Marusja ([info]marusja) wrote in [info]rusam,
2006-03-26 10:56:00
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Американка в России

Американка съездила в Москву со своим русским бойфрендом и жалуется в NY Times Magazine ;)
via [info]tacente


March 26, 2006
Lives
To Russia with Notions
By CATHERINE TEXIER
Dmitri had warned me: "Are you sure you want to go to Moscow? We'll have to camp on the pullout couch. And my brother just moved into my mother's apartment with his girlfriend and her little girl." But I insisted. I had been dreaming of traveling with the man I love to his home city. Finally he relented. We would go for the new year.

On the bumper-to-bumper highway, everything is gray, the bloated sky, the wheezing trucks and cars, the blackened snow banks. I keep hoping to catch glimpses of the city but see only blocks and blocks of Soviet-style concrete tenements, until the car grinds to a halt. The cement hallways are rundown, the lights gloomy. Dmitri's mother, Tamara, is waiting for us, her face as beautiful as in the photos, in a print housedress. But when the quilted door closes behind us, my heart tightens. There are three rooms crammed with furniture that is pressed all along the walls — two bedrooms and a small living room, where we will sleep on the sofa bed. Slippers are handed out to us. Mine are flowered plastic. As soon as I put them on, I feel trapped. Without my boots I can't run away.

Soon Dmitri's younger brother, Kostya, arrives, with his girlfriend, Lena, and her 2-year-old. Kostya strips to a pair of tights, his naked stomach jiggling ahead of him. Lena wears a terry robe. We struggle to fit around the kitchen table, which is covered with delicious red caviar, smoked salmon, salads and numerous bottles of vodka. Tamara stands at the stove. Little Tanya sits on somebody's lap. The family room, where we sleep, is also Kostya and Lena's workroom. Turned back into a couch, the sofa bed serves again as a seat for the foldout table. In spite of the warm hospitality, I feel suffocated.

What did I expect? I'm not sure, but these forbidding blocks of gray concrete I see from the window, and the silhouettes dressed in long dark coats, carrying plastic bags, look too much like old Soviet-time newsreels. I'm filled with sadness and guilt. What a bourgeois materialist I am if the lack of aesthetics and space depresses me so fast. I've spent months in South America and in North Africa; I've lived in Spanish Harlem. But this feels different, a world for which I have no code, slightly off, like the long, strange, swiveling faucet in the bathroom, which services both sink and bathtub.

In the apartment, Dmitri wears a towel and looks as if the 18 years he has lived outside Russia have vanished. When we walk out, he tells me: "It's a good neighborhood. The air is fresh. You can go cross-country skiing in the park." He points to the birch wood along the tram tracks.

When we emerge on a Red Square white with snow, the candy-colored cupolas of Saint Basil rise like a fairy-tale vision. The sublime Kremlin churches, the gala evening at the opera house on New Year's Eve, the women in exquisite gowns and high-heels, the ballet at the Bolshoi: the sights and shows are dazzling. But at the end of the night, like Cinderella, we crawl back to our humble abode in the city's outskirts, a good hour and a half by subway and tram. We have money, so we can, if we want, go dancing in a club or stay the night in the Art Nouveau Hotel Metropole. Except we don't.

At my urging, we go to the family's dacha, a traditional vacation house. But after two and a half hours by tram, metro, train and minibus, all my fantasies of a romantic evening by the fireplace have collapsed. An atmosphere of poverty pervades the whole settlement. The dacha itself seems unfinished, with its wildly uneven staircase covered with plywood and its drab furniture, which in the States would have been tossed. Only the kitchen, with its 1940's cupboard, feels welcoming.

"Why didn't we rent a car?" I ask Dmitri, who drives all over Europe and the U.S. "Only foreigners do that," he says, adding, "Didn't you want to experience authentic Muscovite life?" My dashing Russian prince, who works for the United Nations, who speaks fluent English and French, so at ease with my friends and our "bourgeois" lifestyle, so gallant, so versed, as Russians are, in the art of dialectics, has trapped me in my Western contradictions. Did I want the authentic experience, or did I want the fantasy? Is that why he was hesitant to let me come? Did he worry that my sense of who he is would change?

In the plane going back, he tells me, "If the U.N. sent me to Moscow, I would live in the family's apartment." Is he testing me? "It would be cheaper, and I would be close to my mom." My heart turns to ice. "If I came to visit you in Moscow over the summer," I say, "I wouldn't stay there, I couldn't. You'd have to rent an apartment." In the silence that follows, I distinctly feel the iron curtain close again.

Catherine Texier is the author, most recently, of the novel "Victorine." She is at work on a new novel.

Сopyright 2006 The New York Times Company

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[info]cema

March 26 2006, 19:34:34 UTC 6 years ago

She gave him a wrong answer.

[info]marusja

March 26 2006, 21:00:45 UTC 6 years ago

What do you mean? :)

[info]vernik

6 years ago

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[info]ars_longa

March 26 2006, 19:48:42 UTC 6 years ago

Well, I totally understand her and I lived here in the US for a little more than 5 years. When I went back to Kiev last summer I went bonkers from the lack of space and other little annoyances - and Kiev is much better than Moscow and I'm a native.

I think she was pretty restrained in her complaints, actually.

[info]kniazhna

March 26 2006, 19:51:48 UTC 6 years ago

She knew what she was going for. She asked for it.

[info]ars_longa

6 years ago

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[info]kysaya_ch

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[info]21345

March 26 2006, 19:59:32 UTC 6 years ago

Прикольно, мои знакомые из Москоу недавно сюда приезжали - по вазвращению домой примерно тоже рассказывали о штатах :)

[info]marusja

March 26 2006, 21:03:11 UTC 6 years ago

Их что, тоже заставляли домашние шлёпанцы надевать? :)
Но на самом деле вот это как раз и смешно - что, даже просто попав в чужую семью, человек может набрать половину этих поводов поныть. Другая страна тут даже ни при чём.

[info]21345

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[info]ratya

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[info]kysaya_ch

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[info]ratya

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[info]marusja

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[info]yelya

March 26 2006, 20:40:19 UTC 6 years ago

Well, all I can say is the following: apparently, she didn't live in the Spanish Harlem long enough. Nothing is more depressing then the crammed appartments in the old houses in New York.

[info]marusja

March 26 2006, 21:03:53 UTC 6 years ago

That's my point.
She didn't need to leave States to write this.

[info]yelya

6 years ago

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[info]l_o

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[info]saul_paradise

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[info]yelya

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[info]yelya

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[info]_fro_

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[info]yelya

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[info]_fro_

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[info]yelya

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[info]geish_a

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[info]_fro_

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[info]ashegve

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[info]rizhiy_lelik

March 26 2006, 20:49:21 UTC 6 years ago

По личному опыту могу сказать, что подобная поездка отрезвляет даже коренных Москвичей после длительного отсутсвия, а уж для американки, которая, явно, понятия не имела о реальном состоянии дел и говорить нечего. Да, краски сгущены немного с перепугу, но ничего неожиданного в таком восприятии, для меня лично, нет.

[info]anton_krylov

March 26 2006, 22:42:14 UTC 6 years ago

+1

Согласен. Только у меня не возникло ощущения, что она сгустила краски. Добавлю, что она очень хорошо излогает. Этого и следует ожидать от Таймс, но всё равно приятно.

[info]zvuv

March 26 2006, 21:18:58 UTC 6 years ago

i don't know... i have a lot of American friends, and i'm sure their reaction wouldn't be as negative.

[info]marusja

March 27 2006, 01:39:00 UTC 6 years ago

Мне тоже кажется, что не все бы так отреагировали.

[info]zvuv

6 years ago

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[info]marusja

6 years ago

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[info]zvuv

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[info]marusja

6 years ago

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[info]ta13ka

March 26 2006, 21:54:20 UTC 6 years ago

Бедный хлопчик!
Ах, можно подумать, барышня не в курсе, что мебель в Штатах с мусорок подбирают и используют по назанчению.

Спасибо за ссылку, пойду перешлю приятелю в ООН. Пусть порадуется :)

[info]marusja

March 27 2006, 01:39:38 UTC 6 years ago

А вдруг это про него?! :)

[info]ta13ka

6 years ago

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[info]marusja

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[info]ex_co_lum_bu730

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[info]ta13ka

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[info]ex_co_lum_bu730

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[info]ta13ka

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[info]goldenapple82

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[info]slonarch

March 26 2006, 22:03:23 UTC 6 years ago

Ничего не имею против избалованных дамочек, если они отдельно от меня, но вот что её сморщенный носик делает в Times?

[info]marusja

March 27 2006, 01:40:43 UTC 6 years ago

Это рубрика Lives в NY Times Magazine, на последней страничке, там печатают всякие истории из жизни.

[info]slonarch

6 years ago

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[info]irinaklay

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[info]marusja

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[info]monadahl

March 26 2006, 22:37:12 UTC 6 years ago

меня больше всего развеселили бурные эмоции, вызванные тапочками. сразу вам и 'trapped', и 'can't run away'

[info]_arizonadream_

March 26 2006, 22:48:43 UTC 6 years ago

да-да, как будто ботинки при этом отобрали и в сундук на замок заперли :)

[info]monadahl

6 years ago

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Anonymous

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[info]_fro_

March 26 2006, 22:51:26 UTC 6 years ago

Коза дурная. :)

[info]tvar_v_kruge

March 26 2006, 23:11:48 UTC 6 years ago

Run, Dima, run! :)))))))

[info]_fro_

6 years ago

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Anonymous

March 26 2006, 23:12:16 UTC 6 years ago

Catherine got an authentic experience, which is priceless, but also turned out to be a bit more than what she bargained for.

However, I feel that in the last conversation her husband took a bad stand. The answer should have reasonably be "Yes, we can do that".

[info]_fro_

March 26 2006, 23:13:46 UTC 6 years ago

He's not her husband. :)

[info]janya

6 years ago

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[info]_arizonadream_

March 26 2006, 23:30:55 UTC 6 years ago

да простят меня girls_only, но мне это очень напомнило, как одну девушку повергло в шок, как она вечером (в районе 9 - 10 вечера) приехала навещать семью girlfriend ее брата, когда та самая гёрлфренд только-только вернулась из роддома. А эту девушку бабушка этой гёрлфренд встретила в махровом халате. Тоже был культурный шок :)

мое резюме: бывают не очень умные девушки, готовые повергуться в шок от всего, что не было принято в их конкретной семье

[info]_fro_

March 26 2006, 23:32:22 UTC 6 years ago

Она далеко не девушка. У нее это, скорее, климактерические явления, нежели юношеская впечатлительность. :)

[info]_arizonadream_

6 years ago

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[info]_fro_

6 years ago

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[info]tanyasrc

March 26 2006, 23:41:40 UTC 6 years ago

"Slippers are handed out to us. Mine are flowered plastic. As soon as I put them on, I feel trapped. Without my boots I can't run away."

Вот и нечего таким шизам в Россию соваться =)
Вообще действительно Америка местами гораздо серее, грязнее и депрессивнее, чем Москва в принципе может быть.

[info]sashkina

March 26 2006, 23:55:21 UTC 6 years ago

sounds like the spoiled bitch was dumped by the "Russian prince" and is a bit sore.

[info]marusja

March 27 2006, 01:30:59 UTC 6 years ago

А что, похоже, так и было :)

[info]sashkina

6 years ago

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[info]ivanytch

6 years ago

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[info]sashkina

6 years ago

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[info]vtochku

March 27 2006, 00:03:05 UTC 6 years ago

Moscow sucks in winter. No question about it.

[info]marusja

March 27 2006, 01:30:41 UTC 6 years ago

Кому как. Мне нравится.

[info]vtochku

6 years ago

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[info]marusja

6 years ago

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[info]makay855

6 years ago

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[info]amgirl

6 years ago

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[info]valikv

6 years ago

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[info]amgirl

6 years ago

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[info]valikv

6 years ago

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[info]amgirl

6 years ago

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[info]vtochku

6 years ago

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[info]babulka

6 years ago

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[info]marusja

6 years ago

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[info]saul_paradise

March 27 2006, 00:12:26 UTC 6 years ago

Тетка по-моему не очень вредная, но не слишком умная:) Нарисовала себе в голове бог знает что, а потом впала в шок, от того, что эти фантазии оказались далеки от настоящей жизни. Кроме того, она по-моему так для себя и не решила, что расстроило ее больше: Российская жизнь или то, что ее бойфренд оказался не тем, каким она его себе выдумала:)

[info]amgirl

March 27 2006, 02:37:11 UTC 6 years ago

+1

[info]lmgirl

March 27 2006, 01:15:35 UTC 6 years ago

А по-моему чувак дебил и козел в одном флаконе. При том, что есть деньги на отель, заставлять тетку ночевать на диванчике у общего сортира - это либо желание от нее избавиться (странный способ, конечно), либо тупость непроходимая.

[info]marusja

March 27 2006, 01:30:21 UTC 6 years ago

Ну, там была явная проблема с личным пространством :)
Но он ехал к своей семье и, наверное, ему не хотелось ночевать в гостинице.

[info]drunk_cherry

6 years ago

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[info]yelya

6 years ago

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[info]ah4uk

March 27 2006, 01:37:11 UTC 6 years ago

просто дура! ...и сразу видно, что она выходец именно из Spanish Harlem-а:)

[info]ivanytch

March 27 2006, 02:16:02 UTC 6 years ago

с комментариев уссаццо можно!

[info]valikv

March 27 2006, 03:36:13 UTC 6 years ago

уже

Anonymous

March 27 2006, 02:40:46 UTC 6 years ago

Парня видать девушка "достала", вот он и решил показать ей "по чем фунт лиха", потому и потащил ее на дачу своим ходом, и поселил в этой квартирке с мамой. Так он, вероятно, выплеснул на нее свое раздражение.

[info]marusja

March 27 2006, 02:48:20 UTC 6 years ago

Да, не проявил товарищ понимания, это факт :)

[info]pale_fire

6 years ago

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[info]yelya

6 years ago

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[info]pale_fire

6 years ago

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[info]marusja

6 years ago

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[info]crez73

March 27 2006, 02:59:52 UTC 6 years ago

Дура, она и в Америке дура.

[info]enot

March 27 2006, 04:32:38 UTC 6 years ago

Спасибо! Это очень смешная тетенька! Похоже, Dmitri уже получил от их отношений все, что мог, и это был изящный ход для их прекращения - "If the U.N. sent me to Moscow, I would live in the family's apartment...It would be cheaper, and I would be close to my mom."

[info]pale_fire

March 27 2006, 05:53:51 UTC 6 years ago

А может у него юмор такой черный? А дальше они выпили шампанского и поехали жить в Париж?:)

[info]marusja

6 years ago

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[info]darklazy

March 27 2006, 05:29:05 UTC 6 years ago

аффтар выпей йаду

[info]azov

March 27 2006, 06:03:30 UTC 6 years ago

по-моему, парень хотел просто съездить погостить домой, а подруга увязалась как банный лист, мол хочу с тобой. Парень (очевидно, зная подругу) сразу понял что идея не блестящая, но решительно отказать не сумел.

[info]marusja

March 28 2006, 05:37:36 UTC 6 years ago

И за это получил свои вторые сутки славы уже :)

[info]kiwiboris

6 years ago

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[info]_purple_monkey_

March 27 2006, 06:50:30 UTC 6 years ago

Вообще-то я не понимаю, почему они не могли снять квартиру, если там и так полно народу. Мы не американцы, но в такой ситуации бы точно сняли.
А так, дама наверное в трейлер парке не бывала.

[info]marusja

March 27 2006, 06:57:29 UTC 6 years ago

Но разговор же был чисто теоретический - если бы, да кабы... :) Или ты про визит в целом?

[info]_purple_monkey_

6 years ago

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[info]marusja

6 years ago

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