After a moment, Lalla hears the gush of water pouring out of the drainpipes and hitting the bottom of the empty kerosene drums; she’s as happy as if she were the one drinking the water. At first it makes a crashing metallic sound, and then gradually the drums fill up and the sound becomes deeper. And water is gushing everywhere at once, over the ground, into the puddles, into the old pots left strewn around outside. The dry dust of winter rises into the air when the rain beats down on the earth, and it makes a strange smell of wet dirt, straw, and smoke, which is pleasant to breathe in. Children are running around in the night. They’ve taken off all of their clothing, and they’re running naked along the streets in the rain, laughing and shouting. Lalla would like to do the same, but she’s too old now, and girls of her age can’t go out naked. So she goes back to sleep, still listening to the patter of the water on the sheet metal, still thinking of the two lovely gushes of water spurting out on either side of the house and making the kerosene drums overflow with clear water.
What is really fine, when water has fallen from the sky like that for days and nights on end, is that you can go take hot baths in the bathhouse across the river, in town. Aamma has decided to take Lalla to the bathhouse near the end of the afternoon, when the heat of the sun lets up a little, and the big white clouds start gathering in the sky.
It’s women’s day at the bathhouse, and everyone is walking in that direction along the narrow path that follows the river upstream. Three or four kilometers upstream there’s the bridge, with the truck road, but before reaching that, there’s the ford. That’s where the women cross the river.
Aamma is walking ahead, with Zubida, and her cousin whose name is Zora, and other women that Lalla knows by sight but whose names she’s forgotten. They hitch up their skirts to ford the river; they’re laughing and talking very loudly. Lalla is walking a little behind, and she’s very pleased because on afternoons like this, there aren’t any chores to do at the house or any wood to gather for the fire. And also, she really likes the big white clouds, so low in the sky, and the green of the grass by the side of the river. The river water is icy, earth-colored; it ripples between her legs when Lalla is crossing the ford. When she reaches the canal, in the center of the river, there is a ledge, and Lalla falls into the water up to her waist; she hurries to get out, her dress clinging to her belly and thighs. There are boys on the other bank, whom the women bombard with stones for watching them pull up their skirts to cross the river.
The bathhouse is a large brick hangar built right beside the river. This is where Aamma brought Lalla when she first arrived in the Project, and Lalla had never seen anything like it. There is but one large room with tubs of hot water and ovens where the stones are heated. It’s open one day for women, the next day for men. Lalla really likes this room because a lot of light comes through the windows set up high in the walls under the corrugated iron roof. The bathhouse is only open in summer because water is scarce here. The water comes from a large tank, built on a rise, and it runs down an open-air conduit to the bathhouse, where it cascades into a large cement pool that looks like a washtub. That’s where Aamma and Lalla go to bathe later, after the hot tub, pouring large jugs of cold water over their bodies and letting out little gasps because it makes them shiver.
There is something else that Lalla also really likes about this place. It’s the steam that fills up the whole room like white fog, piling up in layers all the way to the ceiling and escaping through the windows, making the light fluctuate. When you first walk into the room, you feel as if you’re suffocating for a minute, because of the steam. Then you take off your clothes and leave them folded on a chair, at the back of the hangar. The first few times, Lalla was embarrassed; she didn’t want to undress herself in front of the other women, because she wasn’t used to baths. She thought the others were making fun of her because she didn’t have any breasts and her skin was very white. But Aamma scolded her and made her take off all of her clothes; then she tied her long hair up in a bun, wrapping a strip of canvas around it. Now she doesn’t mind getting undressed. She doesn’t even pay any attention to the others anymore. At first, she thought it was horrid because there were very ugly and very old women, with skin wrinkled up like dead trees, or else fat fleshy ones, with breasts dangling down like waterskins, or still others who were sick, their legs covered with ulcers and varicose veins. But now Lalla doesn’t see them in the same way any longer. She pities the ugly and sick women; she’s not afraid of them anymore. And also, the water is so beautiful, so pure, the water that has fallen straight from the sky into the large tank, the water is so new that it must certainly heal the ill.
That’s the way it is when Lalla enters the tub water for the first time after the long months of the dry season: it envelops her body all at once, closing so tightly over her skin, over her legs, over her belly, over her chest, that Lalla momentarily loses her breath.
The water is very hot, very heavy; it brings the blood to the surface of the skin, dilates the pores, sends its waves of heat deep into the body, as if it had taken on the force of the sun and the sky. Lalla slides down into the bathtub until the scalding water comes up over her chin and touches her lips, then stops just under her nostrils. Afterward, she remains like that for a long time without moving, gazing up at the corrugated roof that seems to be swaying under the trails of steam.
Then Aamma comes with a handful of soapwort and some pumice powder, and she scrubs Lalla’s body to get the sweat and the dust off, scrubs her on the back, the shoulders, the legs. Lalla docilely submits, because Aamma is very good at soaping and scrubbing down; afterward she goes over to the washtub, and she submerges herself in the cool, almost cold water, and it closes up her pores, smooths her skin, tightens her nerves and muscles. This is the bath she takes with the other women, listening to the sound of the waterfall coming from the tank; this is the water Lalla prefers. It is clear like the water from the mountain springs, it is light, it slips over her clean skin like over a worn stone, it leaps up into the light, splashing back up in thousands of drops. Under the waterspout, the women wash their long heavy hair. Even the ugliest bodies grow beautiful through the crystal-clear water; the cold raises voices, makes shrill laughter ring out. Aamma throws huge armfuls at Lalla’s face, and her extremely white teeth gleam in her copper face. The sparkling drops roll slowly down her dark breasts, her abdomen, her thighs. The water wears and polishes your skin, makes the palms of your hands very soft. It’s cold, despite the steam filling the hangar.
Aamma envelops Lalla in a large towel, she wraps a sort of cloth around herself that she knots on her breast. Together, they walk toward the back of the hangar where their clothes were left folded on chairs. They sit down, and Aamma starts to slowly comb out Lalla’s hair, one strand at a time, preening each of them carefully between the fingers of her left hand, to extract the nits.
That’s great too, like in a dream, because Lalla is gazing straight out ahead, not thinking of anything, exhausted from all the water, drowsy from the heavy steam struggling up to the windows where the sunlight wavers, numbed from the noise of the voices and the laughter of the women, from the splashing water, the humming of the ovens where the stones are heating. So she is sitting on the metal chair, her bare feet resting on the cool cement floor, shivering in her large wet towel, and Aamma’s adroit hands are combing tirelessly through her hair, pulling it out, preening it, while the last drops of water run down her cheeks and along her back.