Pushkin called it a "strict, shapely" city, this northern capital of Russia for more than two centuries and the royal seat of the Romanov dynasty. Peter I founded it in 1703
as a "window on the west" and a massive military riposte to arch-enemy King
Charles of Sweden. Its very setting, chosen for geo-political reasons and
not human health, is phantasmogoric: an elegant metropolis made from stone and planted in a vast swamp near the mouth of the Gulf of Finland. The stage
setting is ultra European with stylish facades, 18th and 19th century design,
that mainly have stood up well to the lashes of history and climate that have
been its context. It's had its share of human tragedy, notably the seige
during World War II that caused thousands to die from starvation. Normally
described as Russia's most European venue, the city can seem like an alternate
reality from Moscow.
In my time in Russia, now going far back, Moscow was my favorite for various
reasons of personal taste and affinities. I didn't come to Russia at any time
to see Europe. I always wanted to see the "true" Russia and for a long, long
time on many different stays in the country, both long and short, I developed
my own roots in Moscow. With its concentric ring roads, organic, rather
messy growth patterns, its cozy, can-do attitudes, unpretentious, down-to-earth
ethos, Moscow struck me as indeed being that gigantic village that it has
long be labeled. Confortable and folksy. A city without even trying to be one. My friends were in Moscow. Why should I go to St. Petersburg, call it Leningrad or whatever? I was not as much interested in the Romanovs and their splendid failures as in the contemporary life of the country, personified, I liked to think, and perfected by Moscow. Besides, its was so much more confortable, worldly--not fantastic--, a here-and-now city with a rich past but not caught up in a cult of its own identity. St. Petersburg always seemed ever so faintly narsicistic and yet grasping for a European face that didn't seem to hold in Russia. Besides, the
current life of the city in whatever year--hard-bitten and hard-pressed for essentials not to mention luxury--seemed incongurous set against its oppulent historical decorations, even if they were often touched up and at least minimally maintained throughout the Soviet period. On many trips I didn't come to St. Petersburg at all.
Now I find Moscow threatened by its own fearful appetite and by the
Kremlin rulers' egocentric economic and cultural policies, by the hierarchical
centralism that would declare that the sun rises and sets in Moscow.
All who want to participate in the high stakes, even at entry level, of
consumerism and extravagant materialism must go to Moscow. St. Petersburg,
even though the President and previous President (now Premier) are natives of
St. Petersburg, the city has become Second City, despite some occasional
large bones tossed its way (e.g., the restoration of the Konstantinovsky
Palace, the home palace of Nikolai and Aleksandra and family, into a
government reception center for important international political gatherings and
only slightly open to the public). The crowds of Moscow, whether in the Metro,
on the street, on sitting with idling motors in traffic jams that cover the
city with smog, have robbed Moscow of the coziness that I always felt was its primary feature.
I come to St. Petersburg now almost as a refugee from that impersonal
and pushing stream of people trying to get somewhere else fast. More
importantly, I've made close new friends in St. Petersburg and I come
primarily to see them. Maybe all travelers need to have friends where
they go, not that it can be devised in any way except natural chance and an
inherent common language that makes the bond. When the setting is perceived
through the eyes of friends and joined to one's own intake of the outer world,
everything takes on new colors, even through the grey mists indeminic to this
swamp based metropolis.
I live with my friends in a small small apartment on the outer fringes of the city. Transportation is slow, there are traffic jams here, too, and people
rushing. Much is in disrepair here, as in Moscow, in what seems like a traditional
Russian way. (This doesn't work, so let's improvise something else, let it go for
a while or forever, we'll get by.)But through my friends' eyes I see the
importance of the splendor the past, its many layers, resconstructions, secret improvised passages, high cultural achievements, the great classical music, the palaces, and museums, full of opportunities, cultural and professional. It's a stately and expressive place that, if you let it,grabs the imagination and holds on. Of course, it's Dostoevsky's home town (even if he was born in Moscow). Yes, it's Europe but its also a special, undeniably Russian place that contrasts with the provinces and raises hopes through the pastel, neo-classical columns and gold spires designed more likely than not by Italian architects for rulers that were immanating Europe because many of them were indeed from there, married into Russian life. It's an escape from small towns and cities and their dead-ends that don't have the multiplicity and high quotient of educated citizenry that St. Petersburg does. Through their eyes the setting becomes an enhancement to living, however harried, physically uncomfortable and tightly restricted by economic conditions that life
at first may be.
Also, I notice a kind of lighted hearted humor that Moscow no longer has.
Languages and Literatures Division ofthe University has a playful sculpture garden in its courtyard with some doors into the main building its classrooms labeled the Labyrinth, Mt. Olympus (steep stairs going up), Ordnance Field (polygon). A bust of poet Josef Brodsky rests on a piece of rough concrete near a metal-like suitcase--a scupture called "Brodsky Has Returned. In another part of town a bronze nose is attached to the house where Gogol's notorious barber (in "The Nose") would have lived, and the Vasilievsky bridge overthe Moika, has a little bird fixed to his lower support as a reference to the old popular song "Chizhek" about the cadets who studied nearby.
The sparkle has returned to fabled (also especially by Gogol) Nevsky Prospekt.
Expensive stores line its central blocks, New York style. There are bright lights and well dressed people, in more variety of styles than one finds in Moscow, and
especially there is enough space between people for them actually to see
each other, to exchange a few words, nothing seems frantic, instead it's
returned to that civilized norm that we know from the Russian classics
it once epitomized. It's a place that gives you an appetite for living in
all kinds of interesting mileux. My friends are always wanting to take me to
new places, new atmospheres of this splendid, dowager city that has come back to life with renewed vigor and rosy cheeks that are real and not mere rouge.
I find myself falling in love with St. Petersburg and will hate to leave,
despite the incessant rain and penetrating mist, the low, leaden skies,
always on the point of dumping new drops on your head. But when
did climate ever interfere with love?
Monday, October 20, 2008
LEAVING PLYOS
Next morning I set out to photograph more of those bold slashes of fall
colors and use my camera as a memory device, a simulated version of the beauty that had so motivated Levitan and others. The gold strokes, containing aspen and other leaves, flutter against the morning's foggy sky and run down the hill to the Volga. The sun is at work burning through the early fog. The trees also pile up in rows, alternating with tall dark green firs, on the Volga's other bank. The fog is soon
gone. It's a fine sunny morning and the colors are at maximum bright settings
to the eye. The air is polished and dry, breathing is a pleasure in itself.
Some cottages on the slope puff smoke out their chimneys. Eventually
I start looking for Anna's cottage, using the address she gave me. I make
inquiries, everyone is helpful but no one knows. One elderly babushka, already
dressed as if for winter, uses my question to lapse into a long remembrance of
people who used to live on this little road. One young guy, with implied curiosity, tells me I speak in a different "dialect". (Actually Plyos natives have
an accent different from Moscow and use some unusual idiomatic variants.) And eventually I find Anna, behind a high gate, her apples spread out on the ground to spell out Plyos. She's pleased that I've come, and just begins showing me her small garden plot, when Anatoly appears. He's come to help her repair the stove. He's a retired policeman and before that was a petroleum engineer from the Stavropol region, bordering the Caucasus, but came here about 25 years ago, because his wife's from here. She's a nurse and works at the local TB sanatorium. And he's excited about meeting an American for the first time, is constantly joking, asking me questions with a broad smile that shows his many gold teeth and twinkling eyes.
Anna gives me a tour of the cottage--two rooms, including the kitchen with
it's massive cermaic Russian stove, explains its workings to me, shows me
the iron rods used for handling pans and skillets deep inside the stove, the little
ladder that she and her siblings used to climb up to the top of the stove
where they slept ("it held three of us"), the tiny bedroom/living
room. This is where her grandparents raised 10 children. She makes oatmeal
for me since I've had no breakfast and begins bringing all sorts of food
out of the cabinets, even another little bottle to Balsam. The three of us
toast our new friendship and soon finish off the bottle. Anatoly asks me
many questions about the US, my opinion about everything in the world.
What my impressions of Russia are is important and I try to give an especially
truthful and balanced answer. He seems pleased that I'm not under any
illusions about how people really live and that I see their day-to-day problems,
undazzled by the bright lights of Moscow. He jokes with black humor:
"Life in Russia is bad, but it won't last long!" He and Anna complain about
"Moscow"--the binary metaphor for the government and the wealthy class it
favors. "Moscow" (or more literally, "Ivanovo", the large industrial city
that is capital of this county or "oblast'"), is buying up choice property in
Plyos, they tell me. One example is the huge brick house neighboring Anna's
cottage--three stories, insulated windows, decorative grill on the roof,
a typical "palace" of this period, similar to the many surrounding Moscow, but
now "Moscow" is building farther out and in small towns and villages with
pleasant natural surroundings like Plyos.
We go for a long walk, slowly making our way through the birch groves,
see the wooden church on the hill that Levitan used as the subject of one
of his most famous pictures. "Do you have a good governor?" I ask Anatoly
as we look for the best path to take through the muddy road, "anybody
who does anything for the village?" "Ha!" he laughs sardonically.
"The ruling powers! They're all the same, all bad." "Do YOU have any
good ones (in the US)?" I let his question go, as I think about our complaints about our state Governor and other officials, and while silently wishing they
were better, but I can't say they are calloused, corrupt and far removed
from the realities of genuine problems like the ones here. The mud, the
lack of gas lines (Anatoly and Anna joke that the country is able to supply
natural gas to half of Europe but not to its own people: in this village
almost everyone heats and cooks with wood). The wealthy newcomers
are putting in gas lines for themselves and there may be a side benefit
to ordinary folks, who can tie on to their lines.
My bus back to Privolzhk (then from there to Kostroma) is leaving soon, in early afternoon. Anna and Anatoly have dropped everything to see me off. Anna has stuffed my backpack with apples, Anatoly gives me some of his own, a different sort, she
gives me a big package of cookies, a box of candy, some of her own pictures of
Plyos and everything else she can find that fits the occasion. On the way to
Hotel Natalia and then the bus, we stop at Anatoly's--a modest but spacious
three room house, and a large garden plot that a wealthy new neighbor hankers after
and has offered Anatoly a large sum for, but he's hanging on to it for a while.
He'll leave it to his granddaughter. His two sons are dead, and I ask how
that happened. Anna quickly interjects that it's better not to talk about it, it's
too painful. Anatoly scoffs, "No, why not talk about it! One shot himself.
He was determined to go to Moscow, finally did, got a police job, his
wife left him and he used his own gun on himself. The other just drank
himself to death."
Our farewell lasts awhile, and we meet some of their acquaintances as we
wait for the driver to start the bus. A talkative and friendly former policeman, and a young pyschiatrist - a little tipsy, who asks me to translate into Russian the English nursery rhyme "Pussy
Cat, Pussy Cat where have you been?.. ", which he recites in entirety, and when I do, proclaims me a "genuine Englishman," then offers me a swig of his beer, and a very cheerful woman mail carrier wheeling a bicycle, one of Anna's schoolmates friends who after retirement from some professional career has come back to Plyos to live. All are surprised and pleased to meet an American, all ask me to come back--often, cheering me on my way. Anna and I exchange addresses and agree to try to meet in Moscow.
Then, I'm gone, back along the bumpy road to my stop where the bus to Kostroma is supposed to come. Soon a a private Volkswagen mini-van stops, asks only 100 rubles for the ride to Kostoma and in half an hour I'm back at my previous hotel on the Volga. The driver regularly transports visiting German businessmen with factory projects in Ivanovo, himself runs a small dairy farm that produces special milk.
He's very upbeat, but tells me that "Moscow" has bought up most of the old
factories in Kostroma and closed them down as tax write-offs or anti-competition
stratagies so now the city is mainly just a trade center. He invites me
to call him next time I want a ride, even could pick me up from Moscow.
That night I'm back at the Philharmonic Hall listening to a stirring Romantic
program of all Russian music and invited for a private supper in the director's
study for the soloists and conductors. Sometimes just being a Russian speaking
American brings sudden if undeserved fame, but I'm happy to be wined and dined
and to hear all about the current Russian music scene with some of the
masterful musicians of the region. Together we plan strategies for setting
up an exchange with the Albuquerque Symphony Orchestra. The
world really is small--and full of chances for happy relationships.
Russia has the paradoxical ability to make you simultaneous darkly pessimistic about politics and government, but euphoric about personal relationships and individual
human connectivities.
colors and use my camera as a memory device, a simulated version of the beauty that had so motivated Levitan and others. The gold strokes, containing aspen and other leaves, flutter against the morning's foggy sky and run down the hill to the Volga. The sun is at work burning through the early fog. The trees also pile up in rows, alternating with tall dark green firs, on the Volga's other bank. The fog is soon
gone. It's a fine sunny morning and the colors are at maximum bright settings
to the eye. The air is polished and dry, breathing is a pleasure in itself.
Some cottages on the slope puff smoke out their chimneys. Eventually
I start looking for Anna's cottage, using the address she gave me. I make
inquiries, everyone is helpful but no one knows. One elderly babushka, already
dressed as if for winter, uses my question to lapse into a long remembrance of
people who used to live on this little road. One young guy, with implied curiosity, tells me I speak in a different "dialect". (Actually Plyos natives have
an accent different from Moscow and use some unusual idiomatic variants.) And eventually I find Anna, behind a high gate, her apples spread out on the ground to spell out Plyos. She's pleased that I've come, and just begins showing me her small garden plot, when Anatoly appears. He's come to help her repair the stove. He's a retired policeman and before that was a petroleum engineer from the Stavropol region, bordering the Caucasus, but came here about 25 years ago, because his wife's from here. She's a nurse and works at the local TB sanatorium. And he's excited about meeting an American for the first time, is constantly joking, asking me questions with a broad smile that shows his many gold teeth and twinkling eyes.
Anna gives me a tour of the cottage--two rooms, including the kitchen with
it's massive cermaic Russian stove, explains its workings to me, shows me
the iron rods used for handling pans and skillets deep inside the stove, the little
ladder that she and her siblings used to climb up to the top of the stove
where they slept ("it held three of us"), the tiny bedroom/living
room. This is where her grandparents raised 10 children. She makes oatmeal
for me since I've had no breakfast and begins bringing all sorts of food
out of the cabinets, even another little bottle to Balsam. The three of us
toast our new friendship and soon finish off the bottle. Anatoly asks me
many questions about the US, my opinion about everything in the world.
What my impressions of Russia are is important and I try to give an especially
truthful and balanced answer. He seems pleased that I'm not under any
illusions about how people really live and that I see their day-to-day problems,
undazzled by the bright lights of Moscow. He jokes with black humor:
"Life in Russia is bad, but it won't last long!" He and Anna complain about
"Moscow"--the binary metaphor for the government and the wealthy class it
favors. "Moscow" (or more literally, "Ivanovo", the large industrial city
that is capital of this county or "oblast'"), is buying up choice property in
Plyos, they tell me. One example is the huge brick house neighboring Anna's
cottage--three stories, insulated windows, decorative grill on the roof,
a typical "palace" of this period, similar to the many surrounding Moscow, but
now "Moscow" is building farther out and in small towns and villages with
pleasant natural surroundings like Plyos.
We go for a long walk, slowly making our way through the birch groves,
see the wooden church on the hill that Levitan used as the subject of one
of his most famous pictures. "Do you have a good governor?" I ask Anatoly
as we look for the best path to take through the muddy road, "anybody
who does anything for the village?" "Ha!" he laughs sardonically.
"The ruling powers! They're all the same, all bad." "Do YOU have any
good ones (in the US)?" I let his question go, as I think about our complaints about our state Governor and other officials, and while silently wishing they
were better, but I can't say they are calloused, corrupt and far removed
from the realities of genuine problems like the ones here. The mud, the
lack of gas lines (Anatoly and Anna joke that the country is able to supply
natural gas to half of Europe but not to its own people: in this village
almost everyone heats and cooks with wood). The wealthy newcomers
are putting in gas lines for themselves and there may be a side benefit
to ordinary folks, who can tie on to their lines.
My bus back to Privolzhk (then from there to Kostroma) is leaving soon, in early afternoon. Anna and Anatoly have dropped everything to see me off. Anna has stuffed my backpack with apples, Anatoly gives me some of his own, a different sort, she
gives me a big package of cookies, a box of candy, some of her own pictures of
Plyos and everything else she can find that fits the occasion. On the way to
Hotel Natalia and then the bus, we stop at Anatoly's--a modest but spacious
three room house, and a large garden plot that a wealthy new neighbor hankers after
and has offered Anatoly a large sum for, but he's hanging on to it for a while.
He'll leave it to his granddaughter. His two sons are dead, and I ask how
that happened. Anna quickly interjects that it's better not to talk about it, it's
too painful. Anatoly scoffs, "No, why not talk about it! One shot himself.
He was determined to go to Moscow, finally did, got a police job, his
wife left him and he used his own gun on himself. The other just drank
himself to death."
Our farewell lasts awhile, and we meet some of their acquaintances as we
wait for the driver to start the bus. A talkative and friendly former policeman, and a young pyschiatrist - a little tipsy, who asks me to translate into Russian the English nursery rhyme "Pussy
Cat, Pussy Cat where have you been?.. ", which he recites in entirety, and when I do, proclaims me a "genuine Englishman," then offers me a swig of his beer, and a very cheerful woman mail carrier wheeling a bicycle, one of Anna's schoolmates friends who after retirement from some professional career has come back to Plyos to live. All are surprised and pleased to meet an American, all ask me to come back--often, cheering me on my way. Anna and I exchange addresses and agree to try to meet in Moscow.
Then, I'm gone, back along the bumpy road to my stop where the bus to Kostroma is supposed to come. Soon a a private Volkswagen mini-van stops, asks only 100 rubles for the ride to Kostoma and in half an hour I'm back at my previous hotel on the Volga. The driver regularly transports visiting German businessmen with factory projects in Ivanovo, himself runs a small dairy farm that produces special milk.
He's very upbeat, but tells me that "Moscow" has bought up most of the old
factories in Kostroma and closed them down as tax write-offs or anti-competition
stratagies so now the city is mainly just a trade center. He invites me
to call him next time I want a ride, even could pick me up from Moscow.
That night I'm back at the Philharmonic Hall listening to a stirring Romantic
program of all Russian music and invited for a private supper in the director's
study for the soloists and conductors. Sometimes just being a Russian speaking
American brings sudden if undeserved fame, but I'm happy to be wined and dined
and to hear all about the current Russian music scene with some of the
masterful musicians of the region. Together we plan strategies for setting
up an exchange with the Albuquerque Symphony Orchestra. The
world really is small--and full of chances for happy relationships.
Russia has the paradoxical ability to make you simultaneous darkly pessimistic about politics and government, but euphoric about personal relationships and individual
human connectivities.
Friday, October 17, 2008
IN PLYOS
I don't want to stay in longer than necessary in these empty and barren lodgings.
I go in quest of the Levitan Museum and of landscapes to photograph while there is
still good light. Near the Volga I see a fellow photographer, a woman taking pictures
of the old merchant stalls in what might be called Downtown Plyos. Directions
are not easy to come by here. The village men are spare with words and convey
a certain hostility, in general there are very few people on the street.
So I ask this intelligent looking lady. "Yes, yes, I can tell you exactly," she
says in a warm gush. "Come, I'll show the way. But where are you from?" America
(the preferred name for the US in Russia), I say. "And I'm also from another
country--Uzbekistan." I look more closely at her face--a typical round and rosy
Slavic one. "But let me take your picture," she says. And now, again, and now,
over there, closer to the Volga, stand on those rocks. Then, it's my turn,
to take her picture. Right off she tells me her age, 58, and asks me mine.
It's one of those fast-moving friendships that happen sometimes in Russia,
as if strangers, whether men or women, quickly grab hold of each other's hands and hold them firmly, if there's the least spark of compatibility and common
ground. It's as if, in this vast and rugged land, full of pitfalls and distances
that separate you once and for all, one must reach out immediately and build relationships
based on intuitions and shared situations that otherwise might be lost to
loneliness. Not to reach for that hand is to spurn a fellow traveler that
fate may have brought you as if just to make into a friend. Her name is Anna and we
stroll along the embankment toward the Museum. Piecemeal, she tells me all
the essentials of her life: she is originally from Plyos, finished school
here, went away to Moscow to study at the Hydrology Institute (to her mother's
objections--not a woman's work, she said), met her husband there, moved
with him to Uzbekistan where they have lived now for 34 years, working in
a "closed" (for security reasons) laboratory on water issues. Now, nearing
retirement age, she is planning to return to Plyos when that time comes. No,
not with her husband. He wants to stay in Uzbekistan, likes the desert (she
does not, it's incredibly hot in the summer - up to 45 degrees C), she has
one daughter in Moscow, another with them in Uzbekistan. She's come for a month,
needs to do some work on the family cottage (her grandmother's and grandfather's--
who built in soon after they married at the end of the 19th century, raised
10 children in it--he was a blacksmith), especially repair the old stove.
Then, we're at the museum. We exchange addresses, but she wants me to come
tomorrow--even today--to the cottage. Wants to show me her apples--a huge crop.
The naivte of asking a stranger to come NOW to see "my apples" is just one
instance of the absolutely disarming Russian trait, almost childlike, of
making the most of what you have--and sharing it. But, she says, I may
see you after the museum.
It is the house where Isaak Levitan and fellow artists and friends
Aleksei Stepanov and Sofya Petrovna Kuvshinnikova came in the summers
of 1886 and 1888. Some of his best, most innovative works come from those
summers. They rented the second floor of a merchant's house right on the
embankment, the men living in one room and Sofya Petrovna in the other.
This seasonal menage-a-trois seems an avant -garde arrangement for Russia, even
at the end of the 19th century. To my knowledge not much is known about
the emotional sides of those summers. But the museum holds works by all
three artists, if not the best known of Levitan's works. But Kuvshinnokova's
oils and drawings are impressive, delicate and feminine. Pictures of the
three enhance the exhibit, and just when I'm ready to take a close and serious second look, my
glasses fall apart. The little screw that connects one arm of the frame has
fallen out. I've come all this way to see these paintings--and their sources in the
surrounding landscape--only to have some mysterious prankster-spirit cut
it off, as if to spite me. (They're new frames, bought last summer in Albuquerque.)
Especially in the museum's dim light on this late rainy afternoon I can see only
big colorful blurs. The ladies who run the museum are sympathetic and do all
they can to help: one specially sweeps the floor to see if she can find the missing
screw, then when of course it's not found, the other finds a little wire that may
hold the frames together for a while (but it doesn't). The day has darkened,
my mood is spoiled, I'm hungry. On the way back toward toward I meet Anna, who
offers me a little flask of Balzam, the herb flavored liquor from Estonia. I think I'll
need that drink before early bedtime at my hotel. We agree to meet the next day--I'll
come to her cottage and see her apples. She makes me promise.
After a fairly expensive supper at the Trattoria Piccolo Italia (no Italian food here except
ubiquitous pizza, but very tasty Russian soup and chicken pot pie), I climb the hill in a driving rain to my Hotel Natalia. I find Zoya, who is in her dark room knitting in the shadow of the florescent light at the end of the hallway. I now have change, can pay her for the room, ask for hot water for tea, which she soon brings cheerfully and gently handing a whole hot teapot to me. I drink tea and write notes for this blog, then drink my tiny bottle of
Balsam, and think how happy I am in Plyos. Outside the night is dark, there are
no sounds, not even a dog barking in the distance. The hotel is silent, too, but I
imagine downstairs in her semi-darkness Zoya's knitting needles are at least going click-click-
click. That thought makes me less alone. She told me she will be gone tomorrow, someone else will be on duty and I regret that somehow.
Next: Leaving Plyos.
I go in quest of the Levitan Museum and of landscapes to photograph while there is
still good light. Near the Volga I see a fellow photographer, a woman taking pictures
of the old merchant stalls in what might be called Downtown Plyos. Directions
are not easy to come by here. The village men are spare with words and convey
a certain hostility, in general there are very few people on the street.
So I ask this intelligent looking lady. "Yes, yes, I can tell you exactly," she
says in a warm gush. "Come, I'll show the way. But where are you from?" America
(the preferred name for the US in Russia), I say. "And I'm also from another
country--Uzbekistan." I look more closely at her face--a typical round and rosy
Slavic one. "But let me take your picture," she says. And now, again, and now,
over there, closer to the Volga, stand on those rocks. Then, it's my turn,
to take her picture. Right off she tells me her age, 58, and asks me mine.
It's one of those fast-moving friendships that happen sometimes in Russia,
as if strangers, whether men or women, quickly grab hold of each other's hands and hold them firmly, if there's the least spark of compatibility and common
ground. It's as if, in this vast and rugged land, full of pitfalls and distances
that separate you once and for all, one must reach out immediately and build relationships
based on intuitions and shared situations that otherwise might be lost to
loneliness. Not to reach for that hand is to spurn a fellow traveler that
fate may have brought you as if just to make into a friend. Her name is Anna and we
stroll along the embankment toward the Museum. Piecemeal, she tells me all
the essentials of her life: she is originally from Plyos, finished school
here, went away to Moscow to study at the Hydrology Institute (to her mother's
objections--not a woman's work, she said), met her husband there, moved
with him to Uzbekistan where they have lived now for 34 years, working in
a "closed" (for security reasons) laboratory on water issues. Now, nearing
retirement age, she is planning to return to Plyos when that time comes. No,
not with her husband. He wants to stay in Uzbekistan, likes the desert (she
does not, it's incredibly hot in the summer - up to 45 degrees C), she has
one daughter in Moscow, another with them in Uzbekistan. She's come for a month,
needs to do some work on the family cottage (her grandmother's and grandfather's--
who built in soon after they married at the end of the 19th century, raised
10 children in it--he was a blacksmith), especially repair the old stove.
Then, we're at the museum. We exchange addresses, but she wants me to come
tomorrow--even today--to the cottage. Wants to show me her apples--a huge crop.
The naivte of asking a stranger to come NOW to see "my apples" is just one
instance of the absolutely disarming Russian trait, almost childlike, of
making the most of what you have--and sharing it. But, she says, I may
see you after the museum.
It is the house where Isaak Levitan and fellow artists and friends
Aleksei Stepanov and Sofya Petrovna Kuvshinnikova came in the summers
of 1886 and 1888. Some of his best, most innovative works come from those
summers. They rented the second floor of a merchant's house right on the
embankment, the men living in one room and Sofya Petrovna in the other.
This seasonal menage-a-trois seems an avant -garde arrangement for Russia, even
at the end of the 19th century. To my knowledge not much is known about
the emotional sides of those summers. But the museum holds works by all
three artists, if not the best known of Levitan's works. But Kuvshinnokova's
oils and drawings are impressive, delicate and feminine. Pictures of the
three enhance the exhibit, and just when I'm ready to take a close and serious second look, my
glasses fall apart. The little screw that connects one arm of the frame has
fallen out. I've come all this way to see these paintings--and their sources in the
surrounding landscape--only to have some mysterious prankster-spirit cut
it off, as if to spite me. (They're new frames, bought last summer in Albuquerque.)
Especially in the museum's dim light on this late rainy afternoon I can see only
big colorful blurs. The ladies who run the museum are sympathetic and do all
they can to help: one specially sweeps the floor to see if she can find the missing
screw, then when of course it's not found, the other finds a little wire that may
hold the frames together for a while (but it doesn't). The day has darkened,
my mood is spoiled, I'm hungry. On the way back toward toward I meet Anna, who
offers me a little flask of Balzam, the herb flavored liquor from Estonia. I think I'll
need that drink before early bedtime at my hotel. We agree to meet the next day--I'll
come to her cottage and see her apples. She makes me promise.
After a fairly expensive supper at the Trattoria Piccolo Italia (no Italian food here except
ubiquitous pizza, but very tasty Russian soup and chicken pot pie), I climb the hill in a driving rain to my Hotel Natalia. I find Zoya, who is in her dark room knitting in the shadow of the florescent light at the end of the hallway. I now have change, can pay her for the room, ask for hot water for tea, which she soon brings cheerfully and gently handing a whole hot teapot to me. I drink tea and write notes for this blog, then drink my tiny bottle of
Balsam, and think how happy I am in Plyos. Outside the night is dark, there are
no sounds, not even a dog barking in the distance. The hotel is silent, too, but I
imagine downstairs in her semi-darkness Zoya's knitting needles are at least going click-click-
click. That thought makes me less alone. She told me she will be gone tomorrow, someone else will be on duty and I regret that somehow.
Next: Leaving Plyos.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Entries to Plyos
There is something positively intoxicating about setting out on a long
road, or not so long, to go, in the language of the Russian fairy tale,
wherever-I-don't-know-where in search of whatever-I-don't-know-why. The head
spins slightly, the palms sweat ever so faintly and you keep your eyes
peeled for every possible signpost along the way--danger, mistakes, misfortune,
delays, misdirections, miscalculations. Of course I had planned for Plyos
and done my homework, gathered all the information I could from friends
and from the bus station in Kostroma. But much remained undefined. The
details of where to catch the other bus I needed, what I would actually
find there, where I would stay. These little uncertainites give
travel alone in Russia a special and hearty flavor of existential freedom and risk.
(No, despite all temptations, I will not indulge in a digression on
Can There Be Freedom without Risk? -- in a special Russian context. I'll
spare you readers that potentially poignant discourse. See, I do respect
your time.)
We bounce down the highway, all headed for Ivanovo except for me who
must leave the bus at Privolzhk and find something else to Plyos). Our
driver has an especially chatty-but-professional manner about him.
Not all drivers seem so concerned about his passengers, some drivers are downright
morose and irasible. At a brief stop in a tiny country town, he briskly announces, "We'll be here for 10 minutes. Time for a quick spot of tea."
He has protuding upper teeth that give his face an especially friendly
look. Grabbing my tea, I take the remaining time to go up to him
on the boarding platform and tell him that I'm going to Plyos and
ask what he can tell me about the other bus I'm supposed to catch.
He seems delighted to give me detailed instructions, reassures me
that there's no problem and that he will show me when we get to the
place where I'm to get off. Then, without a question to me about
who I am or why I'm going to Plyos, he launches into a fast, highly
structured, and colorful monolog, full of political and economic analysis,
literary images, and appealing "reader" (listener)oriented images.
A masterful little verbal text that here I can only briefly summarize
in its main points. He speaks directly to his points and without ambiguity
or second hand ironies. (Our politicians could learn much from this
bus driver from Kostroma.) These are the highlights:
1. "We" (in Russia) are ruled by bandits. They have taken everything
they can from us and it's not coming back. They are called "Moscow." No other name is mentioned.
2. "We" are supposed to have freedom of speech and press. We have neither.
3. "We" were all equal "before" (in Soviet times), wearing the same clothes,
the same caps, wherever you bought it - the same. Now there is a huge
gulf between rich and poor ("you see it" he addresses me directly).
4. The poor, especially the elderly, have lives of misery and destitution.
"What really pierces me in the heart" and he touches his chest, "is to
see the elderly women in Plyos (he drove a bus of school children there recently)
gathering rocks from the Volga and painting names on them to sell to visiting
school children, in order to get enough money to be able to eat."
5. It's not right, it's not fair.
6. There are no homeless in Moscow, or almost none, because
when the police find them asleep at night on some bench or entryway
they stick some poison in their mouths, then in the morning collect
the dead bodies and dump them in a common grave.
7. He's not making what he is due. He makes $200 a month, the same
as 20 years ago, when he was 20. Now he has a family of four to feed.
He's a responsible driver. Peoples' lives depend on him, but that's
all he's making. And by the way, he took his fishing rod with him
to Plyos when he drove the children there, just to get a little fishing in
while the kids went to the Levitan museum.
"Now I'll do my paperwork" he points to the station office, "and we'll
be on our way."
In 20 minutes he stops and tells me where I need to go to catch the
other bus (just across the road) and wishes me well. I said goodbye and
then wish I had asked him his name, a personal identity I could fix
to him--this eloquent, graphic and modest composer of expressive texts.
My new bus soon comes, the road narrows, the forests close in. It's
a cloudy day, it was raining or thinking of rain all day. School children,
immaculately and elegantly dressed, get on and off the bus at various
small village stops. They look very earnest, as if thinking their own
thoughts about what happened at school that day.
A stop for gas (the price is the about the same as the US), then
suddenly we're in Plyos. I ask this driver for directions to the
town. No, he doesn't know anything, not even that. Women selling
linen (all this region is linen country) towels and tableclothes,
knittings, small souvenirs, direct me down the hill. After a brief
look from the top, down through the golden trees surrounding Trinity
Church, I see part of what I had come to see. Even on this cloudy day,
bright, if muted, colors -- leaves acting as filters to the bright
colors of the freshly painted--sky blue, an especially favored color,
but green, too, and some ochre, burnt Sienna reds--cottages that
spill down the slope to the banks of the Volga -- and more cottages
across the river, the windows outlined in decorative fretwork, Russian style.
I must find a place to stay. The town appears, it has a row of pre-revolutionary
merchant white brick stores, a walkway under an avenue of trees along the
river embankment. A tourist shop. A restaurant called White Sun (part of the
title of a favorite old Russian moviet--White Sun of the Desert) that
sells pizza and just across the street an inviting restaurant, all
curtained in white, named Trattoria Piccola Italia. The name itself
warms me up with Italian sunshine and I imagine savory dishes of
scallopini and pasta alla bolognese, a glass of dry red wine. Yes,
I could use that now, on this damp day. I trudge on in quest of a hotel.
No one on the street. A man gruffly tells me to keep going, it's at the
end. Finally, I come to a gate blocked by a traffic gate. A guard comes
out and I ask him if this is a hotel (the grounds are nicely kept, there
are a few black cars parked around), and he says, yes, it is--and
what do I want? "A room, of course, what do you think?" He grins.
Without a car and with a backpack, he wouldn't have guessed that I
was a potential guest. (Oh, so a foreigner! he must be thinking.)
At the desk I find out a room costs $80, way out of my budget, but also
I could not see myself staying in a place like this of even average luxury,
not in Plyos where I had come to see something real about Russia, its
nature and its artistic heritage, where Levitan and the others had come
to paint, in part of the movement to show Russia its own beautiful and
noble face. The young desk clerk is sympathetic. She tells me there are
two other hotels--one, a sanatorium that I had passed on the way
and found not too inviting, and one named Natalia's Hotel. Tired
and hungry now, I flag down passing cars until one stops and a young
guy--a former cook's assistant at the sanatorium-hotel--agrees to take
me back to the bus station. Natalia's is supposed to be near there.
He doesn't know anything about it. The bus cashier tells me the hotel
is in back, go through the picket fence, or take the asphalt path.
Ordinary paths and streets are muddy, the familiar dark sticky mud and
puddles of the Russian village, wherever it might be.
Natlia's has no sign. It's a two-story barracks type building with
a big faded old rug flung across the porch bannister. No sign of life.
I venture inside, it's dark but old furniture is set out at the head
of the corridor, giving off a bare sign of hotel decor. At the end of the corridor
an elderly woman in a kerchief looks at me in surprise. And says in a pleasant,
even inviting voice, "Yes, this is a hotel. Yes, we have a room."
She takes me to it--first stopping at a broom closet, which I mistakenly
think will be my room--to grab a long-handled mop to open the blinds with,
she says. The boards creak as we make our way up the dim and shabby stairway.
There is no other sound. The door has a hinged lock on a hook, the room
has four cots--that's what she calls them--and tells me I can have
my pick. The bathroom, which also serves an adjacent room, has been plastered
with a layer of cheap white plastic. She proundly tells me they have
hot and cold running water. The toilet is in a little closet and stinks,
toilet paper from some other previous travelers still in the little trash
basket. The linoleum in the room is orange in a vaguely oriental design,
worn by decades of guests shuffling though. There is a table with two chairs.
"And I can live here, too," I think. It's dry, there's a roof, the big
windows look out on a forest that comes close to the walls, the room
itself is clean. It's only 350 rubles ($14) What more do I need? I ask
the gentle faced woman her name. "Zoya." She can't change a 500 ruble
bill and I agree to pay her later. She notices that I take my shoes off
at the threshold of the room, Russian style (for the mud). A few minutes
later, as I'm unpacking my backpack, she comes and brings me some worn
slippers, which I'm grateful to have. The window has been open sometime
recently, some leaves have blown in, and they add a natural touch to the
cracked linoleum. I am delighted to be in Plyos.
Next (tomorrow): my new friends in Plyos and our walks and shared stories.
Writing now from St. Petersburg, its 18th century architectural light harmonies,
decorative lions ("How many stone lions are there in St. Petersburg? 9,235?" my friend jokes), and 19th century arabesques and imperial facades around me
in the bustle and bright lights of the newly redecorated old northern capital.
With friends who are guiding me with skill, patience and wonderful
camaraderie. Writing from the superbly equipped computer room of the
otherwise old Academic of Sciences Library, next to St. Peterburg State
University. Separate entries of the St. Petersburg experience--to come.
road, or not so long, to go, in the language of the Russian fairy tale,
wherever-I-don't-know-where in search of whatever-I-don't-know-why. The head
spins slightly, the palms sweat ever so faintly and you keep your eyes
peeled for every possible signpost along the way--danger, mistakes, misfortune,
delays, misdirections, miscalculations. Of course I had planned for Plyos
and done my homework, gathered all the information I could from friends
and from the bus station in Kostroma. But much remained undefined. The
details of where to catch the other bus I needed, what I would actually
find there, where I would stay. These little uncertainites give
travel alone in Russia a special and hearty flavor of existential freedom and risk.
(No, despite all temptations, I will not indulge in a digression on
Can There Be Freedom without Risk? -- in a special Russian context. I'll
spare you readers that potentially poignant discourse. See, I do respect
your time.)
We bounce down the highway, all headed for Ivanovo except for me who
must leave the bus at Privolzhk and find something else to Plyos). Our
driver has an especially chatty-but-professional manner about him.
Not all drivers seem so concerned about his passengers, some drivers are downright
morose and irasible. At a brief stop in a tiny country town, he briskly announces, "We'll be here for 10 minutes. Time for a quick spot of tea."
He has protuding upper teeth that give his face an especially friendly
look. Grabbing my tea, I take the remaining time to go up to him
on the boarding platform and tell him that I'm going to Plyos and
ask what he can tell me about the other bus I'm supposed to catch.
He seems delighted to give me detailed instructions, reassures me
that there's no problem and that he will show me when we get to the
place where I'm to get off. Then, without a question to me about
who I am or why I'm going to Plyos, he launches into a fast, highly
structured, and colorful monolog, full of political and economic analysis,
literary images, and appealing "reader" (listener)oriented images.
A masterful little verbal text that here I can only briefly summarize
in its main points. He speaks directly to his points and without ambiguity
or second hand ironies. (Our politicians could learn much from this
bus driver from Kostroma.) These are the highlights:
1. "We" (in Russia) are ruled by bandits. They have taken everything
they can from us and it's not coming back. They are called "Moscow." No other name is mentioned.
2. "We" are supposed to have freedom of speech and press. We have neither.
3. "We" were all equal "before" (in Soviet times), wearing the same clothes,
the same caps, wherever you bought it - the same. Now there is a huge
gulf between rich and poor ("you see it" he addresses me directly).
4. The poor, especially the elderly, have lives of misery and destitution.
"What really pierces me in the heart" and he touches his chest, "is to
see the elderly women in Plyos (he drove a bus of school children there recently)
gathering rocks from the Volga and painting names on them to sell to visiting
school children, in order to get enough money to be able to eat."
5. It's not right, it's not fair.
6. There are no homeless in Moscow, or almost none, because
when the police find them asleep at night on some bench or entryway
they stick some poison in their mouths, then in the morning collect
the dead bodies and dump them in a common grave.
7. He's not making what he is due. He makes $200 a month, the same
as 20 years ago, when he was 20. Now he has a family of four to feed.
He's a responsible driver. Peoples' lives depend on him, but that's
all he's making. And by the way, he took his fishing rod with him
to Plyos when he drove the children there, just to get a little fishing in
while the kids went to the Levitan museum.
"Now I'll do my paperwork" he points to the station office, "and we'll
be on our way."
In 20 minutes he stops and tells me where I need to go to catch the
other bus (just across the road) and wishes me well. I said goodbye and
then wish I had asked him his name, a personal identity I could fix
to him--this eloquent, graphic and modest composer of expressive texts.
My new bus soon comes, the road narrows, the forests close in. It's
a cloudy day, it was raining or thinking of rain all day. School children,
immaculately and elegantly dressed, get on and off the bus at various
small village stops. They look very earnest, as if thinking their own
thoughts about what happened at school that day.
A stop for gas (the price is the about the same as the US), then
suddenly we're in Plyos. I ask this driver for directions to the
town. No, he doesn't know anything, not even that. Women selling
linen (all this region is linen country) towels and tableclothes,
knittings, small souvenirs, direct me down the hill. After a brief
look from the top, down through the golden trees surrounding Trinity
Church, I see part of what I had come to see. Even on this cloudy day,
bright, if muted, colors -- leaves acting as filters to the bright
colors of the freshly painted--sky blue, an especially favored color,
but green, too, and some ochre, burnt Sienna reds--cottages that
spill down the slope to the banks of the Volga -- and more cottages
across the river, the windows outlined in decorative fretwork, Russian style.
I must find a place to stay. The town appears, it has a row of pre-revolutionary
merchant white brick stores, a walkway under an avenue of trees along the
river embankment. A tourist shop. A restaurant called White Sun (part of the
title of a favorite old Russian moviet--White Sun of the Desert) that
sells pizza and just across the street an inviting restaurant, all
curtained in white, named Trattoria Piccola Italia. The name itself
warms me up with Italian sunshine and I imagine savory dishes of
scallopini and pasta alla bolognese, a glass of dry red wine. Yes,
I could use that now, on this damp day. I trudge on in quest of a hotel.
No one on the street. A man gruffly tells me to keep going, it's at the
end. Finally, I come to a gate blocked by a traffic gate. A guard comes
out and I ask him if this is a hotel (the grounds are nicely kept, there
are a few black cars parked around), and he says, yes, it is--and
what do I want? "A room, of course, what do you think?" He grins.
Without a car and with a backpack, he wouldn't have guessed that I
was a potential guest. (Oh, so a foreigner! he must be thinking.)
At the desk I find out a room costs $80, way out of my budget, but also
I could not see myself staying in a place like this of even average luxury,
not in Plyos where I had come to see something real about Russia, its
nature and its artistic heritage, where Levitan and the others had come
to paint, in part of the movement to show Russia its own beautiful and
noble face. The young desk clerk is sympathetic. She tells me there are
two other hotels--one, a sanatorium that I had passed on the way
and found not too inviting, and one named Natalia's Hotel. Tired
and hungry now, I flag down passing cars until one stops and a young
guy--a former cook's assistant at the sanatorium-hotel--agrees to take
me back to the bus station. Natalia's is supposed to be near there.
He doesn't know anything about it. The bus cashier tells me the hotel
is in back, go through the picket fence, or take the asphalt path.
Ordinary paths and streets are muddy, the familiar dark sticky mud and
puddles of the Russian village, wherever it might be.
Natlia's has no sign. It's a two-story barracks type building with
a big faded old rug flung across the porch bannister. No sign of life.
I venture inside, it's dark but old furniture is set out at the head
of the corridor, giving off a bare sign of hotel decor. At the end of the corridor
an elderly woman in a kerchief looks at me in surprise. And says in a pleasant,
even inviting voice, "Yes, this is a hotel. Yes, we have a room."
She takes me to it--first stopping at a broom closet, which I mistakenly
think will be my room--to grab a long-handled mop to open the blinds with,
she says. The boards creak as we make our way up the dim and shabby stairway.
There is no other sound. The door has a hinged lock on a hook, the room
has four cots--that's what she calls them--and tells me I can have
my pick. The bathroom, which also serves an adjacent room, has been plastered
with a layer of cheap white plastic. She proundly tells me they have
hot and cold running water. The toilet is in a little closet and stinks,
toilet paper from some other previous travelers still in the little trash
basket. The linoleum in the room is orange in a vaguely oriental design,
worn by decades of guests shuffling though. There is a table with two chairs.
"And I can live here, too," I think. It's dry, there's a roof, the big
windows look out on a forest that comes close to the walls, the room
itself is clean. It's only 350 rubles ($14) What more do I need? I ask
the gentle faced woman her name. "Zoya." She can't change a 500 ruble
bill and I agree to pay her later. She notices that I take my shoes off
at the threshold of the room, Russian style (for the mud). A few minutes
later, as I'm unpacking my backpack, she comes and brings me some worn
slippers, which I'm grateful to have. The window has been open sometime
recently, some leaves have blown in, and they add a natural touch to the
cracked linoleum. I am delighted to be in Plyos.
Next (tomorrow): my new friends in Plyos and our walks and shared stories.
Writing now from St. Petersburg, its 18th century architectural light harmonies,
decorative lions ("How many stone lions are there in St. Petersburg? 9,235?" my friend jokes), and 19th century arabesques and imperial facades around me
in the bustle and bright lights of the newly redecorated old northern capital.
With friends who are guiding me with skill, patience and wonderful
camaraderie. Writing from the superbly equipped computer room of the
otherwise old Academic of Sciences Library, next to St. Peterburg State
University. Separate entries of the St. Petersburg experience--to come.
Monday, October 13, 2008
KOSTROMA
In Rostov the sign on the large and heavy hotel entrance door says, "Guests,
please do not allow cats into the hotel." The morning bells tell me it's time
to leave this magical and dryly naive enclave. It's been a good refuge for me, too,
like many others who took shelter here at some point in history. I'm off
by bus to Kostroma, via Yaroslavl, through the narrow, busy road lined with
golden forests and empty fields, past village cottages, many dilapidated, others
freshly painted, little sign of activity. At the new bus station where we stop
for 20 minutes a handicapped teenager begs me to buy the newspaper from him, and
I do. The lead story is a fairly lurid account of how neighbors are puncturing
each other's tires for parking in the wrong place. Blocking an entryway or another
car. Just a good stake into the tires, there's your lesson. Or break a window.
Parking has become a huge problem in Moscow, too. Cars block each other, but leave
their cell phone numbers on the windshield, so the owner can come running when
you call. A friend tells me the City has no rules, no plans, no garages, etc.
People park willy-nilly, on sidewalks, double park on streets, whereever at the
moment is possible. Today, however, I did see one car being towed from near the
Lenin Library. The exact violation wasn't clear, however, it looked like an
ok spot to me.
In an hour, forests gleaming and light playing on the lower plants under the
golden twinkling canopy, we are in Kostroma. The driver lets me off in the
center of town, as urgently advised by some kindly fellow passengers, and I
look for a hotel. After a long long walk with lots of directions, I come to
the Soviet period hulk of hotel, the Volga, with a nicely done over lobby
and other cosmetics, including a snappy and smiling staff of mainly pretty
girls, I find myself in a familiar (from ca. 1976) Soviet "nomer" (hotel room).
Tiny, Spartan, adequate, unremodeled but still functioning, with a balcony
looking out over the Volga. Mighty Mississippi-like Volga, one of those
rivers strikes some atavist chord within us. You want to keep looking,
to feel its power, flowing on, the other bank quite distant. Cars hum
constantly over its bridge, into late night.
The town itself (250,000) is bustling, dusty, some trash, even right downtown
uncollected garbage has blown all over the park-like buffer to the road,
right across from the Philharmonic Hall, another late Soviet landmark. It's
a small town, but an impressive concert hall and, as I later learn, a
fine community of first-rate musicians. The classical music world is
alive and well, even growing a bit in Kostroma. It's a trade center for the
county/region, and it's Sunday. Lots of people out, in holiday moods, buying
cakes, wine, cabbage, winter clothes in the big market. Birch trees line
the long main street, still called Sovietskaya (only Moscow and St. PBG seem
to have changed their street names, and this gives an odd anachronistic
feel to the urban atmosphere, as if, after all, one is in a time warp).
Young people, as always, are in high spirits. They socialize on the street,
some drinking, but not all, just "hanging out", some couples out on dates.
This highly socialized atmosphere is an appealing trait, one that Moscow
is too crowded to be able to manage, and it conveys genuine vitality,
in a kind of country way where people may know each other and there
is not any great degree of urban alienation, suspicion or lurking dangers.
There's a McDonald's, of course, and it's popular, but lots of little,
lesser cafes, too. I settle into one of those for supper, a place with
large manikins or dolls in the windows, all in 19th century dress and
poses. The meal is small and a bit pricey for the quanity of food, but
I enjoy observing the social scene - civilized, lively, friendly.
Sudden I notice through a window a man on the street, just stepped out from
his car, aiming his camera me, then again down the street (what is there to
photograph there, it's late late afternoon, undistinguised scene), then
suddenly whips around and back at -- two quick takes pointed at me (it's
a large camera), then he quickly steps into his car, and off.
What to make of this? Why did he want my photograph? Me in my crumpled
traveling clothes, and in general no special photogenic attributes.
A little shiver runs down by back and old KGB encounters creep to mind.
But no, no, that was another time, another century, and I toss my
paranoia out. Russia is often a strange place. Just let it go at that.
He wanted my picture -- simply so and that's it. I'll never know the reason
and don't really care.
The next day I visit the Ipatievsky Monastery, the site where powerful
boyars came to Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov, who had been lodged there
by Boris Godunov, and asked MFR to become Tsar. He graciously accepted and
the 300 year plus Romanov dynasty was off and running. That was 1613, and in
1913, Nicolas II, Alexandra and children came to Kostroma to observe
this founding of their family's rule. As you know, they had only 3-4 more
years to live. The monastery is a beautiful place in a sublime setting,
on the banks of a tributary to the Volga and not far from the great
river itself. This monastery has now been returned to the Church, and
given its central place in national history has been lavished with attention.
Everything is nicely restored, unlike the Rostov Kremlin, and today, after
two tiny groups of French and American tourists depart, I and a sprinkling
of Russian visitors have the monastery to ourselves. The light sparkles, the
air is especially fresh, the rooks zoom and cry around the cupolas of the
Trinity cathedral. Inside the smell of incense is sweet and musky, saying
welcome to the other life, a conduit. The icons are many, the
iconstasis magnificent. No service is underway but women are lined up to buy
candles to be lighted later. Beautiful, silent except for the birds and a
few footfalls, and bells, tolling just for a spell.
In the neighborhood of well kept cottages and their gardens, the
streets also, even in this historical piece of group, have Soviet names.
One is Klubnaya, where the House of Culture and community club would have
been, incongurous now.
In the afternoon I visit the downtown square with its whimsical firestation
built during Catherine II's time, still a working firehouse, I'm told, with it's
high tower for spotting smoke in the city. I go to the art museum, its name
now restored--at least that--to the original Romanov Museum of Art and History.
A fine small collection of Wanders painters make up the essense of its collection,
including Savrasov, Levitan, Repin - all my heroes. I'm the only visitor except
for an occasional school group. I ask an attendant some questions about the
museum and the collection. She asks me if I am a native of Kostroma! Quite
a linguistic compliment, too great to be modest about and not report. (A blog
someday on the magical key that command of a foreign language is...Without it
where could I go here? What could I see and hear?)
I'm waiting for a bus to take me back to the area of my hotel when a man
(later he tells me he's 62: age is up front in Russia and has immediate importance).
He has a folded easel in his arms. He looks at me and says, as if in English,
"Tourist?" I introduce myself in general terms in Russia. His next question:
"Well how do things look to you?" I take a cautious approach: "People are well
dressed, look, mainly, well fed, kind of happy." "No, no, no!" he replies.
"It's not that way at all. It's awful. We've been sold out, we're ruled
by bandits (a favorite word for the people and system now in power), they've
taken everything from us and want more still. They'll get it all, take it
to Siberia, destroy our homes. You were wise to keep the Iron Curtain (his
version of who maintained it) and you should put it back to protect yourselves."
His rant continues on the bus, where he asks a bewildered adoloscent boy with the
face of a Caucasus nationality to back him up. I ask why they voted for
the incumbents (Medvedev was here recently, by the way, to Ipatiev Monastery
in a symbolic state visit.) Vote, ha! he replies. "They put somebody in, we
don't have a vote. And if you say anything they'll beat you to death. Not
on any command -- just whoever is passing and hears you." He had tried some
initiative and barely escaped with his life. He does admit to being something
of an anarchist, but there is real pain, not rhetoric, in his word, and anguish.
I mention something about his being an artist and maybe especially detached
and analytical. Again he hoots. "The artist thing is something I just took up.
I do a little daubing at pictures to bring in something extra. You have to
live, you know."
At night, the sidewalk to my hotel is dark and rough, huge potholes,
craters almost, and I pick my way carefully. The pedestrian streets
are totally neglected. That's up to people, let them walk carefully,
you can almost hear some powerful somebody say. We've got other priorities!
That same night I heard an excellent concert, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky,
the local intelligentsia (not wealthy people) in attendance, he hall is
not filled but the audience is strong in its applause and cries of Bravo. The contrast
between high culture and crumbling civic infastructure, or lack thereof,
is dramatic and sad. But why doesn't someone complain? I catch myself
before I complete the question: but to whom and at what cost of nerves
and energy, and risk, without any likelihood of success for one's complaint.
Closing time at the library. Tomorrow I'm off to St. Petersburg and more from
there later in the week.
please do not allow cats into the hotel." The morning bells tell me it's time
to leave this magical and dryly naive enclave. It's been a good refuge for me, too,
like many others who took shelter here at some point in history. I'm off
by bus to Kostroma, via Yaroslavl, through the narrow, busy road lined with
golden forests and empty fields, past village cottages, many dilapidated, others
freshly painted, little sign of activity. At the new bus station where we stop
for 20 minutes a handicapped teenager begs me to buy the newspaper from him, and
I do. The lead story is a fairly lurid account of how neighbors are puncturing
each other's tires for parking in the wrong place. Blocking an entryway or another
car. Just a good stake into the tires, there's your lesson. Or break a window.
Parking has become a huge problem in Moscow, too. Cars block each other, but leave
their cell phone numbers on the windshield, so the owner can come running when
you call. A friend tells me the City has no rules, no plans, no garages, etc.
People park willy-nilly, on sidewalks, double park on streets, whereever at the
moment is possible. Today, however, I did see one car being towed from near the
Lenin Library. The exact violation wasn't clear, however, it looked like an
ok spot to me.
In an hour, forests gleaming and light playing on the lower plants under the
golden twinkling canopy, we are in Kostroma. The driver lets me off in the
center of town, as urgently advised by some kindly fellow passengers, and I
look for a hotel. After a long long walk with lots of directions, I come to
the Soviet period hulk of hotel, the Volga, with a nicely done over lobby
and other cosmetics, including a snappy and smiling staff of mainly pretty
girls, I find myself in a familiar (from ca. 1976) Soviet "nomer" (hotel room).
Tiny, Spartan, adequate, unremodeled but still functioning, with a balcony
looking out over the Volga. Mighty Mississippi-like Volga, one of those
rivers strikes some atavist chord within us. You want to keep looking,
to feel its power, flowing on, the other bank quite distant. Cars hum
constantly over its bridge, into late night.
The town itself (250,000) is bustling, dusty, some trash, even right downtown
uncollected garbage has blown all over the park-like buffer to the road,
right across from the Philharmonic Hall, another late Soviet landmark. It's
a small town, but an impressive concert hall and, as I later learn, a
fine community of first-rate musicians. The classical music world is
alive and well, even growing a bit in Kostroma. It's a trade center for the
county/region, and it's Sunday. Lots of people out, in holiday moods, buying
cakes, wine, cabbage, winter clothes in the big market. Birch trees line
the long main street, still called Sovietskaya (only Moscow and St. PBG seem
to have changed their street names, and this gives an odd anachronistic
feel to the urban atmosphere, as if, after all, one is in a time warp).
Young people, as always, are in high spirits. They socialize on the street,
some drinking, but not all, just "hanging out", some couples out on dates.
This highly socialized atmosphere is an appealing trait, one that Moscow
is too crowded to be able to manage, and it conveys genuine vitality,
in a kind of country way where people may know each other and there
is not any great degree of urban alienation, suspicion or lurking dangers.
There's a McDonald's, of course, and it's popular, but lots of little,
lesser cafes, too. I settle into one of those for supper, a place with
large manikins or dolls in the windows, all in 19th century dress and
poses. The meal is small and a bit pricey for the quanity of food, but
I enjoy observing the social scene - civilized, lively, friendly.
Sudden I notice through a window a man on the street, just stepped out from
his car, aiming his camera me, then again down the street (what is there to
photograph there, it's late late afternoon, undistinguised scene), then
suddenly whips around and back at -- two quick takes pointed at me (it's
a large camera), then he quickly steps into his car, and off.
What to make of this? Why did he want my photograph? Me in my crumpled
traveling clothes, and in general no special photogenic attributes.
A little shiver runs down by back and old KGB encounters creep to mind.
But no, no, that was another time, another century, and I toss my
paranoia out. Russia is often a strange place. Just let it go at that.
He wanted my picture -- simply so and that's it. I'll never know the reason
and don't really care.
The next day I visit the Ipatievsky Monastery, the site where powerful
boyars came to Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov, who had been lodged there
by Boris Godunov, and asked MFR to become Tsar. He graciously accepted and
the 300 year plus Romanov dynasty was off and running. That was 1613, and in
1913, Nicolas II, Alexandra and children came to Kostroma to observe
this founding of their family's rule. As you know, they had only 3-4 more
years to live. The monastery is a beautiful place in a sublime setting,
on the banks of a tributary to the Volga and not far from the great
river itself. This monastery has now been returned to the Church, and
given its central place in national history has been lavished with attention.
Everything is nicely restored, unlike the Rostov Kremlin, and today, after
two tiny groups of French and American tourists depart, I and a sprinkling
of Russian visitors have the monastery to ourselves. The light sparkles, the
air is especially fresh, the rooks zoom and cry around the cupolas of the
Trinity cathedral. Inside the smell of incense is sweet and musky, saying
welcome to the other life, a conduit. The icons are many, the
iconstasis magnificent. No service is underway but women are lined up to buy
candles to be lighted later. Beautiful, silent except for the birds and a
few footfalls, and bells, tolling just for a spell.
In the neighborhood of well kept cottages and their gardens, the
streets also, even in this historical piece of group, have Soviet names.
One is Klubnaya, where the House of Culture and community club would have
been, incongurous now.
In the afternoon I visit the downtown square with its whimsical firestation
built during Catherine II's time, still a working firehouse, I'm told, with it's
high tower for spotting smoke in the city. I go to the art museum, its name
now restored--at least that--to the original Romanov Museum of Art and History.
A fine small collection of Wanders painters make up the essense of its collection,
including Savrasov, Levitan, Repin - all my heroes. I'm the only visitor except
for an occasional school group. I ask an attendant some questions about the
museum and the collection. She asks me if I am a native of Kostroma! Quite
a linguistic compliment, too great to be modest about and not report. (A blog
someday on the magical key that command of a foreign language is...Without it
where could I go here? What could I see and hear?)
I'm waiting for a bus to take me back to the area of my hotel when a man
(later he tells me he's 62: age is up front in Russia and has immediate importance).
He has a folded easel in his arms. He looks at me and says, as if in English,
"Tourist?" I introduce myself in general terms in Russia. His next question:
"Well how do things look to you?" I take a cautious approach: "People are well
dressed, look, mainly, well fed, kind of happy." "No, no, no!" he replies.
"It's not that way at all. It's awful. We've been sold out, we're ruled
by bandits (a favorite word for the people and system now in power), they've
taken everything from us and want more still. They'll get it all, take it
to Siberia, destroy our homes. You were wise to keep the Iron Curtain (his
version of who maintained it) and you should put it back to protect yourselves."
His rant continues on the bus, where he asks a bewildered adoloscent boy with the
face of a Caucasus nationality to back him up. I ask why they voted for
the incumbents (Medvedev was here recently, by the way, to Ipatiev Monastery
in a symbolic state visit.) Vote, ha! he replies. "They put somebody in, we
don't have a vote. And if you say anything they'll beat you to death. Not
on any command -- just whoever is passing and hears you." He had tried some
initiative and barely escaped with his life. He does admit to being something
of an anarchist, but there is real pain, not rhetoric, in his word, and anguish.
I mention something about his being an artist and maybe especially detached
and analytical. Again he hoots. "The artist thing is something I just took up.
I do a little daubing at pictures to bring in something extra. You have to
live, you know."
At night, the sidewalk to my hotel is dark and rough, huge potholes,
craters almost, and I pick my way carefully. The pedestrian streets
are totally neglected. That's up to people, let them walk carefully,
you can almost hear some powerful somebody say. We've got other priorities!
That same night I heard an excellent concert, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky,
the local intelligentsia (not wealthy people) in attendance, he hall is
not filled but the audience is strong in its applause and cries of Bravo. The contrast
between high culture and crumbling civic infastructure, or lack thereof,
is dramatic and sad. But why doesn't someone complain? I catch myself
before I complete the question: but to whom and at what cost of nerves
and energy, and risk, without any likelihood of success for one's complaint.
Closing time at the library. Tomorrow I'm off to St. Petersburg and more from
there later in the week.
Moscow Interlude: Conversation between two ladies
Before returning to the account of my trip to the Volga, I want to
take a short break with a transcript/translation of a conversation I heard
on a bus this morning. Setting: the many towered new apartment boom region of
Moscow's Yugo-Zapad (Southwest). I have nothing to read, so as diversion listen
in to two nicely dressed, middle aged ladies standing near me as the bus
lurches along the long route to the Metro station.
Lady #1: Well, I was wondering if you were going to make it. I called you.
Lady #2: Yes, yes, well, I was running late. But I made it.
#1: We might be late, to make those payments to Maria Vladimirovna.
#2: Well, you know if we are -- and I don't think we will be late --
we'll get her to talking and everything will be ok.
#1: Elena Dmitrievna told me that she always goes at least 10 minutes
before the appointment, sometimes 20, just to be sure.
(switch of topic to "weekend just past")
#2: My Dad had left a thin little pencil that he used to sketch with.
It was just laying in the box (when he died) and I just left it there.
Sunday, I was cleaning things up at the dacha. Mopped the floors, cleaned the
toilet, then I decided, well, I'll just throw this pencil away, there's
no lead in it anyway. But then I took a closer look, and, oh, it opens up.
There's lead inside in a hidden chamber inside. I put the lead in and now
it works just fine. Sure glad I didn't throw it away. It's real sharp.
#1: Did you bring it with you? I'd like to take a look at it.
#2: No, no.
(Another quick change of topic, we're getting close now to the Metro station stop.)
#2: My girl friend called and said it's the 13th anniversary of her dog's death.
She just can't stop thinking about it. I asked her did he shake just before
he died, because my dog was just shaking and shaking.
Time for me to get off as they ride on somewhere farther.
******
There it is, fresh from the streets of Moscow. What at least two people
were saying this Monday morning in mid-October under leaden but so far
rain free clouds.
******
For a bit of contrast: imagine GUM, the historic "mall" on Red Square.
I stolled through there late Saturday afternoon. There is nothing for sale
there anymore than ordinary folks like me can buy, except for one
small ice cream stand where the sales oman herself acts intimidated
by that other, extravagant world. No umbrellas, no hats,
not even any souvenirs. It's all ultra-glamour stores, Europe's fanciest
names. Dior, Gucci, Clinique, you name it, from the pages of Fortune or
the New Yorker maybe, it's there. A smattering of curiosity seekers, window
shoppers, but on row after row (three stories) there is no one but sales
people in the stores. Eerie luxury it might be called. Like going to a
ghost mall where the shoppers have all disappeared for unknown reasons and only the
sales girls and the goods themselves exist. GUM during Putin.
********
News flash: Prime Minister Putin unveils a surprise gift he received
(don't remember who from): a baby tiger. He shows it off to the press at
some swank location of his own, to ooo's and ahh's from the reporters.
It's like a cute very large kitten. Looks friendly. Putin says he will give it to a
zoo when it gets bigger.
Slightly older news: The Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling
and decreed that Tsar Nicholas II and family can be rehabilitated (cleared
of any crimes). The lower court had refused to do this because it argued
that since he was illegally charged any way (by the Soviet regime) he could
not be cleared. So he was in limbo, in this suit brought by surviving
Romanov decendents. Now he is free to go on to sainthood (he was already
there, actually)and maybe for living Romanovs (many in Florida, by the way) to make some property claims since he's officially now not a felon. This item dominated the news here for two days.
More about news and lack thereof, another time. That's a big topic.
take a short break with a transcript/translation of a conversation I heard
on a bus this morning. Setting: the many towered new apartment boom region of
Moscow's Yugo-Zapad (Southwest). I have nothing to read, so as diversion listen
in to two nicely dressed, middle aged ladies standing near me as the bus
lurches along the long route to the Metro station.
Lady #1: Well, I was wondering if you were going to make it. I called you.
Lady #2: Yes, yes, well, I was running late. But I made it.
#1: We might be late, to make those payments to Maria Vladimirovna.
#2: Well, you know if we are -- and I don't think we will be late --
we'll get her to talking and everything will be ok.
#1: Elena Dmitrievna told me that she always goes at least 10 minutes
before the appointment, sometimes 20, just to be sure.
(switch of topic to "weekend just past")
#2: My Dad had left a thin little pencil that he used to sketch with.
It was just laying in the box (when he died) and I just left it there.
Sunday, I was cleaning things up at the dacha. Mopped the floors, cleaned the
toilet, then I decided, well, I'll just throw this pencil away, there's
no lead in it anyway. But then I took a closer look, and, oh, it opens up.
There's lead inside in a hidden chamber inside. I put the lead in and now
it works just fine. Sure glad I didn't throw it away. It's real sharp.
#1: Did you bring it with you? I'd like to take a look at it.
#2: No, no.
(Another quick change of topic, we're getting close now to the Metro station stop.)
#2: My girl friend called and said it's the 13th anniversary of her dog's death.
She just can't stop thinking about it. I asked her did he shake just before
he died, because my dog was just shaking and shaking.
Time for me to get off as they ride on somewhere farther.
******
There it is, fresh from the streets of Moscow. What at least two people
were saying this Monday morning in mid-October under leaden but so far
rain free clouds.
******
For a bit of contrast: imagine GUM, the historic "mall" on Red Square.
I stolled through there late Saturday afternoon. There is nothing for sale
there anymore than ordinary folks like me can buy, except for one
small ice cream stand where the sales oman herself acts intimidated
by that other, extravagant world. No umbrellas, no hats,
not even any souvenirs. It's all ultra-glamour stores, Europe's fanciest
names. Dior, Gucci, Clinique, you name it, from the pages of Fortune or
the New Yorker maybe, it's there. A smattering of curiosity seekers, window
shoppers, but on row after row (three stories) there is no one but sales
people in the stores. Eerie luxury it might be called. Like going to a
ghost mall where the shoppers have all disappeared for unknown reasons and only the
sales girls and the goods themselves exist. GUM during Putin.
********
News flash: Prime Minister Putin unveils a surprise gift he received
(don't remember who from): a baby tiger. He shows it off to the press at
some swank location of his own, to ooo's and ahh's from the reporters.
It's like a cute very large kitten. Looks friendly. Putin says he will give it to a
zoo when it gets bigger.
Slightly older news: The Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling
and decreed that Tsar Nicholas II and family can be rehabilitated (cleared
of any crimes). The lower court had refused to do this because it argued
that since he was illegally charged any way (by the Soviet regime) he could
not be cleared. So he was in limbo, in this suit brought by surviving
Romanov decendents. Now he is free to go on to sainthood (he was already
there, actually)and maybe for living Romanovs (many in Florida, by the way) to make some property claims since he's officially now not a felon. This item dominated the news here for two days.
More about news and lack thereof, another time. That's a big topic.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
ROSTOV II
Outside the walls of the Kremlin one confronts the sad
reality of the little town. A dwindling population. Some
store fronts boarded up. You meet few people on the street,
quite an extreme reversal from Moscow, where most of the young
must go.The reality of demographic statistics (See Washington
Post, Murray Feshback, 'Beyond the Bluster...', Oct. 5, thanks
to Joan Mohan). Meanwhile teenagers hangout on the street, full of fun
and games, high spirits, silly, likeable. Oblivious to all
except themselves. Rostov has two things going for it: (1)tourists,
mainly Russians including lots of school children bussed in from
all over and only a sprinkling of foreigners who don't tarry, and (2)
its famous enamel work, for all kinds of jewelry, crosses, decorations, some pottery and other tourist type crafts. I wander
along the stands shopping for family gifts. Seated on the ground, her
wares spread out on a blanket, a tall and pretty, auburn haired woman of about 50
calls out to me. "Look what we make with our own hands!" The carvings
show spontaneity and individual inspiration. Toys that remind me
of Tolstoy (see Zhilin in his Captive of the Caucasus). "My husband
made these. He's an artist, here's a brochure, he's away in Moscow
selling his paintings, and I made these funny little dolls and dunces
myself." Our conversation comes around to who I am and then it really
gets going, even becoming a monolog, laced in her pain and outrage.
"We are ruled by bandits, just bandits. They take everything for
themselves and give nothing to us. Moscow takes it all. Now they're
buying our land here. Just for themselves. They don't consider us
to be people. For them, we're just dust." She blows into her hand.
"Moscow is a nightmare and the Metro, just hell. I went there for
three days with my daughter to show my works, couldn't stand it any
longer and left. We're self-sufficient. Live 8 miles from Rostov.
Grow our own food. And you know what started it all? Christianity!
That's what brought conflict, exploitation, classes, wars. Before
that the ancient people here lived in harmony with nature. They
had their own gods, gentle and good ones.And now look! That's the
way we're trying to live, close to nature. They can have their
horrible TV, their luxury and wealth, just leave us alone...
And you come back. Go see my husband's paintings. Come see us." Her daughter,
about 16, nods to all her mother says. It was delivered in a long, breathless
spurt, fierce in energy and eloquence. We said good-bye and she turned to
other tourists passing.
I think of her as a true descendant of those ancient ones who
lived here on the banks of Lake Nero two millenia and more ago.
So their decendant survived!
This is the first of several outcries of pain and disgust at Moscow,
a metaphor for the ruling power, that I will encounter during this trip.
reality of the little town. A dwindling population. Some
store fronts boarded up. You meet few people on the street,
quite an extreme reversal from Moscow, where most of the young
must go.The reality of demographic statistics (See Washington
Post, Murray Feshback, 'Beyond the Bluster...', Oct. 5, thanks
to Joan Mohan). Meanwhile teenagers hangout on the street, full of fun
and games, high spirits, silly, likeable. Oblivious to all
except themselves. Rostov has two things going for it: (1)tourists,
mainly Russians including lots of school children bussed in from
all over and only a sprinkling of foreigners who don't tarry, and (2)
its famous enamel work, for all kinds of jewelry, crosses, decorations, some pottery and other tourist type crafts. I wander
along the stands shopping for family gifts. Seated on the ground, her
wares spread out on a blanket, a tall and pretty, auburn haired woman of about 50
calls out to me. "Look what we make with our own hands!" The carvings
show spontaneity and individual inspiration. Toys that remind me
of Tolstoy (see Zhilin in his Captive of the Caucasus). "My husband
made these. He's an artist, here's a brochure, he's away in Moscow
selling his paintings, and I made these funny little dolls and dunces
myself." Our conversation comes around to who I am and then it really
gets going, even becoming a monolog, laced in her pain and outrage.
"We are ruled by bandits, just bandits. They take everything for
themselves and give nothing to us. Moscow takes it all. Now they're
buying our land here. Just for themselves. They don't consider us
to be people. For them, we're just dust." She blows into her hand.
"Moscow is a nightmare and the Metro, just hell. I went there for
three days with my daughter to show my works, couldn't stand it any
longer and left. We're self-sufficient. Live 8 miles from Rostov.
Grow our own food. And you know what started it all? Christianity!
That's what brought conflict, exploitation, classes, wars. Before
that the ancient people here lived in harmony with nature. They
had their own gods, gentle and good ones.And now look! That's the
way we're trying to live, close to nature. They can have their
horrible TV, their luxury and wealth, just leave us alone...
And you come back. Go see my husband's paintings. Come see us." Her daughter,
about 16, nods to all her mother says. It was delivered in a long, breathless
spurt, fierce in energy and eloquence. We said good-bye and she turned to
other tourists passing.
I think of her as a true descendant of those ancient ones who
lived here on the banks of Lake Nero two millenia and more ago.
So their decendant survived!
This is the first of several outcries of pain and disgust at Moscow,
a metaphor for the ruling power, that I will encounter during this trip.
EXCUSE TYPOS
I apologize for the typos in my last entry. The library was
closing, the librarians were scolding me and there was just
no time to reread and correct. Several times -painters- should
be paintings. Left (ancient people) should be lived. And the
like. Once an entry is published I can't change it, so you'll
have to be your own proofreaders. One way of participating in the
blog!
I must discipline myself to write shorter entries, so I can
make corrections. And save money on the time at the computer. But also I'm sure all of you have time limits too.
closing, the librarians were scolding me and there was just
no time to reread and correct. Several times -painters- should
be paintings. Left (ancient people) should be lived. And the
like. Once an entry is published I can't change it, so you'll
have to be your own proofreaders. One way of participating in the
blog!
I must discipline myself to write shorter entries, so I can
make corrections. And save money on the time at the computer. But also I'm sure all of you have time limits too.
Friday, October 10, 2008
October 3, Heading North
The train is out of Moscow in half an hour, I'm all settled on my platskart bench, the
lower one, the last bleak apartment blocks of the suburbs fade. Then the colors start, on
both sides. Orange, gold, red, green, gold again, under a blue and golden sun sky.
Splash goes the paint on the canvas, splatter, trickle down, daub on, spill more
golden, tie filigree fragments on top of spindly white birch trunks, lance them with
slashes and spots of black. I've entered a Levitan painting and am moving through it
for the next hour. It's a blinding-with-beauty sensation like I've never felt, a
kind of Matrix-in-art existence. The Russian "golden fall" term is too understated.
It's much more than that. It transforms you, lifting you up and away somewhere,
makes all other perceptions fade, and as long as your psyche can take it--this
painterly emersion--holds you there, suspended somewhere far from earth, even
as you ride a train across its surface. This is the most memorable visual experience
I've ever had. No LSD provided by the conductor (I've never tried it, for the record)
nor any wanted. This is enough and will last in memory. The road to Rostov in October.
A soft October sun lighting the way.
Issak Levitan was a late 19th century Russian painter, Jewish, secular, a friend
of Chekhov, a younger member of the Wanders school/movement of Russian painters,
especially revered for his landscape painters that captured something classic
about Russian reality, its nature with traces of man. He lived a short life, only
to about 1900, similar to Chekhov, had tempestuous affairs, and saw his name
become celebrated. One of my three destinations is to Plyos, a small place on the
Volga, where Levitan--and two lesser known colleagues/friends went to paint
during three summers. Plyos provided the material for some of his best known
painters, now in the Tretyakovsky and the Russian Museum (St.P.). I've
chosen Plyos as one of my favored destinations, because its fall, never been there
(it's not so easy to reach), and because I want to see what the place itself
looks like, as the stimulus of Levitan's inspired work. I'm increasing in a thrall
about the Wanderers--their deterimination to discover/paint Russia as it was.
To shake visual consciousness of the beauty, not of Venice and Rome, but
just the great back yard, villages and forests and hills on the Volga. If I could
find it I would go to the tree Savrasov, another great wanderer, saw the rooks return one chilly
March in Yaroslavl province. I'd go there on a secular pilgimage and stand there
for a while in his honors. I can't find that tree, but I can find Ploys and get there.
It's Plyos or bust!
But first stop is Rostov the Great (Veliki). Or more mundanely, just plain ole
Rostov Yaroslavsky (in Yaroslavl oblast'). I've been hearing about it since the
beginning of my Russian life, in 1967 (a shorter trip in 1963 not counted). Nina,
one of my best friends and still one today, was from there. She was always talking
about Rostov, that I had to go, that their Kremlin is the best in all of Russia--blah-
blah-blah. But a foreigner couldn't just hop on a train on those years and I never
made, even in the 90's when you could start to point some place on the map and
just go (now it's not quite as easy, but certainly possible). Another--a new friend--
went there on his honeymoon and goes back with his wife every year if possible.
So I've put it high on my list and it's on the way to Plyos. I'm on a tight budget
and take no cabs, stay in the cheapest hotels, in rooms without private bath if possible.
The entry way into Rostov is not auspicious, plain and simple Russian country/semi-
city scenes, all strait out of Soviet reality, more faded now, dustier maybe,
trashier (quite literally meant, because of contemporary packaging: I remember
a Soviet Russia as package free and litter free). After so asking around I get
a mashrutka -- the mini-buses that are semi-private and offer seating to passengers
for a modest price, certainly here, half the Moscow fare. Soon I'm at the doors to the
Kremlin, a little overwhelmed by the new atmosphere in itself, after the crowds of
Moscow here very few people on the street, small buildings mainly in bad shape,
but inevitably kind helpers showing me the way. An elderly woman with a bright
smile intervenes when she overhears a drunken man giving me the wrong directions
and sets me right with firm and friendly enunciation. My hotel is in the Kremlin,
the somewhat strange privitization of almost everything in the country now. It's an
old wooden structure, built on top of the cellars or vaults of the monastery, which
the Kremlin really mainly was. Creaky strairs, the smell of old boards and beams,
up the stairs. Yes, all is in order. Here's your key. The room is a tiny little cell of a room
with a tiny TV attached to the wall, not that I watch it in any case.
Outside in early evening I explore the Kremlin itself and the neighborhood, walk
along the bank of the huge, shimmering Lake Nero. The day has turned cloudy but
there's enough sun left to reflect on the water, to show its flat vastness and a little
island a ways out. Ancient people would have left here, the first human settlers of
northern Russia. The lake would have been sacred and in a way still is, spirits and
nameless pre-Slavic gods would have dwelled there, climbing out of the depths at
twilight. A dark panhandler, a non-Slavic face with a badly broken nose from some
long fight years ago, asks me for money to help his family of 10, including two
babies still at the breast. He must have multiplied for two, I think, and give him
10 rubles for his act, but he asks for more. Oh, well. 'In the West they are
least pay people when they work, don't they? But here not, " he says.
"Have a good rest. Go have some dinner and a drink," he calls out as I wander
in the web of little lanes and pathways, picking my best way through the puddles.
Daylight, with bells proclaiming its opening, shows the Kremlin in full scale.
The massive walls, the puffy, balloon like towers tweaked at the top, the walkways
along the top of the walls, the distant gardens with their aperies, and of course
the churches and churches and cupolas over cupolas. The place is being restored,
very very slowly. The 21st century will pass and we will not see its completed,
not unless there's say a 5-year-old reading this blog. Skafolding is everywhere and
great plastic sheets or netting cover many walls and whole churches. Never mind,
the fantasy of the place shines through. There's so much of it that it cannot be
subdued. The power of imagination of its anonymous architects, their vision of
something between and earth, a stopping over place, an affirmation of faith,
a tribute to the past--say, the 12th century or the 14th--because most of this
Kremlin was built in the 17th century. An assertion of power. The Mongols
had fallen away, some converted, others left. Fortresses, even against enemy
brothers were not really necessay (well, there were the pesky Poles and Cossacks with
them, but local boy from nearby Kostroma had taken care of them by taking them
now to his leader but to a swamp where they all perished). The Rostov Kremlin
is a 17th century Disneyland without Mickey Mouse. It's real, yet not, a late
medieval modernism statement that looks backward to its own roots and classical
forms and overstates them to stunning effect. It is surely one of the great sites
of heritage architecture in the world. Why is the resource rich contemporary
Russian State not restoring this national icon at a faster pace? No, this is
not the place to ask rhetorical questions. Just stand there and drift into
the ancient fantasy. Listen to the bells at Evening (Vechernii zvon), a concert
unmatched in bell musicality (the Rostov bells are renowned). Hear them again
in the morning and enjoy this retreat from overheated, overcrowded 21 century
cities.
At night, examing my little room more carefully, I find this notice -- in Russian
and English- pasted to the large, heavy wooden door. I quote the English verbatim:
"In case of a fire IN your room:
-be quiet,
-leave your room and shut the door, do not lock it.
-say about fire to a man on duty.
In case of fire Out of your room:
-quietly shut the windows and leave your room.
-go downstairs.
-then follow instructions of Administration.
-if there is smoke in corridors or in the stair and you cannot leave the
hotel, be in your room. Wet closed door will save your for a long time."
After a good laugh and another. I reconsider this little text. The Russian
version, without the English gaffes, is not radically different. It's worth
a sober deconstruction. Generally speaking, the points are simple:
In case of a catastrophe: be quiet, obey the Adminstration (Authority),
use whatever common sense you may have (this may be reading to much
into the text) and hope for the best (life is not eternal in any case, you have
to die sometime, if in a fire so in a fire). I think of the most notorious recent
Russian "fires" and catastrophes. The Theatre hostage taking (Nord Ost),
Beslan and school children and some parents held by Chechens rebels until
their were "rescued" by Russian troops, and the submarine sinking. Stay quiet,
obey, wait. Die.
Time to say some cheers for common sense. (And not staying quiet, I would add
gratuitously maybe. But it's my blog!)
And time for me to make my way home. Down the rabbithole, into the Metro
warrens, the rat race will be in full force. Down, down, down. Into the
eternal passages below (actually the metro closes 1-6 am) "Give me a gentian
to light the way, " I recall a line from D. H. Lawrence elegy about dying. No,
it's ok, the gentians are all wearing black patten leather boots on high spike heels.
They shine like little mirrors in the dim light and go tap tap tap through the tunnels
and on the cars.
It's a bit bewildering to reenter Moscow after a few days' respite, but here is
where the computers are, where home is. I'll try to post another entry tomorrow.
Any of you with time and inclination to read a good Russian short story--one that
portrays a very human, psychological side of life here (although written a few decades
ago), please read my translation of Vladimir Makanin's short story 'The Brother's Keeper"
in the September issue of the interesting new Internet magazine Words Without Borders
(www.wordswithoutborders.com To friends and colleagues with Russian lit courses,
like Tanya Ivanova Sullivan, I think the story would do well in the classroom.
By the way my neighborhood bank was crammed with depositors this morning,
eager to get their money out. The news says that some have been interviewed about
why they need their money, etc. IT is hitting here, too.
lower one, the last bleak apartment blocks of the suburbs fade. Then the colors start, on
both sides. Orange, gold, red, green, gold again, under a blue and golden sun sky.
Splash goes the paint on the canvas, splatter, trickle down, daub on, spill more
golden, tie filigree fragments on top of spindly white birch trunks, lance them with
slashes and spots of black. I've entered a Levitan painting and am moving through it
for the next hour. It's a blinding-with-beauty sensation like I've never felt, a
kind of Matrix-in-art existence. The Russian "golden fall" term is too understated.
It's much more than that. It transforms you, lifting you up and away somewhere,
makes all other perceptions fade, and as long as your psyche can take it--this
painterly emersion--holds you there, suspended somewhere far from earth, even
as you ride a train across its surface. This is the most memorable visual experience
I've ever had. No LSD provided by the conductor (I've never tried it, for the record)
nor any wanted. This is enough and will last in memory. The road to Rostov in October.
A soft October sun lighting the way.
Issak Levitan was a late 19th century Russian painter, Jewish, secular, a friend
of Chekhov, a younger member of the Wanders school/movement of Russian painters,
especially revered for his landscape painters that captured something classic
about Russian reality, its nature with traces of man. He lived a short life, only
to about 1900, similar to Chekhov, had tempestuous affairs, and saw his name
become celebrated. One of my three destinations is to Plyos, a small place on the
Volga, where Levitan--and two lesser known colleagues/friends went to paint
during three summers. Plyos provided the material for some of his best known
painters, now in the Tretyakovsky and the Russian Museum (St.P.). I've
chosen Plyos as one of my favored destinations, because its fall, never been there
(it's not so easy to reach), and because I want to see what the place itself
looks like, as the stimulus of Levitan's inspired work. I'm increasing in a thrall
about the Wanderers--their deterimination to discover/paint Russia as it was.
To shake visual consciousness of the beauty, not of Venice and Rome, but
just the great back yard, villages and forests and hills on the Volga. If I could
find it I would go to the tree Savrasov, another great wanderer, saw the rooks return one chilly
March in Yaroslavl province. I'd go there on a secular pilgimage and stand there
for a while in his honors. I can't find that tree, but I can find Ploys and get there.
It's Plyos or bust!
But first stop is Rostov the Great (Veliki). Or more mundanely, just plain ole
Rostov Yaroslavsky (in Yaroslavl oblast'). I've been hearing about it since the
beginning of my Russian life, in 1967 (a shorter trip in 1963 not counted). Nina,
one of my best friends and still one today, was from there. She was always talking
about Rostov, that I had to go, that their Kremlin is the best in all of Russia--blah-
blah-blah. But a foreigner couldn't just hop on a train on those years and I never
made, even in the 90's when you could start to point some place on the map and
just go (now it's not quite as easy, but certainly possible). Another--a new friend--
went there on his honeymoon and goes back with his wife every year if possible.
So I've put it high on my list and it's on the way to Plyos. I'm on a tight budget
and take no cabs, stay in the cheapest hotels, in rooms without private bath if possible.
The entry way into Rostov is not auspicious, plain and simple Russian country/semi-
city scenes, all strait out of Soviet reality, more faded now, dustier maybe,
trashier (quite literally meant, because of contemporary packaging: I remember
a Soviet Russia as package free and litter free). After so asking around I get
a mashrutka -- the mini-buses that are semi-private and offer seating to passengers
for a modest price, certainly here, half the Moscow fare. Soon I'm at the doors to the
Kremlin, a little overwhelmed by the new atmosphere in itself, after the crowds of
Moscow here very few people on the street, small buildings mainly in bad shape,
but inevitably kind helpers showing me the way. An elderly woman with a bright
smile intervenes when she overhears a drunken man giving me the wrong directions
and sets me right with firm and friendly enunciation. My hotel is in the Kremlin,
the somewhat strange privitization of almost everything in the country now. It's an
old wooden structure, built on top of the cellars or vaults of the monastery, which
the Kremlin really mainly was. Creaky strairs, the smell of old boards and beams,
up the stairs. Yes, all is in order. Here's your key. The room is a tiny little cell of a room
with a tiny TV attached to the wall, not that I watch it in any case.
Outside in early evening I explore the Kremlin itself and the neighborhood, walk
along the bank of the huge, shimmering Lake Nero. The day has turned cloudy but
there's enough sun left to reflect on the water, to show its flat vastness and a little
island a ways out. Ancient people would have left here, the first human settlers of
northern Russia. The lake would have been sacred and in a way still is, spirits and
nameless pre-Slavic gods would have dwelled there, climbing out of the depths at
twilight. A dark panhandler, a non-Slavic face with a badly broken nose from some
long fight years ago, asks me for money to help his family of 10, including two
babies still at the breast. He must have multiplied for two, I think, and give him
10 rubles for his act, but he asks for more. Oh, well. 'In the West they are
least pay people when they work, don't they? But here not, " he says.
"Have a good rest. Go have some dinner and a drink," he calls out as I wander
in the web of little lanes and pathways, picking my best way through the puddles.
Daylight, with bells proclaiming its opening, shows the Kremlin in full scale.
The massive walls, the puffy, balloon like towers tweaked at the top, the walkways
along the top of the walls, the distant gardens with their aperies, and of course
the churches and churches and cupolas over cupolas. The place is being restored,
very very slowly. The 21st century will pass and we will not see its completed,
not unless there's say a 5-year-old reading this blog. Skafolding is everywhere and
great plastic sheets or netting cover many walls and whole churches. Never mind,
the fantasy of the place shines through. There's so much of it that it cannot be
subdued. The power of imagination of its anonymous architects, their vision of
something between and earth, a stopping over place, an affirmation of faith,
a tribute to the past--say, the 12th century or the 14th--because most of this
Kremlin was built in the 17th century. An assertion of power. The Mongols
had fallen away, some converted, others left. Fortresses, even against enemy
brothers were not really necessay (well, there were the pesky Poles and Cossacks with
them, but local boy from nearby Kostroma had taken care of them by taking them
now to his leader but to a swamp where they all perished). The Rostov Kremlin
is a 17th century Disneyland without Mickey Mouse. It's real, yet not, a late
medieval modernism statement that looks backward to its own roots and classical
forms and overstates them to stunning effect. It is surely one of the great sites
of heritage architecture in the world. Why is the resource rich contemporary
Russian State not restoring this national icon at a faster pace? No, this is
not the place to ask rhetorical questions. Just stand there and drift into
the ancient fantasy. Listen to the bells at Evening (Vechernii zvon), a concert
unmatched in bell musicality (the Rostov bells are renowned). Hear them again
in the morning and enjoy this retreat from overheated, overcrowded 21 century
cities.
At night, examing my little room more carefully, I find this notice -- in Russian
and English- pasted to the large, heavy wooden door. I quote the English verbatim:
"In case of a fire IN your room:
-be quiet,
-leave your room and shut the door, do not lock it.
-say about fire to a man on duty.
In case of fire Out of your room:
-quietly shut the windows and leave your room.
-go downstairs.
-then follow instructions of Administration.
-if there is smoke in corridors or in the stair and you cannot leave the
hotel, be in your room. Wet closed door will save your for a long time."
After a good laugh and another. I reconsider this little text. The Russian
version, without the English gaffes, is not radically different. It's worth
a sober deconstruction. Generally speaking, the points are simple:
In case of a catastrophe: be quiet, obey the Adminstration (Authority),
use whatever common sense you may have (this may be reading to much
into the text) and hope for the best (life is not eternal in any case, you have
to die sometime, if in a fire so in a fire). I think of the most notorious recent
Russian "fires" and catastrophes. The Theatre hostage taking (Nord Ost),
Beslan and school children and some parents held by Chechens rebels until
their were "rescued" by Russian troops, and the submarine sinking. Stay quiet,
obey, wait. Die.
Time to say some cheers for common sense. (And not staying quiet, I would add
gratuitously maybe. But it's my blog!)
And time for me to make my way home. Down the rabbithole, into the Metro
warrens, the rat race will be in full force. Down, down, down. Into the
eternal passages below (actually the metro closes 1-6 am) "Give me a gentian
to light the way, " I recall a line from D. H. Lawrence elegy about dying. No,
it's ok, the gentians are all wearing black patten leather boots on high spike heels.
They shine like little mirrors in the dim light and go tap tap tap through the tunnels
and on the cars.
It's a bit bewildering to reenter Moscow after a few days' respite, but here is
where the computers are, where home is. I'll try to post another entry tomorrow.
Any of you with time and inclination to read a good Russian short story--one that
portrays a very human, psychological side of life here (although written a few decades
ago), please read my translation of Vladimir Makanin's short story 'The Brother's Keeper"
in the September issue of the interesting new Internet magazine Words Without Borders
(www.wordswithoutborders.com To friends and colleagues with Russian lit courses,
like Tanya Ivanova Sullivan, I think the story would do well in the classroom.
By the way my neighborhood bank was crammed with depositors this morning,
eager to get their money out. The news says that some have been interviewed about
why they need their money, etc. IT is hitting here, too.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Departure tomorrow, entries will pause
Dear Blog Readers,
I'm leaving tomorrow for a short trip to the ancient cities of
Rostov Veliki, Kostroma, and Ples--a favorite spot of the
painter Levitan and others. I don't know what I'll find there
in the way Internet connections, so I plan to pause my blog
entries for these days -- unless to my suprise, an Internet turns up.
If so, the entries would be very short. I'll be
taking notes for future entries. But I'll be back in Moscow
on October 9 and will start up again. I've got lots of untouched
material. Hope you like today's two postings.
Poka ( later), Byron
I'm leaving tomorrow for a short trip to the ancient cities of
Rostov Veliki, Kostroma, and Ples--a favorite spot of the
painter Levitan and others. I don't know what I'll find there
in the way Internet connections, so I plan to pause my blog
entries for these days -- unless to my suprise, an Internet turns up.
If so, the entries would be very short. I'll be
taking notes for future entries. But I'll be back in Moscow
on October 9 and will start up again. I've got lots of untouched
material. Hope you like today's two postings.
Poka ( later), Byron
Grieving together: Sasha's Grave at Rakitki Cemetery and Kut'ya at Boris Davydovich's Wake
It's September 30. Outlined in black on my calendar. It's 3 years since
Sasha's death and by eery coincidence the 40th day since Boris Davydovich,
my dear old friend, died. He would have been 80 yesterday.
Sasha's sister, mother, and niece come for me in mid morning, to my bus stop
and away we go into the smog and the series of traffic jams. (Moscow is choking
on it's own success -- and the failure of the government to invest in infastructure
and build highways in and around the city. People keep buying cars and
using them, complaining even as they spend hours in traffic jams.) They are my hosts, the mother giving me her apartment and going to live with the daughter
while I'm here. I'm a tie to Sasha. In 2005 I was his friend, mentor and encouraged
him to come to the US, where he desperately-desperately want to go. I arranged
an invitation at UNM and all was set when, one night in late September that same year,
something happened. We still don't know what. He lived alone, had his cell
phone stolen a few days before, girl friend had quarreled and didn't come,
and apparently injured badly, he must have tripped over his city telephone
cord and broke it. We assume he was beaten up on the street, in a random
mugging. It happens in this normally safest of places in daytime. Neighbors refused to let him in to use the phone, they were convinced he was drunk (he was not a drinker) because a brain concussion has similar symptoms. The family found him after five days, and rushed him
to a hospital, but there, too, they were sure he was drunk and let him
lie on a cot for a couple of days until it was too late to save him.
He died at the end of that week, age 38.
We drive to the cemetery, and I try to make cheerful small talk. We feel
close. Finally, we're there - at this sea of small burial plots, almost all
surrounded by a small fence, crosses of all kind, mainly marble with pictures
of the departed. Some have gone extravagant and built glass enclosed masoleums
with ivy growing up the walls. Most keep to the traditional -- a bench to
sit on beside the grave and remember the person, a small table for putting out
the person's favorite food, or some kind of small gesture to the afterlife.
As is to say: there take that and enjoy it, enjoy it with us.
We buy flowers, put them on the grave and stand together in a long silence,
thinking of Sasha, as if communicating with him. The mother says: He's happy
to see us coming to visit him today, all of us together. Then we leave,
make our way through the vast low plain of plots, graves, some fresh, others
neglected but mainly not, a plain strewn with flowers plastic and natural that stretches out as far as the eye can see. It's just one of the several municipal cemeteries. A funeral is underway at
the small church by the gates as we leave. It's not muddy, it's a grey but
warmly damp day.
They drop me off at the metro. The next event is Boris Davydovich's wake
(Russian: pominka). According to Orthodox belief, the soul--after flailing
around and about--goes to Heaven on the 40th day. It's a time for remembering and
celebrating the rising of the spirit of the beloved one. The wake is held in
B.D.'s (Borya to all, but the short name is not to be used on such a formal
occasion.) own modest, drab, but (dearly familiar to me) apartment. He and
his late wife Ol'ga got this separate one room apartment during the Gorbachev period
after always living in a communal ones. They were modest people, except
in their loyalty to friends, their independence of mind, their courage (to
befriend foreigners, even Americans - then Enemy #1), living encyclopedias
with a gift for laughter and moral discourse, especially literary.
Moscow is no longer the same without them. But I'm happy to be here on
this special day.
Galina, his daughter meets me at the door. We had never met, but we
knew all about each other. She is a deacon in the Church, her husband
also important in the Patriarchy. There daughter is here from Denver,
where she lives now with her Russian husband and their 5 little children.
She's come to finish her degree here and brought her twins with her.
I am the first to arrive, Galina is still cooking for the dinner, but
the table -- two tables put together to make one long one, set with
tall white napkins folded to stick up high like candles on a bright white table
setting makes striking contrast with the dim, grimy walls. There is a
balcony and the door is open to an expanse of trees, changing colors now,
brilliant in the late afternoon sun. I think: B.D. would like this.
Galina tells me about her church, their old communal apartment, everything
in the world while she peels potatoes. It's nice to have this private
visit. Then the other guests start trickling in -- B.D.'s first wife,
a microbiologist, his son's wife( the son himself
is on a business trip to Spain), and their 20-something old daughter and little son,
old friends, a young friend that BD met in a park and became a fast
friend with for 10 years (he was, among other profiles, a naturalist, as
the young man is). The meal starts with a prayer sung by Galina.
Then we eat bliny with kut'ya -- the traditional rice with raisins,
a sweet and sticky dish that is thought to hold a person together on a day of
mourning, when he might come apart, and to remind us of the sweetness of the afterlike.
Toasts to his memory come (no clinking of glasses on such a day),
chats, gossip, bits of wisdom, memories. Eventually, the conversation
even turns to cats -- and their genius. BD's first wife tells that
many neighbors at the dacha bring their cats there, leave them there
all winter, only bring them back in the fall. Now, and by the way,
she's bored there now -- there are no mushrooms, nothing to do.
She is a city woman, an academic, but with practical garden marked hands.
One guest tells about the remarkable cat who belonged to a friend.
On the day the friend died, the cat jumped to its death from the 9th floor -
a certain suicide. The cat just didn't want to live any longer. We all
agree, cats are marvelous, intelligent creatures. There is some talk of dogs, too.
I'm the first to leave, it's late and I have to travel by metro and bus
to the other side of the city. From the courtyard I look back up at the
balcony, the house where I came so many times, and feel sad to think
that I will not be coming here any more. I buy a bottle of wine to take
home, my neighborhood store will be closed and I feel like drinking a
little. It's been a long day.
Sasha's death and by eery coincidence the 40th day since Boris Davydovich,
my dear old friend, died. He would have been 80 yesterday.
Sasha's sister, mother, and niece come for me in mid morning, to my bus stop
and away we go into the smog and the series of traffic jams. (Moscow is choking
on it's own success -- and the failure of the government to invest in infastructure
and build highways in and around the city. People keep buying cars and
using them, complaining even as they spend hours in traffic jams.) They are my hosts, the mother giving me her apartment and going to live with the daughter
while I'm here. I'm a tie to Sasha. In 2005 I was his friend, mentor and encouraged
him to come to the US, where he desperately-desperately want to go. I arranged
an invitation at UNM and all was set when, one night in late September that same year,
something happened. We still don't know what. He lived alone, had his cell
phone stolen a few days before, girl friend had quarreled and didn't come,
and apparently injured badly, he must have tripped over his city telephone
cord and broke it. We assume he was beaten up on the street, in a random
mugging. It happens in this normally safest of places in daytime. Neighbors refused to let him in to use the phone, they were convinced he was drunk (he was not a drinker) because a brain concussion has similar symptoms. The family found him after five days, and rushed him
to a hospital, but there, too, they were sure he was drunk and let him
lie on a cot for a couple of days until it was too late to save him.
He died at the end of that week, age 38.
We drive to the cemetery, and I try to make cheerful small talk. We feel
close. Finally, we're there - at this sea of small burial plots, almost all
surrounded by a small fence, crosses of all kind, mainly marble with pictures
of the departed. Some have gone extravagant and built glass enclosed masoleums
with ivy growing up the walls. Most keep to the traditional -- a bench to
sit on beside the grave and remember the person, a small table for putting out
the person's favorite food, or some kind of small gesture to the afterlife.
As is to say: there take that and enjoy it, enjoy it with us.
We buy flowers, put them on the grave and stand together in a long silence,
thinking of Sasha, as if communicating with him. The mother says: He's happy
to see us coming to visit him today, all of us together. Then we leave,
make our way through the vast low plain of plots, graves, some fresh, others
neglected but mainly not, a plain strewn with flowers plastic and natural that stretches out as far as the eye can see. It's just one of the several municipal cemeteries. A funeral is underway at
the small church by the gates as we leave. It's not muddy, it's a grey but
warmly damp day.
They drop me off at the metro. The next event is Boris Davydovich's wake
(Russian: pominka). According to Orthodox belief, the soul--after flailing
around and about--goes to Heaven on the 40th day. It's a time for remembering and
celebrating the rising of the spirit of the beloved one. The wake is held in
B.D.'s (Borya to all, but the short name is not to be used on such a formal
occasion.) own modest, drab, but (dearly familiar to me) apartment. He and
his late wife Ol'ga got this separate one room apartment during the Gorbachev period
after always living in a communal ones. They were modest people, except
in their loyalty to friends, their independence of mind, their courage (to
befriend foreigners, even Americans - then Enemy #1), living encyclopedias
with a gift for laughter and moral discourse, especially literary.
Moscow is no longer the same without them. But I'm happy to be here on
this special day.
Galina, his daughter meets me at the door. We had never met, but we
knew all about each other. She is a deacon in the Church, her husband
also important in the Patriarchy. There daughter is here from Denver,
where she lives now with her Russian husband and their 5 little children.
She's come to finish her degree here and brought her twins with her.
I am the first to arrive, Galina is still cooking for the dinner, but
the table -- two tables put together to make one long one, set with
tall white napkins folded to stick up high like candles on a bright white table
setting makes striking contrast with the dim, grimy walls. There is a
balcony and the door is open to an expanse of trees, changing colors now,
brilliant in the late afternoon sun. I think: B.D. would like this.
Galina tells me about her church, their old communal apartment, everything
in the world while she peels potatoes. It's nice to have this private
visit. Then the other guests start trickling in -- B.D.'s first wife,
a microbiologist, his son's wife( the son himself
is on a business trip to Spain), and their 20-something old daughter and little son,
old friends, a young friend that BD met in a park and became a fast
friend with for 10 years (he was, among other profiles, a naturalist, as
the young man is). The meal starts with a prayer sung by Galina.
Then we eat bliny with kut'ya -- the traditional rice with raisins,
a sweet and sticky dish that is thought to hold a person together on a day of
mourning, when he might come apart, and to remind us of the sweetness of the afterlike.
Toasts to his memory come (no clinking of glasses on such a day),
chats, gossip, bits of wisdom, memories. Eventually, the conversation
even turns to cats -- and their genius. BD's first wife tells that
many neighbors at the dacha bring their cats there, leave them there
all winter, only bring them back in the fall. Now, and by the way,
she's bored there now -- there are no mushrooms, nothing to do.
She is a city woman, an academic, but with practical garden marked hands.
One guest tells about the remarkable cat who belonged to a friend.
On the day the friend died, the cat jumped to its death from the 9th floor -
a certain suicide. The cat just didn't want to live any longer. We all
agree, cats are marvelous, intelligent creatures. There is some talk of dogs, too.
I'm the first to leave, it's late and I have to travel by metro and bus
to the other side of the city. From the courtyard I look back up at the
balcony, the house where I came so many times, and feel sad to think
that I will not be coming here any more. I buy a bottle of wine to take
home, my neighborhood store will be closed and I feel like drinking a
little. It's been a long day.
Conversation on a Bus
It's late evening. I find a seat on the bus home and
eager to escape into my own world after a day in the city,
open The Moscow Times, a British funded rag with mainly
business orientation and essentially without anything
one might call news--rumors, trivia, obscure movements
in the financial world of Russia not counted. A man in a
floppy hat, looking rather intellectual sounds down beside
me and strikes up a conversation.
"What does the English word "riverstar" mean?" he asks me.
"There is no such one word, " I answer "but the combination means...etc."
He argues with me a bit about this and tells me it's a navigation system
for airplanes and he saw it once somewhere.
OK.
Then: "Tell me, is there a store in America where you can buy 30
different kinds of tree sap?"
No.
How is that? He insists there must be.
I compromise: not to my knowledge.
He: Tree sap is good for people, cures you of all
kinds of things, oak sap and pine sap and all the
others are good. (Girls sitting across giggle and say, "Especially
for mental problems, right?") He asks about maple sap. I tell
him it mainly appears as syrup. "Oh, syrup -- and why not just
sap?"
Undeterred he goes on. All with a grave face.
"Indians could drink tree sap and change the color of their
skin, don't you think?"
No! And what stop was that? I yell.
The girls tell me, still giggling. I missed my stop thanks to this -intellectual- conversation,
accidentally knock his floppy hat off as I run to the bus door
not go yet another stop out of my neighborhood.
I make my way home through the dark night, checking street
names with passersby as I go. No signs are visible, just speeding
cars.
A few days later, I see my floppy hatted conversationalist, but
avoid any eye contact and keep on my way, lesson learned. Never talk
to strangers, as Mikhail Bulgakov wrote about Woland in Moscow.
Hmmm, Woland was an intellectual...and wore a funny kind of hat.
eager to escape into my own world after a day in the city,
open The Moscow Times, a British funded rag with mainly
business orientation and essentially without anything
one might call news--rumors, trivia, obscure movements
in the financial world of Russia not counted. A man in a
floppy hat, looking rather intellectual sounds down beside
me and strikes up a conversation.
"What does the English word "riverstar" mean?" he asks me.
"There is no such one word, " I answer "but the combination means...etc."
He argues with me a bit about this and tells me it's a navigation system
for airplanes and he saw it once somewhere.
OK.
Then: "Tell me, is there a store in America where you can buy 30
different kinds of tree sap?"
No.
How is that? He insists there must be.
I compromise: not to my knowledge.
He: Tree sap is good for people, cures you of all
kinds of things, oak sap and pine sap and all the
others are good. (Girls sitting across giggle and say, "Especially
for mental problems, right?") He asks about maple sap. I tell
him it mainly appears as syrup. "Oh, syrup -- and why not just
sap?"
Undeterred he goes on. All with a grave face.
"Indians could drink tree sap and change the color of their
skin, don't you think?"
No! And what stop was that? I yell.
The girls tell me, still giggling. I missed my stop thanks to this -intellectual- conversation,
accidentally knock his floppy hat off as I run to the bus door
not go yet another stop out of my neighborhood.
I make my way home through the dark night, checking street
names with passersby as I go. No signs are visible, just speeding
cars.
A few days later, I see my floppy hatted conversationalist, but
avoid any eye contact and keep on my way, lesson learned. Never talk
to strangers, as Mikhail Bulgakov wrote about Woland in Moscow.
Hmmm, Woland was an intellectual...and wore a funny kind of hat.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Dear Blog Readers...
Dear friends and kind blog readers,
Thank you all who have written encouraging comments.
I've just posted a new entry and would do more but my
time is running out for now. Maybe I'll make it back
today and maybe not. But certainly tomorrow, before
I leave on October 3. Life here is always on the run,
although I will confess to having rather leisurely mornings,
necessary to make sure my head is screwed on right
and don't forget anything before going out the door.
The Lenin Library (formally, Russian State Library)
has become my downtown daytime home away from home.
It's gone through some updating, finally, since I was here
last, and is really a pleasant and handy refuge. The place
holds lots of memories for me, from first working here
as a graduate student in 1967-68. When I saw Molotov
(in retirement as a fellow reader in the elite
First Hall - a privilege I'm still accorded, now without
Molotov, of course). The accommodations in the Reading
Room are spacious, genteel, and even light. A view of the
Kremlin outside the windows. Even the computer room
(30 rubles per hour) are adequate. There is lots and lots
to write about, some of it for time reasons will have to
wait until I get home. But I promise you another "blin"
tomorrow, October 2. Trees are turning to gold and red
fast, overnight and soon even those leaves will be gone.
Nature moves fast in the north.
All for now. Poka!
Thank you all who have written encouraging comments.
I've just posted a new entry and would do more but my
time is running out for now. Maybe I'll make it back
today and maybe not. But certainly tomorrow, before
I leave on October 3. Life here is always on the run,
although I will confess to having rather leisurely mornings,
necessary to make sure my head is screwed on right
and don't forget anything before going out the door.
The Lenin Library (formally, Russian State Library)
has become my downtown daytime home away from home.
It's gone through some updating, finally, since I was here
last, and is really a pleasant and handy refuge. The place
holds lots of memories for me, from first working here
as a graduate student in 1967-68. When I saw Molotov
(in retirement as a fellow reader in the elite
First Hall - a privilege I'm still accorded, now without
Molotov, of course). The accommodations in the Reading
Room are spacious, genteel, and even light. A view of the
Kremlin outside the windows. Even the computer room
(30 rubles per hour) are adequate. There is lots and lots
to write about, some of it for time reasons will have to
wait until I get home. But I promise you another "blin"
tomorrow, October 2. Trees are turning to gold and red
fast, overnight and soon even those leaves will be gone.
Nature moves fast in the north.
All for now. Poka!
Moscow Collage
Even coming from sun country as I do and normally sufeitted with it,
I quickly come to love the sun here. In these first few days it helps enormously -
in lighting up dark passages, giving a rich tone to cityscapes that under grey skies look only
shabby, and, maybe mainly, raising my spirits. It's easy to lapse in melancholia
here, even when things are going all your way (does that ever happen?) or worse
still into fits of irasibility and grouches. So yea for the sun all this
week! Until the weekend, which turns rainy.
The stray dogs share this sun-centrism with me. They lie stretched out
in a quiet courtyard in front of a branch of the Academy of Sciences just
off Leninsky Prospekt. They remind me of seals flopped on a sandy beach
in California, bellies sunward. Maybe they are dreaming of California,
by some other dog name. In a strange way I feel drawn to them (the
dogs, not the bellies), kindred souls who will create no problems for me.
Jaded by eternal street life in this city of 15 million souls always
rushing somewhere if they're not in bed, the dogs radiate the joy of leisure.
One or two use the curb as tough pillows that at least fit their long-necked
anatomy. Slowly one rises and lumbers out toward the street, to pee.
Surely no economist has used the health of stray street dogs as the
barometer to well being in Russia's capital. So let me be the first.
If the dogs are doing so well, human life must also be propering or
at least feeling such abundance as to have resources to feed the dogs.
The bellies are full and the dogs sleep rather than scavenge. It's mid-
morning at this Academy of Sciences and some fellow dog lover has apparently
given them their early chow. Similar canine bands can be found all over town.
Unthreatening but not exactly friendly, looking as if they've seen it all,
all this city of drama and indulgence can provide. They seem secure
and unworried, even by the coming of winter. Then they will take
refuge in the Metro, sometimes hopping a train to a favorite station,
where scaps may be plentiful and the crowds smaller (getting trampled
must be a danger for them in this city, greater than the climate).
I think of Sharik, Mikhail Bulgakov's (anti)hero stray in Heart of a Dog,
and how much better this dogs of Fall 2008 are doing. These would turn up
their noses at mere grease. They surely want sausage, maybe kotleti.
Instant conclusion: life is good, life is sweet in this wizened old city
in this particular Indian Summer (more grafically in Russian, Woman's Summer--
warm, soft, caressing). People are well dressed, almost always, some
extravagantly, wildly fashionable, especially young women, of course,
but some young men in the Eugene Onegin mold. Clothes make the woman and
the man here. Much thought goes into making one's appearance on the street,
and only a small percent settles for looking drab or overly plain.
At Moscow State University, where I drop by in search of a colleage and friend,
some outfits, whether women or men, daunt the fashion world and seem just
stepping out from a slick magazine. Roughly some wardrobes must run to about
$5000 per outfit. Elitism is excuded, life whiffs of French perfume.
They all look bright, happy in themselves, optimistic about their lives.
This too is a growth factor by comparison even with three years ago, if
memory serves.
But to return to that courtyard at the Academy of Sciences where I had
scurried on my first full Monday morning. I was there to get registered,
so the police could know where to find me, if need be. This is not a new
requirement, of course, but it's importance is highly stressed. My hosts
cannot do this, because I cannot legally be registered at their apartment
since it is co-owned by a former husband who would never agree, etc, etc.
My tour agency, which also provided me an invitation (for a few) to come to
the country, for another fee (up, now $50) to register me as living
at their office -- Leninsky Prospekt 28, suite 8. They know the
truth (they ask me where I am actually living, but promise not
to come there unexpectedly, ha!) And they have rented
office space at the Academy of Sciences (yes, a comment on the state of
the vaunted Academy) for their chores of playing intermediary between
foreigners and the dread Passport Office (OVIR). The ladies are friendly,
charming, sensible. Everything will be done and ready by Wednesday.
Bragging a bit my contact says that the company has very close relations
with the Passport Office (other mortals should be so lucky). Then, when
I mention that I'm going on a trip soon - to some of the ancient cities
on the Volga, my lady blanches. Uhhhh--I think you'll need a separate visa
for that, for each city. No, no, a young colleague (youth now has all the
answers, thank God) chimes in. Not if he's here on a Business Visa. (Tourist
is for 30 days only, too few for me.) He's fine, good to go. "Everything
is getting stricter and stricter," I object. They nod. "I don't really
think Russia is interested in tourism," I go on, eager to get in my little
punches, I'm not sure why. "I would have to agree with you,"
my lady agent says. I'm the only patron that morning and I see few, if any
foreign tourists.
And off I go, having completed my bureaucratic duty, free and legal.
I find the metro, take my place in the downward swirl, like a Pluto,
in the underworld, jostle myself a place on the great conveyer belt,
downward into the lower depths on strairs, escalators, then horizontally
to some unlikely destination, hurdling forward to some new station.
Ah, the Metro. That's a topic all its own, for another entry.
I quickly come to love the sun here. In these first few days it helps enormously -
in lighting up dark passages, giving a rich tone to cityscapes that under grey skies look only
shabby, and, maybe mainly, raising my spirits. It's easy to lapse in melancholia
here, even when things are going all your way (does that ever happen?) or worse
still into fits of irasibility and grouches. So yea for the sun all this
week! Until the weekend, which turns rainy.
The stray dogs share this sun-centrism with me. They lie stretched out
in a quiet courtyard in front of a branch of the Academy of Sciences just
off Leninsky Prospekt. They remind me of seals flopped on a sandy beach
in California, bellies sunward. Maybe they are dreaming of California,
by some other dog name. In a strange way I feel drawn to them (the
dogs, not the bellies), kindred souls who will create no problems for me.
Jaded by eternal street life in this city of 15 million souls always
rushing somewhere if they're not in bed, the dogs radiate the joy of leisure.
One or two use the curb as tough pillows that at least fit their long-necked
anatomy. Slowly one rises and lumbers out toward the street, to pee.
Surely no economist has used the health of stray street dogs as the
barometer to well being in Russia's capital. So let me be the first.
If the dogs are doing so well, human life must also be propering or
at least feeling such abundance as to have resources to feed the dogs.
The bellies are full and the dogs sleep rather than scavenge. It's mid-
morning at this Academy of Sciences and some fellow dog lover has apparently
given them their early chow. Similar canine bands can be found all over town.
Unthreatening but not exactly friendly, looking as if they've seen it all,
all this city of drama and indulgence can provide. They seem secure
and unworried, even by the coming of winter. Then they will take
refuge in the Metro, sometimes hopping a train to a favorite station,
where scaps may be plentiful and the crowds smaller (getting trampled
must be a danger for them in this city, greater than the climate).
I think of Sharik, Mikhail Bulgakov's (anti)hero stray in Heart of a Dog,
and how much better this dogs of Fall 2008 are doing. These would turn up
their noses at mere grease. They surely want sausage, maybe kotleti.
Instant conclusion: life is good, life is sweet in this wizened old city
in this particular Indian Summer (more grafically in Russian, Woman's Summer--
warm, soft, caressing). People are well dressed, almost always, some
extravagantly, wildly fashionable, especially young women, of course,
but some young men in the Eugene Onegin mold. Clothes make the woman and
the man here. Much thought goes into making one's appearance on the street,
and only a small percent settles for looking drab or overly plain.
At Moscow State University, where I drop by in search of a colleage and friend,
some outfits, whether women or men, daunt the fashion world and seem just
stepping out from a slick magazine. Roughly some wardrobes must run to about
$5000 per outfit. Elitism is excuded, life whiffs of French perfume.
They all look bright, happy in themselves, optimistic about their lives.
This too is a growth factor by comparison even with three years ago, if
memory serves.
But to return to that courtyard at the Academy of Sciences where I had
scurried on my first full Monday morning. I was there to get registered,
so the police could know where to find me, if need be. This is not a new
requirement, of course, but it's importance is highly stressed. My hosts
cannot do this, because I cannot legally be registered at their apartment
since it is co-owned by a former husband who would never agree, etc, etc.
My tour agency, which also provided me an invitation (for a few) to come to
the country, for another fee (up, now $50) to register me as living
at their office -- Leninsky Prospekt 28, suite 8. They know the
truth (they ask me where I am actually living, but promise not
to come there unexpectedly, ha!) And they have rented
office space at the Academy of Sciences (yes, a comment on the state of
the vaunted Academy) for their chores of playing intermediary between
foreigners and the dread Passport Office (OVIR). The ladies are friendly,
charming, sensible. Everything will be done and ready by Wednesday.
Bragging a bit my contact says that the company has very close relations
with the Passport Office (other mortals should be so lucky). Then, when
I mention that I'm going on a trip soon - to some of the ancient cities
on the Volga, my lady blanches. Uhhhh--I think you'll need a separate visa
for that, for each city. No, no, a young colleague (youth now has all the
answers, thank God) chimes in. Not if he's here on a Business Visa. (Tourist
is for 30 days only, too few for me.) He's fine, good to go. "Everything
is getting stricter and stricter," I object. They nod. "I don't really
think Russia is interested in tourism," I go on, eager to get in my little
punches, I'm not sure why. "I would have to agree with you,"
my lady agent says. I'm the only patron that morning and I see few, if any
foreign tourists.
And off I go, having completed my bureaucratic duty, free and legal.
I find the metro, take my place in the downward swirl, like a Pluto,
in the underworld, jostle myself a place on the great conveyer belt,
downward into the lower depths on strairs, escalators, then horizontally
to some unlikely destination, hurdling forward to some new station.
Ah, the Metro. That's a topic all its own, for another entry.
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