Petersburg arose among rotting swamps, away from inhabited places, far from fertile lands. Its location - the sixtieth parallel - is a zone dangerous for the human psyche.
Behind the external strictness of Petersburg's imperial facades, attentive observers have always noticed hidden devilry. There is plenty of evidence of moans heard at night, of sabbaths behind closed doors, of stairwells that attract suicides. Among classicism, Empire style and Rococo, the most indecent scenes took place: on Palace Square, at the signal of the empress, the crowd tore apart roasted bulls and threw themselves into fountains of wine. And a century later, members of the revolutionary society "Down with Shame" marched along Nevsky Prospect stark naked...
A strange, mystical, unreal, depressive city. Unrecognized geniuses, kind eccentrics and quiet madmen live here. On a bench in the Summer Garden, a spry old man in an antediluvian pince-nez with a scraggly beard and a worn-out briefcase will sit down beside you. In winter he wears a woolen bashlyk and Papamin fur boots, in summer a loose Tolstoy shirt and sandals on bare feet. For half a bottle of "Nevsky" the old man will tell you about the ghosts of Engineer's Castle and the mystery of Barmaleyeva Street, about the miracles of Blessed Xenia and the mystical background of the duel on the Black River, about the diamonds walled up in Gostiny Dvor and the mysterious death of Yesenin. He never uses the words "they say", "allegedly", "according to rumors". In his stories everything is truth. And whether to believe or not is up to you.
Bonaparte between the legs
Do you know that Peter I's favorite horse was named Lisette and their love was mutual? On the day when the sovereign for some reason did not mount her, large tears flowed from the mare's eyes. She left the stall and wandered around the gigantic construction site (at that time Petersburg was growing before one's eyes) in search of her master. And upon finding him, she buried her head in his shoulder. In gratitude for this not-quite-feminine loyalty, Lisette was allowed to take part in feasts and eat from the common table.
Time passed. Falconet set about making the monument to Peter, but he used a stallion, not a mare, as a model. The Bronze Horseman was born in torment. Many times in a row the sculptor made a specially hired rider fly at full gallop onto a platform and rear the horse up. For four long years the master made sketches until he achieved the desired effect. But the emperor's head took only one night. True, the author of the head was not Falconet but his young student.
The sculptor Klodt - author of the famous horses on Anichkov Bridge - also worked diligently, but did everything himself, without female help. And probably for that reason he allowed himself liberties. Between the legs of one of the horses, instead of scrotum, he cast the profile of Napoleon. You can see for yourself. Squint. Do you see a cocked hat, a nose, compressed lips? If you don't see it, then you don't have enough imagination.
Sphinxes from the tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep stare senselessly at each other near the Academy of Arts. These mythical creatures are more than three thousand years old; they were found during excavations of Thebes, the ancient capital of Egypt. But the sphinxes are just an architect's whim. The city's appearance is shaped by lions - they open their mouths and wave their wings, roll balls and clamp chains in their teeth. There is other fauna embodied in bronze and granite - bears, bulls, pelicans, dogs, and even one camel. About five years ago, some eccentrics installed a giant monument to a mosquito, welded from rebar, on Liteyny Prospekt. The insect adorned the city for six months.
On the granite parapet of the Fontanka sits a bronze chizhik-pyzhik by Rezo Gabriadze. The tiny sculpture can be seen from Panteleimon Bridge - if, of course, you are lucky. It is hard to count how many times vandals sawed off the little bird and how many times the author had to restore it. By the way, "chizhik-pyzhik" was the nickname for law students because of their yellow-green uniform frock coats.
Drinkers and nondrinkers
Petersburg is famous not only for sculptures of animals, but also for living four-legged creatures that left a mark in history. For example, in 1814 the Persian shah gave the city an elephant named Jafar. He was delivered by ship to Astrakhan, and from there, shod in leather slippers, he walked on foot across all Russia, accompanied by a trainer. Having reached Petersburg, the overseas guests spent a long time looking for the caravan-sarai intended for them. They knew neither the Russian language nor the city, and wandered at random; it was then that the expression "slonyatsya" (to wander about) appeared - a word derived from "slon", elephant.
Poor Jafar was destined to die of alcoholism - in the first three years alone he was given three hundred buckets of vodka - to calm him down. That is, he was treated the same way as the Russian people. Of course, in Petersburg not only the elephant drank vodka. And can anything be done in this crazy city with a sober head? The tradition of taking strong drinks every day at 11 a.m. was established in the time of Peter I. It was at this hour that he interrupted the meeting of the Admiralty Board and with relish tossed back a glass of anisette. Since then, when the clock hand approaches eleven, Petersburgers say: the "admiral's hour" is approaching. Even in the 19th century it was believed that in Petersburg only four people did not drink - and only because their hands were occupied. By these nondrinkers were meant the horse tamers on Anichkov Bridge.
Alexander III wore boots with extremely wide tops, where he hid an opened bottle of cognac from his wife. This fact was confirmed later, during the anti-alcohol campaign, when alcohol was obtained with a fight, and the only place of night underground alcohol sale was "Drunk Corners" on Sennaya Square. There one could always try the signature cocktail "Alexander III" - a mixture of the eau de colognes "Sasha" and "Triple".
But we digress. Let us return to our elephants. In 1841, a new batch of pachyderms arrived in St. Petersburg - fourteen individuals in all. Watering and bathing of the elephants in the Fontanka was a favorite spectacle for city residents. Between Znamenskaya Square and Staronevsky Prospekt, behind the current Oktyabrskaya Hotel, an Elephant Yard was arranged. The road leading from there to the watering hole came to be called Elephant Street, and only at the beginning of the 19th century was it renamed Suvorovsky Prospekt.
Presidential Zaporozhets
One of Peter the Great's favorite creations was the "Collection of Freaks," or the "Kunstkamera." Anyone from any estate could visit it, and at the entrance, visitors were offered what? That's right - vodka. Among the exhibits were "monsters and naturalia" - two-headed babies in spirits, "a most amazing lizard with sharp jaws," "a golden beetle from the Spanish West Indies." Particular attention in that time was given to the pickled head of the maiden Hamilton, executed for infanticide. After Peter's death, a Wax Person appeared in the Kunstkamera - a copy of the sovereign with his natural hair and in his own clothes. During the war, during a raid by fascist bombers, a bomb exploded on the embankment near the Kunstkamera. The walls shook, the Wax Person rose from its chair and barked: "Get out!" A rumor swept through besieged Leningrad - victory is near, if the city's renowned founder is on our side.
Today, you will find the Wax Person in the Hermitage among its countless exhibits. One could tell about this greatest museum endlessly, but the story that caused the most stir was the following. When marrying off his daughter, Politburo member and First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee Grigory Romanov arranged a wedding in the Tauride Palace, amid the brilliant interiors of the nobleman Potemkin. If only we could live like that! The table groaned with delicacies and was adorned with a unique imperial service for one hundred and forty-four persons, which Romanov had requisitioned from the Hermitage.
But the days of the party nomenklatura were already numbered. In the first free elections, Leningrad trounced all the communist candidates, and then things took off. The city again became known as St. Petersburg, Professor Sobchak was elected mayor, and among his deputies appeared a then little-known man with the surname Putin.
Even at school, Volodya stood out among the boys in his class for his restlessness - he studied German, took dance classes, practiced sambo, and played the bayan. He lived in the very center, on Baskov Lane, two tram stops from Nevsky Prospekt. The 20-square-meter room in a communal apartment was on the top floor. In 1972, when Putin entered the first year of the law faculty of Leningrad State University, the family unexpectedly won a Zaporozhets car in a cash-and-goods lottery. Over the next ten years, this car (license plate LEKH 03-07) faithfully served the future president of the country.
From Pushkin to Lennon
A certain beautiful woman was passionately in love with Pushkin. However, the poet, infatuated with another young lady, did not return her deep feeling. Many years later, already in old age, the rejected lady ordered a monument to her beloved. According to her plan, Pushkin was to stand opposite her house, turning a pleading gaze toward the window of her bedroom. The sculptor did exactly that. But on that fateful day when the monument took its designated place, the elderly lady took her own life by poisoning herself with arsenic.
That was in 1887, and exactly one hundred years later, settling in the shadow of Pushkin's frock coat and each drinking a bottle of "Admiralteysky", nonconformist artists made a decision to seize the house whose address soon became known to every Petersburg resident: Pushkinskaya, 10.
Before the revolution, it was a chic tenement house with enormous apartments, visited by Chekhov and Chaliapin. After the October coup, it turned into a "crow's slum," divided by plywood partitions into tiny cells. By the beginning of perestroika, the house had dilapidated, and residents had dispersed to all corners. The freed-up space was taken over by bohemians: trendy artists, poets, actors, musicians, photographers. It was here that Russian Beatlemaniac Kolya Vasin opened his museum.
In the early 1970s, as a teenager, he committed an act unprecedented for those times: he sent a letter to John Lennon himself. And it got through! Among the mountains of mail sent to the musician, a message was discovered from Russia closed off by the Iron Curtain. The legendary leader of the Beatles replied to a simple guy from St. Petersburg, enclosing a record of "All You Need Is Love" with his autograph. These rarities are now displayed in the collection. It also includes a model of a 70-meter temple made of marble and crystal, which will be erected on one of the islands of the Gulf of Finland. It will be dedicated to John Lennon. Kolya Vasin does not believe that the iconic musician was killed; he says it was staged. According to his information, Lennon is alive and is among the monks of a monastery in the Himalayas. As soon as Kolya builds the temple for him, John will return from voluntary seclusion and live there forever.
Peter's Nose Wiped Again
City folklore has always assigned its own names to Petersburg landmarks. Sennoy Market was called the "Belly of Petersburg." The fashion atelier on Nevsky - "Death to Husbands." St. Isaac's Cathedral - "The Inkwell." The cruiser Aurora - "The Iron of Socialism." The names were not given without reason. Why does the Gulf of Finland still remain the "Marquis's Puddle" for native Petersburgers? Because at the beginning of the 19th century, the post of naval minister was held by Marquis Jean-François de Traverse, who was afraid of water and suffered from seasickness.
St. Petersburg is a city of traditions, and this is especially felt during the white nights, when newly commissioned officers - graduates of higher military institutions - stroll along the embankments. Armed with cleaning paste, Nakhimov students polish the nose on the bust of the city's founder to a shine, midshipmen of the Pushkin Naval School scrub the buttocks of Hercules in Catherine Park, and military medics shine the boots of the bronze Botkin.
Petersburg newlyweds also have their own traditions. First they take photos against the Rostral Columns, then they go down to the Spit and smash a bottle of champagne against the cobblestones. As soon as the wedding car enters any of the bridges, the bride and groom start kissing and don't part until the bridge ends. And there are exactly 342 bridges here. They say one young couple kissed their way across all of them... Though what does 'they say' mean? There is no such word for true connoisseurs of legends. All of this really happened in mysterious, mystical, half-crazy Petersburg. Don't believe it? Check it yourself!
Игорь СТОМАХИН,
columnist for the magazine «Вояж и отдых».