Carolyn Wells Kraus
RED ELEPHANTS
One mid-August I was sitting on a cement seawa ll ove r–
looking the beach of Sochi , a Soviet reso rt town on the Black Sea
where I had come for a break in my la nguage studies in Moscow .
The beach was a pa tchwo rk of bla nkets a nd towels, di splay ing fa t
Russ ian bureaucra ts on their two-week vacations, soaking like lugs
in the hazy sun .
But the cla rity of thi s sce ne mi ght be deceiving. I have been
livin g among Ru ss ians fo r months now , tryin g to blend in , keeping
my Lev is and ba llpoint pens back a t my hotel. Yet, in spite of my
growing fac ility with their la nguage, I am not convinced tha t I
understand anything about them . Whi ch is why I stay. People
appear a nd di sappea r without expla na tion , nothing in the hop
windows is fo r sale, no one is behind the persistent ringing of my
telephone. The Intouri st Bureau makes elabora te prepa ra ti ons for
guides to accompany me eve rywhere, but these guides ra rely
appear , a nd then onl y to va ni sh without a word . Either by des ign or
by mi stake, I am left a lone. Windows a re a lways mys teri ously
breakin g a nd las t ni ght as I walked through an a ll ey to hea r the
famili a r sha ttering of glass, I ducked to avoid a fl ying dead cat.
lust
as I am surrende ring
to
pa ra noia, I suspec t tha t there is no
des ign a t a ll , tha t thi s i simpl y an ea rthy chaos, like a Breughel
pa inting, wi th the same lumpy peasants swillin g down vodka with
black bread stu ck in the ir noses (" It keeps you from pass ing out"),
then grunting through steamy sex in the nex t hotel room .
A month ago I hitchhiked south into "off limits" U zbek villages
near T as hkent where the inhabitants indul ged me like a pe t, howled
at my mi sunderstandings ("Are you ma rried ?" "With pleasure, thank
you .") But whenever I reached fo r my camera, they scurried to make
household repa irs a nd changed from colo rful peasant prints to their
bes t fac tory-made drab . When [ returned to my touri st approved
hotel in T as hkent , no one seemed to know I had been gone,
although as I walked th rough the ha ll
to
my room , someone came
running out of it , di sappea ring down a back sta irway. La ter I was
not sure I had see n thi s.
