Tucked inside my journal here is a small plastic bag, with two photographs. One is of my son Dinesh, a snapshot he gave me last Christmas, a great shot of him taken by a friend; he's smiling broadly and his face is off-center, so it takes up the right side of the photograph. In the back you can see the clock tower on city hall in Lewiston.
The other photograph in the bag is of my father. It's a small wallet-sized print of a picture that my step-brother Scott took. Daddy (he has always been Daddy to me, and always will) stands in his office at the lab, in one of the tweed jackets he'd worn since our year in Scotland. There's a faint smile on his face, a twinkle in his warm eyes. Behind him are framed certificates and
pictures of the people who meant so much to him during his tenure as Director of the Lab: Terry Sanford, "Bookie", the many foreign biologists who came through on research grants. He's in a white turtleneck, holding his pipe by the bowl, his strong hands cupped around it so that the powerful knuckles gleam white in the photographer's frame. His other hand is in his pocket. And on the lapel of his jacket is a tiny ship, a lapel-pin replica of the schooner atop the Admiralty in the city he knew as Leningrad.My father first came to to the Soviet Union in the late 1960's, when he was a member of scientific delegations participating in detente-era exchanges. In Moscow he was befriended by a biologist who became legendary in our household as "Simeon" - pronounced Sim-e-on - who showed my father the churches of Moscow, sent home books about ballet and Russian art, and once (wonder of wonders) got my father to do the twist for a gathering of academics at someone's apartment. Last year, when Daddy was so sick, increasingly weak with cancer and various treatments, he and I spent a long morning reminiscing about those remarkable years and the people he met. When I finally went on line to see if I could figure out just who "Sim-e-on" was, the task proved remarkably easy: a much beloved, well-regarded biologist, son of a member of the Academy, he plays a minor role in the memoirs of Vladimir Posner, famous in the glasnost era for his "tele-bridge" broadcasts. Simeon, it turns out, introduced Posner to Ilf and Petrov, a pair of hilarious early-Soviet satirists whose work was virtually unknown in the late Stalin era when Posner and Miliekovsky (Simeon) were both students. My father's Jewish friend had loved Orthodox churches and poetry as well as marine mollusks. He was part of the world of Russia my father brought home with him. Part of the world I fell in love with. That little ship on his lapel was the one thing I wanted most from my father, when it came to take off his jacket for the last time.
All through this fall semester, I have thought of my father off and on, and most often he has come to me when I'm crossing a bridge. This is a city in which you cross bridges fairly often, but there's one bridge in particular - the stock-market bridge, the birzhevoi most, where I've found myself thinking of him most frequently. It's perfectly obvious why: this is the bridge from the Petrograd Side (the island where our Institute is located) to Vasilievsky Island, the bridge that takes you to the so-called Strelka, the eastern-most point of land on Vasilievsky, where the former Stock Market, now the Naval museum, is located. It's a stunning architectural ensemble, with two deep-crimson columns adorned with ships' prows and statues of Neptune, and an enfilade of elegantly-trimmed trees that circle out from the Museum into the Neva. It's the part of the city my father would have come most frequently on his trips to Leningrad, since the Naval Musem sits right beside the Zoological Institute. Filled with hundreds if not thousands of stuffed and embalmed animals, plus the treasured mammoths dug out of the Siberian permafrost, the Institute/Museum is where my father met with his colleagues in the 1960's and 70's. I met most of them when they visited the lab in Beaufort on reciprocal visits in the 1970's. I'd make attempts in my faltering Russian to communicate. My father would be proud. I'd feel inadequate but delighted to be hovering on the edge of this world where people from opposed evil empires spent their time talking about barnacles and blue crabs. No one else really knew how little I could understand. There was still time to learn. I had a lifetime and lots of books ahead of me.
When I cross the north branch of the Neva, over the Birzhevoi most, it's blowing so hard that my tears might be caused by the wind. It's something about the expansiveness of water, the broad river on its way to the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea, the way a stiff breeze feels once it's broken free of buildings and branches. It blows right in your face and smells of salt and sorrow. It doesn't matter if you're crying; it could well be the wind. After all, this is Petersburg, city of madmen and visionaries. You can talk to yourself on the street and no one will care. Besides, these days you might have a blue tooth or be talking on your cell phone. So I talk to my father on the birzhevoi most. I tell him how much I miss him, how much this place makes me think of him, how thankful I am for this gift to me, of Russia.
Walking across the bridge late this afternoon, when the 4:00 dusk draws in under mist-laden clouds and a southerly but quite un-warm breeze, I feel as though I might not need to cry any more. The Neva flows away toward the west, pulling against the heavy trusses, hammering the water into patterns of leaden grey. Grief doesn't follow a calendar, and I will perhaps cross this water again and feel myself dissolve into tears. But today I feel only peace, and gratitude for work - a vocation - that is remarkably like his: teaching and students and colleagues and conversation, with stories and poems instead of barnacles.
That little ship he always wore on his lapel still shines up there at the top of the Admiralty spire, duller and more dimmed on a day like today, but still beautiful. Walking through this city, hearing the words of a language I struggled into all those years ago, I have a sense of following some great labyrinth of affection: my father's for Sim-e-on, Simeon's for architecture and poetry, my own for the language of people I met through books arriving from unbelievably distant voyages. Little ships, traveling through time, tacking against a stiff wind. With tears in our eyes.
