Journey Into the Mind's Eye

by Lesley Blanch

  Russian, of course.

  The whole episode was saved up to be recounted later to the Traveller, and only served to confirm me in my belief that Russians were the most interesting people in the world.

  •

  Pursuing my passion, all things were better Russified. Herrings, called siliodka tasted more delicious. Raspberry jelly, melted down, became kiciel, and much nicer. The spurned cabbage was redeemed, in soup, as stchee. With the same ardour I collected old Russian superstitions, spitting to neutralize bad luck if I saw a parson, until smacked out of this affectation. And I recall a scene at the luncheon-table when I denied myself a slice of ruby-fleshed water melon, recounting how in some Russian villages people thought it unlucky, because it looked like the severed neck of St. John the Baptist. This robust simile disgusted my mother to the point of nausea.

  ‘Morbid lot,’ remarked my father, cutting himself another slice.

  I possessed a fine dolls’ house, a three-storeyed red-brick mansion with a classic portico. Nothing would do but I must transform it into some kind of Slav edifice.

  My mother plunged into this ambitious project with delight and together we modelled the onion-shaped domes of the old Russian churches. Ours were made of clay, and baked, before being glued over the chimney stacks. We painted them in the lollipop stripes, stars and harlequin effects of the Vasilyii Blajennyi Cathedral in Moscow, which we took as our model. The façade of the dolls’ house was painted a brilliant blue – ‘to show up in the snow’ – and we added curlicues of plaster-work round each sober window. The cupolas were topped with little gilded cardboard crosses rising over a crescent, as the old prints showed. It was neither cathedral nor palace, but it was unmistakably Slav, and I loved it, keeping it for many years, at last transforming it into a hat cupboard (berets in the attic, straws in the dining-room and so on). During the bombing of London, in 1944, it suffered considerably, and at last, taking up too much room to house and time to repair, was given away. But I mourned its fantasy and the past it had evoked.

  Even my first essays in sewing were conditioned by thoughts of Russia. My kindergarten school had been a very old-fashioned one, kept by two elderly ladies, the Misses Peeke, who between them taught us the rudiments of music, water-colour painting, and sewing. We reeled off a few dates, recited poetry, were taught simple arithmetic, and to curtsey and waltz. Once a week, a decrepit retired Marine, known as the Serjeant, came to give us ‘drill’, which consisted of swinging Indian clubs rather wildly. Over the years batches of children came and went, but the Misses Peeke had never thought of changing or advancing their curriculum. Thus, we learned to sew on an antiquated looking red flannel bedjacket known as a Nighting-gale. This was named after the redoubtable lady who had designed it while running her hospital at Scutari, and it had been a period-piece even when the Misses Peeke had tried out their ’prentice hand on it. Along with a peculiar knitted helmet, a ‘Balaclava’, these two garments had once been destined for the Misses Peeke’s long-dead father, who as a young man, had fought in the Crimea, but, laid aside in grief, they had at last come to serve as a practice-ground for several generations of uninterested little pupils. Until my advent; for on hearing the magic word ‘Balaclava’, my fervour was aroused. Inkerman and Alma, Sebastopol and Eupatoria were all living epics to me. I had heard the Traveller airing Russian views on the invasion of the Crimea and, much as I thrilled to the Charge of the Light Brigade, I was even more enthralled by Admiral Nakhimov’s stoic decision to sink the whole Russian fleet in Sebastopol harbour. Thus I fell on the flannel Nightingale, running, hemming and feather-stitching it with ardour.

  •

  At this time, my view of Russia was simple. I saw it all under snow; winter and summer alike, the forests and the cities were seen through a whirl of snow-flakes, just as I saw the entire population – the Traveller apart – as hirsute, bear-like creatures smothered in full-length fur-lined shubas. Men wore shaggy furs merging with their beards and long locks; women were even more spherical, toddling and toy-like, bright-coloured handkerchiefs framing their round red cheeks. These were the images of a child’s picture-book, and they lingered: it was some years before I could visualize Russia under the torrid midsummer sun that strikes down so briefly. My first readings of the Russian classics were conditioned by this childish vision too; it was as if I had shaken one of those glass paper weights that produce a flurry of snow-flakes. Through this, the plot developed against a background of universal whiteness. The burning noon-tides of Gogol’s Ukraine, Turgeniev’s autumn woods, fields of wheat at harvest time, or the opalescent summer nights of St. Petersburg were all seen through this perpetual snowstorm. It was only after a considerable effort to re-focus my vision that I could admit, or appreciate the infinite variety, the nuances of climate and landscape which Russian writers evoke so wonderfully: or, for that matter, the range of figures within the landscapes.

  •

  I now began to ask the Traveller to take me back with him to Russia. Generally he would reply: ‘Of course – if you will learn to speak Tartar by Tuesday or Friday,’ or whenever he was leaving. But I had no gift for languages, he well knew. It had taken him two weeks to teach me a Russian rhyme about a crocodile walking down the Nevski Prospect. While the Kyrillic alphabet had been mastered laboriously during my convalescence from some childish ailment, along with the names of the Kremlin’s towers and gates, the Sunday Gate, the Gate of the Saviour, the Trinity, and more, I was painfully slow to construct even the simplest sentences correctly. At which he would call me Douraka – Glupi, little fool, Stupidichka, or even Numskullina, a blend of Thumbelina and numskull. He always showed a most inventive turn for such names, and over the years I acquired many, my favourite being Rocokoshka – which might be translated roughly as my little Rococo pussy-cat. But this came later, when I began to show signs of those elaborate ambiguities known as femininity. At the moment of which I write, I was still comparatively straightforward. And certainly single-minded, even for a short while going so far as to stir butter into my tea in faithful imitation of the Mongolians who, I had learned, enjoyed yak-fat in theirs.

  Once, learning he was leaving for Siberia the next day, I became desperate.

  ‘Please take me with you. Please! I want to ride in our train. Can’t I, this time? Why not?’ I burst into tears of longing.

  The Traveller was stretched out on the old nursery sofa. He still kept to his fur-lined overcoat, but now it was flung over his feet. He was reading The Times leader and disapproving. There were guests in the drawing-room and he had not wished to join them, for he was not sociably inclined.

  Ermyntrude, my pet black and white rabbit, had climbed inside his jacket for a nap, as she liked to do with my father. Her long, pink-lined furry ears could be seen, emerging from the lapels of his coat. Sounds of conviviality reached the nursery; the chink of glasses, high-pitched talk, and a piano began to accompany a soprano. Ermyntrude’s ears twitched apprehensively. The Traveller laid down The Times and sighed, listening more attentively, it seemed, to the song, than to my plea.

  Less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheels, sang the disembodied soprano, with dramatic emphasis.

  The Traveller scowled. ‘A lot she knows about that sort of thing.’

  I must have looked puzzled for he took my hand, looking suddenly melancholy. The slit eyes stared, seeming to reach the brain behind my eyes.

  ‘Don’t cry, my funny little Nursery Traveller . . . How can I take you to Siberia tomorrow? I doubt I can ever take you there . . . But you have such violent desires . . . I’ve no doubt you will get yourself there one day. And you may even find me there.’ He sighed.

  ‘Where?’ I asked, breathlessly.

  ‘Anywhere,’ he replied casually, and picked up The Times.

  As an afterthought: ‘As a matter of a fact, we’re probably there now, having never left it. Magic of magics! Don’t be so finite. “Je suis hier, je suis demain . . .” That’s an inscription on one of the Egyptian mo
numents to the God Horus. You must think yourself where you want to be. Païdum! Lets go!’ Since I continued to stand rooted to the nursery floor, he took my hand, smiling one of his rare soft smiles; then, assuming the proud stance of an archer, he told me how the Mongol warriors galloped across the Gobi, accomplishing distances which nothing less than magic could explain, racing after the arrows they shot into the air before them.

  ‘I remember an old song of theirs,’ he said,

  Fly! Fly! wherever ye be, for I am the Lord of the Arrows said he.

  ‘You must learn their secrets,’ he went on. ‘Magic is everywhere – in the Gobi – in this nursery too.’

  And with that I had to be content.

  •

  So, despairing of human aid to reach Siberia, I turned to magic. Perhaps I could discover some spell which would whisk me there. Magic of Magics! Although the Traveller professed himself a believer it was not without some trepidation that I consulted him on the question. He listened attentively and promised to try and find a secret formula for granting wishes which he had been given, long ago, by a Siberian Shaman living, very suitably, on the Shaman’s Rock, Shaman-Kamen, on the Angara.

  ‘And did it work?’ I asked.

  ‘Like a charm,’ he replied, crossing himself and mixing his magics. He also suggested I should try to reach the Street of the Necromancers, in Prague, where, it seemed, I would encounter a number of helpful people. But from my nursery, Prague seemed as remote and inaccessible as Siberia.

  In due course, a small yellowing square of white silk arrived, curiously folded and covered in cabalistic signs. This, wrote the Traveller, must be placed on the head during the first three nights of a waxing moon. If possible I was to drink the milk of a hump-backed white mare and (this may be tricky, he warned) sprinkled with three hairs from the beard of a centenarian.

  Most of this proving indeed, too tricky to achieve, I fell back on a less exacting, home-made magic, the wishful thinking he had advocated and which for some while I practised hopefully. Having collected a number of my most vivid old Siberian postcards, dog-teams straining across the snows, the interior of the restaurant car on the Trans-Siberian train, a trading post, ice-breakers on Baïal, or the main street of Irkutsk, I would take the pictures to bed with me, and then, by the aid of an electric torch concealed under the bedclothes (for reading in bed was forbidden), I would place each image in turn under a glass paper weight which magnified the scene, bringing it into stereoscopic reality. Then, holding my breath, crossing my fingers, and counting up to ten in Yakute (a piece of exoticism it had amused the Traveller to teach me, one wet Sunday), I had to project myself deep into the magnified scene. Bir, iki, ous, tar, bar, ali, sekki, I counted, plunging into some marvellous white and glittering world where the far northern names on the map sounded like bells tinkling on the reindeer’s antlers as the teams posted between Tsissibas and Yuk-Tak, Sarak-Kalak and Beté Kül. Whichever picture I fell asleep over would be the one in which I would find myself when I awoke . . . or at least, would live in during my sleep my home-made magic told me. But in the morning I was still in bed, unable to remember my dreams, still not in Siberia.

  How to get there? How to reach Moscow, Tash Kurgan or anywhere else, either side of the Urals, on the strength of my desires alone? On New Year’s Eve I still scrupulously observed the Russian tradition of writing my wish (naturally to attain Siberia) on a piece of paper which I then burnt, ceremoniously eating the ashes. It was dusty fare to choke down, but I managed it – that way you could rely on your wishes coming true: but it left a rather grubby smudge round the mouth, and was not encouraged by my family. Since none of the spells worked, I began to think of making off in an easterly direction. But even my accumulated pocket-money would not have got me farther than Dover, although I had read, in some out-of-date periodical, that in order to encourage immigration, the Russian Government had drastically reduced tickets to Siberia, whole families travelling a hundred miles for a few pence. I was enthralled by accounts of the manner in which the peasants were transported in box-cars, hugger-mugger with their farm-yard, two or three cows, geese, some sheep, the dogs, the children and (being Russian), the baboushka-grandmother, along with the pots and pans, while bales of hay were corded on to the roof for cattle-fodder en route. This I saw as some protracted picnic, a country outing on wheels – and surrounded by all those darling animals, too . . . Perhaps it could be arranged that in next summer’s holidays I could go along?

  I decided to lay this plan before the Traveller, as soon as possible, and waited, fuming with impatience, for a suitable moment. I was learning that he, like all men, was more approachable after he had eaten well. We had been spending the afternoon at the British Museum, where, in the Print Room, the Traveller had been studying a collection of Thibetan paintings, gold-leafed scrolls, intricate cloud formations, bamboo thickets glowing with tigers, and holy figures meditating on sacred mountains.

  From my earliest childhood I had been accustomed to long hours spent in museums, for these were my father’s natural habitat, and I accompanied him to them several times a week. My stamina for such outings was therefore established; but the Traveller was plainly flagging when I injudiciously suggested we should leave by way of the Ethnographic Department, taking in the Aztec crystal skull and the Persian porcelain section on our way out. Not that I cared at that time for Persian porcelain, but in the same room there were some life-sized Kadjhar Court paintings of dancing girls whose crimson-stained hands and feet emerged from stiff jewelled and brocaded garments, their side-long glances flashing beneath beetle-brows as they postured invitingly, holding a rose in their teeth, or offering a goblet of sherbet while balancing on one leg, or even upside down, in acrobatic attitudes. They must, I thought, resemble the legendary dancers of Shemakha, on whom the Traveller had expanded, so that Gobineau’s fiery character Oum Djehane was now one of my favourite heroines, whom I liked to impersonate, dressing up gaudily, having stained my fists with red ink.

  But the Traveller had no heart or no feet left for further dalliance, and dragged me away, without so much as a glance for the Asiatic charmers. By way of consolation he proposed a restorative tea. This was the moment I had been waiting for. After a rich tuck-in I would unfold my plan for going to Siberia in one of the migrant box-cars. Infinitely cunning, I suggested Buzzard’s in Oxford Street, a long-vanished caterers which high-lighted my childhood by its sumptuous spreads. Towering white sugar wedding cakes, looped in garlands were displayed in its long, low window. Lesser glories, christening cakes, birthday cakes and ornate puddings flanked the wedding cakes, promising unimaginable delights within. Tea at Buzzard’s never disappointed; it was my usual half-term treat after a matinée at the Coliseum, or the climax to a day’s Christmas shopping and occasionally, as now, an unexpected extra.

  In a religious hush we applied ourselves to the spread. Plum cake, wine dark and accompanied by a thick layer of marzipan, the whole encased in dazzling white icing. Chocolate éclairs, coffee éclairs, marron-cream tartlets, brandy-snaps, cream horns, the whipped cream bursting from the puff pastry shell, meringues, petits fours, strawberry layer cake, rose icing, violet icing . . .

  At last the Traveller was left by the way, a gastronomic casualty. Lighting a cigarette he ordered another brew of China tea with lemon.

  ‘They say lemon helps,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘Helps what?’ I spoke through a glorious last assault on the plum-cake.

  ‘Stomach-ache,’ he said curtly, and added, ‘It’s all a question of what one’s used to eating. I was brought up on pickled cucumbers and salted fish – all the things your mother believes would ruin your digestion; but you can eat any of this’ – he waved his hand to the depleted spread – ‘while I’m feeling worse every minute.’

  Clearly this was not the moment to broach the question of the journey.

  ‘There’s nothing for it, we shall have to walk it off,’ he said, turning up his coat collar and plunging out into a raw fo
ggy twilight. He had a highly personal way of walking – a prowling, cat-like tread, made more so by the soft leather boots he always wore. These were quite different to the regular Russian boot, and I have never seen their like in Europe. He could only obtain them in Irkutsk, he said: they were, in fact, an adaptation of the Torghut boot worn by the Mongols. The upturned, blunt toe he wore was less pronounced, but on the heel there was the classic appliquéd pattern resembling the prow-like line of the toe. This was said to commemorate a ruse by which a Mongol army defeated another, wearing their boots back to front on a march, and thus throwing their enemy off their tracks. The Traveller’s boots walked soft as slippers, and were, I thought gratefully (for children are self-conscious about such departures from convention), not too apparent beneath the trouser leg. We had crossed the park and were cutting through the little squares and terraces between Knightsbridge and South Kensington before I judged it judicious to raise the question of the box-car journey, or, failing that, the possibility of leaving with him on his next journey to Siberia – for I never imagined he was anywhere else, when he was not with us.

  ‘Children under ten travel free,’ I added hopefully.

  But no doubt those same jumbles, meringues and slices of plum-cake which lay so light on my stomach still tormented him; in any case he was unusually severe in his refusal even to discuss either project.

  ‘Out of the question. Ridiculous! Have you no sense of reality? Don’t go on about it. I cannot take you with me. I’ve told you a hundred times. What’s more, I don’t want to! Not now, anyway,’ he added, softening as I burst into tears.

  It was all so hopeless, I sobbed, no one understood, not even he. And now he was angry. How much longer would I have to wait? I would never get to Siberia by myself – I wouldn’t be grown up for years. I would die first. I still had years and years of school to get through . . . I choked despairingly.