Baboons for Lunch by James Michael Dorsey

Author:James Michael Dorsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Published: 2018-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

Emotional Journeys

Downtown Moscow

A Kiss for the Condemned

Irene and I were finishing a quiet dinner in the picture window of a restaurant on Tverskaya Street, the main drag of Moscow, when the salt and pepper shakers began marching across the table.

We Californians looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Earthquake!” A low rumble escalated rapidly like a movie soundtrack of an oncoming dinosaur that segued into the crunch and clank of moving steel. We ran outside to join a rapidly gathering crowd just as a squat, green line of Russian armor crested the horizon.

A squadron of T-90 battle tanks filled the street, two abreast, coming on like a slow-motion migration of mastodons; the yawing ovals of their cannons loomed like hungry mouths. The ground trembled and buildings shuddered; the people stood by silently. Was this a coup? For us children of the Cold War, it was terrifying.

The tanks were followed closely by a rolling mechanized juggernaut, including truly massive ICBMs mounted on trailers, and the thought did occur that one of them might be targeted at my own home. It appeared that the entire Russian army was pouring into downtown Moscow. Outside, on the street, hordes of mute Muscovites, frozen in time like Pompeian statues, bore silent witness. There was no sign of emotion from the people, no sounds; they occupied neat rows silently awaiting their fate. That was our welcome to Russia.

We found out later that this overpowering diorama of steel and aggression was a rehearsal for the gargantuan military parade through Red Square on May 9th, the single most important day in Russia. On that date in 1945, Germany surrendered to the Russian army in Berlin, ending the war in Europe, but not in the hearts and minds of the Russian people. Seven decades later, that day is imbedded in their DNA. The rape of the motherland by Hitler’s armies has been imprinted on the souls of the survivors, and passed down through generations like a hereditary disease. Veterans and the elderly favor the term “Great Patriotic War,” and impose their stories onto visitor’s lives.

We left Moscow on a small riverboat traveling up that brown artery of Mother Russia’s lifeblood, the Volga, looking for locals with tales to tell; the logger drinking a beer with a raw herring for lunch, the businessman who looks over his shoulder before speaking, and the babushka who lost five sons in the battle of Stalingrad. Those were the Russians we wanted to meet. Those of us who spent our childhood waiting for the “Russkies” to drop the big one on us wanted to look the bogeyman in the eye even if he has grown old and gray like us now.

For several days on both sides of May 9th, life in the Volga villages reverts to 1945. It is supposed to be a time of celebration and a respite from daily life that for many has not changed in generations. It is a time to remember the glory days when outnumbered defenders turned back invading hordes.

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