A Roman Bathhouse at Closing Time

Dusk, a narrow street of flat paving stones, and a long brick building that is not grand from the outside because the grandness was kept for the inside. You can tell what it is before you reach the door: the whole building sheds a faint warmth into the street, the way a loaf does when it is carried past you.

The ending, given away now: the lamps burn down, the last attendant banks the furnace for the night, and the building goes on being warm in the dark without anybody in it. Nothing is discovered. Nobody arrives.

The first minute

It is dusk, and you are walking down a narrow street of flat paving stones. The town is finishing its day. Shutters are going up over shop fronts. Somewhere a dog considers barking, and decides against it. The smell of the evening is woodsmoke, and bread, and warm dust cooling down. Ahead of you there is a long building of brick and stone, with small high windows. It is not grand from the street. Most of these places were not. The grandness was kept for the inside. But you can tell what it is before you reach the door, because you can feel it. Warmth…

Why this one works at night

The rooms come in a fixed order and the story walks them in that order, so there is a shape to hold onto that asks nothing of you. It is the warmest thing in the catalogue — steam, stone, olive-oil lamps, a hypocaust floor heated by a furnace two rooms away — and warmth read aloud does a good deal of the work on its own.

“…each lamp is a small clay boat of olive oil with a burning wick, and each one, as it catches, adds a small amber circle to the—”

The kind of sentence people fall asleep during