For Fima, my Russian Peter Pan because he made St Petersburg a magical, living,  breathing entity for me in every possible way.

 

‘Вечером 27 января молодой человек совершил свой последний визит в это место, Литературное кафе, 18 Невском проспекте в Санкт-Петербурге. Молодой человек был Александр Пушкин, который умер через 2 дня от дуэли ранения, полученного в тот вечер в руках Жоржа Дантеса. Eму было всего 38. По сей день, в кафе имеется восковой манекен его в окно, чтобы отметить этот факт. В частности, мы восхищаемся нашими авторами.”

 

“On the evening of January 27th, a young man made his last visit to this place, the Literary Cafe, 18 Nevsky Prospect, in St. Petersburg. The young man was Alexander Pushkin, who died 2 days later from a duelling wound received that night at the hand of Georges d’Anthes. He was only 38. To this day, the cafe has a wax mannequin of him in the window to commemorate this fact. We particularly revere our authors.” 

 

 

Alexander Pushkin

 

I was a student of Russian and I did my 6 month elective studying and living in St. Petersburg – in those days still called Leningrad. I had met the man who told me this, Ephraim Rabinovich (Fima), through another Russian friend, Leonid (Leonya as he was known to his friends). He was my blind date to an evening at the ballet. Leonid had fallen for Bridie McMahon, one of my fellow students, who was a good friend of mine, and, like Leonya, a ballet afficionado. Leonya needed to somehow orchestrate it so that he could monopolise the attention of the object of his affections…!

 

Poor Leonya. Little did he know that he had introduced me to the single greatest asset I was to encounter on my Russian odyssey, nor did he realise that Bridie felt she had drawn the short straw! That is perhaps a little unfair, because Leonya was charming company but he did not have Fima’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the city of his birth nor Fima’s interest in all things literary, musical, archaeological, social, political, architectural. Was there anything he did not know about his birthplace?

 

The Marinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, home to the Maly and the Kirov.

 

Fima was a biochemist by profession but an archaeologist and poet by inclination. And he was on holiday. Fima, like I did, had a passion for all the arts. For music, from Baroque to Rock, from classical to jazz. If you wanted to talk architecture; he knew the architect of every one of the great former palaces and churches built around the city. He could talk about dance, from tango to ballet, from street to ballroom. If art was your bag, he knew pretty much where every famous old master hung in the Hermitage/Winter Palace. But above all, he loved literature.

 

The Winter Palace

 

 

The first time we went to a rock concert, he walked me home via the the building that served as the setting for Raskolnikov’s home in Crime and Punishment. No 19, Grazhdanskaya Ulitsa (street), formerly known as Srednaya Meshchanskaya Ulitsa. Dostoevsky moved 20 times in the 28 years he spent in the city, but favoured the shabbier parts of town around Sennaya Ploschad (Haymarket Square) or Vladimirsky. He deliberately chose these neighbourhoods because he wanted to savour and record life in the rougher, seamier parts of town.

 

 

Grazhdanskaya Street

Then we went to a classical concert – Rachmaninov Piano Concerto Number One. He brought his friend Sasha, with him and promised me a treat afterward. Sasha sat throughout the performance completely silently. His expression was rapt, intent. Once the concert was over, we repaired to Sasha’s apartment, a small flat in a large block, completely dominated by an old battered upright in the corner. Fima got his friend a glass of water and then simply said “идти!” or “Go!” Sasha sat at the piano and recreated the piece we had just heard. It sounded note-perfect to me…. Fima then told me that Sasha was an illiterate bartender. He could not read a word of text, a note of music. Indeed, if you put notations in front of him, he could not perform at all, he simply unravelled. But take him to a concert and he would listen and reproduce it. He played everything entirely by ear.

 

Church of Our Saviour on the Spilled Blood

 

Fima introduced me to all his amazing friends. Every one of them had an interesting story to tell. Astonshingly, they would rather tell me, a total stranger, their deepest held desires or worst fears for themselves than their friend because I would not betray them to the authorities, but their friend just might. Fima took me around the city each day, each night. We would simply take a different route home each time. Every second I spent with him became a grand adventure.We saw the palace that housed Pushkin’s Queen of Spades. We admired the mosaic icons in the Church of Our Saviour on the Spilled Blood. Or we would throw ourselves into the busy crush that was the department store Gum/Gym (Gosudarstvenny Universalny Magazin/State Universal Shop) and look for a suitably Russian fur hat for me.

 

GUM

 

We marvelled at the architectural perfection of Architect Rossi Street. Located behind the Pushkin Theatre, this street is absolutely symmetrical. The two palaces either side of the street are identical, same colour, same facade, the theatre at the end is identical too. In addition, the length of the street is exactly twice its width, and the height of the palaces is the street’s width. Standing at the end looking up its length gives you a feeling of exquisite ‘rightness’. It is home to the Vaganova Ballet Academy, the Imperial Ballet School. It is feeder for the Kirov and the Bolshoi, and where Nijinsky, Nureyev and Barishnikov learned their craft.

 

 

Architect Rossi Street

 

I learned to love the city because I saw it through Fima’s eyes, experienced it in his company. It was exhilarating. St Isaac’s Cathedral, the Griboyedov Canal, the Peter Paul Fortress, Admiralty Square. Stopping for coffee and cake in one of the many cafes on Nevsky Prospect and of course visiting the Winter Palace, over and over, to pore over the enormous collection of museum exhibits, to appreciate the astonishingly beautiful architecture, inside and out.

 

Griboyedov Canal

 

I wish every traveller a Fima, a Peter Pan, who will conjure a world full of surprise, of awe, of magnificence. A world that answers all your questions about music, art, architecture, literature, history, politics. A guide that truly makes a city a living, breathing thing that enchants, amazes, seduces.