A Russian Weekend in New York City
As luck would have it, my entire family (a fairly small affair, consisting of my parents, my wife and myself) has its birthdays within the span of one month – September 29th through October 28th (for all interested parties, money gifts are gladly accepted, preferably in small unmarked bills, although checks and money orders will not be turned away either). Since we live in different cities – my parents live in New York City, and my wife and I live near Boston – we usually combine the four birthdays into one event. This time around we gathered in Brooklyn New York at the very beginning of the birthday month.
My wife had business in NYC, so she took a plane down. Being in the middle of a job search, I took the cheaper and lengthier route – I drove. My wife arrived first (both because she flew and I got stuck in traffic due to an accident on I-95 in Connecticut around exit 29. Stood there for about an hour and a half talking off the ear a friend on the cell phone). Communication at the Dolinov household is always a rather entertaining spectacle, especially since my wife joined our merry company. While my parents can exhibit basic English behavior, their ambition goes way beyond what they can state in our variegated tongue. Being fairly cheerful people, we take it all in stride (my wife speaks no Russian to speak of) and make the best of it. Along with the minor frustrations there are always highly entertaining moments that provide ample compensation.
Once I finally arrived at my parents, I came upon a rather interesting transnational, translinguistic scene. My parents and my wife were glued to the TV, watching the Russian channel. The Russian channel was showing a Peruvian Soap Opera, where the original Spanish (which my wife understands and speaks rather fluently) was dubbed into Russian. As the tantalizing events unfolded, lest my wife felt left out, my father readily translated for her from the dubbed Russian into his own version of English. My father is a professional actor with a fairly high energy level and charisma. Consequently, he not only did a verbal translation of the Russian, but would do an interpretation of the love scenes as well, with a great deal of gesticulation, rolling of the eyes and raising of eyebrows way beyond their natural gamut of movement – Dad can be very understated when he wishes to, but the Peruvian Soap was not taking a subtle approach, so he faithfully followed its cue.
My arrival interrupted the Spanish-Russian-English a la Boliwood brouhaha. Maternal and paternal instincts kicked in, and the enterprise of my parents trying to have me gain 20 pounds over the course of a weekend commenced. I shall not bore you with the details of the absolutely delicious Russian food – a scrumptious affair that, if consumed indiscriminately, will have your veins pumping more cholesterol than blood (those of you who have gone through my drinking Vodka 101 instructional know whereof I speak. Those of you who are yet to go through it will know it then). The crowning event is worth mentioning. My father got a particular Russian delicacy. It is called Vobla – some sort of fish that has been dried into a state of cardboard. The somewhat cavemen like method of consumption of said ichtiotoid involve the ripping off of its blindly staring head, and the skinning of its scales, which do come off nicely provided you have a good grip and pull vigorously. The flesh that is revealed underneath is unbelievably salty and is a veritable ambrosia when coupled with beer, which it was. Having the charming habit of playing with my food, I would speak to the fish, trying to conjure up Hamlet’s somewhat modified soliloquy (“To eat or not to eat, there is a fish now,” and other such nonsense). Ignoring the silent pleas of the fish, and the rather loud pleas of my wife (“Eat, but do not torture the Bard’s memory!”) I would then preceded to consume the fish in a way that would have made the Marquis De Sade proud of me. Dad was right there with me, although he did no soliloquies, but rather produced hilarious but rather untranslatable (to say nothing of unprintable) jokes – I might attempt a translation at a later date to a receptive and highly inebriated audience.
On the following day we decided to go to the Russian Baths, a local institution, frequented almost exclusively by expatriates of the former USSR. The main attraction is the Russian steam bath. This particular variety of the Sauna has a wooden interior with two levels of berths and exposed coals upon which water is ladled to move the place into the next circle of hell. The die-hards, or anyone who wants to have the real experience, would also get a “Venik,” which is a bundle of birch twigs tied together with twine with leaves at the edges. Ideally, one person lies on the lower berth (if he’s a wimp), or the upper berth (if he has mettle, with the other person slapping him rather vigorously on the back and legs with said Venik, occasionally dragging it along one extremity or another with one hand, while pushing down on it with another. It all feels very good and healthy, with the skin pores opening to the size of small countries.
Most people kept to themselves, or exchanged minimal small talk. There was one middle aged Georgian (of the Soviet, not Dixieland variety) who demonstrated that sometimes stereotypes have something to them (the Georgians are notorious Don Juans in Russia). The guy tried to volunteer his services of applying the Venik to all women who were not ostensibly attached to menacing men. In the rather steamy Turkish bath, where small scrubs rather than Veniks were used, I suspect that a very short-lived relationship between the Georgian and a rather fleshy dame was initiated and nigh consummated on a tiled bench.
Repeated trips to the Russian and Turkish steam rooms, interchanged with swims in a cool indoor pool, followed by my fathers very engaging lecture on Italian Neo Realism left us all rather hungry. Very conveniently, the establishment offers a full Russian fare, which we attacked with a vigor reserved to inveterate bath goers. Since my American veneer was washed off by the steam room sweat and beaten out of me with the birch twigs, I proceeded to consume such delicacies as extremely delicious (read fatty) lamb soup called Kharcho, raw pork fat known in Russian as Salo, a Russian salad drenched in sour cream, a non alcoholic brew known as Kvas (brewed out of rye), and a kind of veal concoction known as Chelakhach. Like most things in life, this too shall pass, and I will be back in Newton Mass, eating Kashi for breakfast and swinging dumb bells. Still, one needs a bit of variety.
Sunday was my mother’s birthday. Dad was away at work, so my mother, my wife and myself decided to go and take a long walk on the boardwalk on Brighton Beach. A few words about the Brighton Beach phenomenon. Starting in the 70’s Russian Jews began to arrive on Brighton. It was a particular variety of that cross section of world population. These were people from Odessa. Odessa is a southern city in the Russian empire. Being a port city, it’s extremely lush and cosmopolitan. The development of the Jewish population there took an interesting turn. Besides the usual fare of scholars, mystics, entrepreneurs and loafers, a strong Jewish criminal element blossomed in Odessa between the late 19th century and the Communist revolution of 1917 (a la the Bugsy Segal and Meyer Lansky crowd). That entire milieu was beautifully depicted by Isaac Babel in his “Odessa Tales.” To give you a full flavor of it, I will post my own translation of one of the tales here either later on today or tomorrow (I did not find any of the translations quite satisfying). So, the descendants of the turn of the century gangsters, as well as may dealers in the Soviet gray market – no real market existed at the time, naturally – found the boardwalk on Brighton Beach to be reminiscent of the Odessa sea shore with its own boardwalk and famous steps (immortalized by Eisenstein in “Battleship Potemkin” and lovingly ripped of by De Palma in “The Untouchables.”). Some mild misunderstandings took place between the new arrivals and the local gangs. Once several members of the local gangs were found hanging off lampposts one bright morning, a decision has been made that the Russians should be left alone to their devices. Over two and a half decades later the place is thriving. There is virtually no shooting. Multiple stores offer the most varied and exotic in both Russian food and books. During the summer time (or any time when it’s not raining or brutally cold), people pour into the boardwalk.
Walking up and down the Brighton Beach boardwalk you may occasionally espy the usual fare Brooklyn has to offer – little old ladies in green polyester pants and wildly purple hair. But those are in the minority. On Sunday there was an entire group, Octogenarian to the last one of them, performing folk dances with a small boom box providing the requisite lachrymose tunes. Mostly, though, the population was the highly colorful humanity of the ex Soviet Union, defying all American dress codes, sauntering up and down the wooden beams of the boardwalk. We got there at 11:30 in the morning and left at 2:30 in the afternoon. During that time we saw women in evening black dresses with slits going up to their hips, carrying babies in their arms. There was a polio stricken tour guide leading a gaggle of American tourists that stood out like eunuchs in a brothel. There was one local drunk screaming at another drunk to take a rest and remain on a bench (versus what, keep on drinking?). But the sun was shining brightly and the breeze had the perfect quality of being refreshing without chilling you. Boardwalks cafes beckoned with fresh sea fare and glittered with the golden teeth of the waiters. Bullion notwithstanding, my wife decided to get a cup of coffee. Being dispatched to get said beverage I encountered one of the many oddities of the Russian habits of service – no cover for the cup. The coffee aroma attracted a hungry bee ,who aimed for the foam and died a hero’s death trying to extract nectar out of caffeine and drowning in the process. In spite of my mother’s opining that bees are clean insects, my wife decided to get a new cup, and even though she knows virtually no Russian (versus my florid fluency) managed to get not only a cup but a cover as well. Thus, while a cousin of the first bee tried to repeat his relative’s feat, he was both deterred and saved.
Walking back, we decided to stop by a local pharmacy. My wife went in – having shown much more facility in getting things bought right that particular day – while my mother and I perched on a bench outside. Having successfully completed her transaction, my wife related the following dialogue that had transpired between her and the checkout guy at the pharmacy:
GUY: You got a pharmacy card?
WIFE: No
GUY: OK, so you fill out the form here.
WIFE: No I’m not.
GUY: What’s your problem?
WIFE: I don’t live here.
GUY: Where do you live?
WIFE: None of your business.
GUY: Hey lady, I’m just trying to save you some money!
WIFE: None of the items I bought were on sale anyway.
After we got back to my parents and had a bit of a rest, we proceeded to Manhattan, where we will stay for a couple of days due to my wife’s business trip. At this juncture of the narrative the Russian part should end, but it did not quite. Once we were ensconced in our hotel, we decided to get a drink at “The View,” which is a revolving restaurant at the top of the Marriott Marquis in Time Square. As we were sipping highly over priced drinks that only in New York people can get away with charging for, three young people settled at a table next to us. I could not quite make out their conversation over the general din. I thought I heard a couple of Slavic words, and I certainly heard a very distinct Slavic intonation. Not having been taught by my mother not to stick my nose into other people’s conversations or to ask foreigners where they are from, I stuck my nose and asked. The answer was amazing – Lithuania. The thing is, the Lithuanian language has nothing to do with Russian or any other Slavic language. Lithuanians have been occupied by Russian and the Soviet Union for more centuries than they care to think. They had a brief spate of independence between the Communist Revolution and WWII , but that is about it. As a rule, Lithuanians hate Russians, the Russian language, and often refuse to speak it – and I cannot blame them. Apparently, though, all these years of domination superimposed a certain Soviet personality that has manifested itself in the way Lithuanians into their language. Odd.
11:39:29 AM 
|
|
