Yoga
We are due to leave for St Petersburg at midnight from Leningradsky Vokzal. In the misguided spirit of productivity maximisation, I decide to use the time before our trip to attend a yoga class between 8 and 10pm. A pert female voice informs me over the telephone that it is an advanced group, but I am so thrilled at having discovered that there are lessons in my building that her warnings fall on deaf ears. My last experience of yoga, ten years prior, to counteract a series of inexplicable panic attacks, has left a dimly lit image in my mind of slow, calm movements and pleasant relaxation. I don't really want to use the word 'zen' in relation to yoga, it makes me seem like a victim of post-modern religious insensitivity, but essentially, I expect to feel very zen, perhaps even deliciously sleepy, ready to sushi roll myself into a gently rocking train berth, after a casual session of indulgent stretching.
Two hours later, glazed in sweat and coated in a light powdering of ever-present Moscow dust, like some kind of filthy salty human donut, I am dragging myself to the station in the midst of an argument with angry leg muscles, having discovered – too late – that Yoga Russian Style is more boot camp than spa experience. The only thing that kept me contorted in the strictures of an endless agonising stretch, was the fact that the instructor's musculature had been rather pleasantly refined. Cursing his pretty blue eyes, for whose tender approval I had forced myself into ever-more unseemly positions, I climb the escalators at Komsomolskaya, reflecting that it had hardly been worthwhile; at the end of the class, he had revealed a certain crassness... With seeming chivalry, he had asked whether I would like to sit at the front rather than the back, given my nearsightedness. Not relishing the embarrassment of demonstrating the Collapsing Warrior Pose before a live audience, I invented a silly joking excuse – that I would rather not show everyone my, to put it bluntly, ass. “They'd have something to look at”, he winked.
It is not obvious, once I emerge above ground, which of the three train stations surrounding me is Leningradsky. A confusing warren of kiosks cast an anaemic reddish light over the thick throngs of thieves and beggars attracted by easy pickings. For the first time, I feel intimidated, revulsed. The alleyways exhale stale urine mixed with that sharp vinegary smell, the stench of civilisation, the urban unwashed in their stiff clothes, a Hobbesean state of nature – not the naked, jungular one where bodies are purged by rain. This filthy, hopeless opportunism is the real measure of the city, and its hot breath feels deadeningly close, the distance from top floor to bottom rung only a greasy palm's breadth.
Turning on my own axis with slow uncertainty, awkward in a grey cotton tube dress that suddenly feels streetwalker-short, I intercept the leer of a gang of militsia boys. Their huge peaked caps slide back on their cropped blonde heads. They are always in groups, affecting casual banter to hide their adolescent discomfort; you hardly ever see a police officer alone. Reflexively, I check for my passport. It's not there. Which means I can't get on the train.
