A בית־מרתי in Kapresht
When the balebostes of Kapresht decided to build a bathhouse for the shtetl, a site was chosen near the big ravine. First, this was far from the town, and in the event of a fire it wouldn’t damage other houses; second, someone had found a well there whose water was not as bitter as at the others. Here too, the Kapreshters had cheaped out. Using, when building the bath, bad materials and really poor craftsmen from the Romani town. The roof was covered not with shingles or sheet metal, but with סטו(?).
Everything, including the thin soil, was brought there, that the walls sat on. They looked like humps, and were daily at risk of falling. At the same time however, the Kapreshters, disregarding the fact that going to the bath exposed them to mortal danger, would go to the shvitz every Friday afternoon.
There, in the bath, after being in the vestibule, where people got naked as Adam, one heard voices from the shvitz: “Hot-hot, oy, that’s good, hoo-ah! More baby!” The greatest pleasure was to lie on the highest bench and hit yourself with a little broom made of Oak branches and leaves. One stayed in the shvitz two or three hours.
There were those, like Avram-Itzik Rimer and Chaykel XXX Sklar, סכנות־נפשות, who used to come first and leave last. The next day, on Shabbos in shul, they would tell those who had left earlier that the heat was really extraordinary, and praised the Kapresht bod, saying it was famous in the whole area.
One said that one time an American Jew came to stay, who had left Kapresht as a child. His relative took him Friday to the shvitz. Upon arriving at the bathhouse and looking inside at the old dilapidated building, the American did not want to set foot inside, saying he first had to write a will. Even when his relative led him into the shvitz – by force – the American didn’t last more than five minutes and came out bewildered.
For years the Kapreshters told the story of this episode with mockery; they ridiculed the American who “knew not what ‘good’ meant”, who focused on superficial trivialities and did not understand the sweet taste of a true shvitz.
Before he left, the American left $100 to serve as the fund for constructing a new bath. He also promised to send money from abroad if his relative said it was necessary. First, years later, when not even a memory remained of the hundred dollars (having been spent bit by bit on frequent repairs for the old bath) and thanks to the great sum that the funerary society had extracted from the rich widow of a miserly big-shot, did they begin to build the new bath.
When the old bathhouse keeper died, his post was taken over by his son Izaak – who was a shoemaker by trade and who hadn’t the foggiest idea about bathing.
The situation was saved by Fyodor who had become well-acquainted with the field of bathing. He was helped by his wire Kalina.
The happy couple came to Kapresht completely unexpectedly, from another Shtetl, where the bathhouse had burned down. Izaak took them in and learned the trade from them. Who were Fyodor and Kalina (who were the most popular “personalities” of the shtetl)? Kalina said she was 92 years old and he, Fyodor, 60. She didn’t know her birthday, but she remembered that she was married to her first husband by 15.
Fyodor was no great looker. His face was all pocked up. The hair of his head and beard, red and black. A cataract in one eye, his nose big and crooked, and his teeth dark and sparse. When he spoke, he would spray the face of whoever he was talking to. He really loved a glass of wine and when he put away 2 or 3 glasses, he had barely wet his wistle. He was very hospitable and all the beggers who ended up in the shtetl used to stay at his place, making for that a big כוסה – summer outside, on the grass near the bath, and winter, in the bath itself.
Kalina,
…
The “hitting oneself in the bath” was a pleasant, beloved activity. There were people for whom the hitting was a particular specialty. People used to hit themselves until they were delirious. More than once, someone would get up from the highest bench and tumble down fainting. You would douse yourself with cold water, and when the fainter had brought themselves back to, he would praise the heat, the good broom that really stings the skin and it’s truly life-restoring sitting on the top bench. In just that spot, every Jew – whether rich or poor – did not think at all about money; didn’t worry what would become of their grown daughters still living at home; there one felt oneself a “baron”, a man without a worry in the world; it really felt like a taste of heaven.