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Show 20 locker; he takes a towel from it, and enters the sauna. Here it is crowded too; a row of glistening bodies lines the wooden bench bank, in various postures of collapse and contemplation; Robeck hesitates as the door closes solidly behind him, but the bodies move aside, and make a space on the bench for him. He sits, and the warmth closes in around him like an embrace; he feels the nearness of the bodies on each side of him, and it is comfort. Every muscle in his body seems to individually relax. He sees the knees and thighs of the bodies on each side of him, knees which project unequally out into the tiny room, muscled thighs flattened against the wooden bench. These men do not talk much, here in the heat, and Robeck studies all the angles at which a man's shoulders can slope, the outlines of their breasts, the shapes of their shoulders, the differing luxury of the hair in their groins, and the random way in which their penises hang to the side. He can see these bodies without moving his eyes, and his wonder and admiration for the variety of man's shapes is increased by looking at them; it is the biologist in him. But they can see him too, he knows, without moving their eyes or betraying their curiosity, and he knows that they are examining the hunched slope of his back, the rippled skin on his chest, the wrinkled confusion of his thighs. They will notice the fact that he is missing two small toes from his right foot, and will invent myths of how it could have occurred. He feels the heat invading his shoulders, his knees; he feels the precariously frail thinness of the skin covering his skull, and the way the hot dry air sears his lungs. Some of the people beside him have left; there is room now to lie down, and he does, and the heat closes in on him again. His eyes close, and his thin |