How I Ate the Dog part four

The boat motored quietly, in the sense that it didn’t make any noise, and everyone sat silently, everyone was silent, and even those who were escorting us also were silent.  How – sh-sh-sh –the water swished.  No one turned his head, no one looked to the side, everyone froze, as it were.  Scaryyy.

But the sailors who took us were funny, they seemed that way to me then…. But then they blurred together with hundreds of the exact same, in the sense that they were dressed in exactly the same way…. But these ones I remembered… so funny.  (Here it is better to show pictures or photographs of sailors or depict what types they come in and what they do).

Imagine you wake up one morning and you’re a hussar.  That is, a real hussar.  You have that kind of special hat – a shako, with this kind of long thing.  You have this pelisse with an absurd amount of buttons and little braids, breeches, boots, spurs…, and here – a saber, and a horse.  This kind of large animal, this horse.  And moreover, you already know everything: how to ride a horse, how to cut with a saber, how everything is set up, to what regiment you’re assigned, what rank you have, and, even scarier, – you remember past battles and daring raids…. But at the same time you are surprised at all this.  Because you just woke up and there are these kinds of things going on…. And almost every morning for all three years, I thought this way, and the longer I served, the stronger I thought: “I’m a sailor!  A real one!  The kind like in the movies, and in fact even more real.  Just a sailor on a ship, just like that…”

This can’t be!  This is impossible!

Yeaaaah.. but….

A “verbal chain” culminating in God: Mikhail Shishkin on Russian literature

At the end of October, I heard a lecture at UW-Madison by acclaimed Russian author Mikhail Shishkin that I have only just had time to revisit (for a full recording, see CREECA lecture archive).

His lecture was an incredibly interdisciplinary and gleefully stimulating—albeit only loosely coherent—bit of waxing philosophical on the meaning of Russian literature and its history and future. It was simultaneously a poetic take on linguistics, an allegorical take on political science, a mystical literary study, and a manically thematic and anachronous history. Nonetheless, it ended on a rather effete, New-Agey and possibly even Pentecostal note with Shishkin’s assertion that literature should be a road “to a place where all of us are loved and awaited to be saved,” a statement that was indeed meant in the religious sense these words imply.

Shishkin for the most part ruminated on three themes: the use of language, the situation of the modern Russian writer, and the religious-mystical meaning of literature.

“Words are guards that do not allow meaning and emotion to enter … and still, the verbal path is the only way to understanding.” In Shishkin’s view, language is at the root of both obstructions to divine love (no one loves as purely as mother and babe when they do so “sub-verbally”) and problems of intellectual and moral flaccidity in current literature. Thus, revamping commercially corrupted literature, and thereby alleviating the modern condition, centers on a reinvigoration of the language.

Shishkin obviously troubles himself over knowing the fundamentals of the written word, and avoiding them as such. “For me, the only way to create my own road is to write incorrectly … to say something correctly means to say nothing,” he said.

On the second theme, Shishkin laid out a history of Russian literature as the receptacle of “non-totalitarian consciousness” amid state-enforced conformity. To his mind, the totalitarian consciousness can be atomized into the state’s commands and the people’s prayers (mat swear words are the “living prayers spoken in the imprisoned country”). The “prison reality of the state gave its people a prison mentality” that “created a (Russian) language with an unprecedented power to humiliate.” When literary language arrived from the West in the 18^th century, bringing along with it a respect for human dignity, Russian literature—in the hands of “colonists” like Dostoevksy and Chekhov—sought to “squeeze itself into the space between the insult and the groan.”

Russian writers never depended on the interest of readers, writing only for themselves or the Party, but were nonetheless accorded respect (see the old adage, “A poet in Russia is more than just a poet.”) After the fall, “Literature was left for those who cannot live without writing. Then the dollar came.” Shishkin, who wrote his first novel in teh 1980s, said that the new dependence on print run in the ‘90s was no better than previous dependence on the Soviet regime’s approval.

Shishkin accurately describes the current situation in which literature, its decline marked by the ascension of pop authors like Oksana Robski, is so marginal and meaningless as a product for profit, it can paradoxically exist freely in Russia for the first time. But he sounds a tad curmudgeonly and simplistic in his rote condemnation of the downsides of the market economy.

For his third theme, Shishkin totters out onto a metaphysical limb and gets all mystical: The Russian author—Shishkin suddenly adopts the guise of a parenting help guru—loves his hero unconditionally, as Gogol does Akaki Akakievich. In this he touches the sacred, since in the beginning there was only a “clump of love, or, rather, the need for it,” which prompted God to create “his own child in order to love him.”

What follows is a bit of metaphorical logic stretched to the breaking point: “If the author loves Akaki Akakievich, who does not deserve to be loved, then the reader knows that God exists and loves him.” Thus, the author’s task is to combine words into “verbal chain” that culminates in God. The additional duty of the Russian author, it would seem, is to fight the totalitarian consciousness intrinsic to the Russian nation and the humiliation reflex intrinsic to the Russian language.

Shishkin claims it is impossible to offer a universal prescription as to how to achieve this, then proceeds to do exactly that, speaking from his own experience: To create his own “Russian arc,” the Russian writer must become hermit, i.e. leave, physically or metaphorically, bringing only his own experience and “ten centuries of the Cyrillic language.”

Although by the end I was worried Shishkin was trying to surreptitiously convert the audience to Scientology, I will admit the lecture was the most inimitable and far-reaching analysis of Russian literature that I have yet heard.

A few more chestnuts:

“Russian literature suffers from high blood pressure.”

“The letters I wrote at home had a completely different density abroad.” (Shishkin lives in Switzerland).

“Not writing is part of writing.”

“If the Russian border were closed, Russian literature would never have happened.”

To be successful in the current Russian book market, writers must write a lot, appear everywhere, and “try to create as many scandals as possible.”

The Russian reader is still looking for a book “whose author does not consider him an idiot looking for entertainment.”

How I Ate the Dog part three

So why so many ellipses, random pauses, etc., in Grishkovets’s play?  Because it’s a monologue told by the author himself, and the author affects this homespun, natural style of speech to better match the material.  He assumes a self-deprecating, earnest tone, as if you’re a trusted friend to whom he’s telling his musings and half-baked childhood dreams that all the same are significant in the human sense, since we all have such musings and dreams, only we never voice them.  Plus, much of the dialogue is improvised, so Grishkovets keeps the whole thing completely free-flowing and conversational, and the written version with its many ellipses reflects this.

And just a sidenote: Russian Island is no joke.  The whole of this island, which Japan still contends is part of its territory, is given over to the Russian navy.  In 1993, four sailors starved to death there after a greedy officer hoarded food supplies.

How I Ate the Dog
Yevgenii Grishkovets

continued…

This is exactly like, well…. Like…. Remember, 15 to 17 years ago they were showing, with great pomp, and before that everyone was talking, saying that for the first time in the movie theatres of the country there was a real horror film, “Legend about a Dinosaur.”  Tickets were decidedly impossible to buy; they were showing the film for two weeks in movie theatres with large screens.  At the ticket offices was a crowd…  I went three days in a row, stood idle for an hour, and, having been convinced that today, alas… I went to the theatre exit and waited for the end of the showing.  From the lobby you could hear a little bit of especially loud music and something else…  Then the people came out, and I looked at their faces.  They had seen it…!  They had already experienced it!  They came out and in some way differed from everyone else, they moved, as it were, slowly, as in video clips, carrying a knowledge that was unknown to me, that I also would attain, that I feared, but that which I must…, without fail.  But they had already lived through something, they already knew….  I wanted to see this in their eyes….  I respected them and understood that I couldn’t even talk to them….  Then, on Friday, I myself watched the film….  Well, there you go, watched it…. and left… and went home…

But there it was more serious business, here it was….  It’s like, you know….  You’re walking to school, it’s dark because it’s winter.  Everything really familiar, all the noises bother you.  Well, there’s this little path through the snow, trees, snow.  In front of you loom up other wretches, some mothers pulling their torpid first-graders.  Snow, branches, cold.  You’re walking like this, so that your hands don’t touch your mittens, and through the trees and the snow on the second floor gleam three windows.  They gleam with such a venomous, peculiar light.  This is the room for Russian class.  And now there will be two periods of Russian right off the bat…….   And you’re walking, but this is worse of all, this sorrow, this is intolerable…

And of course you learned everything, your homework is done, and, in general, there’s nothing to fear.  But….  Those three windows….  And through your head passes different plans of how you might avoid this, and thoughts about how it would be awesome, if…, or about what the guys from School 48 said, how they….  But you walk….  Horror….  It’s just you also know that the teacher hates you.  No, not because you’re this way or that.  Just because she really doesn’t like you.  You still don’t even guess that people can not love you, because you’re still….  Ooooohhhh…

We traveled onward…. Past Baikal.  It took a long time to pass Baikal, then we traveled some more…  The city of Ulan-Ude.

It’s curious when some Muscovite tells some foreigner: “Yes… Baikal – our pride, this lake is the biggest, deepest, there’s such and such a percentage of the world’s freshwater, there’s fish…!”

What Baikal?  It’s farther away than Africa…. A lot farther….  And schoolkids in Khabarovsk write essays in ninth grade about “Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg.”  What St. Petersburg?  What are you talking about?  A seven-hour time difference between these cities, and birch trees…, many…, many…, many birch trees.

Incidentally, if you pronounce the word “many” (“mnogo”) many times (“mnogo,” “mnogo,” “mnogo”…), then it will break up into sounds and lose its meaning…, and it’s that way with any word.  Names especially quickly break up….  Well, that’s how it is…

We asked the sailors about what it was like to serve, well, in the sense that….  Well, as it were… scary or not, whether strong….  Well, you understand….  But we asked, as it were, without any particular interest, kind of like….  And they said: “Noooo, now serving is alright, Boy Scout camp, totally fine, no one’s fingers will…, don’t piss yourself.  Now, when we served, that was….  Back then it was, yeah…  Seryoga, you tell them now, Boy Scout camp.  Noooo, totally fine…  Only, the main thing is, don’t wind up on Russian Island, and then it’s fine…

I somehow immediately remembered and worried: “Okay, so the main thing is, don’t wind up on Russian Island, because it’s not worth it to wind up there, and if you don’t wind up there, everything will be fine.”  But for some reason, we didn’t really believe that everything would be fine.  We arrived in Vladivostok early in the morning, it was still entirely dark, and fog hung in the air…, not even fog, but kind of little bitty rain, but so small that it doesn’t fall, but literally hangs in the air.  It was surprisingly brightly light by the floodlights of the train station and the port, which in Vladivostoke are next to each other, and tremendously cold.  But I didn’t end up seeing Vladivostok in the daytime, already three hours later they were taking me on a boat to Russian Island.

Pause.

How I Ate the Dog part two

If you’ve ever been on a Russian train, you’ll know that Grishkovets gets it exactly right, from the wood-burning tea urn by the wagon conductor’s cabin to the sleepy Russian who without fail remarks on the monotonous beauty of continental Russia and its birches.  The train is still the most important form of transportation in Russia, even though it takes over a week to cross the country this way.  I’ve spent at most two-and-a-half days on a Russian train in one stretch, but I can picture what an eternity seven would be … so you really have to note how strong the dread of the unknown that pervades the author’s imminent entry into naval service is, that he would rejoice in each little stop …

How I Ate the Dog
Yevgenii Grishkovets

continued…

I remember how we traveled seven days from the “Taiga” station to the Vladivostok station on a passenger/mail train.  We traveled slowly, stood at each crossing, and I was grateful to the railroad workers for these tiny delays….  We were going…, and interestingly, you could be going anywhere, to the east, to the south, to the north, and the whole time it would be the exact same scenery, in the sense that, it changes, of course, but the feeling remains that it’s the exact same: This means not very thickly growing birch trees, those uniformly spaced white-black trees, everywhere….  Well, in general, the kind of scenery, looking at which a Russian is obligated to say: “My God… what beauty!”  It happens like this: The Russian has woken up, comes out from the sleeping compartment into the corridor of the wagon, on his shoulders hangs a towel, like so, in his hand a toothbrush with toothpaste already on it, he’s a bit blinded by the morning light (in the compartment it had been very dark), he stops at the window, like so, holding onto the handrail.  In the corridor the rattle of the train is stronger.  Someone draws water from the tea urn.  The train: tuduk-tuk-tuk, tuduk-tuk-tuk.  The person who has just woken up: “Ssssoooo, where are we by now?”  The person with hot water in his mug, swaying with concentration, slowly walking and because of this swaying even more, says: “Who knows…”

The person who has just woken up: “Yeah?! Well, all the same, what beauty…!” Tuduk-tuk-tuk, tuduk-tuk-tuk…

Two sailors took us, they wore white dress uniforms and really looked after their appearance.  Both were short, one had a moustache that he really loved and obviously was very proud of, you couldn’t make it out immediately, but if you so desired, it wasn’t hard to count all the tiny hairs he had on his upper lip, and the other was, I for some reason recall, from Tambov, he was bowlegged and right about here he wore a medal “For faraway deployment.”  They got out at every station and walked around the platform with an old cassette player, glancing to the sides, meaning – Are they looking at us or not?  Aha…they’re looking!  Very good!  I was surprised at the time by how their sailor hats stayed on the back of their heads, it was obvious that they should have fallen off, but they stayed on, all the same…. Without any sense of idiotic metaphor, they hung like haloes….  I only found out later, how they stayed on… sailor hats.  And that there’s no secret, they simply stay on, and that’s it.

The sailors were entertaining….  We came up to them with questions about how it is, and they gladly told us how…: “Well, we went through La Pérouse Strait, then we went to Cam Ranh, we stopped there…, then we went to New Zealand and they didn’t let us come ashore, but in Australia they let us come ashore, but only the officers went and…”

And I was thinking: “Geeeeee whiz… After all I studied English in school…  Why?”  Well, there were countries where they speak this language, there was Europe, well somewhere there… Paris, London, you know, Amsterdam, there were those, and leave it at all that.  What’s it to me?  They sometimes vaguely disturbed you in that they nevertheless kind of existed…, but they didn’t draw out any concrete desire.  The world was huge, like in a book….

And these sailors had been, my God, in Australia, New Zealand….  And the same awaits me, just put me in that same uniform….  And little by little, already quickly, the train takes us to Vladivostok, and there is still a little left – and some sort of sea, some sort of countries….  Reluctance!!!!  Because even though I didn’t know anything concrete, I suspected that, well, of course, it wasn’t quite that simple, Australia, New Zealand, and still some other place like that, the essential of what I didn’t want to know, of what I was afraid, of what I was very afraid  and what would very soon come up… without fail….

How I Ate the Dog part one

How I Ate the Dog

A monodrama

Roles:

Narrator – A young man between 30 and 40 years, dressed in a sailor’s uniform, more often holds his sailor’s hat in hand, sometimes wears it on his head.

One may add personal stories and observations to the text.  Those moments that one especially doesn’t like may be skipped.  It is advisable to recount this story in more than an hour, but less than an hour-and-a-half.

On the stage is a lot of tackle, various maritime affects, a bucket of water and a rag.  In the center sits a chair.

Narrator.

There occur such moments in life, well, for example, you arrive home a little later than you promised, meaning you promised to come at nine, but you came at 11: You didn’t call, didn’t warn in advance, and, well, you come in, start to apologize, well, it’s no use…. And they tell you, “Oh, and of course you went drinking, you’re drunk.”  But you weren’t drinking, that is, not at all!  And you say, “No way, mom (or anyone else), God be with you, I didn’t have anything to drink…” and something to this effect.  And suddenly you have a thought, you clearly understand that you’re behaving yourself like you’re drunk, that is, the more you explain yourself, the more you become indignant, the more you appear to be drunk, moreover you already understand this, but all the same you can never do anything about it.  “Well, admit that you were drinking and  go to bed, why get worked up,” they say.  “But I wasn’t drinking, I wasn’t…” you grumble through your teeth, wave your hand and actually go to bed, and there’s nothing else to do about it.  And no one to get mad at, since it’s exactly as if you’re drunk…

I say this so that it will be understood that I myself don’t understand the reasons why I’m going to tell all of this now; it seems that there are many reasons, but as soon as you name one of them, you understand that it’s not the right reason, or it’s not a fundamental reason, or whatever…. That is, we’ll consider that everything that I recount, I’m recounting without a reason, well, and you… you’re listening for the reason that you came to listen, or simply because there already isn’t anywhere else to go, or for some other reason of your own.  I don’t know….

I’ll talk about a person who is no more now, who already doesn’t exist, in the sense that he existed before, but now he ceased to exist, but besides me no one noticed this.  And when I reminisce about him or talk about him, I say, “I thought… or I said”….  And I remember all this in detail, what he did, how he lived, what he thought, I remember why he did this or that, well, good thing, or, more often, bad thing….  I even become embarrassed for him, even though I distinctly understand that it wasn’t me.  No, not me.  In the sense that for everyone who knows me and knew me it was me, but actually that “I” who’s now saying this is a different person, and that one is no more and has no chance of appearing again….  In short, I ended up having to serve three years in the Pacific fleet….  That’s what kind of person this was.

Pause.

Sorokin 1 – 7: “The Eros of Moscow”

I’ve finally finished my translation of Vladimir Sorokin’s “The Eros of Moscow” with the seventh and final installment, “Kapotniya,” which covers the oil-refinery situated outside of the city.

Moscow is an incredible sight, both the largest and the greenest city in Europe, head of an Asiatic empire, living Soviet relic and witness to the greatest socio-political shift of the 20th century.  Sorokin’s story, and the tasks he gives out, are worthy of the city’s many nooks and crannies.

The story follows in its entirety.

The gas-fed flame in Kapotniya, outside Moscow.

The Eros of Moscow – Vladimir Sorokin

Cities, like people, turn out to be sexual and frigid.  You can live your whole life with a person never having understood his eros, never having felt it.  And so any city is capable of making you tremble with orgasmic pleasure or the just the opposite – doom you to tens of years of dreary existence together.

I lived a year-and-a-half in Tokyo, but to this day I have not opened for myself the eros of this extraordinary city.  Berlin gave herself to me after half a year.  Saint-Petersburg – after a week.  Paris – after 12 hours.

Each city has its own eros.

Moscow for me is not a city.  And not a country.  And not even inland Russia.

Moscow is a sleeping giantess.  She lies on her back in the middle of Russia.  And sleeps a heavy Russian dream.

In order to enter into her, you need to know her erogenous zones.  Or else she will rudely throw you off and forever close herself off to you.

For each Muscovite there are his own tender spots on the body of the capital.  But you have to really want to find them.  Then the giantess will give herself to you.

For me these erogenous zones on the body of Moscow number seven.  I started to instinctively grope for them back in my student days.  Before those, like hundreds of thousands of Moscow inhabitants, I saw in Moscow only the “capital of our motherland,” the place where my parents and friends lived, a “comfortable city with a developed infrastructure,” a “historical monument,” the “Third Rome,” the “center of Russia, to which all paths lead” and other such banalities.

But my intuition hinted that with Moscow things weren’t as simple as they seemed.  And I wasn’t mistaken.  It took almost 12 years to find and touch Moscow’s mysterious and tender places.

Now I can truthfully say that I learned this city.  And I’m ready to share its secrets.

There are seven erogenous zones on the body of Moscow.  It’s better to touch them in the summertime.  And so:

1. Moscow State University and the overlook on the Vorobyev Hills

On a sunny and fair day, approach the Stalinist mass of Moscow State University from the side of the Moscow River, come in by way of the granite stairs and stop in front of the columns at the entrance.  Alongside them sit an iron young man and an iron young woman with iron books in their hands.  If you’re a man, go to the girl, if you’re a woman, to the boy.  Softly come closer to your object, climb the pedestal and place your hands on the iron chest.  Cry out “Moscow, let me in!”, stand there for a few minutes, then climb down and go to the overlook.  There place your elbows on the glossy granite parapet and look out over the panorama of the city sprawling out before you until your eyes begun to tear up.  As soon as they break out and the panorama flows together in a flickering kaleidoscope, try to feel Moscow in the form of a colorful orb gliding through the air.  Having felt this, wipe away the tears and proceed further …

2. VDNKh

Entering through the main entrance into the territory of the former Exhibit of the Achievements of People’s Farming, go straight until you see the first fountain, “Friendship of Nations” – 15 gilded female figures in the national costumes of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.  Climb over the side, step into the water of the fountain and walk around the fountain three times clockwise.  Then go further, until you reach the fountain “The Stone Flower.”  Here perform the same action – three times, knee deep in the water, clockwise.  And immediately proceed further to the very end of the exhibit territory, to the fountain “The Golden Ear.”  This is a large, deep fountain.  They used to sail around it in boats.  Undress and swim around the gilded ear of wheat.  Three times clockwise.  If all ends well, as it did for me and the artist Andrei Monastyrsky and his wife Sabina in that memorable year of 1986, get dressed and immediately head somewhere nearby to have a drink and eat something.  Having opened for ourselves this erogenous zone of our home city, we then headed to the restaurant “The Golden Ear.”  The enormous restaurant lay empty in light of Gorbachev’s infamous anti-alcohol campaign –they weren’t even serving beer there.  At the same time, the food was generously portioned.  After our ablution in the three waters we very much wanted to warm up.

“Address yourselves to the porter,” the waiter kindly whispered.  Andrei addressed himself, and within a few minutes a whiskered porter approached and set upon our table a bottle of Bordzhomi mineral water filled with vodka.

“Is this vodka?” asked Sabina in good Russian.  The porter silently nodded.

“But why is it in a mineral-water bottle?”

“It’s hard to explain,” the porter answered and strolled off.

It seems to me, he was speaking not just about the camouflaged vodka, but rather in a deeper, more metaphysical sense.

3. Boulevard Ring

Invite your two closest friends, buy three bottles of port wine, hide them in the pockets of your coats and head down the boulevard arm-in-arm.  You should silently walk the entire Boulevard Ring, keeping hold of each other and deliberately, surreptitiously sipping from your bottles.  I recommend you start the journey through this erogenous zone at Yauzsky Boulevard alongside Solyanka, moving counterclockwise – Chistoprudny, Sretensky and so on.  You need to walk silently, intently peering at passerby on the boulevards.  If you meet any acquaintances, preferably keep silent and turn away your eyes.  You should not drink hurriedly, but rather with feeling.  Having finished the promenade on Gogolevsky Boulevard, you should set the bottles in the middle of the boulevard, embrace each other about the shoulders and perform a slow dance around the bottles, singing and whistling.  Next it is essential to quickly, without saying good-bye and not looking at each other, head off in different directions.

All this was done by Igor Vinogradov, Sergei Kutin and me on one warm June day in 1974 after we successfully passed an engineering exam.

4.  Vagankovskoye Cemetery

Entering the cemetery grounds, steer right, to the most distant part of it, taking with you an unread book.  Finding nothing noticeable besides a tidy tomb with a small bench, sit and read the book until dusk, until the evening cool appears and the letters on the page start to run together and resemble soldiers sleeping side by side.  Close the book, carefully put it on the grave and quietly leave the cemetery.  I behaved in this exact manner in May 1980.  Having gone to the maternity clinic to visit my wife, who was preparing to cast out into our contradictory world two twins, I left to aimlessly wander Moscow, warm and reeking of gas and asphalt, with a Xeroxed copy of Nabokov’s novel King, Queen, Knave under my arm.  I don’t remember, how and why I ended up in Vagankovskoye Cemetery.  The cemetery, not yet ruined by the tasteless tomb for Vysotsky, humbly lay in the shade of the lindens and poplars, spots of sunlight dancing in unpretentious crosses, young grass pushing up on the mounds of the graves.  Having sat on a bench next to someone’s well-kept grave, I read Nabokov until dusk and, not having read to the end, all of a sudden stood and walked off between the graves, not really thinking about anything.  Why did I leave the book on the grave?  “It’s hard to explain,” as that same porter would say.  It’s still harder to convey the feeling that I left the gates of the cemetery with.

5.  Metro station “Krasniye vorota”

The Moscow metro, at first glance, seems to be one giant erogenous zone, a palpating system, each curve of which requires soft caresses.  But this is only a superficial impression.  In my 45 years of travels through this labyrinth, I’ve found only one station with erotic vibrations: “Krasniye vorota.”  Go there after midnight, undress and stand in one of the granite niches and freeze for several minutes in the pose of Apollo (if you are a man) or Aphrodite (if God created you a woman).

6.  Cheremushkinskii Market and Novodevichii Monastery

It is essential to arrive a little before the opening of the market already dressed in tatters.  Having brought a wooden box, go through the main entrance into the market and immediately sit down on the box next to the doors.  Place a scuzzy ushanka on your lap, take a deep breath and start to softly but persistently moan, “Moscow is red with buns!  Moscow is red with buns!”  You need to repeat this phrase continuously all day.  As soon as the market closes, stand and, without counting the money given to you over the course of the day, clutch the ushanka in your hand and go to Novodevichii Monastery.  Enter the grounds of the monastery, stand in the center, cross yourself, bow, and, with the cry, “To you, God, what to us is unfit!” throw the hat with the money as high as you can.

7.  Kapotniya

Having improvised a paper kite, wait for darkness and set off for Kapotniya.  Find the gas-fed flame there, stand not far away on the windward side and release the kite.  See to it that the kite flies into the flame.  As soon as the kite catches fire, draw the string in toward yourself and light a candle off the burning kite  Hold the candle to your chest and shield it from the wind, loudly pronounce: “Fire, come with me.”  Then with your burning candle set off for home on foot.  Entering your home, carefully extinguish the candle, place it beneath your pillow and immediately go to bed.

I promise you, upon waking tomorrow, you will know Moscow.

“It’s that simple?” you ask.  Yes, it’s that simple, since everything is obvious.  In order to feel the eros of Moscow, it’s not entirely necessary to conduct sinister ceremonies and ritual sacrifices.  There is decidedly no need to sprinkle the yellow bile of a bear on the Kremlin wall, take a squat off the Krymsky Bridge at midnight, fling darts at prostitutes or masturbate on the monument to Timiryazevu.  Moscow, like a dear woman, needs earnest tenderness that flows from the heart.

Many Muscovites are ready to place the main erogenous zone on Red Square.

In the 45 years I, however hard I tried, haven’t been able to feel the eros of Red Square.  Meanwhile, I have felt it in the abovementioned places.  About this I can earnestly testify.

As Prigov wrote, “Each has his own heavenly Moscow, and each has his own worldly Moscow.”

Sorokin part 5 and 6: Metro “Krasniye vorota,” Cheremushkinskii Market and Novodevichii Monastery

In the pose of Apollo, albeit only half-naked, in one of the inexplicable niches in the Moscow metro station "Krasniye vorota."

The Eros of Moscow (continued)
By Vladimir Sorokin

5.  Metro station “Krasniye vorota”

The Moscow metro, at first glance, seems to be one giant erogenous zone, a palpating system, each curve of which requires soft caresses.  But this is only a superficial impression.  In my 45 years of travels through this labyrinth, I’ve found only one station with erotic vibrations: “Krasniye vorota.”  Go there after midnight, undress and stand in one of the granite niches and freeze for several minutes in the pose of Apollo (if you are a man) or Aphrodite (if God created you a woman).

Novodevichii Monastery.

6.  Cheremushkinskii Market and Novodevichii Monastery

It is essential to arrive a little before the opening of the market already dressed in tatters.  Having brought a wooden box, go through the main entrance into the market and immediately sit down on the box next to the doors.  Place a scuzzy ushanka on your lap, take a deep breath and start to softly but persistently moan, “Moscow is red with buns!  Moscow is red with buns!”  You need to repeat this phrase continuously all day.  As soon as the market closes, stand and, without counting the money given to you over the course of the day, clutch the ushanka in your hand and go to Novodevichii Monastery.  Enter the grounds of the monastery, stand in the center, cross yourself, bow, and, with the cry, “To you, God, what to us is unfit!” throw the hat with the money as high as you can.

“Inhabited Island 2″ no “Star Wars” after all

In my review of the first part of “Inhabited Island,” I positively raved over the film (as did the living co-author of the series it’s based on, Boris Strugatsky), predicting a possible Russian answer to the original “Star Wars” trilogy.

No such luck.  The second installment, “Inhabited Island: The Encounter” (“Obitaemiy Ostrov: Skhvatka”), falls flatter than an Ewok who just got crisped by an AT-ST Walker.

The main problem is that director Fyodor Bondarchuk (who also plays the role of the main antagonist Umnik) doesn’t have the time or initiative let this film find its own unique dynamic.  With the original “Star Wars” trilogy, each film had its own distinctive feel: “A New Hope” was truly iconic as the introduction to the Star Wars universe and contained an element, like its title suggested, of hopeful rebellion, “The Empire Strikes Back” became a favorite of hardcore fans with its darker, ominous feel, and “The Return of the Jedi” brought everything to a head in an action-packed, plot-turning climax.

Whereas the first “Inhabited Island” mirrored “A New Hope,” the second fell far short of the kind of rousing finale “Jedi” achieved, leaving an impression of a brusque, made-for-the-SciFi-channel flick with entirely uninspiring action sequences.  Bondarchuk should have split the film into two parts and followed the “Star Wars” mold exactly, with a darker middle section for contrast.  Instead, he tries to cram everything into one film, giving such a rushed, schizophrenic presentation that his movie tests the limits of the viewer’s credulity and patience.

In this encounter, our hero Maksim (Vasiliy Stepanov) travels south to a borderland of mutants in order to enlist their help in his quest to bring down the regime of the Unknown Fathers, the circle of Stalinesque magnates who rule an empire based on a network of mind-control towers.  Two of these magnates, “Umnik” (“Smart One,” played by Bondarchuk) and “Strannik” (“Strange One,” played by Aleksei Serebryakov), want to use Maksim, who as a physically engineered citizen of the advanced future civilization of earth wields special physical and mental powers, to achieve their own ends.

Maksim, however, motivated by the simple creed that people should be free, could care less about either of their intricate schemes.  He travels on from the borderlands, getting conscripted into a war with a rival empire and learning more about the higher forces at work in the planet’s power structure, before he makes it back in time for a final confrontation with Umnik (a development accompanied by the film’s single major plot twist) that decides the fate of the empire.

In the rush to pack all this in, Bondarchuk misses every opportunity to build chemistry between Maksim and Umnik, or, for that matter, between Umnik and Strannik.  When the movie comes crashing to a close, the viewer is left without a strong sense of involvement with any of the characters.

For most of the movie, any tension or sense of dynamics is centered around bosom friends Maksim and Gai (Pyotr Fyodorov), which also fails due to the rather simplistic take on what is in essence a complicated, conflicted relationship.  Gai wrestles his brainwashed reflexes like they’re a bad cold, lacking the kind of deep, ambiguous psychological conflict displayed by other such Raskolnikov-style characters (Gollum in “Lord of the Rings” comes to mind).

Meanwhile, Maksim is lollygagging along without a care besides saving the world, while Gai whines and nags him in a strained, manly yelp.  In this manner, the film jumps schizophrenically from scene to scene, relying heavily on a series of deus ex machinas even more egregious than those in the first part: “Oh, here’s a giant working rocket ship they kept hidden in these stone ruins all these years” or “Oh, here’s an abandoned White Submarine like the one we’ve been looking for, with a man-sized hole blown in the side right next to the ladder.”

Likewise, the movie is chock full of characters who decide to stick their necks out and help Maksim in the most unbelievable ways, all with no apparent motivation besides a late-blooming sense of benevolence or personal ambition so misguided it is hardly realistic.  The ultimate such example is when Strannik decides to literally hands Maksim the keys to the empire and then expects him to play nice and do as he’s told.

Although the final plot twist is compelling and intriguing, the combat scene between Maksim and Umnik is pathetic, paling next to the tension-filled atmosphere and appropriately epic setting of the final scene in “The Return of the Jedi.”

Of course, it’s obvious after the second part that there’s no comparing the two series.  “Inhabited Island” is a fun flick that quickly fades due to its rushed feel and missed opportunities for the drama and tension that should accompany such an epic.

Sorokin part 3: Boulevard Ring

The Eros of Moscow (continued)
By Vladimir Sorokin

3. Boulevard Ring

Invite your two closest friends, buy three bottles of port wine, hide them in the pockets of your coats and head down the boulevard arm-in-arm.  You should silently walk the entire Boulevard Ring, keeping hold of each other and deliberately, surreptitiously sipping from your bottles.  I recommend you start the journey through this erogenous zone at Yauzsky Boulevard alongside Solyanka, moving counterclockwise – Chistoprudny, Sretensky and so on.  You need to walk silently, intently peering at passerby on the boulevards.  If you meet any acquaintances, preferably keep silent and turn away your eyes.  You should not drink hurriedly, but rather with feeling.  Having finished the promenade on Gogolevsky Boulevard, you should set the bottles in the middle of the boulevard, embrace each other about the shoulders and perform a slow dance around the bottles, singing and whistling.  Next it is essential to quickly, without saying good-bye and not looking at each other, head off in different directions.

All this was done by Igor Vinogradov, Sergei Kutin and me on one warm June day in 1974 after we successfully passed an engineering exam.

In this section, Sorokin starts to really jump off on a John le Carre-trip.  I mean, who wants to get together with their two closest buds and three bottles of port wine (a pretty stiff drink, even for Russia) only to walk silently arm-in-arm for two hours?

When we attempted this part, we followed the spirit rather than the letter of Sorokin’s story, walking arm-in-arm but conversing evermore jovially as the port wine tinted our mood.  Early attempts to stare creepily at passerby were quickly abandoned, since such behavior can get your ass kicked on the Boulevard Ring, which loops through central Moscow like a never-ending outdoor dive-bar and attracts an even worse clientele.

I don’t know if it was the port wine or just the natural chaos of real-life occurrences, but we diverged from Sorokin after a short time.  Music was definitely a theme; I vaguely remember being nauseated by some buskers with a sound system doing a heavily-accented rendition of “Kansas City Blues,” then later running into a group of kids with a guitar and giving them my own port wine-fueled performance of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ greatest hits.

Photographic evidence emerging after the fact would seem to indicate I also climbed on the shoulders of a bronze clown, only to be joined by my friend Yura, who climbed on my shoulders in a highly acrobatic, drunken formation.

First-hand accounts prove, however, that once all was said and done, we did indeed place our collection of bottles, at that point somewhat more numerous than three, in the middle of the boulevard and danced slowly around them signing at the top of our lungs (in Russia, it’s considered rude/weird to whistle).  Success, dear Vladimir …

Sorokin part 2: All-Russian Exhibition Center

The Eros of Moscow (continued)
By Vladimir Sorokin

2. VDNKh (The All-Russian Exhibition Center)

Entering through the main entrance into the territory of the former Exhibit of the Achievements of People’s Farming, go straight until you see the first fountain, “Friendship of Nations” – 15 gilded female figures in the national costumes of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.  Climb over the side, step into the water of the fountain and walk around the fountain three times clockwise.  Then go further, until you reach the fountain “The Stone Flower.”  Here perform the same action – three times, knee deep in the water, clockwise.  And immediately proceed further to the very end of the exhibit territory, to the fountain “The Golden Ear.”  This is a large, deep fountain.  They used to sail around it in boats.  Undress and swim around the gilded ear of wheat.  Three times clockwise.  If all ends well, as it did for me and the artist Andrei Monastyrsky and his wife Sabina in that memorable year of 1986, get dressed and immediately head somewhere nearby to have a drink and eat something.  Having opened for ourselves this erogenous zone of our home city, we then headed to the restaurant “The Golden Ear.”  The enormous restaurant lay empty in light of Gorbachev’s infamous anti-alcohol campaign –they weren’t even serving beer there.  At the same time, the food was generously portioned.  After our ablution in the three waters we very much wanted to warm up.

“Address yourselves to the porter,” the waiter kindly whispered.  Andrei addressed himself, and within a few minutes a whiskered porter approached and set upon our table a bottle of Bordzhomi mineral water filled with vodka.

“Is this vodka?” asked Sabina in good Russian.  The porter silently nodded.

“But why is it in a mineral-water bottle?”

“It’s hard to explain,” the porter answered and strolled off.

It seems to me, he was speaking not just about the camouflaged vodka, but rather in a deeper, more metaphysical sense.