A Very Foreign Country

St. Petersburg doesn’t know how to behave when it is not covered in snow. The heat gives me a headache; breathing feels like inhaling treacle.  The light reflected in the buildings hurts my eyes.

It is Sunday; to relieve the boredom and desperate for coolness, I had jumped on a bus to the Summer Palace, near the coast.  A trip will give me a sense of purpose; a barrier against the loneliness.  

Four months of my contract have gone by; the time left is an eternity.  When I am not working I am looking for ways to kill time.  It is either that or the time will me.

The air inside the bus is worse than outside.   The floor is covered with grime and phlegm; a cockroach scuttles to a safe place.  Two pensioners are bickering about whether or not to open a window.  They are veterans of the Siege; their jackets are covered in medals.  One of them opens the window and sits back; the other closes it and shouts.  The language is still foreign, but I am beginning to get the meaning.  An old grandmother in black interferes in the dispute: her piercing voice, matched by her eyes, tells the two men in no uncertain terms where to go.  Even the bus driver gets involved, shouting and taking his eyes off the road, a fag in the corner of his mouth.  When the commotion dies down, the window stays open.  The smell in the bus is overpowering: sweat, cheap perfume, unwashed clothes, cheese wrapped in grease-proof paper and something difficult to define:  a rotting, putrid smell.

Suddenly the bus stops.  Everyone hangs out of the grimy windows.  A woman blesses herself, the Russian way, with three fingers. 

In the middle of the street lies a man.  He wears a torn and dirty raincoat; he misses a shoe and a sock.  His hair is grey, long and matted.  And he is quite dead.  He lies in a foetal position, one arm protecting his head; a dark puddle underneath him.  Close by, on a rickety wooden chair sits a militia, a policeman.  He smokes a cigarette.  On his lap a typewriter;  he is writing his report.  

I try my best Russian on the babushka.

‘Shto?’

‘Nee znaye!’  When the woman sees me puzzled she confers with the man beside her. 

‘Nee znaye,’ he repeats, ‘we don’t know.’  Rapid Russian follows.

‘Vodka, many vodka.’  The man makes a drinking gesture.  ‘Many bad vodka.  People stop see. Go blind and die.  But die happy!’  He laughs, showing his iron dentures.  I thank him as best as he can.

‘Spassiba.’

A lazy fly lands on the dead man’s lips. 

Suddenly and violently, I am homesick.  I have eight months to go.