FONTANKA 123 E-Book

Henri Sakomaa

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 116

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

A young state and a young man looking for his identity. A Contractor of Life and the future Engineer of Emotions. The purpose of this book is to share the stories of my relationship to Russia, to the Russians and to myself, not forgetting my numerous fellow mates from other world regions who shared those years with me. I write about my own development, and at the same time, the young Russian Federation takes its first steps after a long Soviet era.

Leseprobe

A young state and a young man looking for his identity.

A Contractor of Life and the future Engineer of Emotions.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Fontanka 123

Ramadan

Queen of Spades

Laika

The Green Leaf

The Peter and Paul Fortress

Elena

The Red High Heels

The Heymarket

A Duel

The White Doors

The Bascule Bridges

A White Dove

Vostok

Militia

The Museum of Russian Art

The Waves of Neva

A Checkmate

Repin

A visitor from Moscow

The Engineer of Emotions

Foreword

The purpose of this book is to share the stories of my relationship to Russia, to the Russians and to myself, not forgetting my numerous fellow mates from other world regions who shared those years with me. I write about my own development, and at the same time, the young Russian Federation takes its first steps after a long Soviet era. In the stories, however, I describe more my inner self, sometimes very painfully, but perhaps it’s necessary in order for me to let go all of my prejudices, assumptions and even some kind of racism, and in replace to learn understanding, acceptance and how to create warm feelings towards myself and others. At the same time, my spiritual bulwark falls off and I dare to be weak and helpless, because I know, that after these experiences, I'm stronger than ever before. As a person and on my spiritual journey, I still have a long way to go, but I believe, that this book is another step in the right direction. Some of the stories are based on my own life and some are my friends' full experiences. I don’t say which ones. I also take the liberty not to remember everything correctly, as it happened such a long time ago. Emotional fiction has also some role in these stories, that take place in the late 1990s in St. Petersburg, the former capital of Russia. I also try to describe Russian habits and mentality without generalization. All the people I came across with were different, but also they were quite similar small people in the big country.

I want to thank my family and the Finnish and Russian states for making my studies economically possible.

Fontanka 123

I'm on a train to Russia and, more particularly, to St. Petersburg. A month ago, I was informed, that I got accepted to the Saint-Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering. I have never been to Russia before, let alone Soviet Union. My feelings are contradictory, I know it will be a great adventure, but at the same time I’m scared as hell. I have lived all my life with the assumption, that nothing good comes out of Russia, Russians are all just criminals and con-men. Now, however, I’m going to live and study there. As I stare outside the window on the train, I realize, that everything looks run-down and even forests seem like thickets, where little trees stand out here and there. There are also bonfires everywhere, and a thick smell of smoke intrudes into the train. The dining car is an exotic experience - it seems as though I’m in an old movie scene, yet food is delicious. I have solyanka (a Russian salmon soup) and blinis. The customs inspection is not as bad as I have heard, filling a few short documents, and calculating my money. When the train is approaching St. Petersburg, I start picking up my belongings. As a matter of fact, I only have a backpack full of clothes, a dictionary, a camera, and some personal items. I started to practice Russian language a few weeks ago, and now I know all the alphabets and some words. The first two things I learned to say in Russian were "excuse me" and "thank you". They will certainly be useful. The train stops at the pier and here I am, in the wide country of Russia. A quite young woman is waiting for me at the pier with a note that has my name on it, but the name is spelled incorrectly. She looks very charming, although her glasses are like the ones used in Finland in 1970s. She guides me to a small buss, and it looks like I will be riding it alone. All the windows of the bus are fogged up with mist, which makes it impossible to see what’s happening outside on the streets. After a while I start to wipe the window and realize, that we are on a bridge across a big river. I wipe the window to see more and suddenly I can see the whole river with its bridges, this must be Neva. The view is absolutely beautiful, all the buildings are like palaces. I spend the next couple of hours sitting in a traffic jam, so I have enough time to wipe all the windows clean and after a while I can see everything around me. Huge crowd of people in grey or black clothes and old Soviet-era lorries pushing clouds of exhaust-gas out. From time to time, the exhaust gas intrudes into the bus and it’s difficult to breathe. Suddenly the driver stops and orders me to step out. Outside, I find the same young woman, who was meeting me at the train station, and I don't understand how she has already arrived there. I ask her about it and she replies, in a rather modest English, that she rode the subway, of course. She points at the building in front of me and introduces it as a dormitory, where I will be living the next couple of years. But first, we need to apply for the migration permit and the "Propuska" for me from the dorm manager. Propuska is an authorization with which I can move around. I stare at the building and it looks huge. There is a large stairway and many huge stone or concrete pillars on the front side of the building. I step in with my backpack and come across with a few men with Kalashnikov rifles on their backs. They stare at me suspiciously. The woman shows them some kind of document and they guide us to the dormitory director's room to wait. We must have been waiting for a half an hour before a small grey-headed woman comes into the room and sits behind the table without any handshakes. Her eyeglasses are like binoculars, so thick that I can't see her eyes at all. I introduce myself and provide the necessary documentation. I'm trying to talk to her in English, but "No English!", she replies. The woman, who picked me up from the station, has already left, so I tell the manager, that I don't understand Russian. She laughs, slams a cardboard case to my hand and asks me to follow her. I walk behind her, with my backpack on my back, several floors up the stairs and then to the end of a long corridor, where we reach a gate with bars. She opens the gate and hands me one key, which, I'm sure, will open the gate. After the gate, we walk past five or six rooms before she stops and opens a door and gives me a key again. I lower my backpack to the floor. The director tells me something in Russian, but I don’t understand a word of it and after a while I’m sitting on the side of my bed with two keys and a cardboard case in my hand. I open the case and try to spell the text written in it. Probuska, Student, my name, then something that I don't understand with a lot of different s-letters. The next word is familiar: address: Fontanka 123. I'm thinking that now it begins. According to my program the first six months I will study only Russian eight hours a day. The next three months I will study half a day Russian and for the rest of the day some mathematics, in which I don't need to know the language too well, and finally the last three months: two hours of Russian and some professional studies for the rest of the day and so will the first year be over. Then a two-week holiday and the following year merely professional disciplines. At the moment, the idea of somehow getting through all of this seems quite impossible.

To be honest, the first weeks I’m just in shock. Everything is so new and strange. The only support pillar is my Russian language teacher Galina, who has been through a similar program with many foreigners for decades. Somehow, I notice, I enjoy myself in her classes. But if someone teaches you eight hours each day, the relationship with her develops pretty fast. Part of the reason is probably that I’m Finnish and the other students in our group are from Pakistan or from other third countries. Sometimes I have to repeat some Russian word or short phrase at least 50 times before she is satisfied, and the next day I have to repeat the same sentence 50 times again. She listens to my pronunciation like a conductor, waving her arms to signal, when the intonation rises or falls. In general, people are quite comfortable with me. The lady in grocery store always laughs when I walk in, because she is so delighted to hear my desperate attempts to buy water and bread in Russian. Her teenage daughter is helping her in the evenings and I tried to be polite to them by praising the girl for her beauty. I thought I was saying in Russian "a beautiful girl," but I found out a little later that I had called her "a red grandfather".

Ramadan

My Pakistani friends are celebrating the end of Ramadan for the third day, and from time to time their party gets so wild, that the lamp wobbles in the roof of my room. I have an uneasy feeling. Yesterday I was once again in the nightlife of St. Petersburg and as often has happened in the recent past, my memory of the rest of the night is blurred. The trembling is getting better, but the mental hangover hangs around even though it's already eleven in the evening. I'm desperately trying to fall asleep, but the Pakistanis are still going strong. Suddenly, I wake up to screaming. I look at the clock and it's 2:00 am. I suppose my imagination is just playing games with me and I try to fall asleep again. The sound is getting stronger now and I hear someone banging the metal bars and shouting my name. I get out of the bed and go to the door to see, what's going on. The lights in the hallway are dim, as only one of the four light bulbs are working. Suddenly I'm all awake, there is something wrong at Pakistanis' side! I hear cries of pain and everyone is running around. I run to the gate, but where the hell are my keys! I return to my room and desperately get through all the pockets of my clothes that are lying on the floor. I can't find them, where can they be!? How about my coat, did I wear it last night? Looks like I did, because a massive key-chain falls to the floor. I run to the gate again and finally I find the key that fits the lock. There are probably ten people in front of the toilet, and they all are more or less messed up. I work my way through them and almost push the person in front of me to the floor. Someone lays on the bathroom floor in pain. It's so dark that I can barely see. Sometimes I think that there are not enough light bulbs in the whole country. The floor is full of glass fragments and I notice that someone has broken the mirror. I look at the person on the floor and I’m astonished by the familiar face, Abraham, the groups nicest and the most rational person. The floor is sticky and wet. One guy tries to press Abraham's right-hand elbow with a towel. I take the towel away and the blood pulps out. From somewhere from my subconscious mind I receive an order to take off my belt, which is easy because I haven't even had time to fasten it, and I can quickly turn it into a tourniquet. I ask if anyone has ordered an ambulance yet and I hear that one of them is just calling. The wound is so bad, I'm afraid he's going to dry out and realize, that we must hurry up. I shout, that we must remove him downstairs to wait for the ambulance. Like a bolt of lightning one of them runs to the opposite room and grabs a blanket. That's a good idea! Because as you know, the elevator was probably last used during the Soviet Union, and we have to carry him five floors down. It's surprising, how easily we can carry him. He doesn't weight much and we have more than enough carriers. The guard downstairs is heavily asleep after drinking a bottle of vodka again, I'm sure. I shake him and he opens his eyes and tells us to go to hell. Now we can only wait. I open the tourniquet but the bleeding is so strong that I instantly pull it tighter. Now I understand the true meaning of the idiom "a watched pot never boils".