A long-distance relationship

Lately, more and more people have been asking me for directions. Shocking myself but not thinking twice, I've been able to give them accurately, in most cases.

An uncultured sea of outsiders from the periphery moves to the center in an attempt to conquer it. It's no different here. Cartographic proficiency is not expected. Yet, I once was the real deal -- a rooted Muscovite, as Russians say, born and raised. I suppose this means that I'm now passing for that real deal once again.

Fifteen years after leaving for good.


The ladies of Moscow
Perhaps it's the fact that I've (temporarily!) dropped the socially necessary, yet occasionally uncomfortable, often dishonest, and certainly ill-fitting North American how-are-you-I'm-well-thanks-how-are-you? facial expression. And, maybe it's my ever-present high heels, which I wear in Canada too. In fact, I pride myself on perfecting stiletto hopping over puddles and cracks in the pavement. Only now I walk faster and more from-the-hip, as women should (and as womyn-historians say we shouldn't). These heels have even contributed to Moscow-style fitness, involving endless self-imposed escalator stair climbs, skillfully maneuvering -- laptop-over-shoulder -- around, uh, less fit ladies on the breathless way up.


@ one of my many "offices" / caffeination stations in Moscow
And I've become a regular in smoking sections at caffeination stations too, not because I don't start feeling rather nauseated after a half hour, but because there's no difference in air quality in non-smoking sections. The latter is combined with fearlessly, carelessly jaywalking across the road, too many grocery bags in hand -- only to end up on the white line as reckless Muscovite drivers pass me by in both directions at twice the speed limit.

I've always idealized Moscow as my city. A living city, it grows organically with a great mishmash of architectural styles and people, and yet is so quintessentially representative of the Russian Empire. In fact, large urban centers I liked well beyond their tourist attractions reminded me of Moscow in some way -- Rome's chaos, noise level, and bad drivers, and Tokyo's sheer human mass in proper black suits -- they are alive too.

At the same time, my recent memories of my city also involved playing tourist: two vacations three years apart. Theaters, dining, museums -- leisure, even if active, is too euphemized to represent life. Careful! This third visit -- another three years later -- gave me just what I wished for. Packed subways, rude clerks who refuse to exchange slightly folded dollar bills, endless rain, angry underpaid public employees, and, yes, general chaos, noise level, and bad drivers too, of course.

Toronto is too rotten to be forgiven for such failures even to a small degree, while my first North American home (mine and Winnie the Pooh's, to be more exact), Winnipeg, is simply too suburban. Yet, somehow Moscow manages to get away with everything. It's like Any and All of Your Boyfriends who always seem to fail at perfection. Or, like a puppy, who jumped onto your brand new couch with dirty paws (or worse), but, unlike Any and All of Your Boyfriends, doesn't know any better.

Though, perhaps, Moscow's been considerate of me as well, and that is why I've been able to practice extreme jaywalking, and that is why I've been fitting in.

Just as I'm about to leave again.

A small case of mistaken identity

I diligently spent my Saturday at the former Lenin Library -- now the Russian State Library -- still fondly referred to as "Leninka". Until my laptop battery ran out, that is. Some of the government-funded research institutions I've been visiting are ill-equipped for contemporary technological uses. At others, grim archivists respond with one word -- "crisis" -- to my futile question about recharging, evidently in reference to saving on utilities under uncertain economic conditions.

As I headed to stand in line for an extremely overpriced cappuccino (to do my part in alleviating the said crisis!) in central Moscow, I began encountering various signs of patriotism. First, I saw a number of thin, nonchalantly chain-smoking youth donning military-styled caps, wrapped in giant white-blue-and-red flags. Then -- a couple of excited fashionable ladies with smaller flags as well as a group of emo teenagers in scarves with the same color scheme.

Perhaps it was the advertisement for Edinaya Rossiya party in white-blue-and-red that led me to link all this activity to today's Moscow City Duma elections. The campaign banner covered an entire side of a building where New and Old Arbat split, as late afternoon sun rays flooded its leader's -- Putin's larger-than-life photograph with divine light.

"Could all the people I just saw be part of the status quo-supporting Nashi movement that I've read about? Am I witnessing urban political activism in action?"

Further, I passed by two athletic males in dark bomber jackets, their military pants tucked into combat boots, and, later yet, a non-descript adolescent with a sun wheel awkwardly drawn onto his brown faux-leather bag with a black permanent marker.

"Are these extreme right-wing nationalists? Will I be able to photograph something curious?"

...

"Will they kick my ass if I do?"

It was not until I successfully consumed the somewhat-botched-but-still-overpriced cappuccino and got onto the subway, as my laptop bag attempted to travel by itself pulled by the human deluge, that I (embarrassingly!) discovered the actual reason for all this commotion.

They were all simply going to a soccer match.

Old Don Cemetery (Moscow).

HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW OR FORGOTTEN DEATH
Boris Akunin (Grigori Chkhartishvili)
Excerpt from the Cemetery Tales.
2004.
Translation: mine ©


I feel genuine revulsion toward functioning Moscow cemeteries. They resemble bleeding chunks of meat torn off the living. Black striped buses arrive; they speak too quietly there and cry too loudly, while the choir prelude wails four times a day in the crematorium assembly line, and a formal lady in a mourning dress instructs with a set voice, “Approach one by one, say your goodbyes”.

If by accident and out of sheer curiosity you had ended up at Nikolo-Arkhangelskoe, Vostryakovskoe, or Khovanskoe cemeteries, get out of there and do not look back – or else you will be frightened by the endless wasteyards reaching the horizon, embedded with grey and black rocks; you will suffocate from the distinct greasy air, go deaf from the ringing silence, and you will want to live eternally, to live at any cost, only to avoid turning into a pile of ashes among the maggots of the columbarium or disintegrating into proteins, fats, and carbons under the flowerbed zero seven measuring one point eight.

New cemeteries will explain nothing to you about life and death; they will only baffle, frighten, and confuse you. To hell with them, let them chomp with their granite-concrete jaws behind the perimeter highway, while we better head to Zemlyanoy town, to Old Don Cemetery, for, in my opinion, no other place in all of our beautiful and mysterious city is more beautiful and mysterious.

Old Don Cemetery is completely unlike the contemporary giants of the funeral industry: the latter are paved with asphalt, while here the paths are covered with leaves; the latter are filled with dust-covered grass, while here mountain ash and pussy willow grow; a concrete slab inscribed, “Natalie, dearest daughter, why did you abandon us?” lies in the latter, while here an angel stands holding an open book, where it reads, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”.

Only you must not wander to New Don Cemetery by mistake, which is located nearby, behind the red cogged wall. It will lure you with the onion domes of the church, but it is a wolf in sheep’s skin – renovated Crematorium #1. And in front of the gates you will be met by smiling Sergey Andreevich Muromtsev, the chairman of the First State Duma. Do not believe this happy prince, who, like a little bee, absorbed all the honey of the short-lived Russian Europeanism with his life (1850-1910) and quietly passed away prior to the arrival of troubles, perhaps fully convinced of the Russian parliament’s victory and of gradually accumulating pleasant neighbors – private-docents and defense attorneys. Alas – he is instead surrounded entirely by the Stalin prize laureates, communist brigadiers, aeronauts, and honored constructors of the RSFSR. Time will pass, and their tombstones with sputniks, compasses, and stars will also turn into historic exoticism. Only not for my generation.

You and I must to go further, into the other gates, crowned with a tall bell tower. Moscow that I love is buried there. Buried, but not dead.

The very first time I felt that she is alive was in the early days of my youth, when I worked in a quiet institution, located close to the Don monastery, and I visited the ancient graves with my colleagues for the purpose of drinking the poor-tasting, but strong wine “Agdam”. We made the habit of sitting on a wooden bench across from the dusty bas-relief with Saint Sergey Radonezhskiy, Peresvet and Oslyaba (he is still there, never returning to the wall of the restored Church of Christ the Savior), snacking on the sweet monastery apples to complement this Azeri hemlock, and the conversation inconceivably flowed from the last album by the band Sparks (or what else did we all listen to back in the day?) to Saltychikha and from super rifle jeans to Chaadaev.

Petr Yakovlich rested not too far away from the coveted bench. His grave informed his descendents of the one fact only about the man, who would have been Brutus in Rome and Pericles in Athens, “Ended his life on April 14, 1856” – and this caused us to speculate.

And as for Saltychikha, time saved neither a single word, nor a single letter on her tombstone. Moscow landowner Dariya Nikolaevna Saltykova, who tortured one hundred serfs to death – really existed – this is the only fact that the grave confirmed. But it is impossible to define monsters; the content of their soul is dark and mystifying, and the most appropriate testament to a monster — an unspoken truth, which looks like a bare grey obelisk, whose silhouette is reminiscent of an aspen spike, impaled into the ground.

Five feet away from the final resting place of the Russian contemporary of Marquis de Sade, a peculiar stone tree, which looks like a snag-covered cross, grows out of the ground – a masonic symbol to the memory of lieutenant Baskakov, who died in the year 1794. No additional information is provided – a pity.

The inscriptions and the awkward poems on the gravestones – a fascinating, completely non-monotonous reading. This is nothing less than an attempt to materialize and eternalize emotion, and, in fact, not an unsuccessful attempt – those who mourn are long gone, but their mourning remains:

“Here rests a young man and a servant of God Nikolai.
God summoned him from this world and its troubles to paradise.”

(From his inconsolable parents to the honorable citizen Nikolai Grachev.)

Or an entirely clumsy verse, but all the more piercing:

“Let these beloved remains rest in the bowels of the earth,
Let the soul soar in skies so blue,
But I remain here in tears for you”.

(It is already impossible to discern who dedicated this and to whom.)

Yet my favorite epitaph, gracing the tombstone of princess Shakhovskaya, is not touching, but vengeful: “Passed away as a result of doctor Snegirev’s surgery”.

Where are you, doctor Snegirev? Is your grave still around? Doubtful, I say. Yet here, at the Old Don Cemetery, you are still remembered, even if not in a good way.

Twenty years ago, when I came here almost every day, very few people visited this overgrown, half-forgotten cemetery. Only the connoisseurs of Moscow history would bring guests of the capital here in order to give them a taste of the most important cemetery sight – a black bronze Christ, extended full-height in the niche of the monastery wall. Even back then the flowers never ran out at the feet of the Savior, while I was never partial to this testament to the Russian moderne – it is too delicate and bon-ton.

I am guilty – I do not like sightseeing. Evidently, due to the fact that these sights are too polished by the gaze, and because everything is already known about them, no mystery remains. One can locate a certain number of the acclaimed names on the Don graveyard signs: historian Klyuchevskiy, poet Maykov, architect Beauvais, Cossack Ilovayskiy XII, but the absolute majority of the local deceased did not make themselves well-known in any shape or form. The famed and celebrated were buried in St. Petersburg in that day and age, while this was Moscow, a province. The flamboyance of the individual tombstones must not mislead you – this is a testament to the wealth, not the success in life. God knows how many failed careers and insatiable ambitions are buried at the Old Don’s. You glance at all this peeling heraldry and
half-erased titles and recall the Danish king Erik the Memorable, whose resonant nickname remains, yet history somehow did not remember the reasons why his contemporaries considered him so memorable.

No one needs my elect few except for me. Their names did not resonate, while they lived, and when they died, nothing of theirs except for a stone on a grave remains in this world. Miss Ekaterina Beznosova, 72 years of age, who died in 1823 in the eighth hour after midnight and state advisor Gavriil Stepanovich Karnovich, who always led an exemplary, truly Christian life, mystifies me with the riddle of his vanished existence. This sentiment is most succinctly expressed in Igor Burdonov’s haiku “A Little-Known Fact”:

They all died –
People, who lived in the Russian state
In August of the year 1864.

They truly did die – those who fasted, made visits, read “Provincial Moscow News”, and disparaged the cunning Disraeli. Yet I feel consumed by an acute and therefore an unmistakable feeling that they are somewhere near, that it is possible to reach them; only I do not know how to catch the time that slipped away, how to grasp the edge of a mystery.

And this very edge is so near – one more try, and you can seize it, it seems. An elbow is close…

I compose novels about the XIX century, attempting to put into them the most important concept – the sensation of time slipping away. I inhabit my invented Russia with characters, whose names and last names are somewhat frequently borrowed from the Old Don tombstones. I do not know myself what I am trying to achieve by doing so – either pull those, who are no longer here, out of their graves, or to sneak into their lives myself.

Urban development. Mikhail Veller.

Mikhail Veller.
Excerpt from The Last Great Chance.
2006.
Translation: mine ©

14. Urban Development

This feature is demonstrated fully and with amazing directness in the appearance of Russian cities.

Russian cities are astonishingly unattractive. They are nondescript. They are not even cities from the point of view of architecture and aesthetic spatial organization. They are simply an accumulation of buildings for the purpose of life and work. These buildings are set in every which way, based on the financial means and the logic of the labor process.

You know, we usually don’t notice this, don’t see it. We were born and live here, grow up and love – “This is our motherland, sonny boy…” You must visit the cities of the world – not brilliant capitals, but rather various cities and towns, in order to ruin your mood because of your destiny. It’s harmful, harmful to allow Russians abroad!...

The best, the most convenient example – Moscow-“the-beautiful”. We are not talking about outskirt, sleeper districts – they are equally faceless and outwardly talent-lacking, pitiful, and cookie-cutter all over Russia. Dwellings for crowds of cheap labor. But – look at the center! Meaningless piling of each and every trend, style, storey, purpose, a complete and utter lack of coordination of the space between the buildings, blocks, alleys, a disorganized alternation of facings, store windows, asphalt, and tiles. Everyone barged in with his structure in any way he could, not giving a damn about the neighbors, with which nothing could be done anyway.

The idea of Moscow as a city is a horde, pile, overcrowding, clutter, apathy towards those who and which are nearby; above all – the desire to rip off and assert one’s own interest, the power of money above any power, chaos as the principle of life.

Take a look at the historic cobble stone of the Red Square – look at the waves, by the means of which the first, most important, grand distance of the Empire marches on! What – is it really impossible to even it out like a table? The utter horror of the VIP box seats – Red Square’s waves. And if this – a continuous sloping pothole – isn’t visible on TV – so to hell with it, let’s leave it as is! – then what else can one expect?...Can the public really respect itself with such a pothole?

So there you have your piss-covered entrances and broken bottles. And thugs.

And until the first faces of the country – yes, just like back in the day, only for real! – come out with actual brooms and participate in subbotniks, while the punks littering all over the city get prosecuted in an orderly fashion…Eh, empty words…

Deliberately flawed reasoning. State’s armored military machinery is no longer capable of participating in Red Square parades, due to the fact that Manezhnaya Square had been thoroughly tunneled by an underground shopping center; the tanks would simply fall through into it. And this underground shopping center largely belongs to (or is it – in part? Or does it rake off plenty?) Moscow mayor Luzhkov, which means that it’s absolutely impossible to challenge this trade, since it’s too profitable.

Private business money is more valuable than the power and pride of the nation.

And this is the nation’s folk? This is whoring trash.

A city, like nothing else, embodies the system-forming instinct of the people. The city is not a pile of houses. It is a system, created out of buildings and the space between them in their congruency and interrelation. The creation of the city as a system is a skill and an independent art form.

The city – is when vertical and horizontal lines of buildings and the space between them in the aggregate are that very totality, which a simple sum, a simple place-conjunction of houses and blocks is not.

The city is intentionality, an organism, a painting and a sculpture per se, self-value.

The only city in the Empire is St. Petersburg. It was built by Italians – the best architects in the world at that time. They knew, and consequently tsars understood – a city is a single whole, its system reflects the nation’s system, its systematic spirit.

Italy, Germany, Spain, France, England, Austria are filled with cities. Russia is not.

And let’s do without arrogance. Pride must be constructive. Negation of one’s own negative traits is the most certain way toward their development and furthermore – toward our very own harm and demise.

An organized space means: we are together, a united community, of one fate, each other’s defenders and helpers, together we are better and stronger rather than alone and apart. It is therefore not surprising that only the citizens of Leningrad were known in the USSR for their goodwill, decency, honesty, pride without arrogance, and an overall embodied blueprint of virtue.

SHOW ME YOUR CITY – I’LL UNDERSTAND YOUR SOUL.

Cities

"Do you love her?"

"I miss the people..."

"But do you love her?"

"You realize that everyone outside of Warsaw calls it a whore, because it's been invaded multiple times?"

"A typical example of provincial envy towards all things metropolitan. So?"

"Yeah, in a way I do."

"Funny how I called it a "she". I..."

"Of course, this city IS a woman! Its symbol is a bare-breasted sword-carrying mermaid, for fuck's sakes! Haven't you seen my dad's car?"

"I am fully aware of that, but nonetheless..."

"You know its legend..."

"Yeah, I've heard it from you many times; I'm too tired to hear it again.... I can't even recall Moscow's respective legend right now....myself. Fucking embarrassing! I mean, I know it rests on seven hills, that it was founded by prince Dolgorukij, and that its first written mention dates back to 1147. Hails to Soviet-styled 5th grade history education! I even remember Tbilisi's myth better: a prince on a falcon hunt was impressed with hot springs in the area..."

"So you've told me."

"And what about the myth of Georgia's birth itself? About God...and, hahah, wine? When people..."

"Not again. Why are we talking about this?"

"I....miss...Moscow. A lot. A-fucking-lot. After my trip I didn't feel it until recently. I decided to give myself a break the other night and allowed myself two chapters of vanity reading - Mamleev's new novel, to be exact. Every time he mentioned locations I recently visited, I, all of a sudden, felt....not a lump in my throat, but more like....restless nostalgia...towards the city. Not culture, not childhood, but the city. I was even motivated enough to stay up beyond 2 am writing a postcard to a friend of mine, because Katerina is a "silly dumb-dumb" and refuses to use the internet."

"Weird. That only happens to me when I watch videos."

"Anyway, "Moskva" is a feminine pronoun in Russian, but I don't know if I'd call this city a "she". My love is not directed at a maternal figure: it's giant, wild, and, damn it - hectic as hell! All three of these I really dislike, yet I feel entirely comfortable there......Have you ever felt like you had to prove yourself to a city?"

"?"

"Almost four years, and it still seems like I need to prove myself to Toronto on a daily basis. My mother always talks of her three lives - Tbilisi, Moscow, Winnipeg. It occurred to me that I have three lives as well - Moscow, Winnipeg, and now - Toronto. This Babylon shares many standard metropolitan qualities with Moscow, yet it is only Moscow I can forgive. I don't feel like I need to prove myself to her...to it."

"Please don't get that "made in Moscow" tattoo..."

"Haha, the only one I'd ever consider if I were to desecrate my body in that way? That, or a large realistic back-piece portrait of my great-grandfather, huh?"

"Not "huh", but "ugh"!"

"You know, that popular higher-end crime novelist I always mention to you - Akunin? One of his series occurs in a contemporary setting and features...uhm, how should I put this, a descendant of his earlier personage, who happens to be my embodiment of (literary) male perfection..."

"Bleh..."

"...and who apparently moved to England around the time of the revolution. So this young Brit - Nicholas is quite in touch with his Russian roots and travels to Moscow only to find himself in various types of trouble. The first couple of novels contain lengthy descriptions of Nicholas' need to prove himself to the new city, which is not always welcoming in the least. Akunin just about personifies it, actually, but not quite. That'd be too simple."

"The Georgian dude, right?"

"Yeah, Akunin is his Japanese pseudonym. Hah, I just realized: he keeps referring to his character as "Magistr", because the guy has a Master's degree. As a felow "Magistr", I guess I view Toronto the way Nicholas does Moscow. But, in the back of his mind, Nicholas knows Moscow will accept him. It has to."