Spring arrived with the frenzy of the habitually late. One morning the air was balmy and buds appeared on the trees; two days later the whole town was bursting out in foliage and the inhabitants of Voronezh were strolling about in flowery dresses, short sleeves, and sandals. They seemed to have wiped the memory of winter from their minds; their serene expressions congratulated each other on their good fortune—no, their foresight—in choosing to live in a place with such a pleasant climate, a climate in which cucumbers and tomatoes grew with such juicy vigor.
Everyone all of a sudden had become dachniki, country dwellers with mud under their fingernails who endured the week in the city only to hurry to the bus station and head for the country every Friday. They crammed into their Ladas, onto trolleybuses and elektrichki, some traveling a couple of hundred kilometers to open up their little wooden dachas and sow their seeds into the black earth.
In the evenings out there the men built fires for the shashlik and fussed around them like surgeons, issuing peremptory orders: “Bring the meat out! And a plate, please! Quick, vodka, we need vodka here now!” Every Russian man is an expert at the barbecue. When the meat is finally ready, they sit around the fire and eat it with flat Georgian bread and a handful of herbs; later on, someone pulls out a guitar and starts singing. The nostalgia for what is described as “nature,” a yearning that hangs over the broken, open-ended roads of the cities and in the concrete stairwells of the tower blocks, is here at its most acute. The succulent greenery that emits little rustles and creaks as it sprouts gives off an irresistible whiff of expectancy.
At the bus station, an English boy called John and I joined the crowd of dachniki heading in the direction of Kursk. It was five in the morning and we were going to the wedding of a couple I didn’t know. Well, I’d met Slava, the groom, a friend of Emily’s who had burst into tears in our room back in September and begged her to help him with a visa. He was going to visit his girlfriend Lucy in Manchester. Emily had done what she could to help, and so when his wedding to Lucy was organized Slava reappeared with her invitation. But Emily was away, and such is my shameless passion for weddings that when Slava asked me instead, I couldn’t help accepting.
“It will be nice for Lucy to have an English companion, as her family can’t come,” said Slava, hastily improvising a reason for my attendance. When the occasion demands it, Russians are the most polite people in the world. “You can come with John, he’s going to be our witness.”
The bus to Kursk took five hours: five hours of flat, unhedged farmland, and all the way John, who knew Lucy from Manchester, sat beside me sighing and plucking nervously at his beard. The male witness at a wedding has various duties apart from signing the register. He must look after the bride and groom, make sure their glasses are constantly filled, and propose a whole series of toasts, the longer and more poetic the better. He is also the defender of the bride’s honor for the day. At a certain moment it is customary for a group of marauding guests to swoop down and steal away the bride from her husband, and then it is the witness’s duty to capture her back. Sometimes this is done by paying a ransom in hard cash, but more often a feat is required of him. The bride’s white satin pump is produced and filled with vodka, and the witness must drink it down. Depending on the size of the bride’s foot, the shoe might contain most of a bottle… Then, ideally, the witness breaks into the place where the bride is held, tosses her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and deposits her back at her husband’s side with a roar of triumph.
“You don’t know Lucy,” John said gloomily. “She’s not big, but, well, she’s not tiny.”
That was still not the worst of it. The most important duty of all, one that the male witness is never allowed to shirk, is to kiss the female witness. After a reasonable time complimenting her on her turquoise outfit—a quarter of an hour will do—tradition demands that he drag her into a bedroom and grapple her on the bed where the guests have left their coats. And if he doesn’t, make no mistake, she’ll drag him. John hadn’t yet made any public announcements about his sexuality, but it was clear that the idea of the female witness filled him with foreboding.
Now and then the bus stopped to let a couple of dachniki out. They shouldered their bags and trudged away, and I was reminded of a proverb quoted by Pasternak: “Life is not as easy as crossing a field.” The black earth, freshly sliced and turned, looked rich enough to spoon straight into one’s mouth. As the sun climbed, the wet soil began to steam and the bus was filled with its smell. When the Nazis invaded the Ukraine, they were so astonished by the black earth that they looted it. A whole convoy of trucks was loaded up and sent back to Germany; even now there must be German farmers who, every springtime, lift their heads and sniff this same, delicious scent, as sweet and dark as chocolate pudding.
In Kursk, one of Slava’s relatives, Anatoly, was waiting for us at the station. He was a huge man. His neck was corded with tendons, his chest bulged, and his face was full of guileless, rapacious delight.
“Welcome!” he bellowed, thumping John on the back. “Guests! You’ve come far—”
“Well, only from Voronezh,” said John. He looked more nervous than ever.
“Far!” insisted Anatoly. “We must celebrate. Immediately.”
We bounced along the wide roads of Kursk in his car, a squashy Pobeda—meaning “Victory”—to an apartment on the outskirts of town.
“Welcome, dear guests,” beamed Slava’s father and mother, shepherding us into the kitchen. “You’ll be hungry after your journey. Sit down, please! Anatoly, will you—?”
Anatoly nodded and took up a glass. “Dear friends, we are glad to welcome you into our home. There will be many toasts today, and each one will be longer than the last, so the first one had better be short. To our acquaintance!”
So we tossed back a shot of vodka, which, at eleven in the morning, on an empty stomach, a five o’clock start, and a long bus ride, had an explosive effect. The order had gone out: take no prisoners. The festivities were beginning.
In the summer of 1943, the Kursk plain was the site of the greatest tank battle in history. Manstein threw whole panzer armies into an attempt to destroy Russian armor and so to stave off what he already knew was an inevitable defeat. The plan, having claimed thousands of lives, failed. After the war the city was rebuilt around a series of huge memorials that are still at the center of every ritual event, and weddings in particular. Following the registry office service, Lucy and Slava were driven to each memorial in a taxi decorated with Russian and British flags. Under the solemn gaze of the video camera, the bride and groom crossed expanses of concrete paving and laid carnations before the lists of the dead. This was the first part of the ceremony.
Back in the apartment, Slava’s parents were waiting to greet their son and daughter-in-law with bread and salt. A horseshoeshaped table had been set up in the living room and loaded with dishes of zakuski, salads, meats, smoked fish, and every conceivable Russian delicacy. Uncles and aunts were standing in the hall, each ruddier, jollier, and stouter than their neighbor.
“Oh, what a beauty,” they cried, kissing Lucy and pinching her cheek. “Now come along, come along.”
And they hurried into the living room to take their places and boss each other around some more. Slava’s mother, carrying in still more plates of food, nodded at Slava and Lucy.
“Sit down, you two.”
They sat at the top of the horseshoe, holding hands and looking shyly around them.