Paris

Just a little while before the long plume of volcanic ash lifted into the air over Europe, I was in its place, on a plane gliding toward Paris, feeling – after the hot chaos of Moscow and the prosaic drizzle of Petersburg – radiantly reincarnated.

At the dopey, unclearly marked little international airport in St. Petersburg, check-in came after a preliminary round of security. I was pulled aside and told to open and search my own bag. I unlocked the lock and palpated my socks. I turned over my t-shirts. I opened my toothpaste. Finding nothing unexpected, I shrugged, stood back, and stared at the dour security woman. She looked from me to my suitcase; she frowned and motioned her supervisor over. They talked heatedly. I waited. Eventually, the lovely lady glanced back up, rolled her eyes, and waved me away. I stalked off hoping that I hadn’t stepped into a Kafka story.

But soon afterwards – after Erica and I confirmed our seats and received our tickets, fidgeted in front of customs officers with our handful of paperwork, and endured a second round of security – we got onto our Air France flight, where the world reversed into one of bold colors and attractive surfaces, soft baguettes with butter and real coffee, and attentive (if incoherent) French flight attendants who knew how to smile. I settled in as we leapt off, hoping that the change was permanent. Incidentally, it was drizzling in Paris too.

Except – unlike that blind, cold Petersburg precipitation – this rain softened and freshened. Everywhere, as we (with one of Erica’s friends, Heather, who joined us at Charles de Gaulle) rode a train (and then metro) through a short stretch of countryside and into the city, the rain worked to coax grass up and buds out; it drew impurities out of the air and enhanced what was left, and so when it stopped just as we emerged from a metro stop near the Bastille, the air swirled with springtime scents and, under the now full moon, my first-ever wide and tree-lined French boulevard gleamed darkly, as though it had been carved out of colored glass.

From the metro stop, we promptly got lost and spent several hours walking in circles, looking for our hostel. Erica spoke the most French, and stopped periodically to ask for directions, but no one seemed to know the street we were after – although one nice couple stopped and, unable to point the way, gave us a spare map. Eventually, we made it, found our fourth comrade (Mary, another of Erica’s friends), and lugged our luggage into the creaking little elevator, which nearly passed out with the effort of getting us to the fifth floor and our room. Later we ate dinner at a streetside café while droll music rolled on by in the background. Later still, in celebration of our first night in Paris, we drank a bottle of red wine out of plastic cups in our room. We were exhausted. We slept.

So that was how we had made it to Paris. There were no interrogations, or deportations to the gulag archipelago. The plane was not delayed by volcanic activity, heavy fog, or terrorist threats. When the new day dawned, I woke up wholly myself (no bug) and real (no dream).

Of course I knew what Paris is supposed to be like long before I got there: proud, beautiful, often antique, keenly fashionable, sparkling, joyous, legendary. But until I got there and saw her during the daylight hours, I didn’t realize just how much she lives up to the hype!

We ate crumbly croissants in our hostel for breakfast. We traveled up a metro line to the city center (our hostel was just a ways out), and strolled up the Champs-Elysees. Japanese tourists snapped photos and gabbed to one another; groups of school children in matching windbreakers swirled around us. After breaking our necks staring up at Napoleon’s triumphant triumphal arch, we bobbed off toward the Eiffel Tower. In the intervening space (greening, airy), we wandered for a while in the web of narrow cobblestone streets. Spring glinted in every tree and off every vibrantly newborn blade of grass. Birds sang and happy Parisians swung down off their bicycles and ducked in and out of little bakeries, singing out “Bonjour!” and “Merci!” as though buying a bit of bread was the best thing that could ever happen to them.

Contrary to what I was expecting (and to Russia), every single person we met beamed at us. We rested on a bench in the sun, drank Coca-colas, and I devoured a giant chocolate chip cookie from one of those (many, many) little bakeries. I felt as though I’d not tasted a good chocolate chip cookie in years. They simply don’t seem to have them in Russia. It was then that we, when we thought of them, started writing down the things which Russia does not seem to have in comparison with France (or the rest of the Western world, at least). For example: toilet paper that is softer than birch bark (and not made from it), drinkable tap water, cigarette smoke-free air, public displays of happiness, flowers, lettuce, optimism, traffic laws, and wine that doesn’t taste like tin.

We found a Post Office (bright, airy) and bought stamps (for postcards) from a woman who almost immediately switched to English and asked where we were from. She told us, after Erica and I explained where we were studying, that she was married to a Russian. We exchanged a few delighted words in that language. Afterwards, all remarking on the friendliness of French people, our little group found the Eiffel Tower, where we jumped on a carousel and rode around and around, and waved at the other tourists. Now that’s entertainment.

Up close, the Tower itself was hulking, brown and awfully ugly. It was the only disappointment of the whole week. I ate a chocolate-filled crepe to consol myself. We walked along the Seine and wondered what it would be like to live in a houseboat with a garden. A few picturesque streets away, in a gentle rain and the translucent blue light of early evening, we shopped in an outdoor fruit-and-vegetable market (fresh strawberries!) and browsed through a small French bookstore (finding Nabokov in a very different translation). After dinner in another streetside café, we bought more wine and whiled away the evening talking under the low eves of our room, with the rain pouring down outside.

We spent almost all of the next day at the Louvre; I smiled back at the Mona Lisa. I think I’m on to her. We saw Notre-Dame at sunset. Inside they were holding a service, and the whole serenely august place was filled with people and sublime singing. And later: two courses worth of crepes at a little crêpery in Montparnasse. Rain on windowpanes. White wine rather than red. Velvet curtain.

The next day, Heather went home to Scotland and the rest of us moved to different places: Mary to another hostel and Erica and I to the center of the city, to the sleek, fifth-story apartment of a friend on the CIEE program.

Now at this point I’d like to say: I could go on trying to conjure every detail of the following days, but I don’t want to: golden memories tend to lose their luster under the glare of an interrogator's lamp. But also, we didn’t really do much. After those first few days, we decided not to go and see anything terribly touristy. We’d caught the essentials.

The rest of the time, we walked a lot (sometimes in the sun and sometimes in the rain, with our umbrellas), made friends of nearly everyone we talked to for more than five minutes, hopped from café to café sipping at long-stemmed wine glasses, dashed in and out of dapper clothing stores, and spent hours in English-language bookstores. One of our favorites was tucked into a bank of colorful cafes and sundry shops on the left side of the Seine across from Notre-Dame. It was called Shakespeare and Company, and it had (in addition to a wonderful selection) a used-books library on its second floor that was open to all patrons.

And one evening, after wandering all day, the three of us stopped in a grocery store and bought pasta, brie and baguettes. Back at that sleek apartment of ours, we uncorked a bottle of wine, set the table, and cooked a meal for ourselves in a kitchen that was – for the first in months – ours to command completely. The dinner meandered by and we talked about our lives in Paris and elsewhere, while Ray Charles crooned in the background. Afterward, we went out onto our apartment’s little terrace, which overlooked a dark courtyard. Just beyond one roofline was a narrow street full of seductive nighttime bustle, but we could not see or hear a bit of it. A cool wind blew through, the stars shone overhead, and now and then strains of Ray Charles still leaked through the open terrace door.

For just a split-second of our brief lives, we are standing high Paris with our wine glasses, living as many people – even Parisians – likely only dream about: luxuriously and without obligation in one of the most expensive cities in the world. We wondered: What made us so lucky? How did we get here? Where are we going?

And the answer to the last question was, inevitably, unfortunately: Back to Russia.

Moscow

The night train to Moscow arrived early in the morning at a station named for Leningrad, a city which no longer exists.

Like bees waking after a long winter, we dragged ourselves out of our little four-bunk sleeping compartments, buzzing, albeit blearily, with excitement. We flicked flakes of sleep from our eyes. We burst out of the dim, cool train station; the city crashed down like heat at the height of summer, or, at its fall, a hurricane at sea. What a place!

Moscow stretches from one side of the world to the other, filling every space in between. Travel from end to end can exhaust gas tanks and all but the most infinite reserves of patience. It is wild with noise and velocity; the electric vitality of seventeen million people sizzles in every street. It overwhelms with possibility and shatters language as if it were glass. It’s alive!

Lumbering from the station in mild shock, we climbed into a bus and drove to the local Holiday Inn, although it was before our check-in time; we refueled in the hotel restaurant, and bussed back off into the madly eddying motor pools to snap pictures in passing and listen to a Muscovite guide with a very dry wit. As we careened around one corner, we caught a glimpse of Lubyanka, the drab brown KGB central headquarters. Among other things, we saw a handful of the Seven Sisters – Stalin’s monumental “skyscrapers” – classily done up as hotels and office buildings. The tallest of the Sisters stands astride the crown of highest hill in the city and, the grand scepter of the Russian educational system, serves as the main building of Moscow State University (and some speculate that her “off-limits” upper levels might shelter super-secret government goings-on or, at very least, one of the best views in the world). From her vantage point, we could see the glass-and-steel whorl of the Olympic Stadium, the scraggly clump of skyscrapers sprouting in the financial district, the house of the late Count Smirnoff (vodka extraordinaire) and, in parks, patches of pale green stubble.

We went down to a frozen lake next to one of Moscow’s many gold-domed churches. I took a picture of a lady with a small dog; friends skated around on the ice, and fell down laughing. Towards evening, we split into smaller groups and wandered around the city center (near the Kremlin), soaking in the springtime air, pointing up (a little aghast) at what must be the world’s largest MacDonald’s (Moscow is well known for its superlatives). I wondered how cool it would be to live and study in such an immensely dynamic place. Other students were confessing that they liked it better than static old St. Petersburg, which seems to have become, by tragic ways that few other cities have traveled, only collection of memories, frozen (literally and literarily) in time. I wondered if I was falling permanently into that vein of thinking, like a meteorite sucked down to Earth by gravity. How could I go back to Piter after such a betrayal? I thought about that often later on.

The next morning, we took a tour of the Kremlin. A cluster of very old churches, home to the head of Russian Orthodoxy (the Patriarch; like Catholic Pope in form and function). Black pine trees, outer walls red and crenellated, the President’s pale yellow office. Our dry Muscovite guide told us about how Russia, already a very big country, possesses many of the world’s largest things. By way of example, he pointed out the megalithic iron cannon that sits in the Kremlin courtyard. It was made long ago, at the order of one Tsar or another who wished to lay claim to the world’s biggest artillery piece. Unfortunately, they failed to take some crucial measurements, because upon trying to load the thing, they found that their specially made, multi-ton cannon balls were too big for the bore. So it’s never been fired. Now it sits where we saw it, collecting winter snow and summer dust, facing the former office of Boris Yeltsin. As our guide told us: Yeltsin came to work one morning (very hung-over), stood at his window, pulled aside the curtains, and saw the world’s largest gun pointed straight at him. He changed buildings the next day.

After our chilly outdoor tour, we stepped into the Kremlin Museum, which contains a splendid trove of imperial artifacts: elaborate carriages, gilt crowns, carved thrones, delicate porcelain and ivory, velveteen dresses and silken surcoats. The wealth of the Tsars was astounding.

Later, an even smaller group of us walked along the brimming byways, past the very large and important Church of the Ascension, which was once dynamited by Stalin to make way for his proposed Palace of the Soviets (a skyscraper to make all others tremble, which never quite came into being because the foundation was unstable and it kept falling down at the slightest tremor; in its place they built – you guessed it – the world’s largest swimming pool). We made our way over a graceful pedestrian bridge (with great panoramic view of the city) to the far side of the Moskva River, where we wandered in strong sunlight and newly minted neighborhoods until coming to a little sculpture garden and the renowned Treytyakov Gallery of Russian Art, standing out in a muddy park (or field. It was hard to tell.) The garden was neat, although half buried in snow and grime; the gallery was astounding. We went straight the floor housing the mind-and-rule bending 20th century paintings, and I fell in love. Such style! What color! And these, by far the most interesting I’ve yet seen, were done during the (early) Soviet era. Who knew?

After it grew dark, Erica and I walked into the Red Square and stopped short. Just over a tower of the Kremlin, I saw:

One bejeweled red star shining in the night sky. It was braced stock-still against black space by a dark spire, thin as the very peak of a rocketship: its ruby light did not waver in the cold wind. All of a sudden, the ghostly clouds thinned and passed away altogether; the wide white moon blazed brighter; this star and moon hung an arm’s-length away, still and seeming, dreamily, both to complement the other and cry for individual attention or outright solitude, like fraternal twins which had developed, along the arc of their lives, completely different personalities.

I tried to photograph the moment, but my hands could not hold still and every attempt came out blurry or altogether obscured by something. I watched them for about a century more, lovelessly locked in a light embrace, but eventually, unfortunately, got too cold and tired of stamping my feet on uneven cobblestones (echoing the military parades of decades past) and drifted on, toward the legendary bon-bon turrets of St. Basil’s, all lit up by floodlights; toward Lenin’s little tomb, squatting in front of the soaring walls of the Kremlin; and at last, catching the reflection of her trillion little white twinkle-lights caught in the high gloss of the tomb, toward Moscow’s largest mall.

There I was, in the slowly beating heart of Russia.

And Erica said: “We are such a long way from home.”

I could only nod and swallow.

I went back the next morning with others. The previous night’s vision had vanished. We toured the cavernous, brightly painted depths of St. Basil’s. We got in line to see waxy Lenin inside his tomb, lying on his back in a glass box, eyes softly closed and arms crossed over his chest like a mummified pharaoh. He is still in his dark suit. I wondered what he would say if he had sat up at the moment I passed by. Would he launch into lecture mode? Would he asked, “What the hell? Where’s Trotsky?!” Or would he simply sigh and resume his long rest?

I stood in the Red Square just a little more after visiting Lenin. It seems to me that it is the one place I’ve found that is exclusively Russian and not replicable to any degree. You may visit Amsterdam and basically find there the architecture of St. Petersburg; you can visit almost any American city of decent size (e.g. 100,000) and see something akin to what Moscow looks like (although there are some aspects which are notably different, like the alphabet and, perhaps, the color palate). If I scrunch up my eyes, I can see Madison, or New York. But the Red Square is a completely unique experience, one which I would gladly relive.

Erica and I spent the rest of that day at a vast souvenir market in the outer city and touring the marvelous metro stations, which are absolute works of art (often involving heavy use of the hammer and sickle motif). We met with the rest of our diminished group in the evening, many having flown off from Moscow to enjoy their week of spring break, and clambered back into a sweltering train. We slept little, overheated and uneasy, and arrived back in soggy St. Petersburg at the crack of dawn.

I wheeled my suitcase along familiar sidewalks; I collapsed for an hour or so into a familiar bed, and woke to a familiar face and a familiar breakfast. I quickly packed for Paris, as my plane left in a matter of hours. And then I heard, and had to sit down: Sometime while I was going through those motions, haggard and harried, two devastating bombs had detonated in Moscow’s marvelous metro.

My afterimage was no doubt consumed.