3.

FEELING BLUE IN RED SQUARE 

part 2

“Hey Jennifer,” a guy called out to me. “Come here. Fifty rubles. I want you.”  Fifty rubles. That was all I was worth? Or was it the price for one of his gaudy, rhinestone faux designer watches? And why Jennifer? Was that his idea of a typical American name? I took one look at his slicked-back black hair, his unibrow, and his shiny red tracksuit and decided I wasn’t going to find out. 

It was Sunday morning and I had ventured out to a large market that was set up near my hotel, probably one of the few places in the city where the average worker could afford to shop. Many of the vendors of the mostly cheap, Chinese-made goods for sale were migrants from poorer former soviet republics like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

With fifty percent of the population existing on two dollars a day it was no wonder that many Tajiks had sought a better life in Russia’s booming economy, working as street sweepers, and construction and factory workers.

In recent years nationalist gangs have singled out migrants as the cause of their economic woes. In 2008, Tajik authorities reported that eighty Tajiks were killed in ethnically motivated attacks. The declining price of oil and Russia’s financial crisis will probably make these attacks more common. The Russian government is even talking about putting quotas on immigration.

The mayor of Moscow, Irina told me, wanted to close the market down for the spurious reason that the states of the vendors’ health (were they contagious?) were unknown.

Rain drove me back to the hotel and I spent the rest of the day in the lobby. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, its smell permeating everything: my clothes, my hair, my skin. I could smell it even

 when no one was smoking.

✢

Ella wrote in Cruises and Caravans that as a young woman she envied those who had known since childhood what they wanted to be, those who had never known the anguish of hesitation,

 “I could not bring myself to do anything seriously. For a while I worked as a typist; acted at the Studio des Champs Elysees and later in a mountain film. But I knew these occupations were only temporary: they helped me live hand-to-mouth til I could find something to believe in.”

 

I have spent a good part of my life searching for something to believe in, believing in myself included. Fear of failure prevented me from trying so many things, from pursuing a career, from trying earlier in my life to be a photographer and a writer. Ella was twenty-seven when she published Parmi la jeunesse russe never having nursed the illusion that she could write. She showed a correspondent from Hearst Press an article she had written about the Caucusus; he told her it was no good, her story too plain. The article ended up being the basis for the book.

I struggle with being versus doing. To be considered a worthy or successful person is being nice, interesting, well-read, well-traveled enough, or are numerous accomplishments, talents and skills essential? I know, deep down, that who I am is more important than what I am, but I can’t rid myself of the notion that I am never going to be satisfied or find lasting love unless I have a long list of achievements, thinking a lover will look at me as a potential employer would and want to see a well-rounded resume.

I have a relative who dismisses me because I have never tried to take the world by storm, because I am not ambitious. Sometimes I am right there with him, rebuking myself for not having a career of consequence. I didn’t think a few teaching jobs and owning a little, moderately successful shop was anything to be proud of or would impress anyone. At forty-five, the pressure to accomplish something, to create something lasting, was weighing heavily on me. I no longer wanted “How’s the shop?” to be the second question my friends and acquaintances asked me. I wanted it to be “How’s the book?” or “Where are you off to next?’ I sold the shop and committed myself to making the trip.

So why was I feeling apathetic? It was troubling. Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was being in Moscow; I always feel inconsequential and diminished in big cities. Or were there still a few seeds of fear shifting around in my head? Would I have the strength to last three months? I had never traveled alone for that long. My one previous attempt in the early nineties, my so-called Asian Odyssey, had been a spectacular failure. I made an ass of myself over a Danish Hugh Grant in Hong Kong, lost my passport on Koh Phangan in Thailand, and almost drowned in Nepal’s Sun Koshi River. I gave up and came home after two months.

Ella was nearly fluent in Russian, I am not. I had bought a book to try to teach myself, but I wasn’t making any progress. I could read the alphabet, but nouns and verbs floated around in my head for several seconds before bursting like tiny bubbles. Would I find anyone to talk to or would I be a silent observer never sure if I was understanding what I was seeing? 

Would I have the discipline to write every day or would I get so disgusted with my prose that I quit after a few weeks? I had never kept a journal for longer than two weeks. I didn’t want the trip to turn out to be an expensive waste of time and money. Travel is never a waste, but I wanted to return home with much more than a collection of photographs seen only by my family and friends.

Would this trip be the life-changing experience I wanted it to be?

I ate in one of the hotel restaurants that had a Middle Eastern, Turkish theme. By the time my meal arrived I’d forgotten what I’d ordered, but if I had had any inkling that it was going to taste that foul (or fowl, it was chicken) I would have ordered something else. Ten dollars for a salad that was the size of a side salad at home and that was mayonnaisey and watery at the same time. I choked down a few bites before I pushed it aside.

All the TVs in the public areas of the hotel were tuned to the Beijing Olympics. Russia had gone to war with Georgia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia a couple of days earlier – two thousand Ossetians were reported dead – but from the amount of attention the people at the hotel were giving it, you’d have thought St. Lucia had invaded St. Vincent. It was true that I couldn’t understand what people were talking about, though from their smiling and laughing faces, it didn’t seem to be about the war.

The hours passed slowly. I window shopped at the hotel’s various gift shops. When the skies cleared I moved outside, returning inside when the light became too dim to read by. Hours spent in the lobby revealed that quite a few people were whiling away the day there. Every hour seemed to bring another busload of Chinese tourists, three in so many hours. Eventually it was ten o’clock and there, with a taxi waiting outside to take us to Kazanskiy Station, was Irina.

✢

“Why is your bag like that?” Irina asked me.

After exiting the taxi at the station, I had put my little blue suitcase down on the pavement freeing my hands to pay the driver.

“Pick it up,” she ordered. “Keep it near you at all times. Last year, I had a tourist who put his rucksack down for a minute and it was gone.”

As for the little black purse I had in my hand, I was told to put it under my shirt right away.

“I need to be able to get at it. I might need money,” I pleaded.

“You’re at the station. What could you need money for now?”

No platform had yet been posted for the Bishkek train so we found some seats in the waiting hall. Across from us a scene from a Russian Jules and Jim was being played out as two very drunk men cooed and fussed over an even drunker woman who was trying to find a comfortable position to pass out in on the metal chairs. Please God, don’t let these three be my compartment mates. When the train was announced they stayed put and we left them to their sordid ménage a trois.

I left Russia the minute I walked onto the platform, swept up into the crowd as it surged towards the train, pushing, shoving, dragging huge bags along the pavement or hoisting them on their shoulders, tripping over the luggage of others, sloshing through puddles that smelled suspiciously of urine. Some fools were going against the flow, trying to return to the station and impeding forward progress further still. It was bedlam with hardly a Slavic or other white face among the hundreds of faces. I was knocked, pushed, jostled and all the while Irina was saying over and over, “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, I’ve never seen anything like it,” and telling me over and over not to let go of my bags for a second and alerting me to all upcoming puddles.

When we arrived at Car No.10, Berths 33-36, Irina commanded me to stow my luggage, like it would be stolen if not hidden away immediately. As I struggled to heave my bag into the storage compartment underneath my berth, my purse swung freely about. Irina was appalled.

“Put that away right now! Where’s your sweater? Why aren’t you wearing your sweater?” she demanded like I was a troublesome child.

“I’m hot,” I whined.

“Well, put it back on.”

Preparing to leave, Irina said, “Call me if anything happens and I’ll come to Kyrgyzstan. I’ll fly though.”

Then she was gone and I was on my own.