Viktor R. shrugged. My father didn’t answer, preferring to wait with the hangdog look of someone who had waited in Soviet lines for the first half of his life and was quite prepared to do so again.
Finally we were at the front. After giving our names, we shifted over to the line on the right to get our pictures taken. In the forty minutes we had been there, the crowd had swelled appreciably. Many more people now tried to muscle their way straight to the photographer, without realizing they first had to give their name in the invisible line right next to the photographer.
After we got our pictures taken, we moved all the way over to the cluster on the left.
I say cluster because line is too orderly a term.
We noticed several people handing over fifty rubles at a time to the teenage-looking clerks giving out accreditation cards. Wondering if we could just buy an accreditation and get out of there, Viktor R. asked what the money was for.
Apparently it was a form of bribe called a fine. It worked like this: Yes, today is the absolute deadline to get the press pass, but if you are strapped for time and want to come and get your accreditation tomorrow, it will cost you fifty rubles now and in cash. Then you can come back any time you want.
At last we got our photo IDs and left quickly, taking the wide gray marble stairs two at a time. On the landing, an enterprising woman had a table of books about the Tsars. I bought a book about Nicholas II and some St. Petersburg postcards. A man appeared and loudly informed the seller she couldn’t sell merchandise on the stairwell. “I don’t know who told you you could, but you can’t. Move immediately.”
When we walked outside, we stood in the courtyard for a few minutes, as my father smoked.
“Paullina, pay attention,” Viktor the driver said. “See this statue? It’s a very famous equestrian statue of Alexander III.”
“Oh?”
“Paullina, do you remember?” my father asked. “It stood for many years on Insurrection Square near Fifth Soviet?”
“Insurrection Square?”
“Yes,” he said impatiently. “Where we used to catch the metro.”
“Oh, that Insurrection Square.”
I looked at the statue again, trying to jog my memory.
“What was in this courtyard before?”
“Lenin’s armored car.”
“Where is that now?”
“In the scrapyard,” replied my father, still smoking.
Changing the subject, I asked, “So what do I wear to the funeral?”
“How would I know?” said my father. “Viktor, can you get us inside the church?” He turned to me. “Because otherwise, I guarantee, we will see nothing. Mark my words.”
“No, no, Yuri Lvovich. That’s not so,” said Viktor R., promising nonetheless he would make a couple of calls and try to get my father and me inside.
“Forget me,” my father said. “Just get Paullina in. She has to see it. She is the writer.”
“I don’t want to go without you, Papa.”
“Forget me. Do you have a black dress at least?”
My stare was his reply.
“Didn’t I tell you to bring a suit?” said my father. “What do you think that meant?”
“I thought it meant bring a suit. So I brought my best suit. My best, taupe-colored suit.”
Papa waved his hand at me. “What can I tell you? I brought a black suit —”
“You told me it was blue.”
“It’s dark blue. So dark it can pass for black. Can your taupe suit pass for black?”
“No.”
“No. Of course not. That’s why I’m going to be inside the church and you will be out on the cobblestones. You’ll look good, though.”
“I will go and buy a black dress,” I said. “My hotel has a boutique. I’m sure they sell a black dress.”
Viktor R. told me not to buy anything until tomorrow — the day before the funeral — when he would find out for sure if we could get inside the church. “I don’t know if I can do it. It’s only big enough for three hundred people, and political leaders are coming from all over the world. I’ll try.”
“Oh,” I said. “Political leaders from all over the world? It’s a big deal, then. Is Yeltsin coming?”
Viktor R. shook his head. “No. Yeltsin is not coming. There is a lot of controversy over this whole funeral thing.”
“Yeltsin is not coming? What controversy?”
“Well . . .” Viktor R. looked at my father, who took a deep puff of his cigarette and shrugged as if to say, I’m tired of talking about it.
“The controversy is — well, the Communists did kill the Romanovs.”
“Yes, but Yeltsin didn’t personally kill them.”
“He might not have killed them, but he did order to demolish the Ipatiev House in which they had been murdered. It was burned down one night in the seventies.”
I had heard something about that. “So, who will greet the international political leaders?”
“Yeltsin is sending Lebed,” my father said. Aleksandr Lebed was the governor of Krasnoyarsk, a region of Siberia.
“The Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church is very upset,” said Viktor R.
“Because he wants Yeltsin to go to the funeral?”
“Well . . . it’s more complicated than that.”
I glanced at my father, who was studying his cigarette. Turning back to Viktor R., I asked, “What’s complicated? Yeltsin is not going. The Archbishop is angry.”
“No, the Archbishop is angry because Yeltsin is permitting the Romanovs to be buried at Peter and Paul’s. It was a museum for seventy years, you know. It’s not a sacred enough place to bury the martyred Tsar and his family.”
“But it’s a church.”
“The Communists had made it secular. The Archbishop wants the Romanovs to be buried in a church in Ekaterinburg.”
“That’s why he is upset with Yeltsin?”
“No,” Viktor R. said patiently. “He is upset with Yeltsin for not going to the service. He figures if the Romanovs are going to be buried in a godless place like Peter and Paul’s, the least a Party flunky like Yeltsin can do is pay his respects.”
“Oh dear,” I said. “So will the Archbishop be at the funeral?”
“Of course not,” Viktor R. said. “He is not going. I told you, he doesn’t think the Romanovs should be buried in a church.”
“But didn’t you just say . . .?”
“If they are going to be buried anywhere, they should be buried in Ekaterinburg, where they were murdered. But he doesn’t think they should be buried at all.”
“They shouldn’t be buried?”
“No,” said Viktor. “The Archbishop wants them to be canonized, as do many people. If sainthood is bestowed upon them, they cannot be buried. They become holy relics.”
“How long does canonization take?”
“I don’t know,” said Viktor. “Ten, twenty years.”
“Ladies and gentlemen!” my father exclaimed. “Please can we go? I’m tired of this.”
We all piled into Viktor’s little Volks.
My father announced that he was hungry and invited the two Viktors to have lunch with us. “My treat,” he said. “It’s not every day your boss buys you lunch.”
The two Viktors heartily agreed.
The Marble Palace sits on the north side of the Field of Mars, named no doubt for its Parisian peer, the Champs du Mars. The Field of Mars is a park about thirty acres in size, used as a training and parade ground for the Soviet military. In the middle of it burns an eternal flame in memory of the heroes of the first 1917 Russian Revolution.
As we drove past the Field of Mars, my father said to me, “If you only knew how much of my youth I spent here with my friends. What great times we had. Yes, it holds many memories for me. See the eternal flame in the middle of the field?”
“Yes. It’s beautiful.”
“Late at night, my buddies and I used to cook a shish-ke-bob over that flame,”
he said. “And wash it down with vodka. Ah. Those were the days.”
We found a café called Laima for lunch. I had come to Russia looking forward to some of my favorite Russian food: mushroom and barley soup, pelmeni, caviar. At Laima they served hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken. If I’d wanted a burger I could have gone to a Wendy’s back home. They offered a few Russian dishes. I ordered Brussels mushroom soup and salad Olivier.
The Brussels in the title meant my mushroom soup was cream of mushroom, which was so not what I wanted, while my salad Olivier was just ordinary potato salad. I glanced longingly over at Viktor the driver’s actual potato salad, which for some reason looked better.
“Take it,” he said. “No, really. Go right ahead.”
“I couldn’t,” I said. “I really couldn’t.”
I took it. It was better. Viktor ate mine.
While we sat at Laima, we planned the rest of our day. Rather, my father planned the rest of our day, and we ate and listened.
First, he said, Viktor R. could go back to work.
“Very kind of you,” Viktor R. said.
Then our driver Viktor would take us to Piskarev Cemetery, where victims of the Leningrad blockade were buried in civilian and military graves.
“Then —” he broke off, turning to me. “Well, what do you want to do then? Do you want to go to the Hermitage Museum and to the Siege of Leningrad Museum? We can go to the Hermitage for an hour, but then Viktor can drive us to your old school and then he can drive us —”
“Whoa, whoa, Papa,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘drive?’ I thought we were going to walk?”
He paused. “Walk from where? From Piskarev? Are you crazy? Do you know how far it is?” The other two men smiled at this. “It’s on the other side of the city.”
“No,” I patiently went on. “I thought we agreed that Viktor was going to drop us off at the record store, and then we would walk to my school and to Fifth Soviet?”
Silence at the table. My father sighed theatrically. “All right, Viktor. You will take us to Piskarev, and then you will drive us to the record store and there we will say goodbye. We will walk to Paullina’s school and then to Fifth Soviet. Afterward we will take the metro to Anatoly’s place and have dinner —”
“Whoa, whoa, Papa,” I said. “I didn’t know we were going to Anatoly’s for dinner. Didn’t we just have dinner there?” I said that, but I really couldn’t recall exactly when we had dinner at Anatoly’s. It seemed a long time ago. But I didn’t want to have dinner there again so soon. There was too much to do.
Papa shook his head. “We have to go to Anatoly’s,” he said. “You don’t know the pressure I’m under. They want you to come and stay in their apartment. We have to go.” By way of enticing me, he added, “Ellie made blueberry pie with the blueberries you bought yesterday.”
“She did?”
“Yes. And borscht.”
“Also with my blueberries?”
“Don’t be fresh. She thought borscht was your favorite soup.”
“Did you tell her I prefer mushroom barley?” I said, finishing up my inadequate cream of mushroom.
“You’re lucky you’re being fed at all,” my father snapped. “Can you even afford to eat in Texas?”
The Viktors chuckled. There is nothing my father likes more than an appreciative audience.
“We simply have to go, Paullina,” he said. “They made us borscht. Ellie has been cooking all day. Also they’re going to show films of you when you were a baby, and of your mother when I first met her. Don’t you want to see them?”
“All right,” I said.
“They really want to do this for us.”
“I said all right.”
Viktor and Viktor sat and smiled.
After lunch, Viktor R. went back to work, and our driver Viktor drove us north to Piskarev.
THE OAK LEAVES OF MOTHER RUSSIA
Piskarev Memorial Cemetery is located on the Prospekt of the Nepokorennykh. The Avenue of the Unconquered.
The wide prospekt was empty as we parked by the curb. It was Wednesday, middle of the week. People were working, not visiting cemeteries. I just expected to see more life. I came to see more of it. What about the people who didn’t work? Mothers with babies? Old people?
The cemetery was surrounded by a five-foot-tall stone wall. On the other side of the wall lay a tranquil green pond, with an island in the middle and benches all around. A few people sat on the benches. A few others walked on the tree-covered paths.
Once we were inside the gates I instantly saw that this was not the Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C. or the St. Laurent Cemetery of Omaha Beach.
There were no white crosses here.
There were no separate graves here.
The cemetery was laid out in a large rectangle about the size of a football field. We stood on a hill overlooking this landscaped field. Directly in front of us burned an eternal flame.
“Did you cook shish-ke-bob here, too?” I asked my father jokingly — and immediately saw by his horrified face that he had not.
It was one thing to cook meat on the memory of Communist revolution, it was another to burn it on the flame of the holy dead of war.
In the far distance, across from us at the end of the cemetery, rose a statue of Mother Russia, holding oak leaves in her hands. Before her, rectangular grass-covered mounds spread out, thirty feet wide by a hundred feet long.
This cemetery was a mass grave.
Five hundred thousand people were buried here, casualties of the blockade. Twenty-five thousand people per mound. To distinguish between civilian and military victims, each mound was labeled: a red hammer and sickle for civilians, a red star for the military.
Bodies were brought here for burial starting in 1942. The war ended in 1945, but the cemetery didn’t open to the public until 1960.
I motioned for my father to come down with me to the grave sites, but he showed no inclination to do so. He kept milling around the two square white concrete buildings at the gate. I walked back to him.
“I’m looking for the Siege of Leningrad Museum,” he explained.
I told him that according to my map, the Defense of Leningrad museum was located elsewhere. Viktor disagreed. “I came here with my school,” he said. “It’s here.”
“Okay,” I said. “Papa, why don’t you come down to the graves with me?”
“No,” he said. “You go. I’ll wait for you here.”
I stood near the eternal flame. It was a beautiful day. It was breezy, about 60°F and brightly sunny.
I slowly walked down the forty steps and through the graves, keeping my eye on the statue of Mother Russia. She held out her hands to me in mercy and judgment. I walked slowly because the air, the very atmosphere, was charged differently than anywhere else I had been to. Besides oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide, there was something else here. It felt heavier, quieter, more ominous. There was a numinous quality to the air. History, death, the angels, the war, suffering. The red tulips in the flower beds around the graves. The air wasn’t light; it wasn’t diaphanous. It was thick with death — paralyzed with death — and in the quiet stillness, what cried out was the violence of this death by starvation, by utter indifference. We died and we didn’t want to die, the voices from the graves whispered. We wanted to live like you, walk through a pretty park maybe. We wanted to feel the summer sun on our faces, but we weren’t as lucky and we died a pitiful death, and we’re still here.
That’s what I walked through: anguish and desperation and a desire for life. No wonder I was walking slowly. I stopped before I got to the end. It was too much.
As I turned back, something clicked inside me. I had been here before. With my grandmother. I was staying with her while my mother went to visit my father in the Gulag. We walked a long way to get here from the bus stop. My grandmother played a word game with me to make the time pass. I was maybe six.
With the graves laid out like hills, the past remained pre
sent. This was no usual walk in the park. No peace was to be found strolling among these dead. It felt as if all 500,000 souls still ceaselessly paced the promenade, keeping the past alive, and I stumbled upon them accidentally, like the blind into a wall. I could almost hear them screaming. I didn’t want to die. I was young like you. I loved, like you. But love and youth weren’t enough to keep me alive. Here you are, six years old, walking with your babushka among us. You’re playing a game and you are hungry and tired. We surround you with our suffering, a suffering you’ve never understood and cannot ease.
I found a bench. I sank down, and saw my father. He was motioning to me from the top of the stairs; faintly I heard his voice. He didn’t come down to me. He called for me through half a million dead souls.
“Paullina, Paullina . . .”
I got up and walked to him.
“We found the museum,” he said. “Are you all right?” But he didn’t wait for my reply. He had already turned around and was walking toward the square white building.
He and Viktor found a way into the museum, housed in the two white structures, Part One and Part Two. Inside Part One was a thirty by thirty foot room, all gray concrete and darkly lit. Barely lit, I should say, to convey the mood of doom.
It took my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the darkness.
Along the walls, poorly lit words and photographs told the story of the siege of Leningrad.
I stood, sickly fascinated, in front of one panel of glass. Behind it was the very thing I had struggled to imagine on the Aeroflot flight here: the bread ration given to the Leningraders during the first terrible winter of the siege.
It wasn’t 125 grams of a crusty loaf. It wasn’t 125 grams of a bagel. It wasn’t even the cold stale roll I had been given on the plane. It was 125 grams of a dark, porous, unhealthy-looking substance. The moment I saw it I knew it wasn’t real bread. Now I knew why. The flour was cut with glue and paper and wood shavings before it was baked. There wasn’t enough flour in Leningrad to give two million people 125 grams of rye or pumpernickel each.