Small Fish

I went out to eat with a Tasmanian and an Irishman: how cosmopolitan.  I live with the Irishman, and now "Tursday" and "tis and tat" have become ingrained into my vocabulary.  The restaurant is called the "American Bar," and its ambiance is plasticine and cliched.  Apparently, if one had to go by the accouterments of this particular establishment, you can’t walk down the street in an American city without tripping over a wagon wheel or spotting a hundred cowboy hats.  It was amusing, not to mention illuminating of the Russian conception of what is America, and what makes one an American.  Or, at the very least, how one should decorate a bar that might cater to Americans.

I step lightly down the jetway, and the chatter of the Pollacks around me pitter and patter at my periphery.  They are magpies, cheery and incomprehensible.  The Boeing 767 hums and its attendants are humdrum, offering pleasantries by rote.  "DzieÅ„ dobry," they wish me, to which I offer an abashed "…hello."  I include the solatium of an apologetic smile and move toward the far aisle.  As I make my way through first class and business class, I note the familiar two-three-two arrangement of seats.  Usually, a person wishes for a window seat or an aisle seat, preferably on one of the sides.  On a flight this empty, however, you hope for a seat in the middle with no neighbors; they way, you can lie flat and sleep.  Having no such luck, I sit at the window above the wing.  9:55 in the evening, preparing to land in Warsaw at 2:30 in the evening on the following day.  I settle in for what promises to be a sleepless, nine-hour flight.

When I swiped my metro card over the sensor at the turnstile, the little gate refused to budge, the red light obstinately refused to green.  The little black speaker blared a harsh rebuke, taunting me, daring me to try again.  Suitably challenged, I flipped the card over, and am once again rewarded with a round red light and the same discordant failure.  A little crowd began to gather behind the idiot at the gate.  A woman barked at me in Russian from behind the plexiglass wall of her guard booth.  I shrugged helplessly, and, a bit panicked, told her, "Я не понимаÑŽ руÑ�Ñ�кий," as if that absolved me of blame.  She quickly darted around the constraints of her little enclosure and snatched the damnable cardboard card out of my hand.  Then, doing precisely what I’d done just seconds before, she magically made the gate give way.  As I dejectedly took card back and move toward the subway train, I received scant solace in knowing I’d have a hundred tries to get that right.

We circle above Warsaw, a jet plane in want of a home.  The ocean of cumulus clouds beneath hint at the chaos below; Warsaw shivers in the crystalline grip of a blizzard.  The pilot once again apologizes; first in Polish, and then in English.  "We will climb," he tells us, "to conserve fuel."  The Polish-born Chicagoan beside me groans his impatience, and slams his hand down on his armrest.  "I have a train to catch," he complains to no one in particular, "and I have to be in Krakow by 7."  As we again assume a lazy, 8-shaped holding pattern, I watch the sun begin to descend behind the gently-bowed horizon.  The announcement, then:  "Sorry, but due to runway conditions, we are being diverted to Krakow."  The Chicagoan guffaws and claps his hands in victory; I sigh and wonder about my connection.  I wonder about America, about Wisconsin, and I wonder if I might be insane.

"Sorry for any confusion or disappointment," he informed me, " but due to the unfortunate tardiness of your arrival, we have had to alter your assignment.  You will not be teaching at Kaspersky."  He was born in Wales, raised on Malta, and had lived for four years in Moscow with his Moscovite wife.  His dialect waffled between accents, sometimes borrowing from all three.  No matter the accent, his intonation remained the same–low-pitched and diffident.  Taking my silence as an invitation, he continued, "You will instead be teaching across town–not a small distance, I know–at Deutsche Bank."  His diminutive stature made him nimble in the mid-morning crowd outside of Mayakovskaya Station.  The sun glinted off of the marble facade, and as I turned to glance at it, the statue of Mayakovsky seemed to be staring in magnanimous approval at his eponymous subway station.  "To get there, you will get on at Oktyabrskoye Pole, as usual.  Transfer at Pushkinskaya, but ride it south instead."  The heavy door nearly broke my nose as he released it, and I hurried to keep pace with his shadow.  We walked down the far side of the staircase, next to the wheelchair ramp.  A ramp consisting of two, wheel-wide slopes separated by actual, red marble  stairs; I saw a legless man on a scooter slide down it some three hours earlier.  "Ride it as far as Paveletskaya.  You’ll know you’re there when you’re surrounding by a wealth of white marble and an unnerving number of hammer and sickles."  He suddenly stopped, and I nearly walked right up his back.  Turning to face me, he smiled.  "Got it?"  Noting my ostensible confusion, he smiled wider.  "No worries.  I’ll take you there now."

After sitting on the Krakow tarmac for two hours, I begin to tire of our worthy, yet tedious, sky-going vessel.  The luggage of those disembarking is removed, and the plane is refueled.  The neighboring passenger, a telecommunications expert from St. Louis, and I question the wisdom of refueling a jet crowded with (still living) people, but there is no issue.  We take off in the midst of a snowstorm winding down, hoping we might receive clearance from Warsaw to land this time.  Which we do, if only just in time to hear the announcement of my connection to Moscow being canceled.  I re-ticket for the following morning at eleven o’clock, and settle in for what would be a onerous and seemingly ceaseless night.  Fighting the urge to sleep, I wheel my impressive amount of luggage–enough for a year of foreign living–in a circular route through the whole of the accessible parts of the airport.  When people see me walk by the first or second time, they say little about a tired man stranded in an airport.  The fifth or sixth, they cock eyebrows and mutter something to one another.  The ninth or tenth, they say little about a tired man stranded in an airport.

As I weave through pedestrian traffic on Marshala Biryozova, I note the eyes on the ground.  The vacant expressions on faces, of being somewhere else; reliving where they came from or pre-living where they are going.  The countless kiosks along the street sell fruit, meats, traditional Russian bread, and Starburst.  Policemen in the crosswalk demand fifty rubles from passerby, lest said passerby wish to be hassled.  The horns honk, the sirens scream, the neon rails blot out the familiar constellations.  The roar of the Metro crashes like thunder through the lightly falling snow.  Here, in Moscow, I am simply a little fish swimming in a sea of anonymity.  Closing my eyes, I delve deeper into the water.

I board the Aeroflot plane, and look around.  The flight attendants are all extremely young women–19, maybe 20–except for a man who must be pushing 50.  Cell phones are switched off, tray tables are stowed, seats are returned to their upright positions.  Moscow is two hours away, and waiting in its indifferent way.