Homesickness

by Murray Bail

  Leningrad’s splendour had little to do with precision, spreading the way it did under the immense sky. Leningrad is in harmony with the land expanse. The town planners were instinctively easy with space. That was my impression. Such wide streets and squares—so many squares—and crescents and columns; and the architecture seemed deliberately, ‘unnecessarily’ baroque, as if to busy the emptiness. Held low and broad the skyline accentuated the feeling. Even underground in the smart subways casual lavishness with space was evident, as in a Malevich suprematist canvas, or in the page numbers of a Russian novel or Herzen’s autobiography.

  There was scarcely a green leaf, a single shaft of grass, not even in the parks. Yet I remember the parks. Many times I think back to them. The trees were bare, the benches had couples resting after pushing a pram, and the floor of the parks was all ice, grey and streaked ice, like a river in flood among trees. Through it all people walked: figures in dark coats. Those strange frozen parks remain—Leningrad’s beauty. In dramatic grandeur it was unlike any city I had seen.

  I can tell you, the Russians were very pleasant, polite, except for the officer at the airport and the guards outside public places. Often I observed, however, a peasant stubbornness, a kind of moody irrationality. For example, in officials at desks, waiters at restaurants, in some taxi-drivers. This has been reported by other travellers. It can be irritating to some.

  As in any foreign country there was the instant impact of the local people’s faces. For several days these were as constantly curious as the windows on the buildings which all had deep double-glazing to keep out the cold. I found myself staring at them: at the tundra hairlines of the men, their cheekbones, eye-sockets and pallor. Being surrounded by such faces underlined my visitor’s status. That is, in the streets I felt conscious of my foreignness, of that definite separation from the nearby faces. As a further reminder they seemed to take no notice of me or the group. We didn’t exist. I remember sensing that in a crowded bus.

  Our guide supplied by Intourist was a student—Natasha. She was slender and had her hair tied in a pony-tail, yet she was somehow disorganised. Natasha was pensive, slightly sad even. She spoke always with her lips pursed. Her mother had been a ballet dancer. It was quite sad when we came to leave. (The Professor of French gave her a present on our behalf.)

  ‘Natasha,’ that English bluestocking slide photographer would call out through her nose, insistent, ‘Natasha, what is that there? No, no, Natasha. Over there.’

  There is no doubt being in a foreign country rejuvenates the powers of observation and sense of wonder. In Russia I felt that wherever I turned my ‘experience’ was being broadened. I think Russia, especially, does that. It gives that impression. I said to the American schoolteacher…

  I noticed among couples a conspicuous amount of arm-holding: wives with their husbands, and pairs of men too. Someone in the group merely put it down to habit, a result of the cold. I don’t think so. I sent an inordinate number of postcards to show friends (‘Dear Comrade’) that I was there in Russia, and they were not. The best was a colour photograph of Lenin’s blue Rolls Royce, a Silver Ghost in a Moscow Museum. Skis had been fitted under its front wheels, and a caterpillar track grotesque but no doubt practical replaced the elegant back wheels.

  Many reasons can be given for visiting the Soviet Union. The dark-haired Brazilian (in our group; I forgot about him), always laughing, wanted to see Communism for himself. He wasn’t impressed. I think we all wanted to ‘see Communism’, a Communist country. Certainly that was a large reason for going. Outside an enormous shop for children the tall Englishman nudged me, ‘You know what that building is next door? The Lubyanka.’ He nodded significantly. Next to a toy shop: ironical, you see. But there are other reasons for Russia. The Professor of French was interested in the art collections and early Russian architecture. ‘My husband,’ his wife said, ‘knows much about Manet.’ He kept asking to see a wooden church. Churches I was told are called Pokrov, meaning ‘covering’ or ‘protection’. Again this must have come from the lecturer from St Andrews. He asked questions for us in Russian and sat up front with the drivers enjoying conversations.

  For anyone interested in the history of the Revolution, Leningrad has many landmarks. It can feel eerie standing at these places. In Russia you can sense the force of history: the spot opposite the old Singer sewing machine building where the Czar was assassinated; the terrible open space before the Winter Palace; the Finland Station and Lenin’s preserved locomotive; and so on. Russia. Doesn’t expanse and tragedy exist in the word?

  Yes, there is much evidence, remaining from the Second World War, traces of the siege of Leningrad. Shrapnel-marked walls and chipped corners, and German bunkers near bus-stops, the cemetery and the reconstructed villas, have a profound impact. Such marks must mean something or have a constant effect. I found myself searching the faces and again noticed the wives holding the arms of the men. No city in Australia, none in America for that matter, possesses such scars. Two pudgy New York girls (in the group; I clean forgot them) went to the ballet and the renowned theatre for children. The language, the climate, the foreignness, the sense of drama, of past events: quite a panorama. Absurdly, too, I think many of us had the vaguely thrilling feeling of being in forbidden territory. And there was the food: the different soups, borscht, their smoked fish and so forth. Vodka, not Smirnoff’s either. In a foreign country there is always the cuisine.

  Interesting how in a group certain figures stand out for some reason or other while others remain level, or recede. The group began as complete strangers. I’d clean forgotten about that Brazilian doctor. He had a wife, beautiful face, who rarely spoke, only nodded and smiled. Some in a group like the tall Englishman remain clear through their complaints. I remember he was the only one who wore gloves (yellow suede and wool-lined). There was another woman in the group in her mid-forties—I only vaguely see her face. She latched onto the baritone spinster (with the camera) and friends. Others created a presence by their very silence, attracting questions and glances. It was interesting how certain people gravitated to one another, first in conversation, followed by regular seating positions at tables and in transport, then walking together towards the next spectacle, a building or a museum. The group subdivides into smaller groups. How in the space of a week most of us became silently irritated at the frowning American, his wife and kid, when they kept the bus or the meal waiting yet again. Travelling makes us tired, perhaps due to the constant state of heightened awareness. It is a series of anecdotes, visual and personal. Towards the end the tall Englishman told me his wife had left him a few months before, so he decided to take a package holiday. Those two New York girls were fun. One was an actress; imagine forgetting her.

  Standing at the front of the travelling bus Natasha bent down to point out the statues of famous men and their preserved houses. I saw Gogol’s nose dripping with snow. In Russia you hand your overcoats to an attendant, an old man, immediately on entering a public building. Dreaming of Russia I often see the coats, heavy overcoats, whole racks of them and the old men who take them, or the distant dark coats in the frozen parks.

  At Heathrow we shook hands and departed. A few such as the Professor and the actress exchanged addresses. I wonder if they ever met again?

  Sometimes I think of the group, but no one person stands out. Perhaps that is only natural. I have more the view of wide buildings standing back in the frost, the dirty snow and ice, and the way my curiosity in all things was lifted to a proper alert pitch. Scraps of general knowledge and images are interconnected by great spaces and the wide sky. The cold and foreignness in that sense acted as preservatives. Individual faces in the group have faded, their names forgotten.

  7

  They were met at the airport by their guide—moon-faced, tub—who introduced herself as ‘Anna’. When she smiled which she did at every question and before each designated monument she showed a set of stainless steel teeth, a legacy of the thirties. But nice! Nice
woman! The other day she had become a grandmother, she confided to Mrs Cathcart. She smiled. And for Gerald she went patiently through the long Russian alphabet, lighting up at each and every letter. As for Doug, whatever Anna or other Russians were like, he went deliberately out of his way to say hello to them, ponderously, showing there were no hard feelings, that communists were there and had to be recognised—a form of condescension.

  In the parks and on the streets, Muscovites went about in singlets, trousers, sandals with dark socks: recent communist custom. Many of their women wore peasant blouses from the Ukraine which were all the rage then in Moscow. Long queues shuffled forward to buy ice-creams and the beer stalls on the footpaths were surrounded, almost hidden from view. In the parks grandparents sat on benches fanning themselves with faded newspapers. And unexplained bands played dented trumpets.

  ‘Before going to Red Square and our Kremlin,’ Anna announced, after clicking her fingers, ‘we will try in here.’

  They were standing outside the imposing ochre walls of a mansion in Botkinskaya Street. It could have been a Rome suburb: similar metal shutters and stately proportions. Pre-1917 it had been a well-known ballroom.

  ‘We have more to show,’ Anna went on, ‘than what is printed on the calendars and postcards. What is it you say? “There is more than meets the eye.” This is correct.’ She showed those teeth again and her eyes almost disappeared. ‘One of our countrymen has equated museums with forests, which is nice. Our Red Square and Kremlin will always be there tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it!’ Garry cracked. Some of them turned; God, he could be boorish. Kaddok though had the information at his fingertips. ‘The Kremlin has been burnt down several times by marauding tribes.’

  Doug slapped his forehead: ‘Postcards!’

  ‘I’ve made a note,’ Mrs Cathcart nodded. To Anna she turned. ‘We intend sending friends postcards showing your country.’

  It was an early reward; Mrs Cathcart made this clear by not smiling.

  It was here that Sheila noticed the man across the street behind the broadsheet Pravda, like the man who leaned out from behind the fluted pillar in the hotel foyer. Staring, she said nothing. She went in with the group.

  Gerald and Phillip North had been trying to translate the sign tacked up at a slight angle above the entrance:

  ‘Centre…’ Gerald managed, moving his lips.

  An ingenious slot device, working on an incline and requiring a kopeck, got them past the turnstiles. It had glass sides and they could see the copper disc rolling and tripping steel levers as it fell through a trapdoor, releasing springs, a horizontal ratchet lock and flashing lights.

  Inside it was dark and cool, a relief. It was a Government hall.

  Anna sat down and wiped her neck. She handed them over to the Ministry’s permanent head who’d been standing there all the time. The two were so familiar they didn’t bother to greet each other.

  Appropriately slant-eyed this Slav had a pale blue eyeball rolling loose in one sloping socket, evidently out of control. Otherwise his face was immobile, distinguished for its large sadness. So many things in the world appear, recede! This one’s nose leaked, sometimes corrected with the back of his hand, and his coat and black trousers were versts too short. On the other hand he was clearly devoted to his role. It had become his obsession, an end in itself. The Centre was an area of knowledge with clear perimeters—in that sense, a province. As Anna had smiled, ‘like our guides at the Museum of Atheism, the Museum of Curiosities, and of the Revolution. They think of nothing else. They’re all the same.’

  ‘I was going to say,’ said Borelli to North, ‘all museums amount to the same.’

  Ha! This one had already launched into his spiel as they removed their shoes and put on the special felt slippers to protect the ballroom parquetry. But then, of course, so highly polished were the first corridors they found it difficult to walk. Brass rails had been fitted along strategic parts of the walls to assist the gingerly treading laughing ones, the girls; but the rails themselves were highly polished. To both Sasha who had taken North’s hand, and Violet, it was like a child’s game. Others began smiling and shuddering as they slithered behind the Russian bear. Joining in, Garry gave Sheila a small shove. Well, they were on holidays. Apparently the Russian was used to all this. He went on mournfully, easily, and told them the Centre of Gravity had been started during the Cold War.

  He spoke excellent guttural English, considering. And they found his angle interesting.

  ‘Gravity is central to existence. Superficially’—pronounced with Slavic fluidity—‘the health of nations is dependent on it. Without it, the walls of our lungs would collapse; our blood pressure is set to balance it. We are all conscious of that. Nails would fall out from timbers. Beams fall on citizens’ heads. Gravity is an experience. We feel. We are conscious. What is death but a loss of gravitation; a collapse. Back to the grave.’

  ‘Thirty-two feet per second, per second!’ Kaddok said for no apparent reason.

  ‘We, in the Soviet Union, are infected with gravity. We are constantly investigating…ways of improving it, how to respect it. Hence the Centre.’

  Kaddok wouldn’t have seen the Russian’s eyeball oscillating like the pale bubble in a builder’s spirit level. Evidently he tried hard to fix his gaze upon them. He stood alongside a crude cartoon of a red-haired man dropping cannonballs from a leaning tower; but still his pupil kept rolling up and down. Next to it an etching showed an ancient Englishman holding an apple with a surprised expression, slightly foxed.

  As Borelli and Louisa suddenly clutched at each other to avoid slipping on the floor the Russian sketched in Khlebnikov’s correlation between gravity and time.

  ‘Have you ever considered,’ said the rasping voice, ‘the peculiar relationship between gravity and perspective, between gravity and coincidence, and gravity and rainbows?’

  The world and its multifarious objects! Its many laws and items to consider; the relationships to inter-relate.

  Gravity and coinc—

  Garry Atlas thought he knew. ‘Right!’ He nodded. ‘I’m with you.’

  Lines of chance, trajectory of bombs, slapstick films. History’s nagging central question: if a falling tile had killed Lenin in Zurich would the Revolution still have taken place? If yes, tick. No, place a cross. Moving bodies and nations attract, collide.

  This guide’s pronouncements combined with his enormous grave head, locally mobile with the dissident eye, held them in a new reflective mood. To Louisa whispering to Borelli and touching his hand, he was among the saddest men she had ever seen. At any rate the idea was to take it slowly, one slipper after the other, gingerly, at the same time listening, keeping an eye on him. Most things were worth a pause; and they soon forgot about the outside world.

  ‘Several other examples of gravity have been classified,’ he was saying.

  The sinking foundations of the mansion had given the far end of the room a glistening declivity, similar to some of the decrepit ballrooms said to be still operating in Vienna. A row of heavy chandeliers increased the stately feeling, as did the gold leaf, and the wallpapers in chevronian tatters.

  Here were specific examples of gravity, including Specific Gravity. They were propped against or tacked onto the walls; some were suspended from the ceiling. Other things stood in the middle—isolated objects. Ambling over, their Russian leaned forward with an interested air as if he had never seen them before.

  A sequence of photographs demonstrated in black-and-white the rise and fall of the German empire. Standing in rubble a Russian private pointed to the fallen statue of the Third Reich, the fierce eagle still clutching the wreathed swastika. From the very beginning the emblem had been encircled by a wreath.

  The guide almost smiled; it didn’t suit him.

  ‘Gravity makes everything eventually come back to earth,’ he said.

  Other exhibits made Sasha and Louisa frown and turn away.

  The trajectory of shra
pnel, of rockets; the flight path of heavy bombs. Photographs. Those taken at night could have been displays of fireworks. Destroyed in Russia during the war were 89,500 bridges, 4,100 railway stations, and 427 museums.

  Mrs Cathcart here slipped over, her thick legs tucking under, and muttering had to be helped up. ‘Where were you?’ she hissed at Doug.

  The guide took no notice.

  The clear correlation between gravity and time was demonstrated, perhaps rather obviously, by a line of synchronised hourglasses. Detecting their interest the guide again almost smiled.

  ‘A central image,’ said he. ‘It never fails. Is gravity therefore connected to magnetism? We have a fascination watching time running out before our very eyes.’

  Sasha yawned.

  A common household tap had been pressed into service. All but Sasha and Mrs Cathcart squatted with the guide and studied the Pavlovian drip. The crystalline stretch grew, hovered swollen, pulled by gravity, and burst into tears. Pause. It began again.

  Born the diplomat, Garry had to gurgle and cross his eyes. ‘I can’t stand it! Chinese water torture! I’m going crazy!’

  ‘Oh dry up.’ That was Violet. But she stopped smiling when Hofmann laughed.

  The Russian carelessly observed, ‘Water is woman.’

  ‘What does he mean?’ Louisa whispered.

  Borelli pursed his lips. ‘He means rivers; that they are always beautiful. Rivers are subtle but strong, and have no sharp corners. They also flow one with nature, are life-giving.’ (He was wracking his brains; glancing at Louisa who was smiling. She wasn’t properly listening.) ‘And men are always wanting to conquer rivers and discover their source. Treacherous undercurrents.’

  She squeezed his arm. ‘You’re making that up.’

  ‘I think your husband’s watching.’