Here were stories I wouldn’t find in any archive. I hadn’t known that the Doukhobors in Saskatchewan almost sent a Communist member of Parliament to Ottawa, nor that the Soviets had tried to infiltrate the Doukhobor community in the Kootenays, sending covert representatives to their meetings. I had heard nothing about the Doukhobor pacifist efforts to support the Japanese interned by the Canadian government during World War II. Or about the roadblocks police set up along the highway so they could search the cars of anyone whose name ended with “in” or “off.” Elmer told of the night when Sons of Freedom radicals blew up an electrical pylon on the shore of Kootenay Lake to protest government pressure to assimilate, bringing down the region’s power grid. With the nearby mines filling with water and lives in danger, the atmosphere in the nearby city of Nelson turned mutinous. Taverns filled with wild-eyed men threatening to grab their guns, go up to the Freedomite village of Krestova, and start lynching Doukhobors.
“But you must be hungry after that flight,” one of the Harolds interrupted. “How about some borscht?”
I looked up from my scribbling and realized that I was a little hungry. Nate looked eager as well.
“That would be nice, actually,” I said, and started gathering my things, thinking we might hit the legendary Weezy’s Borscht Hut in downtown Castlegar. But Harold simply walked up to the counter at the airport café and returned holding two steaming bowls and some slices of homemade bread.
“They sell borscht at the
airport
?” I asked, slack-jawed.
“Doukhobor borscht,” replied Elmer, matter-of-factly. “See that lady?” he said, pointing to the sandy-haired woman behind the counter.
“She’s a Doukhobor too. And a hell of a good right-fielder. Used to play on my ball team.”
I stared down at my soup while Nate dug in. As delightful as all of this was, there was still the fact that I didn’t like to eat things that came out of airports. Not even borscht. Not even from Doukhobor airports. Also, my borscht standards were unreasonably high, having been raised on a Ukrainian version my mother prepared according to an old family recipe. Hers was a mind-bendingly delicious thing that took half a day to prepare. I can still remember Mama sweating in front of her ancient cauldron, a pot that looked as though it had been hammered together by elves in the Carpathian Mountains, turning twenty pounds of soup with a heavy spoon and mumbling something about her aching back while Papa and I breezed in and out of the kitchen for a taste.
But my fear of flinging an insult into the face of Russian hospitality was even greater than my fear of airport soup. Whenever I brought home a guest who didn’t clean their plate, my mother referred to them forever as Melissa-Who-Did-Not-Like-My-Beef-Stroganoff-with-Mayonnaise.
“It’s good,” Nate said, nodding.
I smiled queasily at the Doukhobors and took a sip. It
was
good. And not just in a this-won’t-give-you-salmonella kind of way. The soup was truly good. And the bread was even better.
When we finished, I realized that a couple of hours had somehow gone by. The Doukhobors had to get back to work, but one of the Harolds asked whether tomorrow we’d like to take a tour of the Cultural Centre in Brilliant followed by a trip to Peter “Lordly” Verigin’s tomb. We exchanged phone numbers and stepped outside onto the passenger pickup strip in front of the
airport to say our goodbyes. But suddenly the Doukhobors seemed to hesitate. Elmer bent his head and Harold said something too low for me to hear. The other Harold nodded and consulted a crumpled piece of paper pulled from his breast pocket. Then the three of them formed a little line. Elmer cleared his throat.
“Our counter bass went and passed away on us, so we’re not in top form. But we’d like to sing a song for you.”
The sun was burning brightly over Castlegar and Brilliant and the Valley of Consolation. It was the kind of squinting light that usually fills me with a desperate longing for a windowless room and a strong cup of coffee, but now I blinked into it joyfully. The Doukhobors were
singing
—long mournful notes, rising and falling, in three-part harmony. They sang in a language that was neither exactly Russian nor Ukrainian, accented by a flat twang reminiscent of the midwestern plains. It was an unfamiliar cadence, like something from that other world, that place where the Skoptsy sail across the sky in their ark of salvation. When they finished, Nate and I clapped and begged for another song, and then another. The Doukhobors obliged us, not minding the occasional harried passenger wheeling by with a sideways glance.
After the third song, one of the Harolds jiggled his keys in one hand by way of goodbye. He set off in search of his car just as Elmer turned to me.
“Now how about
you
sing
us
a song?”
“Yeah, you should sing them something,” said Nate. “You could do that Russian one.”
“Hey, Harry, come back!” called one Harold to the other. “She’s gonna sing something for us.”
With the Doukhobors assembled before me I turned to face the airport parking lot. Cars came and went. I could see the heat rising from the tops of Mazdas and Ford pickups. A sedan pulled up behind us and a family began loudly unloading bags
from their trunk. Somewhere behind me planes lifted off into the mountains.
“To ne veter vetku klonit,”
I sang in Russian.
’Tis no wind that’s bending the branch.
It was an old folk song, the only one I happened to know by heart.
The first notes sounded uncertain, wobbly—I hoped to do better with the second line. I could see Nate from the corner of my eye, fiddling with his iPhone. And there were Harold, Harold, and Elmer, watching me expectantly from their place under the awning. I found it hard to concentrate, to forget that I happened to be standing in an airport parking lot, hot under the extra sweater that wouldn’t fit into my suitcase, my lungs full of exhaust and asphalt fumes. I closed my eyes for a moment, tried to clear my mind, concentrate. And then, without warning, there it was. The adornment. That feeling of grace the Doukhobors knew well, that can come over you in the most ordinary of places, even as you confront a group of strangers. The thing you are trying to do—to turn air into notes, and notes into song—seems as ridiculous and impossible as an alchemist’s trick. You feel leaden, earthbound. Your audience looks at you, their faces inscrutable. You close your eyes and focus on the melody. You hold it there in your mind, trying to pin it into place. But it is like trying to pin a living butterfly to a board. You steady yourself again. You take another deep breath. This is pointless. You open your mouth and hope for the best.
And then something catches. And then you soar.
Mama’s Borscht Recipe
Ingredients
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, finely minced (about 1 cup)
1 medium carrot, peeled and finely shredded
1 small (or ½ medium) beet, peeled and finely shredded
half of a 6-ounce can tomato paste
about 3 liters of water
salt and black pepper
4–5 large potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
2 medium-large green bell peppers, cored, seeded, and cut into ½-inch squares
1 small (or ½ medium) head green cabbage, finely shredded
2 cloves garlic, chopped (optional)
basil or 2 bay leaves (optional)
juice of 1 lemon (to taste—optional)
2–3 teaspoons sugar (to taste—optional)
Directions
Heat the oil in a large skillet (6 quarts) over medium-high heat until hot. Reduce the heat to medium, add the onion, and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Add carrot and beet, cook just until they start to change color. Add the tomato paste and cook together, stirring, for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, simmer water and 1¾ teaspoons salt in a large soup pot. Stir in the fried vegetables with tomato paste, bring to a boil. Add potatoes, green peppers, cabbage, and garlic; simmer over low heat until potatoes are tender (about 20 minutes). Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Add bay leaves or basil (optional). Bring to a boil again and simmer covered over very low heat for another 35–45 minutes. Add more water if needed. Adjust the taste with lemon juice and sugar according to personal preferences.
Makes 14 to 16 servings. May be served garnished with sour cream for individual portions.
Keep in mind: borscht tastes better the next day (and even better the next week).
N
ot a single trip that I’ve ever taken to Siberia—and there have been many—has ever gone according to plan. Perhaps that’s why I have such an irrational appreciation for these first crumpled hours. Landing. Luggage. Cab. Hotel. Thank you very much, Siberia. Everything will go to shit soon enough, but at least you’ve eased me into things by way of this boring but reassuringly logical progression of events. And let me just start out by saying that the landing strip at Tolmachevo in Novosibirsk is not a series of rotting planks laid across the snow, and that today, the airport is neither an igloo nor some deteriorating Soviet bunker. It is the same citadel of gleaming steel and polished glass you find in any Western city. Oh, and you will not implode upon first contact with the atmosphere. Your eyeballs will not shatter. Frost will not instantly form on your underpants. To be honest? It’s really not
that
cold. You will be comforted to find no fewer than five cafés happy to sell you an overpriced cheese sandwich and a cappuccino with almond syrup at seven in the morning. See? Just like everywhere else. Aside from the icicles dangling from the awnings like a row of loaded Kalashnikovs, you’d think you’d just landed in Missoula or Bar Harbor.
By now, I’ve become something of a scholar when it comes to arriving in Novosibirsk. For example, I can tell you that the cabdrivers greeting arrivals to Tolmachevo can be divided into exactly two groups. The first is represented by a young man with closely cropped hair, a black leather jacket, and a vaguely thuggish air. He has no interest in talking and will spend the whole ride blaring
blatnaya muzika
from the car stereo while keeping his eyes tethered to the backsides of blondes making their miraculous way over the ice in stiletto heels. The other kind of cabdriver requires far more energy. He is slightly dumpy, with the collective sorrow of the gulag puddled in his drooping eyes. Kind of a Siberian version of Bill Murray. I will enter the cab and automatically reach for the seat belt only to find that the clasp has either been sawed off with great violence or shoved so deep into the anus of the car that, with my mere arm’s-length grasp, I could never hope to retrieve it. Then the cabbie and I will exchange introductions and have a conversation that roughly follows this script:
CABBIE: So … America. How is it?
ME: Good, uh, pretty good. How’s life in Siberia?
CABBIE: Eh—how is
life
? Life is hard. Life is hard everywhere. Where in America do you live? Virginia?
ME: I live in New York.
CABBIE: Ah! My sister-in-law’s nephew is studying at the polytechnic institute in Virginia. Perhaps you know Bulat Antipovich?
ME: Sorry. New York is pretty far from Virginia.
CABBIE: What a pity. He is an exemplary young person. Tell me, how much does it cost to rent an apartment in New York?
ME: That depends.
CABBIE: But approximately?
ME: Really, it depends on exactly where you live and what kind of apartment you have.
CABBIE: Who cares, right? It is all the same now anyway—New York, Moscow, Novosibirsk—everywhere is equally expensive,
blyad
.
ME: True.
(There is a pause punctuated only by the sound of cheesy pop music from a generic radio station.)
CABBIE: I hate this music. Phoo! Everything on the radio these days is carrot-love.
(You have no idea that in Russian
carrot-love
is an idiom for love-shmove.
Shmove
doesn’t usually mean “carrot” in Russian, except in this case, when it does.)
CABBIE: Tell me, what kind of car do you drive?
ME: Honda Civic.
CABBIE: You have automatic transmission or manual?
ME: Manual.
CABBIE: Tsk. Manual is not so good. It is very capricious?
ME: Sometimes.
(Then there is another long pause during which one’s attention is called to the motor grinding away like a fork stuck in an Insinkerator. The morning mist is burning up in the first rays of sunlight and pale gray outlines of concrete buildings begin to emerge on the horizon, like illustrations from Dante’s
Purgatory
.)
CABBIE: Alina?
ME: Yes, Vanya?
CABBIE: Can I ask you something?
(Pause.)
ME: Sure.
(Pause.)
CABBIE: If there is such a thing as God, why must we endure such suffering … ?
And so it will go until we arrive in Akademgorodok, where the cabbie will insist on calling his wife to get Bulat’s phone
number so that when you get back to New York you can tell him that Vanya wishes him success with his studies and promises that his wife, Raisa, will make his favorite
holodetz—
a frightening kind of jellied meatloaf, the key ingredient of which is commonly cow’s feet—when he comes home for the holidays.
With the cab ride behind me, I will stand at the threshold to the Golden Valley Hotel, confronting my final hurdle. Zolotaya Dolina does not look anything like a golden valley. It is a typical Soviet-era hotel, and as such it more closely resembles an egg carton. I approach the front desk full of apprehension. Since the room quality at Golden Valley varies so drastically, the registration process tends to involve a certain degree of negotiation. Once I went to sleep in a room on the third floor and woke up thinking I was on a ski slope. An Arctic wind had made its way across a thousand miles of tundra to find a happy outlet here, in the gap below my windowsill. I had opened the door to my room only to duck down immediately when I discovered real Siberian birds flapping down the length of the entire hallway, cawing ravenously. So now I approach the reception desk with a cut-the-shit look on my face. “Don’t even think of putting me on the floor with the birds,” my eyes say, “I want to wake up with the ends of my hair fried to a crisp. I want to feel like I am falling asleep under a tanning lamp. I want
heat
. And plenty of it. Because if one thing’s for sure, Comrades, it’s that I didn’t come to Siberia for the weather.”
But why did I keep coming back to Siberia? I had no family connection to Siberia and, when I first traveled there, no friends to speak of. The Ukrainian city of Kharkov, where I was born and where my father’s family still lives, lies nearly two thousand miles west of Novosibirsk. My parents, and everyone else I knew, wondered why, if I wanted to experience Russia, I didn’t just start with
Moscow or St. Petersburg, the cosmopolitan city home to my mother’s side of the family. It was as though I was passing up New York City or San Francisco in favor of an extended stay on Three Mile Island. The first time I traveled to Siberia, where the nonprofit I worked for ran a teaching program, could have been passed off as a mere professional obligation. But that would have been a roundabout lie. I’d accepted the job to begin with only because of its peculiar regional focus. Besides, that explanation would have withered under the scrutiny of my subsequent trips, which at last count numbered about a dozen. I have spent, all told, about a year living in Siberia. And when I wasn’t working or traveling in Siberia, I was thinking about Siberia. I was listening to bootlegs of the Siberian punk singer Yanka Dyagileva or researching the Skoptsy, a castrati sect once banished to the far reaches of Yakutia.
I still don’t have a single compelling reason for what first intrigued me about the place, only nebulous justifications and unsatisfying excuses. First there was the notion that Siberia was kind of like Russia, only with training wheels. A good place for beginners. The only taste of Russia I’d ever had was my own family, and that small dose in itself was already overwhelming. I feared I just couldn’t handle the big cities of western Russia. What if everyone in St. Petersburg was like my mother and spoke in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS ALL THE TIME? Then there was my admittedly unhealthy fascination with Siberia’s weirdness, its monumental scale and inhuman temperatures, its Evenk reindeer hunters, Tuvan throat singers, and Altai shamans—all things that sounded considerably more interesting than an eight-hour stroll through the Kremlin, quality time with Lenin’s petrified corpse notwithstanding. But more than anything, I bought into this mythic idea that Siberia was where you went to experience the
real
Russia. From the first time I crossed the Urals, I remained convinced that it was only here, among the descendants of Cossack warriors, political prisoners, and religious dissenters, in these
gray and cosseted cities, that I would become one with the True Slavic Soul; I would come to terms with the country my family had fled and deconstruct my own personal issues regarding cultural identity and displacement. Or perhaps I would do none of these things. Perhaps I would just fill my backpack with birch tchotchkes and endure some endless train rides. Regardless of what I did, my parents had me convinced that my first trip to any part of Russia, however real or fake, would also be my last. Like most Western immigrants who came of age in the Soviet Union, they were terrified by news reports from the New Russia, all those stories of mafia shootouts and pyramid scams and nuclear warheads being sold for a dollar on eBay. It was a murderous chaos that had nothing to do with the repressed and stagnant country they remembered, a place where problems officially did not exist.
“These people have become complete moral degenerates!” my parents bleated. “They will do anything for money. They will kill you for an egg sandwich and send your remains home in a ziplock bag. So when you are cold and dead, and your kidneys are up for sale in the back of some newspaper in Cherepovets, do not blame us. Remember: we warned you about that godforsaken hole.”
Then one day, while I was in college, my roommate’s good friend from high school was murdered while on a language exchange program in Moscow. This event only confirmed what my parents had already expended vast amounts of spittle trying to explain. It would take another decade for me to gather up my courage and travel to Russia. Even then, one could scarcely say I threw caution to the wind; my first day in Chita City was spent staring hungrily out the window, wondering whether I should risk calling a taxi to ferry me safely to the tiny grocery store across the street. But after several days spent alone in a dorm
room, deep in the drafty confines of the Chita Pedagogical Institute, with nothing but the sounds of mice and cockroaches playing badminton in my kitchen cabinets to keep me company, I realized that life in Siberia was not a real-world version of
Grand Theft Auto
. I could stop hugging the sides of buildings whenever I stepped outside, because if anything was going to kill me, it was my very own predilection for a particular sort of Siberian smoked cheese composed of about 90 percent saturated fat and 10 percent salt. No, my problem with Siberia was not a surplus of excitement but its polar opposite, the age-old dilemma of how to fill all of that time and space, two things that Siberia had always offered both tourists and prisoners alike in great abundance.
I felt this most intensely during my longest stay in Siberia, a five-month stretch during which I worked for a large foundation based in the city of Novosibirsk. My research assignment actually involved a great deal of travel, but for that first month, I lived in the city and worked at the main office. I was still too scared to wander far beyond my comfort zone, so my orbit was limited to the spheres of home and office, trips to the market, and a daily quest for coffee that did not emerge, granulated, from a dusty packet. My self-imposed isolation came to an end only once I left Novosibirsk for Tomsk and my field research began.
I remember it was my first day off, and I had taken what tourists in warmer climes like to call “the chicken bus” to Kolarovo, a tiny village where one of the rare eighteenth-century Orthodox churches to have survived the Soviet wrecking ball still stood. When I arrived I found that Kolarovo did not disappoint, with its wooden cottages sinking quietly into the dark earth and its picturesque church keeping watch from a lonely atoll like a Palekh miniature come to life. After visiting the church I decided to hike down to a lake I’d spotted in the valley below and was soon walking along the shore, basking in the sight of all that open land and
the boundless, incredible Siberianness of it all. But half an hour later the spell was broken. I was bored, itchy, and feeling the pangs of a caffeine-deprivation headache coming on. Moreover, dusk was falling and I was starting to worry about the bus situation. I hadn’t bothered to examine the schedule too closely, figuring that sooner or later a
marshrutka
would putter by. Now, standing by the road and squinting into the darkening distance, I began to doubt this was true.
That’s when I noticed two men clambering up the untended path from the lake, swatting the weeds out of their path and cursing as they made their way toward me. When they drew closer I could see that one of them was dressed in jeans and a collared shirt, the other in a dirty Adidas tracksuit.
“Privet!”
the cleaner of the two called out. He was still huffing when he stopped in front of me. “We were down at the lake and saw you standing by the side of the road for some time now. Just wondering if you might be lost … ?” The man in jeans introduced himself as Pasha and his friend as Sasha, grimacing a little at the unfortunate rhyme. They had been fishing, Pasha explained, and grilling shashlik down by the shore when they’d spotted me. I told them I had come from Tomsk and was just wondering about the next bus back, whereupon Pasha confirmed my fears—the last bus had been the one that brought me to Kolarovo.