A Drone Makes It All the Way to St. Petersburg

My wife's family called today with worry that the war had made it to them

Author’s Image 

Yesterday, a close friend still living in St. Petersburg took this photo. She works at Gazprom in the city and while not necessarily a big supporter of Putin, she supported his decision to go to war in 2022. After we argued a few times, I decided to stop pushing it with her. We don’t talk about politics anymore. We just quietly miss each other.

We used to be in love, but we were both with other people. Colleagues, we never even admitted this love to each other, but everyone who saw us together knew this was the case. It was one of those loves that caused a genuine ache in the heart, but neither of us was sure that the other felt the same way, so we stayed with our mates at the time. We both later divorced those partners, and to this day, we have never spoken about those feelings that tortured us from the moment we met in May 2005 until I moved to Moscow for work in 2008. 

This picture is of the Fontanka River, the left branch of the city’s main river, the Neva, which crisscrosses the entire city. I have stood on the bridge my friend was on when she took this photograph a thousand times. I have walked on that ice, though, only once or twice. The canals and rivers do freeze, but the ice can suddenly become dangerously thin because of unpredictable output from local factories. As much as I adore ice skating outdoors in the winter, something I have missed terribly since I left St. Petersburg, I was never tempted to risk my life by skating the canals.

Not far from this spot on the bridge was one of my favorite pubs in the city, Dicken’s Pub, and a place where a little photo the owners cut out of a local paper after an interview was done with me. They taped my head to the wall where my mug stands, awaiting my return. I met my current wife in that pub. I was in that pub when a real estate agent called and offered me my current place in Austria.

My third wife and I went there on the second day the place opened, and it became our favorite pub where many a Friday night was whiled away drinking pints and eating fish and chips and pepper steak. 

For fun during the summer, I used to walk to the pub from our apartment, which was six miles away. I thought the brisk walk meant I had earned four of five (or six or seven) pints. On long white nights, I would leave the pub at midnight and make it across the bridge to my island just moments before the city’s bridges would open up for the night. 

Then, slinking through the grayish and silvery light, vanishing briefly in pools of silhouette, I would slowly walk back home through courtyards, fields, tunnels, and parks, absorbing the city while listening to the whispers of history. So deep was I in the moment, so aligned with the city that by the time I got home around 3 or 4 a.m., upon viewing myself in the mirror, I would notice that my reflection had become altered by the sepia of a past clinging to my present.

My friend sent me this photo this morning. Upon opening it, I stared for what was easily 10 minutes. Days from my life, 1990 to February 26th, 2022, raced past me as if someone was holding a giant kaleidoscope before me. For the first time since we left, it began to physically hurt that I was not able to access my city. My relationship with St. Petersburg never had anything to do with Russians or Russian culture. The fact that the city is in Russia just happens to be a stroke of luck for them. It almost seems that to mitigate the misery that so many Russians feel, God decided to let them have this city.

As I sat and stared at the sky, which is in the direction of the Gulf of Finland, a sky that tantalized my senses each time I watched as the sun dropped out of sight behind the western horizon, casting an orange glow that turned the whole city in an explosion of tangerine, my mother-in-law called. She was upset — really upset.

“A drone was shot down heading for the city today.”

The drones that have exploded in other cities throughout Russia have a range of 700 kilometers. St. Petersburg is 1000 kilometers from Ukraine. City residents felt confident that they were safe. St. Petersburg still lives with the memory of having been encircled for 900 days by the German army. Shelling of the city took place daily. It is estimated that 1.5 million people died during the 900-day siege. 

“The war is here,” she said excitedly.

I looked at this picture as I digested this latest development. As much as I ached to imagine that my city could suffer, something inside of me whispered: You brought this on yourselves, God damn it!