András Zoltán Bán
Moscow, Moscow...
...
Our splendid taxi ride
The first obstacle has been cleared, then, but here is the second. Frantic telephone
calls make it clear that the car sent to pick us up is lodged in the continuous
Muscovite traffic jam that avowedly relents only around three o'clock in the
morning, so Ilona Kiss, the Centre's director, recommends that we push off under
our own steam. I set about this task by teaming up with a Siberian lady translator.
You stand at the kerb, raise an arm, and within seconds a car will stop beside you
and a beaming informal taxi-driver asks 'Where to, folks?' I am sceptical, so we
ask one of the KGB types idling in the hall to order a taxi. After it emerges that even
the quickest car will only arrive in an hour and a half, we take up our position by
the kerb after all. And wonder of wonders! The system is so finely tuned that a car
going by us brakes merely on spotting that we hesitate. Having agreed on three
hundred roubles, we hurl ourselves into the mind-boggling traffic. I now finally
see Moscow illuminated - an unreal spectacle, with the city as a whole looking
like an unimaginative cross between Las Vegas and an industrial housing estate
built beside two six-lane motorways, enlivened with unearthly flourishes by the
Imperial idiocy of the seven Stalinist houses ("the seven Sisters"), illuminated at
night by blue, green and red floodlights. We speed by the Foreign Office and the
Hotel Ukraina at 20 kilometres per hour.
Consoling arms await us at the Hungarian Cultural Centre. We head now for
an Uzbek restaurant known as KishMish. By now it's nine-thirty and I'd be
prepared to eat a boiled mouse (like the Muscovites who survive the Blast in
The Slynx, that masterly novel by Tatyana Tolstoya) but the choice is of Oriental
opulence and, waited upon by swivel-hipped maidens with jaunty caps, we stuff
ourselves to the brim.
The next morning I wake up without a headache (I should hope not, the vodka
here is pure!). In the metro I come face to face for the first time with that celebrated
spooky underground world: the dim candelabras bordering the escalators
as if they were lighting the paths leading down into hell, with every face in this
semi-darkness from Dostoevsky's The Insulted and Humiliated, while in ten corridors
of sheer marble, decorated with chandeliers of opera-house grandeur,
frescoes depicting the uninterrupted victory of the working class (and their peasant
allies) tell of some kind of five-dimensional monumentality. As on the streets,
there are conspicuously large numbers of uniforms: militiamen, policemen, gendarmes,
firemen, war veterans, former partisans, Gulag prisoners who survived
their death. Figures belonging to God knows what organisations, their chests
almost caving in under the weight of the diverse medals with which they are
laden direct the streams of humanity down the appropriate channels. Fear of
terrorism, apparently the explosions that went off in the metro not so long ago
have had their effect. For all that, I am more scared of those who are supposed
to be dispelling the fear.
...
In the land of Kalashnikov
The republic itself is not primarily known for the fact that the Udmurts (otherwise
known as the Votyaks) are linguistically related to the Magyars, but
because this is where they used to (and still do) manufacture one of the most
lethally effective weapons in the world. First, though, we offer a sacrifice on the
altar of kinship, with me delivering a lecture on contemporary Hungarian literature
to those studying Hungarian at the university. Out of the total student roll of
26,000, some 50 - all of them young women, as far as I can make out, and of a
beauty vying with the girls in Moscow - are curious to find out how I endeavour
to elevate Dezső Tandori's poetry to a central place. In the Finno-Ugrian
Department, I then spot the first Russian samovar and take great pleasure in
drawing the boiling water onto the "zavarka".
That evening my journalist colleague attends a performance of The Nutcracker
at the Udmurt State Theatre, after which he sets off for a village as the guest of
the family of one of the university lecturers. For my own part, I seek the joys
neither of The Nutcracker nor of visiting any village, but first inspect the roll of
honour set into one wall of the theatre. The heavily retouched supermarket salespeople
and big sports officials eye the European traveller, but we have little to say
to one another. Later on, I dine magnificently, then rummage around, openmouthed,
in a general goods store that is open around the clock. (It is noticeable
that no one sleeps in Russia, as Antal Szerb already pointed out seventy years ago
in his essay on Dostoevsky.) The shelves are groaning under a profusion of
excellent French wines, while over there a range of marvellous smoked fish entice
at ridiculously low prices. All this at the foot of the Urals. Who would have
thought it? Strolling in the street is magical, with snow that puts one in mind of
diamond dust; I am spellbound as I saunter toward bed. Snuggling beneath my
blanket, I immerse myself in the short stories of Chekhov.
Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, after hard years of misery and experimentation,
set out in the early 1940s to develop the machine gun that first came into
service in 1947. "I created this weapon to defend the fatherland," is the ars poetica
that stands on a plaque, in English as well as Russian, in the museum that
was constructed (and naturally named after him) for the 85th birthday that he celebrated
not so long ago. The abstract visions of Kandinsky, Malevich, Popova,
Rodchenko and the rest that were admired earlier would be put to shame beside the extraordinary dreamlike quality of this collection. In one display is a decorated
weapon, with the gun hanging in a gilded picture frame. It is an image that
beats the most daring of Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades hands down. In other
places, the creatively inclined artist has engraved pleasant folk-life scenes on the
mother-of-pearl of the gun butt. Here too control is total. When I set off to the
right in the circular room the museum's dyezhurnaya bawls out that I must keep
to the left! I can hardly shake her off, with her expression a mixture of part contempt
for me, part religious ecstasy for Kalashnikov. But we just rush through the
rooms; we are in a hurry, because the plane will soon be setting off back to a
Moscow I am barely acquainted with. On boarding we are taken aside and grilled,
and on account of the Moscow reception-dyezhurnaya's incorrect registration
I am required to sign a two-page, closely typed statement of which I understand
not a word. It's just a formality, the officer assures me. This puts paid to my plans
as to how to spend Sunday morning in Moscow. I am told to go to the Hungarian
Embassy where it will take me two hours to get myself properly registered.
My prospects of acquainting myself with the city fade in the distance.
András Zoltán Bán
is a critic and translator who edits the arts pages of the weekly magazine Magyar Narancs.
