White Nights

by Peter Hammer

         ‘White Nights’ in St. Petersburg still leave me with a feeling of bewilderment, a sense of a pleasant, lingering deception. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the actual memories and the actual effect that they have had on me – a recollection bursting with enchantment and romance. But whether they are memories, or their effect on me, they are much more powerful than any photos I have taken during those nights, or of expressive paintings I have seen in any Russian gallery or museum, which have tried to capture this natural phenomenon. These nights are strangely bright - they are not like nights as many latitudinally-challenged such as my former self know it, these are curiously indistinguishable from day, almost like a dimmer switch being turned down but only by a few notches. And the twilight has an eerie silvery-blue glow which plays tricks with your eyes, such that when it blends into dawn, you are unsure if it is morning light majestically triumphing over the luminous evening, or if the colourful twilight is the daytime’s playful twin, coming to town for just a few weeks of the year in early summer to joyfully illuminate St. Petersburg with its magical appeal, but sympathetically ebbing away each of those sunrises and allowing its slightly stronger sibling to surface and take some of the glory. During these few special weeks, all the city’s sights and beauty possess the same shape and grandeur as other times of the year, but the dampened light gives you a type of tunnel vision when you look at something for a couple of seconds, and then its beauty engulfs the object you are looking at, capturing and whispering to your vision to look at it longer. The network of canals which predominantly feed off the winding Neva River gleam throughout the bright night, but the sheen sticks to the water and doesn’t reflect onto the numerous tall, gallant bridges which stand to attention for only a few hours each night to allow ships to peacefully glide through. The bold, massive St. Isaacs Cathedral, with its mighty golden dome and thick, polished granite columns, sits and solemnly stares like a concerned guardian, demanding that the city’s disrespectful children - still joyfully bustling in the streets at that late hour - should return home and go straight to bed. The ominous silhouette of the 12-meter thick walls and bastions of Peter and Paul Fortress trace the elliptical shape of Hare Island floating between the Neva River and Kronverk Strait, and protects a strangely contrasting, long, slender spire, from the centrally-situated cathedral, trying to poke through the silvery blue haze surrounding it. The White Nights finish confusing your eyes and body clock when they depart in mid-July, but by late May the following year they are doing it again.

         These so-called “White Nights” (Beliye Nochi) are not unique to St. Petersburg, as, for instance, Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Anchorage all sit roughly along the same latitude. However, St. Petersburg is the world’s most northern city with a 5-million strong population, 4 times that of its closest rival, which enjoys these White Nights and the only one which has painstakingly crafted so many waterways, so many dazzling, ornate palaces, and surprisingly so many wide roads dotted with stunning 18 th- and 19 th-century architecture, cathedrals, theatres, and museums, all of them eager to emit a spectacular, vibrant aura during this time of year.

         It is not surprising, then, that these northern nights have received tremendous poetic acclaim. As Fedor Dostoevsky once wrote, "St. Petersburg's White Nights, a whole moment of bliss!  Is that not enough for an entire human life?"

         However, good old Fedor’s literary praise didn’t really prepare me for a different type of white night in St. Petersburg. I experienced such a night in St. Petersburg not in the summer, but rather in late November, during the winter of 1997.

          Food and drink is very popular with Russians, as with many nations, and I certainly got my fill that wintry day in November. Now, I had been to Russia a few times before this trip, but mostly to Moscow due to various business developments, and I had always found the Russians to be extremely hospitable. The very tall owner of our Russian business in St. Petersburg, Mikhail, was extremely generous and kind, and even though he didn’t speak any English, had a very soft and pleasant demeanour – a typical ‘gentle giant’. Even during the most busy times and hectic days, he would always try to allocate part of the day to take an excursion together, whether it was to visit one of their many palaces, cathedrals, or theatres, or just to take a walk around the heart of the city. This particular day, after a long but successful seminar, we hosted a short but enjoyable reception with a variety of soft drinks, vodka, and even Russian sparking wine, ‘shampanskoye’! I hadn’t tasted it before, as the typical beverage (or at least, in the business world) is, yes you guessed it, vodka. So how refreshing it was to sample something with a little more bouquet and a lot less potency. And it actually tasted quite pleasant!

          Once the reception was coming to an end, I managed to escape from the hotel with the help of my gentle giant comrade to visit the Hermitage, a beautiful green-and-white baroque palace, a former residence of the Russian Tsars and Tsarinas and today one of the world’s largest museums founded by Catherine the Great boasting a vast art collection - Egyptian, Greek, Ancient Roman, Oriental, Western European etc. – you name it, it has it. It has been calculated (no doubt the initial hard work completed by some underpaid but dedicated, pallid Hermitage curator) that if you decide to spend only one minute in front of each exhibit, you would have to stay in the Hermitage for over 5 years(!). My whirlwind tour was only limited to 2 hours, as we had to attend a very large banquet for a number of customers later that day back at the hotel, so luckily I managed to come out of the Hermitage without ageing too much. (For any math whizzes out there, I would only have managed to dedicate approximately 0.0026 seconds per exhibit - with a bit of rounding up involved – if I would have managed to see all the exhibits, that is). Almost incomprehensible, all that beauty packed into one large building.

          After our overwhelming tour, we walked around the Hermitage building in calm, blissful snowy weather, it was so strangely quiet in the heart of this very large city that we could hear the snow crunch beneath our feet, and could almost hear the snowflakes flutter and softly land on and around us. I thought that this was almost too good to be true – it was truly a dreamy setting. The White Nights in May were spectacular, but this was equally astonishing.

         Unfortunately there was business to attend to, duty called and we, including a couple of Mikhail’s employees and my translator, had to make our way back to the hotel to partake in the banquet. Either we arrived quite early, or the guests, approximately 50-60 in number judging from the place settings laid, were due to arrive a little later. Mikhail motioned that all 5 of us should proceed to sit at a table in the centre of the room, his inviting expression made it seem that it would be perfectly natural to start without the guests, perhaps even customary since there was already food and drink on the table – and I must say it was quite the spread – or perhaps it was an apologetic gesture to the maitre d’, as the guests hadn’t yet turned up and he thought it best to commence straight away. So we certainly tucked in: various hors d’oeuvres, different types of smoked, opaque fish, heaps of red and black caviar, all sorts of marinated mushrooms, different delicious soups…and once again, Russian ‘champagne’. I thought to myself, ‘good on all those influential French masters who came to Russia all those centuries ago’! And good on old Peter the Great for first building, then opening, that ‘window to the west’!

         I learned through my translator, that Mikhail was a former Soviet submarine commander for about 10 years of his life. A submarine commander! And now here we were, east and west, sitting together enjoying each other’s company, with a table full of sumptuous food and decent sparkling wine…just as life should be. Of course no Russian meal would be complete without a couple of vodkas, so we naturally had to polish off a couple of shots, out of national respect. And who would want to disobey a former Soviet submarine commander? Then, when Mikhail heard that I was half-Danish, his face lit up and he said in a strong Russian accent, ‘Ah, VIKING’! My heritage from my mother’s side apparently pleased him. Suddenly he motioned for all of us to move and sit at the table next to ours, presumably because he thought that I was still hungry and thirsty for more – which I wasn’t really, I would have been content to take a break and wait for the guests to show up. And where were they all? But, in what I guess he thought was true ‘viking-style’, we needed to continue to keep drinking and devour the next table’s contents, the contents of which being identical to those on our first table. Mikhail was not a man of many words, but at our new table he bellowed a short but courteous speech. It went something like, according to my translator, “The real St. Petersburg White Nights, together with the White Bear.” Well, it was certainly snowy, I thought, and perhaps he was the Russian bear? He was certainly built like one. Then he proceeded to calmly lift his short vodka glass, and plopped it into the tall, half-filled champagne glass. The sparkling wine’s previously peaceful state fizzed sharply around this unwelcome invader, and he drank it calmly but swiftly in one tilting of the glass upwards. Then he smiled, said ‘beliye nochi’ (white nights) and waited for me to do the same. My translator explained to me that the ‘white bear’ reference was to the drink consisting of champagne and vodka. Now, to me, champagne or sparkling wine plus vodka seemed like a strange mix and was probably going to equal trouble, but throughout my business travels I always tried to apply the Romanic-influenced proverb to whichever city or nation I was visiting at the time, and therefore undauntedly thought to myself, “Oh well, when in Russia…” and responded respectfully to Mikhail’s toast by recreating his current drink of choice, trying to emulate the same timing and physical precision as Mikhail’s. I smiled back at him, quite pleased with myself that I managed to polish off this new white bear concoction in one go.

         Of course, in Russia, it is tradition to follow a toast with - no prizes for guessing - a toast. So I decided to try to impress Mikhail, to carry on his White Nights theme, and once my glass was topped up with a bit of bubbly, I again loaded it with my full-to-the-brim vodka shot glass, squared up to my gentle submarine commander, uttered some gracious words, and ‘bevies away’ downed the drink in one. He looked at me, smiled, and reciprocated. He was smiling but when he looked into my eyes, it seemed as if he was trying to read my expression. Perhaps it was something Mikhail did not expect me to do, or perhaps even be able to do – for I was not from Russia, and I did not possess his worthy sea legs. My smile turned into more of a wry one, as I imagined that these were very different ‘depth charges’ that the submarine commander had probably experienced in his past, or at least trained for, while in the navy.

          This continued back and forth for some time. Perhaps he was testing my limits? After a few more white bear bouts – I mean toasts – and polishing off the second table’s food, Mikhail pointed to yet another table! My mind raced with thoughts. He can’t be serious! How long was this going to continue? Where are all the guests? Were any of them coming? Or maybe they were never even invited, and this was all part of Mikhail’s strategic dining plan - we were to invade each and every table, all 10 islands of food, and pick them off one by one – the question was, who was going to survive until the end? I was tempted to hold my hand up and accept defeat. My thoughts of surrender turned to those of ‘The Hunt for Red October’. It was not Mikhail who was sitting next to me, I was actually dining with the incredible submarine commander, Marko Ramius. However, now it was I who was personally giving myself ‘one chance in three’ of surviving this journey! This must be the culinary version of that head-to-head game of ‘chicken’, where we keep eating and drinking until one wavers, flinches, and ashamedly capitulates. The only other end to this game, that I know of, normally ends in a very large explosion.

         What started out as a delectable feast was now turning into a bit of a gastronomic grapple. Nonetheless, I rose to the challenge, and moved with him to the third table. I did not want him to think that I was not a worthy dining adversary. Halfway through devouring our (third) table, as if someone had heard my prayers, or perhaps my whimpering stomach, I was saved! The large banquet doors opened, and a wave of guests flooded into the room. I did not have to finish this gourmet combat! My body’s constitution had persevered! This game of ‘chicken’ (and luckily we hadn’t been served any) surely would be ruled as a tie, and he would have to respect me for matching his stamina.

          But then Mikhail smiled and muttered something in Russian. The translation to his words caused my elation to turn instantly into despair. My translator excitedly told me: “Mikhail says that now the guests are here, the vodka drinking and real eating will commence!” I was gobsmacked. They couldn’t be serious. This was turning into an impossible task, a hopeless mission. My heart would have sunk into my stomach, but there was no room for it.

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         Even though I forced myself to eat some of the hot foods and take a small sip of drink whenever a toast was announced, Mikhail cleaned each and every portion received and calmly swigged every shot of vodka. I was just pleased to have survived the rest of the night, to this day I am not sure how I did. Similar to the visual aspect of a summer’s White Night twilight, everything that happened during that winter’s White Night after our third table remains quite hazy. I recall that after the main course I managed to convince a bunch of people to head to a billiards room in the hotel (it would have been a wonder if I managed to hit the cue ball), play a few games before dessert was served, smoke some large Havana cigars, and then apparently back in the banquet room during dessert, I managed to convince the maitre d’ to pipe in some music such that those who were so inclined could dance between the tables. According to many reliable sources, my attempt at Russian Cossack dancing was quite the performance.

         The pleasant lingering deception of memories from that night still exists.

         So if you ever visit St. Petersburg, and a Russian asks you if you would like to join him to partake in a ‘White Nights’ celebration, there are three things I would recommend: never try to match him drink for drink, or plate for plate; stay away from all dangerous white bears, liquid form especially; and as a final precaution, check to make sure that there is no snow on the ground and that it is indeed early-to-mid summer!

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