The Rules of the Moscow Metro

There are rules on the Moscow Metro.  They are all fairly simple; on the escalator, stand on the right, walk on the left.  When an older woman needs a seat, retaining yours is verboten.  Some of the rules diverge from the realm of courtesy into that of the adorably quirky: in the Ploschad Revolutsii station, bronze statues stand at the corners of the lode-bearing black marble pillars–walk up to the statue of a soldier with a dog at it’s foot, and then rub the dog’s burnished nose.  He’ll bring you good luck.  You can wear a dead animal as a hat, you can even smell like a dead animal, but most importantly, you’d better behave like a dead animal.  Stare straight ahead at your faint reflection in the window.  Get caught making eye contact with someone else and smiling, they’ll ship you to Siberia.  In Siberia, there is no underground transit system in which to keep warm.
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I grimaced at the top entry of my Facebook Newsfeed.  "Hindsight is 20/20."  Cold.  You’d think I’d blocked her by now.
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I didn’t bring rope.  I should have bought rope.  I take an extra long extension cord, one with the European style prongs, and do a MacGuyver across the room.  Now, when the wash hangs limply from the line, my room resembles the nicest room in a shantytown.  Early in the morning, I can hear the clattering racket of Ian in the kitchen, right outside my bedroom door.  Sometimes he sings in a melodious Irish lilt.  I never bother with a complicated breakfast, so I stay in bed until the last possible moment.  On bad days, the moment after that.

The bulb had died in the bathroom; an unfortunate consequence of dealing with a light switch that won’t switch off.  The spigot above the bathtub pivots, so it can also drain into the sink.  Water pressure is a distant memory; showering is akin to standing in a windless early summer rain.  At least the water never fails to be warm.  The pipes alongside the wall are exposed; before I shower, I drape my underclothes over the horizontal length, and exploit the heat of the water coursing through it.  I light some candles; as I stand beneath the weak deluge of water, I’m uncomfortably reminded of a woman lighting candles for a bath.  I need to get clean, though, so I’m not the obligatory stinky passenger on the way into work.
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I don’t care for the saying "Hindsight is always 20/20."  Perhaps you can pick up the line and curve, the nuance of the differing depths, the conflict in the foreground propelled toward you by the weight behind it.  But it’s colorblind, and if it’s a bit of self-indulgent solace for a wounded conscience, then it’s a cop-out.  And if it’s because you wish the present was easier, then it’s cowardly to boot.

Love doesn’t freeze to death on the street.  It wanders–staggers, really–into the Metro, a place somewhere underground.  It doesn’t board a train.  It stands on the platform and watches them zip by, cringing at their shriek as they slow to a stop.  The trains empty, but it makes eye contact with no one, and no one looks left or right as they pass it by–after all, there are rules.  It stands as still as a faithful dog at the side of a bronze soldier.  Love doesn’t die–it ceases to move forward.
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Tanya, a woman raised in Moscow, speaks English with the thickest Cockney accent that I’ve ever heard.  Foully, too.  "Fo’ fuck’s sake!  It’s complete an’ u’er shite, is wha’ i’ is."  She waits for Ian and me on the platform at Turgenskaya.  She wears calf-high boots, much like every other Muscovite woman on the street.  Describing their color as "pistachio," I doubt she intended to provoke a twenty-minute conversation about her shoes.

"Do you often base your purchases upon the colors of various nuts?" I ask her, as we walk back from our respective lessons at Henkel.  "Is your purse almond colored?"  I step carefully; everyone smokes in Moscow, so everyone spits, as well.  The sidewalks, especially the underpasses of busy streets, are usually slick with frozen saliva. 

"Yeah," Ian chimes in, "are your earrings peanut?  Are your socks walnut?"  Ian had foregone his hat because of its ear flaps, convinced it made him look like a foreigner.  It was quite a change from the ruddy-faced Irishman who hadn’t been able to conceive of such temperatures on the Emerald Isle.  I still wear my Rally to Restore Sanity hat, because I don’t want to walk everywhere with my mittens over my ears.  It’s better to look like a foreigner than a madman.

"Good point," I assert.  "Are you wearing pistachio boots and walnut socks?  Is your footwear mixed nuts?"  Tanya scowled, half-playfully, and half as a warning.  I’ve heard a number of people, both men and women, advise me not to make fun of Russian women.  In my experience, though, it’s always a risk, Russian or not.  "Maybe you should glue fake mustaches to the front of your boots."  She looked over in wary curiosity.  "That way, you can wear mustachioed pistachios."  Ian broke into uproarious laughter as Tanya shook her head, and we barged through the heavy doors of the Metro.
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The original Moscow Metro line was inaugurated in 1935, during the Stalin regime.  Having decorated the original stations with stunning mosaics and surrounded them in various shades of marble, they were meant to be the "People’s Palaces."  Reminders to the People the privilege of living in Soviet Russia, and an attempt to obfuscate the fact that three things stay underground in the Moscow winter: rodents, the dead, and the Moscow Metro.
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As I hurry through Tverskaya station, I start in surprise at the trio of Moscow policemen standing alertly near the transfer corridor.  They are wearing black trench coats that encase their shoulders, and then hang limply down to the floor.  Their dark fur caps sit securely atop their heads, and the ear flaps are tied together at the crowns.  At their feet, a muzzled German Shepherd alertly monitors the passengers as they stream by.  This one’s nose I do not rub for good luck.

Sometimes, of course, just being around the police can make you feel like you’re doing or have done something wrong.  This is especially true if they are decked out like the Gestapo.  As I pass them, I’m reminded of a few weeks prior, when I sneaked by Polish authorities in the Warsaw airport in order to reclaim some luggage I’d left behind.  When an angry man wielding a firearm marched out into the baggage claim area, I weaved between two carousels and confronted him.  "Excuse me," I say, "but where would lost luggage be taken?"  Not looking at me, he responded, "Over there," and he pointed past the carousels toward an enclosure just barely within the confines of the international terminal.  I left, and he continued scouring the premises.  Sometimes, when you go face-to-face with the consequences, you’ll just stare through one another.

I step into a railway car, and am relieved to see it relatively empty.  On busy days, it’s shoulder to shoulder, ass-to-crotch.  I sit.  For whatever reason, "Hindsight is 20/20" is playing through my head.  It’s insulting on a personal level.  It’s bothering me.  I stand.  I look around.  I sit again.  Suddenly, it doesn’t anymore.  It becomes a reaffirmation to learn and move forward, rather than gaze backward and mourn.  I look over at an older woman in a brooched coat.  She looks back.  I smile.  She smiles.

If hindsight is 20/20, then I’d rather be blind.

Ian: