Andrei Sharov: Here and There.

It all began here. Or rather, it all began at London’s airport, where I unexpectedly ran into Ilya, an old friend from my youth, who was also flying to Seattle on that same flight. It turned out Ilya was waiting for our mutual friend, professional traveler Gennady Iozefavichus, who was returning from Alaska. I, on the other hand, was waiting for my friend Vasily Klyukin, an architect and one of the most successful businessmen in Russia, thanks to whom my trip to visit Richard Bach became a reality. As it turned out, Vasily and Gennady were on the same flight from Los Angeles. A little later, Richard’s friend Sabrina joined us. We spent a wonderful evening in this warm company, and the next morning we went our separate ways: my friends headed south from Seattle, while Vasily, Sabrina, and I went north. We drove for a while, then took a ferry.

The feeling of a fairy tale intensified because the weather was simply magnificent, the kind you only dream of. A perfectly blue sky, absolutely green water, a white ferry, and all around, as far as the eye could see, islands, islands, islands… When we reached our final destination, Orcas Island, there was a sense of complete unreality about the whole thing. It felt like everything was familiar, like the middle lane of Russia, but the birch trees didn’t look like birch trees, more like white giants, and the pines weren’t pines, but rather perfectly straight columns made of pink tuff. Everything radiated a sense of complete peace, and the people were incredibly dignified, noble, and welcoming. After quickly downing a mug of cold, fragrant beer, we got into the car and started winding up the serpentine road, climbing higher and higher into the mountains. Even while we were on the ferry, Sabrina had been calling someone a few times and seemed a bit concerned. As we approached the island, she confessed that she still hadn’t received confirmation that Richard Bach would receive us. He had been living as a recluse for a long time, barely interacting with anyone and not wanting to see many people. His social phobia had only worsened after the plane crash he survived at the age of seventy-six, two years ago. Now, as Sabrina explained, he was full of energy again, working, but he had practically stopped communicating with people. And also, Richard was incredibly dependent on his moods, which were impossible to predict. Of course, it was an adventure – to embark on such a long journey, not being fully sure whether the meeting would happen or not. But when we arrived on the island, Sabrina beamed, informing us that everything was perfect, Richard was in a good mood, and he was expecting us.

Bach turned out to be a tall man, still full of energy, with large, strong hands, a rugged gray stubble, and a very open, weather-beaten face, etched with wrinkles that could tell many stories about what this man had seen and experienced. He invited us in, and at first was extremely polite, but reserved. When we passed through the house and stepped out onto the terrace on the other side, which was situated on the very slope of the mountain, a breathtakingly beautiful view unfolded before us. Beyond a chain of sprawling islands, disappearing into the mist, immense mountains could be barely discerned. Richard pointed in that direction and said that Canada was there. It’s hard to describe the beauty of the landscape, there’s a reason people say it’s better to see it once than to hear about it a hundred time. But believe me, even if the meeting hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have regretted a single second of it, having seen a place like this. The longer I gazed at the view that stretched in every direction, the more I found myself thinking: was this an earthly landscape? Was I really on Earth? We settled comfortably on the terrace, drinking ice water from large beer mugs and talking, talking. Sabrina had disappeared somewhere, probably figuring that we would be more comfortable in a men’s company. Above us, and everywhere really, there were constantly different kinds of small planes and seaplanes flying. They swarmed over the surface of the straits like dragonflies, flitting from island to island. During the conversation, I noticed that Bach would occasionally follow a plane with a long look, in which curiosity and sadness were clearly visible.

After about an hour of conversation, Richard politely told us that he was a little tired and would like to rest. We thanked him, went back through the house to our car where Sabrina was waiting, and drove off.

We descended the mountain, and Sabrina showed us the second house, the guest house, which was prepared for us. It turned out that Bach’s estate had two more houses. And, according to Sabrina, several years ago, artists who came here specifically to work lived in one of them. Now that house is empty, and she offered absolutely sincerely: if I have the desire, I can come at any time, settle in there and paint. And just so you know, it’s not easy to walk from one house to the other. We drove for about five to ten minutes to each one through an absolutely wild forest, where there were no signs of human presence at all.

With a mischievous smile, Sabrina told us she had a surprise for us. It turned out to be a small but very cozy airfield, like everything else on this island. There we were met by Richard’s friend, a pilot with whom he had flown together in the past. He led us to a stunningly beautiful little red four-seater plane. The sun was already setting, so we needed to hurry. So, without wasting time on unnecessary chatter, Vasily and I put on helmets, after which the pilot very meticulously showed us how to board the plane, where to step, and where not to, what to hold on to, and what not to. Once inside the cramped, open-top cockpit, I suddenly felt distinctly like I was in the movie “Two Comrades Served.” And the line uttered by Rolan Bykov, “I said, we’re all going up!” echoed in my ears. We found ourselves crammed into a small cockpit, barely fitting two of us. The pilot sat behind us. We took a fairly short run and took off very quickly and smoothly. For an hour, we circled above the islands, passing over Bach’s house several times, getting a bird’s-eye view. I tried to take pictures on my iPhone, but was scared it would slip out of my hand. The speed wasn’t very high, but if I stretched my arm out a bit with the phone gripped in my hand, it felt like it could be ripped off. We didn’t land immediately, the first time, almost touching the ground with the wheels, we suddenly unexpectedly soared upwards and made another go. What the pilot said was hard to hear because of the propeller running in front of us. Apparently, at the last moment before landing, we missed his signal. He asked us to spread our heads apart slightly, as he couldn’t see the landing strip. So, on the second attempt, Vasily and I spread out in different directions, practically sticking our heads out of the plane.

After the flight, we settled into cozy chairs in the hangar where the owner kept his plane for the night. We talked for a long time with this man. He was tall too, with gray hair and a bright blush across his cheek. He put us at ease immediately, and within just a few minutes, we were chatting with him like old friends. He radiated a kind of magical calmness, and it was clear that he was an absolutely happy man. Later, after we said goodbye and got in the car, Sabrina told us his story. He had been a young boy when he went to war in Vietnam, where he became a fighter pilot and served for three years. He was one of the first to start dropping horrific napalm bombs on Vietnamese villages. When the war ended, he left the army and for many years lived on the edge of madness. He would wake up from nightmares almost every night. And nothing, not even powerful psychotropic drugs and treatment, helped. Then he met Richard. They were both pilots, the sky was their home, they flew together, and Richard suggested he move to this area. And for many years, he has been living on the island, taking tourists for flights.

After dinner in the small town we arrived at by ferry, we went to visit Richard again. It was already dark, his house glowed warmly with lights, and we settled inside instead of on the terrace. We spread out the books we had brought for him to sign and sat at the table, chatting for an hour or two. Mustering my courage, I cautiously broached the topic of a portrait I’d love to paint, but Richard smoothly steered the conversation away. So, I decided to present him with a book of my paintings recently published in the US. I was deeply touched that Richard didn’t just glance through it superficially, as people usually do, flipping through the first couple of pages. He studied it thoroughly, lingering on certain paintings for a long time. After a while, I brought up the subject of sketches, of a portrait, and noticed that the topic no longer caused such resistance. He wasn’t keen on being photographed, but he willingly signed all the books I brought. It was a whole ritual. I even felt he was genuinely delighted to sign his books published in Russian.

He was very curious about Russia, asking us many questions about what was happening there, and how things were. He was actually surprised that Russians knew about him and had read his novels. His massive living room was lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves, and as it turned out, most of the books were his own, published in different languages around the world. When we asked if he had any Russian editions in his collection, he silently looked at Sabrina, who, after a pause, replied: “Yes, yes, of course, we do.” She took a chair, climbed up to the shelf, and pulled out a book. But upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a Bulgarian edition of “The Seagull Called Livingston.”

When we inquired about the print runs, Richard said he couldn’t remember the exact numbers, but he knew for sure that his publishers had sold around fifty million copies of “The Seagull” alone. Thanks to my friend Vasily, who somehow managed to win over Bach’s affection, we finally persuaded him to take a farewell photo. We stood in front of his library: Richard in the center, Vasily and I on either side. Jokingly, we raised our arms, mimicking wings, and Richard pretended to hold a steering wheel. Sabrina took several pictures with her iPhone.

The only thing Richard asked was that this picture not be published anywhere, because he did it solely for us. We gave our word, so the photo will be kept in our archives with Vasily’s.

The farewell was brief but very warm. He came out to see us off on the terrace and stood there for a long time, watching our car drive away.

By the time our conversation ended, it had gotten completely dark. The few minutes we spent driving from Bach’s house to our guesthouse felt surreal. Looking up, I couldn’t tell where the dark treetops ended and the sky began, and the headlights were cutting through the darkness, revealing incredible scenes of an unreal, fairytale forest. Suddenly, a young deer emerged from the darkness into the headlights. I could tell it was young because its antlers hadn’t fully grown in. It stopped right in the middle of the road, stared straight at us for a long moment, and then, just as calmly, disappeared back into the shadows. Arriving at the house and stepping onto the terrace, I was genuinely struck by the beauty of the view that unfolded before me. Above my head, a huge, almost full, shining moon hung in the sky. In some ways, the scene reminded me of Kuindzhi’s painting “Moonlight Night on the Dnieper” from the Tretyakov Gallery. Only this landscape would need to be shrunk in perspective by a factor of ten. Earlier in the day, we had stocked up on beer and delicious salted nuts, and now, bathed in this nocturnal splendor, we sat, drank beer, and reminisced about the past twenty-four hours. The tops of the trees reaching out into the distance, bathed in moonlight, looked like ocean waves, and just as on the waves, a lunar path ran across the treetops. Apart from our own voices, we couldn’t hear a thing, and when we were silent, the feeling of stillness was unreal. People live amidst all this beauty, I thought, which is something completely ordinary to them, just as breathing Moscow smog is ordinary to us. And, most likely, they don’t even notice it, accustomed to it in the same way that we’ve become accustomed to the cramped spaces, the chaos, and the noise of big cities.

Sleep came on me unexpectedly, like a switch had been flipped. It definitely wasn’t the beer. I barely made it to bed and was asleep before my head even hit the pillow. We didn’t sleep long, just a little over four hours, but we woke up completely energized and refreshed. We had to get up so early because we had a seaplane booked to get us to Seattle quickly. Everything was meticulously timed: twenty minutes by car to the seaplane, forty-five minutes of flight, one hour to get from one airport to the other, and then we’d split up to catch our flights. Vasily was flying to New York, and I was flying to work in my studio in Monaco. I had never even seen a seaplane up close, let alone flown on one. So, when it landed on the water and gracefully docked at its pier, I was completely thrilled. We quickly boarded, sped up smoothly across the water, took off, and for all forty-five minutes until we landed in Seattle, I gazed downwards, mesmerized by the breathtaking views. The color of the ocean water kept changing, taking on thousands of shades of gray and green, with mountains on the horizon and islands beneath us. Our journey was nearing its end. After making a final circle, almost touching the skyscrapers of Seattle, we landed in a small bay, which from above looked like a giant puddle in the heart of the city.

It’s hard to believe, let alone describe or summarize succinctly, the entire range of emotions packed into those few hours, but everything I’ve mentioned – the unexpected reunion with friends, the dinner, the ferry, the flight in an open 1929 plane, the two remarkable encounters with Richard Bach, the stunning Kuindzhi-esque night, the islands, and Seattle from a bird’s-eye view – all of it was miraculously compressed into just twenty-four hours. Later, as I flew from Seattle to Europe, I had time to reflect on it all, and once again I recalled the Baron Munchausen quote: Time flows differently Here and There. Here a moment is There centuries. How truly said! Sometimes you can live so much in a single day that in another life it would last a year.