Journey into the Mind's Eye by Blanch Lesley;

Author:Blanch, Lesley; [Lesley Blanch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1764169
Publisher: Eland Publishing
Published: 2014-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Sometimes, in my wanderings about Leningrad or Moscow – and later in other Russian cities too – I felt myself impelled towards a certain quarter or street, without knowing why and, equally without any specific reason, would find myself peering in at a window or a courtyard, searching it seemed, for some person or episode which eluded me, as if the shade of that other self that had, I believed, been Russian (or was it the Traveller operating through me?) was now able to revisit through my present self some place which had once been of significance to one of us. Thus, between my own desires and these other promptings, I covered a great deal of ground, generally outside the tourist orbit.

There were certain lodestar points to which I always returned. The railway station ranked very high among these. In Moscow I would sometimes hire a taxi and with voluptuous deliberation pronounce the magic formula: ‘Na Yaroslavski Voxal!’ To the Siberian Station! There, like a Peri at the Gates of Paradise, I would stand disconsolate before the florid Kurhaus façade – portal of bliss – through which scurrying crowds surged, dragging their bundles, their children, samovars and lumpy sacks of provisions, for that long, long journey it seemed I could not make. Puffs of steam and the wail of the engines eager to be off merged with the pandemonium of the main hall. Away beyond the barriers I could see the high, curiously shaped funnel typical of Russian engines. Then, as I gazed, they shunted majestically out of sight while I strained my eyes, lover-like, for a last glimpse. At the ticket-office endless queues were inching up; but each person presented a pass which alone entitled them to a ticket, to the right to travel eastwards into that mysterious, withheld land of my desires.

The Tzar Nicholas I had distrusted innovations such as railways, holding they were likely to foster unrest (a view shared by his contemporary, the Duke of Wellington, who held they would only encourage the working classes to move about needlessly). Perhaps this view was still shared by the Soviet authorities, for it seemed déplacements were generally discouraged.

Since I had no pass I would sadly turn back to my waiting taxi. The chauffeur was usually dozing across the passenger seats, surrounded by husks of semitchki – those dried sun-flower seeds which the Slav peoples nibble in such untidy quantities. He would spring awake, smile widely, a disarming, and usually silver-capped smile, and thrust a twist of paper containing the remaining semitchki at me. Nibbling and spitting out the husks (an occupation traditionally known as ‘Siberian conversation’), we would drive back to the hotel companionably. But in the cracked mirror above his head I would see him eyeing me with a puzzled expression. Foreign ladies going all across town to the Siberian Station just to stand there and stare were to be humoured – but returned quickly to the Intourist Bureau.

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