Sunday... errands, cooking, and a visit to the nineteenth century. The "children's spectacle" we attended this afternoon was full of the antiquated details that make me love Russia. In a small hall on the chilly upper floor of a Soviet-era museum, before two dozen parents and a front row of extremely well-behaved children in party clothes, a young girl started things off with a song on the balalaika. Wandering among the rows of seats, unwilling to sit with us, EB found an older woman to cozy up to -- has done it before on the train -- she smiles coquettishly, puts a hand on the woman's knee, turns away and lifts her arms in full expectation of being lifted onto the woman's lap, the woman obliged, and there she was, her hair being stroked and sweet nothings whispered into her ear -- content for the rest of the show!
The girl onstage bowed to brief applause and scuttled to the back of the room, where she took off her pumps and handed them over to her sister, a very plump soprano in ballet costume, who performed next (she had been sitting in the aisle morosely, in stockinged feet, when we walked in). The rest of the revue was supervised by two prim middle-aged ladies in tea gowns and, strangely -- I am not fabricating anything here -- tiaras, both of them very much music teachers, both extremely demure. One wore a coiffed wig and played the triangle. Much of the hour consisted of one or both ladies speaking to the children in urgent and very dramatic whispers about winter, Grandfather Frost, the Snow Fairy, and various Russian composers. Advertised for young children, it was really a lecture, with interludes of piano music and the recitation of poetry. The Russian children were absolutely quiet, however, and even EB and Lula were good until the very end. The whole thing made very real to me a parlor world in which women are the sequestered keepers of everything civilized and delicate: holidays, china cups, belles lettres, music. It was fun.
Before the show I spotted three stray dogs sniffing around the street for food; when it is this cold, and the city landscape so unforgiving, I do not understand how they get through the nights alive, I really do not. I dashed into a small store and bought a bag of sausages, unfortunately the kind encased in plastic skin, the kind that require peeling. While I was fumbling with freezing hands trying to peel the sausages for the waiting dogs, an old babushka with no teeth and a cane joined me and started to help -- then A came flying out of the concert hall, gesticulating wildly for me to come in for the start of the show -- the old woman said she'd feed the dogs and so I handed her the bag -- I ran inside, checked my coat as instructed, saw that a few minutes remained before the curtain, and dashed out again for a last look -- just in time to see the old woman disappearing around a corner, bag of sausages in hand, leaving the puzzled dogs sitting on the sidewalk and beginning to wander away.
Oh, and EB's birthday yesterday was magnificent. Each of us -- me, A, and Basia -- performed a song or poem that we had written in her honor. There were balloons and silk leis, presents from Amsterdam, pink cake by special request, and wishes from abroad! (Thanks to all.)
No comments:
Post a Comment