Tatyana Voltskaya
trans. Rebecca Bella Wangh
“Yes ma’am,” says the Negr[1] in the hotel, and you feel as if Tom Sawyer has awakened within you. “Negr?”my Russian friend sneers, “you’d better forget that word: one time my friend showed up, bruised all over; so I ask him, ‘What happened?’ Turns out he and his friend mentioned on the street that there were a lot of ‘Negri’ over there. Well, ‘Negr’--that word sounds the same in every language. Somebody overheard and taught him street-style that there aren’t any Negri in America, though there are African-Americans.”
I knew this tale before arriving here. But high-way…from the word highway, I confess, there still emanated an alluring, mythical smoothness: so we entered the highway and we’re off! Ready to tear it up! But 70 miles an hour is exactly the speed at which I, a novice driver, used to go to the dacha[2] over our beaten-up roads—no dividing line—risking my neck at every moment. Here they crawl along at turtle speed on the luxurious six lanes. It’s smooth as a runway, yet, for some reason, nobody flies. In the city, New York or Washington, the cars move exactly like in a slow-motion movie, rooted at the streetlights, transfixed by the pedestrians who brazenly cross, even on the red light. This unbelievable sight reminds me of how, on our side of the Earth, the instructor, in explaining the art of driving to one of my friends, called pedestrians “softees.”
Here the “softees” are in charge. Remembering the Russian ride, with its unadvisable chases—terrified figures scooting out from under the wheels, its “clip offs,” its unsanctioned leaps from row to row, I distinctly understand that this was, without any exaggeration, an extreme sport. America, with its calm and crawling, simply stupefies the Russian. One stands there incredulous: really? They’re not rushing anywhere? A savage would surely gawk the same way if conducted to a civilized party: why don’t they tear the meat with their hands, or skip in ritual dance around the table? Again, without the human sacrifice it’s rather dull…
In Washington I had a fairly significant revelation. I understood why Americans love to work, rather than hang out on the street: because at work there is air conditioning, while on the street it’s hot as hell. True, they loved to work even before air conditioners were invented, probably in anticipation of them…
Nobody rushes anywhere. Nobody is late. All bow to two deities: the flag and the lunch. Wherever you look there are stars, stripes, and sandwiches the size of pillows, with chicken breast and lettuce in the middle. Yet even a former Soviet citizen, whose disgust for government symbolism runs almost like alcohol in his blood, is not annoyed by this display for some reason. It seems, somehow, there is no great cause to be ashamed of this flag and this sandwich; they are simply sacred, there’s nothing to be done about it.
And maybe they truly are sacred? Maybe to feed yourself and half the world at once is not an empty thing? Maybe, if our people fed each other not slogans but sandwiches for many years, they too would worship their flag? In fact, I’m inclined to saint the sandwich and even fit it onto all possible flags, if that will help the hungry…
Golden fish swim in the pond. The pond is small and the field around it big. At the other end of the field is a bronze soldier running with a rifle, a monument commemorating the Civil War. In the university (for this is university) there is a legend that when a virgin passes the soldier, he shoots his rifle. Not far off, there is a gazebo which, upon closer inspection, turns out to be a historical well; when the university was first founded, they got the water from there. Some students sleep on the grass in the shade of enormous trees. On the neighboring square, others keep awake by protesting capital punishment, and a large expanse flutters with photographs of the condemned. Still others chant a slogan calling for a cucumber boycott, since said cucumbers are gathered by illegal immigrants who are mercilessly exploited by cruel farmers. A third group guffaws at the fountain--some joker has sprinkled a packet of detergent into the water and now it billows up in columns of foam.
Not long ago, a scandal broke out here: the professors recommended that students read the Koran (with scholarly intentions, of course). The state administration resisted, and the bureaucrats threatened to cut off university finances if the dangerous book wasn’t withdrawn from the program. But the university persisted, and, after many debates and much worry, asserted its intellectual independence, and quashed the attempt to show professors which books to assign or not to assign. The golden fish can swim in peace.
This is only one lesson in independence. A local professor, a former Muscovite, sitting with me at a student café, nods in agreement. He recalls a television program where they asked a little boy what he did in school today. “I wrote an essay called ‘How to be Happy and Remain Independent.’” “And what essay did I write?” sighs the professor. “I wrote ‘Who I Want to be Like when I Grow Up’”…
Heat. A blue lake. White cottages. Enervated children laze at the shore, drawn to the glittering water. But nobody swims. Maybe the lake is poisoned? Then why are there so many fish? A fisherman pulls out one after another. After a couple of days, they explained it to me: if any citizen goes swimming in the lake and, God forbid, drowns, his relatives could go to court, claiming that the lake, property of the city, caused them a loss, and that they deserve compensation. For this reason, no swimming allowed. Get in your car, drive two hours to the ocean and swim to your heart’s content. True, you could be eaten by a shark, but in this case, it seems, they still haven’t figured out whom to drag to court.
The Statue of Liberty is a truthful, accurate statue. It’s not without reason that there are spikes (or rays) around her head. It could be that they, regardless of the sculptor’s original intent, remind us that freedom, when taken to the absurd extent, becomes its own opposite. You can, at will, bring anyone to court, but you may not swim in the lake beside your house.
By the way, about Liberty Island: when leaving it by boat, heading towards Manhattan, you see the most beautiful, classical postcard picture of New York. The cardiogram of skyscrapers catches the nerves, plays on the heart. At the same time the brain, independently from the heart, inexorably registers: there is not one truly beautiful building there--bricks and curving reflective surfaces, yes, but altogether…Yet the powerful impulses triggered by this single whole compel you to shut up and perplexedly submit: it is beautiful.
In revenge, the conquered mind begins to pulse, to blaze with a word at first indistinct, then coming clearer: ROME. Eagles, legions, roads, the many-colored pantheon of gods from all the world. Let the European snobs look down their noses at American pop culture. The ancient Romans seemed just as coarse when compared to the finer Greeks, but without the law of Ancient Rome, there would be no European democracy. An empire exists in order to propagate its own culture before it dies. Apparently, the future world cannot come into existence without the American declaration of human rights. America is also an empire, and she spreads her ideas everywhere, including into the standards of motion on the road. It seems nothing threatens the victorious tread of her legions--except the sheer weight of those giant sandwiches…