Russians are private people. I remember not long after I had first moved to St Petersburg, I asked my Russian language teacher why it was that Russians had acquired that most-famous-of-stereotypes: "They never smile, and always look grumpy". She laughed, and replied that Russians have a certain way of behaving when in public which may seem cold and stand-offish to foreigners. She then went on to explain that within the comfort of their homes, Russians let down their guard. They cross the threshold of their private dwelling, shuck the shoes off their tired feet, slip on their тапочки ('tapochki', slippers), and shed their prickly hides, leaving them at the door to dry. Home. Comfort. Safety. A sigh of relief. A smile.
There have been moments when I have been speaking with Russians that I have felt that they let their guard down with me. In the past semester I've become friends with a teacher of mine at the conservatory who is in her twenties. Over time, she began to confide in me more and more. I began to teach her English, and she in turn helped me a lot with my dancing and pushed me to improve my technique. We went to the theatre to watch a ballet together, and we switched from the formal to the informal pronoun and mode of speech (equivalent to "tu" in Spanish or French, with all verbs declining according to the pronoun).
Each of these details were, to me, small victories. They were signs that I was somehow getting closer to meeting the real person underneath her wary, guarded exterior. Recently, she was confiding something in me, and then suddenly she paused and looked at me again, as though seeing me properly for the first time. She shook her head, a cloud passing over her pale, thin face, and her brow wrinkled as she said, "You know, sometimes I forget you're not Russian..."
A "dacha" is a summer house, but not in the American or European sense of the word. It is not an ordinary house in the country, or a quaint little seaside cottage.
Each dacha is unique, generally built by the family that owns it. Often, they have no indoor toilet, but rather a small outhouse. Most do not have a shower. Apart from the rudimentary plumbing, the electricity is, traditionally, a work in progress. The patchy, bare-bones insulation renders the little shack uninhabitable except for a few months in the late spring and summer. But the point of a dacha is not to sit indoors all day, for as they say, "That's what we do all winter!"
The joke among Russians is that the dacha is always a work in progress. Something always wants mending or improving upon. If it weren't that way, well, then it wouldn't be any fun. It wouldn't be a proper dacha.
The dacha is not just a place for rest, but a place for the very special brand of activity known as "dacha work". This generally refers to the constant fixing of the house - painting, nailing in uneven floorboards, adding a door here or there, cutting new curtains, adding a greenhouse or bigger tool shed, repairing whatever damage a hard winter has brought on .
Apart from repairs, dacha work consists, first and foremost, of gardening. There is the near-religious cultivation of cucumbers, to be eaten fresh and pickled for the winter. Then there are the rows of radishes, cabbages, tomatoes, peppers, and melons, with the occasional crab apple tree providing fruit for jams and pies.
In addition, there is the great Russian summer tradition of шашлык ('shashlyk', pork kebabs cooked on a charcoal grill).
As with everything else typical of dacha life, the tradition of shashlyk is not just about eating the meat. It's about the entire process, from start to finish, which is what makes the experience one of the most beloved summer activities among Russian families.
The mother or father goes to the local butcher, selects the cut of meat carefully, then comes home and proceeds to slice it into cubes, which are all the same size to ensure they all cook evenly. Then there is the marinading of the meat for half the day in onions, spices, water, and a touch of vinegar.
One of my hosts assured me, with a grin, that he would trust no form of measurement other than that which his own tongue told him to be right, when it came to gauging the ratio of vinegar to water for marinading the meat.
"I like to season the meat piece by piece, so I'm sure each one is properly covered in the spices.", he told me. "It takes longer," he conceded, "But I think you can tell the difference in the taste, and that's what's most important." He smiled and laughed a little at himself, then we lapsed back into silence as he carried on seasoning the meat. I watched, entranced by the attention to detail, the care with which he handled each cube, rubbing it between his fingers and then placing it back in the pile.
We sat out in the garden, sipping квас ('kvass', a traditional Russian fermented drink made from rye bread that tastes like the love child of kombucha and beer), waiting for the coals to heat up in the grill. The smoky smell of the charcoal intermingled with the tantalising odour of the shashlyk in the air around us, and we waited impatiently, staring like a pack of ravenous wolves at the sizzling meat.
It was excellent.
It was such a relief to crawl out of our underground dens and blink in the light of spring, filling our lungs with fresh air and our eyes with all the surrounding green. With the summer sun setting at around 10pm, we stayed up late chatting, drinking cup after cup of tea, the kitchen table scattered with biscuits and sugar cubes.
There was a simplicity to everything about the dacha and the life we led there for those couple days. A deep sense of peace came over me, which was sorely needed after a year of hard dancing, stressful studying, and after months of being cooped up in a grey, dark city.
After so much time of living alone, I was very grateful to find myself in the company of such warm, welcoming, generous people, and to have been welcomed into their home like one of the family. I feel as though I've been given a long-awaited nod of approval. It's as though they said, "She's not one of us, not our kind. But she can be trusted. She is welcome in our home."