A dozen or more stops later, after disembarking, searching and concluding they were the wrong stations, I finally found Mockva. Mockva is the English transliteration of the Russian spelling for the city we Americans call Moscow. It’s not even pronounced like ‘moss’ and ‘cow. It is more like ‘mosque’ and the ‘vo’ in von Buren.
The escalator, the longest and tallest in the world I later learned, carried me into the heart of Mockva, into the center of a square, a square large enough to give home to an entire town. To my pleasant surprise, I saw something I had only seen in posters on walls of travel agents in Japan. A large beet colored church-like structure with an olive green mushroom top and several pointed cones stood sanctimoniously on one end of this square. It was St. Basil’s Cathedral! And I was in Red Square. To my right was Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum. An army could have been buried there instead of just that one man. I reminded myself that Lenin was responsible for other armies being buried. Behind Lenin’s mausoleum was a giant pale yellow wall which stretched for nearly as far as I could see. On the other side of that wall was the Kremlin.
I had learned the heart of communism was Moscow. The heart of Moscow was Red Square. The heart of Red Square was the Kremlin and the upper chamber of the heart of the Kremlin was the Moscow High Party School. Little Rabbit had arranged for me to visit all of them, including that upper chamber of the heart. Perhaps Little Rabbit had sensed the need for me to confront not only my past but my present prejudices against the Russian people. Though it was deep freezer cold outside I could feel my own heart begin to thaw.
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