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March 23, 2005
Petersburg Hyperreality
I remember my time in St Petersburg in unusual, almost frightening detail. I remember almost every conversation, every dish in every cafe, each routine humiliation and what I was wearing when it happened. By contrast, the five months I spent in Dijon right before I left for Russia are a compact blur.
I don't know if it's because I fell in love in Russia that every sensation felt realer than real, or whether I fell in love precisely because my senses were so heightened.
--
Misha/Mike has lived in America too long. After a night of drinking, his tongue doesn't cry out for vinegar and brine like mine does; he wants tea and blini. Chainaya Lozhka it is, then. We stumble into the day; a rumpled dvor-cat meows.
Misha hoards his Russian and always refuses to help me order. "You have good pronunciation," he says. I stammer something to the waitress and lower my eyes. I think I've ordered a chicken and mushroom pancake with garlic sauce, and a sweet apple pancake with sour cream. We sit in customary awkward silence and wait for our food to arrive.
I am brought a chicken and mushroom pancake with sour cream, and a sweet apple pancake with garlic sauce. I discover this only by biting into my apple-cinnamon-garlic blinchik.
"Devushka!"
I try to explain to the waitress that my fillings and sauces have been reversed. Apologies are made, my plates are whisked away, and I wait for the second round of what is fast becoming Operation Blinchiki.
This time I am given a chicken and mushroom pancake with sour cream, and a sweet apple pancake with no topping at all. I suppose I ought to be thankful that now, at least, the results are edible. But I am fed up with the national campaign to willfully misunderstand me, and decide to take a stand.
What happens next leaves an even worse taste in my mouth than apples with garlic - our Tartar waitress breaks into wildly improvisational English for my "benefit". She does not, however, seem to know the English for apples, chicken, garlic, or even pancakes.
By now even Misha-of-stone is moved to intervene. He not only reconfirms my complaint, but berates the waitress for challenging my perfectly serviceable Russian. We await Round Three. We are not optimistic.
Some minutes later - joy of joys - I am handed a sweet apple blinchik with sour cream. I cut into my other pancake and peer expectantly through thick lashings of garlic sauce to see unmistakable shreds of mayonnaise-bound chicken... but no mushrooms.
I give up. I eat my blini (his are long gone), we finish our tea, we go. The next time I see Misha, he still won't order for me.
Posted by michele at March 23, 2005 12:57 AM