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.