The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight

by Gina Ochsner

  'What's new?' the old man called out in military tones.

  'Oh, nothing,' Olga replied mechanically

  'And how is your nothing?'

  Olga dug in her plastic bag and gave the man a boiled egg. As black as soot.' Olga turned for the building. One look at the man and Olga knew she did not have to tell him anything he didn't already know. It was all there swirling at his feet: how the old pensioners had lost their entire life savings in recent crashes, banking scams and hyperinflation. This Olga and Arkady had dubbed 'elastic economics'. But their job was to shield harsh realities in language so diffuse and vague that the veterans would never know how people like them had edited them out of history books. Her job was to spin the news with stretchy fibrous words of euphemism so that young people like her son, Yuri, and his live-in-girlfriend, Zoya, would never know just how very bleak their situations had really become. Her job was to do all this, and then dispense boiled eggs afterwards.

  Olga paused at the lift, contemplated it for its metaphoric value. Then she thrust her head inside. Someone had pasted an advertisement—on the ceiling no less. Quite a gymnastic feat. WILL BUY VOUCHER FOR 10,000R. It was a joke, surely, for someone else had already scribbled beside it some handy advice: Take your voucher, and shove it up your ass. No, this doesn't mean you are BARKING MAD. It just means you're like the rest of us—screwed.

  In the office of translation Arkady was already ensconced behind his side of the desk. This was what she liked about him: he was such a hard worker and so rarely did he ever complain. Sometimes he even offered helpful suggestions.

  Olga forced her ample backside behind the desk. On the blotter lay a new work order awaiting translation.

  A prestige apartment building in the Novyye Lyady district and a tank factory in the Industrialny district collapsed into a morass of mud in the early morning hours. In the Kirovsky district near the Upper Kama, two female pensioners disappeared into a sink hole while walking their dogs. Neither the bodies of the women nor their dogs have been recovered. City officials advise residents to avoid the out of doors at all costs. If one must walk about, then he or she should do so in a state of high alert. If one should find him or herself mud-bound by no means should he or she thrash about. 'it's best to let nature take its course,' advises Osip Gregorovich Shudno, a sink-hole expert with special training in loon-muck survival strategies and marsh water recovery. 'But if you can raise your hips into a horizontal position, then you have a 67% chance of remaining afloat until help arrives. Under no circumstances should one drink the water.'

  'Is this a joke?' Olga looked slyly at Arkady. Since his wife left him all those years ago it had become Arkady's habit to tease Olga now and then—his way of flirting, she supposed. If he wasn't dangling exotic facts from far-flung corners of the map, then he sometimes placed on the desk news items Olga suspected came straight out of his inexhaustible imagination.

  With his thumb Arkady pushed his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose. His eyes swam behind his glasses. 'Not a joke, I'm afraid.' Arkady dug into his trousers and withdrew a handkerchief. 'Kaminsky asked me for a translation but I can't do it. Those old ladies. Well, not the ladies, but their dogs, I had grown very fond of.' Arkady honked into his hankie.

  Olga reached across the desk and touched Arkady's sleeve. 'I am so very sorry,' she murmured. Arkady sniffed and pulled his chair closed to the window overlooking the production floor. Below them the huge wheels churned the paper rolls in a deafening roar. How could they stand it down there, pummelled by the noise of all those words, none of them quite accurate? Olga wondered. And just what was she to do with this latest bit? When the very earth beneath your feet could not be trusted, what then? Certainly she could not write what she knew to be true: that the ground they lived on had been completely overmined and undersupported. The last time she wrote up a translation a little too truthfully, she'd nearly given Arkady an ulcer. But it was quite by accident.

  She'd meant to write up the first attack on Grozny as a sudden climatic shift in the far south. But knowing that her son, a boy in heart and mind, had until just recently himself been out there fighting in this war so few of them cared for and understood far less had incited her instinct for truth, and out it came—colossal and unexpected defeat of the Russian army due to incompetence.

  Not a minute later, Chief Editor Kaminsky appeared in the doorway of their tiny office, his eyebrows lowered in a tight band above his nose. 'Very creative work, Olga Semyonovna,' he pronounced, his voice atonal and flat as if the words were produced by something mechanical lodged inside his throat. Olga had cringed. Chief Editor Kaminsky, as every other boss she'd ever worked for, only called a woman by her first name and patronymic when she'd fallen into his extreme disfavour. Olga realized then than too many more transparent flashes of creativity and she'd be given the boot.

  Olga pushed aside the report about the sink hole and reached instead for a work-on-the-left item from the wire basket. This time she withdrew a cocktail menu for an American-style hamburger restaurant. The names of the drinks sent her into an immediate state of flummox. Sex on the Beach. Olga glanced at the Topic Guide. Yes, it was a behemoth. But as comprehensive as the Guide was, conspicuous gaps had yet to be filled. Because even though glasnost had come and gone, certain things—sex, for instance—were not to be discussed, not even in dictionaries, those safeguards of thought and propriety. Sure you could find colourful graffiti addressing that topic along the walls of every metro station and on any fence. But a word that could be printed, well, that was another matter. The Russian language was great. Greatly expansive. Even so, she could not think of a single decent word, noun or verb, to describe love-making. She considered—briefly—'Passion on the Sand'. But the word for passion was also the same word for horror and terror, and it didn't seem right to Olga to add to the trauma most women she knew already associated with sex.

  The next item on the menu was something called 'Screaming Orgasm', a concoction that featured two forms of alcohol, a juice and fizzy water. An elaborate drink, it sounded like an animal, or perhaps a bodily ailment people in the West suffered from. Olga had heard of this condition—Lyuba in fact-checking claimed to have suffered from it from time to time. But Olga found it altogether suspicious. The deepest physical response one could feel during the act of love was perhaps a great swelling of the heart, a stirring of feeling which one could attribute to passion or to the use of too much cooking grease in one's dinner. All this was to say that Olga had never experienced orgasm and if any woman she knew, except for Lyuba, ever had, certainly they were keeping very quiet about it.

  Olga glanced at Arkady, who was at that very moment picking his teeth with the nib of his pencil. They were very good friends, she and Arkady. But he was a man, nonetheless, and asking him for help in this matter was absolutely unthinkable. Also, when Arakdy picked his teeth with his pencil, it meant he was thinking of his most prized possession: a large lump of petrified wood that had been in his family for several generations. If Arkady were ever to sell this wood, he would be a very rich man indeed. At least, that is what Arkady had told Olga about the rare specimen, which he kept wrapped in damp towels in a coat closet.

  In desperation, Olga slid out from behind the desk and wandered to the not-so-remote place—that is to say, the toilets, the place where she did all her best work. In the twenty years she'd been at the Red Star she'd learned that if she needed to outsource for alternative definitions, her best bet was to park her broad backside on a commode. Because everyone knew that if something were spoken at the toilets, then most certainly it was true.

  Absurdity no. 5

  The toilets...

  ...stretched the limits of olfactory tolerance. But, sadly, it was only there, amid the open unapologetic odour of human waste, that Olga could conduct candid discussion, as few women besides herself and Vera could endure the closed quarters with unambitious ventilation for more than thirty seconds or so. Olga pinched her nose with one hand and pushed open the
door to the women's toilets with the other. The searing at the back of her throat, this she ignored as she lowered her head and charged for the reprieve of a cracked window, where Vera stood, a mobile phone jammed against her ear, and a cigarette in her hand—smoking being the only way they knew to counter the virulence of a building plagued with desultory plumbing.

  Vera was lucky enough to have natural platinum blonde hair, the colour almost every Russian woman dreams of having. And so why Vera insisted on dyeing it dull black, Olga could not figure. Even worse, Vera tended to let the roots grow out so that with her blue-black eye make-up, she really did resemble a skunk. And this observation carried zero connotation of moral judgement. Because with the exception of Arkady, Olga considered Vera her one and only true friend.

  Vera tipped her head and switched her phone from one ear to the other. 'Of course it's true. The birth rate has halved in the last ten years and the mortality rates are soaring. Just don't ask for the numbers—it's too depressing.' Vera slid the phone into her purse and lit a cigarette for Olga. Vera had started as junior fact-checker and over the years moved up the ranks, as evidenced by the blaring crimson rings around her ears—the result of the pressure of a phone constantly applied to one side of her head or the other. This was Vera's official explanation, though Olga wondered if her friend's ears hadn't been permanently stained from what she had to listen to. Then, too, Vera had a penchant for collecting naughty jokes and proverbs and altering them so that they tipped from the naughty to the downright obscene. It was the only way that Vera, assaulted by raw data day after day, could maintain her fragile hold on sanity.

  Olga smoked her cigarette down to her fingers, then hiked up her skirt and sat cautiously on the rim of the commode. Here, as in all the stalls, the caretaker had exercised his sense of humour. It was rumoured that he had once worked as a copy-editor but had been demoted, though Olga could not see why. FELLOW SYNTACTIC ENGINEERS: PLEASE FLUSH YOUR DANGLING MODIFIERS, he had written on a placard taped above the place where they used to have real toilet paper. ATTENTION OFFICE STAFF: REGARDLESS OF THE QUALITY OF THE WORK PUT FORTH OR THE EFFORT IT REQUIRED—FLUSH!IF RESULTS EXCEED YOUR HIGHEST EXPECTATIONS, PLEASE USE THE BRUSH.

  'I'm so stuck,' Olga said. 'I need some of your valuable directive.'

  'You want the plunger or some of my vodka?'

  'No. Seriously. I need some advice. How would you translate "screaming orgasm" from English to Russian?'

  Vera contemplated the lazy ceiling fan. 'Did you know that alcohol has rendered the typical Russian male unable to perform in such a way that would provoke orgasm on the part of the female participant?'

  Olga squeezed her eyes closed as she searched her memory for any such recollections of Zvi. But she could not remember Zvi, at least not in that way.

  'It's true.' Vera blew a cloud of smoke into the air. 'The average tryst between a Russian man and woman lasts only eleven minutes. Compare that with the Americans, who clock in at eighteen minutes, and the Italians, who average twenty-one.'

  Olga knew that as a fact-checker, Vera was in a unique position to verify such claims. Also, Vera had worn out four husbands trying to find one that would satisfy her. But they'd all been drinkers and Vera could not contain her bitterness on the matter.

  'Sergei is practically useless. Last night—nine minutes and he was done! And what does he do with himself after? Nothing. He lays about whining, Sergei does. He won't work. He thinks about working. He imagines what work might feel like. This tires him out. Then he drinks himself into a blind stupor. He says it makes him happy. Then I tell him what I know: as long as a bottle of vodka costs less than a kilo of apples and bread is more expensive than beer, he will die of this happiness. You are so lucky, Olya. You married a real muzhik.'

  Olga shifted on the commode. Sometimes it was painful to sit and listen to Vera. The mildly dissatisfied people she knew rarely recognized how burdensome their conversation was, how discussing their problems only increased the heartache of those who had to listen and so revisit again and again their own loss. And the only thing worse than mildly dissatisfied people were happy people. With all sincerity Olga thanked God that at the present time she did not know anyone who was overly happy, or even slightly happy, and certainly she did not know anyone who was happily in love.

  God be praised. Because talking about love, talking about men, only reminded Olga how much about Zvi she had forgotten. Because memory was a strand of hair pulled tight and too easily broken. Because even with her eyes closed, squeezed shut to the uncertain light of the lav, only with great effort could she recall Zvi in his service uniform, his hat perched on his head, his charcoal eyes. And that was it. Olga reached for a Letter to the Editor and scribbled a few lines.

  Every day for twenty years on the back of the squares of Very Soft or Pigeon, popular brands of scratchy brown toilet paper, or on the backs of the Letters to the Editor, Olga wrote anything she could remember of Zvi. For twenty years she tried to corral her failing memory and word by word, memory by memory, reclaim her lost husband. But somehow (when she was cramming Hungarian into her ears? When she was forgetting the family prayers to make room for Nakh conjugations?) Zvi had inexplicably retreated particle by particle into the murk. Every day for twenty years she tried to call him back, detail by detail. For instance, Olga knew that every man wears a map of skin: sweat creases on the back of the neck or scars on the knuckles, indelible footnotes of the work done with the hands. But what signs and markings Zvi's body heralded, Olga couldn't remember. Only because her notes said so did she know that he had a star-shaped scar above the right cheekbone. In her note she reads how Zvi had an entire constellation of moles on his back that resembled letters of the Arabic alphabet, but now she could not recall what words they spelled. And it was only because the backs of the Letters to the Editors said so that she knew that Zvi's smile was so wide, it pushed his ears back. And it bothered her like nothing else that she couldn't remember his feet or his hands or his knees. If he had been a dreamer, a loner—the sound of his laugh—it was gone from her. Only his sneezes trumpeting through the corridor and rattling plates in the cupboard—that she remembered. But even then it was with effort, only after consulting her chipped dishes and stopping to wonder, 'How?'

  'Am I right?' Vera's voice pulled Olga back to the bathroom smoke and stink. 'Should I not insult Sergei mercilessly and then give him the boot?'

  'Absolutely you are in the right.' Olga thrust her notes into her purse. If a woman asked such a question, it was only because she knew the answer already and wanted quick confirmation.

  But Olga had had about all she could take of sex and husbands. And realizing that she'd get nowhere on the cocktail menu with Vera, she wiped her backside with a Letter to the Editor:

  To whom it may concern,

  I think you should know that it is a well-established fact the Russian military is bankrupt and has been for years. Recruits have gone AWOL in record numbers and Russian soldiers have given their weapons to Chechen opposition in exchange for bottles of vodka. And why not? Under-equipped, underfed, under-supported, and ill-trained, why should these boys die in Chechnya? Good God! We sent tanks into Grozny without giving the tank navigators a city map!

  (signed General S———, Mozdok.)

  By the time Olga slid behind her side of the desk, Arkady's eyebrows had locked in a wrestling match. On the desk in front of him lay the week's inflation index.

  'The President is an ass.' Arkady waved a curled transcript.

  Olga glanced at the Topic Guide. 'I think "donkey" is the preferred nomenclature.'

  'OK.' Arkady scratched at his arm. 'Donkey it is. And as such, according to city ordinance prohibiting the use of animals in public, he should stay at home in bed and keep his hangover to himself.'

  'Hangover' was a not-so-subtle reference to the President's decision to invade Chechnya, a move prompted by a long round of holiday toasting and reckless dares.

  Olga scowled. Yes, Russia was a countr
y manned by drunks. No one knew it more than the fact-checkers and translators at the Red Star, but still, even in this age of pseudo-glasnost, there were things you shouldn't say. Now there were unconfirmed rumours that the President might be plagued with a bad heart. To this end, Kaminsky had installed a special cut-and-paste function. Any time the word 'president' appeared in print it was followed by 'could not attend the event because he was labouring over documents'.

  Just then the teletype, a squat grey machine stationed beneath the glass window, spluttered to life.

  Absurdity no. 6

  The teletype.

  ...was of archival, that is to say antique, quality. Olga held her breath as the large round metal element spun in quick agitation, striking the paper in an exaggerated staccato fashion. Arkady adjusted his glasses and squinted at the transcript unfurling from the yammering maw of the machine. Although office protocol dictated that she and Arkady retrieve and translate as many assignments from the basket as they could, if the teletype went active, then they were to drop those assignments immediately, as something horrific was happening and the public—for their own good—must not at any cost hear about it in its raw and undiluted version.