up again.

  Passing beneath it, something plucked at Dima’s inside, told him turn around, leave, but the man was pulling at his arm and by the time Dima had tugged his elbow free they were already in the foyer. As if he’d loosed Dima’s arm on purpose, the man slipped behind him, started easing off his coat. From the window of a cramped coat-check booth, an old babushka in a scarlet shawl reached out with heavy arms. Their coats, their wallets: once he’d relinquished those, there seemed nothing left but to climb the steps behind his balding guide, past plastic plants missing half their leaves, walls stuck with pictures that looked ripped off calendars decades out-of-date: photos of factory workers with sleeves rolled up, farmers beaming as if about to sing.

  The changing room was packed with men, most old, all either wrapped in towels or nude. They greeted Dima by name, as if guests at a party planned for him. Passing between the benches, he nodded back, silent but for his squishing footsteps. Did he know them? He didn’t think so. The man with the poppy seed–flecked teeth set down his bag on the rubber mat, took out two towels, two pairs of flip-flops, two brown bottles of kvass. He popped their caps, handed one to Dima, raised his own. “To chance meetings,” he said and tipped his back.

  Chance? The word plucked at him the way leave had a moment ago. What, he wondered, could this man want with him? What could any of them? Weirder, yet, how could the man have been so right about how much Dima had missed this: the malty sweetness of the kvass, his bare skin prickling in anticipation of the steam. Because the other passengers had been right, too: in the past years, watching the city’s bathhouses close one by one, he’d wondered if any would be left, if he’d ever enter a banya again.

  The quiet squeaks of their flip-flops on the wet tile floor, the pocket of warmer air between the first door and the second, the way the sounds of all the bathers washed over him with the steam, the heat: Dima could feel his muscles relax their grip on his bones. Outside, the rain beat against the fogged window glass. Inside, a dozen naked men moved through the steam-soft light, filling plastic basins from rumbling taps, scrubbing their skin with soapy sponges, chatting and laughing, their voices mixed with the slosh of water, the murmur of pipes. Dima lifted a basin off a wet bench, splashed some water in. Swirling it around, he asked the man who’d brought him how often they all came.

  “We don’t,” the old man said. “I mean, we can’t, not anymore, not regularly.” He scrubbed at his basin with some soap. “Only on special occasions,” he said, and handed Dima the bar.

  Dima glanced at the other men. Some nodded, some just watched him back. “What’s the occasion?”

  The old man smiled his poppy seed smile. “You.” He walked to the other end of the bench, slopped his soapy water over the grated drain. “
To congratulate you.”

  “For what?”

  The man passed by, flip-flops squeaking. Filling his basin at the faucets again, he said, “To welcome you.”

  From all around: a rumble of mumbled greetings.

  Dima stood with his soaped-up basin in his hands. “Welcome me to what?”

  “To the Party.”

  “The Communist Party?”

  “Of course,” the man said, and in one heave dumped the entire basin of hot water over his own head. Wiping at his eyes, he blinked them open, smiled. “We’re so glad,” he said, “to see you following in your mother’s footsteps.”

  “My mother?” In her confusion, might she have made a phone call? Regressed in memory to The Past Life, reestablished some old connection? The man motioned for Dima to dump out his basin, but Dima simply stood there, started, “Why do you say my mother’s—”

  Grabbing his basin from him, the man splashed it out over the grate, pushed it back at him, all the while nodding, smiling, shaking his head.

  “I’m not a Communist,” Dima said.

  “Of course you are.” The man’s palm slapped Dima’s back as he pushed him towards the faucet. “Why else”—he turned the red lever on—“would you be amassing the proletariat in the square?” The hot water thundered into Dima’s basin. “Why else would you be rousing the workers, rousing us, against those paid-off thugs of the capitalistic regime?” He reached over, turned on the cold tap, too. “Why else,” he said, dipping his hand in Dima’s basin, splashing it around, wiggling his fingers in the water before turning the hot tap off, “would we have brought you here?” He yanked the cold lever shut.

  “I don’t know,” Dima told him.

  The man’s face was a father’s amused by some small failure of a child he knows will eventually succeed. He flapped his hands once at Dima: go ahead, get splashing.

  Dima reached into the hot water, sloshed it over his front.

  “How is your mother?” the man said. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen Comrade Zhuvova.”

  So, Dima thought, it was this man, and not his mother, who had dug up some connection from the past.

  “She was always such a pleasure to have at meetings, Galina Yegorovna. Brought the most delicious cranberry pies, was such a devoted parent.”

  Dima slopped more hot water at his belly.

  “She spoke,” the man said, “with such love of you and your brother. Like she spoke of her love for the Party.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dima said, “I just came for the bath,” and he upturned the basin over his head. The hot water crashed over him. He wiped his hair away, squeezed out his beard, cleared his eyes with the heel of his palm. There was the old man’s shriveled, sagging rear, turned to him. The veiny backs of his knees, the heels of his bright orange flip-flops, the wet-furred back, the crinkled neck, the drooping ears, the black tips of the ear grips of his glasses. He set his red water basin down on the bench, and when he turned back to Dima he held a switch of birch branches in his hand.

  “Then why,” the old man said, “did you quit your job on the Oranzheria? A good job? A well-paid job? Why would you do that?”

  Through the dripping from his hair, Dima watched the man.

  “Why would any sensible wage slave, any right-thinking worker dreaming of his place among the bourgeoisie, why would such a man, a man like you, do a thing like that?” The old man whapped the birch sheaf lightly against Dima’s chest. The wet leaves stuck to his skin, then pulled away. “Because,” the old man said, “you aren’t like that. You aren’t such a man. You’re your mother’s son. Dmitry Lvovich Zhuvov.” He held up his fist, rattled the birch switch. “Shall we go into the heat?”

  But even as he stood Dima couldn’t help wondering if he’d heard wrong, if the man hadn’t said Yaroslav instead, if whoever had conceived of bringing him here hadn’t mixed up the man Dima was with the one his brother had become. Or maybe just the boy their mother had always expected Yarik to be. Of Dima she hadn’t ever expected anything. You are, she used to tell him in exasperation, such your father’s son. Their mother’s son would have never followed the man towards the stream room. Yarik would have heard leave and turn around and steered his brother back long before Dima had ever neared the sauna he was stepping into now.

  It was a small room already full of men, old men in pointed gray hats woven of nappy wool, guts white and round as the bulging bellies of frogs; a few middle-aged ones marked with tattoos—a spider crawling across a shoulder, a star stamped on a knee—that must have meant something back when they were young and the world was different. Some stood still, arms akimbo, breathing slow; others sat on the wood bench slapping branches at themselves; a few bent over with hands on the worn-smooth rail while their helpmates flogged their backs. All of them were sopping with sweat. Dima squinted at the dimness, the gust of heat on his eyes. The naked men looked back, blinking at their sweat, crammed closer together, slid a little left or right—long row of low parts swinging—to make room.

  The man with the poppy seed teeth poured a ladle full of water over the hissing rocks, led Dima up the stairs to stand among the others. He introduced them—Comrade Murin, Comrade Gergiev, Comrade Agletdinova, Comrade Korotya, Korzhanenko, Nevolin, Comrade, Comrade, Comrade—and put the question to them all: why would a man like Dima quit a job like the job that Dima quit?

  The ones beating themselves stopped. The ones being beaten took a moment to breathe. The ones sitting there, sat there. They all seemed to give it some thought.

  Finally, one old man two bodies away leaned over, looked at Dima as best as he could, his sweat dripping off his face, and said, “Because you were tired.”

  The men in between the speaker and Dima nodded like the man had said something profound.

  “You were tired,” the man went on, “of being a commodity.”

  The men in between nodded harder. Dima could feel the drops of sweat flung off their chins.

  “You were sick and tired,” the speaking man said, and another man said “sick!” out of the dark, and the speaker continued, “of your worth as a man . . .”

  “As a person!” another said.

  “Sick and tired of who you are, what you are worth as a human, being resolved . . .”

  “Into a price,” someone said.

  “. . . into an exchange value.”

  “. . . a rouble.”

  “A dollar.”

  More sweat flew off nodding faces.

  “You were nauseous at it,” someone said.

  “You were bilious!” another shouted.

  “No.” The word came out of Dima’s mouth so suddenly he wasn’t sure he’d said it. Then he said, more quietly, “I think I was just tired.”

  “Of what?” the poppy seed man said.

  “Of bourgeois claptrap,” someone called out.

  “Of oppression by the overseers,” another offered.

  “I think,” Dima said, “I just wanted time.”

  They were all quiet.

  “To do what?” asked the one who’d brought him. For a moment, the man waited for an answer. Then he reached down, cupped his hand around his balls, lifted them, and lowered himself to sit on the wood. With his other hand, he patted the bench beside him. Halfway through Dima’s sit, the man’s hand shot out. His fingertips snagged Dima’s scrotum. Midcrouch, Dima paused. “Careful,” the man said. “Hot.” And another hand came out of the mass of old men and placed a rag on the bench and the poppy seed man let go of Dima’s balls, nodded, said, “OK.”

  Even through the rag, Dima could feel the burning of the bench. He waited until it had turned to just a warming heat. Then he said, “Nothing. Time to do nothing.”

  A few questioning grunts.

  “Nothing?” someone asked.

  Some grunts of dissent.

  “Like this,” Dima said. “Time to—”

  But the poppy seed man had stuck a finger to his lips. Too late. Another old man was already revving up to a shout
: “Nothing? To do nothing?”

  “Maksim Grigorevich . . .” Dima’s guide tried.

  “To do nothing is to make . . .”

  “Max . . .”

  “. . . the worker to your right, to your left . . .”

  “Max, please.”

  “. . . do more! To want to do nothing is the most dangerous thing, the hope of the bourgeois, the capitalistic dream, to be rich enough to do nothing, to be master of the worker to your right, your left . . .” In the far corner, a man—it must have been the one shouting—had begun to smack the wood before him with his birch-branch switch. “Either an aristocrat,” he shouted. Someone else spat: the sizzle of spittle on hot stone. “. . . or a bum!” Another hawk, another sizzle. “Nothing more than an anarchist . . .”

  The spitter tried to hawk up more, but either couldn’t get enough or missed the stones. The man who’d brought Dima leaned over, whispered, “Comrade Korzhanenko . . .”