Stories of the Strange and Sinister (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

by Frank Baker

  It was then I saw, on the far side, a tattooed arm hanging down from the bench, and gradually there came into misty view the rest of the other man’s body, a large clumsy body with streaks of wet grey hair on its back. I looked at the other benches, but all were empty; there was only this one occupant, and myself. I was glad to feel his presence; I might have been uneasier without him. I tried to lie on my back, but the heat was too much and I felt if I so much as touched the stone wall I would sizzle and shrink to a wet cinder. I half expected to see the electric chair rise up from a trap door in the centre of the room. I saw a block of what looked like iron scooped out to make a neck rest, and similar blocks on the other benches. But I did not dare to touch it, feeling it would be red hot. I began to expect the skin to peel off my body layer by layer, until a raw piece of sinewy meat would be all that was left of me. And then I wondered how much of this it was wise to take; whether a point would be reached when it would be impossible for me to make the supreme effort to reach the door and get out.

  Sense of time began to waver; had I been in here one minute, two, or even ten? And what was the longest span of time one could endure with safety? An odd pride began to govern the me who seemed to have become a distillation of the body I had brought in, and was now floating around in this gyration of steam – a pride which told me I must not weaken till the other man had gone. But he had not moved so far as I could judge; he was still in the same position. By now I could see the pink soles of his feet, the fat and flattened thighs, the wrinkled buttocks, the hairy back, and the neck crouched in upon the block. How could he bear it? For how long had he been roasting? Probably he was well accustomed to the tyrannies of the Turkish Bath and knew just how much of the steam room he could take, unlike myself who had only used it once before in my life, and then not here. An ardent balneologist, perhaps, given to boasting of his experience. No. I was not going to be beaten by this man; what he could suffer I could suffer. And so, gingerly, with a great deal of trepidation, I offered my back to the wood slats, stretched out my legs, and closed my eyes.

  I began then to think of death. At the age of fifty-six you do think of death rather more often than you wish, and it can become disquieting. How would the end come? Always assuming it was an end . . . Peacefully, with those I loved and who loved me, at my bedside. Absolution given, the Host on my tongue, the prayers for the dying distant in my ears? After a stroke, with limbs paralysed, speech distorted, vision impaired? Aided by merciful drugs to lose the pain of a cancer? Alone, struggling to find the way home in a snow drift? Dragged down by the crash of a wave, or hurled broken on a spine of rock? The operative figure in a bedraggled and shameful procession to the gallows? Crushed to a raw bleeding mess by a nose to nose meeting of car and lorry? Falling from the triforium of a cathedral and knowing, in the air, that the flagstones were bound to be splashed and spattered by blood and brains? On the operating table, intestines laid indecently bare, the surgeon cutting through to an enlarged appendix? Drifting to a fog of remorse after supper of barbiturate and whisky? The roof of the mouth blown to bits by my own gun? Licked by tongues of fire in a top storey hotel room? Dragging the unwanted old body to some rank dustbin with mildewed bread crushed down on top of a mush of tea-leaves soggy in newspaper? By axe, knife, or guile of poisoner? Fallen forward on the lavatory seat in one last defeated effort to evacuate bowels? By interior haemorrhage, the crash of a fist, or broken bottle splintered in the eyes? Slowly, unknowingly, face upwards in a hot bath? Or face downwards in. . . .

  There were as many ways of dying as there were of living, and, for all I knew, one of those ways might now have come to me unless I could urge my palpitating body up from this blistering bench towards the door. There were ways of dying which perhaps had never yet been imagined, unimaginable as once had been the searing pains which ate into Hiroshima, and slower than the unfolding of the glory of spring. Slow, too slow; and again – quick, too quick – as when the hands of a murderer both lost and took control, and smothered you head downwards on a wooden bench in the steam room of a Turkish Bath; then, having attacked unseen, left you to rot away in the heat with the door locked, left your carcase to be found hours later and taken from hence to the cold slab of the mortuary, there to suffer the final humiliation of identification.

  I forced my stupefied nine stone up from the bench, hideously fascinated by these images (of the ways of dying). It was dreadfully true that I could not with certainty declare that my way out would not be one of these ways. But one way I would not go; not in the steam room, the breath pumped out of me, the lungs bursting. It was possible to avoid that.

  Yet, suppose the door would not open? Suppose it had been locked on the other side because of some fault in the mechanism of the heating – and why not? For no one had seen me enter so far as I knew. I remembered that there were few others in the Baths that morning. And now the silence, smothered by the confluence of steam, burst and gurgled in my ears, my throat was rough as sandpaper, my eyes streaked with sweat that seemed the colour of blood. I dragged myself up, sat, and looked down at my legs. They seemed to taper away to slimy strands of seaweed in a dank cave. With all that foetid heat I yet felt cold. I was cold; and I was trembling. And I crouched forward as though to begin a race – a race I must make to the door.

  I don’t exaggerate these fancies; and I don’t exaggerate the horrible relish with which I indulged such images and then, with a pent-up sigh of relief, turned to look to the other bench, determined to make some remark, merely in order to have the consolation of a response from my companion. It was an absurd comfort to know he was there, probably dreaming of past pleasures, of lovers who had shared their younger bodies with his, of luxurious meals and rare wines; perhaps, even now, ageing as he was, contemplating richer pastures. If the door was locked, had been locked in error, with his company this could be lightly met. We would both shout, and bang, and bang again, till one of the attendants would come, full of apologies; and I would be able to tell the story of how I was nearly stifled to my end in the steam room and was only saved by a sense of humour which I and the other man found we both shared. Perhaps I would come to know him well, we might even become close friends, and in extreme old age take a delight in recalling the oddity of our first encounter with one another.

  I think I tried humour. I think I said, ‘Why don’t you turn over and roast the other side’ (thinking of the Roman Martyr Lawrence, on the grid-iron). But whatever I said, no answer came. I looked across to the arm hanging down, with the finger tips nearly to the floor. And then I seemed to see something else: a thin red trickle coming slowly from the slats by his head. And there was a smell in the place, a smell of sickly corruption.

  I moved a little closer, then suddenly stopped. I realised there were no feet displayed on the bench; no spreadeagled thighs, no buttocks, back, neck, or head. . . .

  I was alone in the steam room. The door had not opened since I came in. I had been alone all the time.

  Of course the door was not locked, and of course I got out, panting, weakened by the sweat which blinded me, and moving on legs which seemed to have shrivelled to sticks. Falling into one of the deck chairs in the adjoining chamber I tried to admit a sense of relief into me. But it would not come. My heart thumped and stuttered, and I began to want to return to the steam room to certify what I had not seen; what, it appeared, I must have imagined. But too vividly I remembered the coiling scarlet streak of colour on the floor of the colourless, engulfing room (like a painting by Francis Bacon); something which had been dribbling from the head of the man I had seen, or thought I had seen, lying face down on the bench. Very good, then: so there had been blood. I had imagined that too. Macabre inventions fester in the mind easily when the body is weakened; and I had come to the Baths in a weak condition, tired and burdened by worries. I had hoped to lose them here. But it had been a mistake – one that I warn others never to make.

  But had there been
another man there? And had I merely never heard him leave as I lay, muted and steamed, on the slats? Or had my desire for company embodied him in my imagination? Either was possible; and now I began to watch the outer door to the steam room, hoping that the other inmate would emerge, if there had been another – and I hoped so; it would be more comfortable if this were so.

  Nobody came out. Perhaps three minutes passed. A thin lank man, almost altogether hairless, passed me and went towards the shampoo room; and a short paunchy man with a Jewish face fell into the chair next to mine with a grunt of satisfaction. Both were in their fifties. It was impossible to place them, except that by their lack of muscle it was clear they did not do heavy manual labour. One might have been a bishop, the other an accountant. It didn’t matter; they were only flesh and blood here, and male. I looked at the key of my cubicle, attached to my wrist by its strap, and thought with deliberate pleasure of the soothing rest I would soon have on the cubicle bed, after massage in the shampoo room, the final shower, the cold refreshing dip and the rough invigoration of the outsize bath towel I would take from the attendant’s office. But this pleasurable thought was beaten down by renewed apprehension. I could not relax until I had been again to the steam room to find out if there was another man there, or not. And I began to dread that second visit. What would I really find?

  There was movement in front of me. I looked up. Somebody was going to the steam room. I did not see his face as he disappeared into the lobby; but he was a tall cumbersome man and I had seen his back. It was covered with hair. And his arms were tattooed.

  Now it is a fact about the male of the species that he grows hair almost anywhere, but not so commonly on his back, between the shoulder blades. I was certain that this man was the one I had seen, or thought I had seen, in there a few moments ago. Was he so soon going in for a further steaming? I wanted to make some remark to the man next to me; but he was snoring, and it is not good etiquette to address a stranger in the Turkish Bath. The word ‘Silence’ is displayed everywhere, and it is generally respected. So I waited, tensed now, disliking every second. I longed to leave the place and get out into the March sun; the experience had become tainted. But there was something I had to see through. I waited.

  In another half minute a second man passed me and also went towards the lobby. I would have recognized him without the scarlet slip he wore on his nakedness; he was one of the attendants, who had taken my ticket and shown me to cubicle number seven: a man of powerful build, with a waxy military moustache, hectic colouring on his cheekbones, a curiously theatrical figure. Ex-RSM, perhaps. And he had seemed to me in some way like a Turk – the genius of the Bath – its familiar. A pantomime being, with something of clockwork in his movements; and in his fixed unnatural smile too much show of very white teeth. One of those men who overdo the body business. His chest was tattooed. And his body was taut with muscle, his hands very large and white, yet with red protuberant knuckles.

  He opened the door labelled ‘steam room’ and passed out of view. I closed my eyes, trying to become detached from action which, I told myself, had nothing to do with me. But all the time I was invaded by fears I could not rightly interpret. I tried to pull myself out of the chair to go to the steam room again. But it could not be done. I stayed, eyes closed, seeing again that scarlet rivulet on the stone floor.

  Again I was aware of movement. The paunchy man next to me was reading a newspaper, his left hand picking at the softened skin on his left heel. I saw the attendant coming out from the steam room. He walked quickly and silently past me.

  I got up suddenly. The whole thing had now become absurd; why should I feel this involvement? Why accept it? Stifling questions, blacking out images, I went back to the showers I had already used when I first came in. I washed myself down from head to foot with soap, feeling like Pontius Pilate after he had given Barabbas to the crowd. Then I went quickly towards the shampoo room. The quicker I got out of this place the better, I said. But I had to have my money’s worth; and I greatly looked forward to the massaging of my flaccid body. Perhaps it would erase the discomfiture which had fallen, unbidden, upon me.

  I lay on my back on the stone slab in the shampoo room and rested my head on the scooped-out head-rest. I closed my eyes. This was the essential pleasure of the Turkish Bath and I gave myself to it unreservedly. Outwardly as cleansed as by the first lavation after birth, I waited for the therapy of the masseur. He came almost immediately to me, and I did not open my eyes as he began to soap me, then work his pliable fingers along my tired and relaxed body. This was altogether an impersonal act, but I permitted myself the words ‘marvellous weather’. He made no verbal response. But suddenly his fingers became tensed. For a moment he stopped. I smelt his breath, very close to me. It was slightly sour. I opened my eyes.

  I was looking up to the moustached raw face of the attendant who had gone into the steam room. This was a shock, because I had not realised he was also one of the masseurs. But this was not, I knew, the only reason why his ministration came as a shock. While I saw his white teeth and felt his strong fingers working round my ribs I knew that presently he would ask me to turn over. I said something. I said, ‘The heat in the steam room was almost more than I could take today.’ (And I added ‘today’ as if to make it clear that I was a practised devotee of the rituals of the Turkish Bath.) To this, he made no comment. With a fixed expression, he only said, ‘Turn over, will you please sir?’

  I did. And as his hands began to knead down my back to my loins a sudden rising sickness glotted in my throat. I swallowed. ‘Stop a second,’ I said. ‘I’m not comfortable.’ He stopped. I moved my head a little. He asked, ‘Ready now, sir?’ I murmured yes, I was ready. And now his hands smoothed and slid over my thighs and buttocks, then to my shoulder blades, curving round the nape of my neck. The nausea seeped up in me again. I felt his thumbs. My face was pressed close down to the slab and I could not get into an easy position. I again asked him to stop. But now he took no notice; and as I tried to yield my body to his manipulation I felt a horrifying sense of urgency, in him and in myself. From him – an intuition that he was playing for time, that he had to keep me here; in myself, fear which became terror. For what did I know about this man, who now had mastery of my body? What did I know of his past? Of the earlier activities of those hands?

  His hands were now pressing at the top of my spine. Then he thumped me lightly, several times. He was hurting me. I tried to assure myself this could not be helped; it would be ridiculous to complain. After all, the man was a professional; he knew precisely how to deal with the pains of middle-age. Perhaps too precisely . . .

  My head swam. Into my imagination lurched back the man in the steam room, the blood from the inert head. There was a harsh dryness in my nostrils and throat. Death could come quickly, yet never quickly enough under certain conditions. And death was not so much the enemy as was the manner in which it chose to come, seizing as its means a chance encounter with one whose dreadful deed had so nearly been witnessed. Did he know that I knew? And had there been other victims before the man who, dead or alive, might now be still in the steam room?

  I heard someone speaking. ‘Jake, I can’t get into the steam room! Has something gone wrong with the door?’

  The hands were lifted suddenly away. I gasped, and an intense relief filled me. I turned over, pulled myself up.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Jake spoke. Another man was standing beside him, the man who sat in the chair next to me just now. ‘I had to lock it. Something wrong with the regulator – or ventilation blocked, maybe. I was just going to tell the other gents.’

  ‘Damn’ nuisance! Reckon we should have a rebate on this – don’t you agree?’ He had addressed me.

  ‘I used the room,’ I said. ‘It was – certainly – very hot.’

  The other man moved away. I forced myself to look at the attendant. ‘Someone went in,’ I said, ‘jus
t after me.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ His eyes were an unreflecting blue, cold as stones; his words were on one level note. ‘I found the gent and saw he wasn’t comfortable. So I called him out, and locked up till I can put it right.’

  He moved away from me. ‘Kindly take a shower, sir,’ he said, ‘if you intend to use the cold bath.’

  I took the shower, and washed away the pressure of his hands. Quickly I plunged my body into the cold pool in the adjoining room. But there was none of the relaxed exhilaration this should have given me. I went back to the long rest room, found a towel and dried myself. I looked at the half dozen or so men who reclined in the arm-chairs. None of them had tattoos on their arms . . .

  I heard Jake talking to a colleague. ‘I’ll slip down to the boiler room and see if I can fix it.’ He was pulling on a sweater over his shirt. I saw him go out. A few moments later I left too, glad to find the sun and breathe even the fumes of the city.

  Jake did not return, nor was the steam room used. When the door was unlocked an Italian, who had recently opened a restaurant in the city, was found dead, lying face downwards on a bench, his nose blocked with blood. He had been suffocated by pressure on his neck from behind, his face forced down to the slats.

  Some days later the body of the attendant was dragged from the river. He had lived alone, a bachelor and ex-seaman, and although no motive for the crime was discovered it was openly surmised that he had been responsible, since it was found that there was no defect in the steam room. It was also found that he and the Italian had been at sea together twenty years earlier.