Chapter Eleven:

The White Nights

AS WE WENT TO RUSSIA in mid-summer, we were privileged to partake of the famed White Nights celebrations. This takes its name from the fact that Leningrad is about on the same latitude as the tip of Greenland, which means that the sun never dips far below the horizon at that time of year. It stays "light" all night long. You can read a paper outdoors easily the whole time...

We were near to a big park where the Russians put on a sort of disjointed evening show in commemoration of their city at this time of year. I am ashamed to say I cannot remember the name of this park – descriptions I read years later ere "sound" like it might have been the Pavlovski grounds – but I am very unsure. And I think it was within walking distance of our hotel. So one night (it must have been around my birthday in fact – June 22nd), we walked over to this park to see the sights. The park was surrounded with a high, iron-railing fence and a big still-closed gate. A number of tourists and locals were all standing patiently in a ragged queue on the sidewalk. I remember the scene vividly – because many years later in a history book somewhere, I recall opening to a page, and there was this same exact view of this same spot – but it had been taken at the height of the Great Siege. Everything was covered in snow but the same iron-railing fence, which stretched away in both directions. In the middle were some armed, over-coated German soldiers and one man – apparently a German officer on horseback - and they were looking into this park through the fence and all along the fence there were piled up frozen corpses –stacked like firewood. I may even have copied this picture somewhere but do not now have it at hand.

But it is the exact spot where Mill and I waited that White Night of the Russian summer...

I remember one thing the Guide had told us about this park: before the War it had been embellished with many outstanding marbles, bronzes and renowned examples of statuary. When the Siege began, the locals had toppled all these monuments and buried them deep beneath the soil, in hopes of thwarting the Germans. To some extent, I guess, this ploy had succeeded and they were still - even then – digging some back up and re-erecting them.

We were told vaguely that there was to be a show of some kind, and to please stay on the walks and in line. A Red Guard then ceremoniously opened the gate to the anticipated events, and we all passed in. "But what is this?" I thought. The park was ragged and rank and overgrown and untrimmed dense brambles and bushes in every direction. But up ahead of us – maybe say 100 or 150 feet – was a cadre of old babushkas – maybe ten or fifteen, and they were strung out about the width of a path suited for we who followed – and they were busy scything (with old-time scythes! – no lawnmower!) – a cleared, walking path through this jungle of weeds and grass! I thought I would die! It was the counterpart to rolling down a red carpet one jump ahead of the guests even as they are arriving!

And so we walked slowly along and then we heard a woman singing. High-pitched – and in French! And suddenly way off to the left in the ragged grounds stood a small sort of portable theater affair – stage and all – and the stage faced toward us. Several costumed singers and players were doing a sort of "tableau" on it all on their own, and we just sort of stared at them as we walked on by. (We didn't want to lose track of the babushkas you see as we might then be forever lost in these brambly woods! LOL!)

Later, our Guide, who sometimes seemed to be present amongst us and sometimes curiously missing altogether, explained – haltingly – that the "tableau" (and there were others to come) – commemorated the days when the Tsar's Court sought to emulate court manners and affectations of the French and were busy importing all the tastes and mannerisms of the same into their own country. (We saw this elsewhere in Russia, too – in museums, etc.... The world's first Communist State, where all are equal in the 'Worker's Paradise," can think of no better way to impress visitors and outsiders than to emphasize its Imperial past and even the language and customs of its then-rulers...! LOL! What a puzzlement...)

The next thing I knew was that suddenly out of a bush hops a guy about seven feet tall – I kid you not! A great big Russki with a big beard and all and dressed completely in an elegant 17th century costume of the times. Without a word he pushed right into the midst of our group and walked right along with us – with now and then a "Da!" and a nod right and left and sometimes a French word or two.

It was... Peter the Great! (The Rooskis Rooski – he who could knock heads – and did – with all of them back then, and built this great city on the Neva here and made Russia a naval empire for the first time and, (my kinda guy!) could straighten a horseshoe on his forehead.) Dang! He is likewise said to have been able to break silver coins in two with his fingers – but interestingly – some sources now hold that he was not strong at all – just tall, narrow-shouldered, and weak – with a small head... But we all know that "debunking" is the hobgoblin of modern times anyhow (as Emerson might have put it).

We were walking backwards through Russian History and also through today's (indeed, this very hour's!) fresh-cut grass, on the onetime palace grounds where Nazi bomb craters yet showed beneath the foliage, and half-excavated statues leered from their underground crypts!

I tell you – you got to pinch yourself a lot when you wander abroad in Roosha!

Well, finally we came to an odd little spot – sort of a clearing whatever. There were rows of chairs set up now in the new mown hay (LOL!), and on one side was a sort of two or three story "country house" of some kind – sort of period architecture and unused appearing and all – I would have guessed it maybe where the Parks people kept their scythes and all – but I was wrong...

Peter suddenly vanished from our midst. The next thing we knew he was hanging out the third floor window of this "Dacha" or whatever it was, and haranguing some actors on a stage in front of us down below. They harangued him back (in Russian), and then sang songs and cavorted about in pantomime and posture – mostly in French.

It was all quite interesting and mysterious. It never really ended – people just began wandering off and some of the actors left, too, and then there was no more. So we got up and began to retrace our steps. By now we were a rather large throng – extending even onto the unscythed areas along the dim path. People strolled and babies cried and little dogs barked here and there. That sort of thing.

Then one of the best parts of the whole evening happened - indeed, in some ways the best part of our whole strange trip to this to strange land happened:

Most of the group had sort of stopped and were watching another "tableau" enactment on a nearby portable stage. Somewhere I heard very faint singing – many voices – and it was not coming from the direction of the stage. It was somewhere way off behind us. Millie was sort of engrossed with the tableau and chatting with some fellow Americans nearby. I eased out to the fringes of the crowd and then back behind it. The singing was louder.

Suddenly out of the woods behind us emerged a whole troop or sect of some kind – all in peasant garb, men and women. You see this a lot in Russia – different villages and areas have different sorts of clothes. I guess so they can tell where you are from or whatever. Now our Guide told us later what I had seen was NOT part of the White Nights planned ceremonies at all: it was a real, honest-to-goodness in-group of peasants from somewhere who were just "doing their thing in the woods" of this park that night and passing through if you would.

But they were dancing in high-spirited fashion around and around in intricate circles and formations as they moved. And some had musical instruments. And at some unknown signal, they would suddenly break and all the men would rush together in a bunch and climb one another's shoulders maybe three high and dance around and around in a circle and then collapse and all run out like ants in a nest when the hit the ground. The women formed rings and sang and clapped and the action was unbelievable. Sometimes there would be a shout and the men would all go down and do the "kazachok" or the "zhotsky" (?) – you know like they do at a Jewish wedding. Then up and into dance formation again.

I had my video-cam with me, you see, so I crept nearer and nearer and soon I actually got right in the midst of them – crouched down and filming. They never even looked my way. They just sang and danced their way into view and across the backlot and away into the woods again - still singing and dancing and then just vanished.

This tape I have yet and with any luck someday I might figure how to post some of it here! It is the real thing and better than the Red Army Chorus shows (which I have seen also when they visited the US).

So we returned to our quarters and tried to block out the light with a blanket over the window. Across from us was a many-storied apartment house where Russian workers lived. The little apartments all had miniscule open porches opening out onto the wall facing us. To this extent, the building looked somewhat just like its counterparts anywhere in the West. But here in Russia, every one of these porches up and down the side of that building was crammed with ...stuff. I mean old truck tires, boards, rags, bottles, boxes, scrap metal: anything in short, that one might find abandoned, lost, thrown away or discarded in the public streets! The building thus looked sort of like a surreal vertical city dump!

Around one or two in the "night" we heard the workers returning. Their factory had let out and here they came home in a solid, singing, drunken mass down in the street. You could look out and see them. Here and there bottles flashed in the crowd – they seemed in good nature – and shouts and songs drifted up to us. A contingent broke off and entered the apartment complex – while the main body continued on up the avenue.