St. Petersburg, laissez-nous entrer!
In my mind’s eye, St Petersburg has always been shaded with fog:
both an imminent doom- Raskolnikov fog and the lighter fog that masks something passionately desirable, something mysteriously inaccessible. Desire
tinged with prejudice: what if St. Petersburg competes for my heart; what if it
inches Moscow, my Moscow, to second place?
I’ve been in Russia, to so many of its cities and villages,
bathed in Baikal, yet never made it to the capital built on swamps. Monday evening,
(June 12th) we stayed up all night long, packing our hiking
bags(again) and scrubbing the kitchens. Our train for St. Petersburg left at
3:33 am.
Passing sleeping guards and multiple metal detectors, we
walked out onto the mile-long train platform. Through the glazed windows, we
pointed out the rows of bunk beds to Nikhon and Johnny, trying to prepare them
for the Russian train experience… we knew, though, that they would only
understand when they settled in, saw rows of sweating bodies, felt the whiff of
kolbasa combined with smokers’ smoke, the little tables spread with vodka and
salmon and horseradish and raspberries.
Anyway, when we got to the train, our train compartment
monitor was horrified. “But how can this be? I already have someone in your
bunk!” She was stressed until she looked
at the date.
We weren’t going to St. Petersburg that night. Our tickets
were for Tuesday morning.
Masha, our organized Masha, Masha-Masha…had gifted us with
another day in Moscow.
On that unexpected day in Moscow we woke up late, went to
Donskoy Monastery. The 1591 monastery, where the relics of Patriarch Tikhon
reside, was built in commemoration of deliverance from the Crimean Khan Kazi-Girey invasion.
Its thick red walls also served as a fortress, protecting the Kremlin from the south.
Then we sprinted over to the Moscow Operetta Theatre. Since
we were getting “acquaintance tickets,” I had to inch over to the administrator’s
office, say a secret last name (Shvedov) and get my five 200 ruble (3.5$)
tickets.
That evening Jane Eyre was playing. Or, should I say DJEYN EYRR (to get the full experience, switch on heavy Russian accent, and viciously roll your rrrs).
Jane Eyre sang like her heart—and all our hearts—would deflate if a single note
dropped, unwanted, to the floor. Rochester’s proud, high posture shriveled at
moments of sudden vulnerability. Bertha Mason danced like a white crumpled
flame. The end, however, did not live up to the rest of the production:
Rochester walked out, beautiful, powerful; his crippled leg and sightless eyes
disappeared, and that cheapened the story to Hollywood. So we decided to
disregard the end.
Tuesday night: St. Petersburg packing round two. I was in
charge of putting on the alarm…what I forgot was that my phone was on silent.
Thankfully, Nikhon woke up fifteen minutes before were supposed to leave. Again,
we put on huge hiking backpacks, call a taxi, walk past the sleeping guard in the
booth, past the police, down the mile of train platform towards Compartment 7.
This time, though, we’re given bunk numbers and bed sheets. St. Petersburg had made
up it's mind: it would allow us to enter.
But before that, we had 10 hours on the train. Ten hours of nothing but deep sleep full of train lurches and squeals, chatting, hysterical laughing, maybe drinking tea and
reading. There's nowhere
to go, nothing to do, as little
wooden villages and birch
forests slide by.
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