The news comes from Moscow: heavy snow, and the first signs up for the New Year celebrations. It reminds Mary Leland that in Moscow, at Christmas, she lost the dative case.
I never had a very firm grasp of it. Every time my Russian teacher says "it is a peculiarity of Russian grammar that. . .", I feel faint. She tempts me with comic strips and rhymes; together we conquer my dismay at the news that with the genitive plural the feminine kniga turns into kneeg when it changes from one to five books, while one brotherly brat becomes five bratyev, although a friend changes from one droog to five droosyeyii.
As an artificial aid for the dative I had a memory of Virgil's warning to fear the Greeks: timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. The D was the key, although in Moscow the clue disappeared in the shock of the actual.Yet it is true that in attempting to learn a language one learns a culture as well. "In Russia", my teacher had said, "it is not always possible to understand. What is important is to believe." And so, believing, I walked out each morning, sure to find my way.
Unlike the European St. Petersburg, the inspiration for the film Russian Ark, Moscow is unswervingly Rus, despite its modern spools of roadway and apartment blocks. Between the Kuznetsky Most and Petrovskiy Bulvar I wander through the arcaded lanes which lead to Chekhov's Moscow Arts Theatre on one hand or the Museum of the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service on the other. Up the hilly, continental streets lie the Lubyanka and the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonder Worker; past the giant Christmas trees stand the Savoy Hotel and the Church of St Nicholas of the Bellringers. I can see the turreted walls of the Kremlin in the icy distance; stallholders brush the snowflakes off their displays of CDs and balloons decorate the entrance to the Alexander Gardens where, unbelievably in this extreme cold, stoic traders still offer their ice-cream to the holiday crowds.
With my young guides I explore the cuisine of the Ukraine, hearty and very cheap, and discover that to eat properly in Russia one must order from the Russian-language menu, not the English one. Thus my borshch at the Taras Bulba restaurant on Petrovskii Boulevard is a reddish beetroot broth with potatoes and a lot of beef; my schii a shredded cabbage soup served under a pastry lid in a ceramic pot . Many medium-priced Moscow restaurants are in cellars and basements, saving on the ever-increasing rental costs, and have a trendy charm, but Moscow has its silver-service too, and its high-Stalinist décor is still abundant, its cafes and bars ranging from the sleek to the casual and its bakeries and specialist shops - where they occur - a delight.
But the city still surprises with the surreal. In the snow, at night, waked by a policeman, a corpse is laid out on the pavement, his face covered by newspaper which lifts and drifts gently in the wind. He draws no crowds. My guide explains this death as "pathological inebriation leading to a fall on the ice". Most hypothermia deaths occur outside the centre in less-frequented areas, the body undiscovered often for days. And on another night, walking through the bowers of black trees which decorate these boulevards, we meet two horsemen, their mounts rugged and booted against the frigid air, the manes glittering with snowflakes as they pad noiselessly along the street.
At the theatre we meet 30 minutes before the performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden, chosen for our seven-year-old guest. We are in the new Bolshoi auditorium behind the main theatre. On the vast banquette sit the swaddled children, and this is what takes time: off come the scarves, the gloves, the hoods and hats, the puffed and padded anoraks, the leggings, the boots; on go the slippers, the spangled stoles, the velvet waistcoats. Child after child emerges like a butterfly from its chrysalis. No wonder, I think, that all the cloakroom attendants in Moscow seem cheerful, every day witnessing this winter transformation.
Later, at the Maly, we are bound in the spell of Chekhov's Vishnevii Sad: as Madame Ranevskaya smiles under her cherry trees, I think of Rachel Burrows and those radiant Everyman Theatre performances of The Cherry Orchard.
Outside, flushed with enthusiasm as the snow falls, I realise that to recount that past, to speak of those giving people to these giving people, this Christmas I must somehow reclaim the dative case.