A short series of letters written over a few days in early 2000.
Letter 1
It is Sunday, I am reminded just how distant England is from much of Europe in the ways it celebrates its fading faith. A little after ten o’clock, I file quietly into a basilica, late for Matins at the Novodevichiy Convent, on the Moscova River.
The amount of movement during services always comes as a surprise, used as I to am to the serried pew-bound ranks of the Church of England. Once you are in an English parish church, that’s it; you stay put until the vicar says you can go.
Here people continually arrive to replace those slipping away. It is a while though, before I realise the obvious. The architecture, the iconography, the candles, of course, are all very different from the English tradition. But the main difference is so striking that, at first it goes unnoticed. There are no pews and the worshippers stand, or walk silently but purposefully.
As the congregation softly sings, in Russian or Latin I know not, the icons of Christ draw my attention. Most appear to have been painted in the nineteenth century, appealing but not exceptional art. But that is not their attraction for the faithful. They are images of the son of god. Middle-aged and elderly men, and girls and women of all ages, their hair covered, kiss each portrait several times. A man lifts his young child to kiss the feet of Jesus. Here, icons embody Christ rather than merely portray him.
Everyone except myself made the sign of the cross on entering the church, but for many it seemed a ritual, unthinking action. The kissing of icons is different, this is devotion.
Elderly nuns shuffled through the hundred or so believers collecting the offering. Then, as communion began, as many as half the congregation left but I remained, entranced by the eyes of the remaining devotees. They were celebrating their god, their eyes neither happy or sad. For them, increasingly for me also, this was a deeply emotional experience, and there was not a smile to be seen.
Communion began and a crowd pushed forward to the chancel as the choir and worshippers sang. Blessed, the faithful walked with hands crossed over their chests to take a wafer and wine in the nave.
It is curiously emotional being amongst people who believe so strongly when you do not believe yourself. It is a feeling of being a spectator, voyeur even. But it is the gulf of understanding that is greater. How can they believe so strongly and emotionally in a God that I think does not exist? I am comfortable with being an unbeliever until I meet those that really do believe. Being scientific and rational is no match for faith.
Letter 2
My mind still serene after Matins, I stroll along the Moscova River towards the Metro. As ever, I am interested in the ordinary people, what do they do on Sunday? In Moscow it appears, they go to the market. A flood of Muscovians streamed out of the Metro towards a huge sports stadium, but none were wearing the regalia of sports fans. I decide to follow, fearing I may be within metres of the biggest event in Moscow on a Sunday and might miss it entirely.
The crowd marches purposefully and cheerfully through an underpass lined with impoverished old ladies clutching shawls and other oddments for sale. This trade was clearly not permitted and security guards constantly move the women on. But this chore is conducted with great humour; authoritative smiles from the guards are met with knowing cackles of laughter from the women. Moments after the security men have passed, the peddlers are again plying their illicit but innocent trade.
The market is in the car park of the sports stadium. It is approaching winter, and the stalls are piled high with fir hats, great coats and long leather boots. The old women are not tolerated here and are turned back at the entrance. The women trading in the market are of an altogether different style. As the buyers push their way through the crowded narrow paths between the stalls, they squeeze past young and middle-aged women. If these ladies are poor, they do not show it. They have immaculate hair and striking lipstick. They are Moscow’s glamour and they are there to sell the coats on their backs, literally. As I pass, they call out; perhaps suggesting a price or voicing an invitation to feel the quality of their fur and leather coats. These are designer coats and the sellers wave the brand tags in front of potential customers.
There are no tourists here and no Americana is for sale. It is a striking contrast to Warsaw, where trainers and American sweatshirts are sold at every second stall. True, there are a few Adidas bags but the only real sign of the western world at this market is a stall that sells nothing but carrier bags with the names of western brands. Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Pierre Cardin and more, used and new. Idling nearby, I learn that the price in Russia was two roubles a bag, about seven pence.
Then, there is nothing for it, I need to go. I had seen a lavatory near the entrance. It was a barrack of a place and the odour greets me as I approach. I hover outside, I had been briefed about the horrors of Russian toilets before I travelled. But I need to go and, at five roubles, the cost was the same as a public toilet in London; or about two-and-a-half carrier bags in Moscow. At that price, it ought to be OK: it isn’t. As I take my change from a table, a wrinkled, bent and thin old woman mopping the floor to no evident effect gestures me towards the “facilities.” Facilities is a useful word, it can be used to describe useful things, and horrors. This was a horror. The urinal is a trench half-a-metre wide and to call it unsanitary would be a complement. Dirt, scale, spit and thankfully unidentifiable solids create mini-dams along its length, creating reservoirs of stale, stinking urine.
This is too much for me and I disappear into a cubicle. Fortunately, I do not need the toilet seat as there isn’t one. The pan has much the same mixture of dirt, scale, spit and solids as the urinals. Scraps of newspaper hang off strings, with spare supplies in a soggy basket on the floor. I try the flush, amazingly it did discharge a thin trickle of water but it had little effect. A glance at the wash basins, and I decide that it would be more healthy not to wash my hands. I make for the entrance and wandered back through the old ladies to the Metro, my mind brought back from the serenity of God to the realities of daily life in Moscow.
Letter 3
It was time to venture into the Metro and onto the Kremlin. I was well prepared and showed the ticket seller a map marked with where I wished to go. This was a mistake, as the map was in western script not Cyrillic. She could not read the text and, it seemed, could not understand a map. Ten minutes, after a lengthy discussion between the entire crew of the ticket office as queues lengthened, I was bluntly told “Bibliotecka,” and thrust a ticket.
Moscow’s Metro is world famous for its stations, sculpted with heroes of the revolution. Not Lenin or Stalin, but the ordinary men and women portrayed armed and in striking combat poses. The trains are ageing but efficient. At the end of the platform, an electronic counter records the time since the last train. At the weekend, the trains arrive at less than three minute intervals, during the week, less than two minutes. I was intrigued by the honesty of this system, as the clock is not reset until the train leaves, so the waiting time at the station is included in this effective performance indicator. If we installed this system in Britain, we would stop the clock when the train arrived in the station and start as it left. It is our custom to choose numbers that portray us well rather than honestly.
Tourism, it seems, is not a matter for the State in Moscow. Certainly no friendly signs to point you in the right direction. No tourist icons and, definitely, no tourist information offices. At Bibliotecka, I could not find the exit to the Kremlin and decided to surface at and look around. After twenty minutes of long detour, I arrived at the gates of the Kremlin, and found the subway connection that I had hoped to find at Bibliotecka.
This was tourist land. Beer at 30 roubles, twice or three times the price in a local bar. Young men thrust books and cards into my hand, trying to make a sale. Before I speak, they seem to know I am English. I am unhappy with this, as I rely on my rugged looks to allow me to slip invisibly around cities in northern Europe without being mugged. This works perfectly in Warsaw, where Americans ask me for directions in painfully slow English.
There is also no hope of getting a cheap ticket for the Kremlin. In Moscow, tourists pay more for tickets, usually, three times the price. After parting with my 200 roubles (£5), I queued to pass through the security scanner. As I read my guidebook, I was joined by a woman in her fifties, her head wrapped in a scarf and a small bible in her hand. I presumed she worked at the Kremlin, as she did not proffer a ticket. But the woman is somehow familiar and later I was to wonder if I had seen her at Matins at the convent.
The Kremlin is beautiful, its cathedrals and palaces crammed together within thick brick walls, overlooking the river. It is a place to visit twice, once to get an impression, and a second visit to absorb its history and beauty. Unfortunately, my schedule leaves me time for just one visit. I head for the museum in the Patriarch’s Palace but this is closed. But I do get a glimpse of the modern Kremlin, stark white concrete and glass, obliquely and offensively sited among the venerated pre-revolution buildings. Yet, in common with its historic neighbours, it had an air of authority. Who knows how later generations will view its architecture; perhaps they will venerate it, or perhaps they will demolish it? In Britain, we would demolish it; for us history is dead and distant from the present, consigned to be entertaining but useless heritage.
The beautiful cathedrals are being carefully restored. They are overwhelming, so full of art and icons that it is impossible to absorb it all. I speculate that once every inch of a cathedral has been sculpted, painted and gilded, they simply built a new one. A groups of tourists thrust their camera at me and I take their photographs against buildings that miraculously survived a godless century. In one shot, I see the woman with the headscarf through the viewfinder. “Perhaps she is a tourist after all?” I puzzle. Later, she approaches me outside a cathedral. Politely, I walk away, thinking she might be a beggar.
For all the beauty of its cathedrals, there is no God at the Kremlin. It is a museum, dead, distant heritage fit only for the happy-snaps of tourist cameras. No one worships here and few people sign the cross before entering churches. It is a spiritless place for venerating the past, not for encountering God in the present. When I am old and living only for my fading memories, the Novodevichiy Convent will remain an unforgotten experience but will I remember the Kremlin?
I have had my fill of Christian art, and it is time to head to Red Square, to see the tomb of one of the Godless revolutionaries. As I limp with aching toes and knees towards the exit, my tourist turned beggar now turning to harasser hurries up behind me. “Can I show you some cathedrals?” she pleads. “No, thank you,” I hurry on but she continues to implore me to let her be my guide. My long damaged knee groan but I pick up speed. I have now designated her “a situation.” I have seen many ugly events in cities around the world but have never been hurt: as soon as “a situation” looks likely, I walk quickly away. The downside of this policy is that I have undoubtedly missed some interesting opportunities, the upside is that I am still standing upright.
Outside the Kremlin, she catches up. Her English is excellent and I tell her not to pester me. Fortunately, I am swamped by the young men selling guides and trinkets, for once grateful rather than annoyed with their persistence requests. A few minutes later, I stop to buy a beer and glance behind. She is there; a hundred metres away across the park. Motionless, waiting, watching. I walk on; she follows, always at a distance. I stop, she stops. I walk, she walks. I am not frightened but I am getting angry. Angry with her for destroying my pleasure, angry with myself because I do not understand what is happening. She is neither beggar, prostitute or thief; these threats I understand and can avoid.
Outside the Kremlin, there are areas of magnificent municipal gardening, including a plot planted with coloured cabbages. I stop to admire the handiwork and she catches the opportunity. Thrusting a picture of the Virgin Mary into my hand, she pleads. “Please ring me.” She presses a scrap of paper on which she has written a Moscow phone number. I return her unwanted articles and talk to her slowly and sternly. “Go away. You are harassing me. Go away.” And she does go away. Her eyes becoming tearful, she rushes across the park and is out of sight with a minute.
And I am left perplexed. Was she a beggar, mentally ill, lonely? I do not know. I feel godless, mean of spirit and selfish. How the day has descended from its spiritual start at the Novodevichiy Convent to this secular, callous end at Red Square.
Letter 4
I make my second more confident trip on the Metro, back to the Arbat, where my hotel is located. Once a main thoroughfare for decrepit, polluting vehicles, Arbat Street is now a pedestrian tourist haven lined with antiques shops and crowded with barrows selling tourist trinkets. Here and there shabby men sit behind tables or ply their trade from rusting cars. Some are clearly money changers; what the others trade I cannot learn as all the signs are in Russian.
The stallholders speak English. Say “No thank you” to one and the next approaches offering their wares at cheaper prices. No hope of being mistaken for a local here. I buy very expensive bangles for a friend (600 roubles, £15) and barely cheaper toys for children. Best of all is the “Matryoshka,” or Russian dolls. I remember finding one at my grandmother’s house decades ago and being delighted by the discovery of more dolls within the doll. I look forward to the hoots of laughter from a two-year-old friend and grin in anticipation.
It was that grin that did it. It was spotted by a portrait artist as I strolled away from the doll stall. He opened his arms and implored me to sit and be drawn in Russian. “Sorry. No thank you,” I replied hurrying on. “Your portrait, sir,” he insisted, catching my English. “If you don’t like it, you don’t pay.” I was intrigued but still reluctant. “How much?” I enquired. “Two hundred. If you don’t like it, you don’t pay.” How could I refuse? My portrait for the price of a small Matryoshka (£4).
I was settled on a painfully small, part-broken camp stool. I was given no instructions about how to pose, not even a gentle guiding hand to ensure I looked the correct way. So I struck up my own posture: my head level, looking straight ahead at the artist. He busied with soft graphite pencils and charcoal. A glance at my face, longer probing stares at the craggy details, and minutes of intense sketching.
As he drew, I studied his face. He was a fifty-year-old man who had seen better times; soft, worn folds of skins hung from his cheekbones. Beneath huge, square, thick glasses, he had gentle, enquiring eyes. Occasionally he spoke, but in Russian so I did not react. He frequently pursed his lips and muttered, about what I do not know.
My discomfort grew as the stool cut into my buttocks and the day cooled. I grew increasingly concerned about what the portrait might look like and more and more self-conscious as other tourists stopped to look and laugh. I had not seen the man’s work before agreeing to sit and feared I was being caricatured. Other artists left their pitches to view the work in progress, and muttered “Good. Is good.” “But a good what?” I wondered. “A satirical cartoon perhaps,” I answered myself.
After 50 minutes, as I was beginning to shiver and night fell, my questions were answered. The artist had sketched a remarkable likeness, right down to the heavy lines under my eyes and my uneven moustache. Except for two things. My hair, which is short, spiky and uncontrollable had suddenly acquired an unnatural neatness and parting. Perhaps he had thought that I had not time to comb my hair, not realising that a comb has no discernable effect on my follicular chaos. This, and the density of shading, gave me the look of a Muscovite, at last I was a local. And my face had been reversed. I had looked left towards the artist, he portrayed me looking right away from him. It seemed that he had a Moscovian template in his head and fitted the detail of my face into it.
I paid my two hundred roubles, shook his hand and strolled back to the hotel. As I easily slid into sleep on the rock hard bed, I reflected that this was at least an absorbing end to an intriguing and sometimes disturbing day.
Andy Boddington, 2000