Dacha Country

Saturday, the start of a long holiday weekend, and we were about to embark on a quintessentially Russian adventure: we were going to the village. In this case, the exact place was Povarovo, outside of Zelenograd, but really, for a Russian, 'the village' is any place away from the city where they can go on weekends, grow some cabbages, maybe throw a party without the neighbors banging on the walls – their dacha. Usually one of many dachas, a colony, widely varied in scope and design, from a motley straggle of huts (middle class) to a gated, heavily guarded collection of country estates (mafia).
We – meaning me, Lindsay, and Shayla – were headed for the dacha of Nikita, a student at the Moscow Institute of Technology and an old friend of Sasha, administrator Olga's son. Sasha had organized the party and invited the rest of the Zelenograd English teachers, but we three already knew Nikita: he was a regular at our favorite underground art club. By extension, he was a regular of my kitchen, where the party usually moved after the club closed at 3 AM…
On Friday night, over endless nocturnal rounds of black tea and Finnish beer, Nikita and Sasha schooled us in dacha protocol: Bring food. Bring blankets. Bring house shoes (somehow it Russia it always comes down to shoes.)
Further, Sasha informed us, grinning, there were no toilets; they were planning to go out early and dig trails through the snow, leading to the woods – very fine snow toilets, with separate trails for men and women.
Well so be it. On Saturday evening, we set out for the dacha. Owing to a little bus mishap, we were late to Kriukovo Station, and by the time we got there, the other teachers had gone on without us. So we stood on the platform and waited for the next train. It was a clear chilly March evening. Smoke spiraled out of the factories beyond the tracks, and from the mafia-run DVD kiosk behind us, there rose an incessant throbbing techo beat.
Povarovo, three stops down the line, was a shambling little town, one produkti (boarded up), some small cottages up the hill, and the roads running off into the dark countryside. According to Sasha, the next step was to find a taxi to take us out to the dacha. But there were no taxis. The cars rushed by as we huddled beside the road.
At last, though, we located the taxi pulloff beside the railway bridge, and sure enough, there was a beat-up Lada idling there, its driver kicked back smoking a cigarette. Shayla opened the front passenger door. "I don't speak Russian," she said in Russian. "Here, here – he – you –"
She shoved the cellphone into the driver's startled face, and I heard Sasha on the other end, talking fast. Meanwhile, we got in and made ourselves comfy. The driver listened, nodded, shrugged, and then pulled out into the street, heading out of town. What was in his mind? God only knows.
But my amused speculation was cut short as we crossed a bridge, leaving Povarovo behind. The bridge wasn't plowed, not even a pretense of it, and neither was the road beyond. It was pretty clear that a whole winter had gone into the sculpting of that road, the gentle thaw followed by the bitter freeze, a fresh snow fall here and there, grainy strata overlaid by slick black flow. Down the middle there was a thin strip of exposed asphalt, and our driver, clearly a veteran, aimed his Lada at this, so that the left hand wheels ran on good ground and the right hand ones bounced over seven inches or so of ice pack. The hills and bridges were a bit more of an obstacle, being frozen all the way across, but he took a running start and cleared them like a champ. Where the road opened out, he gunned his engine to 80, 90, 100 kilometers an hour, bouncing and fishtailing.
I looked out the window at the passing forests, the glowing dachas gathered by the road, the open fields rolling away into the last sunset light – and I was stricken, suddenly, by a sense of Russia in all its vastness, and I wished I could take off across it, about as far as I could go, just to see what might be there. If you offered a taxi driver enough money, I wondered, how far could you get? They are some intrepid bastards, these drivers.
After a while, there was some confusion concerning where to turn, and we had to phone Sasha again. The driver listened, shrugged – and then overshot the turn completely, fishtailing wildly before plowing straight into a snowbank.
Unperturbed, he backed the car out and had another go. We were now on a single-lane driveway, even less plowed. He barreled on, sliding from side on the ridges of ice. There were thick trees on both sides, and then some high gates.
"Well, ladies," Shayla said. "This might be the end…"
We flew round a few more bends and twists in the road, and then suddenly came across Sasha, who leapt into a snowbank as the driver skidded to a standstill mere inches from where he had been standing.
We bundled out of the taxi, handed the man 100 rubles (~$3), and then followed Sasha through the snow to Nikita's dacha, one of several in the colony. It turned out to be a small a-frame behind a ramshackle iron fence. The walk up to the front door had been shoveled; the drifts on either side were 3 feet high. But inside was another world: a big table with everyone gathered around it, a blazing wood stove in the corner. The Beatles on stereo and the floor littered with boots and logs. One whole table held the juice, wine, vodka, and cocktail supplies.
"Come on," Sasha said. "Put your stuff upstairs."
We dragged our things up a narrow twisted staircase to the upstairs, where there was a landing with couches and bookshelves. Two smaller rooms opened off of it. Glancing through the open right hand door, I was startled to catch sight of a snarling brown bear. Closer investigation proved it to be a monstrous skin, complete with a head the size of a microwave, glass eyes, and a detachable plastic tongue. It was draped over the back of a pullout couch, so that whoever slept there would wake up in the morning staring down its throat.
"Nikita's father shot it," Sasha said. "In Siberia."
Leaving the urso to brood alone, we went back down to the party. Most of the English teachers there, along with several Russians that I recognized from the art club and Sasha's girlfriend Lena. Nikita himself, wearing a somewhat patchy fur vest and beaming away, dished up white Russians all around. They were made with some kind of horrible Arabic coffee brandy and lots of vodka. Somebody decided I looked cold and gave me another fur vest to wear, this one white and carved out of some unidentifiable animal – possibly a goat.
Two white Russians and a strawberry cream liqueur to the better, Shayla got into a fierce argument with Alexandra and Lauren, the British teachers, about Britain and America.
"American culture is nothing but a copy of British culture," Alex said, unprovoked. "A bad copy."
"Yeah, we did it first," Lauren said. "Sorry – I know how terribly gungho you are about America…"
Shayla, predictably, raged.
I broke in to babble something about the American dream, the idea of boundless possibly drawing on boundless space, forever separating us from the island mentality of the British, fallen empire as they might be.
"Yeah," said Lindsay, getting involved too. "I always feel like America and Russia have that in common..."
Then it got nasty. I retreated to the great outdoors for a visit with a snowbank. By the time I got back and found another drink, they had all more or less reconciled themselves, the Beatles had been exchanged for dance music, and the party was going strong. Vanya, a shaggy-haired hipster, and pretty much the happiest Russian ever, was jumping up and down on the sofa, filming a group of people, who were dancing and also jumping up and down. We ate pickles and little sandwiches, drank some more, and danced a lot.
Oh, it went on, this party, all night long with the fire blazing. At some point we Americans all used fabric paints to draw our home states on Nikita's stringless 'zen ukelele.' Shayla put in Wisconsin; Lindsay, Washington with Seattle labeled, and a Texas flag for Josh. Forsaking Ohio, I drew an electric blue Sears Tower. Later a few people left, everything died down a little, and then came back to life again as more Russians arrived at 3 AM. At 7 I packed it in and went upstairs to sleep on the couch on the landing.
The next day nobody moved before 11, minimum. I got up and went downstairs to an icy morning. Sasha was pottering in the kitchen, Alexei stirring the fire, Lauren dozing on the couch. I sat in front of the fire wrapped in furs, looking at the clean day blooming outside the window. Eventually Josh came down. He had fallen asleep, very drunk, under the bear, and gotten a nasty waking when its detachable tongue fell out and hit him in the face.
It was 2:30 before we were all ready to go. The Russian boys dialed a taxi, and we trekked back to the main road to meet it. This driver was far more careful. It was an uneventful trip home. I didn't mind at all.