With Oxana on Waterloo Bridge by Gillian

In the early 1990s, right after the words glasnost and perestroika entered our vocabularies, I spent some weeks in Russia as a USAID volunteer.

I worked for a company located right in the middle of Leningrad, shortly to return to its pre-communist identity of St. Petersburg, on the edge of the Nyeva river. I had a tiny attic room in an apartment belonging to Vadim and Ludmila Desyatkov, and the wonderful Ludmila had provided me with a season pass to The Hermitage museum.

          So every lunchtime, while my male Russian cohorts tossed back a few vodkas in the nearest bar, I walked, or let the old rattling tram take me to the orgy of magnificent creations that is the Hermitage.

On my third day of discovery I walked through one of the innumerable doors into one of innumerable little rooms and found myself alone with Waterloo Bridge. Effect of Fog. By Claude Monet. Oil on canvas, 1903.

Waterloo Bridge. Effect of Fog. By Claude Monet.
Oil on canvas, 1903

I had never been so completely transported by any work of art in my life.

         I had seen prints of this painting, and I had seen enough other originals by that time to know that no print ever comes close, but for some reason this one left me speechless.

         I gazed in wonder. The lavender fog swirled around me. I felt its fuzzy coolness envelop me.

I moved forward.

I was jolted from by reverie by a shockingly loud sound behind me.

Almost unable to tear my focus from the painting, I slowly turned.

In the corner a tiny little old lady sat on what looked like an old kitchen chair. She was rapping on the ancient wooden floor with an ancient wooden cane and staring admonishingly at me from shining coal black eyes. The term giving someone the evil eye leapt into my mind.

Both my hands shot up in the air of their own free will, surrendering and simultaneously demonstrating that they had no intention of touching the painting. I felt much more fear of her than could ever have been instilled in me by one of our uniformed, armed guards.

What smattering of Russian I possessed fled from my brain. I reverted to that best of universal languages and smiled. She scowled. Those bleak black eyes continued to bore right into me.

I left.

Of course I couldn’t stay away.

And anyway, ferocious little old women abound in Russian museums. There is at least one stationed in every room, where they perch on rickety old stools and chairs, their hands never still as they slave diligently at their tatting, knitting, embroidery. There never seem to be any men, but then most Russian males wisely drink themselves to death at a considerably younger age.

I returned the next day, and those that followed, better prepared. Every day I flashed my very best smile and offered a cheery dobroye utro, which was received with the same stern glare but I remained free of cane-rapping as I drank in my new obsession from every angle, soon forgetting anyone else was there.

This was a small room, perhaps twelve feet square, and what I now thought of as my painting, hung in splendid isolation as the only work in the room. Often the little room, my room, was empty of other visitors. It was January, the weather was miserable and it was well before the start of the tourist season, in all senses, as tourism had not really reached Russia at that time.

A couple of weeks later I had made almost daily visits to my painting and had graduated to not only a Russian good morning but also goodbye and thank you in what I’m sure was a deplorable Russian accent. All I ever got in return was that evil eye.

Dasvidaniya, I said one more time, turning regretfully to leave.

Spaciba.

The wrinkled brown face broke into a wide smile.

Our relationship zoomed off into fast forward. Only three weeks of smiles went by before we graduated to light touches, a hand on an arm, and eventually an offer for me to admire her handiwork. It was some kind of doily and I was a little unclear what it would be when it grew up but I admired her embroidery skills and there was nothing fake about my oohs and aahs of praise.

Now there was no stopping her. Only a few days later she stood, placed her embroidery carefully on the vacated seat, took one of my hands in hers, held it to her old sagging breast and said, ‘Oxana Kalashnikova.’

‘Gillian Edwards,’ I solemnly replied.

Each day from then on, she rose when I entered the room, placed her embroidery neatly on the seat, took both my hands in hers and stated almost reverently,

‘Zjillian Ed-oo-ards.’

‘Oxana Kashlikova,’ I replied.

These mutual assertions were followed by a nod of the head, almost a bow, in what seemed to me a strangely Japanese ceremony.

I never saw anyone else in Russia doing this, I think it was a little ritual Oxana herself devised.

And, yes, her name was actually Kashlikova, not Kalashnikova but I always preferred to think of her as the second. I know ova means daughter of, and the thought of some ancestor of hers slaving in his workshop to invent the infamous Kalishikov AK-47 greatly appealed to me.

With Ludmila’s help I began delivering small gifts to Oxana. Nothing extravagant, and mainly food in some form as Ludmila insisted that was what she would really value. After Communism collapsed, the Russian people lost the safety nets previously provided by the system and with inflation running around a thousand percent many people were desperately poor. Most of the store shelves were empty, and what food there was few could afford.

She opened the rough paper bag holding my first gift, peeked inside, and when she turned those hard black eyes to me they were filled with tears. She thanked me profusely in a stream of Russian which had no need of translation, then neatly folded over the top of the bag, placed it in her apron pocket, and resumed her work. Of course I hadn’t expected her to eat it there, the very thought of the look she would bestow on another caught eating in the museum made my blood run cold, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she would actually eat it herself, at all, or if it would be shared out meticulously among several family members or maybe slipped to a favorite grandchild.

After three months it was time to leave. With the help of my pocket calendar, which happily contained a tiny map of the U.S., and various childlike flying gestures, I conveyed to Oxana that Friday would be my last visit to my painting, and on Saturday I would fly back home.

It was with truly heavy heart that I entered my room for the last time. Three months is long enough to spend alone in a foreign country where you understand little of the language and in some ways even less of the culture. I was ready to leave, but I wanted to take my painting with me. The prospect of never seeing it again was like losing a loved one or a body part.

And, yes, the thought of never seeing Oxana again filled me with sadness. Where else would I find someone to greet me every morning with clasped hands, a little bow, and that reverent utterance,

‘Zjillian Ed-oo-ards.’

I handed her my last paper bag, and without a peek she stuffed it into her voluminous pocket.  I was relieved she had not looked as I had tried to hide the last of my rubles and a $20 bill, a pearl beyond price at that time in Russia, under the stack of ponchiki, a kind of anorexic donut.

Silently she handed me a similar paper bag.

Snacks for the plane? I wondered a little hysterically.

Then I noticed that for the first time ever, she was without her embroidery.

Enough of the protocol.

I threw my arms around her, we both wept a little, and I walked out of the little room with its solitary wonderful painting watched over by its solitary wonderful guardian.

I have never managed to find a real use for that gift that means so much to me.

         But every time I look at it I see my painting, in my room, watched over by my babushka.

And her final words echo in my memory.

‘Gooood-bye, dasvidaniya,  Zjillian Ed-oo-ards.’

After I read this story to the group, Ray S. painted his own version of Waterloo Bridge for me. I treasure it. Thanks for the painting and permission to show it here.

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.