Sauna

I went to the sauna just a few times here in Estonia. Once was with a bunch of female semioticians in a smoke sauna during summer school, next to a large cold pond into which we periodically jumped to cool off. We were lucky enough to catch the moonrise right over the pond, huge and full. Another memorable time I went with my boyfriend’s mother at their country home. The building housing the sauna was a couple of hundred years old. They had converted it themselves, but the old walls remained the same. We each took a beer and a bundle of branches thick with leaves.

After undressing we entered the room, dense with heat, and sat down on a high bench. She 

took a ladle of water to pour over the hot rocks. When she did, a burning steam slowly enveloped us. Then she began to hit herself all over with her bundle of branches. I followed suit. When I asked why we are doing such a thing, she said because it is so clean in here. I asked again and she said, bacteria can’t live in so hot a place. I couldn’t make the logical connection and didn’t speak enough Estonian to express my discontentment with her answer, so I went back to beating myself. What it did for me was fan the hot air around me, seeming to make it even hotter and almost unbearable.

When we had our fill, we approached a large barrel of ice cold water. We took buckets and dumped it on ourselves - a bone-deep shock. Then she said it was time to wash, so she gave me a sponge and we began to scrub ourselves clean. She told me she would wash my back. Confused, I let her. Then she had me wash hers, saying ‘aita!’ I didn’t know that word yet (help) and it sounded like aitäh (thanks), so I said aitäh! She said ei ei, aita!  I nodded and said thanks for washing my back. She laughed and I didn’t get it until much later.