From Russia with Love

From Russia with Love
The Education Trees of Slovenia

“Time, a good man’s time….” Hannah Scott My Dad and I

We’re driving South around the Northern curve of the Adriatic coast: Venice, Trieste and finally Piran in Slovenia. We remain in Italy as the three lane highway hugs the coast to avoid Croatia. It’s a kind of metaphor for the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 90’s: don’t cross the Croats or Serbs, let them occupy one another.

In the front seat of the six-seater taxi there’s Joey, our youngest who plans this week to propose to their beloved, the lovely Sasha who awaits us further South. Me, my wife Sheila, daughter Henrietta, her twin Jessica and husband Will with their baby Ada May, here to be shown off to Sasha’s family, are in the very back. Joey has brought an impressive ring, an heirloom which belonged to Sheila’s late mother.

And as the Italian bays become Slovene I notice something distinctive: the cliffs and ridges are lined with conifers, typically perhaps thirty feet tall, of which twenty plus is naked trunk. Master Chan Kun Wah used to call these “education trees” because they are shaped like a Chinese calligrapher’s brush. I’ve never seen so many in one place. And I never knew such trees were an actual genus: the Italian cypress, cupressus sempervivens. They are said to speak of a high level of culture and especially of education.

Every now and then, as I have for over twenty years, I feel in my hip pocket to touch the sliver of moldavite there. I am used to checking in with this stone as countrysides flash by: the volcanic rim of Bermuda that sits atop a submerged mountain taller than K2, the reclaimed spits of Singapore, Auschwitz (where the birds do sing whatever they tell you) and across central China. It’s not that I have deep beliefs about crystals but like Blaise Pascal, I can see no downside to such precautions.
Sheila and I hold hands, Ada May sleeps. Road rushes by. More Italian cypress. I fiddle with my moldavite.

Sasha’s Dad Roman made an awful lot of money during the 90’s when Russia was a neo-liberal wild west. He knew how, where and when to buy for a thousand roubles and sell for ten thousand. He as Joey puts it, generally “knew a guy who knew a guy”. His friends, big men who meet at expensive restaurants in Chelsea and Belgrade dress in the emigre uniform of Raybans, baseball cap and high end designer clothing. These guys always knew Roman was special. Even when scuffling in the free-for-all of 90’s Moscow, it was clear that Roman, who travelled with an English-Russian dictionary and an Agatha Christie for company, was different.

As I admire another campanile, Hannah Scott’s “My Dad and I” comes up on my playlist: … “and as the stories wind they become his and mine”. Sasha once showed me a picture of herself at two held up in one hand by her big handsome father. Not that she saw much of him growing up. “….Time, a father’s time, a good man’s time.”

Joey swivels in their seat from time to point things out in the landscape. They have been back and forth a few times and know Slovenia quite well.

Crystals are not commonly respected by feng shui Masters but I have carried a sliver of moldavite for more than twenty years. It’s reckoned by many to be a promoter of vision, the most powerful crystal of them all. Each New Moon I wash it carefully with healthy Water and “charge” it.

The stones are thought by some to have a life of their own. I’m not going to waste time here supporting or dismissing that position any more than Pascal’s, but one thing moldavite stones are known for is disappearing and re-appearing. It may simply be that because they are rare and therefore expensive, most such stones are very small. My own, tucked into the hip pocket of my jeans, is the size of a thumbnail. To date it has not wandered. But they say that they do.

As we approach Piran I can see across the bay to Croatia in the South. The view is different, it takes a moment for me to work it out: I swear there are no cupressus sempervivens over there, just regular conifers.

One time, Sasha told me, Roman swam over and was temporarily arrested: all that followed was an exchange of banter with border guards and a swim back; not a man to offer unnecessary deference, as curious as me, I guess but a very different species of curiosity. When we first met it was clear that he half expected an Englishman to be like Bertie Wooster, all gaiters and understatement. But he also knew enough history to be fascinated by the unapologetic violence of the British Empire.

Joey turns again from their seat to joke about it. His tee shirt reads proudly (in Cyrillic) “Naglosax”, the not-that-dismissive term often used by Russians for Brits. A gift from Sasha.

Roman did an awful lot of research before choosing southern Slovenia. He knew guys who knew guys and money doubtless discreetly changed hands. Sasha’s niece Svetlana had to leave Russia with only an internal passport which involved her blagging her way into Bielorus with a combination of pathos and Oscar level acting and once beyond Minsk, arranging a place in the half-lit back of a truck taking goods to Slovenia.  All this at 14. Gritty chaps these Russians. This is what Joey is marrying into.

Feng shui practitioners sometimes shave the trunks of regular pines to imitate cypressus supervirens but natural is so much more powerful than contrived. As we travel further South I notice thousands, on the ridges, in the towns, in gardens, fringing the streets and beach. It appears to be a Slovene thing.
I once recognised an education tree in Wimbledon in the front garden of a house I was vetting for an American client. The house faced West but jutted out to the North West, making an irregular outline so that the West and South West were in effect missing. This indicated that two members of the family were absent: the Youngest Daughter and the Mother respectively.

“Which means what?” my client asked in her valley girl drawl.
“Not a nuclear family, no daughters, high level of education, Father in charge. The vendor is a teacher who has brought up boys by himself.”

This turned out to be exactly right. Which illustrates just how much can be deduced from the exterior of a house. I advised against purchase. And as it happens, her own kids safely in higher education, she left her husband shortly afterwards.

Joey is becoming restless and anxious. Even after this time they are suffering the nerves of the suitor.
Sasha is a British subject these days. She got more of the questions on the cultural familiarity test right than I did. Her English is close to immaculate, her lack of an accent the main giveaway. Like her father she is fascinated by how a small but savage people could have spread out to rule three quarters of the world, leaving their culture and tongue behind them. Beats hell out of me too.

We arrive at the gated complex the family live in – smart but not luxurious. If not a gilded cage, a comfortable one. There is something of a Russian community here and a Ukrainian one. These groups socialise together, united by displacement and loathing for Putin. It took many guys knowing many guys to put this together.

Sasha’s Mother greets us and her nieces who are close enough to Sasha in age as to be her sisters. Both are beautiful and brilliant and are undergoing full time Slovene education in studies I can barely spell. We hang out, Ada May charms everybody. We shop, we watch the football. It’s too hot to spend much time outside. Excellent broadband, very limited Amazon delivery service; high culture indeed.

When Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991 Slovenia had planned ahead. There was a half-baked assault by the crumbling Yugoslav army but Slovenes were better at trapping tanks in the mountain passes than the demotivated army was at bombardment. And in any case bringing uniquely Balkan mayhem to the Italian border was clearly unwise. Having seen off Serbia, Slovenia simply joined Nato.

Sasha saw little of her father as she grew up, first fostered to Roman’s Mother, the baboushka and then sent away to school in the West for reasons  that are probably best not interrogated too deeply. He was busy. His rapid enrichment involved many guys knowing many guys, some maybe not so nice. But the times she had with her “Papa” are her most precious memories.

Who is to say what amounts to time well spent? Each of us is granted a certain lease and then we are gone. I think of the little girl held up very gently with just the one hand.

Today the Slovene Riviera is uniquely civilised, with the bequests of communism such as a sophisticated and subsidised health system as well as stability and government from the centre-left, though the right has like everywhere in Europe made recent gains.

Sasha’s nieces’ university education is free, they receive a modest subsistence grant and regular food vouchers along with state of the art tuition. “Communism with a human face” Roman has called it. I’m tempted to give some credit to the conifers.

As for the moldavite, I have read that all those light green stones derive from a meteor fall near the Moldau River about ten million years ago, hence the name. Today’s scientific consensus however is that the meteor formed the Nordlinger Ries Crater in the extreme South of Germany. That’s only a few hundred miles from here. It may even be that, as the meteor shattered, this little piece of moldavite fell right here, in Piran.

Next day we are sitting on thin grass just back from the beach when a nervous Joey takes Sasha off a discreet distance out of sight. While we wait, some of us decide to go off for a swim. I take my moldavite out of my jeans pocket along with some small change and my nickel plated Sheep year charm and leave them with Sheila and Ada.

I don’t see Joey go down on one knee but they swear they did. Both return beaming. Anyone who makes Joey this happy is alright with me.

My moldavite is nowhere to be seen. Lost in the scrub I guess.

Soon we say goodbye to Sasha’s family and to the education trees lining the cliff above the road. And we drive North past the churchyard that houses Roman’s body. He doubtless made enemies. But none of these enemies took him out; it was, I think the cancer of Putin in his soul that became one he could not digest.

I wonder whether Roman is in some sense home. And Joey. We have left them behind with the moldavite. Perhaps that is now home too. For now, like Joey. But then they are in love.

Richard Ashworth©
www.imperialfengshui.info