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Moscow By The Hudson
by Robert Goff, from the Summer 1997 issue.
It’s Friday afternoon. Heading to Brighton Beach. Take the C or the E to West Fourth Street. Walk down two flights. Take the Q train heading downtown, to the last stop. The sun is out. It is the end of the work week and people are leaving early. I imagine that they just slip out, around 3, without asking. They leave and go to the park. Or go home. Or just walk the streets. I’m going to a beach in Brooklyn.
Descending to the Q train platform, faces change. Upstairs people are younger, whiter, faster. They are rushing to and from classes at NYU. Tourists head to the heart of Greenwich Village. Germans, French -- foreigners, mixed languages. Down on the Q platform, languages also mix. But these are not foreigners. I am the foreigner -- white, American, midwestern even, resident of Manhattan, heading to Brooklyn.
The train pulls in. It is dense with people --mutiny from jobs in the city--heading home. I get on and pack myself in between a Chinese woman and a sleeping drunk. He’s chalky white, with flushed cheeks, white hair, and a gut spilling over his pants. We pull out to make a few last stops in Manhattan. The faces on the train are darker, eyes darker, thicker eyebrows. A man across from me wears a fedora. The people are quiet, many are reading -- the Post, hardcover novels, literature, a Chinese paper.
Manhattan is already being eclipsed. The frenzy, the pretense, the vanity of the city isn’t palpable on the Q train on Friday at three in the afternoon. These aren’t people rushing off to investment banks or art openings or the Empire State Building. They are people escaping Manhattan, their jobs, their bosses and going home.
We cross into Brooklyn. Nobody seems to register the change. At DeKalb Avenue a clutch of Russian women board. They stand and chatter in the aisle. Their clothes are cheap and colorful. At 7th Avenue -- the Park Slope stop -- three tall white women with graying hair, long print dresses, and strong Protestant jaws get off. They all look like children’s book editors.
We head farther out. We pass neighborhoods of houses with yards, swaths of endless tenements, industrial parks, more shade-covered neighborhoods. The people on the train are African, Korean, Russian, Italian, Jewish, black, white, prosperous and down and out. Nobody pays any attention to anyone else. A young Russian girl reads an adolescent novel in English, occasionally turning to ask her father something in Russian.
The crowd in my car of the Q has thinned out. A man with a thick Slavic face, unshaven, splays his legs, holding a gymbag between them. His t-shirt is dirty and his expression is blank. The Russian women from DeKalb remain, gesticulating and talking fast. Besides them, it’s just the girl and her father, a few Africans, an old Hasidic man, and a couple of people of indeterminate ethnicity pressed against the door at the far end of the train making out. The myopia of Manhattan infects my thoughts--it’s been forty minutes and I feel like I’m heading to the end of the earth. I think nothing about sitting on a plane for six hours if I land in a foreign place, but here on this slow train, travel is not a shock. It’s gradual. And, anyway, I expect the place I’m going still to be America.
The ocean appears. This comes as a surprise. From the train it looks like any other stretch of ocean -- deep blue in the sunlight, infinite, beautiful. It seems very strange to me though, having just left the concrete valleys of Manhattan. It’s too close. It hasn’t occurred to me that I’m going to a beach. For me, New York and beaches have nothing to do with each other. You go to the beach to be away from New York. But here it is, New York on the beach.... The Q pulls into the Brighton Beach stop. It’s come faster than I expected. What was I waiting for, an announcement?
The first thing I see are the top floors of three-story buildings: the platform is elevated so you look directly into people’s apartments. I make my way to the exit, trying to take the rush out of my step; nobody else is rushing here. I walk down the two flights and out onto Brighton Beach Avenue. The avenue is covered by the train’s platform overhead so I feel like I’m in some sort of underground arcade, the authentic version of what people try to reproduce in other places like Atlanta or Minneapolis. The sun is strong today, so the edges of the Avenue are bright with light, which falls on the bustle of commerce surrounding the markets and fruit stands.
The first thing you see and hear is Russian. A shoe store with signs in Russian announcing a sale (I think). Workmen in blue uniforms pass by, speaking amiably in Russian. People conduct their daily business, their grocery shopping, their gossiping and haggling all in a language of which I can’t understand one word. If you’re a Manhattanite, you’d notice how cheap the produce is -- half of what it costs downtown. And better looking. I walk up and down the street. I pass by booksellers with books piled on tables outdoors, all in Russian -- Dostoyevsky, crime thrillers, the Torah. The newsstands sell a dozen different Russian newspapers and magazines -- the Russian edition of Playboy and Cosmo, included. Russian restaurants and nightclubs gear up for the weekend.
A little overwhelmed, I head to the beach. This seems like clear, neutral territory. Here, ironically, I can leave Russia and touch base with New York again. I am thirsty, so my first stop is the Rainbow Snack Shop, almost tucked under the steps leading up to the boardwalk. It’s a tiny place, sparsely furnished. Two old men sit there with a plate of stale-looking pastries between them. They are glazed with something that makes them shiny. The pastries, not the men. In the corner is a tall glass-faced cooler that has Coke written across the top. It is filled with Pepsi. I like this: marketing breaks down here. To tell the truth, I have never given a crap about the difference anyway. I buy a Pepsi and leave. I walk up the steps, cross the wide, gray-planked boardwalk and park myself on a bench in front of the ocean.
The sun is hot enough. One of the first true days of spring. Just in front of my feet the gray wood stops and the sand begins. I kick my feet up on the rail which separates boardwalk from beach and am satisfied that Manhattan is somewhere off in the distance, out of sight.
The beach is wide and brown. Trash litters the sand here and there. Big urban pigeons amble around: this is not the Caribbean. Farther out, near the water’s edge, people dot the beach. I can see a man in a wheelchair just sitting there. A few black kids chase each other around. An old couple moves very slowly, arms entwined. There is nothing fancy about this beach. Nothing sexy. It is too early in the season anyway. And a Friday afternoon. People are just getting reacquainted with the water and sand, fully clothed.
There are a lot of old people in Brighton Beach. Again, maybe it’s just the time of day. Who has their afternoons free anyway? Only old people, children, writers and bums. I’d include the idle rich, but they don’t really venture this far out of Manhattan. An old couple sit on a bench near me and talk, in heavy Brooklyn accents, about the bane of corporations: It’s the big corpah-ray-shuns I tell ya.... His wife, or female companion, sits plastered in silence. On another bench nearby seven old Russians are jammed together, all wearing blue, all facing the wrong way, backs to the ocean, legs dangling out the backside of the bench. They talk among themselves in Russian, facing towards the boardwalk, looking at no one in particular. Just talking. A lot of talking, looking, and slow walking gets done in Brighton Beach.
The boardwalk itself is a multicultural highway. Besides Russians, there are Chinese, whites, blacks, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Africans. All the mix and mash of Manhattan and New York. There are fat people, old people, ugly people, people in cheap clothing. No one cares. This is not Manhattan. There are no pretty people. Not the faintest whiff of pretense, or fashion, or vanity. I have heard about the nightlife here, the slick Russian mafia dons and their weedy blonde girlfriends who cruise up and down the Avenue in white Mercedes and BMWs. But there is no evidence of that now, in daylight. An old woman walks down the middle of the boardwalk wearing a great white beak on her nose. I think it’s some sort of bandage. Or maybe it protects her from the sun. I don’t know. Playgrounds abut the boardwalk, surrounded by chain-link fences. They are filled with children screaming, running, and laughing.
A lot of New York clichés roost here on the boardwalk --- accents, gestures, faces. The buildings and apartment houses that edge along the water belong to New York. So does the dirt. But there is more space here, room to breathe. The self-consciousness of Manhattan doesn’t exist in Brighton Beach. Jammed up against the ocean, there’s no place to rush to. Slowness is a luxury.
I walk down to a string of restaurants and cafes that line the boardwalk. All the signs are in Russian. The outdoor tables are crowded with people eating and drinking. A number of the tables make it look like lunch has already lasted a couple of hours. I hesitate before picking a restaurant--the reluctance of someone who doesn’t speak the language. I choose a table at Hirsche’s Knishes. It’s not the fanciest nor the cheapest looking place, but it has a clear view of the water and a couple of open tables.
The familiar alienation of travelling in a foreign place sets in. Will they understand me? How will I communicate my order? Will I make a scene involving pointing and translating and getting the wrong thing? I hate making scenes. I’d rather blend in. But I don’t blend in: this is Russia.
I am the only non-Russian at the restaurant. The waiter comes over and doesn’t speak any English. Luckily the menu is translated and I point to what I want. What the hell, I’ll try the Russian pancakes with caviar. I order the cheap red stuff, not the black, and a mug of beer. Heineken? Sure, whatever. Everyone at the tables next to me are drinking beer or shots of vodka or whisky. And it’s such a pleasure to have a beer outside on a warm day, facing the ocean while everyone you know is working.
The food comes. Russian pancakes turn out to be perfectly done French crepes. The caviar is surprisingly good--not overly salty, firm, cut by the sweetness of the pancakes. I see a couple of old people with the same mysterious beak-bandage walk in front of me. It must be a geriatric Russian thing. Sitting here, with a slow buzz softening the edges, I could be at a resort on the Baltic Sea. Manhattan is absent.
The cafes cater to a distinctly Russian crowd. Non-Russians seem to pass along in front of them, in an alternate world. They walk, they look, they skate, or bike or skateboard by. Across the boardwalk, Russia begins again. A crowd of old Russians huddle under a large metal gazebo talking, playing chess, sitting at tables and picnicking. A flock of pigeons mirrors them just outside of the gazebo on the sand, pecking, chattering.
I wash the last of the pancakes down with the beer. A table of old Russian men behind me don’t seem to be any farther along in their lunch than when I arrived. They could be talking about anything -- quantum physics or the price of chicken. Whatever it is, they speak with energy and passion. Each takes his time making his point, drawing out certain words, accentuating with eloquent gestures. They don’t feel the pressure of Manhattan--but then they are in a different country and they are old. At another table are two young, good looking couples. The men are talking
seriously, and the women -- both bottle blondes with dark roots -- sit back, docile and quiet. In front of me two Americans have taken a seat. They order Snapple. The waiters ignore them. Every other table is laden with beer and alcohol. My own almost-finished beer protects me: at least I’m not one of them.
God, it’s pleasant here. The boardwalk gradually becomes more crowded. People are getting off work, returning from school and errands. I gesture to pay the check. After a little confusion, I pull out the money and leave a good tip since I sat there for quite a while and didn’t order much. I don’t care that it isn’t acknowledged. At least they take dollars.
I walk back to the Avenue, more crowded than before. I find the subway entrance, an ornate iron staircase leading up. The escalator next to the staircase is broken, leaving a bent old woman stranded at the bottom. I take this as a sign that I’m heading back to the city, where so many things don’t work well and the old and weak are left to fend for themselves. I’m reminded that even here, in Brighton Beach, I’m still in New York.
The cars on the subway ride back to Manhattan are relatively empty, compared to the ones coming in the opposite direction, into Brooklyn, which are packed. The return trip seems to take a much longer time. This isn’t due to headwinds, just the sense you get when you’re coming back from the beach or a foreign place to the dirt and grind of the city.
by Robert Goff, from the Summer 1997 issue.
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