Krylatskoye was my home for six years. Moscow is divided
into districts – rayon in Russian – Krylatskoye is one of the districts.
It was new construction, with high-rise apartment buildings. All residential, I
remember only one grocery store (which was completely empty) and we didn’t even
get a Metro station at the beginning – that came years later. We moved to Krylatskoye when I was 10. We moved from Perovo, a rayon on the East side of the city, to
the West side. Moving East to West – seems to be a story of my life. Perovo to
Krylatskoye, Moscow to Chicago, North Shore to Western suburbs…
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| My building |
The building we lived in was 17 stories tall. We lived on
the 14th floor. The building was divided into five sections: podyezd
(loosely translated into “carport”), each with its own entrance foyer and a
locked double doors. So your address would first list a building number, then
podyezd number, then your flat number. Flats were numbered 1 thru … what ever
would the last one be for the podyezd. There was no indication of what floor a
flat was based on the number. We were number 63. Also a pattern for me, every
place I lived in has a 6 in the number.
The building was shaped like a U. There was a twin right
across it, the two Us made a square with a large courtyard in the middle. It
had grass and trees and playgrounds, two ugly short square utility buildings,
and an area with a couple of lines to hang your laundry out to dry. I don’t
remember anyone hanging laundry on them, I remember the lines being used to
hang the rugs on when they were cleaned in the winter. They were thick wool
Oriental rugs, and in winter, they would be dragged out into the courtyard to
be cleaned in the fresh snow. It was called “beating the rug”. You unroll your
rug on top of the snow, cover it with fresh snow, then brush it off with a
small broom before hanging it up on the line and vigorously beating the life
out of it with a special tool that looked like a tennis racket and was made out
of reed. The bitter cold of Russian winter would freeze to death what ever
unwanted decided to live in the rug and it would all fall right out along with
dust during the intense beating. My 14th floor windows provided a
great vantage point to watch such a normal household ritual. We never partook
in it, my parents installed wall-to-wall wool carpets in our flat, completely
covering the parquet floors (according to my dad the parquet was of an inferior
quality and too cold). I still remember the sound of the racket hitting the
carpet, it was a dull slap that echoed across the entire courtyard. Slap, slap,
slap… Slap, slap, slap…
In winter the courtyard was covered in several feet of snow.
When they plowed the street around it, they piled the snow on the edges into
little mountains which would eventually freeze solid enough for me to safely
walk on them without falling in. It was my favorite winter pastime: walking on
hard snow. My mom would drag me outside every evening for some fresh air before
bedtime and I loved walking on the snow mountains, stomping around to see if I
could break it. I would eventually succeed once a year and end up with a boot
full of sharp and frozen unpleasantness.
The entire rayon was these U-shaped buildings facing each
other. Most of them were clad in white and blue tile. They were built out of
prefab sections concrete sections with windows already installed and slid into
a building frame of steel and poured concrete. New construction is new
construction anywhere in the world: thinner, lighter, faster, cheaper. In
Perovo the buildings were old and much shorter, they were made out of bricks by
hand. Their hallways were dark, damp and musty; ours were white and bright with just a hint of garbage smell from the garbage disposal that ran the entire height of the building. Perovo's flats were tiny but warm and solid. Our large new Krylastkoye flat drafted
like a sieve, I would put on a sweater and hose while still in bed under the
covers before getting up every morning…
The flats were acquired raw: parquet floors (totally
standard and nothing special in Russia), white tiled bathroom, kitchen with
just a sink, stove (electric, since they didn’t pull gas lines into the new
rayon), and a fridge. Everyone added kitchen cabinets of their liking and
wallpapered all the rooms. We had a kitchen from Estonia, red cherry. And when
I say red, I really do mean red. Along with a red table and chairs. The walls
were covered with orange and yellow gingham wallpaper and my mom had orange
pots with white polkadots and dishes to match. We brought the pots with us. I
still have one of them, I think it’s older than me and it’s still the best pot
to cook pasta in. I had a nightly ritual in that kitchen – I would make myself
tiny sandwiches of black bread and cheese, and sit at our red table and eat a
plateful with a cup of tea while devouring yet another book by either Victor
Hugo or Tolstoy. I miss that table…
The flat had three rooms. By American standard it would
qualify as a two bedroom. But all the rooms had doors. The kitchen, my room,
and my parents’ bedroom faced the front of the building. The largest room,
which other families used as a living room, was dedicated as my dad’s design
studio. It had a balcony which we never used and faced the other side of the
building. There was a large dark square space in the middle of the flat, no one
knew what to really do with it, we used it as a TV room. I wasn’t allowed to
watch TV unless it was a weekend (but then I was too busy playing piano or
painting to even watch TV on weekends) so my mom would close my door if she
wanted to watch something. I used to stand by the door and listen. Eventually
my dad gave me my own little portable TV so I could watch a teen program (it
was like Russian version of MTV but for teens) at the of which they aired Star
Wars in 10 minute incraments, which of course was pirated. Eventually Hollywood
caught on and ordered cease & desist and I had to wait a long time to
finally see it all.
The toilet was in a separate room from the rest of the
bathroom and all the plumbing pipes where enclosed in a cabinet behind the
toilet. The cabinet had a door, if you stuck your head in there, you could hear
the upstairs neighbors. Who, being well connected, installed a Japanese toilet that
used hot water, which promptly exploded one night in the winter and flooded everything, us
including, with water. The flat owners weren’t home when that happened, and
when my dad and a neighbor went upstairs to see what was going on and ended up
breaking down the door, their flat was so full of water by that point that it
gushed out the door, down the fire escape staircase, all the way to the first
floor. Their parquet floors floated out as well, they didn’t have wall-to-wall
carpets to absorb it all. Thank God they were nice people that felt really bad
about what happened and paid for all the damages. I wonder what happened to
their plumber…
My dad’s room was the best place in the flat. It had dark
green carpet and white furniture. One entire wall was floor to ceiling art and
design books. Every single one made the trip across the pond, some of them are
now in my house. I was allowed to hang out in there, but interrupt. I learned
design by osmosis, so to speak. When he was away for a meeting, I would
carefully look through his stuff on his desk, making sure that nothing was
moved, to see what he was working on. He also had photo-printing equipment
because there was no Macs or Adobes in those days and everything was done
entirely by hand, and his studio would become the dark room at night. He
developed film in our bathroom, we all learned to take showers without wetting
the large format film that was hanging out to dry. At some point, my mom
finally acquiesced to my begging and let me stay up at night to watch my dad
develop and print. Lit by red light – the only color safe for film and
paper – we would listen to Pink Floyd, print, and barely talk. There was no
need for a conversation, great design speaks volumes.
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My school was very close to our building. My mom could watch
me walk there from our kitchen window. Across the street from school was a
large park/forest area. We called it Gorki, hills big enough to ski off in the
winter (in fact they now host free-boarding competitions there). The hills surrounded a vast sports complex, still in operation. The hills were covered with enormous lilac bushes of all colors and
varieties. Every spring everyone would go to Gorki and bring back heaps of
lilacs for their kitchen table. I now have lilacs growing in my back yard, I
planted them when we moved in. And I’m thinking of getting some more, perhaps
hoping to recreate the same affect…
I remember when we finally got a Metro station. Just like
our buildings, it was modern in design: floor to ceiling granite, without the
over the top mosaics depicting communist life. Every Metro was designed as a
bomb shelter, the huge 10 feet thick steel doors where hidden on either side of
the of vast platform area right below the very long escalators. I was told that
there were even moving platforms that would cover the tracks so people didn’t
have to stand on rails in case of a bomb threat. Nuclear bomb that it. I liked
our station, it was the end of the line and not that crowded. I always found a
seat and would disappear into a novel before the train pulled away…
There was an ice cream kiosk that sold the best ice cream in
the world and green fizzy Georgian soda. Since I didn’t spend my summers in
Moscow, I only got to eat the ice cream once a year. The kiosk was only open in
the summer…
Then one night in September, we left at midnight to drive a
long way to the Sheremetyevo International Airport to board our flight for New
York and the future unknown. I waved a tearful goodbye to my high-rise living
in Krylatskoye and fearfully looked ahead. Once again, I was moving from East
to West. That was 22 years ago today.