GUARDIAN ANGEL

You probably would call her babushka, but I call her my Guardian Angel!

A white-haired, fairly short, bespectacled woman in an ordinary dress. Definitely the grandmother of any number of children. You wouldn't spend a lot of time observing her.

We met for a few, unforgettable minutes yesterday, about 1:15 oclock on my street, Bolshaya Konyushennaya. I had spent the past 25 minutes pacing back and forth looking for No. 10, the 505 record shop. I had the ad in my hand. I enquired inside a store and the young woman told me to make a left at the first corner. I did. Nothing.

For a while, I considered giving up the quest and going to the Mussorgsky Theatre, on that wonderful square with the statue of Alexander Pushkin in the park, next to the Russian Museum. Maybe they have tickets for Boris Godunov. But I decided not to give up so easily. So I returned to Bol. Konyushennaya.

I enquired of a young waitress who had been cleaning tables outside the 24-hour restaurant. If she spoke English, I still wouldn't have been able to decifer the many different locations to which she pointed, her hands moving like the arms of a windmill.

Then this woman approached and, in quite good English, asked me if she could help me. I showed her the ad and she said I should follow her, that she would show me the store.

She took me to a car, which turned out to be a taxi, and she told the driver to put this brown dog in the front seat. She went into the back seat and shuffled over to allow me to enter. Which I did.

She spoke both English and Japanese she said. I told her I loved the sound of Japanese, and I asked her where she has learned English but she choose not to respond. She said she had visited England and Japan. She translated for the driver, who glanced back for a second, that I was Jamaican. He seemed to approve.

Then, without warning, she pointed out the record store across the street. I got out quickly so as not to stop traffic on this one-way street (one-way on either side of the central mall) and wished her Bolshoy Spasebo, meaning, not just thanks but many thanks, big thanks, huge thanks, thanks a million, so to speak.

I know I will see her again. When I think about angels, when I think about St. Petersburg, when I think about generosity.

Patrick Barry Barr