Red Square

“Andrey, I’m leaving, I’m going home to Moscow.”

After many years in the U.S. Sasha Nova still spoke with that soft Russian sound, like a zephyr in summer swishing through a Birch forest, like the sound of her name. Sasha Nova. 

“Andrey, my father found me an apartment and I’ll be in Red Square for May Day.”

Sasha Nova left home when she turned twenty-one. She’d fallen in love with a Russian woman ten years older who’d migrated to America and soon she would follow. Sasha’s not really Russian, she’s Ukrainian, born on the Black Sea in Crimea in the capitol, Simferopol. She was an only child and her parents were intellectuals, art critics and university teachers versed in classical Russian history. They were not members of the Communist Party so walked a tightrope between intellectual honesty and supine Party politics. They were Russian realists.

As a young girl, Sasha was encouraged to read widely and she developed a taste for all kinds of literature. She read the great writers, Russian and Western and stepped into the pages of Hemingway, Melville, Faulkner and Dostoevsky. She loved to bury herself in these books and read deep into the night. She was seldom in bed before midnight. Unless for sex. 

Crimea, like Constantinople, was on the great trade routes between east and west and saw many wars. During the Russian Civil War early in the last century, Crimea was a stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik White Army. The White Russians supported the czar and made their last stand against the Red Army here in 1920.

My paternal great grandparents, Lithuanians, were in the Jewish merchant class when Russia dominated Lithuania and they tended toward expediency in their politics. Like President Putin and perhaps Sasha Nova, some in my family sided with the Tzar. They abandoned Russia, escaped to England, South Africa and Australia as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics spread and congealed in revolution; blood and bone and smokey union halls, cafes and students in Paris and Mexico City and Greenwich Village, even in my home town, Melbourne Australia, drank coffee, smoked and discussed the utopian New Man.

Goths and Huns, Bulgars and Khazars, the state of Kievan Rus, the Byzantine Empire, Kipchaks and Mongols; invasions and turmoil in Crimea go back longer than the time of Christ. And in 2014, unmarked soldiers in green fatigues invaded and took it for Putin and Russia. By then Sasha had already left and was in America watching and reporting to all her friends from Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Sasha’s parents separated long ago. Her mother was deeded the family apartment on the Black Sea. Her grandfather’s garden was filled with vegetables and lavender. He was a submariner captain in the Soviet navy in the Second World War. Sasha adored her grandfather and carried pictures of his medals. Sasha’s mother sold the apartment to get money to send her only child to America. She knew nothing of the dark-haired older woman with whom Sasha had fallen in love and who was now in America.

One day Sasha Nova left Russia and flew to Chicago pursuing her lover. She dressed in a consevative, plain black business suit  and donned secretarial spectacles to make her appear older for she was petite, child-like with sea green eyes and could easily have passed for Lolita. 

She flew into O’Hare, passed through customs and stepped into the streets of Chicago knowing nobody. She found a phone, rustled through her papers, dropped a dime and made the call to connect with her lover and found the number had been disconnected. Now there was no lover at all. She was truly alone. 

She found a room with a family in the immigrant Russian part of Chicago and bunked there. It was like home with the smell of borscht and garlic and sausage and cigarette smoke and vodka shots. It was not long before she headed for New York City. She was an illegal alien in America, like Sting and millions of others. 

She found a room with a family in the immigrant Russian part of Chicago and bunked there. It was like home with the smell of borscht and garlic  and sausage and cigarette smoke and vodka shots and the husband drunk and abusing his wife and kids and roaches and rats crawling around the corners of her room. It was not long before she headed for New York City. She was an illegal alien in America, like Sting and millions of others. 

In the legal context, an “alien” refers to an individual who is not a U.S. citizen, foreign born and not naturalized, still the subject of another country. If we dig a little deeper we find “aliens” also disturbing, distasteful and extraterrestrial.

She needed a green card, official permission to stay and with that in mind, seduced a street performing clown she saw one day near Washington Square, gateway to Greenwich Village and New York University. They went back to the clown’s East Village apartment that day. She liked his pot and the dark Lower East Side dive bars and the music and the downtown life. It was certainly not Simferopol back in Crimea, it was the high life. The relationship didn’t last. There was no green card and soon she was on the prowl again.

The night Sasha Nova came to my Vanderbilt Avenue storefront in Brooklyn, I was making dinner for friends.We had a couple of dime-bags of marijuana, a block of sharp cheddar, some bread and a large bottle of cheap red wine. it was late fall and it was cold and snow scuttled along the sidewalk. We huddled around the electric heater because the steam heat didn’t work. And in she comes with an old mate of mine from radio days. 

The Vanderbilt Avenue storefront was a large empty space with aluminum framed sheet glass store windows and a heavy glass front door. The pressed tin ceiling was high and there were no side windows so it was dark inside. But it was ideal for my stone and garden business and a place to live in a part of Brooklyn I knew.

It was the late nineties and I was a gardener specializing in stone. I was two marriages down and living alone. I laid a sleeping futon in a corner and in another constructed a simple wooden bench for a two-ring electric stove and kitchen sink and to square things off, my recently gleaned full size claw foot enamel and cast iron bath tub and a shoji screen for minimal privacy. My books and audio tapes and my beloved Nagra tape recorder filled the rough wood book shelves that ran along another wall. The rear windows were broken and I covered them with a double layer of plastic sheeting to keep some of the cold out.

As the night deepened Sasha Nova drank and smoked and eventually and presumptuously crawled under my duvet. When the party was over my friend tried to rouse her. She refused to move and told him to go catch the subway by himself and eventually he slinked out into the snow and she and I were alone. That’s how my chapter with Sasha Nova began.

She’d been trained in cine camera operation, had studied film and knew the Russian classics. A few years earlier she’d garnered a camera job with a top-notch filmmaker who’d made some of the best independent documentaries commissioned for mainstream television. When Sasha Nova came into his life he was making a film about gang violence and spending a lot of time in the South Bronx.

She strode into his studio one day with her steely confidence, stared him in the eye and told him he needed her to work for him. A few months later she’d be jumping on the back of his motorcycle, nursing an expensive video camera, headed for gangland to rub shoulders with the Crips and the Bloods.

She was a hustler and a battler and just because the guy was married it did not deter her. She went for the jugular and they became an item, undercover so to speak. This infatuation passed. But not before he sponsored her and she finally struck gold and a green-card. She was in. 

                                                          _____

She was a wild child and loved the rock n roll quality of it all. She’d been trained in cine camera work back in Moscow, had studied film and knew the Russian classics.  A few years earlier she’d garnered a camera job with a top-notch downtown American filmmaker who’d made some of the best independent documentaries commissioned for mainstream television. He’d filmed Castro in Cuba and travelled to Iraq during the first of the oil wars. When Sasha Nova came into his life he was making a film about gang violence and spending a lot of time in the South Bronx.

She strode into his studio one day with her winsome good looks and steely confidence, stared  him in the eye and told him he needed her to work for him. And he probably looked at this beautiful upstart and felt a strong testosterone surge and gave her a shot. A few months later she’d be sucking his cock before jumping on the back of his motorcycle, nursing an expensive video camera, headed for gangland to rub shoulders with the Crips and the Bloods. This infatuation passed. But not before he sponsored her and she finally struck gold and a green-card. She was in. 

I’d heard that younger women were a handful. Well that’s an understatement especially when it came to Sasha Nova; beautiful, imperious, potentially criminal and demanding. I relished the fact she was sexually promiscuous and she said so from the start. She enjoyed both yin and yang and we had sordid adventures at lesbian bars and strip joints, in taxi cabs and back rooms.It was inevitable that it would come off the rails and when it did I was broken.

                                                   _____

It’s ten years later and and I’ve purchased a modest farm house in a small upstate New York village. Sasha Nova took the bus and here she is coming down the steps with that smile that melts old men’s hearts. “Hey there, Andrey, you lookin great,” and she hugs me and looks into my face and then puts her hand on my chest and asks again, with that soft breeze in her voice: “Andrey, how are you, really?’’.

I take her bag. She was traveling light. We crossed the road and walked towards the railway tracks. The old house is not far and it was not her first visit. She knew the drill. I liked the symmetry of it, the modesty of it, the wonder of a bus from New York City three hours to Hancock and walking past the gas station and the auto accessory store, the movie theater they turned into a church and the industrial laundry, and now paralleling the railway tracks and the old white two-story farm house with the green roof comes into view.

That night we sat and talked and laughed about the old days. I told her about a Russian poet I’d heard about who lived not far away at the Lordville railway crossing overlooking the river where it narrows and flows faster under the bridge. We decided to visit.

Konstantin Kuzminsky emigrated from St. Petersburg in the mid seventies and finished up in Lordville on the Delaware not ten miles from my home. Like Joseph Brodsky and Yevgeny Yevtushenko he escaped to America, his ideas challenged the Soviet status quo and he published a nine volume anthology of Russian dissident poetry called The Blue Lagoon. This was underground poetry the Russians call samizdat.

As we drive across the Lordville bridge and railway crossing that day we saw an old Russian jeep with mannequins sitting behind the wheel and a CCCP sign, a diorama of the old Soviet Union outside the poet’s house. Two men are talking and remonstrating on the roadside. One wears no shirt and a black mane of hair frames his face tumbling to his shoulders. His broad chest is exposed to the chill air. His name is Boris. His friend is Alexander, a skinny bearded fellow with deep-set dark eyes, visiting from New York City where he drives a yellow cab. Alex translated Allen Ginsburg's Howl into Russian and met the Ginsburg. He is a writer and intellectual from the Crimea near where Sasha Nova was born.

We parked nearby and approached. They invited us to share lunch and we sat at a long wooden table outside beside the road, under the maple trees which were now shedding their technicolor leaves in great numbers. The wind scattered them hither and yon as we pulled chicken off the bone, fed bones to the dogs and chomped into the fresh lemon cucumbers Boris gathered from his garden. We drank wine, smoked cigarettes and the conversation tracing an outline of books and geography, science and the atomic bomb, quite unlike any hitherto encountered in these realms. Then we walked across the road to visit Kusminsky.

I’d driven past the old shanty shack shaded by maples with the army jeep outside with CCCP painted over the camouflage paint. A sign over the door reads Petticoat Junction. Opposite are the remains of Lordville which used to be a thriving hamlet on the river. Water offers opportunities and in the past, rivers transported lumber and blue stone downstream lashed and chained on log rafts. Today there are three of four rickety wooden hotel-size buildings beside the river. One hundred and fifty years ago they were bustling with river men who’d stay overnight on their way downstream. It was almost  a ghost town now and the tarpaulins that protected the leaking roofs of the grand old buildings are tattered blue plastic shrouds. 

It was almost a ghost town now and the tarpaulins that protect the leaking roofs of the grand old buildings are ghastly shrouds. 

Up the hill, the wood framed Lordville Protestant church still stands with windows that shine like jewelry in sunlight. There’s a wood stove inside. On the Fourth of July the Lord family return to celebrate and they gather on the road outside the church and read the Declaration of Independence. And there are homes hidden in the trees and the steep valley that traces the railway tracks south. Like many river hamlets people drifted to Lordville, all kinds of people. Konstantin Kuzminsky and his wife retired by the river, beside the bridge and the railway tracks. He’s a legend to some in these parts yet largely unknown. 

Walking into his house was walking into a museum. His wife Misha, a stout gray woman with glasses that made her face look like a cat, greeted us and beckoned for Sasha to leave the gift of wine on the table near the front door. Kusminsky is a binge alcoholic and was currently in recovery so no alcohol was permitted in the house. 

He collects weapons and African and Sepik art and poetry and books and the walls were covered in carvings, masks, weapons. A machine gun that looked like a World War One Gatling gun with an ammo-belt draped over the barrels, a display of daggers and curved knives, many of them, and a huge plastic blow-up globe of Earth hanging from the ceiling near a wide desk covered in books and an ashtray still smoking. Two cats watched us and Misha invited us deeper into their home, to the back, behind a bookcase where Kusminsky lay naked. Misha leaned down to throw a blanket over his nakedness as we approached.

He was laying on pillows like a Roman Emperor, his full white beard flowing down his chest. He leaned to one side with a long white cigarette smoking between his well manicured fingers and he grunted quietly as Sasha Nova leaned over the poet to kiss his cheek, like kissing an icon.

She introduced me and when I told him I was Australian and had spent seven years in Papua New Guinea and began explaining where the island was as I have so often in America, he stopped me. He knew it well and told of early Russian explorers who had ventured there, names I'd never heard and he pointed to a Papua New Guinea flag on the wall.

Behind the pillows were books and I noticed his poetry anthology The Blue Lagoon among them. This was Samizdat going back more than sixty years. Later I learned he'd carried the poems in his head when he crossed the border to escape the U.S.S.R thirty years before and transcribed them, tapped them out on his typewriter. At least that was the story. He'd been a professor in Austin, Texas but now spent his life here by the Delaware, reading, drinking, providing audiences to wandering acolytes. 

Behind the pillows were books and I noticed The Blue Lagoon, his anthology of more than one hundred Russian poets, photographers and artists who were persona non grata in the Soviet system. This was Samizdat going back more than sixty years. Later I learned he'd carried the poems in his head when he crossed the border to escape the U.S.S.R thirty years before and transcribed them, tapped them out on his typewriter. At least that was the story. He'd been a professor in Austin, Texas but now spent his life here by the Delaware, reading, drinking, providing audiences to wandering acolytes. 

When I walked outside into daylight everything felt surreal. The tall empty buildings filled with ghosts, the leaves scuttling and wild Russians still talking at the table on the roadside. Boris stood as we approached and before I could say a word he invited us to join him on another journey and we drove through the mountains about ten miles to a dacha that resembled a small castle. Huge stones and concrete balustrades on both sides and carved wooded posts supported the verandah and stairs that led to the front door. 

Once again we entered a kind of theater, art displayed and scattered in every direction. A woman poured tea from a samovar and another brought food. The table cloth patterned with wild flowers, there were thin slices of lemon on a plate. Sugar in a bowl. Cups ready and waiting. One of the women stoked the fire.

This was the home of Alex Shnurov, another émigré artist who talked about death and immortality, about Lenin and pointed to the amazing Soviet Era renderings on the wall. He showed videos and played radio programs in Russian from his laptop computer and we sipped tea and then cheap port and the Russians sat quietly smoking and nodding their head as I spoke about my life.

By now Sasha Nova was infused with sweet port wine and the conversation grew more animated and the temperature rose and she stripped off her sweater down to a tank top and she stood over the men, leaning in, gesturing aggressively, challenging and goading as we argued, cut and thrust and parried until the wine bottle sat empty on the table.

Before we departed we ventured up the dark stairway up three flights to the sleeping quarters. Everywhere we looked there were more objets d’art hanging on the walls and an antique wrought iron bird cage hung from the ceiling. We reached the top floor and entered the bedroom.

On the bed was an AK 47 Kalashnikov machine gun and Sasha eagerly grabbed it and settled the butt firmly into her shoulder, her cheek on the butt and she squinted down the barrel like a guerrilla fighter. Alex reached across and took the AK from her and placed it back on the bed muttering something in Russian. Sasha swore at him and we went back downstairs.


                                                       _____ 

The phone rang and I picked up: “Andrey, I’m going home next week. My father got me an apartment and I’ll be with him and his artists friends again.”  

Sasha Nova was going home to Putin’s Russia, to Moscow. She would turn fifty this year and she said she’d be in Red Square for the May Day Parade. 

“Andrey, I am starting again for the third time in my life."

I told her: “Start writing in an excercise book. Write what happened." I told her I’d started another life when I learned I had prostate cancer at fifty-three and had some of the best and most important years of my life.

“Andrey, I love you.” And there was a long pause, and she hung up.