chapter 8 - generation games

I’m amazed at how many Russian words have crept into Babby’s vocabulary even though she never lived here. She is even starting to sing snippets of old Russian folk songs, childhood tunes she must have learned from her father. She tells me stories about her siblings, people who are mostly just names on Christmas cards to me, people who become real, with family faults I see in myself and my sisters. Dad sounds like the carbon copy of her brother Dimitri. Serious, conscientious, concerned about what the world thinks of him and his family, everything logical, even his sock drawer methodically colour coded.

My father, a man who would spend hours learning the rules of some board game but who never enjoyed playing it. Who thought nothing of explaining some difficult math problem no matter what time of day or night but who never asked why it was important to solve that particular problem, as long as a teacher or a boss said it was important, it was. A man who had no time for newfangled things but who would spend hours hovered over the latest catalogue of new bean varieties to grow each year, memorizing attributes and parentage. A man who judged himself and others by social convention, always comparing himself to the world, but never changing. Always finding his children lacking. A man who tried to understand my love of maps but never the love of travel behind it.

Babby is loosening up and enjoying herself. This must be what she’s like in Reno, her favourite holiday place. At home she’s quite abstinent, denying herself even simple treats because she couldn’t let go of the lessons learned during two world wars and the Depression and what she hears in the news. Yesterday she surprised me by declining sour cream, saying “I am worrying about my cholesterol.” I almost spat up my blini. 84, tiny as a doll and healthy as a horse! ‘Have the sour cream’, I wanted to say. ‘Have a tub of it! You’re 84 - deny yourself nothing.’ I didn’t have to say it though. She snuck a spoonful when she thought no one was looking.

Myself I am enjoying seeing how life revolves around baby Vasily. He is a poppet, a smiling Buddha, fat, good natured and bland, but you’d think he was king the way his every desire was anticipated. Seeing his mother’s curly hair and his father’s pointy ears together in one new little body, I suddenly miss Sidney’s kids, now in Edmonton, and even Sam’s dogs, which I have to admit do actually look a lot like her. I think it’s the eyes.

I had never really worried about having children myself seeing as there has never been any real opportunity. But now, my great age of 34 seems to be a green light for everyone to tell me how important, how necessary it is to be married and have children. I see Vasily smile at me and for the first time wonder what it would be to have such a smiling piece of oneself.

Chapter 8 - theatrical day without drama

Blinis and coffee for breakfast then we all went off in the car, a rattly Lada, squashed and pressed against the windows except for baby Vasily who had an entire seat to himself. We went to see ‘Pinocchio’ at the famous Obraztsov puppet theatre, a modern looking place full of children dressed in their best. Of course I couldn’t understand any of the performance, but that didn’t diminish the pleasure. Afterwards there was an appearance by ‘Papa Frost’, the Russian equivalent to ‘Santa Claus’ or ‘Father Christmas’. I quite like the name ‘Papa Frost’. Vasily, who has been saying nothing but “Papa Frost” all day suddenly turned red and started howling, clinging to Svetlana’s skirts and screaming. Auntie Galina gave him a smack about the head which of course made him howl even louder. I picked him up and carried him off to look at pictures of puppets on the walls, whispering endearments until his sobbing stopped. Nothing dries quicker than a tear at his age.

Squashed trip back home for a big bowl of soup and then the others rested while I went out to explore the Novodevichy cemetery. Austere and crowded with bodies cheek by jowl, large tree roots have raised the slabs under which decades of Moscow’s citizens lay. Black and white marble indicated final destinations for Khrushchev, Chekhov, Gogol and Prokofiev. And Stalin’s wife, her husband now suspected of her supposed suicide. Chaliapin, whose citizenship was stripped whilst touring in France, his remains only returned to ‘mother Russia’ a dozen years ago. Rubinstein, Shostakovich, Stanislavsky, Tupolev, Ulanova – Russia’s artists and scientists row on row. Crows flew and rustled overhead. Somber birds, crows. They flapped in the bare trees and rasped down at me through black branches. I love trees in winter. Anything can look lovely decorated with leaves and blossoms, but nature’s true beauty is in her bones. I thrill to the sight of a naked tree against a grey sky – graceful, fluid, proud, real. A raw breeze slithered around me and I shivered. Still no snow.

I managed to get tickets for ‘La Boehme’ at the Bolshoi, thinking it would be a treat. Arkady said nothing, but then he rarely does. When Auntie Galina had left the room to make tea Svetlana said to me “Opera. How dull. You can return my ticket at the box office. I’d rather stay home.” Auntie Galina caught the end of her comments as she returned to the room, and said of course Svetlana was going to go, her relative had bought the things without anyone having a say in it and so the only polite thing would be to go and make the best of it. Then she told me I had nothing appropriate to wear and ordered Svetlana to give me one of her dresses. It was a hideous green colour, but I didn’t have any say in the matter. Svetlana didn’t look entirely happy about it either. But I was determined to enjoy myself this evening.

At the theatre I took everyone’s coat and then had a terrible time trying to find the cloakroom in the labyrinthine halls. How many times as a girl did I dream of being at the Bolshoi? Of course back then it was to be on the stage but it’s much better to watch and listen with joy. It’s nice not to feel the need to perform anymore. In the intermission I got Babby a bar of chocolate, a selfish act as I quite like Russian chocolate myself.

Babby was unusually quiet and I asked her if she was having a good time. “Oh yes dear, the singing is quite lovely.”

“And the theatre? Isn’t it wonderful to be someplace so historic and famous?”

“Yes, it’s somewhat like the Municipal Theatre at home isn’t it? Although I think I prefer the Municipal Theatre.”

“Well…” I foundered. How could she compare the two, this veritable palace and a square modernist block built in the 1960s? “The Municipal isn’t all that old you know.”

“Oh yes, but it’s so much bigger. And it has carpet.”

Chapter 8 - First sign of trouble

Tonight we all went out to a concert held in an old wooden building down a dark lane, lit with bare light bulbs and one unprepossessing leaded glass window. The performers were dressed casually, most definitely amateurs but terribly earnest. After the concert we were taken to a French restaurant obviously meant to impress us, which worked for Babby who declared it “quite posh”. It was filled with well-to do people that Auntie Galina whispered to us were black market mafia. I wondered if others whispered the same about us. Everyone is beautifully dressed in exquisite, delicate fashions, probably because in here, like everywhere in Moscow it is extremely well heated. Too well heated – I sweltered in my wool dress.

We drank cranberry flavoured vodka and ate well. I guess what Svetlana calls “boring old Russian food” is passe for locals now that new cuisines have become available after ‘glasnost’. Except for German cuisine, I suppose not so surprisingly. Galina hates anything German. Babby is not so keen either and they both start badmouthing a country they know nothing about and to which they have never been, all due to a war that ended fifty years ago. I couldn't stand it. “Germany is not just about the Nazis. There’s more to it than that, thousands of years more.”

“You don’t have to tell me, dear,” Babby said. “I’ve seen The Sound of Music.”

I laughed. It sounded like something Mom would say. Then I caught myself. If Mom had really said something like that I’d be rolling my eyes but with Babby I just laugh. I wonder why we are harder on the generation that brought us up. Especially our mothers. Women are so hard on their mothers.

What I really wanted was “boring old Russian food”, which wouldn’t be boring to me at all, but it might be hard to sell the others on this. Auntie Galina is a bulldozer, knowing what everyone wants without taking the time to actually find out. “Arkady, you know you can not have the lamb. You always want the lamb and then say how bad it tastes. So you are not having the lamb. Have the salmon instead. Svetlana, don’t squirm. The baby will not sleep through the night if you squirm. Arkady, our young guest is almost finished her drink! Order another one right away. What will she think of us if we allow her glass to go dry? I noticed this morning your bed was wet. Are you wetting the bed again?”

“That was the dog. And what do you mean ‘again’ Mama? I haven’t wet the bed since I was eight.”

Svetlana sits quietly with a miserable face as her mother-in-law tells her what to eat and what to wear, then she leans over the table to whisper conspiratorial criticisms of every other woman in the room to me. Getting her own back I guess. I guess it's not confined to mothers - women can be so often mean about other women.

Svetlana asked me why I wasn’t married yet and wasn’t it unfair to my parents who no doubt want grandchildren. Before I could answer Babby got in there. “She's sowing wild oats these days by the bushel full. And needlessly! She had a perfectly good opportunity she let slip away. A lovely young man. Perfectly well suited husband material.”

“Babby!” I said disturbed at the blush I could feel, “That was over a year ago and you never even met the man.”

“I spoke to him on the telephone. You can tell a lot from voices.” She said with as haughty an air as a 4 foot high chatterbox in a voluminous orange shawl is able to produce. I was about to silence them all and take the focus off the subject by saying this perfect man of Babby’s had chosen Germany in which to study, but I was too slow.

“You didn’t get all modern on him did you?” Auntie Galina asked. ”Young girls today, feeling they are worthless unless they drive men away with their independence. Working themselves out of marriage. Putting off having children until they are too old and tired to be good mothers.”

“Oh he was perfectly willing to let her work,” piped in Babby.

“Well what’s the problem then? No money?”

“He had a good job, and was studying to get even more education. I don’t think money was really a problem was it dear? He gave her lovely presents. An enormous globe, the biggest I've ever seen, full of countries I've never heard of. And books. Anyway, things she wanted.”

Who's 'she' I want to shout - the cat's mother? I'm sitting right here!

“Was he ugly then? It is very hard to be with an ugly man but when the lights go out they all look the same. And even an ugly man is better than no man at all.”

I jerked into the conversation. “Excuse me, but if I could get in one sentence about the topic of my life, I would like to say that I am perfectly able to choose my own partner if I even need one at all, which is debatable. Besides what happened between Hamish and me is my business.”

Babby patted my hand and soothed, “Of course it is dear, we only want to see you are happy and looked after.” Then, hastily, after seeing my response “I mean, not lonely.”

Auntie Galina had to have the last word of course. “I think it is disgraceful for women these days to think they know so much better than their mothers and grandmothers what life is.” She looked, no, glared, at Svetlana who shrank into her seat and I felt like kicking the old shrew under the table. But of course I didn’t. I’d like to think it’s because I’m a polite house guest but I suspect I’m merely a coward.

Chapter 8 - Moscow observations

As the others prepared to talk, or rather listen, to the stories I’ve heard hundreds of times before, I took myself outside, using Anastasia as my excuse to take a long walk. We started along the Moscow river, passing under the gaze of the not quite finished colossus Peter the Great. I silently thanked the man who, desiring a more exact knowledge of his eastern territories, initiated his Great Northern Expedition to explore and map Siberia. Such a remote part of the world charted not for expansion but for knowledge itself. That didn’t happen often.

Anastasia and I took a detour through a deserted Gorky park. Dilapidated with rickety shanties and rusting equipment. I saw one lone man ice fishing in a tiny frozen pond. There were a couple of kiddie rides up and running although no one was around. The loudspeakers at the entrance broadcast lively, blaring music. Anastasia did not approve of the loud music I could tell. She turned her head to look up at me with pain in her old dog eyes. ‘Are you a reincarnation of another Anastasia?’ I asked her with my thoughts. She blinked. I took that to be a yes and picked up her poop with a bit more reverence after that.

I turned in at Red Square to see the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Basilica looking like some mad Arabian dream and zigzagged back through streets and lanes, always within sight of renovation cranes hovering over Christ the Savior Cathedral. Peeked inside the famous GUM department store, a multi-leveled glass arcade housing several stores that all sell the same things. Moscow is dilapidated and magnificent, everything on a massive scale. Buildings take up entire blocks, square and solid in red brick and grey stone with little decoration. Streets are wide, in many case six lanes wide, although it is evident that the lanes do not restrict, for cars pitch and weave across the road at will. I saw u-turns completed right in the middle of the street without even slowing down.

The men are somewhat colourless but the women of Moscow are impressive. Very smartly dressed in furs, impeccable makeup and stylish shoes. How they can manage to look so groomed in polluted air and muddy streets I don’t know. The December air is cold and the skies are grey but I am surprised not to see snow. Disappointed too, I want a ride in a troika sleigh.

When I returned I encountered one of Auntie Galina’s neighbours, a well dressed man accompanied by two guards armed with Kalashnikov rifles. He motioned me to join him in the elevator but I smiled him on, pretending to be waiting for someone else. I did not fancy standing in a glass elevator glass next to someone who needs two armed guards. Back in the flat everyone was resting, so I read “Crime and Punishment”. “Such a troubling book” Auntie Galina said with a sniff when she saw it, but I have always felt connected with Dostoyevsky somehow.

I was frequently distracted by the landscape out the window however, the river off to the left, and one of the so-called “Seven Sisters” in the distance. These are wonderful old Soviet buildings that look like severe wedding cakes, tiers topped with a communist star. I placed my hand on the shiny window pane to feel the ebbing sun’s weak warmth. Light reflected on the top layer of creamy white paint, showing off long ago brush strokes by some unknown painter.

Chapter 8 - homesteading in Moscow

We were both bleary-eyed this morning. Our night was interrupted often; Babby’s because of the jet lag and mine because of Babby tottering off to the toilet at what seemed a constant shuffle. When she did sleep she snored loudly and robustly.

Babby always was talkative, but travelling with her really puts it in the spotlight. As I write this she is going on and on about a mish mash of things – politics, birds, how pale Russian fruit is, her garden back home. No one else has said anything for twenty minutes, nor even really looked at her as they go about their chores, but she carries on cheerfully and undaunted. So different from her son. I now wonder if Dad is so silent because he never got a word in edgewise.

“Of course I don’t need to talk to you about the war. I wonder what Stalin was really like. I bet he didn't eat enough fruit. The apples we get at home are so red they’re black, these must be a winter variety. No scabs though that’s a blessing. I would have killed for fruit during the depression. Vegetables too, other than potatoes. Did you have fresh vegetables here then? Or maybe you didn’t have a depression the same as we did. Terrible drought. Our chickens dying left, right and centre. Oh look! A lovely little thing just flashed by. It has a white flash on its wing now what would that be? I have a chickadee at home that knows me – he always comes to eat the gumps out of the porridge pot. I call him Chucky Dee, Dee, Dee, Dee, Dee! Chucky Dee, Dee, Dee, Dee, Dee! I’ll call and there he is, hungry as anything.”


A silent Arkady sloped off to work early this morning and the rest of us enjoyed a leisurely breakfast. Babby offered to cook and I am happy to say Auntie Galina wouldn’t let her near the kitchen. Babby’s cooking is and has always been abysmal, worse even than Mom’s. Cookies like rubber. Tea thick enough to stop a bullet. Boiled meat. I remember hearing the story of when Sam was born, and Babby stayed at our house to look after the rest of us. Mom’s boss gave her five porterhouse steaks as a celebration gift. Five beautiful steaks. Steak was an expensive treat in our house and my mom sat in the hospital trying to decide how and when to cook those precious and rare bovine gems. But as soon as she stepped over her threshold with baby in arms, Babby patted her on the arm and said, “Now don’t you worry about that meat that was lying around. I boiled it up so there’d be no germs.” My mother’s heart turned cold at the sight of five grey, desiccated slabs sitting on a platter in the fridge. Dad always said that’s why there are only three of us kids, Mom couldn’t bear the thought of Babby in her kitchen ever again.

Far better she should sit and talk about old times, growing up on the prairies, her early life with Grampa, a traveling salesman during the depression who sold household items nobody wanted and no one could afford. His death, literally on the road, his heart stopping as he walked from one house to another, goods spilled out on the sidewalk like scattered weeds. Then her and all her children moving to the tiny farm she called the homestead. I always liked that word. ‘Homestead’ sounds so cosy. But I imagine in reality it was anything but.

chapter 8 - ties that bind

We had a quiet evening listening to some music on the radio while Babby wrote postcards. I wonder she has anything to impart having been here all of three hours, but she tossed off several before willing to call it a night. She’s amazing. I’m hearing her faint accent anew – that weird combination of Danish, Russian and Canadian. I guess she comes by it honestly. I remember her mother, just barely, as I must have been four when she died. She only learned the rudiments of the English language. I never met my great-grandfather but I know he never learned a word of English, a fatal omission as it happened.

It must have been some life. Setting up home in the flat plains of a new country, a fisherman who had to learn how to be a farmer, providing for a family of nine children. Babby was the youngest but one. There was also a cook and a ‘girl who did’. Babby once told me how each child had been instructed to save a particular family treasure in case of fire. Hers was an enormous samovar, an object as tall as she and twice as heavy. Thankfully her strength was never put to the test. What a thing to put on a child!

They never had money, but after the eldest sons grew old enough to taste a bit of the outside world and earn, they got a horse to make life easier for the father who had always pulled the plough himself. Three days later, still not used to my great grandfather’s touch, the horse bolted, reins tangled up in arms and legs. Every command the middle aged man could muster was shouted as he was dragged over the fields for miles, his body becoming a bloody and then a silent mass, but the horse would not heed. Of course not. Canadian horses do not understand Russian.

Chapter 8 - Babby's homeland

Travelling with an 84 year old has some real benefits; we got seats right at the front of the plane and received the most attentive service. Babby was glued to the window the whole trip, telling me about icebergs and cloud cover for 14 hours. At one point she asked me to get her a hankie out of her capacious handbag and I got to see what was inside:
· six hankies
· one pair of wool socks
· cotton neckerchief
· four little boxes of Chicklets gum
· notebook decorated all over with pictures of kittens
· pocket diary promoting a brand of greeting cards on every page
· plastic rain cap - gold
· two full decks of cards and a spare joker
· three rolls of Life Savers (butterscotch, rum and butter, grape – her favourites)
· Paper serviettes
· a roll of toilet paper
· a silver plastic candelabra in two pieces that fit together with a snap.
The last item in particular had me stymied. I could only hope it was a gift.

Auntie Galina met us with enormous fur-coated hugs and a car, driving us to her apartment right in the centre of Moscow. Though dark, I could see the streets were crowded, and we took more than two hours to get what seemed a relatively short distance but Auntie Galina says this is a normal rush hour. Imagine having to do this every day!

The apartment is larger than I expected. I guess my reading material was pre-perestroika and so my views of what to expect were skewed. We are at the top of a nine-storey building with a glass elevator that rides up the outside to get to our floor. Auntie Galina’s daughter Svetlana, a carbon copy of her mother except pregnant, silent son-in-law Arkady who looks to be at least 9 feet 6 inches tall, and toddler Vasily met us with hugs and kisses all round. A dog named Anastasia met us with a more lugubrious expression. “Just like my Binky at home”, Babby cooed to it. A fabulous display of smoked trout, caviar, salads and wine awaited us. Babby professed she only wanted a cup of tea but far be it from me to pass up such a feast.


While we ate Babby kept up a non-stop chat interspersed with showing photos. “Betty came west because her dad had a bad stroke and was not expected to live. Pearl lives next door. Her husband has a little greenhouse but she is a few sandwiches short of a picnic if you catch my drift. Don’t the potatoes look good? I must spray them for flea beetle next year. Mogen’s wife Violet came from Saskatchewan. She dove into the beach at Jericho at low tide and died of head injuries. She wasn’t used to the ocean. No low tides in Saskatchewan you see.”

I’m sure no one was really taking in any of it, but that doesn’t seem to deter her. Or to matter. It will all get repeated, no doubt, several times during the next two weeks. It’s good to see her happy, seeing the family she’s never seen while she can still see. I am struck by the family resemblance. Second cousins once removed, but she and Auntie Galina have the same chins. And the same girlie laugh. I’m used to it from Babby, but it doesn’t seem to match Auntie Galina’s formidable personality. I asked Arkady to show me how to put in a call home as I knew Mom and Dad would want to know we’d arrived safely.

“Was Galina there to meet you? I’d heard she was unreliable. Was she late? Did you have to wait?”

I didn‘t rise to the obvious. “No Mom they were there on time and got us here just fine.”

“Have you eaten? Are they feeding you?”

“Yes we’ve just eaten a lovely meal. Caviar Mom.”

“Oh, well no doubt it’s as common as beans there. I hope you’re not letting your grandmother eat caviar. You know what fish does to her insides.”


“Don’t worry, she just ate bread and salads.”

“Salads? Do they have salads there then? Are they washed properly? Do they know how to wash salad properly? Is the water clean?”

“It wasn’t that kind of salad. It was cucumber, peeled. And potato. Cabbage. Everything is well cooked or peeled or pickled.” I rolled my eyes. Here she is commenting on others when she is always notoriously late and hasn’t eaten a vegetable that wasn’t in a can or frozen in decades.

“Good. You make sure she gets enough to eat. But don’t let her near fish. And make sure she gets to bed on time.”

“I will. We’re just having a cup of tea. I’ll give you the number here so you can contact us.”

“Oh my goodness don’t bother. It will be so expensive to call all that way and I know we couldn’t work out the numbers anyway.”

“Oh, so we’ll just call you then. On Auntie Galina's phone. The one who is hosting your daughter and mother-in-law." I tried to sound pleasantly acidic.

“Much better.”

Curses! She always wins!