This time I didn't want to leave Russia. It's all rather interesting,
you see, because when I go there I habitually count the days --
and then feel very guilty about it -- until I'm finally on the plane back to fairy-tale Amsterdam,
away, away, away. Of course this time I counted the days too,
but only because I wanted none of them to end. And that, dear Reader, came
to me as a surprise of the size of an elephant, no, a jumbo jet.
We started our Russian vacation in the south where
I'm from. We hadn't yet boarded our flight, but I was already rolling
my eyes and warning Anthony about Shakhty's limited number of sights:
four main streets, an obligatory Lenin stature (every city and town
in Russia has one) and a green park (that goes by the name The Park
of Culture and Relaxation). What else is there to see? Maybe that
newly rebuilt church, its walls whiter than white, that once was wiped out (the Bolsheviks) and the plot converted
into a tram depot? What else? Overgrown playgrounds, and beat-up buses,
and heavily dented roads, perhaps?
We landed in Rostov-Don at midnight. When the
air suddenly turns into velvet -- sultry, fragrant, green velvet --
you know you are in the southern Russia. I always forget how luscious
and scented the late spring there can be, in fact, alway is. My parents
met us at the airport, and off with a taxi we went to Shakhty. You can
rely on me to arrive with a bang, by which I mean I'm such a idiot.
I managed to lose my phone when the taxi driver stopped to fill up on
gas and we had to get out of the car and my phone slipped off my lap
and none of us heard it drop on the gravel. The next morning, ratracing
our steps, my mother and I again took a taxi and went to the gas station
in question. The phone lay untouched (!) on the ground, only by then
it had been run over by a fleet of cars. I'm such an idiot! Or was it
an early misfortune for the fortune later? And what fortune that was, Reader! Our week and a half in Shakhty was a ton of fun, and cake, and
family dinners, not to mention sun, and short-sleeve weather, and more
food!
I'm loving it, Anthony didn't fail to say every day. Russia
may be rough arounds the edges, but there is something so charming about
it. Like that colorful make-shift stage next to my parents' apartment
block where, back in the 80s, children could act out their performances,
only by now the benches for spectators were almost all long gone, the
rusty thills in their place fully consumed by grass. Or that iron play
house where I kicked it as a child, it still stands there hiding now
under the canopy of trees. And that old man's little patch of soil next
to the rusty garage fenced off by the bushes of tea roses the color
of the fire engine and filled to the brim with garden plants, each row
a geometric line. And what about my grandparents' next-door neighbour
who turned her patch into an open-air exhibition of garden statuary,
that is, if one can call statuary the swan figurines made of frayed
car tires. All those things I had, worryingly, overlooked but Anthony
took notice of. And you said there is nothing to see!
Did I mention that neither of my parents speak
English -- although my father did extraordinarily good this past year
in regards of mastering the ABC's of English grammar and the beginner's
vocabulary -- and Anthony is only starting on his textbook Learn
Russian the Fast and Fun Way? What would they do when I wasn't there? I don't
know if you can tell, but I was worried about that too. Indeed, what
would they do? Here is what: they would watch The '80s: The Decade That Made Us on National
Geographic, the Russian voice-over for my father and the
English original in the background for Anthony. They say vodka connects
people? I say television! (There also were Goodfellas and Rambo: First Blood Part II.)
My seventy-eight-year-old grandfather outdid everybody
on the language front. I mean, he cracked everybody up when
he limped towards Anthony and, combining his microscopic knowledge of
German with even smaller expertise in English, introduced himself as
the gross father. We all bursted out in laughter, each probably giggling
for different reasons. I chuckled from the realization that we were together
at the time, and it was all that mattered, god damn the unswept side-streets,
and dented roads, and other such things! My favorite moment every day
was sitting down across the open balcony in the living room after everybody
had gone to sleep and, one lung-ful after another of the sullen and
soft air filled with the scent of acacia blossom, find comfort in the
fact that Anthony snoozed in one room and my parents in another, and
for the time being I didn't have to miss either.
I'm not even going to start on the food we had
had. It's the subject for another post or two or three.
We sat down for a full-scale dinner -- zakuski, first course, main,
and desert -- every night. One thing Anthony thought could be bad, or
mediocre in the least, was Russian food -- and this I don't know where he got from! -- but
it only took him a day to fall head over heels with the local fare.
Stay tuned!
On our last night in Shakhty we all went to a
restaurant to celebrate my mother's birthday. We sat down and raised
our glasses, and then a band started playing and a red-faced woman the
shape of a watermelon from the table next to ours ran up to Anthony,
grabbed him by his shirt, and swirled him into a dance. Don't
scare him, mom said rushing after her. Let me dance with a foreigner!, cried the red-faced woman the shape of a watermelon.
Rough around the edges but charming.
Next afternoon we flew to Moscow -- the city of
24/7 everything: weight loss clinics and breweries next door (!) --
to see my uncle's family. When we weren't at my uncle's devouring the
crayfish he expertly cooked in a heavily salted broth with dill and
bay leaf, and washing it down with beer, we walked.
I sprained my foot
and it swelled, but we walked on! We did the obligatory saunter around Red Square, and through Kitay-Gorod, and down the Boulevard Ring. We took a boat ride along the Moskva river and saw beautiful things
like the new Cathedral of Christ the Savior that had been demolished
by the Bolsheviks and in its place came a public swimming pool.
One late evening we returned to Red Square
to see it in the lights, and it was special. By which I mean there were
hundreds of people and more flash lights coming off every second wherever
you looked, and yet somehow I found myself standing there a few meters
off the stone gate leading to Red Square and there was not a soul around
me, a soft breeze the only disturbance. It felt quiet and comfortable,
as if the whole world just folded itself up and I had nothing to do
other than to feel the breeze in my face, and look at the colorful onion
domes of Saint Basil's Cathedral on the horizon, and at Anthony ahead of me taking
pictures with the enthusiasm of an American who finds himself at Red Square. And I felt very glad about where I was and where I'd just
been. As if there were cracks in me, and now, for an instant, I was
whole. I remember saying to myself: Please do not forget this moment. A second later -- hundreds of voices around
me again and even more thoughts.
I've been thinking about that moment everyday
since. But most of all, I've been thinking how I can't wait to go back.
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