the good companions

One of the nicest things about being in Petersburg is singing with my choir again. Coming back on Monday for the first time since the spring it was like I’d never been away. As a lot of my Petersburg stories are choir stories, here’s a little who’s who of the characters I spend two or three nights a week with:

NR, our conductor. She is quite a character in the way that only singing teachers are, and anyone who has had one before will know what I mean. She doesn’t do anything in halves; whether she’s hugging and kissing me and telling me how good and clever I am, or berating everyone for causing her so much pain (!) by talking amongst ourselves too much or not listening to one another’s parts (or any other misdemeanour, etc etc), she always expresses herself very intensely, which is more funny and endearing than anything else. It’s nice that these singing-teacher qualities are apparently universal and transcend cultures.bShe always calls me moia devochka (“my girl”) and is always looking out for me.

N, who I know best, and who gets only her first initial because she is the definitive N. She is an alto and I’m a soprano but despite this the universe has brought us together and we’ve remained very close, always write and have two-hour voice calls together and she in the times I’ve been back to Petersburg it’s her I’ve stayed with. I remember the first time I met her I thought she had a rather earnest face and bearing, but she is never, ever stern or severe and her eyes widen and light up when she laughs; and I very quickly got to know this side of her. She is also very devout; talking about the beauty of a specific prayer or song also, like joy, makes her eyes widen and her voice rise and fall.

LS, a second soprano, is still my senior by more than ten years but is still the closest to me in age, so our relationship feels more sisterly than eg NR’s grandmotherly fussing over me and she is, apart from N, the only one I call by the informal pronoun ty. She is one of our best singers.

TR and VK, the other first sopranos. I know TR a little better as we take the same bus to the metro after rehearsal, which gives us time to talk. Like NR, one of her closest friends and with whom she worked before NR’s retirement, she is very in touch with her emotions. Sometimes this is cute and sometimes it’s just awkward for everyone involved. She once burst into tears on the bus after a christening because she found it so moving and I was mortified and had no idea how I was meant to comfort her. Was I meant to comfort her? Was she expecting me to join in too? Perhaps the best way I can sum her up is by the way she, also like NR, spoils me rotten. I cannot open my mouth to sing a single note without her calling me an umnichka and a molodets. Whenever we’re in the trapeznaia after a service and there’s food involved, she follows me around plying me with black bread, grapes, chocolate wafers, and slices of banana.

EB, who has joined the choir since I was last here, is incredibly sweet. She has asked me to meet up with her and her daughter this afternoon because she studies IR and she wants to introduce us, and it’s nice that she has been so warm and friendly.

MG and SG used to come to choir but since I was last here they’ve got married and apparently don’t have time for us any more, which is a shame because they are the cutest couple I think I’ve ever met. MG is a soprano with a beautiful voice and though SG was one of the only men in the choir, he was completely tone-deaf and just came along to sit with SG and knew it was better for all involved if he didn’t join in. She tried to help him along, but it was a lost cause. They now have a joint Instagram where they share their cute adventures, and though they don’t sing with us any more I think they still come to the church and they always compere church concerts and events, so I hope I see them while I’m here.

AK and AB, our only men these days, do their best to hold the fort at the lower end of the scale. They also do all the manly jobs. I know that as a feminist I am meant to reject this kind of stereotyping and distribution of roles, but sometimes it really is helpful. We were once singing at a baptism and half an hour beforehand the paddling pool we were using punctured and started to leak quite aggressively until water was pooling across the chapel floor. While I also wanted to solve this crisis (!), I have no idea how to solve this kind of practical problem and nor do I really care to pretend I do, but they patched it up very quickly and did not expect us “sisters” to lift a finger.

VT seems pleasant but she told me this week that I’m supposed to be thinking about getting married (!!!) and I do not like her VKontakte reposts from pages with names like “HOLY RUS”, which just seem like thinly veiled nationalism. Both of these things make me cast doubt on her character. Moving on.

NY, another soprano, is very short, very cute, and always cheerful. To distinguish her from N, with whom she shares a name, people call NY “little N”.

OKh and LKh, two more altos. NR told me to sit next to LKh on the first day I turned up at the choir and she took very good care of me. Something about her reminds me of Ethel from I Love Lucy: partly the sound and intonation of her voice but partly also this odd aura of innocence and naïveté she gives off despite her fifty or so years, which endears her to me and makes me want to protect her.

YV has such a low voice that she often sings with the men. I don’t know her very well because we don’t sit by each other in rehearsals and don’t have much of a chance to talk outside of them, but I’m eternally haunted by the way she answered a survey I gave them all for my year abroad essay and wrote in the margins that the family is like a church and women are meant to support their husband, who is the priest. Scream (especially because it was completely unrelated to the topic of my survey). I find it quite unsettling that my female friends in the choir always talk about love and marriage in such a positive and, I think, quite idealistic way when just about all of them are divorced or spinsters. What is the logic? Do they not notice the contradiction between what they wish for me and their own lives, or do they somehow think things will be better for me?

Father V, one of the priests at the church who does most of the liaising with our choir and leading the services we sing at. He often drops in on our rehearsals to see how things are going and say hello. I first met him not long after I started going along: we were rehearsing when I heard the door open behind me and everyone else stood up. I did the same and when I turned around I saw the most Russian-looking priest you could possibly imagine, in red robes with a massive gold cross around his neck. I don’t know how to describe him except to invite the reader to picture a stereotypical Russian priest, and I can assure you that whatever you are thinking of, that is Father V exactly. He is very kind and warm and always pleased to see me, but as he once took me aside and asked me if I “related to the theme of same-sex love” to remind me that “we in the Orthodox Church absolutely do not support this”, I know that that warmth towards others has a limit, and part of me lies beyond it. I’m not really interested in doing any more hand-wringing about this, so whatever.

I think that’s about everyone. I wish I had a slightly more upbeat ending to this post (!), but never mind. Our next rehearsal is tomorrow night and we are very busy getting ready for our New Year service and a series of little services in the days immediately after Christmas. I’m moving in with N today, which will be nice because she and I like to practice together. Except I need to pack all my things! – so I will end here and get on with it.

It never occurred to me what our conductor, NR, might get up to before our choir rehearsals – she’s always the first one there – but I got to the church early yesterday and found her alone in the крестильный храм singing from the Psalter. It was such a lovely moment of stillness and intimacy that once I’d realised what she was doing I felt bad for coming in. Over her shoulder she said hello and that she would just finish – she read on, got to the end, bowed and crossed herself – then set the book aside and came to greet me.

five days in moscow

It’s too much to explain but I’m in Russia until the end of February, so we’ll just jump into things.

I arrived in Moscow on Tuesday and left for Petersburg, where I am spending Christmas and New Year with friends, on the Sunday, so here are some small things about those first few days – little observations, comings and goings, all the rest.

One. The flat I’m sharing with two others is on the fifteenth floor, which is going to take some getting used to, especially as I don’t like lifts. My view is very – Russian. Lots of blocks of flats, towers with steam rising out of them day and night, a very new church and a Burger King side by side. I feel like there is something deep to be said about the ‘new Russia’ or whatever in the sight of the two of them next to each other, but I don’t care to and it’s probably trying too hard, whatever, you can work something out for yourself.

Two. I stopped in at Nikolsky monastery on Wednesday evening when I was walking past and heard their bells chiming. I stayed for a while and wished I could have spent more time there because it is so beautiful there – the chapel feels as though it’s practically underground, everything very small and close and intimate. And the choir is gorgeous! While I was there the men and women, of which there were only a handful of each, stood on opposite walls facing one another as they sang and taking turns. The darkness and intimacy reminded me of Perov’s Первые христиане в Киеве. I would love to go back soon just to listen.

Three. Teremok, I have missed you so! I am so glad to be finally reunited with their chicken and potato blini.

Four. On the subject of food, on Friday I went to a chaikhana by my metro stop and it was simply dreamy. I cannot get Central Asian food at home, and though I am still far from Bishkek here, I am a little closer to it than I am from the village. Manty, warm lepyoshka, tea по-ташкентски – truly the dream. I went home extremely content and unable to remember the last time I’d enjoyed a meal quite so much.

Five. Back to churches and a big change in scale. On Wednesday night, which is the eve of St Nicholas’ Day here, I visited Sretensky monastery for the all-night vigil. I visited it when I went to Moscow for a few days last year, but going on a winter night felt completely different to going on a hot summer afternoon. I don’t know how to explain it but I just like the energy of Sretensky, that’s all. I love our little church in Bristol but at the same time it’s very exciting to be surrounded by so many people – hundreds – and to be sharing in the same thing with them, making the same motions and saying the same words and passing akathists to and from one another. It was very different to the stillness of Nikolsky but beautiful in its own way.

Six. Russian metros have such a specific smell and it’s something I’d forgotten all about. Not a bad smell – just a metro smell that the London underground doesn’t have. Going down into the metro for the first time in a long time, something strange and familiar all at once.

Seven. Why is Moscow so big? Who is making me suffer this way? When I moved in there was no duvet in my room, so I trekked to Ikea to get myself one and even though it’s still in the same sort of part of the city (different district, same little eighth-slice of the compass), it took me three buses and two hours to get home. Moscow is just so enormous that when you’re in it, it’s hard to imagine that there is anywhere else in the world, and this forgetting about life beyond Moscow is a kind of losing of oneself.

Eight. My big mission for my time here is to get my hands on volumes three and four of 60 лет советской поэзии, which I discovered in the library in the spring and have since been tragically parted from because it’s impossible to get one at home. Where else can I enjoy Avar and Karakalpak poetry except for in these books? Will I be reunited with translations of my Kyrgyz faves until the time comes I can read them in the original? Please stay tuned for the conclusion of this quest.