The Heat In Moscow? Well, yeah...

As a Sunday-afternoon poet when the spirit is on me, I've been interested in poetry all my life, and consequently have read a lot of it. With my lifelong interest in Russia, it goes without saying that I have read a great deal of Russian poetry (in translation, of course) and have become familiar with some of Russia's famous poets.

Muscovites doing the old jump-in-the-fountain bit.

Many years ago, oh, when I was in college I guess, a copy of a book called From Desire To Desire by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko fell into my hands. (I have no idea what its title in Russian was.) The poems were mainly about love, every poet's favorite subject, but one that leaped out at me in particular was a poem entitled The Heat In Rome. Evidently Yevtushenko found himself in Rome during the summer. (I've always wanted to visit Rome, but NOT during the summer.)

In this poem, Yevtushenko rhapsodizes about how miserable Rome is in summertime, the heat and humidity of the city eventually prompting him to imagine a mass striptease, with everyone jumping naked into the Po River. Yevtushenko was born in a spot called Zima Junction, in Siberia. "Zima" means "winter" in Russian, and I can just imagine, with his background, how violently Yevgeny Yevtushenko's constitution must have reacted to "the heat in Rome."

I know how he feels. Only I'm not in Rome. I'm in Moscow.

Moscow? Yes. There is a widely-held perception in the west that the former Soviet Union is cold all the time. When I arrived in Kiev, Ukraine three weeks ago on my way to Moscow, my friends on Facebook were all asking me if it was cold there. In point of fact, it was not. It's springtime, and even the former USSR can get quite warm in spring. In summer it's worse. Really. Read your Tolstoy. There are scenes in both War & Peace and The Cossacks where the soldiers are plagued by heat and mosquitoes. It happens here, believe me, despite the fact that most Americans can not envision Moscow as anything but buried in snow. In all honesty, Moscow is buried in snow for nearly six months of the year. But for the rest of the year ... well, just make sure you have some shorts, some T-shirts and some sunscreen available. You might need them. Moscow has very long days in the late spring and early summer, and when you're looking at 20 hours of sunlight, you just might be looking at 20 hours of sun.

It was has been uncomfortably warm in Moscow this week. I know, I'm here. The heat isn't unbearable by itself -- it's not 90 degrees (yet.) The problem is, it's sultry. Moscow's humidity isn't as bad as that of New Orleans, Birmingham, AL, or Washington, D.C. but it's higher than that of, say, San Diego, where I come from.

Yesterday I had to get out to the suburbs to have a tutorial session with one of my children here. (I teach English.) On the Metro, I noticed myself doing the same thing with my Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap that I used to do with it when I lived in southeastern China, where it's even hotter and more humid than it is here: taking it off and wiping the sweat off my head with it. I stopped on the way to my young pupil's apartment to slam down a bottle Schweppes' Bitter Lemon, asked my pupil's mother for a glass of water when I reached the apartment, refilled my water glass during our lesson, and then stopped on the way home for more water.

It's warm here. Guys are going around in shorts; gals in their lightest summer dresses (or their tightest jeans.)  T-shirts and sandals are in evidence everywhere.

Trying to cool off, Moscow style. 

 

Now, I know I shouldn't complain. Because in about five months we're going to be looking at the opposite situation: COLD, everyone bundled up, cursing the snow and the slush. That's the Moscow familiar to my compatriots back home from television and movies. And yes, it's real. I have lived through a Moscow winter once before, and expect that my next one will be worse, because as mentioned on this page before, I'm living here now as an ex-pat American, subject to all of the same inconveniences as the locals. Before, I worked for (and lived at) the American embassy, where the comfort levels were much higher.

 

But I have this one thing going for me. Like young Yevtushenko's, (he's 79 now and living in Oklahoma, where it also gets both hot and cold) my genes are attuned to cold weather. My ancestors on my father's side were French Canadian, and hot weather has always driven me crazy. My dad once accused me of being "part Eskimo," so strong was my objection to being in hot places. And yes, I have often stated that my least favorite human activity is sweating.

 

But I'm doing my share of it now, believe it or not, right here in the shadow of the Kremlin.  

 

And it's not even summer yet.

 



 

Rites of Spring

Or..."The Coronation of Spring," or, I don't know,  "Коронация весной," but in any case, Russian spring, which is like almost no other spring that I've ever seen.

Russian spring is legendary. It comes on with a crash. Winter lasts six months here in Russia. The first snow usually falls in October, the last at some time in April.

Moscow in May...Just a nice, bright day

But when it's spring, you know it.

And it's spring.

The sun shines nearly 18 hours a day, high in the sky. At 5:30 a.m. it's broad daylight. At 9:00 p.m. it's still broad daylight. This will get even better later on. I know, I've been here in the spring and summer before. It takes on an unreal quality, this Moscow equinoctal-solsticial light. Many years ago when I worked at the American embassy here in Moscow, I remember leaving my office at midnight in July, and there was still twilight lingering.

I was in Yaroslavl years ago, one early June night with my Russian friend Nadya. Yaroslavl is about 200 miles northeast of Moscow, on the Volga River. We stayed with relatives of hers that night. After supper, around 10:30 p.m., we all went for a walk along the river. 10:30 p.m. and it was still afternoon.

Everyone began petering out shortly after midnight. It was more-or-less dark by one a.m. I fell asleep.

But I awoke 90 minutes later. It was 2:30 a.m. and the sky was already blue again.

Now, I have not seen St. Petersburg's legendary White Nights, those few days before, during and after the summer solstice when it doesn't get dark at all. Around midnight, they say, the sun dips below the horizon, then comes back up again. 24 hours of daylight.

I'm going to see it this time around. It's a promise I've made to myself.

Spring rituals in Moscow. I went out to the store the other day, and on my way spied a guy who had obviously fallen off his bicycle and was being questioned by a couple of cops. "Drunken cyclist hits tree," I thought. Why not? Public drunkenness is the Russian version of baseball.

But nobody's riding bikes in the winter. Not here. You can't. Come spring, bikes are in evidence everywhere. Just this afternoon I was walking back to the Metro after visiting a cafe down near Kuznetski Most. I encountered a girl with a big, balloon-tired Schwinn. Such bicycles are regaining popularity after decades of road-and-mountain-bike supremacy: people want comfort again (and my generation is getting older; we NEED comfort again if we're going to cycle.)

I asked her where she got the bike. Oh, she bought it in Moscow, but neither of us had a pen or pencil so she couldn't write down the place. She merely advised me to go online and Google "Buy a bicycle in Moscow."

I bought a bicycle in China last year. It was stolen in China, even though I had it locked. Before I buy a bicycle here, I'm going to make damn sure I have a safe place to keep it.

Who knows but that some of these guys might have been
among the crowd we watched race past as we sailed up
the Moscow River on a tour boat?

Speaking of bicycles, my boss here in Moscow, Robert Dingwall, took me along with his family on a boat ride along the Moscow River last Friday. Although I have lived in Moscow before, it was the first time I'd ever done the boat-tour thing. As we cruised along enjoying the scenery from the river, which included Red Square, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and who knows how many other Muscovian visual delights, we also saw...a bicycle race. Yep, a fast-moving peloton was racing up and down along the banks of the river. You had to look fast or you'd miss it.  Even the stragglers were moving along at a pretty good clip.

Today was very warm here, by Moscow standards. All last weekend we saw nothing but gray skies, chill and drizzle. But Moscow in the spring will surprise you: after a string of dismal days, all of a sudden the sun will come out and it's dreamland...everything looks like it's in technicolor. I could not stay indoors on such a fine day. I got on the Metro and went back down to Kuznetski Most, one of my favorite Moscow neighborhoods. It's a short walk from K.M. to Red Square, but Red Square was closed today. Tomorrow, May 9, is Russia's biggest holiday: Victory Day. It was on May 9, 1945 that Germany surrendered to the Allies and World War II came to an end. Russia celebrates every May 9 with a huge parade on Red Square. No doubt that's why no one was being allowed down there this afternoon--they were getting ready for the big parade tomorrow.

No matter. I know what Red Square looks like. So I sauntered back up to Kuznetski Most, shucking my denim jacket because it was too warm for it, sat down in a cafe, had a cold beer and thought, damn, isn't it wonderful to experience another Russian spring? At my age, no less.

My age. Who cares? Spring is rejuvenating, as anyone who lives this far north will tell you. Na z'dorovye!

More to come...

 

Return Of The Prodigal Son

MOSCOW--If you go to the website of The Moscow Times, an English-language newspaper that's been publishing in Russia's capital now for slightly more than 20 years, you will see a link which will take you to a list of stories that the newspaper has covered in the past two decades.


May, 2013. Moscow is building a skyline. I think it looks
like Rosslyn, Virginia, but that's just me.

Here is a story that the Moscow Times will NOT be covering: the 23rd of this month will mark exactly 20 years since I, Kelley Dupuis, set foot in Moscow for the first time.

May 23, 1993. It was a Sunday. It was a different Russia, different from before, and certainly different from now. And I was a different Kelley. I was here at that time as a minor employee of the American embassy. I was under its, and the U.S. State Department's protection. Not now. I'm here as a private citizen, an English teacher. Just another happy ex-pat. Ever since I first read Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast when I was 16, I've wanted to be an ex-pat. This is my big chance. Hemingway had post-World War I Paris. I have post-Cold War Moscow. Both versions of it.

The two versions of Moscow that I have seen, not to mention the two versions of myself, are as different as Hemingway's Paris and that of  La belle Epoque.

I was 37 on that spring day in '93 when I first touched down at Sheremetovo airport. The Soviet Union had been dead and gone for less than two years. Boris Yeltsin was president of the newly-liberated Russian Federation. Moscow's economy was imploding. Conventional stores were empty; the streets were lined with kiosks where everything was for sale. People were selling vouchers in the Metro stations. Hell, people were selling everything that wasn't bolted down. At the flea market at Ismailovo Park, you could buy anything from hot church icons to a used MiG. Beggars were much more in evidence than they are today.

Moscow in 1993 was like Dodge City. Anything could be bought, oligarchs-to-be were just piling up their fortunes, and stories of gangland hits, some of them in broad daylight, were not uncommon.

God, what an exciting time it was to be here. 

Not that the "exciting" part of the equation has changed. Moscow is still what it is, one of the world's biggest, most bustling capitals. There's always something going on somewhere. No question, Moscow is still an exciting city.


This is the Moscow I remember. October, 1993: President Boris
  Yeltsin and the parliament fired each other, and Russia
came close to civil war. I was here when this happened.

But 20 years is a lifetime to some people, and when I returned to Moscow just over a week ago, I experienced the emotion people are referring to when they quote American novelist Thomas Wolfe as saying "You can't go home again." Culture shock? No, I've lived here before and knew something of what to expect. I made return visits to the city in the late 1990s, but perspective had not settled in yet -- it was still pretty much the Moscow I remembered.

Not any more. It's the frozen-in-time nature of memory that makes coming home difficult. Nothing is quite as you remember it, and ... the friends you remember are older. Some of them are gone. You're older. Moscow, which was here long before me and will be here long after I'm gone, is also older. But, as cities, unlike people, are able to do, it has also become younger. To me, in some ways and places, almost unrecognizable. I'm staying with a colleague whose flat is near the Улица 1905 Года (Year 1905 Street) Metro station. It's a neighborhood of shops and stores. Across the highway is a large cemetery, into which crowds were streaming yesterday, Russian Easter. But aside from the signs and store displays in Russian, as I walk around this neighborhood I feel as though I might be in many another European city. Where is the distinct, unmistakable Moscow that made such a deep dent in me twenty years ago?

It's still there, but I had to go down to the city center to find real traces of it. Last Thursday was a gorgeous day, sunny and warm, radiant as only a spring day this far north can be. For old times' sake I got on the Metro and went down to the Kuznetski Most station. I got off there and ... just wandered.  To my relief, I found ample evidence of the Moscow I remembered as I sauntered slowly down to Red Square, which of course teemed with tourists as it will on a beautiful day.

Home again.

But when I entered Red Square again after all these years, I felt a curious mix of emotions. In fact I damn near cried. Memory is, first and foremost, a lonely place.

But everything was there: the State Museum, GUM, everybody taking pictures ... although these days they're as likely to be doing it with iPads as with cameras. Two new additions since my last visit: a guy made up to look like Lenin and a guy made up to look like Stalin, walking around offering to have their photos taken with visitors (You gotta wonder what Lenin and Stalin would have thought of that.)

St. Basil's Cathedral must have recently received one of its regular repainting jobs: its technicolor onion domes fairly glimmered in the afternoon light. I sat down on the grass alongside the Kremlin wall and looked at them for a long time, floating like huge, majestic balloons against the blue sky. "I'm back in Russia," I thought."There was a time when I thought this would never happen again, but somehow it has."

It's true that no matter how many times you return to a place that has meant much to you, the magic of seeing it for the first time is never there again. I have experienced this with many places in the travels of my adult life: Washington, D.C. New York City. Paris. Moscow. Even my own home...yes, when I returned to my home town in California for the first time, at age 32, after spending two years in Europe, there was a special radiance even to Chula Vista that I never again recaptured in all of my many happy returns.

So Moscow, 2013 is a different place to my 57 year-old self than Moscow 1993 was to myself at 37. I'll step around the Heraclitean cliche about stepping into the same river twice and say only that despite the inevitable disappointments that nostalgia is heir to, Moscow, like all great cities, has her own wisdom, a wisdom she shared with me once, and I'm most confident, will again.