Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia (16 page)

Being followed by people can get into your head and make you paranoid. Sergei and I find a hotel a short walk from the
sanatoriy
and check in. The place is small, wooden, and drab, with just six small rooms. It seems entirely empty, but as we walk across the creaky wooden floors and back toward our rooms, a man walks out of another room and immediately introduces himself.

“My name Vasily,” he says in broken English.

I extend a hand to shake.

“Ochen priatno, menia sovut David [Nice to meet you, my name is David].”

We carry on a simple conversation in a mix of basic Russian and English. Vasily learns that I am a journalist from America working on a book. I learn that Vasily is a doctor on business in Uva. Vasily says we are the only people staying at the hotel.

“Banya!” he suddenly says, motioning outside. There is evidently a
banya,
a traditional Russian bathhouse, attached to the hotel. Vasily is proposing we join him there.

“Sevodgnia vecherom [Tonight]?” he says. I give a nod that I hope agrees to nothing more than maybe.

Here is a moment when I want to believe this is Russia giveth but fear it’s taketh, and I am caught in between.

Vasily seems as unthreatening as you can imagine—a short, unassuming friendly guy in his fifties with thinning hair and a bushy little mustache. He probably just wants a few friends to drink and steam the night away with. Then again, isn’t it odd that he is the only other person staying in this hotel with us?

Isn’t it odd that he happened to be coming out of his room just as we checked in?

Could he actually be working with the FSB?

I wrestle with whether I should let my paranoia and suspicion stand in the way of meeting a fellow traveler. I want to go to the
banya
—but feel like precautions are in order. Maybe its going overboard, but I decide that we should be on guard, especially so if there is food or drink presented by Vasily (I prefer that Sergei and I never both consume the same item) in case he’s laced it with poison and intends to rob us.

The
banya
is a truly Russian experience, and Vasily does it up. We meet him after dinnertime in the small wooden building next to the hotel. He has brought beers, a bottle of vodka, glasses for both, pickles and homemade horse sausage (right, horse sausage) from his hometown, a few hours away. All this is spread out over a wooden table. Vasily is
banya
-ready in a green tank top and shorts. We have agreed that I’ll partake of the bathing itself. Unlike most Russian men, Sergei isn’t all that fond of the
banya
anyway, and he can stand guard over all our things.

Vasily tells us he is in fact the chairman of his local
banya
society, so I’m presumably in good hands. He instructs me to remove my clothing—as much as I would like. Some men go full monty. I typically hang onto the boxer shorts. I’m pretty happy when Vasily does the same.

I’ve been to a
banya
a half dozen times, and while I always feel cleansed and rejuvenated afterward, I can’t totally disagree with Daniel Rancour-Laferriere who, in his book
The Slave Soul of Russia
drew a parallel between the bathhouse and the pride Russians feel from enduring something difficult. The author called the
banya
a “favorite theater of pain” for Russians.

The idea may seem strange to the Westerner who is accustomed to the lonely pleasure of a tepid bathtub, or the bracing spray of a shower. A proper Russian bath, however, is not just relaxing, or bracing. It truly hurts. The Russian does not merely soap up and rinse off, but endures additional quotas of suffering. The water . . . thrown onto the stones or bricks atop a special bathhouse stove . . . produces steam which is so hot as to bring out a profuse sweat in the bathers. The eyes and nostrils sting from the heat. Moreover, the naked bathers flail one another (or themselves) with a bundle of leafy birch twigs (termed a venik). This mild flagellation supposedly assists the steam in flushing out the pores of the skin, and leaves behind the pleasant fragrance of the birch. Sometimes the hot portion of the bath is followed up with a roll in the snow, or a dip in a nearby river or lake, or a cold shower.

“Sergei, you good?” I say, looking at my colleague seated before a spread of horsemeat and beer. “I’m good, David, enjoy.”

Vasily walks me through a thick wooden door into the next chamber, where he tends to some mechanics. He opens the metal door to a compartment and ensures that a burning fire has the pile of stones good and hot. We then move to the third room of the wooden cabin, the bathhouse itself. There are wooden benches, and I sit comfortably on one as Vasily opens another metal door—accessing the same compartment but from this other room—and douses the hot stones with water. There is a sizzling sound, and the heat in the bathhouse goes immediately from really, really hot to unbearable.

I am sweating profusely. “
Aaarrrhhh
.” Vasily is making an animal sound, suggesting he’s enjoying the heat. I would not call it enjoyable, but I do feel and appreciate the therapeutic nature of all this. I take a deep breath—the air is hot and clean as it runs into my lungs.

“David.”

He’s trying to get my attention. This isn’t my first rodeo, so I know what’s about to happen. As per tradition, Vasily has taken a birch branch—the
venik
—out of a bucket where it was soaking, and he is motioning for me to lie down. I do, and he begins whacking me violently with the branch, while making that animal noise: “
Aaarrrhhh
.”

I really can appreciate most
banya
traditions. But the idea that violent contact with birch somehow adds to the experience seems like a stretch. After a few whacks Vasily lies down, and I return the favor.

After ten minutes of this, we both return to the middle chamber, where the next tradition awaits. There is a bucket of ice-cold water, and I dump it over myself, screaming bloody murder but knowing this is somehow making me a healthier and happier person, because why would generations of Russian men have done it otherwise?

Vasily does his dunk. Both dripping wet and shivering, we return to Sergei and sit at the table.

“How was it?”

“Great, Sergei, thanks. You sure you don’t want a turn?”

“Yes.”

“Sausage?” Vasily is holding a chunk of horsemeat in his right hand, and a large sharp knife in his right. By this point Sergei and I have concluded that Vasily seems genuinely harmless—though Sergei still decides not to drink the beer or vodka (I take one for the team here).

Vasily and I are sharing a small bench in boxer shorts, our wet bodies all but touching.

“So you’re a doctor,” I ask, with Sergei generously translating.

“I’m a doctor of alternative medicine. For animals. I’m here to treat cattle around Uva. They’ve been having infections in their hooves.” He then cuts two hunks of horse sausage. We both chew them and wash them down with beer.

“I have a special honey that I invented that treats ailments. I’ll give you some when we go back to the hotel.”

Vasily and I talk into the night about our jobs, our professions, our countries. “You know, David, if you and I ran the two countries, there would have been no Cold War!” We find this funnier than Sergei does, perhaps helped by the beer and vodka. When the three of us return to our rooms and say good night, I am happy that Sergei and I were careful with a stranger. I am also happy we kept that
banya
date, because the memory of that night remains special. (The same cannot be said for the photo Sergei snapped of me and Vasily, dripping on each other on that cramped bench.)

The next morning Sergei and I walk up a snow-covered dirt street to the entrance to the
sanatoriy
. It’s a sprawling two-story tan-brick complex set in front of a frozen lake, with forest extending to the horizon behind it. Soft music is playing from a set of outdoor speakers, interrupted every few minutes by a woman’s voice announcing the day’s activities (Karaoke! Skiing! Excursion to a museum!), or meal hours at the cafeteria or just general messages of warmth (“Welcome to our
sanatoriy
. Have a nice trip, for those leaving. We wish everyone a cozy atmosphere, love, and happy days until our next meeting.”)

Personally, this kind of place would be my worst nightmare as a vacation spot. But my favorite babushkas are here, and I’m anxious to reconnect with them.

9
•
GALINA

T
HE
B
URANOVO
B
ABUSHKAS
live in the tiny Udmurt village of Buranovo, just outside Izhevsk. After many of them lost their husbands, they turned to music for comfort. Somehow a Beatles cover they performed at a local concert made it onto YouTube and went viral.

On my first visit to see them I was overwhelmed by their charm and courage—such big personalities in such tiny bodies. Most of them barely reach five feet. I sat at a dining room table next to the oldest member of the group, eighty-four-year-old Elizaveta Zarbatova, whose head barely reached above the table. But her high-pitched, crackly voice carried authority. She was widowed in 1957, when her husband was electrocuted. She was sitting next to a woman who lost her husband in 2004 to drinking and diabetes. Another fellow babushka lost her husband in 1984 to alcoholism, and shortly after his death, she lost her own right arm trying to use an electric saw. But Zarbatova, like her friends, was in no mood to complain.

“After I lost my husband, I received some kind of gift—the ability to compose music,” she told me. “The music comes from the heart. The suffering comes right from my heart.”

My story about the babushkas was produced in 2011 with support from the Kitchen Sisters, veteran independent radio producers who made the piece part of an on-air special called
The Hidden World of Girls
, hosted by the actress Tina Fey. I was honored and touched. But I never felt any sense of finality. I never felt as if I asked these women questions that truly got to their pain. I always wanted to revisit them.

In 2012 these tiny women—never having traveled much beyond their small village—represented Russia at Eurovision, the international music competition held that year in Azerbaijan. It’s as if the babushkas of Buranovo—and greater Russia—were collectively sending a message to the world: We may seem like some relic dying off, but don’t count us out yet. Maybe, somehow, that’s Russia’s message today: We may be misunderstood, we may seem like we don’t know where we’re going. But given our rich past, given where we’ve been, what we’ve endured, what we’ve accomplished, and how we’ve influenced the course of history for better and for worse, don’t discount us. As Zarbatova testified, out of the darkness can come something beautiful.

Sergei and I walk into the lobby and tell a receptionist that we are here for a scheduled meeting with the
Buranovskiye babushki
. The man says we must see Marina. I did not yet realize the impact of his directive.

Marina is the exuberant, overhelpful activities director for the complex. Think annoying tour director whom you want desperately to scream at, but you can’t because he or she so innocently thinks he or she is being sweet and helpful.

Thing is, there are a lot of Marinas in Russia. For so long, life here was bleak, days were monotonous, travel was restricted. There were few chances for vacations, or relaxation—a word that has a most-unpleasant translation in Russian:
Otdykh
. So when it actually happened, nothing about it was casual. It was a big moment. Families expected—at least hoped for—over-the-top treatment. What’s more, the Soviet government kept a watchful eye on citizens’ movements. So many tours were rigidly organized, in order to fit code. Take all that together, and a culture was born. When you arrive somewhere to see something—on vacation, or say as a journalist or writer innocently trying to do his work—nothing is casual. A tour, or a trip—an “
ekskursiia
”—must be arranged. And there must be a guide. In this case her name is Marina.

As a reminder, Sergei and I are here with a sole purpose—to reconnect with the Buranovo Babushkas. Marina is not allowing access to them at this moment.

“Mozhet byt ekskursiia?”

“Maybe a tour?” Marina says at her desk, with me and Sergei facing her in two chairs. Marina is in her forties, with jet-black hair, small eyes, big lips, and quite an outfit: A tight, long-sleeved leopard-print top that doesn’t at all go well with her bright turquoise ski pants with suspenders.

She speaks very loudly, as if there is a tour group of hundreds gathered, not just Sergei and I sitting in her office.

“What is your purpose?”

Sergei explains our previously arranged interview with the babushkas. They have a producer who does their music and publicity. We’d talked to her. Said we’d meet them here. In and out. Nothing complicated. Or at least that is what I imagined Sergei telling Marina in Russian.

She yells back. Sergei translates.

“David, Marina would like an hour of your time to talk about the Udmurt people and give you a tour of the
sanatoriy
.”

“Okay,” I say, smiling at Sergei with gritted teeth.

Sergei translates my okay. “Okay,” he says.

Marina smiles. “Plan.”

In Russia that word is as frightening as
ekskursiia
, or
vodka
. A
plan
is translated into English as “plan” but means so much more. It means that Maria has devised a schedule that will be hard to alter once it comes out of her mouth. She begins rattling off times to Sergei.

“Okay, David, Marina says now we have lunch in the cafeteria of the
sanatoriy
. At 3 p.m., you meet with Marina for an hour. She wants to spend time showing you around and talking about the
sanatoriy
complex and the Udmurt people. At 4:00 p.m. you may meet with the babushkas. After, you will have dinner in the cafeteria. Later, at 9:00 p.m., Marina will be available to answer any more questions you have.”