Once in India I took a ride with a poor rickshaw driver, negotiating a price beforehand. When I reached my destination, I foolishly gave him more than the sum we had agreed on, just out of spite. The driver took me rather roughly by the sleeve as I was climbing out, and firmly pressed the change into my palm. His entire being said “I need nothing extra, I ask only the set fee established by my union.”
A Russian waiter or waitress, even while serving your food, will always let you know, subconsciously, by way of his or her face or posture, that he or she is doing you an enormous favor. He or she considers his or her current predicament to be a temporary and unnatural state: I may be a student right now, supporting myself by working in this restaurant, but just you wait. I’ll graduate and the moment I do I’ll become a top manager or rich businessman, or at the very least, will marry an oligarch.
Assuming the whole time, of course, that they will achieve this goal in their current lifetime. They have no faith in a future life. It’s not about belief; the possibility of some future life simply doesn’t cross their mind. And at the same time they naively take for the truth the theory that if you “want something badly enough” or if you “just try really hard,” then “everything will work out fine.”
And in fact that is the way it is.
This formula has become the catechism of modern Western man, conveyed through Hollywood films, articles in glossy magazines and books by the ubiquitous and all-knowing Paolo Coelho. But the wise men of the East who originally came up with the formula proceeded from the premise that we have more than one life to live.
True, the art of customer service is not very advanced in Russia. That said, if a Russian starts licking someone’s posterior, then he will find himself getting deeper and deeper in filth, wallowing around in there without the slightest need or profit. And not only that, he’ll fight an army of other guys tooth and nail for the right to lick even deeper. A nationwide case of mass sadomasochism.
I watched the Chinese guy ordering the white girls around and marveled at his skill. He was clearly in his element. Before long the ancient Eastern man will come into his own, and when that time comes, we, white tailless monkeys, lazy self-satisfied creatures that we are, will do his bidding in the utmost tedium and servility.
After work I started to make my way home. The traffic was horrendous as usual; the line of cars barely moved. Some drivers, like me, kept to their own lane, creeping submissively along in short lurches and long pauses, surfing the radio dial and glancing dumbly out the side windows, first right, then left, or fixing a blank stare, devoid of emotion or thought, through their front windshields. Others fidgeted, jockeyed for position, or drove up on the sidewalk, attempting to pass on the right, but at the next stoplight found themselves inevitably in the same position as before, relative to the rest of us.
Without particular rancor I muttered my habitual curses at the impatient ones. You’d think they were all rushing to some super-important, earthshaking appointment, or that every wasted minute was costing them a thousand dollars.
I’m quite sure, though, that they’re simply going home to collapse on their sofa and watch some TV. The more energetic among them might have something to eat first, or engage in sexual activities with their domestic partners. So what’s the big hurry? An hour earlier or later won’t change anything.
Soon everything will be perfect: They’ll fix the roads, fill in all the potholes, lay down new pavement, set up roundabouts, repaint the white lines, add a parking lane so that parked cars won’t clutter up the entire right side of the road, and they’ll construct a triple layer of high-speed beltlines around the city for heavy trucks. And everything will be perfect. Maybe not right away. But someday.
In the meantime, the speed of every individual car in a line of traffic is ultimately reduced to the same average speed as the rest of traffic. Showing excessive individuality just gets some more scratches and dents on your car, and more resentment from everybody else.
Traffic is no different from the rest of life.
KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR
I made it home and parked the car in the improvised for-profit lot next to the supermarket. A polite, solicitous man with an Armenian air about him guided me in between a Volkswagen and a Toyota. The lot was full as usual. I handed the guard (I can’t for the life of me recall his name, let’s call him Ashot) forty rubles, the fee for his services overnight.
I used to park by the entrance to the apartment building but in no time the side-view mirrors were stolen. Savvy neighbors explained that it might have nothing to do with the night security guards, but then again, it might. In general, you could do without paying the forty rubles to the guys running the unlicensed parking lot. But then parts of your car might go missing: windshields, mirrors, fenders, and the like. It’s simpler just to pay.
Sometimes when I came out to get the car at night, there would be no guard at the lot at all. The services of the bottom feeders on site, evidently under instruction from the guys in charge, were strictly limited to making sure nothing was “disappeared” from the cars under their protection. The cars parked at the entrance, though, were fair game.
Anyway, I began parking my car by the supermarket, paying their paltry tribute and enjoying relatively undisturbed sleep at night.
Ashot took the money in his left hand, with an air of sincere regret on his haggard face.
His cell phone rang and he raised it to his ear with the other hand.
“Hello? Hello? Galya? I come today. Money? I bring it. Wait up, don’t sleep, we go to movie. The money? I got some—I bring it.”
Let it be said in his defense that Ashot is the most reliable of all the lot’s watchmen. He does disappear now and then, naturally, but there are times when he spends the whole night pacing from one end of the lot to the other, humming verses of some Armenian song. I’ve seen it myself, quite often.
When our locals are on duty, they might as well not be there at all. They just drink themselves into a stupor and sleep the night away in their jalopy right there on the lot.
It occurred to me that Russian women could organize a movement in support of illegal immigration. Those Galyas, Liubas, Klavas, and Nadyas—ladies who have crossed into their forties and who tip the scales at eighty kilos plus—wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of catching a partner in life who’s occasionally sober, capable of working and bringing home a salary, and of giving her some good times in bed, if it weren’t for these Ashots, Tigrans, Dauds, and Sulemans.
Such ladies should lock arms and come out in full force to confront the assembled demonstrators of the Anti-Immigration Movement, forming an impenetrable wall with their massive breasts. They could say, so you want all these non-Russian elements to leave our country? Fine, out they go. But can you satisfy your womenfolk? How about right now? Bring it on, defenders of the Motherland, give it to us till we can’t take any more. All these dark-skinned immigrants will be out of the picture, so you can plow us every night like Young Communists conquering virgin lands, all night long. Work all day, and then bring home the bacon and potatoes. How do you like that version of Russia, fellow citizens?
That would put an end to the patriotic Russian Orthodox struggle against the so-called black-assed invaders; our valiant warriors would scatter into the alleyways with their tails between their legs, hiking up their ripped trousers with one hand and crossing themselves plaintively with the other.
This is the sort of serious matter that preoccupies me when I’m out walking. Sometimes I even move my lips or laugh out loud. Looking like a real moron.