Brave New World

This is the last stop in the line, the final drop in the hat, a tallying of time spent and things gained. When the button popped of my newish pair of pants last week (from wear-and-tear, not gained girth), I immediately thought: Oh thank God I’m going home soon, where I can certainly find brown thread and someone who can sew! But then I stopped, and thought some more: That was the terrifying truth! I am going home soon, and this is it. My final entry.

To begin, here is one memory I’ll never forget:

On the extreme western edge of Russia, at the top of a steep hill that slopes into a twisting blue lake, is an estate where Alexander Pushkin lived a while. When I say estate, do not imagine (although you will now that I’ve gone and said it) the plantations of the Old South, or a grand and crumbling English country manor, or even the stately palaces in Petersburg. This is far from that. The house is sensibly sized (six or seven rooms) and unremarkable. In addition to its blandly elegant architectural, it’s only an approximated recreation of the one that was obliterated by the Nazis as they passed through: the polished rooms hold none of Pushkin’s spirit and just a few of his belongings. Only his former study is of any interest, as it holds some of the old books and an original footstool, chair, desk, cane, etc. But Pushkin did not draw his greatest inspiration from rafters and baseboards – and he wrote much of Eugene Onegin in that study. It’s the land around that’s most astounding.

The estate grounds are lovely. They cover several rolling acres: soft grass, a little orchard, a cobblestone path replete with iron lampposts, a bridge over stream that starts at a small pond with its own island, a forlorn guest house, slim birches and grand oaks, berry patches, white benches, and a dirt drive leading away into the cool, deep pine woods. These are some of my favorite things, and they were all within the square mile around Pushkin’s old home.

And off at an angle a few meters away from the house, I stood in awe of the view: the long, long, loping line of the horizon; a wooden windmill, its sails bound, standing out at the tip of a little peninsula which jutted into the lake; the lake itself. And so much green in so many hues! White and yellow wildflowers bobbed in the mild breeze. It was as though that wide corner of the world had been coaxed to shimmering life by the brush of Monet or Van Gogh. There was an old, off-kilter fencepost driven into the soft ground just next to me, and so I put my hand on it as I looked out, and felt as though I was fused in place. After all, that fencepost provided the most concrete link between me and the ground which Pushkin walked on. I gripped tighter, and looked more closely at the post. Its blue paint was flaking, and weathered silver wood shone through: the color of a partly cloudy sky.

We spent the rest of the weekend at a low-slung lodge outside of a tiny Russian village (the clean air!), rejuvenating from the stress of city life. We visited the monastery where Pushkin is buried beneath a great tombstone, now covered in a heap of flowers. As we bent our heads for a quiet moment, I waited for something big to come over me – but there was only the golden sun on white marble, and then a murmur of Russian. Some people laid flowers. I didn’t have any, but I waited until the crowd left and kept on looking for what I was supposed to feel, although I didn’t know what that was exactly. All I knew was a vague feeling of disappointment. What was it I really feel for this man? Why do I obsess over him? What have I even ever read by him? Where do I know him from?

The grave stood next to the monastery’s little church (both precariously perched on the top of a steep, short hill), and so I went in. In a dazzling collection of sunbeams, a young monk in faded black robes was chanting in Old Church Slavonic (a precursor to modern Russian) and waving an incense holder around; a handful of people trickled in, crossed themselves, bowed, kissed an icon, and slipped back out. I watched, and felt the incense smoke tickle my ears. Shortly, I left too (minus the crossing, kissing and bowing). By then, most everyone in the group had walked on down the hill to meander towards the bus, so I was quite alone; a balmy breeze washed over the hill; I went back around to the grave. And there it was.

The answer to what I was looking for was not, of course, in a grave. It was in all the other things I’d seen that were devoted to Pushkin, or written about him, or in all the (many, many) people who could spout his poetry on the spot, or in old wooden fence-posts and how I feel when I look out at this stunning, endless country.

Alexander Pushkin is her most beloved poet, bigger here than Shakespeare in England. The only reason the English-speaking world doesn’t know more about him is that his work is so complex that it is untranslatable (it’s hard to transform moderately simple Russian into English. All you can get of Pushkin in English is a faint feeling that something wondrous is going on.) He was their mischievous Mozart of the written word. He was the horny, hard-drinking, laughter-loving meteoritic genesis of one of the world’s greatest literary traditions. There is not a single life in this land of books which he has not touched in some way. And so I love him too, and owe him: for all of my favorite Russian authors, and the feeling I get when I walk down most streets in St. Petersburg, and many other things I cannot explain for lack of space. My Russia is the way it is because of him. He gave her the soul that I have fallen in love with. (And he liked to doodle in his notebooks.) I said, outloud, “Thank you,” and turned and walked back to the group.

Eventually, we drove back to St. Petersburg, where these past two weeks have evaporated in the hot sun, in her forests or fountained parks whose fervent green is gemlike, in walks along cool canals, in slippery vowels and consonants that tingle on the tongue.

Of this week, I will only say a little because so much has happened. In fact, there is no easy way to condense everything that should be said in a last word on such a big experience into this more manageable space. There’s certainly no time. And so, because that’s the case, I’ve come to realize that when I say this is my final entry, I know I’m wrong: I’ll keep on posting, although perhaps less often. I’ve too much to think and say about Russia. Posthaste.

By Monday we were talking about our plans for Thursday and Friday: presents for host families and teachers, final exams, cake, slideshows, a final get-together (a beautiful evening boat ride down the Neva). I started to get a little misty-eyed whenever I went into my homestay’s kitchen, or saw my host mom.

On Tuesday evening, I met with my English-language tutee and we drank tea and ended up talking only in Russian (me, exhausted and apologetic – I just had my grammar exam). I said that I had an eighteen hour layover in London, and she gave this little gasp and told me about the different times she had been to London. “Nice place,” she said. “The British are nice people.” When our time was up, we shook hands and she told me to let her know the next time I was in town. Then, with Erica, I returned to the Petersburg Philharmonic – which is for me now the epitome of a concert hall – to attend a performance of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony. Music like that defies concrete form – the written word burns up in any attempt. Best only to say that I wandered away afterward in a daze and on the verge of tears. A little while later, I could not stop smiling. For the rest of the night, I felt incandescent.

But that day was the first real day of lasts. My last grammar class, my last tutoring session, my last concert in Petersburg: I sensed each of them flash through me, as though I were a trembling tree struck by lightning, and waved them off with a sigh and greeted the next in line like old pals soon to be the dearly departed. That’s how the last few days have passed.

Classmates and conversation partners and friends with familiar smiles, routines, favored pathways through the birch trees, keys, a room, a bed, a ceramic mug, a carved cat, a bust of Lenin: these are the kinds of things we all say goodbye to over and over again in our lives – a final orbit, and a marveling look down and back at the gleam of a little world, a little life made up of myriad moves and billions of moments – before we sail off again into the great blue star-strewn beyond.

From there, recalling the things we’ve learned and, in turn, everything we might have left behind but are going back to, we enact daring, desperate feats of synthesis and diplomacy: pulling it all together is the thrilling act of recreating our lives.

I first realized this most clearly when I was leaving for St. Petersburg several months ago. I felt the same vast uncertain and opportunity then as I feel today: It is the stuff from which we can mould for ourselves a brave new world. And so I think to myself as I stand on this bittersweet embankment that, in at least some aspect of my life, I am immortal.

For now, as many times before, I begin again.