Lonely place AmericaCharlie calls from Moscow and asks me if it is possible to come to St.Petersburg two days early because something does not go well for him there in Moscow -- he has free time with which he does not know what to do. His flat is taken so far, but I find a room for him in the same building, the schedule of his meetings also all moves; only Valia to whom he wrote very little turns out to be available on the day of his arrival, and even she doubts that she will be able to come because her daughter coughs, and maybe a client will invite her that evening – Valia works as a hairdresser, goes on private appointments. Valia still comes, this meeting with a foreigner is not her first one and after a previous American very honestly and straight-forwardly claimed that she was not in his style, too bright and painted and he would advise her to meet rather a Latino man Valia’s enthusiasm has somewhat slackened. This time she comes without any make-up, with her hair tied into a pony-tail, hardly having said hello to Charlie she already looks at her watch, says that by 10 p.m. she should be back home. We go to a cafe Charlie would eat after his trip: he curiously looks around, passer-byes also cast looks at him, nobody in the whole Nevsky has such a remarkable Panama hat. It is stifling in the cafe selling chebureki where we take Charlie, but Valia resolutely puts her bag on a chair and says that it is stifling everywhere in heat like that, so we stay. Before they bring our order Valia sits leaning back, looking at Charlie with friendly curiosity, her face looks tired, it seems, she is pleased just to sit like that and to relax even in a stuffy cafe and that it does not often happen to her. She asks Charlie if he is pleased with his trip: St.Petersburg is a terminal of his itinerary through Kirgizstan and then the whole Russia, he will fly to America from here. From Charlie’s letters we both know that for many years he has worked for the U.S. Post Office, that it was a very well-paid, but monotonous work, that one day he quit and left for FSU to spend the money saved during the years of work, looking for a future wife and that he will not return to the Post Office any more upon his return, but will start from zero elsewhere. Charlie has a large forehead turning into a bald patch which he protects in the sun by his Panama hat, curious eyes behind thick glasses, shy smile. He says that his trip was fine, that previously he has never traveled so far away and that he has seen as much as never before in his whole life. He, in turn, asks Valia about her life, and Valia says she was a music teacher in Kazakhstan, when Russians started to leave she also left for St.Petersburg, but her music college was not enough for a job on her profession here, it was too late to enter conservatory, that’s why she finished hairdressers courses, now she visits private clients and also cells cigarettes in a kiosk 24 hours every third day. Valia also says how capable of music and dancing her daughter is, she says it is necessary to teach her everything, lots of money is necessary for all that, that’s why she must work very hard. They bring our order, Charlie eats chebureki, Valia and I ordered juice. Valia asks him how, according to his opinion Russians differ from Americans, and Charlie says that here in Russia personal element is stronger even in business relationship, but people in America mostly do business everywhere. He also says that Russians with whom he communicated often listen to a person they talk to poorly, reply not to what they were asked about, but what they themselves wish to say, and Valia and I laugh and say that it is maybe because of their bad understanding of his English. Charlie offers us to call on his place after cafe, to look at the pictures he took in his trip and, having come out to Nevsky where a slight wind arose while we sat in the cafe we gladly put our flushed faces to it. We come to Charlie’s temporary shelter with suitcases put around all the floor; in two days Charlie will move to a beautiful flat with paintings on the walls and antique furniture, but so far there is nowhere to sit in the room except a narrow couch, and having moved Charlie’s bedding Valia and I sit down on it, and Charlie takes thick piles of pictures out of his suitcase. Valia gives them to me one by one, she asks Charlie if he will show these photos to anyone else having come back to America, and Charlie, having confusedly spread his hands, confesses that he has nobody to show them to, that we are his only audience. In his pictures we see some apartment blocks in some local outskirts, entrances, balconies, street-cars – everything that seems so ordinary to me and Valia, but so interesting to Charlie: sometimes he directs our attention to a shade in which sun rays paints chipped stucco of the walls or branches of birches. In some pictures there is Charlie himself in the streets of different cities in his Panama hat or in interior of an apartment, sitting on the couch with a carpet decorated with patterns hanging on the wall as a background, alone, or with a girl, or with two girls, one of whom is usually a translator. Charlie tells us about girls in the pictures: this one told him finally that she would hardly leave Russia; he liked another one and she liked him, but some differences of opinions happened between him and the girl’s uncle, a new Russian, and Charlie tells us a long knotty story how he did not see the girl off to her home because he did not understand he was expected to do it, later her uncle, having opened Charlie’s door with his own key, violating all norms of privacy, though has not found his niece, promised Charlie to tear his head off for his bad manners, and looking blank, Charlie asks us how we can explain all that. Charlie also shows us pictures of a Kirghiz public holiday where black-haired, black- eyed people in round fur hats eat, drink, walk in a square of a city surrounded by snowy peaks of mountains, and having pulled just the same hat out of his suitcase, Charlie puts it on, Valia and I laugh, but, he says, smiling, that in his childhood he loved to read books about falcon hunting when a falcon sits on a horseman’s iron glove and then flies to chase wildfowl. Charlie suddenly looks up at us with his short-sighted eyes and says that he usually more dreamed about life than lived, that real life seemed much less significant to him than that one his imagination painted, he dreamed about women and did not date those who were beside, that’s why maybe he had neither job, nor family at his forty three. But having smiled and having raised one finger up, Charlie adds that he also always dreamed to see falcon hunting sometime, partly that’s why he also went to Kirgizstan, and he really saw it on that holiday, so at least one dream of his life has come true. Then Charlie shows us pictures of a town where he lives, a picture of a library where he takes books, public laundry where he goes to launder to associate with neighbours there a little, and finally pictures of his home, light one-storeyed structure standing in a deserted solitary street among similar buildings with lawns and cars near entrances. He shows us also his own pictures in the interior of his house which he himself took automatically – in the kitchen with a frying pan in which he fries something, at the computer in the living room in the hall, near the telephone. Valia asks him if he ever calls anyone on phone and if anyone calls him, and having become thoughtful, Charlie negatively shakes his head, then says that in February when he had a depression he called his sister, but she was not at home and he left a message on her answering machine, so now it is possible that sometime she will call him back. He takes another photo album out of his suitcase, says that it was his father who had given it to him. Valia and I know that Charlie was an adopted child in the family where there were two more adopted children and Charlie shows old white and black pictures of himself as a boy with his baby-brother on his lap, pictures of grown up brother and sister, pictures of his parents. Charlie says that his parents were intelligent and educated people, his father was a scientist-chemist, his mother was a teacher, his brother and sister matched them, Charlie points at bright eyes and spiritual faces in their portraits. Charlie says that his brother has become a vice-mayor of a town in Nebraska, and only he, Charlie, studied poorly and was the only dummy in their so intelligent family, and sometimes it seems to him that maybe it would be better if he was adopted by people belonging to working class, he would feel more in his place then and he would not be jealous because they all had had no barriers that they could not overcome. Valia asks if his childhood was happy. “It was very, very happy!” enthusiastically exclaims Charlie, showing a picture of fishing where his brother and he both stand with huge, by half of their height fishes, surrounded by some men with their father among them, a picture of wild geese hunting where hunters stand in semicircle, posing for camera, and wild geese already sadly let down their long necks parallel with the rifles that killed them. Charlie says that in those happy times he did not understand what a good friend his father was for him, that his father always tried to help him and to be beside, but he, Charlie, left home being 16 not to return there anymore, when his father sent him this album for his eighteenth birthday Charlie threw it far away on the shelf and opened it for the first time only not long ago. Valia asks him about his work for the Post Office, how much he made there and why he left, Charlie says that for 15 years running his boss had convinced him that he was a nobody, and women, his fellow-workers, took it for granted, expressing this way their attitude or absence of any attitude at all, and little by little he started to understand why some Post Office workers in America sometimes brought a gun to work and fired at everyone on end, that’s why he left to get out of harm’s way. Valia immediately responds that in music school where she started to work, having arrived to St.Petersburg, she was also informed that their standard of teaching was higher than she could provide, and it was especially offensive because in Kazakhstan she would win the contest for the title of the Best Music Teacher of the city, she loved her work and gave herself to it. Valia asks Charlie what he is going to do having returned to America, and Charlie replies that maybe he will take a job of a clerk in a department store or a job of a taxi-driver. Valia asks how much a music teacher or someone like a hairdresser or a sales-girl makes in America, if it is enough for living and for choreography lessons for her daughter, Charlie answers that if a husband works then it should be enough for everything. And having looked at her watch, Valia is horrified how late it already is, we get up, part with Charlie, and leaving him amidst things and pictures laid about the room we go out in the street where there is no trace of heat any more, and we recall that it is April yet, huddling ourselves up from the wind blowing through our light clothes we quickly go to the metro. Valia says something about her girlfriend married to a Hungarian and living in Hungary, that her girlfriend has at least some acquaintances there and that her husband and she go somewhere on vacation while Charlie wrote to her that he preferred to be at home than to fight for several square meters of beach on some overcrowded coast. Valia says that America is a lonely place and she is not already sure that she really wishes there, we spend the rest of the way in silence. And on the next day Charlie and I go to the Hermitage with another woman, an artist, they talk more of arts and paintings and part, not having appointed the next meeting. And in one more day the woman with whom Charlie corresponded most of all and whom he wished to see in the first turn becomes finally available, we go to Petergoff with her, she immediately starts to ask Charlie fundamental questions concerning his ideas of family and marriage and his capability to fulfill his commitments, and when Charlie calls me in the evening and says that he liked Valia the best, it seems to me that I was ready to hear just that name. I call Valia, and having heard my voice, she sighs as if she is unhappy, and when I ask her if she can meet Charlie without my interpreting next day she sighs again and agrees. Before the departure Charlie calls me and informs me that he met Valia’s daughter and sister, but before deciding anything fundamental he has to take a new job in America. With this he leaves and neither Valia, nor I receive any letters from his yet; having met Valia accidentally in a metro passage when she runs to her next client I ask her about Charlie, and, having pulled up her heavy bag with hairdressers stuff across her shoulder, seriously looking at me, Valia says that let it be what will be, but if he really invites her there, she still decided to try because here or there – it is light nowhere, but you may cheer up the two together.
|