Russia - A Tale Of Two Cities

This is later than I normally post but I was exhausted this morning and running on very little sleep. We had a very late late night last night and I was charged with opening and tending the office for the first two hours this morning. I was there, corporeally, not so sure about my head though.

Yesterday started wonderfully. After I posted I went to the church of Catharina Aleksandreavna. Its a large catholic church dating back to the early 19th century. The inside was gutted by fire in the 80s and it was since rebuilt. Sadly, the 200 year old frescoes were destroyed. There are brick altars that still show the signs of fire and destruction. I sat and talked with the woman who ran the place, she was selling beezwax canals. She told me the history of the church and talked to me a bit about the other Catholic Churches in St. Peters.

I left the church an headed down the Gribojedeva hoping to get into Spill blood-- CLOSED! Cerado! Zakrity! Well that's just my luck. I swear I'm getting into that place before I leave this time. I seem the have the dumbest luck there. Its terrible. I listened to a couple old men singing and playing accordion on one of the bridges. The singe had a gorgeous voice and the songs probably dated back to the time of Lenin or before. They were very old Russian tuns, probably military as both of them sported their medals. I dropped some money in the accordion case and then two hoods came up and began to harass the guys. I think they were trying to extort money from them. I was going to take their picture, I tend to ask before I take them, but once the thugs made it on the scene I backed off... I walked down the canal and passed a ballet school where a piano was banging out something that sounded like Tchaikovsky and the voice of the ballet teacher boomed from an open window. I could only imaging the terror of the tutu clad teenagers as they were criticized for everything from their posture to their grace. Still, there was something charming about the whole experience.

Back to the hotel with haste I went and wound up meeting James for the Dostoevsky Crime & Punishment walk. There was only one othe person who came on the walk, Karen. We started by an embankment on the Gribojedeva where Jams set th scene an conundrum of coming to St. Petersburg an wanting to see Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg. It doesn't exist. You must be asking yourself, what do you mean? It doesn't exist?! That's absurd! I think so too, but you're also thinking with a western mind. Dostoevsky was detested by both Lenin and Stalin. He was, in his own time, pronounced dead as a writer. Although in the west he has been hailed as a genius, a paragon of not only Russian letters, but literature the world over, he was not as beloved here in Russia. St. Petersburg played host to throngs of writers in the 19th century. They were everywhere. There were dozens of them. The city built by Peter the great, facades with courtyards, long perspective lines, was also a major bureaucracy and it needed clerks to run it. Lots of them. These clerks were amazing; they spoke four to five languages, wrote and did translations. Once the serfs were set free, people fooled the cities from the countryside. Petersburg swelled in its population and also in its brain trust. Gogol was here, self loathing, self hating, a short small man who burned his own manuscripts and thought of himself as a poet and not a novelist. Pushkin's legacy was live and well in both stone and paper from the bank of the Nevya to the Catherine palace outside the city limits. This was a place where writers lived, work, live and died. Although in our western mind Dostoevsky is Russian literature along with Tolstoy, the concentration of writers would make your head spin.

Now, taking that background into account, consider that the walk we went on never existed. The quarter of the city, just beside Sennay Square and the old hay market id indeed exist an th street on which Roskalnikov lived had over 14 bars and 18 brothels in a two block stretch, is a figment of one man's imagination. Fydor was very observant he would walk through the neighborhood muttering to himself. He would move often for he wrote about the places he live and exhausted the creative anima there and would need more inspiration thus he had many flats around the city. St. Petersburg is not only a real place, a place that carries the mythos of Russian literature, but is contextualized by western preference. We forced Dostoevsky back on Russia. When James came here 5 years ago to do research there were no maps that listed Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg, it doesn't exist, yet it does in a universe west of this place.

We left the embankment and made our way up the street to the house where a plak hangs announcing that Fydor wrote Crime an Punishment there. From there we crossed the street and went into a dvor (courtyard) and through an open door, to the top of a staircase that would have been where Roskalnikov lived. The walls at the top are covered with grafiti saying repent, forgive, Roskalnikov lives, murderer, we believe in you Dostoyevsky. The owners/occupants paint over it, but it doesn't stop. The graffiti is in 12 or more languages. Its everywhere. The mythos of that apartment, of a fictional character transcends both language and culture, yet here maybe its taken a little for granted.

Yes, I took pictures.

We left the flat and moved down the street and around the corner to the Pawn Broker's flat where the murder takes place. During soviet times, Stalin was hosting some cultural visit from some noteable scholars. They were so ashamed of soviet poverty that they installed Brass Knobs on the stair case that lead up to the flat. Some were still there, others were missing.

The stairwell is much cleaner, its not quite the cult locus as with R.'s flat. (aside, wow I love the tunes here, thy are playing a remix of Scottie Deep). From the pawn brokers flat it was back onto the gribojeiva for James' closing thoughts on both the impact of the novel in the west and what we just experience.

There's a quote from big D. I can't remember the whole thing but he said something like this: respect life. All inspiration should come from life for its far richer than the imagination. Trust life he said.

With that in mind we set out for dinner at Zoom. The food is still quite good there.

*****

7am the next day.

I had run out of time the day before and I decided that rather than buy more time and go back I needed food. It was off to the brick for tsatzivi and xachapuri. Back to my tale of two cities.

*****

Zoom offers one a relaxing atmosphere, relatively good service, wonderful ambiance and a generally great place to be. The menus are card catalog drawers. Every dish is on a notecard in the drawer. I could picture a joint like this in Hayes Valley in SF. James and I were joined by Andy, a participant that decided last minute to arrive early. Unfortunately housing is tight so he had to find his own digs until the second session starts and we can move him into the hotel/hostel/dorm.

After an hour or more of smoking drinking beers and general discourse concerning education and how people learn James and I left Andy to work on his book and we went back to the office. We stopped off at the hotel to drop off my camera. Tom met us in the office lobby and said we were off to Cynic. What's cynic you ask? Well let me tell you. If one was to take Kazanskaya Ulitza down to where you can see St. Isaac's Cathedral you would run into a short bit of street till it hits the giant square that in Dostoevsky's time lacked St. Isaacs. It was a massive, massive square that parallelled the massive city in which it resided. Half way up the first block one runs into an archway that leads to a dvor. There's a small sign that's easily missed, I didn't see it. But below the sign is a wooden door. I would call it pile of wood more than a door, but low and behold, a narrow set of stairs ran you down into the cellar and into a breakbeat haven of young kids. The tables were picnic style benches of wood with green metalic legs. The benches pulled out. They served Baltika No. 7 (quickly becoming my favorite beer in Petersburg.) After a liter or so the tap ran dry and we had to switch to Tuborg, also not bad. Our party consisted of Sarah, Crystal, Masha, Tom, James, Natalie and David. We spent a good hour to two listening to breakbeats and talking. I was feeling rather tired from the previous nights revelerie, but that's the funny thing about steady beer consumption: it wakes me up given enough of it. The alcohol kicks in and as long as I keep adding coal on the fire the locomotive keeps chugging right along.

Eventually another group of Americans sat down at another table (seemed quite the popular and out of the way place with the foreigners.) A large contingent of our party was on their way and eventually they arrived surly, hungry and ready for havoc. We moved to the back room which at that point was empty for lack of easy sitting and benches. Then more arrived but not before I managed one good glass of absinthe... man that was ridiculously strong. Some pour it over sugar allowing it to disolve. I took the sugar, dipped it in the glass letting the liquid creap into the white crystals turning them emarld green. I took my lighter and set it on fire watching the blue alcohol flame as it slowly cooked the sugar. I stirred it into the drink and then knocked it back... I don't like anis but I did like this.

The night continued on with sevearl shots of vodka, a den of smoke so thick you could play football with the whisps that fell to the ground, or trampel them into what seemed a thousand year old stone floor. We cavorted, moved about and told each other lies that strangers tell when feeling an immediate intimacy for no other reason than they're both strangers on a train.

Time doesn't matter in this city and I couldn't tell you what time James got up stating he couldn't stay there anymore. I stood with him as I had been nodding off feeling the weight of countless liters of beer, vodka and the green devil. We left the bar and then went on another walk. This time we were in the throws of the drink but filled with a certain hope. The fresh air filled our lungs and our pace quickened as we walked past St. Isaacs heading for the Nevya. It was very late, but in this part of town, between the Dvortsky and Troitsky bridge, the party was just getting primed. I know it was before 1:30 both bridges were still down. We passed the tribunal where Dostoevsky was tried before being sentanced to a mock execution that was stopped at the last moment and he went into exile for 10 years in Siberia. Through the garden and behold, there we were before the statue of Pushkin's Bronze Horseman. We stopped admiring it as a token of living literature. It was almost too much to take in.

We turned right at the river and headed up the street watching the people as we swam next to each other in a one sided alcoholic haze. I was happy that I had very little money on me. If we were stopped by the cops the shakedown would be cheap. As we neared the Dvoretsky bridge the corwd thickened with revellers. Somewhere near the walkway across the bridge a girl materialized in my slightly blurred vision, a fire dancer that was twirling two balls of flame against the white night sky that had darkened to its most purple hue. From somewhere drums sounded and it felt like I had stepped out of Dostoevsky's world and crossed the atlantic, the great divide and the rocky's and wound up in a burning man festival. This night was too amazing. On we pressed into Revolution square infront of the Hermitage and starred at the white columns of the castle ablaze with lights. The square was filled with motorcycles and people doing tricks here and there. We passed through a vaulted arch and out onto Nevsky Prospect turning right to head back to Kazanskaya when we hit paradise.

Are you ready for this? Positive? Cause I'm not sure I can tell you, but hell, I must, right? Viva la KFC!!! Oh yes... there's nothing like KFC at two in the morning hell bent with 19th century fire in your veins. The sweet smell of the colonel's chicken hit us with a vengence and we felled our bellies swell with hunger and the desire for something other than our liquid diet. We walked inside and ordered a couple sandwhiches and fries, pepsi no ice. (You don't want the ice in this town, its made with tap water and giardi lives in the taps.) I must say, or maybe its the absinthe and vodka that says this, but them fries were mighty tasty.

My cell phone began to explode. It was Burke. He was back at the mini hotel and wanted company. He called us three times while we were there. We stood, content with our walk, our tour, our score and proceeded back to our residence. We found Tom behind his keyboard with a bottle of Stolichnaya on his desk, sealed and three shot glasses. After spending the night drinking Ruskiy Standard Platinum my stomach turned at the notion of powering down Stoli at room temperature. We did, a couple shots later we went to bed, after hearing one of his short stories of course.

A knock on my door fifteen minutes after laying my weary head down roused me from my bed and my smoke. James and I were trashed but I would quickly sober up. One of our participants had been walking back from Datcha with two other people. A group of three seperated them and he was cornered alone like a wilda beast. The lifted him over the edge of the griffin bridge threatening to throw him into the water. During the commotion they removed his wallet, put him down and made off. Another group of three, probably with the first party came by and advised him not to call the cops and then too vanished. The other two caught up to him and they proceeded post haste back to the office. He was unharmed, shaken, but unharmed. The loss of credit card and money was minimal at best. He related this story to us in the hotel, he was still emotional, but we gathered around him and tried to let him know it was ok and that we were all happy he was safe. This is the first such incident in the history of SLS. People have had their wallets lightened by the cops, that's just life here, but never in this manner.

The next day (Thursday) Misha anounced that a group of thieves had decended upon downtown and had been robbing people left and right. He also advised the group gathered at the Petrovas & Dee reading to avoid Datcha. Between getting stopped there and the dark lanes one needs to take to get back to the hotel, its just a bad idea. I couldn't agree more... tis a tiny place that gets so packed you spend most of your time on the street anyway. I much rather sit in the beer garden all night, or at the brick under the blue light, which we did last night. It was an all nighter at the brick listening and dancing to jazz and blues. The time and space vortex made me think back to last year's jazz festival: sitting in this town, with no real sense or desire for time, listening to timeless music, its something that will never leave me. I didn't drink that much last night, mostly just beer... staying away from the vodka. I wish I had. I came home and from having slept late into the afternoon yesterday, my sleep pattern is totally off. I might have fallen asleep for an hour, but woke and couldn't get back to sleep. I finally roused myself and came here to kill time before breakfast, and the openning of the Atryum so I can get some more rubles. Then I think I'll walk for a few hours to burn some energy, take a nap and it will be off to the Nabokov museum for the open mic, Fat Pete's Wordshack as its come to be called over the years.

Some folks are trying to rope me into going to Maralyn Mansom with them on Monday night as translator, I'm not so sure I want to, and I may have to work that night anyway, I'll be on night patrol then (notchnoy deezhour). But anyway, that's still several days away and I'm hard up for sleep, so that may determine my schedule more than anything.

So I'm going to say adieu, shislivo, goodnight and goodbye for the time being...