okay, so I’m trying to inspire myself to work on my book again. It’s been a while. but I REALLY want to finish it.
I managed to re-write a chapter and I decided to break precedent and post a little bit of it here.
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As excited as we had been to get to Russia, we waited. Even before the plane landed, everyone had jumped up to get their bags out of the overhead bines. The fasten seat belt sign has still on, but it was not acknowledged. We couldn’t push past all the people clogging the aisle, and there was no way we could easily gather up our stuff to carry it out again.
So we waited. As tired as we were, it wasn’t that hard. I looked through the window to see Russia for the first time. It was totally dark outside. We left in the dark and landed in the dark.
But at last all the people were out of the plane. We huffed up out of our assigned seats and into the aisle, reaching down in to the footwell to excavate all the debris that we’d shed.
We humped all our stuff to baggage claim, and I looked up.
The high ceiling was molded into deep squares, with a Soviet star in the center. I had never seen anything like it. I tilted my head back and stared.
“Watch for the bags!” Mom warned me. I looked down to watch for the baggage. But everyone else was watching; they could handle it. I went back to taking in the ceiling.
“Okay, that’s everything.” Mom had gathered all the bags, and double checked that everyone had everything. Be needed to go to customs. Where was customs?
After much sounding out of posted signs, only to discover that none of them sounded like “Customs” or anything else recognizable. While we were fumbling around with our Russian-English dictionaries with no success, an official pointed us in a direction.
Once again we gathered all our things into a configuration that we could carry. A shuffling and handing off of this bag for another ensued.
But wait. What were they going to do to us in customs? What were we supposed to say? Should we be careful?
Customs was official. Customs were a kind of police or soldier. There were authorities—agents! This was Dangerous. Mom decided that Dad should speak for all of us, and we should say nothing. We agreed to this.
We said nothing as we carried all our things to the line. We held our bags silently as the cold-faced soviet official looked everything over. Dad handed them the papers we’d filled out on the plane.
We said nothing when the Soviet official barked out questions at Dad while pointing towards the bags. We looked on as Dad shrugged his shoulders and raised his palms up. The customs agents stared hard at him. Then they stared hard at us.
We said nothing as the customs agent waved us through. Close-mouthed, we pulled up all the things and walked through the door into the terminal.
Once inside, we disgorged all our things onto the seats with sighs and groans of relief. The bags, the coats and hats and scarves and carry-ons with all the bulging contents flung off us at last. Relief!
Mom gushed, “Norm, You were great. I was so afraid, but you handled it just right.” Her relief was broadcast to all the four walls.
We had passed the customs hurdle, but what had we gotten into? I desperately wanted get clean and into a bed to sleep. But we had made no arrangements. We were on our own.
I know this was going to happen. I knew it. We had nowhere to go, and no one to help us. We knew no one and nothing. Everything I had imagined about this defect in the plans was staring me in the face.
“Surely someone is looking for us. What about that college girl’s brother?” Dad said.
We were hoping some kid would show up and take care of us? Oh boy. Oh no.
He was still talking: “We’ll just wait for them to find us.”
“Orange?” Mom said, peeling off a segment.
What else could I do? I took the orange. I chewed it and stared at the ceiling some more. Alaska had shown me nothing like this. Plaster molded with stalks of what and sickles—and in the middle of every square section, a star. It looked old—in a glamorous way.
I hadn’t noticed that he left, but Dad had come back with a young man who could speak English. His name was Valyrie.
“Valerie?”
“No, Vah LEEE ree.” He was not sent from anyone. He and dad had just met. He said he helped people who traveled. A travel agent? He had offered to help dad find a hotel.
So of course, Dad had come back to get all of us and all our stuff and take it to the hotel. But when VaLEEree saw how many of us there were, and how very much stuff, he was taken aback. The new plan was for him and dad to go alone and get the hotel reservation, and once it was secured, come back for us and the stuff.
This was a bad idea. Who was this guy? If dad left the airport, could he get back in? We shouldn’t separate. But how could I say all this with the nice/creepy guy standing right there? I did my best to express my concerns to mom and dad without upsetting our new “friend”.
But away they went and Mom gave us slices of cheese and crackers.
I stared at the ceiling.
“Mom,” I asked. “Do you think Valyrie is helping us because he’s KGB?”
“Maybe.” She handed me another slice of cheese on a cracker.
“It’s 40 below outside!”
What? I must have fallen asleep. Dad was back with Valyrie, and they did look cold.
“…the power is out in the town, so it’s actually warmer just to stay here.”
Dad had to repeat this news to each of us as we came back together to hear the report. Then he had to repeat it to each of us again.
“It’s 40 below? And the town has no power? No HEAT?”
Valyrie said this happened sometimes. We made him repeat it also.
Since this was the situation, it seemed best to stay at the airport terminal. Even Valyrie was going to stay. I interpreted his reluctance to leave us as further evidence that he was KGB. Mom shared our cheese, oranges and animal crackers with him. He really liked the oranges.
His English was pretty good. We asked him the Russian name for everything in sight, and then moved on to phrases. When we couldn’t make out what he was saying, we made him write it down.
He was very nice about it, but as soon as he started writing, I realized I was going to have to learn Russian longhand. None of us could read it.
“Oh, I see. I beg your pardon,” he said. “Let me write it this way: COPOK MUHYC”
We all sounded it out. “Soh roak meee noose. Forty Below!”
I was already flipping through my Russian-English dictionary to see if the Russian word “meenoose” had the same array of meanings that the English “Minus” had, when I made another appalling discovery.
“I don’t know the alphabet!” I cried.
“What do you mean?” Valyrie said. “You were just reading the words.”
Sure, I knew the sounds of the letters. But I could not say them in order. How could I look anything up?
“What’s your song?” I demanded.
“Our song?”
“Yes, you must have a song.”
“We have many excellent songs…” he said.
“No, an alphabet song…Like this..’A B C D E F G’ ” I sang, and everyone joined in to sing the whole song. “….Next time won’t you sing with me.”
Valyrie clapped and asked us to sing it again. We did.
“That is a most excellent song. I can see it would be very useful.”
“What is your song?”
“Hmm… We have a song that starts the alphabet, but not one with the..mm…entire alphabet.”
This was going to be harder than I thought. I took out a page and wrote out the alphabet in order from the dictionary. I showed it to Valyrie, and he said it was right. Mom took it and tried to sing the names of the Russian letters to the tune of our Alphabet song.
“This doesn’t work.” She gave up. “There are too many letters.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and it’s hard to match LMNOP.”
The others had drifted away a while ago, and mom got up to look for them. I tilted my head back to stare at the ceiling again.
“Don’t you think this ceiling is beautiful?” I asked Valyrie.
“Hm…” he said. “I do not enjoy it. It reminds me of Stalin.”
“Stalin built this?”
“It was built in the time of Stalin.”
So he didn’t like Stalin. Maybe he wasn’t KGB after all. Perhaps he was an ordinary helpful citizen that would turn out to be a thief or rapist.
I decided that I should not be alone with him again.
