(or, Close Encounters of the Unkind Kind)

Click here to Read the Series Introduction

We were warned.

As part of the orientation for our time in Russia, we heard a talk about blending in. The purpose of being there was to practice and improve our Russian language skills, to mix with Russians, to immerse ourselves in Russian daily life and culture. It seemed logical that the best way to do that was to not stand out so much, to not present ourselves openly as outsiders. It would give us access to more things than the tour bus crowds might get, while still providing us a bit of protection.

It’s not like we were spies. But if we made it too obvious that we were Americans, i.e. those who could afford to travel to Russia from far away, it could well be concluded that we were carrying cameras or other valuables, maybe even cash. As in any city anywhere, there would be people on the lookout, hoping to find a way to relieve us of that; after all, it was just things we had, things that we could later replace. Moscow was not unique in this; such people lived in every city around the globe, even in our own home towns. But we didn’t know Moscow, and a few tips would be helpful.

Don’t smile. This didn’t mean to act rude, though there was precedent if we did; the “Ugly American” was known around the world, and had been for many years. But we shouldn’t do what came naturally in public back home: to smile at people we didn’t know for trivial things like holding a door, completing a transaction, or even just passing on the sidewalk. More than almost anyone else, Americans gave smiles to anyone for any reason. To some outsiders, it made us look like idiots, or at least children; to others, it was a tipoff that we weren’t regular pedestrians or commuters, but people worth taking advantage of. So we would wear blank faces in public. Don’t look angry or disapproving, just…ordinary. Blend in.

Don’t speak English in public, at least not loudly. This was common sense; and besides, weren’t we trying to practice our skills in Russian as much as possible? Doing so would pleasantly surprise the locals (because “Ugly Americans” speak only one language, you know, and expect to use it everywhere), and if we stumbled a bit, they’d be happy to help. During my time in Moscow, I found this to be true. At a bookstore (which itself will merit its own essay), I asked a cashier where I could find a place to buy sheet music and even small musical instruments. With delight, she told me of a shop called Noty (“Notes”), and gave me very clear directions for getting there. It was diplomacy at the personal level, and definitely not “ugly.”

Keep any valuables close, or out of sight. Again, these are wise words even in one’s own home town. We were given scenarios in which someone would distract us while an accomplice grabbed a camera or backpack, or even slit open the latter with a knife to remove its contents. Fighting back against this was potentially dangerous, so the best thing was to avoid giving anyone temptation. Hold tight to bags or backpacks, make use of a fanny pack (secured and worn on the front, of course) or even a money belt under your clothing if you have to carry around your passport or a lot of cash. I had obtained one of these back home, and found it useful, though once in place it was inconvenient to get access to. So I ended up using it mostly for carrying items I didn’t want to leave in the hotel room, i.e. passport or cash. Otherwise, I carried a slightly battered, dull blue Lands’ End bag with a shoulder strap. It was my constant companion, and served me well throughout my time in Russia.

Other advice was nothing new: avoid traveling alone, duck into shops or nearby hotels if you felt uneasy on the street, stay in safe neighborhoods. The last one was a challenge, because the neighborhoods in Moscow mostly looked the same to me, with gray pavement, gray streets, lots of pedestrians and mass transit. Moscow’s population at that time was about seven million, the largest city I’d ever visited.

Lastly, we were told about the tsygane. I won’t use the actual word common to English speakers, beginning with G, because it’s pejorative, and etymologically inaccurate anyway. Those among the students who had already been to Russia or elsewhere in Europe nodded their heads. The tsygane were Roma, a wandering people. Russian popular culture celebrated the Roma for lively music and dancing, colorful clothes, and art that they would sell to make a living as they traveled. But the modern Russian image was of families of thieves, mostly children who came into the city and would follow unsuspecting tourists until they could grab something and then disappear into the crowd. Native Russians saw them as a nuisance and were wary by nature. Everyone else, beware.

The implied (well, overt) racism of this made me uncomfortable, but I took heed, since this was meant for my well-being in an unfamiliar environment. I was forewarned.

*****

During my five-week stay in Russia, I had two major encounters with the tsygane. I’ll relate them in reverse order of occurrence, for reasons I hope will become clear.

• It was a warm afternoon in early August, the day before we would fly out of Moscow. My companion Dawn and I were walking through a district of shops and cafes off Red Square. We were looking at a map to find an address I had for a music store. The street was a little crowded, but not more so than I was accustomed to by then.

Publicly consulting a map was our first cardinal sin, and no doubt we compounded it by speaking English. That’s when the kids started to appear.

Tsygane kids seem to multiply exponentially in short time; when the first one finds you, it seems only seconds before there are two, then five, then twelve. They surrounded us, making a circle that started to contract. 

Dawn and I quickly headed for the door of the nearest business. We were stopped by a sign saying that the shop was closed for pereryv, the two-hour lunch break common in Russia and other European countries. By my watch, there was still over an hour left. I quickly realized that likely every door on the street would have a similar sign.

By this time several woman in colorful scarves had joined the kids. And like the whole incident, what came next happened quickly. 

One of the women approached me, shouted something in what I assume was Romani, and jammed a hand into the left hip pocket of my jeans, where she correctly deduced I kept my wallet. My next action was an unpredictable one, as much to me as to her, but it worked: I suddenly collapsed and fell to the ground, bending at the hip so that the woman had to withdraw her hand before I broke her knuckles. My memory is fuzzy, but it’s possible that I curled up somewhat into a ball. I thought later of the story of the fox and the hedgehog; if I’d ever doubted which one I was, I doubted no more.

I saw the woman back off in surprise, and was relieved to see that she didn’t reach for a knife. Then I turned to look at Dawn.

Several boys in the group, seemingly about twelve years old, were reaching to unbuckle Dawn’s fanny pack. One started tugging at her shirt, presumably to look for a money belt; immediately Dawn’s training (or instincts) as a young American woman took over, and she backhanded the kid, sending him flying.

The elapsed time was probably less than thirty seconds, but measured by my heart rate, it seemed a lot longer.

The next moment we were literally rescued by the cavalry, in the form of two young Russian men, blond haired and very large, who saw our predicament and ran over. The woman and kids, now lacking any advantage, scattered. The young men helped me to my feet, made sure that Dawn and I were both all right, and even asked us not to think badly about their country as visitors. We returned directly to the safety of the Hotel Metallurg, quite naturally a bit freaked out. 

For her part, Dawn later said that she saw the incident as “empowering,” having successfully defended herself with no net loss of possessions or health. And we both had a good story to tell back home.

• The other incident happened in Red Square, probably in my first week in Moscow. I was walking by myself; that was my usual m.o. back home, but I had been warned, and the fact that I hadn’t made friends yet was no excuse. Red Square has the Kremlin, Lenin’s Mausoleum (closed that day), the massive GUM store, and of course, St. Basil’s Cathedral, a poster of which already adorned my classroom wall back home. I kept my camera, a not-too-bulky Konica, stashed in my blue shoulder bag, figuring I could keep it hidden until just before I was ready to aim and shoot. (Why does that last sentence make me think of a Klingon warbird?)

Amid the crowds, and the tables that were set up as impromptu kiosks selling everything from jewelry to matryoshka dolls to books, I heard the faint sound of music. Following my ears, I reached a little boy in a colorful cap playing a concertina. 

I’m a sucker for street musicians, and all the more so with this child. I listened to him for a little while, then pulled out of my pocket a 100-ruble note and put it in the bag in front of him. At the exchange rate in the summer of 1994, 100 rubles was worth about five cents, so it was almost literally nothing to me, but it could be a sizable portion of a day’s income for his family. I then pulled out the trusty Konica and snapped the picture that you see above.

The boy gave me a big smile, and I smiled back and walked away. I hadn’t gotten more than a few meters, when suddenly I was stopped in my tracks by a child. Then two, then five, then more. They all looked at me intently, and almost in unison said, “Den’gi, den’gi, den’gi!” (Money! Money! Money!”) This was my first close-up encounter with tsygane. 

They had probably seen me put the bill in the musician kid’s bag, and it’s possible that I even still had the camera out. I reached into the outer pocket of my shoulder bag and pulled out some…balloons. If I was thinking at all, I must have thought, “Hey, it might work, or at least stall for time.” I handed a couple each to several of the kids directly in front of me. I think one of the boys pocketed his, but the others just dropped them on the ground and started chanting again. By this time I had noticed a man selling books from a table about three paces behind me, and I eased my way back, hoping to get his attention while not taking my eyes off those kids. 

Well, it worked. Suddenly the man leapt from behind his table, confronted the whole group of kids, and literally (and I do mean literally) kicked some of them away. They all scattered in what seems to be a practiced maneuver. The man then turned to me and in no uncertain tones told me I should never talk to such kids, never give them money or anything else, stay away from them at all costs. I rather shakily thanked him, made sure that my camera was securely stashed in my bag, and walked away.

Suddenly, there was a tug at my shirt. I’m sure my heart stopped. I turned, looked down, and saw one child there, who after a moment I recognized as the boy with the concertina. He was saying something to me, softly and rather shyly, and soon I realized that he was asking for a balloon. I gave him several. He thanked me and ran back to his post to resume his music.

Considering how I got myself into these situations, bungled my way through, and relied on luck (and the kindness of strangers) to see me through, am I embarrassed to tell these stories? Obviously not. But as shaken as I was, in the time between these two incidents I didn’t hesitate to venture out again into the streets, metro, shops, and even parks of Moscow. Often I was alone (!), but increasingly I traveled with Dawn or others, immersing ourselves in the life and language we had traveled far to experience. We were not just tourists, we were students, and I for one wanted to make the most of this exotic open classroom while I could.

•Дополнении•

• This essay provided a challenge I hadn’t encountered before: how do you describe an entire group of people when almost every recognizable name for them is considered offensive? At the time these events took place, everyone I knew was comfortable with using the term “Gypsy.” But now, particularly when I’m putting my words out for the world to see attached to my name, that’s no longer acceptable to me. Etymologically, it refers to Egypt, which is not at all the original homeland of the Roma people. Worse, the term long ago spawned a pejorative verb: “Be careful doing business with that guy, ’cause he’ll gyp you if he can.” That word with that meaning has been around long enough to be included in my Webster’s International Dictionary, Second Edition (published in 1949). The word joins the infamous ranks of verbs for bad actions made from terms for unpopular peoples. (There must be a real lexicographical term for them; if I ever find it, you’ll soon after see it here.) Other examples might be “to welsh on a deal,” “to jew someone down on a price,” or various terms referencing traits associated with Dutch or Irish people.

I thought of using Roma, which is the term the people use to describe themselves. But I ran into the problem of over-inclusion: for this piece, I wanted it clear that I was writing not about the entire nation or tribe, but only those few who were bad actors, even if all the others were tarnished by their actions. This happens so commonly with various religious groups that I don’t even need to give examples. I then thought of using the more generic “transient” or “itinerant” in my narrative, but that seemed so general that the reader might think I’m deliberately using coded language. That wasn’t the case. I didn’t want the reader to have to guess who I’m referring to, but to have it clear, without derogating an entire group. I then thought of using a restrictive adjective: if you can have “toxic masculinity” to distinguish itself from regular (non-toxic?) masculinity, then how about “Criminal Roma.” The problem is that too often the reader assumes that the adjective is not naming a subgroup, but rather stating what should be obvious: “Well, that means they’re all criminals then, right?” Much as I would like to credit my readers with precise and critical thinking, I feel I should follow the age-old advice that writing should not merely be possible to understand, but impossible to misunderstand.

By default, more or less, I settled on the word tsygane, which is what the Russians themselves use to identify this group of people. When in Rome, after all. But I’ve since discovered that the term, and similar forms used in various European countries, all hark back to a Greek term meaning “untouchable.” A little more knowledge did not turn out to be a dangerous thing, but it certainly is an annoying one.

I’m going to let it stand as written, unless I discover a better term and can remember at that time how to use a keyboard. Or if that doesn’t happen, future generations might use this as an example of the “horrendous racism that permeated the early Twenty-First Century.” I won’t be around to defend myself, but hey, being the subject of some literary thesis is better than not being read at all.

And speaking of not being read at all, if you’re still with me now, I thank you.

☆Read the Series Introduction☆

(Or, Life is a Struggle, and Death’s No Walk in the Park)

I’ve long been fascinated by cemeteries. When visiting one, I usually feel relaxed, thoughtful, even inspired. Also, I don’t have to worry about making small talk, I can leave when I feel like it, and no reciprocal invitation is ever expected. Come to think of it, I’m attracted to cemeteries for many of the same reasons I tend to avoid parties.

Growing up within biking distance of one, I discovered that it was a great place to read, to enjoy sounds of nature (occasionally disrupted by mowing or weeding),  or to walk along the cinder road, pondering some of the mysteries: what was the story beneath the stone entitled “Mother,” over the grave of a woman who died on her twentieth birthday? Who was represented by the tiny sunparched stone that bore no name or dates, but only initials that were the same as mine? Not all questions in life get answered, but as long as people are still asking them, a light still flickers.

Finding myself in Moscow in 1994, a city of seven million living persons, I did not miss the opportunity to pay a visit to some of its most permanent residents. One sunny July day, I persuaded my friend Dawn to accompany me to Novodevichy (“New Maiden”), a historic convent and the site of the city’s most famous necropolis. With tourist map in hand, Dawn gamely navigated us through the park so that I could visit some literary, artistic and musical giants, to get six feet from stardom. At some points, the journey became surprisingly emotional.

Here are some photos (not nearly enough, of course) that I took along the way. People whom I had known only through their art or history became a little more alive to me that day. The images are fairly sharp, and I’ll try to keep my prose to a modest purple.

Yuri Olesha

This Soviet-era author was one of many whose art walked the often razor-thin line of government acceptability. His novel Envy ostensibly contrasted the modern Soviet experience with the petty feelings of pre-Revolutionary Russia. Despite initial praise in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda, the novel was later deemed to be a bit too even-handed for official tastes in its comparison of old and new. Olesha survived Stalin, but it was only after the latter’s death that his career was revived.

Vladimir Mayakovsky

A poet of contrasts, Mayakovsky once wrote verse proclaiming his pride in presenting his new Soviet passport to a startled old world. He also would shock people at poetry readings by introducing himself thusly: “I am Mayakovsky: Syphilitic!” His innovative phrasing and visual artistry inspired artists in and out of the USSR. But within a few years, disillusioned by the turn his new country was taking, he killed himself at age 36. Nonetheless, Stalin elevated his memory to roughly the Soviet equivalent of sainthood, with praise, many monuments, and a station of the Moscow Metro that’s practically a museum. During my stay in Moscow, a celebration marking the Futurist poet’s centennial was attended by his American daughter Patricia, born of an illicit affair, whose very existence was unknown to most Russians until shortly before that visit.

As an undergrad, I once performed Mayakovsky’s poem “Lilichka” at a Russian Department “Literary Evening.” In the piece, subtitled “In Place of a Letter,” the poet proclaims his devotion to his friend Lily Brik by assuring her he will not kill himself in various ways that he describes in some detail. My audience was stunned, as I suspect Lily herself was years earlier.

Nadezhda Alliluyeva (Stalina)

Stalin’s second wife and mother of two of his children, Nadezhda was by all accounts a tragic figure. She is thought to have suffered from bipolar disorder, and one day, after a heated argument in public with her husband about the cruelties of collectivization, she reported went to her bedroom and shot herself. This memorial, with her soft features sculpted in marble, clearly still evokes feelings of love and sympathy among visitors.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Likewise, the affection for Soviet composer Shostakovich is shown by the bounty of flowers at his gravestone. A child prodigy, he fell out of government favor more than once in his career, but he and his music survived to world acclaim.

Isaac Levitan

This Nineteenth-Century landscape artist was a direct contemporary and friend of the writer Anton Chekhov. Levitan’s body was not originally interred at Novodevichy, but was moved there in 1941 after the closing of its original site, a Jewish cemetery at Dorogomilovo.

Those who can read Russian will note the use of the old Cyrillic orthography on the headstone, including some spellings and letters that were altered by Soviet decree in 1918. Tsar Peter I had similarly changed the written Russian language in his day. That’s autocratic power on a level all its own.

Ilya Ilf

Ilf (nom de plume for Ilya Arnoldovich Faynzelberg), and partner Yevgeny Petrovich Katayev published a number of works under the byline “Ilf and Petrov.” They wrote outrageous comedy and biting satire in the ’20s and ’30s, a time not usually associated with either genre in the USSR. Among their collaborations are a humorous account of their journey through America, and The Twelve Chairs, a novel that spawned several film versions, including one by Mel Brooks. It has been suggested that Ilf might have fallen victim to the Stalinist purges had he not first succumbed to tuberculosis at age 39.

When I saw it, Ilf’s grave appeared neglected, or at least not visited in a long time. It seemed sad to me. Before parting, I brushed dirt away from the base and left a balloon, for a bit of color and silliness.

Mikhail Bulgakov

What was it about Soviet life that inspired so much satire? (That’s a rhetorical question.) The novelist and playwright Bulgakov enjoyed some early success with tales such as The Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog, which lampooned the dangers of scientific experimentation gone awry. In later years he found decreasing opportunities to publish, leading to him writing a letter in 1929 to Stalin asking for permission to leave the Soviet Union. Very fortunately, Stalin was a fan of some of Bulgakov’s earlier writing and took the unusual step of finding him work at the Moscow Art Theatre. It was at this time that he began work on his magnum opus, The Master and Margarita. This satiric novel of demons wreaking havoc among Soviet bureaucrats was written in secret, and only shared with friends in a private reading shortly before Bulgakov’s death. It wasn’t until a quarter-century later that the novel was first published, serialized in a Soviet literary magazine. Like so many of the so-called Steel Age, Bulgakov knew that to be ahead of your time could be a very dangerous thing.

Anton Chekhov

Playwright, short-story master and my literary hero Chekhov is represented here with a monument modeled after a church, or perhaps a theater, and which some of us American philistines might mistake for a mailbox. This grave was transplanted from a different part of the cemetery, in order to highlight a special section for the graves of Chekhov and many of his theater associates. Even without his renowned plays, Chekhov would still rank high in my esteem for his brilliant short fiction, such as “Gooseberries,” “Sleepy,” and “Lady With a Dog.”

Sergei Eisenstein

I might be in error, but filmmaker Eisenstein is possibly the only creative artist represented here whose work has been alluded to by The Simpsons at least twice. I found ways to include Alexander Nevsky not just into my Russian classes, but even Senior English curriculum. It combines pioneering cinema, brilliant persuasion (it was commissioned as anti-Nazi propaganda, after all), an archetypal battle scene that inspires cinematography to this day, and a masterful score by the Soviet composer…

Sergei Prokofiev

If all you know of Prokofiev’s work is Peter and the Wolf, then, well, you’re an average American. I discovered the music of Sergei Prokofiev while still in junior high school, and we’ve been linked ever since. His wit, playfulness, and even brooding mystery have carried me through some trying times in my life. I could listen to his Symphony № 5 every day.

Visiting Prokofiev’s grave made me actually choke up a bit. Dawn indulged me by letting me take the time to compose a somewhat rambling, grammatically questionable and probably tearstained note of thanks that I left at the site along with a candy bar. The man was fond of sweets, I hear.

Valentin Katayev

Katayev was a realist Soviet writer, a phrase that seems self-contradictory. The brother of writer Yevgeny Petrovich Katayev (of Ilf and Petrov), he was able to accurately describe some of the harsh conditions of Soviet life without seeming to criticize the regime. No small achievement.

I first read Katayev’s story «Отче Наш» (“Our Father Who Art in Heaven”), that takes place in Nazi-occupied Odessa during a bitter winter, in a college class in 1978. Its description of fear, desperation and struggle for survival still haunt me four decades later.

Nikita Khrushchev

Probably the most controversial person in this fair assembly, Soviet Premier Khrushchev was interred at Novodevichy because the government denied him inclusion with other past Soviet leaders, i.e. in the Kremlin Wall necropolis. History considers him to be an improvement over his predecessor Stalin (about as low a bar as you can get), though no doubt there are Russians today who might dispute that. I made a point of visiting and photographing his grave for its artistry, which took me a bit by surprise. Khrushchev was no friend of modern art, dismissing one exhibition by saying “a donkey could do better with his tail.” Yet to me this monument represents a man at once crudely drawn and also intent on rebuilding his shattered nation and restoring pride, prosperity, and an abundance of maize to his people.

When in conversation with Muscovites, the couple of times I invoked Khrushchev’s name were met with frowns, and even gritted teeth. That was enough to test the waters; I never mentioned him again.

Velimir Khlebnikov

I conclude this showcase with Khlebnikov, Futurist poet and friend of Mayakovsky. I have no idea what is signified by the “reclining sarcophagus” statuary here, but to me it says “rest in peace” as well as one can without words. Judging by his dates, Khlebnikov’s life might well be described as nasty, brutish, and short.

In one of the aforementioned “Literary Evenings,” I shared a poem by Khlebnikov called “I and Russia.” In it he congratulates the country for it’s revolutionary achievement, but then suggests that matched that feat by removing his shirt, causing all the hairs of his back to rejoice in the new freedom from the oppression of fabric, and the sunlight and fresh air that would now transform their existence. Yeah, pass the vodka.

There were some other graves we visited (Gogol, Scriabin, David Oistrakh), and some that in retrospect I’d like to have seen (Molotov), but nonetheless it was an enlightening jaunt, and a pretty good hike. Like nearly all the experiences on this trip, I’d gladly do it again, with more time and more photos.

☆Read the Series Introduction☆

Next: The Sweet and the Unsavory

(Or, I Went to Moscow to Learn Something, After All)

A troika is a group of three, historically referring to the trio of horses pulling a Russian sleigh or carriage. For my classes in the Study Abroad program in Moscow, I had three fine instructors that summer of 1994. Since I would soon after inaugurate my first semester as a high school Russian language teacher, my experiences there would benefit both my linguistic and my pedagogical skills.

This essay might contain little more than photographs, alas. Other than a class schedule and a couple of writing assignments, little seems to have survived of my notes from class. But my primary goal here is to honor the three ladies who taught me the intricacies of their native language, and inspired me with their love of sharing knowledge across oceans and cultures.

Лазарева, Марина Евгеньевна

The photo shows me and two of my classmates with Marina Yevgenyevna Lazareva. She taught our classes in reading literature and newspapers. Marina Yevgenyevna also conducted the Wednesday “excursions,” educational tours to places of historic or other interest. Among these were Fili, the New Jerusalem Monastery, the Pushkin Institute, and Tolstoy’s Moscow cottage. All explanations were in Russian, of course, and if a student had difficulty understanding something, classmates were allowed only to use Russian in any further explanations. Total immersion, my droogs.

As yet I haven’t found any internet mention of Marina Yevgenyevna.

Корчагина, Елена Львовна

Yelena Lvovna Korchagina was in charge of our individualized instruction, usually involving in-class writing of either sentences or whole paragraphs (creative writing, not dictation), which she would then go over with corrections; it’s likely that she inspired my teaching habit of marking papers in green ink rather than red. 

I got along very well with Yelena Lvovna, and I’m pleased to see that she is still on the Faculty of Philology at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, as well as co-author of several textbooks and an online tutor.

[And yes, all these photos were taken the same day, at the end of the summer semester, when I was clearly in need of a haircut.]

Маргарита («Рита»)

Our Phonetics instructor was Margarita, who asked that we call her “Rita.” Either I never wrote down her patronymic and family name, or I never learned it. She may have kept it that way for privacy or security reasons, not as a former Soviet citizen, but as a young woman in a large city anywhere. Her class focused on spoken Russian, with its sometimes complex (to English speakers) declensions and idiomatic expressions.

Not surprisingly, everyone wanted pictures of Rita on the last day. As she walked down the hall, cameras clicking around her, I remember her smiling and remarking, “Kak kinozvezda!” (“Like a movie star!”)

With only a first name, of course, I’m not able to find her in an internet search. For all I know, she is the author of this recently published text on Practical Phonetics of English. 

I’ve had the good fortune to have been taught by many amazing teachers over the years, most of whom I’ll never be able to thank personally, let alone photograph. Whatever else is achieved in my life, I am proud to have shared a profession with some of the finest human beings I’ve ever known.

•Дополнении•

• The illustration at the top of this post is exactly what it looks like: a 20-piece jigsaw puzzle of a beautifully illustrated Cyrillic alphabet. No, it had nothing to do with the classes in Moscow; the alphabet was one of the first things I learned in Russian 101 back in 1979. I found this gem at a bookstore in Moscow called Dom knigi, and thought it might be a neat classroom decoration. Unlike most of the other things I purchased at that store, it fit very neatly in my suitcase for the trip home. More of my [ahem!] voluminous finds from Dom knigi will be featured in a later essay.

• For any of you who already read Russian, here’s the illustrator’s key to the images for each letter of the alphabet:

☆Read the Series Introduction☆

Next: Novodevichy Cemetery: Get Thee to a Nunnery!

#ЛазареваМаринаЕвгеньевна #КорчагинаЕленаЛьвовна

(or, Livin’ on Tula Time)

     The whole point of traveling to another country for language study is cultural immersion. It isn’t enough to know vocabulary, and to be able to read street signs, and to ask natives relevant questions like Где я? (“Where am I?”). To learn a language is to learn a way of life. It is to live for a while as a resident, and not just as a tourist, shielded by bus windows, English-speaking guides and American fast-food franchises that serve beer, but also charge extra for ketchup packets. It is to walk the roads, breathe the air, trade in local currency.

The flight to Moscow via Aeroflot dipped our American toes in the Russian waters. Getting through airport customs eased us in a bit more. (A uniformed clerk there asked to borrow my pen; maybe I should have let him keep it.) Then, we were on a bus to the hotel. We had been told that the hotel would not be a tourist-style accommodation, with conveniences designed to make an international clientele feel relaxed, secure, even pampered. Rather, this would be an establishment built by the natives for the natives, and that local customs, language and hospitality were to be expected.

Perfect! That was exactly what I wanted. Beyond a few nights in Sonora, Mexico, I had never spent extended time in Not-USA, and I wanted to savor it. Also, in general, I don’t really ask a lot from hotels. My basic needs are like enhanced camping: electricity and water, secure place to store my stuff and lay my head, and clear demarcation between me and local wildlife. Offerings much more beyond that, especially of the shiny, satiny, or indulge yourself-y variety, are designed to keep me from my ultimate goal: to spend as much time as possible away from the hotel, experiencing the country I had traversed ten time zones to see.

The Metallurg Hotel met my requirements like a student one unit shy of an already-delayed graduation. From a distance, the appearance is innocuous, even pleasant, in a subdued purple way:

The color comes from royal blue ceramic tiles affixed by the tens of thousands to the exterior of the building. Interestingly enough, they differed from standard tiling in two significant ways: 1. They were very small, about two centimeters square; 2. They were colored and glazed on both sides. I know this latter fact from finding a number of loose tiles on the ground nearby, probably having come loose due to poor adhesion to their glazed surface. (I carried a couple of these tiles around in my pocket for years afterward.) Upon approaching the entrance to this enormous edifice, the visitor was greeted not by a marquee, or garish neon light, or even by the hotel logo in soft bas-relief, but by this sign:

There was likely an audible gasp from some of my compadres, but no, not from me. I saw an adventure just beginning.

Despite my general view of hotels as places to spend the night and little more, I regret not having taken more pictures of the place. I feel this way about my activities on the program in general. Wouldn’t it be neat to have the technology to store and record everything you view with your eyes, for later playback? (Answer: No. It should take only an episode or two of Black Mirror to disabuse anyone of that notion.)

My brief photo essay of this grand establishment concludes with this shot, in which I was demonstrating to my roommate Pat the remote function on my camera:

That’s the room I awoke to each morning for five weeks. The decor seems to have been inspired by the interior of a bedsheet fort. The curtain behind the TV covered a window that faced out to a moderately busy street. I opened it once for some fresh air, but closed it later because there was no screen and mosquitos were getting in. A remarkable thing, since we were on the fourth floor.

The hexagonal wall ornament was a radio, permanently tuned to only one station. In Soviet times, this would be the go-to source for inspirational speeches and the like; at least it could be turned off. I never checked, but that would have been the obvious choice for planting a microphone.

Note that I claimed the bed with the two nearby electrical outlets; this place clearly surpassed my old classroom for modern conveniences.

Following the advice of previous Study Abroad participants, I had packed some powdered detergent and clothesline, so that I could do my laundry  in the bathtub and dry it overnight. On the bathroom wall a huge hot water pipe emerged, turned upward, then made two more turns for a big U shape before disappearing again into the wall. I guessed that this was a way to provide some radiant heat. It was hot to the touch, and wet jeans draped over it were dry enough to wear in a couple of hours.

Speaking of hot water: in 1994 (and to this day, for all I know), heated water for a building came not from an individual unit on site, but was piped in from a central water heating plant within a few miles. Great Scott! This was the epitome of the kind of centralization that the Red Scare folks warned us about. Like any utility, it’s out of mind until it stops working. Moscow’s water heating plants had scheduled two-week shutdowns for maintenance every summer, which meant that entire neighborhoods would take cold showers or go across town to bathe at a friend’s place. Sometimes it takes a village to wash your hair.

I had not brought toilet paper, on the advice that I could buy it locally. Or, I could use the sheets of newspaper thoughtfully provided by the hotel maintenance staff. The toilet was the European design, with far less standing water in the bowl than what we’re used to in the States. I had read that in the Soviet days, when the KGB would search an apartment while the tenant was away, they would often leave a “calling card” in the form of an unflushed toilet. Not until I encountered the Russian loo did I realize just how offensive and menacing such a message would be.

Also European (I was told) was the hotel’s custom regarding the room key. It was attached to a large wooden knob, because rather than carry it around, the guest was expected to leave it at the front desk when away from the room, and ask for it back upon returning. The knob was used to hang it on a wall in something resembling a large pegboard.

I had been accustomed to third-floor classrooms at school, so I felt quite comfortable using the stairs on a regular basis. The elevator was functional, but its button technology lacked the ability to retain more than one floor request at a time. You pushed a button, which would then pop out with a snap! when the chosen floor was reached, and only then could you choose another button. The things we spoiled-rotten Americans take for granted.

Update: someone out there has posted a video of that very elevator in action. Be sure to have your sound on for the complete snap-out experience.

One day I was preparing to leave my room to go to class, when the cleaning lady knocked and entered. After a perfunctory smile and greeting, I watched in utter fascination as she proceeded to mop the carpeting in the room. Huh.

◊◊◊◊◊

A quick word or two about my student compatriots (and fellow Metallurgians): the photo above features Pat, a high school Russian teacher from the Phoenix area. In an adjacent room were Richard, from Connecticut, and John, from Tucson (whom I’ve run into once or twice back home). Someone told me that among the hotel staff, as a group we were known as dyadi, “the uncles.”

  I have a vivid memory of many other of the students, some of whom appear in my photos, but to my chagrin I find that I remember very few of their names. That’s what I get for waiting two dozen years–and for websites to be invented–to write all this down. One exception is a young student who became my regular companion (sputnitsa, the feminine form of sputnik, or “fellow traveler”), on some field trips, shopping, or other ventures. For privacy’s sake, any mention I make will refer to her as Dawn.

Epilogue. Unlike many things in Russia (and elsewhere), the years seem to have been kind to the hotel built on behalf of the Metallurgists’ Union. It’s listed on various hotel-finding sites, and its own website shows a beautiful accommodation, “in a quiet district of Moscow.” It calls itself an economy-class hotel, and advertises a room rate of 1000 rubles per night; as of this writing, that’s the equivalent of $20, cheaper than a Motel 6. Clicking on the booking page shows updated rates, but even so, a double room comes out to $100 or less.

A promotional video for the hotel, uploaded in April, 2018 (I was only the fourth viewer), gives a slideshow of the accommodations, to a twangy soundtrack. Another one I found, from 2013, was a ten-minute survey by hand-held camera, narrated in Russian by a man who was clearly more interested in parts of the hotel that more closely resembled the Gostinitsa Metallurg that I knew. Ужасно! (“Terrible!”) he would exclaim over rotting woodwork and Soviet-era fixtures. That video had over 1700 views. 

Would I stay there again? You bet. And I’d be sure to check out the elevator.

•Дополнении•

• About the subtitle: I was in Moscow, not 200 km away in Tula, though in the same time zone. But when obvious and clearly brilliant wordplay comes forward, sometimes it just will not be repressed. 

• As a person who always seems to have a song in his head, I had adopted the habit of whistling to myself in hallways, elevators, other situations that ended before people had a chance to ask me to stop. I did so at the Metallurg as well, until someone told me that Russians consider whistling inside buildings to be rude, or even bad luck. Undaunted (or not taking the hint), I switched over to sotto voce singing. My music of choice was often old pop tunes. And so it was, for part of the summer of 1994, the halls and stairwells of that staid Moscow hotel were softly serenaded by the likes of “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” and “Love Potion Number Nine.”

• One of my shining moments of language fluency occurred at the hotel front desk. I had come back from class, and requested my room key. The clerk, who could have been my mother’s age, looked at me sternly and said, Мне кажется, это женский номер. (“It seems to me that that’s a female room.”) Without hesitation, and with all the instinct of my Slavic ancestry, I gruffly retorted, Нет! Это мужкой! (“No! It’s male!“) She looked at me for a moment, shrugged, and gave me my key. I walked away in victory, feeling a momentary kinship with Alexander Nevsky.

• The day that I checked out of the Metallurg, I opened the window one last time to leave a parting gift on the ledge outside. I can only hope that the water balloons that suddenly hit the pavement of Oktyabersky Lane one day were received in the right spirit.

☆Read the Series Introduction☆

Next: My Troika of Russian Teachers

(Or, Transatlantic the Old-Fashioned Way: With Two Fuel Stops)

I rarely have the opportunity to fly, so to this day my boyhood sense of adventure emerges whenever the chance arises. Window seat? Yes, please! Safety? The trip to the airport in my car was statistically more dangerous. And there’s nothing like viewing the light show of a thunderstorm in Mexico from 200 miles away and 32,000 feet up. Just in case that doesn’t happen, I bring a book.

[To my friends whose jobs require them to fly so often that the process has become a chore, I say: you have my sympathies, and I hope to stay aviationally unjaded for a long time. To my friends who dread flying at all due to phobia, I say: again, my sympathies, and I’m glad to have been spared your affliction. To my former students, I say: yes, a book.]

Compounding my joy at finally visiting another continent, I was pleased to learn that the travel to and from Mother Russia would be aboard Aeroflot.

Aeroflot (“Air Fleet”) is a major Russia-based airline, founded in 1923. For historical perspective, that was the year before Lenin died and subsequently kicked off his still-running one man show in Red Square. During Soviet times, Aeroflot was technically the largest airline in the world, at least on paper; it comprised literally every nonmilitary aircraft in the USSR, down to the last crop duster. The airline’s reputation in the West, even dismissing the obvious Cold War propaganda, was not sparkling. Stories were told of passengers boarding domestic flights along with their livestock, of pilots who asked the ground crew for directions to the airstrip by shouting out a window, of brake failure in the landing gear because the fluid had been drained by workers seeking a free drink. 

The airline had no flights to American airports at all until about 1992. Remember Samantha Smith? At age 10, she wrote a letter to CPSU General Secretary Yuri Andropov expressing her concern about nuclear war. He responded by inviting her to visit him at the Kremlin. In order to do so she had to travel to Montreal in order to board an Aeroflot plane.

By Summer 1994, when I would board a flight from New York’s JFK to Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Aeroflot was still using Soviet-built aircraft. Here is my photo of the Ilyushin Il-86 that would wing me to the other side of the world:

I remember thinking at the time that the plane must have been painted in transitional livery: it flew the recently adopted Russian flag on its tail, but also bore the winged hammer-and-sickle emblem of its Soviet roots. For whatever reason, the emblem remains in use to this day, as shown in the photo at top, taken from the airline’s website.

(OK, so it’s not as startling a sight as it would be if, say, the Lufthansa planes sported the Hakenkreuz. But I know at least a dozen people who would sooner swim to Europe than travel there in a plane stamped with “that Commie insignia.”)

If the aircraft appears huge on the outside, the interior struck me as cavernous. This was my first trip on a wide-body plane, and not only were there two spacious aisles, but also plenty of headroom, especially in the center section, which had no overhead storage. I’m sure that last fact has made some of you automatically nix this plane from your travel plans. Not to worry: the Il-86 is no longer in civilian service, having been banned from most world airports in 2003 for violating noise restrictions.

As large as it was, the Il-86 was classified only as medium-range, which meant that it lacked the capacity for flying nonstop to Moscow. We touched down twice for refueling along the way: in Gander, Newfoundland, and in Shannon, Ireland. The plane also restocked its food supplies at each respite, and I have to say that the breakfast from Ireland was the finest meal I have ever enjoyed aboard an aircraft.

To my disappointment, I found that the entire trans-oceanic leg of the trip was above cloud cover, so there was no blue Atlantic for me to gaze upon from above. But I was delighted as we approached to land in Shannon: the Irish countryside really did appear a rich green, much like the patches of moss I would dig out of sidewalks as a boy. (Yes, that was a quaint small-town occupation, but it kept me off the streets.)

After setting down at Sheremetyevo, I distinctly remember that as we emerged from the passenger bridge into the concourse, the first item I walked past on Russian soil was…a floor ashcan, bearing an advertisement for Marlboro cigarettes. Yeah, the Soviets put in a rough three-quarters of a century, but Western culture had prevailed in the end.

Scarcely a month later, I was back at Sheremetyevo to return to the land of my birth (and non-centralized water heaters–more about that in a later essay). The chariot of the day was an Il-96, newer and larger than its predecessor. A long-range vehicle, it would carry its travelers directly to The Big Apple from The Big Cabbage. (Nobody calls it that.) I had my books, my pocket Scrabble game, and people I knew on board to play it with. The ten-hour flight proceeded without incident.

Almost. About an hour before landing at JFK, the plane encountered turbulence on a major scale. I’ve never been a white-knuckle flier, but it was uncomfortable shaking, and lasted several minutes. The Russian passengers on board seemed strangely unperturbed, but no doubt some of the Americans were looking out the windows to make sure all the engines were intact. There were retching sounds coming from several sections of the cabin. Suddenly, a little Kazakh boy seated next to me shouted to his mother a couple rows back: Мама, меня тошнит! (“Mama, I feel sick!”) Following an instinct that could have been paternal or just self-serving, I quickly reached down, emptied my camera equipment from its plastic grocery bag, and held it in front of the lad just in time. A moment later, the boy thanked me, as did his mother. I was a hero to my adjacent passengers and our clothes. It was only then that the flight attendants began handing out barf bags.

A former classmate of mine sitting across the aisle said, “Guy, you just got my vote for Father of the Year.”

Aeroflot. Once you’ve traveled with them, you’ll never fly another airline like it again. If you can help it.

•Дополнении•

• Not an Aeroflot story, but one I must share about the travel from Tucson to New York. I flew via America West Airlines to Las Vegas, where I then took a connecting red-eye to JFK. My seat on that plane was toward the back. There must have been congestion on the airstrip (at midnight?), because we sat on the plane without leaving the gate for at least a quarter-hour. I became aware of a conversation from the passengers directly behind me. These were people who were returning home (I quickly surmised), and were discussing the relative merits of New York versus Las Vegas. Specifically, the bagels available in The Entertainment Capital compared miserably with those readily purchased back home. The woman in the group offered her scientific explanation for New York’s clear advantage. “It’s the water!” she declared. (Read this in the urban accent of your choice.) “The sulfide content of the water!” Her companions clearly agreed, though the conversation stayed on that subject almost until we left the ground.

I glanced at the woman who was seated next to me, and saw that she was somewhat red-faced, trying to maintain composure. She looked at me, and very quietly said, “I wonder if I should tell them.”

“Tell them what?”

“I own a chain of bagel restaurants here in Vegas.”

I shook my head. “Just leave it alone. Or else we could be hearing about it all through the flight.”

She nodded. The Bagel Battle would not take place tonight, in a sealed metal craft high above the Great Plains.

Epilogue: upon returning five weeks later to New York, I visited for a few days with my sister and her husband in Manhattan. I related that story to them one evening over dinner. My brother-in-law nodded. “Guy, I think you’ve just met our Brain Trust.”

• On the flight from New York to Gander, I was seated next to a young woman named Yulya. She had been an exchange student for the last year in Minnesota, and was now returning home to Belarus. She really didn’t want to leave.

• For our stops in Gander and Shannon, we had the unusual (for me) experience of deplaning through a center door that took us through the cargo hold of the plane. That’s a weird design, I thought. Much later I discovered that this was a feature of the aircraft, which enabled the система «багаж с собой» or “luggage-at-hand system.” The idea was that passengers would buy their tickets at the airport, and then board the plane, depositing their luggage in the hold on the way to their seats. For some reason, that arrangement was never implemented at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

• On the ten-hour flight from Moscow to New York, word went around the cabin that a celebrity was on board. It was none other than Ukrainian-born actor Boris Sichkin. No, I had never heard of him. Yes, I got his autograph.

• Among many other things, this journey sparked in me a lifelong affinity for…Ireland. Yes, a two-hour layover in an airport concourse is barely a sniff, let alone a taste of a country; but all the same, I was smitten. Maybe it was seeing the puffy white dots of sheep on the green pastures near the runway. Maybe it was hearing a heavenly woman’s voice over the public address inside, purring the words, “Would Mr. Murphy, recently arrived from New York, please come to the duty-free?” Definitely the latter; I was the sleep-deprived American in the corner, melting to the music of an angel’s brogue. Oh, yeah.

I haven’t yet been back to the Emerald Isle, but I occasionally tune into Clare FM for a fix of Celtic ear candy. It puts a sparkle in my already-green eyes.

☆Read the Series Introduction☆

Next: The Exotic Metallurg Hotel

(or, Five Weeks, With Balloons)

Spring semester of 1994 found me facing my challenges with the wind at my back. It was my second full year of teaching English at THMS, and despite a few burrs under the saddle (e.g. a classroom with exactly one electrical outlet, by the door; the school library closed due to building renovation), I was at full gallop, wind in my mane. And let’s rein in that metaphor right now.

The gleam in my eye came from the news that my wish had been granted: come fall, my teaching schedule would include a Russian Language class, unique in the district, and one of five foreign languages offered at the Magnet. I would be putting to full use the other half of my teaching accreditation; I would have a classroom full of students who were there by choice and not just by graduation requirement; I would empower the next generation with communication skills for a post-Cold War world. I had dreams big enough to require two, even three electrical outlets.

I had already prepared a flyer to give out at preregistration time. Selling a class on paper is a gamble, and I gave it my best shot. I recently found one of those two-sided flyers. Apparently graphics were beyond the scope of our school’s Mac OS 7 computers, but I seemed to think that using Enterprise font in the title would attract attention:

One day I got a call at home from Dr. Del Phillips, one of my professors in the Russian department at the University of Arizona. He asked if I was teaching Russian yet, and when I told him that I’d be starting that fall, he said he had some very good news for me. He had arranged for some scholarship funding for the UA Study Abroad program, specifically funding to send Russian teachers to a summer program in Moscow for language study. And I was the first person he thought of. 

Wow. Twelve years earlier, I had finished my degree in Russian studies, followed by three semesters of graduate work (with a teaching assistantship), but I had not yet made it over to Mother Russia. Now I could go, sharpen my language skills, amass pictures, books, artifacts and stories, all in time to begin my new class in the fall. The stipend would cover five weeks of classes for graduate credit, room and board, and airfare from New York. Again, wow. I accepted immediately. Del apologized for the lateness of the offer, considering that I had a fair amount of applications to file, passport and visa to obtain, and of course transportation to arrange between Tucson and New York, all with rapidly approaching deadlines leading up to the program starting at the end of June. 

[I pause here to once again express my love and gratitude to my wife Kathy, whose enthusiasm for the prospect almost matched my own. Whatever doubts or concerns she had about being a single parent of three-year-old for a good chunk of the summer she kept mostly to herself. To this day I am amazed and thankful.]

For several years before, and many afterward, I had supplemented my income by teaching summer school. Question: would I be able to fit it in this year? The answer was yes, although it meant a tighter schedule than was probably wise. Summer classes began as usual in late May, shortly after completion of the regular school year. They ended in late June. I persuaded the program administrator to allow me to conclude my class one day early (Thank you, Mary Wilging!), because on that last day I would board a plane for New York by way of Las Vegas–more about that in another post.

My suitcases were packed with clothes, cameras, dictionary and other books, writing materials, my trusty Lands’ End bag for ambling about… I also acquired a Walkman-type player with radio and recording ability. And as a bit of whimsy I brought along a couple bags of toy balloons. Why? Maybe I wanted to have something nice to give to any kids I met. Maybe it was my way of bringing a little color to a city I’d always heard described as gray on top of more gray. Maybe my inner child was showing his delight at the biggest adventure of my life. 

By way of long introduction, this begins the story of a summer that has affected my life’s introspection and outlook for nearly a quarter of a century. I brought back a lot of books, artifacts, and stories, as I’d hoped I would. I took many pictures; looking back now, I wish I’d taken more. But these were the pre-digital camera days (at least for me), and film and processing were an expense. Also, to be fair, any time spent behind a viewfinder meant less time in the activity itself, and that’s a balance that’s not easy to maintain. All in all, I think I did remarkably well. I recently had the slides I took converted to digital (Yay, Costco!), and intend to share a good many of them as I continue posting to this category.

Allow me to begin with a portrait of me, in my casual attire and photochromic glasses, standing proudly at Tolstoy’s country home. The Count was not available to greet me, having died some eight decades earlier.

Note: from time to time I will append this and other postings in this category with little bits I call Дополнении (“Addenda”), anecdotes or memories from the experience. As I prepare to chronicle this amazing brief chapter of my life, I find that long-neglected memories are returning to mind, often as I revisit photos or other remaining treasures from that summer long ago. As time passes, the addenda to my postings will continue to grow (I hope), and I encourage the reader to check back now and then for new stories of something old.

•Дополнении•

• Since I was going to be away from home (and Kathy and three-year-old Sasha) for over a month, I was concerned about keeping in touch. Postal mail was unreliable and slow. Email? At that time, we didn’t have a home computer, let alone an internet connection. Shortly after arriving in Moscow, I made my way to the main post office, where I could send an international fax to the preschool where Kathy worked. I let her know I was OK, and gave her the phone number of my hotel room. A day or two later, I received a very staticky call in my room. It was Kathy, and she was giving me the local access number for Sprint, our long-distance service. I had been a Sprint subscriber since 1982, and it turned out that my circumstances made for a pretty good deal with them. On international calls, they gave a generous discount (about 20%, I think), for calls either originated or received at our home phone, and a similar discount for “Sprint-to-Sprint” calls. The result was that we qualified for both discounts. I called Kathy at least twice a week, and while I don’t remember the total charges, I do recall figuring that the discounts saved us about $300.

Unlike that initial phoning, the calls I made to Kathy were largely static-free; yay, late-20th-Century telecommunications! The difference in time zones took some getting used to. What worked best were calls I would place at 8 a.m. in Moscow, which she would receive at 10 p.m. (the previous date) in Tucson.

• I recently found a poster I had made for my Russian class to be displayed during enrollment for the second (or possibly third) year that my class was offered. I offer it here now in all its garish green glory. Apparently I had access to only a dot-matrix printer this time around. As for the snarky/crypto-elitist/proto-hipster tone: well, let’s just say that its a good thing I didn’t quit my steady job to try my hand at the exciting world of advertising.

Next: Flying the Formerly Soviet Skies