Page 67 - WTP Vol.X#1

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Slava dropped me off at my apartment with the di- rection that I should take the next day off to get over my hangover. But I wasn’t having it, even though the walls in my apartment seemed to bow and flex with my breathing the next day and my head was splitting like a hydrogen atom. I walked down to the hill to the university early, to print out a couple things. When
I walked down the hall, I looked in the doors of the open classrooms and offices, hoping to see some of my colleagues and, if I could, extract some sympathy for my pitiable condition. But when I looked into
the large classroom, I saw that the heavy from the nightclub was sitting there, in a button up shirt and blazer, looking like a visiting lecturer. There were no students in the classroom, just him sitting behind the table at the front of the room. He made eye contact with me and forced me to break it, walking off to the dept office to print out my course materials.
I shut the door to the office behind me and sat. On the other side of the door, I couldn’t guess what terrors the world held. Inside the office, there were bilingual dictionaries, a poster with Picasso’s sketch of Don Quixote and a translated quote from the book, and a lamp with a swing arm. There was a dusty old printer and an industrial stapler and a comb binder. I was supposed to teach, and the world out there was hostile, and I remembered that it had always been like that. I collected my materials, and when it was time, I walked down to my classroom.
I didn’t look inside the classroom where the heavy sat as I walked by. I didn’t see any of the other teach- ers in the department, either.
Maybe it was the fear, but I felt like I had one of my best classes since I’d started teaching here. And after, I raced home to look at the devices Slava had brought me. When he first brought them, I’d put them in the back of the freestanding wardrobe, behind some
running shoes I’d packed and never worn, because no one jogged here.
The devices sat silent in the basket. They really did look like pysanka, the carved eggs babushkas sold at the open markets. I lifted one of them, and it was light in my hand, with textured grooves and wedge shapes incised in the surface. Slava had done something for the egg to give up a USB connector, but I couldn’t figure it out, so I put it back. It wasn’t for me, anyhow. I had a US passport, and as long as Slava was guiding me, no doors in this city were closed.
The wardrobe seemed unsafe, though, obvious. I may as well have hidden them under my bed. My cleaning lady would find them in either place the next time
she came. There was a small door below the pechka, though, in its wooden base. Slava had showed it to me the second time he visited, telling me that it’s where men hid porn. “Everyone knows it’s there,” he ex- plained, “so no one has to look for it.”
I opened the door beneath the heater; it was cooler than I expected, for being so close to the heater. I tipped the bowl to get it through the door and closed it again.
I walked back to the kitchen and tried to relax and plan my lessons. I was reviewing some Depression- era folk poetry and wishing I had some decent coffee when I heard Slava’s familiar knock on the door. I feared the worst, that he’d be held at gunpoint, but when I opened the door, he was by himself, holding a cardboard caddy that contained two paper cups of Starbuck’s Coffee.
“Oh my god,” I said before I could contain myself. “Get in here.” I ushered him into my apartment and looked at the stairs in both directions to be sure no one was watching us before I shut and locked the door behind me. Slava was already seated at the table, sipping
his coffee and reading my textbook when I sat down. “Where’d you get this?” I asked, taking my coffee out of the caddy. I thought maybe there was a Starbucks in the capital, but not in our little burg.
“Don’t get too excited,” Slava said. “It’s not real, it’s just a cup.” He took another satisfied sip from his. “A couple hundred sleeves of cups fell off a truck some- where and now they’re here.”
“It tastes better, somehow,” I mused as I sipped on mine. And then I remembered what I needed to talk to Slava about.
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