Arrival in Perm

This is a guest post from Wade Schuman of Hazmat Modine as part of The World’s blogging series presented by musicians and artists while on tour.

Perm, Russia (Photo: Wade Schuman)

Our hotel in perm is a strange Russian 1970′s time warp complete with a swingers disco, a bowling alley and photos of “Eminent Guests” in the hallways, with stylish lapels, and flayed and poofed hair.

Dinner started with one of the ubiquitous Russian salads of indeterminate soggy contents. No one could tell if it was salmon or chicken. After the salad we were served a piece of what I call UFA: unidentified fried animal, with fried cheese on top, fried potatoes, and three rolls.

Asking for butter seemed to cause a great deal of anxiety from the servers and a committee of three finally appeared and I was told that if I wanted butter for the rolls I would have to pay extra as it only came with breakfast.

On the first day in the hotel everyone checked into rooms, only to find that by mid-day they were removing all the locks to change them from keyed doors to card doors. This process involved much banging, drilling, and about 40 doors open with no security. Trying to explain why this was not a good thing for the occupants seem to baffle and annoy the hotel employees.

This time of year the sun stays up till 12:30 a.m., then falls below the horizon, rising again about 2:30 a.m. The light in Perm was clear and astonishingly bright.

Directly opposite the hotel is a small zoo. Around 11:00 a.m. I walked in. Two guards were standing playing an odd sort of backgammon with plastic coke bottle caps, they spoke no English but waved me in after cautioning me in pantomime to not stick my fingers in the cages.

All zoos seem sad, but there is nothing as sad as a small semi-derelict provincial zoo, any pretense of preservation or science is gone, the zoo consisted of poorly made wood and metal cages with dirty concrete floors and occasional half hearted attempts at mimicking nature by wiring sticks or trees to the ceilings. Broken toys were scattered about in some of the cages: a tip of the hat to the intelligence of the otters of the wolves, these broken green or blue plastic Chinese toys were chewed into bits or pockmarked with teeth holes.

The animals appeared like flashes of luminous essence in this drab and terrifying place, it was soul piercing to lock eyes with the snow leopard pacing back and forth in a 10×12 cage, all the grace and beauty that exists in the universe infused into its being contrasting with the idiocy and cluelessness of the concrete and metal enclosure.

If there ever was an example of man’s profound lack of divine perception this is it. The big cats stared out at me as I passed: all twitching awareness. The zoo had hyrax and jaguars and lions and a tiger, the guano filled birdcages had all sorts of fowl mixed together, owls and pheasants and parrots and chickens.

Numerous signs and depictions of bleeding fingers warned visitors that the mistake of poking through the mesh could ensure the wrath of the inhabitants. There were extensive graphic images: don’t harass the bears with your dog, or poke the rabbits with a stick.

I walked about the vacant zoo in the late northern evening light, the sun skimming the horizon, listening to the wheezing sound of the jaguar as it paced and the moan of the lion.

In one corner there was a large eagle huddled by the front of his cage sticking his head out and makes a pleading sound over and over again with a gaping beak. There were agitated wolves and morose weasels, skittering dwarf mongoose and a few fruit bats and a group of coati mundi.

To my surprise also two large polar bears, one asleep with his paws around an old bald tire, the other shuffled forward 10 feet, then walked backward, like a movie running in reverse as if to erase his steps, then forward again. The whole ritual over and over … a strange and disturbingly unnatural movement, moving forward and back again as if in a trance.

Polar bears, tigers, most large predators walk thousands of miles, covering distances, always on the move for prey, in these concrete enclosures they simply go insane. The constant pacing and circular motions a shattered memory of the instinct to move, I watched each animal and saw that each one was broken.

I left the zoo and walked toward the river. The sky was filled with thousands of swallows. In the distance they appeared like a swarm of insects. Beside the zoo were huge dilapidated government buildings, a church and a square, all in various states of disrepair.

From here was a view of the river far below and far away the highway moved across on a huge bridge stretching to the other side.

With the sun setting it was a vast and beautiful view, and brought to mind places I had seen when I was hitchhiking through Montana as a teenager. I was struck how similar and melancholy the largeness of space and the isolated provincial aspect that this place had in common with the American West.

Above the river was a series of verandas and paths full of teenagers drinking, smoking, groping, kissing, cars and groups of girls, a tent with disco lights and a DJ. Below on the water several cruise boats went up and down the river, in the distance I could make out on the decks groups of dancing figures in the flicking light of the disco balls.

I walked up through the woods along the river. Below a train sped by and teenagers came and went through the woods disappearing into various abandoned buildings that sat at the edge of the trees below the zoo.

At the end of the road there were new buildings, covered in the chrome, glass and granite that seems to be the required construction of modern Russian wealth, turning back around the edge of the zoo I passed a men’s club next to a hotel called the “Hotel California” and a beautiful old 19th century wooden house joined to the neon lit strippers club.

Eventually I made my way back to the hotel.

The windows on the third floor face the zoo, and the sound of the teenagers circling in cars around the city mix with the moans of the lions. Outside the window the sickly yellow street lights glow in front of the steeple of the church, which was lit above by the gradually returning sunlight gently spreading over the zoo.