RuKsaK

My second ever visit to my future in-laws was spent with five of us huddling the tiny, cheap Formica table under the window. A drawer-full of messed paraphernalia from my wife’s past was spread over it:

Scruffy, summery photos.
A hammer-and-sickled school award for lobbing a dummy hand grenade the furthest (girl’s group).
One archaically written text book teaching Lenin’s history as a boy in English.
A stack of badges.
Old roubles.
Papers.
Fluff.

All this was passed around furiously between the family members and me. Babushka welling up with mirth, Mum sweeping her arms in nostalgic sarcasm and future Brat-in-law scratching for bits to study, fidget and break. I was adrift in the noise of the four Russian mouths and the scraps of translation.

Doing my best to impress politely - I picked up the playing cards from a corner of table:
‘Translate for me – I want to show your brother a really cool trick.’
‘Not yet – everyone’s showing you my stuff.’
‘No – come on. It’s a good one.’

Space was cleared. The family sitting patiently as I dished out four crosses face-up.
‘Ok – tell him to pick a card and don’t tell me which one’

That done I gathered the pile, re-dished face-down, same instruction, but to point this time.

Waiting for him to select a card a gentle sticky mist brushed quickly into my face. Instinctively I rubbed at it. Then the rip piled in. My eyes whelped flames outwards. Tears Niagara-ed down my face, even making my chest wet. I scratched wildly with my knuckles:
‘What the fuck is that?’
‘Hss! Don’t swear! They understand that word. My brother just maced you.’
‘He just fucking did what!’
‘He pepper sprayed you.’

In the bathroom with the cacophonous Russian generations surrounding me:
‘He’s sorry. He was just fiddling – your trick was boring. He didn’t mean to spray you. He’s hiding now.’

Still wringing my blazing eyeballs in cold water:
‘Where in the name of shit did he get it from?’
‘It was in my drawer. I used to carry it in case of a rapist or something.’
‘Jesus! I’m not going to fucking rape you! Why’s he spraying me?’
‘It was an accident. He was just messing about.’
‘It’s a fucking disaster! Wait – my trick was boring?’
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I left that visit with ruby fleshy eyes, and perfected knowledge of how to say ‘sorry’ six ways in Russian.

On the trolleybus home I thought about the trio: the trick, the mace, the apologies. The Socialist kitchen ghosts had got me. There’s to be no lying in a Russian kitchen, no tricks or illusions – it’s a hidey-hole for truth and I’d broken its cosmic laws.

And yet wrapped inside my belly was a Stalin-sized taste for revenge – another ghost from the same time perhaps.
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Ghosts in Part 3.

Friday, January 28, 2005

Russian Kitchens - part 2