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.