i see dead people...

…on an almost daily basis here. and many of the dead people are not just dead, they never existed in the first place. when i go to a station, for example, i see anna karenina. when i see my landlady, i hear raskolnikov in my ear. when i hear a doctor, i listen to zhivago. this weekend was no different as i was invited to a dacha. the very word ‘dacha’ is so evocative of great fiction that i can scarcely believe they exist in real life, especially not in this century. nevertheless, they do, and the majority of russian families have a dacha somewhere in the country – ranging from a small shack, where they grow vegetables in the summer, to mansions on large estates the size of a european principality. the dacha i went to was somewhere in between – a wooden house deep inside a forest and perched on the banks of an ice-bound lake with a statue of lenin at the gates holding up a cheery hand in welcome. naturally, my hosts, being russian, were generosity itself and the table moaned under the weight of a muksun cooked in salt the size of small whale, enough lamb to put a shepherd out of work, plus any number of salads and accompanying dishes, my favourite being ‘herring in fur coats’. as wonderful as this fayre was, however, the highlight for me was simply sitting on a bench outside and catching the dacha vibe. i could all but see tolstoy pacing up and down, smoking a pipe and fretting over what to do with his peasants, while chekov emerged from the banya having decided what to do with uncle vanya. of course, that may have been the vodka.