WRONG COUNTRY

PART IV CHAPTER 1

LARISA RIMERMAN

∙Returning to my father:

My father introduced me to the best restaurants in Leningrad. I wondered about a restaurant on the roof of the Hotel Evropeiskaya (Europe) on Brodsky Street, across from Philarmoniya. Usually, before the concert, we girls stopped for a light supper in the café at Evropeiskaya; also, only there could we buy BT (Bulgarian Tobacco), the best cigarettes available to Russians, and which was the only place open to them in this hotel. The restaurants, the more famous one of them, on the top of the roof, were for foreigners. There was no sign, but everybody knew it.

I told him how, once, my Estonian girlfriend, who studied English, and I were wandering along Nevsky Prospect and, for fun, decided to stop at the Evropeiskaya restaurant. Stella was playing the young English Lady; I was her Russian friend. It was daytime, and the restaurant was empty. The prerevolutionary name of the restaurant and hotel was “Grand Europe,” and its elegant Dining Room was kept in the same grand style in our Soviet time. The Head Waiter was standing in front of the open Dining Room. We approached him, and Stella, smiling, greeted him with, “Good Afternoon.” He bowed slightly and handed us over to a waiter, who settled us at the table. It was fun. We, of course, didn’t have money for dinner and could only afford coffee and a pastry. The waiters were questioning Stella’s “foreignness.” We saw them talking and looking at us, but at the same time, they were afraid of a scandal if they were wrong. Our bluff was successful, though the feeling that only foreigners felt free in our ‘proud’ Soviet country was rather unpleasant.

With my father, I guessed, I could go to any restaurant, closed to the simple mortals, and we did. At last, I dined in the fancy Evropeiskaya restaurant on the roof. The restaurant had a European flavor, was very attractive, with many flowers and tropical plants, and was open only in the summer. We were seated and given a heavy, golden menu book, which I opened and began perusing, but could understand nothing. The names of the dishes were in Russian (besides French and English) but utterly unknown to me. I vaguely remember one sauce for unknownto me fish with Pushkin’s name. I didn’t understand what Pushkin had to do with it, but he might have loved the same sauce in his time. To honor my favorite poet, I chose the fish with Pushkin sauce. The last fancy restaurant we visited was the Hotel Astoria. This time we had a serious reason to go there. My benefactor at the Institute of Physical Culture (now called the University), where I worked at the library, knowing of my problem with registration in the city, offered to register me if my father obtained permission from the authorities. As the Director of Education, the second person after the Rector of the Institute, he promised me a place in the dormitory of the Post-Graduate School of the Institute for registration. So, my father invited him to join us at lunch at the Astoria to discuss the possibilities. I had never eaten such a delicious fish pie as at Astoria. Evropeyskaya and Astoria were kept as grand as before the Revolution for visiting foreigners, high-ranking communists, or famous artistic people.

Father asked to meet my friends. I brought him to Rosa. (Recently, on the phone, Rosa and I were musing about his visit). He was too elegant for Rosa’s huge, untidy, and messy room; ironic, friendly, and fond of mocking us, already not so young, close to the age of spinsters, probably, in his view. Four years passed after our university graduation, and we were not yet established, unmarried, or having good jobs. True, none of us ever wished to be married or even have a boyfriend, but the question of work was open. He talked about the surplus of Higher Education intelligentsia in the country and the longing to stay only in two cities -Moscow and Leningrad, and not go to the provinces. In the end, Rosa recalled his sarcastic notice, “What could you do besides find a guy for one night?” I don’t recall this cynicism, but I remember (Rosa also) when leaving, he kissed Rosa’s hand, and she was somewhat confused by such a noble gesture. How could it go together with his cynical remark, or was it a poseur’s gesture?

And he wished to see my dwelling. The first time he visited my place (it wasn’t even mine) was three years ago, after I returned from teaching at the village to Leningrad and temporarily lived with my friend Ira and her black boyfriend Alfa at Ira’s Leningrad friends’ apartment. They gave her an apartment for the whole summer while they were living at their dacha (summer house). Ira and Alfa took the bedroom; I got the living room.

For three days, Alfa and I stayed alone in the apartment. Ira went to Riga to visit her mother, as she told me. I invited my father to dinner, explaining our disposition to him. Alfa was preparing dinner- it was his regular task. I introduced Alfa as Ira’s boyfriend. After Alfa’s excellent dinner, we drank coffee and mainly talked about African students at the university. On our way out, seeing my father off to the taxi, my father said in his ironic tone that it’s my will to have a black boyfriend, but to marry him would be undesirable. (Alfa himself didn’t have any desire to marry a Russian woman, actually.)

My father’s second visit to my rented room happened on this last visit. At that time, I lived in a communal apartment with delightful people. It was a family of actors: the mother was an actress at the Lenin Komsomol Theater, and her daughter and her husband were actors at the Sophia Kommissarzhevsky Drama Theater. In the 1950s, Maria Phillipovna played the principal role in my father’s play “Magic Stone” and, sure, she wanted to meet the author; she even prepared her old “Magic Stone” program for signing, but the author refused to see her. In our last meeting, he was feeling poorly after a stroke, and it was my mistake to drug him four -stories of walk-up of ‘Stalin’s building to my apartment. (We divide our modern buildings into Stalin’s time buildings, which are very good because of high ceilings and thick walls, and Khrushchev’s low-quality ones, with low ceilings and thin walls.) He was in no condition to meet an old actress. M. Ph. couldn’t forgive me for my non-introduction to my father as long as I had lived in this apartment.

I had the opportunity to observe my father’s interactions with the different people on the streets of Leningrad, in cafes, restaurants, and stores with waiters, salesgirls, and taxi drivers. I was pleasantly surprised by his kind, gracious aptitude to the people of service. At least in Leningrad, it was so unusual that some taxi drivers didn’t even answer his polite and smiling greetings. But women always were grateful for his kind manners.

One day, he asked me to take him to a store to buy several shirts. Obviously, not expecting to stay a whole week in Leningrad, he was left without clean shirts. Being on Nevsky, I always passed the store “Man’s Shirts,” so I brought him there. This store was unusual for our Soviet times. You enter this store, and you see none of the shirts, only a salesgirl behind the counter and a huge, floor-to-ceiling wardrobe with many drawers. All the furnishings looked expensive and prerevolutionary, as they were left untouched after the Revolution. We were the only buyers. Of course, my father began with his ceremonial “Good morning,” smiling, and the girl was happy to help this unusual, polite person. Their transaction was like a scene from some film of Russian nobility of old times. The girl began to open the drawers, even climbed on the step ladder to show shirts, and tore her nylons while climbing and opening the upper drawers, but nothing could satisfy my father, unfortunately. He apologized graciously, seeing torn nylon, and they parted as friends; she invited him to come back with a smile. He told me he would have his clothes washed by the hotel's service girl.

The day of my father’s appointment for my permanent registration with the important figure at the Leningrad Committee of the Communist Party had arrived. We went to the Mariinsky Palace (Princess Maria’s palace, sister of the last tsar) on Isaak Square, which the Party occupied. In the elevator, I noticed the nervousness of my father: his lips were tightened- no smile; even his eyes were not smiling -no irony; he was leaning heavily on his stick. I understood it was our last instance, my last chance to get permanent registration in Leningrad, to become its citizen. After that, there was no higher authority.

In the anteroom, a secretary told my father that my presence wasn’t necessary, and I stayed with her. After hearing my father’s name on her phone, she took him to the important bureaucrat. After some time had passed, my father came out of the cabinet with an unsmiling but soft face. He thanked a secretary, and we left. Back in the elevator, he told me I got permission for permanent registration in Leningrad! I had to come on the appointed day at 9 a.m. to the first floor of the same building for official permission. I don’t remember my reaction to this favorable outcome of the complex, lengthy attempts to get the desired city.

These daily meetings with my father in Leningrad had drawn us together; we grew closer, and I finally started calling him “papa.” First, I began our acquaintance with no name for him; then I called him Nikolai Aleksandrovich, and only in those Leningrad meetings have I been calling him “papa.” We agreed to meet later at his hotel restaurant for dinner. In the late evening, he planned to take the night train to Moscow on the Krasnaya Strela (Red Arrow) line. After dinner, we spent some time in his hotel room talking. He looked tired but contented by our ‘victory.’ In the lift, when he saw me off, instead of kissing me on the cheek (as I expected), he kissed my hand, not only to my surprise but also to all the present foreign tourists, judging by their glances. He stayed in the lift to get back to his room, and I went to the metro station, thinking about him, not realizing I had seen my father the last time. It was September 1973.

My Collision with Soviet Bureaucracy

Five weeks after my father’s visit to the highest court of the Soviet bureaucracy of the Leningrad Communist Committee had passed, I had to go there myself for a long-awaited permit for permanent residency in Leningrad. My interview was set for 9 a.m. I entered the Mariinsky Palace in a state of confusion. On the one hand, my father had promised me a permit; on the other, I couldn’t believe my luck that, at last, I would get it.

I was shown into the enormous, beautiful white room, with huge windows on one side and a very high, gold-decorated ceiling. It looked like a former ballroom, but now its designation was more primitive- a waiting room for all the destitute people who were already sitting along the walls on the chairs. I took the last chair. The presented audience was of different ages; some came as the families of mother, father, daughter, or son, perhaps. I was the only one alone. All were modestly dressed, slightly confused in this beautiful Hall with a shining parquet. It was almost improper to walk such a festive parquet in our street shoes and boots, as we didn’t belong to this elegant Palace Ball Room.

The reception has begun. As I understood, we all were invited at the same time- 9 a.m.- with the same problem: registration in the city. A male secretary called each of us by our last name. Some people went to the office as a family, some as two, a husband and wife, and some as parents with an adult child. I had plenty of time to watch people come and go from the office. The more I saw them, the more nervous I became: everyone came out of the office agitated, upset, or sad. I understood that no one received a permanent or even a temporary registration permit. And it was the last instance, the high-and-mighty.

I was the last one to go to the office of this bureaucrat, who refused to all the people before me.

A bureaucrat turned out to be an ordinary fat man, age 50 or older, dressed in a regular made-up suit and an unfresh shirt with an obligatory tie. He was sitting behind a beautiful antiquarian desk (definitely, from Palace furniture). He, like all of us, didn’t belong to the surroundings of the Palace. Instead, he was the Master here. He invited me to sit down. In front of him was a thin file. I understood, mine. We had nothing to talk about. He opened a file, pulled out an official document, and held it to me. It was the permit for my permanent registration in Leningrad! I thanked him and left the Palace.

I had been waiting for this piece of paper for 5 years, but I didn’t feel happy.

After watching forty people for two hours who were refused, I was sure that some of them had more serious reasons to be citizens of this city than I did; I felt guilty. I had only gotten the permit by chance from my father, who was in a more privileged position than these poor people. I also had a premonition that something would go wrong, even with this priceless piece of paper in my hands. I didn’t yet know that all those humiliations would be useless.

I was right. When, on the next day, I came to the Rector of my Institute with the permit for my registration at the postgraduate’s dormitory, he had an astonished face. He didn’t expect me to get a permit, and now, he couldn’t refuse my registration from such a high post. He took the document from me. I suspected later that he put it under his desk cloth, as we say in Russian, or shunted it in the drawer. I didn’t know exactly what he did with it, but I never saw this precious document again. My patron, Vladimir Nikolayevich, who was one step below the Rector and who met my father and gave him the idea of my registering in the Institute dormitory, explained the situation with our Rector to me. It was a terrible time for Rector. He was waiting to be sacked. He knew he was losing his position, and everybody around him knew it. I came to the wrong person at the wrong time. Every time I visited his office, he told me to wait. My wait continued for two months. I was nervous because I didn’t know how long my permit was valid. While hanging in midair with Rector’s resolution, several things, small and big, had occurred in my life.

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© 2026 Larisa Rimerman
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