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| The Snowberry |
There's a YouTube version of Kalinka performed in Leningrad - or rather St Petersburg - by the choir of the Red Army, assisted by some unlikely types known as the 'Leningrad Cowboys.' I don't know quite what either the haircuts or the shoes of the Cowboys signify but close your eyes and you can imagine how, with a few vodkas, such singing could have kept the cold - and the enemy- at bay. Na Zdrowie!
Despite the majesty of the rhythm and the catchiness of the tune, Kalinka, is more or less a nonsense song about the little snowberry - Symphoricarpos. Wikipedia provides the picture of the snowberry above and also translates the Russian lyrics of Kalinka as
Little snowberry, snowberry, snowberry of mine!
Little raspberry in the garden, my little raspberry!
Ah, under the pine, the green one,
Lay me down to sleep,
Rock-a-bye, baby, rock-a-bye, baby,
Lay me down to sleep.
Little snowberry, snowberry, snowberry of mine!
Little raspberry in the garden, my little raspberry!
Ah, little pine, little green one,
Don't rustle above me,
Rock-a-bye, baby, rock-a-bye, baby,
Don't rustle above me.
Little snowberry, snowberry, snowberry of mine!
Little raspberry in the garden, my little raspberry!
Ah, you beauty, pretty maiden,
Take a fancy to me,
Rock-a-bye, baby, rock-a-bye, baby,
Take a fancy to me.
Little snowberry, snowberry, snowberry of mine!
Little raspberry in the garden, my little raspberry!
In fact there's another, instrumental version of the song played on by three young women with violins which is also very catchy. And not only musically catchy. For the trouble I find in trying, as a complete tyro, to write a novel is that the characters begin to take over. There's this troublesome girl called Olga who works in the chocolate shop, who first demanded a friend and then a job in London and now she's telling me that I ought to have known that she also played the violin. Well, what can you do? Another character, sent me to eBay to buy a silver 1866 Napoleon III coin which is his lucky charm and a third just saunters into the picture as a kind of Russian eminence grise. He is actually, he tells me, the economic planning chief of St Petersburg who sits behind an enormous empty desk in a very large office in a fictional part of the Mariinsky Palace which I call the Prefecture. I tried to model him on the Communist mayor of Calais who I met once when I was trying to help a British company build a new factory there, but as usual he has become his own man - at least he has tried to. You reach his office by a 1930s lift which is very small and slow and full of carved wood and delicately engraved mirrors. This actually comes from Barcelona. It wasn't very practical but was very beautiful and riding it you almost regret that Mr Otis (if ever there was a Mr Otis) had been allowed to dominate the world's elevating industry.
Despite the references to the Leningrad siege, this is actually a love story surrounded by chocolate, or at least a chocolate factory, presided over by Ludmilla the elderly matriarch, who with her roller pin arms, wispy grey hair, liver spots and her Leningrad defence medals is all the wise and aged grandmothers you have ever known. Her problem is that she will never stop working or stop fighting.
The main protagonists, though are Vladimir and Beth (who know each other as Lenin and Elizabeth). It is pretty obvious from the start that they will fall in love because this is a love story, but where will love's path take them? They are like corks bobbing around on the turbulent river Neva and having met Beth briefly at a New Year party, Lenin now finds himself showing her the sights of St Petersburg on a cold snowy January day (which isn't exactly the best time to see the city). Anyhow, here is a part of their journey. (I have a feeling that he should be humming Kalinka and she joining in with the bouncy bits - you see how the characters dictate what they should be doing?)
They had reached the river now, and were standing on the abutment looking out across the river at the rushing torrent of black water with its cargo of ice blocks. “Look down there, Elizabeth,” said Lenin, raising his voice a little against the tumult below and pointing vaguely in the direction of the water beneath them. Beth tried to follow.
“No no! There!" Again he held her arm and she experienced a frisson of delight. She looked at him, the wind lifting the flaps of his fur hat. His arm pointed at the grey granite of the abutment wall.
She could see now a ledge about ten feet above the river where a little snow had collected. On it nestled a shape. “Is that meant to be a bird?” she asked, peering beneath her.
“It’s a statue of a siskin,” replied Lenin softly. “A type of finch with colourful yellow and green feathers. Very common here in summer.”
“But it’s tiny!” exclaimed Beth. “What does it signify?”
“The smallest statue in St Petersburg. Only 11 centimetres tall,” answered Lenin, holding one hand approximately this distance above the other. Too cold to stand still, they walked on as he talked. “The little siskin commemorates the old Imperial Legal Academy which stood just by here. You know the students at the academy had to wear gowns of yellow and green so they became known as ‘siskins or Chizhik Pyzhik.’ I think there must have been some other statue or model at one time because we say that Chizhik Pyzhik helps students with their love affairs, especially when they don’t go too well.”
And so that little statue was Chizhik Pyzhik?” asked Beth, wincing at her memory.
“Well a new Chizhik Pyzhik” said Lenin. "Because it was only put there a year or two ago. I don’t know quite what happened to the old one. In fact I think there are now several Chizhik Pyzhik for people keep stealing them. They are supposed to help Russian students to travel around the city without paying on the buses or the metro! Though I don’t know how!” Lenin's face was straight though Beth could see the corners of his mouth involuntarily turning upwards. "It's true! Really!" he protested.
Beth laughed and then she laughed again full and hearty against the wind. “If ever I am sad, just say Chizhik Pyzhik to me and I shall remember the little statue and I shall smile a big smile” She beamed and without really being conscious of what she was doing she leaned against him slightly. Lenin was now laughing too. Despite the cold and the wind both felt calm and easy with one another, as though love had already arrived without either of them noticing or ever thinking that it might be remarkable; and of course they would have denied its arrival, even to themselves.
Lenin began to hum Kalinka.
