Guillermo Erades - Back to Moscow

In the epilogue, we see Raskolnikov a year and a half later, serving his sentence in a prison in Siberia. Sonya has moved to the city nearby and visits him often. It’s only in Siberia that Raskolnikov’s spiritual resurrection can take place, in the vastness of nature, under God, far from the infested streets of the city.

For Dostoyevsky, our existence is a lifelong struggle. In a life with no bright future, Sonya embraces spirituality as a way to cope with suffering. Without that blind acceptance of her own destiny, without her unwavering faith — without the existence of God, really — Sonya’s life would have no meaning whatsoever.

‘WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE to be in five years?’ I asked.

It was a warm summer day and Tatyana and I were strolling along the shaded alleys of Novodevichy cemetery. We had spent the morning visiting the adjacent convent, an impressive citadel with ancient churches that Tatyana had been wanting to see. Now we were wandering among trees and tombstones — map in hand — searching for the VIPs of recent Russian history.

‘Five years,’ Tatyana said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Like, if you could choose your dream life, your perfect job, the best city to live in, everything. Where would you like to be?’

‘Why five years?’

‘Just because.’

‘What’s happening in five years?’ Tatyana was wearing bright red lipstick and a silvery top that sparkled every time we crossed a sunny patch.

‘Forget about the five years,’ I said as we stepped onto a gravel path. ‘That’s not the point. What I’m asking is where do you want to be in the future? What do you want to do with your life?’

‘That’s a serious question,’ she said. ‘If we keep going in circles, in five years we might be stuck in Novodevichy, still looking for Chekhov’s grave.’ She laughed and took hold of my arm. A fresh breeze shook the trees above our heads, releasing a snowfall of white blossom.

‘In five years I’ll be almost thirty,’ Tatyana said. ‘I want to have children before I’m thirty.’

‘What about work?’

‘I don’t care about work. That’s less important.’

‘Why so?’

‘Family is the most important thing,’ she said, brushing the little flowers off her shoulders. ‘A woman cannot be a woman without children.’

‘But professionally,’ I said, ‘would you continue to work in real estate or would you rather do something else?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t care, really. You know work is not the most important thing for me. I’m not a man.’

I picked some petals from Tatyana’s curls, then brushed my hand over my own hair. ‘Women also care about work,’ I said.

We walked in silence for a couple of minutes, then came across a large memorial of someone who must have been a famous soviet pilot, an aviation pioneer perhaps, a life-size statue of the man resting his hand on an aeroplane propeller. A group of older Russians — tourists from the provinces, I guessed — were taking pictures of each other in front of the memorial.

‘But imagine you have it all,’ I said to Tatyana. ‘A beautiful family and a great man who would take care of you. What would you do?’

‘Well,’ Tatyana said with a smile, ‘if I have a great man to take care of me I won’t have to work. I’ll stay at home and raise my children. I work now because I need the money. I don’t want a career. I’m not a modern Western woman. You know that.’

‘You don’t have to be modern or Western, some women just want to have an interesting career. We are in the twenty-first century, you can have both: a job and a family.’

‘I’m Russian,’ she said as we moved towards a sunnier alley lined with little chapels. ‘I don’t believe in this equality thing between men and women. We are not equal, you and me, we want different things in life. I don’t want to be like a man any more than you want to be like a woman.’

‘Would you like to live abroad?’

‘Do you want to take me abroad? Martin, what is this? Are you going to propose? Here, in a cemetery?’ She turned to me and bent her knee ceremoniously, bowing her head, one hand up in the air, the other lifting an imaginary long skirt. She was laughing.

‘Stop it. I’m just curious, we’ve never talked about this.’ I glanced down at our map, trying to figure out if perhaps the pilot was on it and could help us find our way to Chekhov.

Tatyana gripped my arm. ‘Let’s just walk around,’ she said, removing the map from my hand and sliding it into her handbag. ‘We’ll find it.’

We strode in silence among the sea of graves. Rulers, generals, scientists, poets, writers, composers, actors, painters — an elitni crowd like no other, an impressive number of world-famous personalities who had undoubtedly made great contributions to humanity. Yet it occurred to me that, considering the scale of the cemetery, the big names were but a chosen few. The majority of the Novodevichy graves were occupied by people whose lives had not justified a mark on the visitors’ map. Lives that were already being forgotten.

‘I’d like to live in Russia,’ Tatyana said.

We had stopped by a cluster of headstones with elaborate wrought-iron fences that formed garden-like plots. I wondered if it was all right to sit on the enclosed stone benches and picnic tables or if they were reserved for the relatives of the dead.

‘Look around,’ Tatyana said, sweeping her arm over the rows of graves. ‘So much greatness. Why would I want to live anywhere else? Russia is the best country in the world. Of course I’d love to travel and see other places. But, to live, I’ll always prefer Russia. This is my home, my rodina, where my friends and family live. I love the food. Everybody speaks Russian.’

‘In Moscow? Would you like to live always in Moscow?’

‘Martin, why are you asking me all these things?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, resuming our stroll. ‘Just wondering.’

‘I wouldn’t mind going back to Novosibirsk. Live closer to my family. Or somewhere else in Siberia, in Altai for example. Everything is much cheaper over there. You can buy property for next to nothing if you compare to Moscow prices. It’s very beautiful, there are lakes and mountains and the air is so fresh. A better place to raise children. And people are much friendlier than in Moscow.’

The crunching sound of our shoes on the gravel made me think of fresh snow and, for a fleeting moment, I missed the feeling of winter. ‘Moscow has its advantages,’ I said.

‘Of course. Moscow is the cultural capital of the world. We don’t have that many theatres and museums in Siberia. I could always come to visit every now and then.’

‘What about the weather?’ I said. ‘Winters must be harsh in Siberia.’

‘As my grandma says, there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.’ Tatyana stopped and took a deep breath. For a moment her bright gaze was lost above the graves. A tiny white flower remained trapped in her curls, just beneath her ear. ‘You know what?’ she said finally. ‘If I lived in Siberia, I would not care about the weather.’

IT WAS FRIDAY AFTERNOON and the entire city was fleeing to the dacha for the weekend. Dachinikis moved around the crowded platform of Kursky Vokzal, lugging overloaded plastic bags, beer crates, sacks of coal, birdcages, potted plants, metal buckets, grills, toolkits.

Tatyana introduced me to Marina, who had dyed black hair and a sickly Goth-looking face, and Anton, Marina’s boyfriend, a tall lad with cropped blond hair and a crushing handshake. Anton was carrying a crate of Baltika. I was told that the third couple would join us at the dacha on Saturday morning.