309828-0830-3333

At the appointed hour there had been a knock at the door of their apartments and a silent servant
had arrived. Rayley had followed him down a series of hallways until he had arrived in a large
dressing room where the man had handed him a red silk robe and simply disappeared. It had been a
strange matter indeed to strip off his gray suit and don the robe, quite uncertain what, if any, garments
were meant to be left on beneath, and to venture across the broad stone floor toward the cave-like
entrance of the adjoining room. A blast of hot damp air had engulfed him before he was fully over the
threshold, filling the room with hisses and fogging Rayley’s small round eyeglasses so thoroughly that
he had been forced back into the dressing area where he pulled his spectacles off and peered
nervously in the direction from which he had just come.
This was surely what the gates of hell must be like. Minus the silk robe, perhaps.
It was just then that the servant had reappeared and surprised Rayley by addressing him in
English. “Steam or sauna?” he had asked.
“What is the difference?”
“Steam wet, sauna dry.”
Ah, so that moist and hissing cave must have been the steam room. Anything would be better
than that, and at least in the dry room he would be able to see his hand before his face.
“Take me to the sauna,” Rayley said decisively, wiping his spectacles on the robe. “And would
you be so kind as to tell me who sent the invitation you delivered? I am uncertain as to how I might
thank my host.”
But the man’s English appeared to be limited to the distinction of “Steam wet, sauna dry,” for he
had looked at Rayley blankly, then turned and walked toward a second hallway. Rayley had little
choice but to follow, which had resulted in his arrival in this place, a long and thin wooden room, the
walls of which smelled quite pleasant in the manner of a cedar forest and were lined with benches.
Seven or eight men were already seated, all of them alarmingly nude, causing Rayley to wonder if the
ability to see detail was really an advantage.
But when in Rome, he’d supposed, and unknotted the red robe. Due to the slick texture and
elegant weight of the garment, it had fallen to the floor decisively, leaving Rayley as naked as the
others and announcing his Judaism and thus his outsider status in one fell swoop. And so he had sat,
trying desperately to look nonchalant, and noting that while the heat of a sauna did not rush at one all
at once in that sort of breath-snatching, skin-flushing assault of the steam room, it was still a
formidable enemy. A film of perspiration was slowly growing across his chest and the wire rims of