Constant Tent Face

The weekend at Pilorama 2009 was truly one of those ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experiences: sleeping in a tent on top of a car next to a former GULAG camp… Now, that’s a first for me, comrades! On this picture you may even catch a glimpse of my travel comrade Matthias – who taught me just exactly WHAT the red [diplomatic] plates on his car are for – as he’s removing the green tent cover after a rainy night.

Visiting the Pilorama Festival 2009 at the former GULAG camp “Perm-36” filled me with this strange proud feeling, a sort of strong sense of not being alone. When I visited this museum – the only one of its kind in Russia – for the first time in February 2008 I was not filled with such a feeling. As a matter of fact, then I sensed nothing but loneliness as I and Meghan were the only visitors to what seemed to be the Edge of the World on that snowy, cold day a year and five months ago. My second visit was much different. After six hours of driving from Yekaterinburg, Matthias and I arrived in time for some more rain in the evening and a free excursion of the museum together with the USA’s general consul Tim and his very cute, very young female translator [somewhere in the back of my head there’s a voice that tells me that I might have seemed to be a mirror version of her to Matthias – who works for the German Consulate – in the eyes of people at Pilorama, but I do my best to block out that voice]. The excursion lasted over two hours and I was surprised at how much I remember from the last time I was there, when I also – incidentally – translated the entire excursion to Meghan from Russian to English. After the excursion we tried to have some dinner at the ‘food court’, as I nicknamed the tents which served different kinds of very Russian dishes [buckwheat, anyone?], and were almost successful. We walked around and looked at all the many different people that had gathered at the festival and marveled at the amount of tents already in place on the field across the river from the camp. Everywhere people were drinking beer – despite the fact that the museum’s website clearly said ‘alcohol forbidden’ during the festival – and thus we concluded that Russians do not count beer as alcohol. We decided to make up for lost time and went back to the car and drank red wine. After that I tried to make friends with a Russian – he said his name was Igor and I take his word for it – and gave him a shock in the process, nevertheless, he still accompanied us as we went to listen to some of the artist giving concerts the first [Friday] night. I fell asleep in a tent on top of a car to the numbed voice of a narrator commenting a documentary film about the history of GULAG that was shown on stage after midnight… Definitely something you don’t do on a day-to-day basis, comrades?

Saturday morning began with several cups of coffee and taiga honey on salty crackers as breakfast from the back of the car as we waited for the festival’s second day to begin at 11.00. The weather seemed to be promising in the morning, but it soon started to rain, and as I had not brought any pants – all I had with me was the mini-skirt I was wearing since most of my clothes were dirty due to constant traveling the Urals for the past ten days – I felt very cold and escaped into one of the camp buildings. This particular building had two rooms with two exhibitions that both turned out to be very interesting to me personally. The first exhibition was in the first room and was about the famous German concentration camp Auschwitz – a great opportunity for me to refresh some old knowledge [when I was a very young child I was obsessed with German concentration camps and knew EVERYTHING about them; now that I’m an adult – I think? – I’m obsessed with Soviet concentration camps…]. The second exhibition was in the second room and was about Soviet dissidents, some of which had been ‘connected to’ [i.e. served time in] “Perm-36”. As I read on big posters about these young Soviet dissidents, I could not but notice their professions – they were all philologists: translators, teachers, poets, writers – and which university department they had all graduated from – the Philology Department! Philologists, just like me! These were MY people! These people had studied just what I’ve studied; they’ve also made it through 20 centuries of Russian literature and several special courses on stylistics and grammar and Latin and come out of it as – dissidents! I felt a strong sense of pride for my profession. Philology may not be something you can make money on, but it is the best way to keep a clear head when things around you become messy. Philology is the answer to every question. At least to all the questions that matter.

Then it continued to rain and we were informed that we had missed the USA’s general consul Tim’s solo concert [not on banjo, but on guitar] as it had been rescheduled from 18.30 to 13.30 and we were greatly disappointed by both this fact and the heavy rain that kept pouring down. No, we had not brought even as much as an umbrella. We discussed our next move and decided to head back to Yekat which we did. During the six hours on the road back my body felt extremely tired of traveling – after seven hours on a bus on Thursday and twelve hours in a car during less than 24 hours. We came back to Yekat and had a later dinner together at the best place for Russian traditional ‘pirogis’ [pies] in town – my suggestion – and I ordered two big cherry beers and Matthias agreed that this is ‘the girliest drink in the world’. Then I got back to the dorm after midnight and could finally spent ten hours of quality time with my bed and all the teddy animals in my bed – a bear, a dog and a mouse. They had all missed me just as much as I had missed them and it felt very good to be reunited with them and to know that this would be more than for just a night – but for five whole nights!

On Sunday I washed my clothes – finally – and started to pack things into my bag as I’m flying to Sweden on Thursday next week. In Kurgan I managed to buy a couple of gifts for friends and family, but I still have to buy many, many more and I haven’t got a clue as to what to buy since I’ve already brought back everything one could possibly bring back from Russia to my family members and friends. Name the Russian souvenir – I’ve given it to someone during one of my trips back the past half of a decade of living in the Eastern Motherland. I don’t know what to give to people. I’ve been thinking of buying a huge amount of reproductions of my favorite Russian painting – “Christ’s Appearance to the People” by Ivanov – and give them to everyone I know. But perhaps not everyone will come to see and understand and love this painting the way I do? Also, several people I know pretend to be ironic when they’re actually serious deep down. I’ve toyed with the idea of not bringing anything at all. Nothing. But I already tried that one year and people back home were deeply disappointed by me due to this behavior. People expect gifts. For example, I have to bring Mother’s favorite Ukrainian vodka, or else she’ll have me written out of her will [i.e. no red little house in the Swedish woods for me to live in as professor emeritus]. Also, Malin just had her b’day in July and I have to come up with something extraordinary for such an occasion… I might only get the Ivanov reproduction for Katharina. She’ll get it.

Currently I’m reading Yevgenya Ginzburg’s 800 page memoir of her 18 years in GULAG camps entitled «Крутой маршрут» [English title: “A Journey Into the Whirlwind”]. At first I didn’t like it – the ‘Introduction’ is terrible; purely in ‘poor taste’, I would say and you could argue with me but I would just nod and say ‘read it first, argue later, good comrade of mine’ – but now I can’t stop reading it. I fell in love with both her and the memoir when she wrote about the 1st of September 1936, where she for the first time in her life was unable to celebrate the start of a new academic year due to having lost her job as a university teacher [because she was sentenced as having been ‘affiliated’ with a ‘trotskyist’]. When I read about her feelings toward the start of a new academic year I realized that they mirror mine and so she won me over. Now I read it and stop for a while to cry and then I read it some more and cry some more. Also, it is very interesting and highly healthy for me to read about Stalin’s GULAG camps from a female point of view after this huge amount of Shalamov. After all, women are not men. And that’s why I’m going to read this big book until done. It will not take long, I don’t think, considering there’s a two flights and a train trip ahead of me next week…

Between Yekaterinburg and the museum “Perm-36” there is, if I remember everything correctly, one patch of good road. It starts about an hour before you arrive in Yekaterinburg [outside of Revda].