She told him how 300 years before, Peter the Great had planted his seed here. He was the illegitimate offspring of old Russia and the European Enlightenment. It was a new Russia of majestic palaces, lamp-lit streets, and a regulated police force. There were refuse collections and a strong sense of civic pride. Residents living near the river were punished for polluting the waterways and taxes were levied to fund municipal services. Gone were the days when bears and wolves roamed free, but savage dog packs were still common. With the flesh around their snarling muzzles drawn back, fangs dripping saliva, they attacked tourists on the streets. It was certainly wild, but in a different way than the ‘time of troubles’ centuries before. Then a priest blundering on the black ice, frowning under his flapping cowl, would hold his arm aloft, crude wooden crucifix in hand, exorcising the bleak soul at the heart of this pagan wilderness. The locals had long forgotten the Lion of the North, Gustavus Adolphus, but under the surface, the past still flourished. Nature-worship and Piasts fought for supremacy. The primitive still lingered.
Along the embankment, scores of couples walked hand -in-hand. The Professor felt that if he had been looking at the scene from the deck of a merchant’s skiff 200 years earlier that his eyes would have witnessed a similar performance. The blue and yellow ensigns of Swedish brigantines were long gone. This was Russia’s Paris now. A city of passion, mystery, and deep-seated romanticism, but still forever a stranger in its homeland.
The captain cut the engine, letting the boat drift so as not to disturb the fishermen casting out from the river’s edge. Tom watched the slow, gentle flight of lines fire out in the thin light, reels whirring, the plop of lead weights taking the hook below the surface. Then the engine started up again and they went on into the great grey silence, along empty reaches, around still bends, between the high walls of tall buildings, with only the sounds of the motor to soundtrack their progress. Stone upon stone, millions of them, massive, immense iconic structures towered as they pulled through the narrow canals. The metal screw turned, churning mud-coloured waves, sending them crashing headlong into the embankment. Flapping birds trailed the boat, calling for scraps.
The vessel was aiming for the yawning mouth of the Fontanka Canal. The Summer Gardens came into view, the ornamental grille railings framing a giant vase rising out of the trees and hedges. Before them, the intricately decorated Summer Palace stood proud, looming over a tea house. ‘Trezzini built this in 1712’, she was saying. ‘Peter the Great died here in 1725.’
‘The park is beautiful.’
‘Many writers liked to walk here, Taras Shevchenko, Zhukovsky, Gogol, and Alexander Blok.’
‘I once visited the Taras Shevchenko University in Kiev, where Darius Stoyan studied’, Tom said.
‘You have been to Kiev?’ Her eyes flashed. There was a hint of jealousy in her voice.
‘Twice, actually. The first time I was invited to give a memorial lecture for a man called David Lane. The second time I was presenting on Western perceptions of the politics of Ivan Franko, Vasyl Stus, and Dymtro Pavlychko.’
‘I would love to visit this city’, Ekaterina gasped. Then, ‘If I remember correctly Franko wrote Beyond the Limits of the Possible?’
‘Yes, indeed. My favourite line is: “anything that goes beyond the frame of the nation is hypocrisy from people of internationalised ideals which serve to provide for ethnic domination of one nation over another….”’
‘It’s like a prediction’, she replied.
‘Certainly is.’
Their eyes were drawn to the sculptures of Cupid and Psyche, then the scoured marble representations of the Roman Emperor Claudius, his wife Agrippina, and her mad son Nero. Tom was wondering how many demagogues had fiddled while this megalopolis burned under incendiary attack. Leaning on the metal railings, they watched the boat swing to port side and enter the Moika. They chugged past the Swan Canal and Mikhailovsky Castle, where one paranoid Tsar was strangled to death in his own bedchamber.
Gliding around the curves under steep concrete canal walls, they advanced below the Police Bridge. Above and all around, people moved to and fro, bodies swaying, laughing, lighting cigarettes on coffee breaks from the office. Young men stood arm-in-arm with their girlfriends. Old lovers escaped the watchful eyes of neighbours, illicitly meeting among the tangle of iron and jagged masonry. Here in the heart of the city, the pulse of life was strong and fertile. You could buy anything at a price. The menu was wide open, deals were made, and transactions done quickly. This was no place for hesitation or uncertainty, it diminished credibility. Everything was about respect and the ability to pay your way. In the very cradle of Communism, money was king again. The cycle was turning, repeating itself with the inevitability of the Sun’s rise and set, the Moon’s waxing, and begging bowls in Africa.
Ekaterina moved closer to him. ‘It is cold’, she said, pulling his arm around her shoulder. Tom could smell the sweet perfume she had used to entice him. He could feel the loose strands of her hair blow against his face. He caught himself looking at her profile, waiting on her every word. His eyes watered with what he passed off as the effect of the abrasive easterly, but was really the rise of intoxicating feelings that had lain dormant far too long.
They disembarked by the Palace Bridge and stood by the Vasily Zhukovsky, Ekaterina posing modishly on the pavement, her finger jutting out to attract a passing car. Several very new European models drove on.
‘I would love a ride in that’, Tom indicated as an Audi sports car swung away from them.
‘They do not need our money, they have enough of their own.’ Eventually, a beaten-up VW pulled over, leaking oil and puffing fumes. The asthmatic driver wore a cloth cap and toothless grin, and cast an otherworldly gaze over them. Ekaterina leaned in close to negotiate a price. ‘Skolka?’ Tom watched her step back from the man’s toxic breath. Then, tugging on the door, she turned, telling him to get in. The Professor sat amid a collection of discarded pizza boxes and sardine-smeared overhauls, listening as Ekaterina gave slow and simple directions.
They entered Nevsky from the Neva end, travelling as far as the Kazan cathedral, before the dark sky broke and bright sunshine covered the thoroughfare. ‘Look’, Ekaterina said excitedly, dropping her usually reserved demeanour and pointing upwards. ‘It is a rainbow, you must make a wish!’ Tom could see the variegated light painting the brimstone colonnades of the cathedral. The vibrant red, yellow, and violet were made all the clearer set against the crisp arctic air.
‘Make wish!’ she encouraged.
‘I already did’, he said, reaching forward to squeeze her shoulder.
‘And you will not tell me what you prayed for?’
‘No, of course not. That would spoil the surprise.’
The driver shot Tom a mean glance through the rear-view, pulling over, talking harshly as Ekaterina thrust money at him, notes cascading between thin legs. Tom almost fell out through the door as the car accelerated away. Halfway across the road, he grabbed her by the arm. ‘What was that all about?’ At first she did not answer. He saw a look of discomfort distort her youthful features, but he was genuinely curious and not a little angry, so he persisted with his questions. Stopping to avoid the oncoming traffic, she looked deep into his face, evaluating how he would respond to what she told him.
‘He said I was selling myself to a Westerner and should find myself a good Russian man for marriage.’ Their fingers interlocked.