Old Guitars

For every 100 Russian guitars, it seems one has a case. That’s how things look as one travels through cities and towns. Watch any sidewalk for 10 minutes, and you’ll see someone walk by gripping a naked guitar, its once-lacquered sheen rubbed away by continued hard use. I’ve seen guitars stuffed into kayaks, bounced around in the back seats of buses and strapped into motorcycle sidecars. A Russian campfire can’t flame without one. The truth is, it can, but when guitar chords fill the air, campfire flames become highly hypnotic. Russians store in their souls an unending supply of melodies. They sing them as the battered guitar resonates – songs in minor keys, tinged with romance, soul-searching and pain. In the firelight, they sing of the Great Patriotic War; of many sons leaving and few coming back. They sing of passionately loving someone who can’t love you in return. They sing songs asking: “Why do I give my heart, when I know it will bring me great sorrow?” You can hear these songs everywhere in Russia: reverberating through a subway station, as an accordionist plays for change from passersby; or on television variety shows, where the guitars are shiny but the grit in the songs stays the same. But the best place to hear Russian songs is at night, in an evergreen forest, with an old guitar playing, while the flickering flames hypnotize.

Campfire

Sunday afternoon, cold and cloudy. My last day in the city this year. Four of us drive from town to the first stand of forest we find. Turning off the main road, we creep through pine woods on a primitive track free of snow but still frozen rock-solid. We build a quick fire, pierce thick sausages with sticks and hold them above leaping flames. Branches pop as fat drips to the fire. Volodya Nikolaev offers a toast. This is a time between winter and spring, he says. A good time to be in the forest with friends. A good time to toast to more times like this, when we can look forward to reawakening our souls, just as spring will reawaken this forest. The sausages taste juicy and sizzling hot. We drink Mstavskoya vodka. It slips down smoothly, warms the head and the heart.

I hear a woodpecker drum. I hear a boom box car pass on the distant main road. We drive five miles home, encountering one car and a bicycle on the way. I arrive at my apartment at 6:50 p.m., almost dark, at a time between seasons in Russia

Borovichi Kids

Borovichi kids can play with anything. Or nothing. An old ball is prized. They play hopscotch or draw on the street. Winter finds them sliding on frozen potholes. They fling shattered hubcaps as Frisbees. They climb trees. They chase each other, sprawl on hoods of old cars, stand in circles, perch on railings and talk. They play in the dust, mud or snow with nothing but their imaginations. Noisy and energetic, they sound no less happy, more so perhaps, than American children their age. Perhaps they sense play time for them in this life will be short. They seize the moment. Adults around them let it happen.