Taking The Waters

Kitty and Max, Robert and I were having a rough go of it. The night before was still on top of us: heavy, hot, spinny. We’d had too much to drink at the Central Café and then too much to eat at Bistro Hadik (making fast friends with the bartender who described in deep, grisly detail a recent hog butchering while serving us generous tastes of his homemade palinka). Pig squeals, apricot brandy, paprika cabbage and my deepest regrets from the evening played in my mind and on the back of my tongue as we tried to get through a pot of coffee (they offered this to Americans) in the lobby of our hotel.

Robert sat numbly and moaned. Max told half-stories from the night before (mostly hilarious) and Kitty, well Kitty was lovely. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t help but hate her.

We’d decided to take the waters, as they say, for some relief to our condition and took a taxi to the Széchenyi Baths. I wore my standard uniform: wide black hat, over-sized sunglasses, black dress and my non-functional gold watch — a gift from my father after he’d died from cirrhosis. I’d like to say I was Breakfast At Tiffany’s, but really I was Don Corleone’s funeral. Kitty, though, was impossibly fresh in something white and crisp that had no indication that it had been in a suitcase for the last month.

At the baths, we changed into our suits next to each other, me careful not to glance her way lest I catch a glimpse of her full nature. She wasn’t thin, nor was she voluptuous. She was just the right amount of healthy and imperfect with strong arms, wide hips, enough dimples in her thighs so as not to intimidate her fellow bather; even her body was consciously considerate.

“I love your suit”, Kitty said, “so perfect on you.”

“It’s alright, “ I grumbled back. But continued, with a smile, so as to hide my distain for her kindness, “It covers enough.”

We met the boys outside, Robert already two beers in.

“Want one?,” Robert asked me hopefully, apology in his voice. He’d been an idiot the night before. He didn’t deserve an answer.

Max held out his arm, Kitty slipping gracefully, gratefully into his nook. Max had never done that for me in our years together. He would have clapped me around the shoulders perhaps, smiled big, but I wouldn’t have melted into him.

The three of them decided to stay in the outside baths for a while — large, cheerful aqua-tiled pools set against the yellow palace of the indoor baths. I left them near a statue of bare-breasted Leda, her eyes calm and clearly unaware that the swan craning its neck towards her was about to do its worst.

Inside was noisy, sound bouncing off white tiles as people talked and laughed and moved between baths. I found my way into a corner sauna, 212 degrees. A sign outside the door warned of its dangers, including death, which seemed more quaint than menacing since the English was a bit off. I opened the door and dry heat hit me hard, along with an equally powerful sense of relief since it was empty. Finally. Alone.

Max and I had finished things up years ago. He was bored of me, but didn’t yet know it, so I had an affair or two which freed him up. He acted devastated so I felt obligated to assure him we would still be friendly, which is how Robert and I found ourselves in Budapest with Max and his girl. Max was a fine enough man, not kind or good, but close to it. I hadn’t hated Kitty at the beginning of them; I didn’t consider her enough to feel much of anything. When did I start to hate her?, I gently wondered as I began to sink into my breathing, trying to avoid the point at which I might vomit or faint or both. Two girls opened the door, giggling in French. I watched them with dulled interest as they attempted to settle onto the dry benches. They left in less than a minute. Amateurs.

When I finally got up, I was suddenly conscious of my watch. Since I wore it everywhere, all the time, and had for years, I usually didn’t notice it. But now, it was heavy. A burden. I opened the door feeling fresh air but smelling something of the cabbage from the night before. Ten paces and I jumped into the plunge, a small pool at 65 degrees.

This was my bath ritual — heat, plunge, heat, plunge, heat, plunge. Though my heart would race, I’d keep it up for a few hours, resting in between. Plunge, heat, plunge, heat. It provided enough hot and cold to forgive most sins and enough of an endorphin rush to make me feel momentarily like I wasn’t the miscreant I knew myself to be. But this time, I was interrupted. Kitty greeted me as a came up from the plunge. I did not attempt to hide my disappointment.

“The boys told me I could find you here. They’re a little…”, she started.

“Drunk?”

“Yes.” She looked embarrassed for them.

“Been thrown out?” I asked. Expulsion was usually the next stop on this particular train.

“Not yet. They’re upstairs somewhere, lying down, in the men’s changing rooms,” she said, sitting down and flinching initially as she put her feet in the cold water. What she really meant to say was that she was planning on staying with me for the rest of the afternoon. The self-loathing that I was hoping to exorcize doubled as I flashed forward to an afternoon of forced niceties.

“So what is it that you do here? Robert said it was…extreme, I think he said?”

I smiled. He called the Plunge/Heat psychotic; she was too generous to repeat that. “I go between the sauna and this little cool bath. Want to try?” I asked, knowing she liked me too much to refuse.

The first time in the sauna, we were silent. I calmed my body so I could stay longer than I had before; she controlled her panic so it wasn’t all over her face. She stumbled a bit as we walked to the plunge, gingerly walking onto the steps of the pool; I jumped into the middle.

The second time in the sauna, she asked about my watch. “Does this bother it?” she wondered, almost not to me. The heat was getting to her.

“No, no bother” I answered. “It will look old and dirty and ruined and make my wrist green. And in a few days, everything will be back to normal. Like a good breakup.” Clearly the heat was getting to me, too. We soldiered on.

“Can we have a rest?” she asked after the third plunge. If I paid attention to such things, I’d say her breath was shallow.

“You know, you don’t have to do this.”

“But I do. I have to do something. Listen, I know how you feel about me. Just stop,” she said, interrupting my look of perfunctory protest, “and let’s be honest for a moment if we can. You hate me, I don’t know why, I’m tired of guessing. I know it’s not jealousy, and annoyance doesn’t generally grow to be this ugly but here we are. Max worships you still in some sick self-hating way. And somehow he convinced me to come on this doomed trip so I’m stuck here, now, in this psychotic — Robert was right — torture chamber of yours. Only you could make something that’s supposed to be life giving, restorative into some sick ritual. So give me the satisfaction of knowing I’ve correctly identified you: a damaged piece of walking father issues who’d just as soon kill me as look at me.” She breathed in deep, sputtered out a few coughs, rose from the cool tile, straight-spined, and walked out the door.

That was the last time I saw Kitty. I heard she’d gone back to the States, and years later married a non-drunk, becoming something known as “happy.” I’ll always remember that day at the baths — not just for Kitty’s speech, not for the moment when she left, accompanied by her dignity, and I finally decided I liked her. I’ll remember it because it was the the day my watch spontaneously began to work again.