Three Russian Winters ago............(jk)

Three Winters ago I was living in a small rented room in Shabolvskaya in South Moscow. It was a Stalin building, built in 1951. It was a cold November night, outside it was -29.c. The windows are closed in winter and taped over with masking tape to stop draughts. Just the tiny little window at the top can be opened to let air in sometimes.
It was dark, I was lying on my bed watching the candle flicker and splutter. The neighbours were quiet. They must have been asleep or out.
I heard an unearthly screeching howling noise from outside. It was like a cat being mutilated.
My head just about fit through the small rectangular top window. Below in the snow I saw four dogs, each holding the leg of a black cat and pulling outwards, splaying it. The cat continued its black howl, but now seemed to be sobbing softly as it’s life dripped out of it’s thin ribs onto the snow. A fifth dog arrived, and bit the middle, I heard the crunch. There was a final sound like the last dregs of air seeping from a bagpipe, the dogs continued to hold the splayed cat, five black tails now wagging . They huddled together, snuffling slurping noises from the feast. Next morning I checked the snow but there were no traces, bones, nothing. Fresh white snow had fallen and covered the ground.

JK – 2009, Sept.

Mariengof

An old woman wearing a Tsarist service cap is trying to sell a ring with an emerald like a black cat’s eye ripped from its socket. An old general wearing a misty monocle and tattered mittens is selling a bottle of 1823 Madeira. The general’s face is as stupid and lifeless as a belly without a navel. A Jew with sagging cheeks is selling a white dress waistcoat and a flute. The flute has a sad air which suggests that it has never played anything but funeral march
Anatoly Mariengof – (Cynics).

Smile!

“If we are to believe a venerable English diplomat, Ivan the Terrible attempted to teach my ancestors to smile by ordering that while he was out walking or riding “those he met should have their heads cut off if their faces did not please him”.
But even this decisive measure produced no results. We have remained gloomy by nature.
Anyone walking along with a cheerful expression on his face is pointed at – and the smile of love has split my features from ear to ear”
Anatoly Mariengof – (Cynics).

Alex Ratinov - Iceberg

Alex Ratinoff- Icebergs

In Russian 'pips' are 'bones'

" These grapes are nice. They've got no bones in them".

Letter from P

"Dear Joe,


Nice to read a message from you. Well, I have different feelings aboutour army. I will write an essay because I think it will be a goodessay. Our lieutenants were quite strict but they were good guys. But
some evenings we passed on the place of arms studying how we should
walk together in a right way. The army structure is so stupid and not
effective. The army I have seen cannot protect this country. The
techniques, cars and arms are old. No soldier can shoot correctly.
Besides, cooking is ridiculous. I was punished to pass one day in the
"army kitchen". I went to the toilet after 22.00. Russian soldiers
have no right to do it)) My punishment was to wash all plates,
coppers. So, army gave me new skills which I could use in usual life
especially during the crisis)) I agree it made me stronger. I know how
to survive eating only one type of food during a month. It is crazy
but it is true. I don't imagine how soldiers can protect the country
if this country cannot give a food for them. It's make me unhappy."


P----

Somewhere near Olga's

Somewhere near Olga's

I'm alive while Lyusha is smiling

Moscow river

Olga's garden

Olga's garden

Olga's garden

From inside Olga's

From inside Olga's

From inside Olga's

From inside Olga's

From inside Olga's

From inside Olga's

From inside Olga's

From inside olga's

From inside Olga's

From inside Olga's

From inside Olga's

Hiding under the table.............(jk)

The Patriotism of the Beaten Child

It isn't easy to write about Russia. It is like living with a big dysfunctional family with a scarred and tortured past but which has welcomed you into the home and treated you well. It is easy to simplify things and make archetypes, goodies on one side and baddies on the other, but it's much more complex. Any attempt to put Russia into words seems to come unstuck. You have a chunk of words which seem to make sense, which say exactly how you felt about something. But this chunk of words is like a snowball. You put it on the windowsill and it's solid and white, you made it with your own hands. But when you return a bit later it's gone, it's just a pool of water.

It has changed it's form , in the same way that emotions and ideas change their form and depend on the stance you take on a particular subject at one moment. Attempts to express anger, frustration at aspects of Russian life are inevitably followed by "the snowball effect", by a feeling of guilt or sadness that you have somehow tried to put the boot into a man who is already down and out for the count, badly beaten, and that what you thought you were angry about wasn't what it seemed. Usually it's something deep down in ourselves.

It was simply the way you chose to see it. Only a child would expect to put a snowball on a shelf and for it to still be there half an hour later. Adults should be aware of the more subtle ways the world around us and inside us is always shifting. Once, in France many years ago, I saw a man attacking his girlfriend. He had her pinned on a car boot and was punching her in the face. In such situations there should be some hesitation or doubt in a healthy mind about what to do. There should be a voice urging caution about intervening. That voice was there, but nevertheless, my legs in such situations seem to drift of their own free will, like an insticntive reaction, like a cat towards a mouse's tail. As I came close the woman screamed at me to "f*ck off" and mind my own business.

It's a lesson that William Burroughs spoke about when he said "Never interfere in a boy girl fight". The same could be said for domestic rows in the Russian family. Any inlaw who finds him or herself married to a person with a dysfunctional messed-up family, will know the dangers of getting involved in their arguments. It's as if you didn't marry the person you love, but a whole tribe of warring enemies. There are usually those in such families who hate the scenes and rows, the decent peaceful ones who just want life to be quiet and normal, who crave a small corner a million miles away to crawl into and escape the madness. But it is impossible to completely stand outside it. Such families are hyper-sensitive to outside criticism and will band together to defend themselves and attack the aggressor. The more they have suffered , the more they have been through together, the more they have hurt and hated and scarred each other, the more tightly they will band together to defend against anyone attacking from "outside", from "out there".

The Russian experience is something similar. There are many here who are crawling, or trying to crawl, away into the corners. So many young ambitious and usually talented Russians who don't want to start families here, want to leave to work and study in other countries: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, the USA, etc etc. Russia has been haemorrhageing her best people for many generations, and the flow has gushed more since it all fell apart.

Putin has exploited this "us us against them" mentality very well. There is a new kind of patriotism in Russia now which is based on a kind of desperate need to believe that things are not as bad as they seem, and will get better, if we just trust the great hero leader flexing his torso on a stallion with a rifle in his hand.
Russians are not complainers. To whom would they complain? About what? There aren't the structures or avenues for complaint that Western Europe has. Mr Angry is treated badly by a shop assistant in Wolverhampton, or there is a strange smell of sewage in his train station, so he gets home and writes a letter to some public organisation or watchdog or solicitor and some process of complaint is started which may or may not solve the problem, but will, Mr Angry thinks, at least be addressed. If not, he can go higher up, maybe down the legal road. One of my students is a solicitor in a prosecuting office in Moscow. She is very self-effacing, modest and intelligent. She told me: "One of the worst things that can happen to a Russian is to find himself caught up in the Russian legal system, because it isn't about laws or right or wrong or justice, only interests, power and money. You don't stand a chance".

It's like the son who's father came home drunk every night and beat him with a leather belt, but still loves him and protects him when the police come to investigate complaints from the neighbours about the screaming and crying. For children like this, the tears and the pain and the guilt and the pity are love. Their love. The only kind they ever knew.

There are different kinds of censorship in such environments, but the most powerful one is 'self-censorship'. There is no need for the State to apply a great deal of force and control to a population which already has the "beaten child" syndrome, and has already been conditioned not to look father in the eyes when he comes home drunk, that it's safer just to stay out of his way and hide under the table.

The Kingdom of Oilygarchy..............(jk)

I have noticed that many of the men who work in,
or are connected with,
the Oil Business,
have eyes of dark black oil.
It makes me wonder if
their blood is also black ,
and if you crushed one
with your heel,
when his shell cracked,
would black oil ooze out?
From the Kingdom of Rublyovka
on the outskirts of Moscow
Snakes a highway
With no potholes in it.
This Kingdom is surrounded by very high walls
Impossible to climb
Because they are painted
With a special kind
Of slime.
And in this Kingdom
Are thousands of giant castles
Where the Oilygarchy live.
The Oilygarchy have many workers
To do their chores
Like bringing up their children
Taking them to school
And home again.
The Oilygarchy Highway
is patrolled by The Bruisers
Big Bellied policemen
With big sticks
And guns.
When the King of Oilygarchy
Leaves his office in the Kremlin
To go home for his dinner
The Bruisers wave their big sticks
And close the road,
While the King of Oilygarchy drives past
With his bodyguards.
For 20 minutes, the whole Oilygarchy Highway
From the Kremlin to the end of the Kingdom
goes silent.
Everything stops.
Life stops.
Thousands and thousands of little people
in their little cars
going about their little business
All have to stop...and wait...
in silence.



The trees wait.

The leaves wait.

The dogs wait.

The air waits.

The sky waits.

The wind waits.

The grass waits.

The silence waits.

In silence.





Suddenly, the silence is broken
By a loud whistle,
Blown by a big Bruiser,
And the sound of sirens
And from nowhere,
you can see the flashing lights
Red, White and Blue
As the King of Oilygarchy speeds past
hidden behind the darkened windows
Of a great oil-black chariot
Which looks like a shiny giant beetle
Scurrying along the oil-black highway.
Then, the Bruiser
Waves the traffic to start again,
And bit by bit,
The whole Highway
From the Kremlin
to the end of the Kingdom
Starts to snake along again.
The little cars beep their horns
Tired of waiting,
Hungry to get home
to their little families
Their little children,
Their little dinners
And their little lives
In their little flats.
Of course, the rich in their big expensive cars
Also have to pull over
When the King comes past.
These, the tenants of the walled Kingdom of Rublyovka,
Who usually look down on the Littler people,
Are also made to feel
A Little Small.
This is one rule of the Kingdom
Which has been observed since the days of Terrible Ivan
the Tsar who killed his own son.
It doesn't matter how big and bad you think you are.
There is always someone bigger
To make you feel small.
And the King is the Biggest.
Every day
When the King of Oilygarchy
Has his breakfast in his Oilygarchy Castle,
he sits at on a giant oak throne
But his little legs
Don't reach the floor.
He eats his Kasha
Then goes to his office
In the Citadel of the Kremlin
And the Bruisers
Close the Highway again
While he goes past.
Morning and Evening
The same routine.
All the little people
Who sit in their little cars
Going to and from their little jobs,
Feel angry that their little lives
Are stopped like this
For one long hour every day.
"Life is too short for us to stand still so long like this!",
they murmur, under their breath
So the Bruisers won't hear them.
"Why must our lives go on hold?"
they say..
"For the King of Oilygarchy,
Who's feet don't even reach the floor?".
But the bruisers
Wave their big sticks
And the litttle people
Dream their little dreams
Trying not to think about these Big Holes
Ripped into their Big Hearts and their Little Days
And why they must continue
To be Little
And Be Littled
By Black-Blooded Beetle Kings
and
Pot Bellied Bruisers
In the Kingdom
Of Oilygarchy

I digress

I digress

Today I thought of the phrase " To beat about the bush", meaning ' to prevaricate', be indecisive or slow to do or say something. The reason this popped into my mind is because I saw a man in his mid- fifties, in the street , beating up a bush. He was throwing wild punches and high kicks, using some grappling techniques I recognised from wrestling and judo, sweating, and shouting something in a language I did not understand. ( He was from one of the southern former Russian republics, maybe the Caucasus. Just a quick word on that word "Caucasus", if you don't mind a slight digression?


In Britain, or, if you like, the United Kingdom, if you see a police officer chasing a shoplifter down the street near Tesco's, for example, you may see him stop, out of breath, put his hands on his knees, and say into his Walkie Talkie - " I am in pursuit of a Caucasian male, about 25 years old, very big feet, strangely big, as if he was wearing false clown boots, but he's run away , he was too fast for me, I couldn't keep up, please send some of our fastest officers to help me catch him...this man runs like the wind, how he can run like that with such big feet I've no idea...it's like one of those dreams where you want to run but can't...but I'm giving up now, I'm knackered...."


Notice how our friendly British Bobby used the word "Caucasian". This denotes that the man being chased was white, or slightly pink. It means 'not black and not brown, and not Chinese'. Now, isn't that strange, when you think about it? Why do we use the word 'Caucasian' to mean 'white male'?


Because (please let me start a sentence with 'because'), The Caucasus is a range of mountains near the Black Sea, incuding areas like Dagestan and Chechnya, where people certainly don't have white complexions, but are famous for being dark-skinned. Russians refer to them by many labels, but one of them is ..ahem...'black'. Anyway, I digress.
Back to the Bushbeater. His curses sounded like Arabic , his shiny head glistened with sweat , a bit like a date.


Now, in life, sometimes we should act quickly but we don't. We are much slower in reality than we are in our heads. In our heads we are capable of all kinds of things, and imagine that we would do 'this' and 'that' very quickly in the event that 'this' or 'that' happened. But it's not true. In reality, we are very slow, and when 'this' or 'that' happens, we seem to get stuck like in one of those dreams where you are being chased but you can't run, your legs feel like they were stuck in treacle, and then you wake up, just as 'this' or 'that' is about to catch up with you. This is, thank God, one of the few blesssings of such dreams, that we do wake up before 'this' or 'that' grabs us, it would be terrible for the dream to continue after 'this' or 'that' had grabbed us and proceeded to mutilate us slowly and deliberately. Thank God I never had such dreams, and may God spare me from them in the future.


Sometimes we should do the opposite of what we decide to do. Three months ago I was walking home to my old room in Avtozavoskaya ( in Russian, this means "District full of automobile factories), at about 6pm, so it was still dark and the streets were covered in ice. A soft blanket of snow was falling, it was like an typical idyllic British Winter scene from a Victorian postcard.
As I walked towards the front door of my block of flats, a family was walking towards me. They were all wobbling slightly, and I could see they had been drinking. The father was a big limbed man, two feet taller than me (I am just under 5 ft 9) with a black moustache. He was thumping his son, who was slightly smaller but still big, about 20 years old perhaps, in the chest. The mother was also big and was pointing at the father shouting at him to stop. The older lady was probably the man's mother, because she was pointing angrily at the mother, shouting "It's his son, he can hit him if he wants". Meanwhile the son was shouting "Don't hit me Dad". The Dad was shouting "I'll fucking hit you if I want, I'll fucking knock you out if you don't shut it...".


I could see something bad was about to happen, and it did. The mother poked the father in the chest and told him to stop. The father pulled his fist right back, as if he was getting ready to hit one of those fairground punching targets with a big dial, a 'punchometer', which shows how strong your punch is. She didn't try to move out of the way, even though the fist was held back for at least 2 seconds (which is further proof that we are much slower in reality than in our minds), and the man planted his thump bang on her chin. She dropped to the floor in a heap and the son bent down and started crying ''Mum, Mum....".


Do you ever do things on automatic pilot, without thinking? I'm sure you do. Are there some situations where you just react with your instincts and do something, and then later wish you had done it differently? I'm sure you do. We all do, don't we? For example, if you're a parent and you saw a child being hurt, you'd try to help it wouldn't you? Or a dog being kicked, something like that, each person has his 'thing' that he reacts to. Sometimes it's probably wiser and safer to do nothing. Anway, I dropped my shopping and ran towards the father.

Time slowed down, and as I ran, it seemed my legs were stuck in dream treacle, not quite sure of what I was going to do when I reached him, he was much bigger, it wouldn't be a good idea to start wrestling with him, so I just did what came naturally and threw, from the side, an uppercut which missed his chin and caught him in the mouth. It wasn't enough to knock him out, but it made him very angry. Suddenly I was moving backwards on the ice, skidding and falling, the father, the son and the mother-in-law were coming towards me in waves, like in the dream, I couldn't wake up, my legs were stuck in treacle, my punch had failed, like a wolve's nip, to bring down the bear. And now the bear and his moustache were coming for me, and his cub, and the awful giant babushka. The mother was still out cold on the pavement.


Ice is a terrible surface for fighting on, perhaps the worst, apart from sand. Both are also shit for playing football on. I could never understand "beach football" for example.
The man was the first to reach me and grabbed my coat. I slipped and fell down, almost voluntarily, as if it was part of the dream, and was going to happen anyway. The giant babushka, who looked like Big Daddy, got me in a neck lock as I was lying on the floor, the son grabbed my leg, and the father took wild kicks at my body and head. The babushka was strong, by God she must have been a wrestler in her youth. The father shouted: " I'll teach you to poke your fucking nose in..."


They say words are weapons, well , at this moment, I had no others at my disposal, as I was gripped on all sides. It was time to use my language skills, but when I'm nervous, my Russian isn't so good. I said " You punched your wife, I wanted to defend her"
Big Daddy shouted: " WHAT!!!?? It's HIS fucking wife, it's NONE of your fucking business!".
The giant black Moustache shouted "Yes, it's MY WIFE, not yours...I'll do as I want". (As I looked at him, from below, it seemed like he wasn't a man, with a face, but just an enormous black moustache on legs).

At this precise moment I had a flashback to childhood, when I was woken in the night by a prowler outside my bedroom window, who also had a giant black moustache and turned out to be ( when I chased him barefoot up the road in my underpants), a local farmer by whom I had been given my first Saturday job, digging pig drains for 10 pounds a day. Rumour had it he was an ex-member of the Special Boat Service, which would explain all the fancy diving paraphernalia in his shed, and perhaps also the night prowling and stalking, but needless to say after that night I never showed up on his farm again. He was probably just lonely, his wife had died, or left him, I don't remember which, he had a small daughter who was very thin and pale.


I tried another approach, and felt I heard shades of Withnail in the pub when the homophobic Irishman threatens him:
" I have a heart condition, I'm a foreigner, I did't understand your customs, your ways, they are different from my culture, in my culture we don't hit women...now let's discuss this in a civilised manner...."
My words had their effect and they lost interest. A reasonable victim isn't much fun.


So, back to our Bushbeater.
As he was attacking the shrub, I wondered if it would be better to nip off to the right or left and not keep walking straight towards him. After all, he was on the pavement. I prevaricated in my head, but my legs kept walking words him. As he was 'beating up the bush' I was 'beating about the bush'.


As I was walking past him I heard him mutter something which sounded like : " By eck, the fucker deserved it", but as this is Yorkshire dialect I realised it must have been some Arabic sounds that were similar. An old lady approached him and told him to stop attacking the bush, as it had done nothing to him. I remembered a story my American friend Kevin told me about a Caucasian man punching his girlfriend in the face on a crowded Moscow bus. A right thumping whopper. No one did anything. So while it isn't a correct idiom to say "beat up the bush", in Moscow this will usually attract more attention and indignation than "to beat up your bird".

I digress.

From inside Olga's

Old Blue Car

Snow Car

Ice Rink or Football Pitch

Old Flats

Poodle in Boots. Nescuchny Park. -33.c

Blue Building, Nescuchny Park. -33.c

Bridge at Nescuchny Park. -33.c

Nescuchny Park . -33.c

Lovers by the River - Nescuchny Park. -33.c

Moscow River at Neskuchny Park . -33.c

Bronze woman - Neskuchny Park. -33.c

The Icebreakers - Neskuchny Park . -33.c

Beware.
These premises are patrolled by
Dangerous People.


i read that now in London
The latest scapegoat for our unhappiness
Is the dog.
First it was the blacks,
then the Asians,
Now it's the dogs.
"Dangerous dogs".
Five years I've lived in a city
Where thousands of dogs run Wild
Free to be true to their nature
Free from the influence
of Dangerous people.
And, as a result..
I have never met
A "Dangerous Dog".

Literacy Slump

The Soviet Union
Was known to be a country
Of avid readers.
Banning and censorship
Only made them more avid.
If you wanted it,
you could get it.
Now, they can get hold of everything
But all you see now
on the metro
is 99 Russians
reading Paulo Coelho. The hundredth is reading Jackie Collins

Annino metro, Moscow

"меньше знаешь - крепче спишь"

"Less you know, sounder you sleep"


photo- Barbara Mensch - Smoke

Things which Russians say better



" Tell me the name for the person who serves drinks on a plane"

" Flying waiter"

By the river


"Look at that duck,
The way it moves it's paws in the water"

Every day for 3 weeks, the Yellow Van used to park outside my building.

Two men would get out, lean against the fence smoking, and looking over.

My heart would start to race, I would see what weapons were to hand.

Luckily for me, there were more urgent cases in the queue in front of me.

My turn never came, the knock on the door...never came.

But like any prisoner on death row will tell you, the waiting is the worst part.