A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [43]
‘Where are your papers?’ went the routine. Apparently, there never are the appropriate papers in these instances. The cop didn’t even wait for Zamir or Alexej to search. ‘Fifty rubles,’ he announced. Grumbling, Alexej gave him a few notes, and the cop simply wrote down the amount in a small lined notebook before putting the money in his pocket and waving us along.
We stopped at a market on the outskirts of town for some traditional banya treats to take along. Soon, we were driving past apartment blocks of worker flats, looking like inner-city projects of the 1950s and 1960s, and then empty spaces appeared, punctuated by swatches of birch forests, the country dachas of old apparatchiks, run-down gingerbread houses, set back from the road on untended plots of woodland behind peeling picket fences.
The wheels of our car crunched over thick hard-packed snow as we left paved road and wound slowly through forest, finally arriving at the edge of a vast frozen lake. A worse-for-wear wooden house sat next to a small log-and-shingle cabin, smoke rising from a chimney. A rickety ice-encrusted walkway with a shaky-looking railing extended out over the lake, then descended down thickly glazed steps to an eight-by-four-foot hole in the ice, a black oblong of water one degree above freezing, already hardening at the surface.
We were met by a red-cheeked woman in sweater and overalls. She ushered us inside and showed us into one of three tiny wood-planked rooms, each with its own inner sauna, where Zamir and I quickly stripped, wrapped ourselves in towels, and broke out the drinks and snacks: beer, vodka, dried, salty sprats, a few smoked sable fish, stiff, pungent, and still on the bone, a little dried sausage, and a loaf of dark bread. After a beer, Zamir and I stepped into the closet-sized sauna, took our places on the higher, hotter of the two wooden benches, and started to sweat. Coals glowed in the corner of the tiny room. A battered pitcher of water stood by, a thick bundle of birch branches protruding, their leaves submerged and soaking. We sat in there for a long time, sheets tucked under us, groaning and breathing loudly, and when it seemed that any second I’d pass out, we retired to the outer chamber to devour the food. The deliciously oily, salty fish and a few beers renewed us enough to venture inside again.
Twenty minutes later, Zamir asked me if I was ‘ready for my interrogation.’ I warily assented, having a pretty good idea what was coming. Our thick-wristed hostess entered the sauna, motioned for me to lie naked on my stomach, and began savagely flogging me with the foliage ends of the birch branches. WHACK! . . . WHACK! . . . WHACKWHACKWHACK! I started with each blow – not too painful in and of themselves – because my bare chest was being scalded through the thin sheet on the skillet-hot upper bench. But it is one of my many failings that I don’t want to look like a wuss, even when medical imperative and good sense dictate otherwise, so I gritted my teeth and endured without complaint. Dead leaves flew everywhere, clinging to my flesh as she whipped and whipped, the blows coming more frequently now, more forcefully, as she informed me in fractured English of the many health benefits this treatment provided. When my whole body was a glowing, irritated red and my chest covered with angry, soon-to-blister burns, every pore on my body open to the elements, she stepped back, opened the door, and pointed to where I’d known from the beginning I’d eventually have to go.
I paused long enough to throw on a bathing suit. While the prospect of exhibiting my genitals to Food Network viewers, under ordinary circumstances, had a perverse appeal, I preferred that they not be pignoli-sized when I did. I hurled open the outer door, jogged carefully in bare feet out