The love song of the dark lady VIII

Previously

Chapter 8

I sat with David at dinner. He was the only person there who I even vaguely knew apart from Galina, and she was pretty much unavailable to either of us. She’d talk for a minute. She asked the usual questions about how we were getting on, how we were enjoying ourselves, she’d introduce us to her friends, but after a few minutes there was always something she needed to do. What she needed to do fundamentally was follow the rules of the Hare Krishnas. She had to spend her time meditating, chanting her mantra incessantly and serving the group in any way she could. Moreover, the group was wary of outsiders and those who didn’t follow Krishna. It was fine if you were on the way to Krishna. People like us who it was assumed were interested and potential converts were most welcome. But people who definitely were not interested, people who believed other things were at best distractions, at worst harmful. It was for this reason that Galina had left behind all her old friends in Kaliningrad, it was for this reason, too, that she had ceased contacting her parents.

Galina was helping Vera in the kitchens and then came out to serve the food. Whether she really needed to do this was unclear, but it meant that the benches had all filled up by the time it was her turn to sit down and eat. David would glance at her and smile, but the smile he got back was pretty much all he got back.

He had made it clear to everyone he met that he was only here to see Galina. This simple true statement had been met with incomprehension by some.

“Who is Galina?” someone had said.

“You may know her better as Garudi,” said David.

“Where have you come from? You’re not Russian. “

“I flew from Scotland. I just study Russian.”

“You speak awfully well. But you’re just friends with Garudi, aren’t you?”

“I’d say that was her business, wouldn’t you?”

This sort of conversation went on frequently. He always said “Galina” even to her and only used her Indian name to avoid confusion. He maintained that he wasn’t here to learn about Krishna, though, of course, he was interested in new subjects and experiences. He saw no harm in being an open minded person and was happy to chat about anything, but that was not why he was here. He had been invited by Galina and that was why he’d come. Without her he would not have come.

I could not give the real reason for my coming and it was not plausible that I should be there to see a former student. So I had to rather maintain the idea that I was there because I was tempted onto the path to Krishna. This limited what I was able to say. I mainly sat in silence, which was my usual role, and one in which I was well practiced. Sometimes it’s much easier being a woman. People accept that you are shy and meek and quiet. Passivity goes with the role. They don’t know and don’t expect what is underneath. I have used this fact all my life. It can be the best form of maskirovka [camouflage] that exists. The trick in any battle is to get into the rear areas without them even knowing you are there.

After dinner the conversation started and it looked as if the Hare Krishna top team was ganged up on David. There were some really friendly, really kind people who I chatted to over the next few days. They had degrees from some of the better universities. They often had very good jobs in Moscow. One or two were actually academics. Outside of this gathering some of them lived undercover. They never mentioned their occasional few days away being Hare Krishnas. Some even had families and friends who were completely unaware that they also had Indian names. Likewise, Galina did not go into her office asking to be called Garudi. She did not wear her Indian makeup, she did not talk about her beliefs to anyone there. She was Galina Fedorovna. She looked and sounded like any other Russian. It wasn’t really possible socially to be anything else in Russia. For an ordinary Russian to say they were anything other than an ordinary Russian, would tend to invite incomprehension, ridicule or worse. In that sense all of us to some extent were undercover. It’s not so very different anywhere else either. There is a conformity in Scotland also, things that must be said and things that may not be said, roles that must be played, at least in public, if not always in private.

I couldn’t help David much in the discussion that we all had in the next few days. I helped a little with translation. I told him a word he didn’t know, or helped him find a Russian word that he had forgotten. But he didn’t need my help much neither with Russian, nor with philosophy. I was reminded of when I had applied for some sort of fellowship in my college. I had been presented with some of the best minds and most senior academics spread round me in a semi-circle. For half an hour and more they had asked me whatever they pleased about anything they pleased. The trick, I think, was to answer in a similar fashion. I just said what I thought was true, without thinking whether it would impress. I just let my thoughts flow and became unconscious of thinking. Rather like later I would become unconscious of grammar when I spoke Russian. In this way I could think freely without inhibition and sometimes come up with an idea that was new.  I gave reasons why I thought someone most eminent had said something incorrect. The fact that my reasons were unthought out meant that they could be rather hard to counter, for they had an immediacy and a naivety that can be the best counter to when thoughts have too long gone through the process of mediation. What else is academia than mediation and recycling of the same old scholarship? Directness and something a little surprising often leads to academic bluster. But I remained calm even if someone else became flustered. David did something similar.

He continually reiterated that he was not here to learn about the Hare Krishna movement, that he had his own beliefs, but of course he was willing to discuss with anyone in a reasonable fashion. He said that his fundamental disagreement was that Eastern religions like Hare Krishna took the person on the wrong path. They led to the death of self, indeed, that this was their goal. They viewed the whole of the ordinary world as appearance while reality was something none of us had ever seen. This he considered was an essential part of the “everything becomes one” school philosophy. For ordinary experience suggested the opposite, that everything in fact was many. His alternative was that the world we see is perfectly real. That the self we experience in our freedom is real and we are really free. But by means of this self we can reach the divine through looking inwardly and by accepting that the divine can only be reached when we accept that it is beyond reason.

His criticism was much more subtle than they had expected. He did not attack the stories about Krishna. He instead pointed out that many stories about Jesus are likewise hard to understand. We need to go beyond reason to believe miracles. So in the end, it is a choice. You can pick Krishna if you like. It is equally a choice beyond reason. But don’t try to come up with proofs. They won’t work in any case.

Someone pointed out that Jesus and Krishna were the same.  He answered, in that case why not follow Jesus? Moreover, they clearly are not the same, for the essence of the teaching of Jesus is that our selves, our souls will be preserved. So, too, is the self preserved in reincarnation, someone said. Perhaps so, but if I have no recollection of my being a rabbit previously in what sense is my self preserved? Moreover, that is not the place towards which it is all tending. The goal is to lose the self in Nirvana, rather like throwing a cup of milk into the ocean. The goal is to become one rather than to preserve the individuality of the individual.

I saw how when necessary, David’s Russian kicked into a higher level than he usually used. It was like he had a series of gears. He would not always get the grammar right, but when necessary, he could get the point across very clearly and very cleverly. Meantime every day as these discussions continued he continued to attend the services. He sang the songs enthusiastically, he listened patiently to the guru. He took part in the dance at the end with enthusiasm and then he put up every evening this extraordinary defence of his own beliefs. I began wondering what role he was playing. But I also knew that he didn’t need my help. Far from it, I was very grateful sitting beside him that he was defending so ably what I believed, too.

Each evening after these discussions, we would go back for a drink and a debriefing to his room. I was careful not to give away too much of what my role was. It wasn’t so much a lack of trust as simply following my usual practice. But as we sat drinking and smoking cigarettes in his freezing room, I showed that I was sympathetic to the arguments that he had been making, and pointed out one or two of my own which might prove useful to him.

We talked about Galina. She sometimes observed the discussions that continued over a number of days, but she didn’t take part. Sometimes she would come up to David and act in a slightly flirtatious, affectionate manner, but she never spent long with him. It was as if she wasn’t allowed to. I saw her sometimes deep in conversation with the guru and his wife. Galina’s English was very rudimentary so they couldn’t talk without a translator. The guru at times looked rather worried. I wondered if they were worried about David. In the debates no one seemed to be landing any blows on him. He had successfully circled the wagons. He was here to see Galina. He was a Catholic. What he believed was not founded on reason. Therefore, it could not be attacked by reason. He respected what the others believed, but it was not the direction he wanted to take as it tended towards loss of self rather than preservation. They charged round like Indians, but they couldn’t land any blows. Meanwhile, he picked them off one by one.

But David was getting frustrated.  The whole experience was taking its toll and he was becoming very tired.

“What’s the point, Effie? I don’t even really talk to her. I just have these endless discussions about something that isn’t very interesting.”

“I think the time may be right when you confront her with her lack of attention. After all, she invited you. You came. She owes you. If it’s a nice day tomorrow, ask her to go for a walk between the morning and the afternoon sessions.”

“I already asked her, she said she was busy.”

“Tell her that you came to spend some time with her. If that isn’t going to happen, you might as well go.”

“You think that will work?”

“I don’t know. But if she won’t go for a walk with you, you must leave or at least you must make all the preparations to do so. But I think she will go for a walk with you.”

Next  

The love song of the dark lady VII

Previously

Chapter 7

I hadn’t realised that the guru had finally stopped speaking, so lost had I become in not listening, until he stood up and picked up the drum that was beside him. His translator wife stood up beside him and looked at him expectantly.

I don’t know what conclusion he had arrived at as I had spent the past hour and more thinking of other things. I played the role of the interested person who was there to learn, but it was just like any other undercover job, my thoughts were my own. Just as when I had sat in the Marxism-Leninism lectures, just as when I went to the Komsomol meetings, I silently thought of what I wanted to think about and paid only enough attention so as to stay undercover. Silence was my weapon of choice. But I was used to the role. I had been undercover my whole life. I remember gazing out of the window in school thinking my own thoughts, but when my teacher tried to trap me with a question, I would always know the answer.

Everyone began to stand up and so I stood, too. There was a look of anticipation. They had all sat so patiently, they had listened devoutly, but it was for this moment they did so. The guru began to sing the mantra and beat the drum. He started what was a sort of pied piper conga routine. Everyone followed, joining in the words ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna’. The rhythm got faster, the singing more ecstatic. People ceased to be aware of their surroundings as they lost themselves in the music. It was quite intoxicating, much more so than mere alcohol.

In order to play my role I, too, had to at least momentarily go with the flow. I always favoured a more or less method form of acting. Part of me would become what I was supposed to be. If I had to pretend to be a communist, then I would in part became a communist, just as Marlon Brando tried to become Terry Malloy when he played him in ‘On the Waterfront’. Only by becoming a washed up former boxer could the actor convincingly play someone who once had a chance to be a contender. In the end, it’s the only way for me to be persuasive in the role. It needs to not be a role. This is especially so if the role goes on for years. If you don’t become it, you’ll always slip up somewhere along the way. So as I danced and joined in the singing, I became a Hare Krishna devotee, or at least a part of me did, while the other part looked on. To understand a problem you have to understand it from within. It has to be your problem, touching you personally. The abstract approach to the problems of philosophy and theology is deadly dull and produces nothing of interest.

As I danced and sang, at least for that short time, I became one with this group of revellers. I forgot who I was and it was as if I could see myself fading away in the face of all this oneness. But still I was only the actress who had worked herself up to the state where she felt her hands were such that nothing could wash away the blood. She was one with the role, but it wasn’t as if she actually was going to go out and buy all the perfumes of Arabia. I still could look on myself acting and yet there were moments during these bacchanalian dances when I became drunk without drinking. I saw how extraordinarily powerful it all was. It was fun. We’d been sitting patiently. The others, too, must have been bored. Maybe that was the idea. Anyway, they’d all been concentrating on difficult concepts, trying to understand their guru, who didn’t exactly make it easy. Perhaps, that too was the point. The basic philosophy behind his views is relatively straightforward to explain, but I don’t think he wanted to explain; he wanted to make everything complex. In the end, he wanted to make everything dull, so that then there would be this release. He had been building always towards this. Suddenly, there was no longer any need to understand. Now there was only the need to feel.

I saw Galina lose herself in the ecstasy of the dance. Her face swooned. She reached a peak of emotion. It looked as if she had never reached such a peak in any other way. She was dependent on no-one. This peak she could reach by herself. She ceased to follow the guru as did many others eventually who moved to their own inward music always chanting with their minds and with their mouths ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna’. That was all there was in the world. Just that mantra endlessly repeated. They lost themselves in the chant, and I think they thought they were glimpsing eternity. Who knows, perhaps, they were.

The song drew to a conclusion. The guru slowed down his dance and came to a stop in the midst of us. At this point we all simply murmured the mantra and the curtains around the Krishna idol were closed, the candles put out, and like Bagpuss he went to sleep. It took people some time to come down from the high. No wonder they banned alcohol, caffeine and cigarettes. What need had they for such drugs which could only inhibit this intoxication.

I saw David looking blank. He, too, had lost himself in the revels, but I wasn’t sure what role he was playing or whether he had a role at all. I snapped him out of it.

“Let’s go for a cigarette,” I said.

When we were outside I asked him what he thought.

“I couldn’t follow much the lecture, but the dance at the end was quite fun. Rather like losing yourself in the music when some sort of techno rhythm keeps pounding.”

“Is it what you expected?”

“To be honest, I hadn’t a clue what to expect. I wasn’t even completely sure that Galina was a Hare Krishna.”

“You know now. I think she wants you to be one, too.”

“I’m not sure she knows herself what she wants. There is something between us, we’ve been writing for a long time, but I’m not sure what it is. I flew here to find out. It was a gesture.”

“You have no interest in Hare Krishna?”

“No, none at all, I’m a Catholic who rarely goes to church, but I know what I believe.”

“All the same, be careful with these people, David. It’s powerful stuff.”

“I saw that. You kind of feel something in the dance. Did you?”

“Yes. We all felt it. It’s why we must be careful.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“About Galina? It’s not easy. She only seems concerned at the moment with the Hare Krishna stuff. Let her talk to you about it. Show interest. Talk to the others as if you are interested. Why not? It is interesting. Find out, but very gently stick to your own beliefs. Don’t concede anything. Tell everyone that you are here to see Galina. But that you’re happy to find out about something important to her. Take that line when you speak to her. But try to get her alone. I don’t think she wants that at the moment. But find a time when you can go for a walk and then make your offer. Say what you’ve come here to say.”

“Just like that?  I’ve made hints, of course, in my letters, but she doesn’t always pick up on them, perhaps they are too hidden.”

“Believe me, David, she knows why you are here. Why else would a man fly all the way from Scotland to Moscow? She’s used the fact that you love her to get you to come. So no more hints. Get her alone sometime and tell her how you feel. Make her an offer. Surprise her. It may just shake her out of this.”

“Why are you here, Effie?

“I’ve known Galina for years. I haven’t seen her for a while. She’s a sort of friend and I wanted to see what she was up to.”

We went back inside and saw that preparations were being made for dinner. I didn’t expect anything much different from lunch. I wasn’t disappointed. 

Next  

The love song of the dark lady VI

Previously

Chapter 6

When we went back inside, everyone was already beginning to gather for the first session. Galina had already gone. Vera came up to us. She looked uninterested. Indeed, she had looked uninterested ever since we’d met her that morning.

“Galina had to get some things ready” she said. “She asked me to tell you that she’d gone on ahead. But you know where to go, right?”

“I think so,” said David. “The big room up the stairs.”

“That’s right.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I’ll help out in the kitchen. I’m mainly here for the company anyway. Why are you here?”

“I’m here to see Galina,” he said.

“Better say Garudi while you’re here.”

“As I said, I’m here to see Galina.”

We went up the stairs and found what must once have been a sort of conference room, except now there were no chairs. Around the edges there were some cushions and at the front there was a slightly raised area that seemed somehow more luxurious than everywhere else. There were some mats, a microphone stand a little table on which was some bottled water and a glass. Beside this was another place, though not quite so luxurious.

David and I sat down next to each other. Galina was a little in front of us but there was no place on either side of her. She glanced round to see that we were there. There was a sort of smile on her face, but a frown, too that went with it. Too late she seemed to say. Look what happens when you go outside to smoke cigarettes. A few minutes later however she came back to us for a minute or two. At this point I noticed that she had some markings on her face and especially on her nose. It was quite pretty I thought, though rather odd looking. Makeup was out, but face painting was in, but it didn’t matter: the whole effect still worked.  She hadn’t done anything to her hair. There wasn’t much she could do, but somehow the combination of yellowish markings on her nose framed within the blackness of her cropped hair just worked delightfully.

“We’ll talk some more afterwards,” she said to David.

“That’s OK”, he said.

“It’s just I have to concentrate and focus during the meeting. You understand?”

“Of course, don’t worry, there’s lots of time.”

“This is all very important to me. I wanted to show you.”

“I’m very pleased I came.”

“You might find it interesting. I hope so.”

“I hope so, too.”

The room was filling up and Galina returned to her place. She had given us each a little printed pamphlet. It contained what looked like songs. I guessed they were in Sanskrit, but transliterated into Cyrillic. It would be interesting indeed trying to figure out which song to sing.

In the corner stood a table with what looked like some dolls on it. At some point something sounded, chimes or bells or a sort of mixture of both, and two or three people approached the little table and lit some candles and said some words. A buzz went through the room and at that point we were ready.

A man entered the room from a side door followed by a woman. He was dressed in the sort of white loose clothes that Indian men sometimes where. Many of the men in the room were wearing similar clothes. The woman had on some sort of sari type clothing as did many of those who had sat there waiting. Galina’s sari had looked authentic, but somehow I had ignored the dark blue cloth with elaborate embroidery because of how it had enhanced what the cloth had contained. It was all a bit like dressing up, but I had noticed the effect that it had on David. So, too, this woman who was now entering made a similar if rather different effect.  Her beauty was of a different kind, her sari was pale and everything about her seemed light as if she were about to play Kriemhild in the Nibelungenlied. What she wore was all very simple and quite austere. She looked modest, and it was as if she would always walk one or two steps behind her man. But I could sense that she was proud of her role and happy to be there on what amounted to a low stage. She was happy to be part of the performance even if she was not the star. She knew that she would get some of the attention and she did.

The man had some kinds of marks of distinction that set him rather apart. The mark on his nose was somewhat different and somewhat more elaborate. But it wouldn’t have mattered what he had been wearing. He had a look that set him apart. His eyes were wild and he smiled like he had recently smoked grass. Perhaps he had, but I doubt it. His high came from a higher source.

He sat down in his place and welcomed us, and mentioned who he was. He spoke English with quite a refined southern English accent. The woman who sat next to him translated every word into Russian. I instantly forgot his name, or rather didn’t bother putting it into memory. It was one of those long Indian names. I didn’t try to store it because I already knew his real name. It was a typical English name that was far easier to recall. I was almost certainly the only person in the room besides him who knew this name. So he was just the guru to me as indeed he was so described by most of the acolytes. He was our guru. So that is how I intend to describe him, too.

The woman was obviously Russian and very beautiful indeed. She looked about twenty-three or twenty-four and I found out later that she was the guru’s wife. Sex was usually discouraged as tending towards acting as a barrier to enlightenment, but an exception was made in the case of the guru. It made sense to make exceptions, otherwise the tendency was to go the way of the “shakers” who died out because they banned procreation. The guru had seen what he had wanted, a rather lovely blonde Russian girl who was devoted to what he was saying and in a way devoted to him. She was one of those Russians who looked as if she might have stepped off one of the Viking boats that first sailed down the Dnepr. Even her eyebrows and eyelashes were blonde as is sometimes if rarely, seen in Finland and Sweden. I knew a little of the story. She had turned up at one of the guru’s meetings. He discovered that she spoke rather better English than his translator at that time, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she had spoken rather worse English. He began giving her some private instruction in meditation and soon the previous translator was dismissed. An added benefit was having married his translator he now had all his translation done for free. But that was not why he had married her. I could see exactly why he had married her.  

It was hard to tell how old the guru was. He had the sort of English, slightly aristocratic look that ages well. He might have been thirty five, he might even have been forty. He had blondish hair and a fresh complexion. He was just the sort who would have been considered very eligible a century earlier.

He looked sincere, he looked like someone you could trust. He had a certain charisma. Perhaps, he even believed what he preached. There is always a certain double mindedness in all of us. Matters of faith are never psychologically straightforward. How could he have been so convincing if he did not himself believe? So yes, no doubt when he talked, he did believe and yet it seemed to me even then that there was something about the whole performance that was a masquerade. There’s nothing so fair and false as a guru.

And yet I don’t want to be overly critical of these people. What they experienced and what I experience is not so very different. I, too, believe some odd things that I can in no way prove. Worse than that, the central tenets of my faith I consider to be beyond reason. They are contradictory or at least contradictory from the only perspective I have which is my own. But what is the difference between believing in a contradiction and believing that the moon is made of green cheese or in a god who is painted purple. I may try in the pages ahead to show the difference, but I’m not at all sure that I shall succeed in a way that is not hopelessly circular. Insofar as I attack anyone else’s beliefs, I am fully aware that as I thrust my knife I leave myself open to the same attack. Yet I can do no other.

The meeting began with some songs. People on either side of David and me helped us with finding our place and we both began stumbling through the, to us, meaningless words. Most of those there however sang with enthusiasm and with understanding. Galina told me later that she had been studying Sanskrit and had the goal of reading these ancient texts easily and even speaking with fluency. I told her that I had read some of the Vedic literature in translation. She emphasised to me however that it was necessary to be very careful as the stories could not be understood directly but only through the mediation of people like the guru. I had probably therefore gained a false impression. It all seemed rather pre-Reformation. These were just the sorts of arguments used against people like Tyndale when he wanted to translate the Bible into English. But then again, perhaps, she was right. I had made nothing much of the stories I had read, beyond that they were ancient stories from a culture that was strange to me. Perhaps, what had been lacking in me, perhaps my lack of understanding had been precisely that I had lacked a guru. We were about to find out.

After the songs the guru proceeded to interpret some of these ancient stories from Sanskrit literature. The songs had been enjoyable in a strange sort of way. After much repetition they became familiar and even I with a little practice soon was able to find the right place just from the first few rather strange notes. They had a way of getting into your head so that a familiar tune and set of words was greeted with pleasure at its repetition. I saw everyone including David, including me, light up eventually as we got to sing one of our favourites again.

But then would come the lecture. The carpeted floor that had seemed rather lush in the beginning became harder as the lecture went on for two, sometimes for three hours.

The guru rambled through various sacred texts explaining stories, going on and on. He would speak a sentence in English that was remarkably bad English, which was then translated into even worse Russian. I gave up trying to understand him quickly as there was nothing to understand.

I’d read quite a few of the central texts of Hinduism, not in any great detail and not with any great expertise, but I paid attention and my academic training was in this sort of subject matter. I was familiar with the basic ideas of eastern religion. But I couldn’t follow anything that the guru said. He’d take some minute little theme and stretch it and twist it and all to no purpose. I began to wonder if he saw his task as one of numbing us into boredom.

When I’d been reading a few of the texts about Krishna in preparation for the trip, it struck me that it was as if the religion of the ancient Greeks had continued to the present day. The stories of Krishna’s exploits with his friends struck me as primitive. They were rather similar to stories of Zeus and Aphrodite and so on, but rather less interesting from a literary perspective. The Greek myths could touch me in a way that these ancient stories about India simply could not. Perhaps, that was simply because I am European and India is an unfamiliar culture, which does not much interest me. Then again I didn’t think it accidental that the Greek myths were rather better known worldwide.

I found polytheism hard to take seriously. There was a god of this and a god of that. There were gods who were monkeys, gods with many hands, gods who looked like elephants. This was the sort of thing that we had chucked out when we chucked out paganism. I know that it wasn’t straightforward paganism, I know that in the end the gods were manifestations of the one god. But it struck me as if we could have retained belief in the Greek gods in the same way by building on those foundations the same structure of everything being one. In this way Zeus, Aphrodite, Poseidon and so on could all have been manifestations of the one god. I thought this was a way of having your polytheist cake while somehow pretending to be a monotheist.

In the end, it was just idolatry and no more worthy of serious consideration than the worshiping the golden calf. They had Krishna on their little table, but it might just as well have been Hermes. In this I’m afraid I sided with Nietzsche. Belief in the Greek gods was a dead issue. I just differed from Nietzsche in the next step he wanted to make. Perhaps, from his point of view I was still stuck with the Greeks. But I never thought he had adequately shown belief in the Christian God to be the dead issue he thought it was. He no doubt would simply say it was a matter of time. But the point he was making about Greek Gods did not then and does not now apply to the God of Christianity, at least not in my eyes. I couldn’t take seriously anyone who earnestly claimed to believe in Thor or Zeus. It would seem eccentric at best, comical at worst. The only argument necessary would be to laugh. In just the same way I couldn’t take seriously anyone who believed in Krishna. It was faintly ridiculous to believe in this mischievous purple little naughty boy, playing tricks and peeking at girls bathing naked.

There was a depth to eastern mysticism especially in the Buddhist tradition, which was quite similar to aspects of belief in Krishna. If you stripped away all the stories, you arrived at the idea of losing yourself in the one or of finally merging yourself with that one in Nirvana.  There was the idea that this world was a distraction, even an illusion and that, most importantly, the self was a hindrance to enlightenment. The self was considered part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Of course, this sort of philosophical/theological tradition was a matter for serious thought and consideration. Monism, or the idea that everything is one has after all a serious place in philosophy and some of the greatest minds have advocated it in one way or another. But I had rejected that path long ago.

For me the foundation of everything was the self and to merge myself into Nirvana would simply be to die and to cease to exist. I had long before arrived at the fork in the road where one direction pointed to Hegel and nearly everyone else who came afterwards. The other path pointed to Kierkegaard. That was eternal choice: either Kierkegaard, or Hegel, either the individual, or the collective.

In this sense I could take seriously the path these people all around me were taking, but I thought it was profoundly the wrong path. The guru wanted his acolytes to lose the one thing I thought they must above all other things retain. He wanted them to lose their sense of self. That was the purpose of his interminable lectures, that was the purpose of the songs; that was the purpose of the mantras that were chanted.

But for me the loss of self was the loss of the soul. If successful and the self was lost, there would be nothing for God to grab onto, nothing for him to save. Even the one good deed, such as the gift of an onion, which Dostoevsky suggests, might be enough to save a soul, could not be efficacious if there was no soul to save. The onion could be used to pull a sinner out of hell so long as the sinner was generous and was willing to allow other sinners to be dragged out, too, but what if there was no soul to grasp onto the onion? I shuddered at the loss of self. I looked around me at the vacant eyes and the mouths silently repeating their mantra. The guru had succeeded. All around me were minds that were blank. Even David began to look blank, but that had more to do with his tiredness. I sat there and wondered what would happen next, now that all minds were empty. The guru stopped and began filling all the minds, and I saw that he had a power. Now they would not just whisper their mantra they would sing in a sort of wild release. I got up and found myself joining in. Not just as part of the role that I was playing, but finding myself swept up into it all. I realised then that I was up against a force that was very powerful indeed. I would need help if I was to have any chance of succeeding. I would need David as he had with him the only force that was more powerful than the one the guru had. He had love. 

Next  

The love song of the dark lady V

Previously

Chapter 5

The accommodation was all inclusive, but I could immediately see that the food and drink was a disappointment to David. We sat on benches and were served a sort of Indian tea without any of the plant that is usually described as tea and what I can only describe as a mess of pottage. It really was a mess. On plastic plates we were each given some stewed vegetables with a slightly Indian taste. Nothing remotely resembled what you might expect to find in an Indian restaurant.

Galina was busy with her friends. She knew absolutely everyone and they knew her. I saw David looking around and wondering what to do.

“Why not sit with me, David?” I said. “I think, she’s a bit busy right now.”

“I could really do with some coffee to be honest,” he said. “I’ve been up all night and now that the excitement has worn off… What is this anyway?”

“This is what we’re going to eat for the next few days.”

I saw his look of disappointment and disbelief. He was slightly plump and I guessed he had no idea whatsoever about deprivation. He could buy whatever he wanted at the supermarket in Scotland and never had to even think about it. The idea of a few days without any meat, without any tea or coffee filled him with horror.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We can slip out for cigarettes and I brought some contraband with me. I had an idea that it would be like this.”

“You don’t mind?”

“I’ve been through worse.”

Indeed I had. When the Soviet Union fell apart the little enclave that was Kaliningrad suddenly found itself cut off from the rest of Russia. Whereas previously we had been able to travel freely into Lithuania and further into Latvia, within a short time there was a manned border. Now we needed a visa and it was not always easy to obtain. Over the years the border to Poland was sometimes all but closed. Sometimes it was the Russians that decided to search every car, sometimes it was the Poles, but the result was that it often took half a day to cross and nearly always took three or four hours.

In the beginning there were food shortages because the normal sources of food from all around dried up. The collective farms ceased working. Workers were unpaid and so did not work. People sometime think that when a country breaks up, everything that went on before continues to go on as if nothing had happened. This is untrue. We noticed the breakup of the Soviet Union and for the first year or so we noticed it every day. The shops were empty and anyway we might have to wait months for the next pay check. I remember gradually working my way through every tin in the cupboard, until there were none left.

My money from Cambridge continued. They were happy with the work I was doing and did not think it of any less value now that the Soviet Union had fallen apart. Unfortunately, in most of Britain the Russian/Soviet departments were gradually closed down until the subject ended up being almost as obscure as Sanskrit. But even if in the end, I had access to money, I did not always have it to hand and anyway, I did not always have anything to spend it on.

So we would go gathering what we could in the woods. We went fishing and hunting not so much for recreation as for food. We bartered and we shared. Most ordinary people back then were very generous. Nobody starved.

In the first few months after the breakup there was chaos. Petr did not know who he was working for now. The organisation that he had been working for ceased to exist and he waited to see what role he would have. Many of his friends and colleagues found themselves unemployed. The job they had been brought up to think was for life, was no longer needed, their experience no longer useful. Petr was lucky he got to stay. But he was paid much less and found himself earning less than taxi drivers, and he had less status than criminals.

There was a mad scramble to seize the assets of the Soviet Union and for the most part they were seized by crooks.  Petr’s grandmother ran one of the largest department stores in Kaliningrad and as the central power fell apart, it ended up effectively as hers. That’s how things went in those days. The party functionary who ran the factory ended up owning the factory. But he had to be willing to fight for it.

I remember Petr coming back one day to tell me that Olga, his grandmother, had lost the store. Some men had arrived and told her she must give them the shop and everything in it, and she must do so immediately. She made inquiries. Petr made inquiries. He was told that these men were untouchable and nothing could be done. He told his grandmother to give away the store. She did so without hesitation. That was how you became an oligarch at that time or failed to become one. Someone would say this one is untouchable, that one is not. The rich became rich because of connections patronage, luck and sometimes the willingness to fight or at least to risk things getting rather dangerous. Most of us did not think it was worth it. It was not.

It was better to be relatively small and insignificant. The initial risk involved in fighting for wealth was not worth it, because it would be liable to continue. There was always going to be someone stronger who was willing to fight harder and who did not fear any risks. There are always people who fear nothing, because they do not care and have nothing to lose anyway.  In the thirties the safest place to be was someone anonymous in a factory or on a farm. That was not always safe, but it was a safer than being someone important. So we did not envy those who got the store. They did not last long.

After the initial period of chaos, things gradually improved. But we had all been through a period when we eat just to obtain calories. We did not care what we eat. We would open a tin of stewed marrow for dinner and be grateful we had that. So I was fully used to eating vegetables and I did not mind doing without coffee.

When you live in Russia, you talk to people who have been through worse. It gives a certain perspective. I had been through the breakup of the Soviet Union. I had been through the default and the devaluation of 1998. I had gone hunting through shops when there was nothing. I had told my husband we did not have anything for dinner. I had received parcels marked ‘Aid’ from the USA and been very grateful.  It did not matter what was in the parcel, we ate everything.  I had gone through that sort of experience twice in one decade. It always runs together, perhaps, it was three times even four. We stopped following the news. It was always just one more story of parliamentary chaos in Moscow. The news did not matter. It only mattered that we sometimes got paid, and sometimes there were things to buy in the shops.

But there were always friends who rallied round and we all faced the tough times together. The thing is we all knew that times were just not that bad. So what if we had lost all our savings and so what if a loaf of bread suddenly seemed to cost a week’s salary? We knew that this was as nothing compared to what earlier generations had gone through. Everyone knew friends and family who had gone through the war years. We used the collective memory of this to give us strength. The war is much closer to Russians than it is to those in the West. It always seems very close indeed. It is not a matter of history, it is a matter of now. Those people are always with us. Their presence is why we feel their absence so.

So when I was faced with my cup of strange tea and my stew of vegetables, I simply ate everything while I watched David picking at his and leaving the most of it.

“Let’s go out for a cigarette,” I said.

“Sure.”

As I got up I saw Galina glance at us. Was it disapproval I saw on her face? It could not possibly be jealousy. I was at least ten years older than David, if not more. But anyway if she felt at all proprietal about him, why had she not sat with him while we ate. I wondered again about what she was hoping for and what she was looking for.

The cold hit me again as I left the warmth of the building. But it was not unpleasant to stand out there for five or ten minutes. It was dry and fresh and invigorating. It was only when you were out in it for half an hour or more that it became really unpleasant.

“Shall we talk in English?” I said. “I’m sure you’re tired.”

“Why not? You speak English as well as me. Where are you from, Zhenya?

“I’m from Kaliningrad.”

“But before that?”

“I lived in Scotland.”

“Are you Scottish?”

“Why don’t you call me Effie, that’s what all my friends call me? That’s what they called me as a little girl in school in rural Aberdeenshire, too.”

“I don’t get it. How can you have two names?”

“It’s as much as anything about declension. You know that. Effie doesn’t decline, Evgenia does. It’s much easier living in Russia if your name fits the grammar.”

“Did you learn Russian as a child?”

“I’d describe it more as a teenager. Now, David, stop probing. We’ve only just met.”

“I’m sorry. You seem something of a mystery.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you to say. Every woman wants to be a bit mysterious. How did you start learning Russian and what for?”

We spoke a lot about our experiences with Russian over the next few days. From these I am able to piece together much of David’s story, naturally, I also told him some of mine.

He’d been in his early thirties, single and working in an office in Aberdeen. He had liked his work well enough, but the last year or so had been rather the same as the year before. Most of his university friends were married and he seemed to have rather missed out. If there were a boat, it seemed to him that it had long since departed or else had sunk prior to arrival.

What he liked to do tended to be solitary and somehow he had become very shy. Holidays were a particular problem. He hated travelling alone as he was not at all good at meeting strangers without an introduction. He just was not the sort who could get chatting to someone he did not know in a bar. He never spoke on trains. But the few times he had spent some time abroad in a strange town all on his own he remembered with a shudder as being very dreary, lonely affairs, watching other people having fun while not taking part.

Somewhere he read an article about language schools. There was a built in social element. There was the chance to learn something and meet some new people. He looked at the pictures in the brochures. Everyone looked like they were having fun. They were all university age or just past. There were usually some pretty girls.

He liked studying and although had never seriously studied a language, school French somehow did not count, he thought it might be fun to try. He had been looking for something, perhaps, a new challenge would make him feel less despondent.

He thought of the languages he might learn. Chinese and Japanese were too hard and anyway, it would be far too expensive to go to there on multiple occasions. He thought of all the western European languages, but he reflected on those who went to evening classes in French or German, and it seemed terribly dull and unoriginal. Anyway, he wanted to do something difficult. To be honest, I got the impression he wanted to be able to show off a bit. Who can really tell about someone else’s motivations? We all deceive ourselves and the reason may be something quite trivial. It can be something as small as a book you read, or a film you see or a person you meet for twenty minutes. The first step that takes you on a new path may be made for a reason even more trivial than that. Usually the first step does not cost very much. It might turn out that it leads nowhere, but sometimes a few pounds can change your life.

David bought a “Teach Yourself Russian” book that cost about 10 pounds. Thousands buy such a book and never finish it. Some barely even start. They waste 10 pounds for curiosity’s sake and to half learn a strange alphabet. David was one of the few who persevered. He had no teacher, just whatever books and other materials he could find on the Internet. Those first few months were pretty tough. I do not know that I could have done what he did.

After a while as summer began to approach, he began looking a for a language school in Russia. He did as much research as he could but in the end, the information provided by the various schools was much the same. He chose to go to Kaliningrad, partly because he wanted to go somewhere relatively small, where people were unlikely to speak much English, but mainly because it had once been called Königsberg, and he had rather liked Kant.

The three weeks he spent there was a very pleasant holiday. There had been plenty of students from the school with whom he could go on trips and out drinking. The school arranged for him to have conversation partners with two Russian girls in their twenties. They had not spent much time speaking Russian, but it was the first time in some years he had been out with a girl even if it was only for conversation practice. Who could tell, maybe conversation practice would lead to something else, if not this time then maybe the next when he could speak rather better?

He had liked Russia. It was not that far away, but it was very different indeed. There was something exotic in everything being written in Cyrillic and he found the Russian people he met had a subtly different mentality to anyone he had met previously. They looked more or less the same as anyone else from Europe, but he found himself surprised by how they thought. It was not that different, but it changed things around in way that was sometimes similar to the way Russian sentences came out back to front. The whole experience in Russia was like some sort of “Oh, Brave new world that has such people in it” series of encounters to him. At times it was challenging, but it was interesting and he grasped onto what he had found there and did not intend to let it go. He resolved to return and in the interim he decided to study harder and improve his Russian as much as he could.

His three weeks had taught him what he needed to do in order to improve his ability to successfully complete the complex task of speaking a Russian sentence. He had bought a book recommended by a teacher there which had hundreds of grammar drills. He did every exercise in the book, then turned back to the beginning and did them all again. He drilled himself in grammar like learning to play the piano. Only by practice could the piano player learn to play without thinking about the notes. The same applied with Russian. He drilled so that he could stop thinking about the grammar, rather like a piano player can only play by ceasing to think about the fingering of the notes.  He did all that he could to immerse himself, even drown himself in Russia. He watched films, he read novels and he read books on history. He hoped that by somehow almost transforming himself into a Russian he would be able to speak like one.

When he returned the following February, there were only two or three other students, but he did not want to talk to them anyway. He only wanted to talk to Russians. His teachers were amazed at his progress. He began to show off a little in the lessons and performed the odd party piece like translating an English poem into Russian. But they soon put him in his place with a full speed Russian sentence that he could hardly follow. But they did take him seriously. Few students at the school every made any real progress. But this one could.

It was at this point he met Galina. Someone had the bright idea that it would be interesting to put them together. It was. I could still see that spark that had been evident from the beginning. No doubt, it was one of the reasons someone thought they might do well together. It might smoulder, or more likely flicker. It might be damp and struggle to catch fire, but there was something between them, and it kept bringing them back together and preventing them continuing apart. That same indefinable something had been when they first met and it was still there now. It was as if they at any point could have fallen into each other’s arms. There was something like a current fizzing between them and yet there wasn’t the connection. There was something hindering, some barrier that couldn’t be overcome. So there would be a look that was shared, and then the shutters came down and there was nothing. It wasn’t by any means only David who was involved. Galina looked, too. She lit up sometimes when she saw him looking. They were a natural couple, but the moment when they should have kissed had long passed and it wasn’t clear there would be another such moment.  That happens sometimes with people who ought to be together.

David now spoke very well indeed and I could see that the motivation had been Galina. Without her he would not have put in the hours. Without her he would have been stuck at the level of most undergraduates who know a lot of grammar, but speak as if they are working it all out in their heads. In the time since he’d last seen her he’d thrown himself into the subject returning as often as he could to Kaliningrad. He spoke only Russian while he was there and stretched himself beyond what he thought were his limits. There was a freedom in the way he spoke even if there were a lot of mistakes. It was rare indeed for a foreigner to speak this well.

We shared notes in the course of our conversations. Of course, quite a bit of this was technical stuff about grammar and strategies of learning. There is no need to go into any of this. In general, David told me rather more about his experience of learning than I told him about mine. I had the impression of someone who loved to talk so long as he was in the company of someone who wanted to listen. We spent a lot of time together in those few days, either smoking outside, or else we would sneak down to his room and I’d pour him some of the whisky that I’d smuggled in.

I told David that I began Russian at Cambridge, which was more or less true, but I felt there was no need to mention that my degree had nothing whatsoever to do with Russian. It was a sort of optional extra course I took with a Soviet émigré. It wasn’t something I was able to speak about while I was at Cambridge, and I had rather kept that habit ever since. Did I begin speaking Russian when I was eighteen or was it rather earlier? There were times when I had needed to be rather vague on this point. So I never went into any great detail about my origins. That still remained the case even if my initial reason for coyness had rather changed. So I let David talk about his initial struggles with Russian nouns. I mentioned mine only in passing. I did however describe some of my experiences when I’d reached a rather higher level.

When I went to live in Kaliningrad I was given intensive private lessons every day for a year. This was a special programme for those who already had reached an excellent level. I was very lucky indeed to be given the chance to work with some of the best teachers in the Soviet Union.

The lessons were strict, serious and austere. I remember an element of sadism sometimes crept in. The teacher would read a complicated passage of Russian. My task would be to copy it. Every mistake would be gleefully pointed out by the teacher and I would have to copy out each word I got wrong five times. I learned to hate dictation with a passion, but it worked. In time, too, there was something of a thaw. Eventually, I saw that my teachers were rather pleased with my progress and just occasionally I surprised them by doing something rather better than they expected. This drilling combined with total immersion in Russian life where I never ever spoke English meant that after that year I reached the stage where no-one much questioned my Russian. I sounded like any number of Soviet citizens who spoke Russian, not quite like a Russian did but near enough so as it wasn’t an issue worthy of comment. I began to fit in, and gradually I found my voice and no longer needed to be shy at parties. I no longer had to avoid conversation, I no longer had to pretend to be the shy little women to scared to say anything. But I retained elements of that persona as it meant that people took me for granted and sometimes let their guard down. 

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