The Last Days...

In past years I’ve been really bad about posting the “last days” of my trip, but I thought I’d write a closing thoughts or summary of what happened and perhaps even how I felt after the trip. I mean I didn’t write a post home after my first year at the program where I drank till the moment I left and suffered from the absolute worst flight in my life, sweating beer and vodka all the way across the Atlantic and North America until we touched down in Seattle where I thanked the powers that be for depressurization and cursed the authorities of Seattle’s airport for confining smokers to a 6x9 foot square on the lowest level of the multi tiered structure. No I didn’t write about that or how on the drive to the airport I saw a dead body on Moskovsky prospect, a woman lay there between police cars in a pool of blood and how it seemed that either she had been shot or brutally hit by a car. I omitted these details and the fact that St. Petersburg bid me farewell that first year by saying: “your romantic notions are just that, and here’s the grim reality of being mortal.” No, my love affair with the city didn’t end there, but every year I find another reason to hate and love the city all at once. That first year, I hadn’t seen the sun actually rise in two weeks as the buildings obscure the “act” of sunrise, but that morning, when I reached the airport and found the door to the domestic terminal check in and registration locked, I stood outside on the 2nd floor of Pulkova and smoked a cigarette staring at a ball of crimson fire in the sky and how the pool of blood on the road and this cosmic event seemed to be a mirror reflection of the microcosm of human existence. No, I didn’t write about any of this, or the anti-semitic cab driver who said “Bloomberg (NYC’s mayor), is a bit of a Jew isn’t he?”

The last days of my trip this year weren’t quite as visceral as the previous years. In a strange way, they were the perfect juxtaposition for what I had experienced; you might say that the scales were balanced after this year. My trip with Sergei was fantastic, we started at the Hermitage, the clouds weren’t really cooperating, but it was still a treat to be out there on Aleksander’s Square during the wee early hours of the morning when very few people were out and the DPC (cops) were asleep in their cars, that blocked certain street entrances to the square. It didn’t quite strike me at first how many cops were out on the roads, but as we left the hermitage and began to drive to the small church near the Marinsky theatre taking the long route along the Fontanka canal their presence became an undisputable fact. Every corner had either several DPC’s or young soldiers in camouflage standing guard. The G8 which starts today, was still several almost two weeks away. The city seemed to be undergoing some kind of rehearsal for what I can only imagine is a massive show of force where they will be shooting first and asking questions later.

The street that the small church sits on has a small canal that runs along it. The marinsky is a block or two away. The sky was just becoming right as we pulled up along a sleepy little street. Sergei stayed in his car and I got out and began to take pictures. Every now and then I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder and at the shoddy building behind me with its darkened courtyard entrance. I imagined that some drunken hooligan would come out at any minute and I would have to make the decision of weather to brain him with the monopod of my camera or make a dash for the car. I thought back to last year and how I had visited this church then and been denied access as I hadn’t remembered that I need to wear long pants when going to orthodox churches, even those that are museums and not working churches. I used my telephoto lens to peek inside the church, into its gilded bowels. This year, the sky blue paint, seemed a cold husk against the slowly warming sky that was turning different shades of rose, and the clouds that still weren’t lit from below and hung heavy in their gray lifelessness.

After I snapped a few and stood there staring at the waters of the canal I decided we needed to make a dash for the small rose church, way out near the airport. Sergei lived in a large building, in what he described as a good neighborhood, a few blocks from the church. We arrived to find it sitting there, perfectly picturesque in a setting of gravel and trees and a playground behind it. The church was built in the 18th century to mark the victory of a naval battle. During festival days people flock to it, due to the size the party spills out onto the grounds leading up to the church. It was beautiful and I was happy to finally find this little structure which seemed to be the perfect counterpoint to the massive and heavy domed churches that line Nevsky Prospect. This small memorial chapel with its very simply crown of spires and stripes, and the pink color of its walls, seemed to sit there humbly adorning the trees behind it, waiting for someone to come up to it and acknowledge its beauty. I was reminded of Bramante’s Tempietto of San Pietro and how perfect it is in both size and decoration. What is lost in terms of grandeur like the Pantheon in its classical perfection, is gained in the subtlety of its form, the way it doesn’t impose but makes the eye trace its circular circumference, it makes one desire to see what is on the other side or stand atop the balcony that although held by a round of columns has the appearance of floating.

Once I had my fill of trying to capture the fleeting, and now flat light of morning, we left and wound up at a coffee shop near Kazanskay. I bought Sergei a mocha and he began to tell me stories about “driving” in St. Petersburg. The most memorable was about train tracks. According to him, the driver who pulls closest to the tracks, in an act of bravery, is “the man” (krutoy), and will be the first one to peel out once the train passes. A land cruiser had made its way pretty close to the tracks as a long freight train was passing through. A small Lada , this thing is tiny, made its way through the crowd of cars, skillfully weaving in and out of the lane of traffic and using the sidewalk managed to pull in front of the big shiny new Land Cruiser in a move of total defiance. The guys inside the Land Cruiser took this as an insult and got out of their car and began to beat the crap out of the Lada smashing the tinted window to reveal four passengers. They took out the headlights and riddled it with dents as they had money and thought themselves tough guys. Once they were done they got inside their big shiny car and sat there content. The doors to the Lada opened and four guys with machine guns stepped out of the car, the real mafia. They proceeded to do to the land cruiser what was done to their “fly” soviet ride. As three of them took the land cruiser apart, shooting out its tires, one man stood in front of the car with his machine gun pointed inside the cab. Once they were done demolishing this once shiny and new piece automobile, they climbed inside their newly ventilated ride and drove off… the moral of the story is: never assume that expensive cars are driven by mafia, never assume that cheap ones aren’t.

The next few days were filled with last minute shopping, packing, a trip to the banya with Parker where I watched a replay of the Italy vs. Germany game where the Italians scored 2 goals in the final minutes of the second overtime. It was beautiful, and as I sat, recently baked in the parilka, smoking a cigarette next to other toga wrapped men, we all agreed, it was pretty the way the Italians knocked the Germans out of the World Cup. After the banya we went to the Ukranian joint for a quick bite before the final open mic. Shinok, the name of the restaurant means puppy in Russian, and so we sat, hungrier than puppies staring at the menu. I found something that seemed to fit the bill as I didn’t want eat a huge and heavy meal for fear of falling asleep during the reading. I kept the alcohol intake to 1 beer. The waitress, dressed in a quasi traditional headdress, and the waters in their billowing and baggy red satin pants make the whole theme a bit laughable. Still, she comes over and I order cauliflower friend in egg. Its something my grandmother makes here, and it’s a wonderfully simple and not very heavy dish. A few minutes later she comes out of the kitchen and says that they just served up their very last portion of cauliflower and I needed to choose something else. I ask her “so what else is good here vegetable wise?” She looks at me and says “well the chicken in curry on a skewer is nice.” Aha, so as I had previously thought, chicken is a vegetable. I went with the chicken on a skewer as replacement for my cauliflower.

My departure, on Friday, was fast approaching and there was little time to do anything. I decided that I would take things easy, instead of running myself thinner than I already had, I would just “chill” and take in the sights and sounds. I started packing early so that I wouldn’t be bothered by it on Thursday. Wednesday night turned into a bit of a late, late night at The Datcha. In truth, we hadn’t quite planned for that late of a night, but that’s the way things go. It started something like this: Sam Lipsyte, James and I were sitting in The Office Pub. I asked Misha, the bartender, for one last round of vodkas, were thirsty, what can I say? He apologized saying that they had closed down the register. The way that the pub closes down is this, first they ring the last call bell, then they turn on the lights if they’ve been dimmed, then the TV goes off, then they kill the music, and then they throw you out if you still haven’t left. During the process they put away the register and cash and stop serving booz. The three of us weren’t quite ready to put the axe down and after stepping outside for fresh air and the 30 millionth smoke of the night, we decided, what the hell, two vodkas at Datcha and then we’re done. Ok, so we all went back to the hostel so I could unload the camera, no way was it accompanying me to Datcha without a well built and well strapped security guard. As we were leaving the hostel we heard voices emanating from Nancy and Sarah’s room. We knocked quietly and found the two of them plus Kristin, all in black cocktail dresses, fresh from the ballet. Try as we might, they didn’t want to join us for drinks at Datcha, so we were off… And when we arrived, we found a good number of SLSers dancing the night away at that asshole of a bar. Well we drank, and kept drinking, and drank some more, and danced to remixes of the doors, it seemed to be funk night and the James Brown was flowing free along with Sly and The Family Stone. Ryan was there and he was dancing as if he fell off some lost episode of soul train. We left, eventually, and hit the sack around 6 in the morning, could’ve been seven, I simply can’t remember, and I was the most sober one among us.

I woke the next day and blundered around the hotel, finishing the packing, throwing this and that away, figuring out how I was going to smuggle as much vodka as possible back home, the odds and ends of leaving a place after living there for a month. Sveta called me around noon to tell me that I’m going with them to the Datcha, now I had heard about some staff dinner that was going to take place at a real Datcha an hour outside the city. Originally they told me that we’d be back around 9 the next day, or so I thought they meant 9am, so I had turned down the invitation as my flight was leaving at 11. No, they were coming back around 9, it actually was more like 11 or 12 at night, but that was fine, I wouldn’t of minded spending the night there. So at 4 in the evening I made my way to Gherzen to meet parker. Sveta’s mother, Victoria, and a driver, were there to pick us up. We drove north onto Vasilevsky Island and continued down into the thick of Krushev apartment buildings where we picked up Lana. Now with Parker, Lana and I squeezed into the back of this Lada station wagon, we drove another 30 – 40 minutes beyond the city, into the country, to the home of Edward and Vera Romenko. Vera is the “Dean” of Victoria’s program at the Gherzen. Victoria is a liason for foreign affairs if I remember this correctly. Edward is retired and was our host for the night.

How do I begin to describe this experience? Well I think I’ve mentioned that Datchas are the country residences that Russians with means keep outside the city. Some are small and quaint as in the case of my relatives in Moscow, and passed down generation to generation, and others are more opulent, as is the case with Edward. Their Datcha is a modest 3 story affair that has 3 bedrooms, and I’m sure the dinning room is used as sleeping quarters for large parties, sits on a very nice chunk of land that is planted with all sorts of flowers, fruits and vegetables. Off to one side there’s a banya, and beyond that another datcha that will dwarf Edwards, its probably twice the size, which has an indoor pool and banya in a separate structure. Although that Datcha is beautiful, I like Edwards, with its brick façade and near Dutch staircase that has a vertical angle that makes it seem more like a ladder than anything we know in the west. Parker and I were taken in, shown the house, complete with a Gym, which Edward says keeps him young, and at 70, he’s definitely ahead of the curve. We settled at a table outside with Jenya (short for Jennifer Lopez), Sveta’s dog, jumping and prancing around us. Victoria brought out a plate of freshly cut vegetables that included giant tomatoes, pickles and yellow and red bell peppers, a plate of various salami and home made hachapuri for appetizers. I was terribly thirsty with a wicked cotton mouth, so instead of starting with beer I asked for Kvas, and eventually made my way to the beer. We sat outside with Edward who seemed as if he was sizing us up. He asked us questions, wanted to know how I spoke Russian so well, and we simply sat there having a conversation. He told me that he was a survivor of the blockade of Leningrad. He has a card that designates him as a “blakadnik”. He shows this card to police when they stop him and half of them don’t believe him and ask where he bought the forgery. I can only imagine that this is one of the biggest insults that you could give to someone who lived during the days when food rations were 100 grams of bread per day. If you think about it, 50 grams is 1 shot of vodka, maybe that puts the ration into perspective. His father came home from the front, a couple years into the war, and caught pneumonia and died on the couch. Edward was alone with his mother and would surely have died of starvation if it wasn’t for his aunt who worked for the KGB. They were given a larger food ration and they shared it with Edward and his mother. He said that when you ate bread in those days, whatever crumbs fell onto the table or the floor, you would lick your finger and carefully collect every single crumb and speck of bread dust as food was that scarce.

An hour or so after we arrived the rest of our dinner crew made it to the Datch, driven by Alina and Sveta. After greetings, a beer outside, it was time to dine. We went into the hose to find a long table with five different kinds of vodkas, as many salads, juice, sparkling water, salty goods, everything that I’ve come to know as home, growing up, that my Mother will tell you as a child, my brothers and I would refer to as Russian Torture, that now is ambrosia to me. It was all there, and so we dug in amazed by the variety, the freshness and the absolute pleasure. Needless to say there were many toasts and I was expected to act as translator, alternating with Sveta and Tatiana. Edward doesn’t drink, he kept a glass of champagne that he nursed through maybe one refill during the entire dinner. Yet he was fond of giving toasts, and even more appreciative when you would give one in return. James and Sam both stood, in drunken wavers, and toasted his health. We thanked each him, Vera and Victoria for their hospitality, we drank to friendship between peoples and countries, to good times, to Russia, to America, to peace on Earth and nothing at all. We drank, oh boy did we drink, and we ate. The meal was multiple courses, of course, and they decided to omit the hot fish course, after we had the meat course, and the potatoes before that, and the 2 cold courses before that. We just couldn’t do it anymore, I later found out that Ryan had to purge not because of the drink, but because he had eaten way too much. I know that I was in pain at some point. I made the mistake of coming last to the hot course, had to use the facilities, and being a rather stout fellow, they decided that I needed two of everything. So as not to be rude, I ate it. Danny hardly touched his food and he got an ear full, that “you don’t like it?” Which we nudged him and said eat, doesn’t matter if you’re full, keep eating, you’re eating for those that starved to death during the blockade damn it!

Over the dinner table hung a portrait of Edward from when he was 25. He was bare chested and his abdominal muscles were painted and exaggerated. Edward told us that he was a “master of sport” which is a designation that doesn’t really exist in the states. During the days of the soviet union, all sports, all professional athletes were state sponsored, so there was a designation, a degree if you will, called Master of Sport. Its hard to imagine, but its when you reach such a profound level of skill in your chosen sport that you are given this title. Edward was a weight lifter, not body builder, weight lifter, and as such was a master of sport. He used to pose for artists as a model, after one such session he lined up all the paintings and bought his favorite for 15 rubles. That was a sizeable chunk of change 45 years ago. I asked him if there was a cubist among them, he said yes, and he couldn’t tell if he had painted him or the female model, so he passed over that citing a lack of understanding or appreciation for such styles of art.

We all agreed that spending the night would’ve been an ideal way to digest the food. I mean they pulled out young garlic from the ground, washed it and there we ate it with pieces of salami. It was divine, but alas, it was time to go, so we bid Edward farewell. Sam happened to have a copy of The Subject Steve in his bag and he gave it to Edward, after signing it, as a parting gift. There were pictures, handshakes and hugs. A thousand thank yous to our hosts and then we were off, heading back for the wilds of St. Petersburg. Alina drove like a bat out of hell, I mean this was normal for ST. Petersburg, and Parker and I sang hair metal songs in a drunken haze as we went flying by. To be honest, I put my seatbelt on for the first time in Russia, she made me very nervous… poor Parker, there wasn’t one in the back seat for him to wear, otherwise he would’ve.

So we came back, spent a few hours at the office pub, said boodbye to friends and then headed for the hotel where I set out my clothes for the next morning, put away the laptop, camera and everything else and went to sleep for a few hours before I woke and began the very long trip home. And so here I am home… missing the fact that I could get meat on a stick in any restaurant, that I can buy cigarettes in every restaurant, that beer is once again an alcoholic beverage, that I’m not walking everywhere, that I’m stuck in my car, that I can’t buy vodka in Subway, that the nights are truly dark, and that hitchhiking isn’t an acceptable mode of transportation. These things I miss… I’ll probably always miss them as they’re touchstones of the romance I have with a place that is at once a home I never really knew or understood, and a destination that I know well enough to enjoy and help others enjoy. Shislivo…