1. In which a man explains to Mary about marriage, and women drivers.
After a workshop in England some weeks ago, I was picked up from the airport by a school driver I hadn't met before. I learn his name, though, after I introduce myself and drop myself in the front seat of the 30-passenger van the two of us are in. I tend to like to talk to strangers, and don't get as many chances here as other places. So in a probably unladylike, un-Russian way I sat in front with him and proceeded to ask questions and chat. After some discussion about the weather, the traffic, and the school, comes the Eventual Question:
'Excuse me, Mary - you married?'
'No. Nope.'
Silence.
'Excuse me Mary - Why not?'
'Well... I'm... busy?' I reply, laughing.
Silence.
'Excuse me Mary - you not married? But you very nice girl.'
There you have it, people. I am a very nice girl, and I am not married. Meanwhile, I am in Russia, over-friendly, and in typical 9 p.m. traffic, 6 lanes going 60 (or 80) miles per hour. As vehicles whiz past us on all sides, the car in front of us is going too slowly and can't seem to change lanes.
'Ugh,' I say, 'This car.'
'Woman,' he says.
'WHAT?' I reply, 'You think that's a woman just because they're a bad driver?'
'No,' he says, 'I know.'
'It's not true that women are bad drivers,' I say.
'Yes, true,' he says, almost gleefully.
I look at the car in front of us and say, 'Maybe it's a man with big hair.'
We pass the car and my driver slows down and gesturing for me to look at the driver, who is, in fact, a woman. Next, a black car with all its windows tinted black is weaving crazily in and out of lanes, scooting between cars at a terrifying speed and squirming into spaces that don't seem big enough...
'Man,' he says. 'Good driver. Is man.'
2. In which a man rescues Mary from imminent escalator death
Moscow is okay. Really. I mean, it's the only place I've lived where I don't really feel a sense of community or security (which I think is mostly because I can't communicate well here). For example, walking through the park by school, which is full of feral dogs, I have frequently had the thought that if I got attacked by one of these dogs and was being torn limb from limb on the ground in the middle of the trail, I would fully expect nobody to help me. Young Russian mothers with old-fashioned baby carriages would stroll serenely by, annoyed that they had to navigate around an obstruction in the path. But sometimes I am surprised into thinking I am wrong about this place, that people would in fact help a flailing foreigner being eaten by a dog. I see small acts of kindness sometimes, for example: young men carry the carts of old women hobbling down steps in the tunnels to the metro - they do it quickly, without looking, scooping up the cart, depositing it at the bottom of the steps, and disappearing into the throng of people without a backward glance.
A few weeks ago I was riding the metro, and as a man across from me who had been reading the newspaper got up to leave the car, he leaned over to me, startlingly close, and though I have no idea what he actually said, he gestured and told me that my bootlace was untied. Huh. For someone (me) who tends to always be an always-semi-unprepared fly-by-seat-of-pants kind of person, the magnitude of the gesture (in a place where people don't generally interact much in public) seems totally disproportionate to the situation. Half the time I notice my boot is untied and ignore it. I feel like it's each person's responsibility to tie his or her own shoes and realize when it needs to be done. However, it does occur to me also that by alerting me to my untied bootlace, this stranger not only may have saved me from a gruesome grinding death in the escalator, but perhaps also saved thousands of other people the inconvenience of having their commute interrupted or delayed as my body was pried from the stalled machinery.
3. In which a man rescues Mary from unwittingly freezing to death while shopping
At a big outdoor market, immediately following the untied-bootlace-on-the-metro incident, I stopped at a jewelry stand with an old woman and an old man working there, and they told me (as far as I could tell) that I was crazy for having my vest unzipped. My hands were full (with the earrings I was planning to buy from them) and I figured I could placate them by zipping my jacket after I paid them. But as I continued to stand there and weigh the potential purchases I had in my hands, the man came over AND BEGAN TO ZIP MY VEST! And then I realized: it was an emergency! How could I have survived this long with only two sweaters, a scarf, a hat, and an UNZIPPED down vest?!?!?
A lot of the time here I feel like people want as little interaction as possible and see other human beings as merely obstacles on the sidewalk, but then perfect strangers are overwhelmingly concerned for me on matters I consider truly not their problem. I honestly do not understand Russians much of the time, and I imagine there is a lot of cultural history on both sides of our equation that keeps the feeling mutual. I find that often I disagree entirely with their perceptions of the scale of things, but I love it that they do in fact care about each other, even about strangers, even to the point of desperation. My vest zipped, purchases in hand, I leave the market, smiling, and sigh. I LOVE it here! Until my next unpleasant impossible tense unproductive humiliating infuriating exchange, I love it here! I will not be eaten by dogs. I will not die in an escalator. I will not freeze to death on a Saturday afternoon.
4. In which Mary is (happily) left alone
These nights in Moscow lately have been cold, crisp-- nights that have the smell of impending winter and nostalgia - for the winters of my childhood: open spaces, skiing and stars and snow. Here in Moscow it's dry sidewalks past beauty salons, construction zones, old small churches, gold-painted onion domes and skyscrapers, men in suits smoking cigars outside upscale cafes, chauffeurs waiting in parked cars idling all along the street, a BMW dealership with all the lights on. Traffic. Noise. Bright lights.
On a recent evening I am surprised walking toward a bus stop by a smiling, portly, drunk man who whistles at me as he topples off the curb across the street. I suppress a chuckle (in case he is more ferocious than he looks), turn a corner, hop on the bus, buy my ticket from the driver in the dark, and settle in the back of the bus to see my company: a frizzy-haired pink-hatted passenger surreptitiously snacks on cookies from her handbag, a student with a backpack talks on a cellphone while listening to music through headphones, and there's a distinguished-looking man whose shiny leather gloves and shoes and demeanor is at odds with the trolleybus aesthetic of old coats, old people, old plastic bags. There is no noise inside, just the clack-clack-clack of the lines we're attached to overhead, and the swishing traffic outside. I love the bus. In the old metal tube with its silent, sepia-toned, grimy interior and windows fogged to the darkness and traffic outside, the scene feels timeless, sad, somehow surreal. The knitted hats and plastic bags. You could be anywhere, it seems, on these winter night buses in Moscow. Moscow twenty years ago. Moscow twenty years from now. America. Argentina. The Polar Express.
Distinguished mystery man gets out after two stops. A dozen people join us at the river, lots of gloves and boots and bags and averted eyes. I get out next, buy water, walk past the pile of vomit that's been drying in the underground passageway since last Thursday, make my way through gates and guards and electronic codes to my building. In my apartment, I settle down in the windowsill to drink some tea and watch the building across the street. From my window I can see the interiors of these apartments, strangers folding laundry, cooking dinner, pacing back and forth, watering plants, closing the curtains, looking out their windows at the apartment building that I am in. In the midst of this life here that I find largely and literally incomprehensible, this scene is always beautiful and comforting.
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