The Road to Siem Reap

Listening to Vaughan Williams as I am borne along 

a Cambodian highway

the red dust billowing at our passing

I hear the cool, silver tones

of choristers in the echoing chill of

vaulted stone and know

as never before

the music rooted in the land

of its gestation.  A white ox

wanders over dusty grass

as the road beneath our wheels

Turns to dry, rutted mud

and the red cloud envelops

two small determined girls

emerging from a school

as crisply clad as if they too 

could sing qui tollis peccata

with the boys whose voices sound

a million lives away.

C.M.M. 03/15

I actually wrote this on a bus - an air-conditioned coach - on a six-hour journey over roads of varying degrees of completion through Cambodia. I scribbled it on the back of a daily bulletin in handwriting that I could barely decipher and transcribed it onto my phone notes when we stopped. I was listening at the time to Vaughan Williams' Mass in G minor, consumed by the strangeness of the contrast between what I heard and what I was seeing.

A Tale of Two Cities

 I suppose this church, St Basil's in Red Square, Moscow, is what I perhaps thought of seeing when I was in Russia. And indeed, when I emerged from the underpass that had taken us safely from the coach  park, I almost couldn't believe I was actually standing in front of such an iconic building. But what I want to explore in this post is the different way I felt about Moscow from my feelings in St Petersburg, where, if I'm honest, I'd already seen as dazzling an onion-domed church, as well as all the others seen on our long sail.

Primarily, I felt disbelief in Moscow. Disbelief that I was actually there, in the place that for all of my life had been synonymous with Soviet rule, used as a symbol for The Other Side in the Cold War, a backdrop for missiles, marching and fur-hatted rulers on Lenin's tomb (left). It seemed hardly credible that we could take photos unhindered, that the guide was talking about where "Our President" worked hard in his nearby office, that I was really in the heart of the Moscow Kremlin and could see the long street which forms the background for foreign news editors on the ten o'clock news on the BBC.

It became apparent to me in Moscow that this was where 'my' history lay, rather than in the more European splendours of St Petersburg. Look at the picture on the right: St Isaac's Cathedral in the heart of St Petersburg is one of the world's largest cathedrals (and is still a museum, as it was in Soviet times). It was designed by Auguste de Montferrand and opened in 1858, and it could be in Paris. The wide square in front of it is flanked by the Astoria hotel, and there are large foreign cars parked at the kerb. It felt like Europe. Peter the Great would have been pleased, but I realised that I was looking for a Russia defined last century.

Actually, Moscow doesn't really work very well right now. The picture on the left was taken from a bus, at teatime. The traffic was already heavy, but fortunately the Northern River Terminal was on the same side of the city centre, which is surrounded by three concentric roads linked by radiating highways like the spokes of a wheel. On our last day, we had to travel back across the city, from Sparrow Hills, and the drive, at snail's pace, took us 90 minutes. We watched as ambulances wormed their way past queuing cars, and noted which siren seemed more effective.  It was hard to imagine doing this daily, and we saw the power of the Metro. But the new Russia means that people want cars, and that desire is paralysing the city.

In contrast, St Petersburg seemed spacious and wide-skied. This could have been attributed to the weather, or to the fact that much of our travelling was done by river. We did see one or two examples of grim "Khruschev" architecture (building styles are designated by the era in which they were built), but far less than in Moscow. Perhaps we were visiting palaces more than housing schemes and universities; there seemed less of the ordinary in the places we saw, and the most mundane was probably the area where we were docked during our stay there.

In Moscow, we caught a glimpse of the Presidential motorcade as it swept over the cobbles of the Kremlin. We travelled on the Metro (train every minute) and made an unscheduled stop in a cafe because of the rain. We visited a beautiful lake by a convent and thought of Tchaikovsky, and we saw the Israeli ambassador laying a wreath at the eternal flame round the corner from Red Square (Rachmaninov this time, and much goose-stepping). We bought chocolate in GUM and saw a rainbow over the city from the amazing Victory Park. We saw a Lenin lookalike street performer in Red Square, and didn't buy a Marshal Zhukov cap from a street stall. I had loved my time in St Petersburg, but in Moscow I felt I had arrived in a bit of history I knew. The final photo shows the decrepit Northern River Terminal building - fenced off, riddled with concrete cancer, but still illuminated every night. It was directly opposite our balcony. It had a revolving red star on the top of it. It was Russia.

Contrasts recalled

Found myself thinking back to our trip to las Vegas two years ago - one of our "let's escape the tail-end of the Scottish winter trips", another of which I shall soon be off on. A quick look at the flickr set of photos from the trip revealed a pleasing patchwork of colour; I've reproduced a section of it here.

The interesting thing for me is that this particular section represents what I most recall about the trip: the huge contrast between the silent tranquillity of the desert and the frenetic sounds and lights of the city. The desert is all pale blues and greys - even the vegetation has a blue-grey tinge - while the city, and in particular the Strip, is alive with colour. The liveliness, of course, is artificial, as fake as the interiors of the casinos replicating Rome, Venice, Paris. There, the noise is constant: the background of the tunes the one-armed bandits play incessantly, the changed chords for a win, the hum of machines rather than the sound of conversation.

But in the desert there is nothing. No birdsong, no sound of water, no wind, no smells. A purity of place that I have experienced nowhere else. And it is the desert that I remember.