Two holidays and a funeral

MAY: SPRING LABOR PEACE VICTORY GLORY

There’s a Russian superstition that its bad luck to be born or get married in May, which I don’t really understand, because May is probably the greatest month in Russia. It starts out with May 1st, International Labor Day, which is basically an excuse for a 3-day weekend and some protest marches by old Communists who don’t matter any more.
Then May 9th is Victory Day, where the achievements of those old Communists are celebrated. I think an American wouldn’t really understand what all the fuss is about: we fought in World War II, as well, and Veterans Day is enough for us. But then you have to look at how the war was fought for both sides. We lost about 300,000 men, which is roughly all of Anchorage. Which is awful. But the Soviet Union lost 25 million, which is like all of New York City, its suburbs, and part of New Jersey as well.
After the war we were finally completely free of the Great Depression and a new period of prosperity began. The Russians were left with almost all of European Russia (the part where everybody lives) in ruins, and there was starvation in the first years after the war.
So despite all the ineptitude that the Stalinists showed at the onset of the war, despite the cooperation between Nazi Germany and the USSR before June 1941, despite the war with Finland, the occupation of eastern Poland and the Baltic states, and despite the 40 years that followed the war in Eastern Europe, all of these things that are not really mentioned in Russia, despite all this, the Russians have a reason to celebrate. Because they fought 70% of Germany’s armies back to Berlin while we landed in Normandy. But 25 million is 25 million, and today I saw a poster that said “May 9th Is Joy With Tears In Its Eyes,” and that seemed appropriate to me.
What did I do on these holidays? For May Day I went back to Arshan, a 3-hour trip, with the other American girls minus Sarah and Igor, a nice Russian kid who is dating one of the Americans. Across from me on the minibus sat a buryat girl who frowned most of the way and asked Claire to close the window in an offended tone. But, as has happened several times before, she surprised me by talking to me after the mid-way rest stop. It turns out that she had just spent 5 months in Myrtle Beach, of all places, under a program called “Work & Travel.” She liked the US a lot, she was afraid of black people when she took a grayhound from NYC to South Carolina, she worked in Eagle’s, if any of you have been to the beach on the East Coast. She liked Atlanta a lot, as well.
We had a nice relaxing time, I washed the dishes, that was the only thing I was good for, really, and the weather was pretty nice. At the base of the trail of the waterfalls Claire made friends with a drunk Russian named Vladimir, who tried to speak German with her. While we were relaxing at the base of the waterfall who did we see but Vladimir, who walked right by Claire, seeming to have lost his peculiar interest in her entirely. He instead stripped to his underwear and dipped into the shallow, cold water and slapped his belly for comedic effect. The other Russians all laughed. Igor decided to go for a dip as well, and I decided to join him, because besides watching dishes my other talent is enduring cold water. Except I’m not especially good at washing dishes, I just don’t mind doing it.

The water was really cold.

As for Victory Day, I was at the dacha and had a relaxing time. We worked on what will hopefully one day become a chicken coop. Grandma was sometimes in a good mood, sometimes not, because her back has been bothering her a lot lately, and sometimes tempers flared a little between her, my host mom, and her son Konstantin. It’s strange how my family works in an entirely different way. Tolstoi was wrong when he said that all happy families are alike. Every damn family is different, even happy ones.
I watched the live news feed of the parade on Red Square in Moscow. I purposely avoided thinking about what modern helicopters have to do with the unconditional surrender of German forces on May 9th, 1945, about whether military parades themselves are fascist, and instead just tried to enjoy the pomp and ceremony of the event. It was neat, I should say, to watch those big planes that refuel other jets in the air fly over the Kremlin.

Last Wednesday was my first trip to the Russian police station: what happened today? Nothing as alarming, but also very strange. You see, on May 10th a helicopter carrying the governor of Irkutsk oblast’ Igor Esipovskiy and three others crashed not far from Lake Baikal, killing everyone on board. When I was told this on Sunday I just felt weird. I don’t trust any Russian politician, really, and very few American ones, but on TV he seemed like an okay guy. His tubbiness and thinning hair was sort of a relief from the tough guys that take most positions, and he seemed likeable, really. He had only been governor for about a year—in Russia they aren’t elected but appointed by Moscow.
But it was just weird, in a word. He was 49, he was making himself a career, and he died. Even stranger is the alarming number of Russian governors that have died in helicopter accidents—at least 4 others, maybe 5, including Alexander (?) Lebed, the third-place candidate for President in 1996.
Today as I approached Kirov square I saw a row of police officers. When I got closer I saw that the whole area around the hulking gray Administration building was cordoned off to traffic. There was something going on in front, so I crossed the street to check it out. There were four military cars lined up with artillery pieces attached, and a red velvet place to hold a coffin. Government members were standing on the front steps of the building, woman were coming in and out with flowers, and military men were walking around, giving orders. The crowd was made up of mostly passerbys like myself, and was pretty quiet. We all waited patiently for at least 15 minutes: the cars all started their engines and everyone perked up, but it was a false alarm. After 10 minutes the doors opened and a lot of the who’s-who in the Irkutsk region gathered out front, along with the bereaved. I should mention that it was hot—at least 75 degrees. Soldiers appeared, carrying four coffins, and a military band started playing. The cars went out first, followed by people carrying huge garlands, and lastly a large column of various businessmen and community leaders. I spotted a rabbi, two Orthodox priests, a Catholic clergyman, and a Buddhist monk, who looked a little out of place, honestly, in his yellow and red robes. The parade moved very slowly and people watched it go down Lenin street. Woman scattered roses along the way and the band kept playing.
People weren’t saying much, just watching quietly. I walked along with the band and listened. The songs they played were very simple and slow. They seemed to say “this is sad, this is sad, this is sad,” and nothing else. It was very strange, I had never been at a public funeral like this before. After about 3 blocks they carried the caskets into vans, which drove away to the airport and on to Moscow. Kirov Square is a rectangle surrounded on four sides by a traffic circle, and the empty street with roses scattered all over it was probably the strangest sight of all.

After the buses taking the policemen home started to leave, I bought myself some ice cream.

An Unpleasant Incident

After class at the literature department I set off with my german friend Almut to find the used book store that was located somewhere around the bus station. We found it only after asking a grocery store security guard who shocked us by telling us exactly where it was and how to get there. It was just what we were looking for—it was full of old soviet books for ridiculously cheap prices. I bought a photo-guide to the neighboring Buryat republic from 1971, a 15-postcard set of Soviet actors from 1972, some postcards with nice black and white pen drawings of the Russian countryside with Esenin quotes on them, two trashy science-fiction/adventure journals aimed at teenage soviet boys, and a collection of stories by Platonov. All this together cost about six dollars. It was great.
We decided since it was a nice day to sit down in a nearby park that we saw and look at our finds together. We both bought some beer to drink, which I should say is pretty normal in Russia, in every park there are young men and women and older men drinking beer causally. We were told that officially it is now illegal to drink in public, but nobody ever seems to follow that rule. While we were looking at photographs of the Buryat republic together, a young man walked up and asked if he could sit with us. He was wearing an orange long-sleeved shirt, had earbuds on, and seemed fine enough. He explained that he also had a book. But as soon as he started talking to us it became quite clear that he was insane. His name was Sasha, he spoke English surprisingly well in little fits and bursts and apologies, and he asked us at least 6 times if we understood Russian, and every time said he was really happy that he met us.
He seemed mostly harmless, but he asked us to help him buy drapes for his windows, and I said that we have to go soonish, so we couldn’t. But I was getting sort of uneasy because whenever somebody passed by us he would say something to them: when a young buryat walked by he offered him some cognac (I forgot to mention that he had some cheap cognac in his backpack, too) and when he ignored Sasha he sneered and said “I bet he doesn’t speak Buryat. Didn’t even say “I don’t want any.”. When a lady walked by he blurted out a tangle of swear words that I didn’t understand but understood as such, and he said in Russian “what I said was untranslatable.” And then in English “that is untranslatable, sorry, how do you say it?” Lastly, he was smoking the second of Almut’s lady cigarettes and smoked it down to the end when a Central Asian man walked by with a cart full of stuff. Sasha got up, walked to the trash can, but instead flicked the butt into the Central Asian man’s cart. The man just looked at Sasha and kept going, thank God.
When I repeated that we had to go soon, he got sort of upset, and asked me, in Russian then in English, why I was afraid of him. I tried to explain that we were planning to sit there for just a few minutes and we had already been talking for 10, and he asked for Almut’s number. I wrote mine down on a piece of paper and gave it to him, just so he wouldn’t get upset. He demanded that Almut listen to one song on his mini ipod, but when we found out that it was 8 minutes long we said nuh-uh. We compromised on a song less than a minute long. At this point I was getting nervous. I tried to get him to write something on a paper so he didn’t feel cheated, and he kept mentioning about how we should come see him. Finally he asked Almut about the song and we said that we had to go. Some girls asked us where a movie theater was and he got up to help them and during that time we also gathered up our stuff. But he didn’t want us to go. It was painful and disconcerting to look at his face when suddenly he would narrow his eyes at me and said that he had a feeling that we weren’t planning to go before he came and that we hadn’t drank our beer yet.
We were about to break away, finally, when I noticed some police officer talking to some Central Asians in the park. I thought, if Sasha won’t let us go than I can at least address the police officer. But as we were getting ready to go the police officer walked by us, with Central Asians in tow, and I think Sasha’s strange behavior caught his attention, and he asked us for our documents. He was surprised to see that we were foreigners, and Sasha gave him his textbook instead of his documents and in general didn’t answer any of his questions. The officer calmly asked us to accompany him to the station.
I wasn’t too worried, because I knew that we would probably have to pay a fine, and that’s it, and I had my passport and my documents all in order, anyway. I was more upset that I didn’t just walk away from Sasha earlier, but in the beginning he seemed like a normal guy and then the rest was just trying to leave without upsetting him. And I gave him my real number because I was worried that he would call me right then and there, so that I knew his number, and he would find out that I lied to him. So I walked with Almut and sort of apologized and said that this is just #(!%(*@#, and listened to Sasha babble on with the police officer behind us.
The “station” was one room in the bus station. There were a lot of people there, and while we were waiting for a space to clear, the police officer asked us a few routine questions, and Sasha started making fun of our accent, which made me lose a lot of sympathy for him. We all sat down. A drunk was mumbling loudly when we walked in:
“Let me go, let me go! I have two kids! I have to pick them up, I was sitting in the park, drinking a beer calmly, let me go. This is ridiculous.”
They told him to be quiet. When the officer announced to his senior that we were citizens of Germany and America, he laughed, and everybody sitting there was surprised. “Foreigners, huh? And a visit to the police?!” and he laughed.
I laughed too, because it was sort of funny, but in a way that I hoped that people didn’t think they were laughing at me. They asked us if we drank cognac, we said no. Only Sasha drank the cognac.
“That’s right! Russians drink the strong stuff!” and we all laughed.
Sasha kept babbling on about random things, and making fun of our accents.
The drunk started ranting again, and he even stood up. “I have two kids, let me go home, I have to pick them up!”
Sasha translated for us “I have two children, I need to take them, I need to go to home!” He spoke English pretty well.
The cop thought this was funny. “You’re translating for them?” “Yes.” “Like, a live translation?” “Yeah.”
“I’ll show you a live translation. Keep me here 3 more minutes, and I’ll show you a goddamn live translation.”
He was still standing and was shuffling towards the door.
“What, you didn’t understand? Sit down immediately. What don’t you understand? That’s it, we’re keeping you as long as we can. Sit down!”
But he didn’t sit down, and the cop pushed him down. He stood up again, and the cop hit him, not too hard, in the chest. He stood up again, and the cop hit him again, but I didn’t see where, because I was trying to pretend like I didn’t see anything.
“That’s enough, Grisha!” the other cops said. “That’s already an excess!”
“C’mon, Grisha, let’s go.” And Grisha left.
“I’ll show you a goddamn live translation.” Said the drunk.
“Respected citizen, please sit down.” Said the cop who took us in.

“So, citizen, I take it you were drinking with these two foreigners in the park.”
“Yes, officer. (in English: I waz dreenking witt deese foreigners.”)
“You’re translating again?”
“Yes. We were _____” and here he used a Russian verb that is more formal than “boozing” but less formal than “having a drink.”
“Now you’re talking like an honest Russian. So you were _______ing.”
“Drink” said another drunk shyly from the corner, in English. He looked at me and I gestured that “drink” is absolutely the right word in English.

They kept talking with Sasha for amusement, during which they gave us back our documents, and when Sasha said “be careful!”, the officer said “check them, if you want. Are all your documents there?” They were. He explained that we weren’t going to pay a fine, because we were foreign citizens, but Sasha was damn well going to pay something. It was unclear if we could go or not, but we could. “We have no pretensions to you”, he said, which is a phrase I hear in Russian a lot, which seems to mean “this is just a warning.” He said that we could wait on the bench for Sasha if we wanted to and then we could continue drinking. Almut and I left, relieved.

It wasn’t really scary, the only part that was unpleasant was when they hit that man who refused to sit down, but in America they would have just handcuffed him so he couldn’t leave. I didn’t see any handcuffs. It was sad that all the Russians in there were either drunkards or perhaps prostitutes, while the Central Asians seemed pretty sober and were probably just drinking one beer in the park. I heard that they have a quota, but I have no idea if that’s true. Now I’m only worried that Sasha is going to use my number to find me and confront me, but I don’t think that’s likely. I think he already called me, but I didn’t answer. Another plan is to ask a Russian to answer and say that he has the wrong number. It was a weird experience but the police weren’t that bad, but if I was not a foreigner I don’t know how it would have played out. I know I won’t be drinking beer in public anymore, though. My host mom seemed more concerned with germs from the police station. So it was sort of unpleasant but not as much as when we were on the Mongolian border, and now I tell this boring story to people to make me feel tough.