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.