Sunday, September 28, 2008
This morning it took forever to simply get downstairs and out the door, tension building all the while, and then we did not make it more than two blocks before EB, squirming on A's shoulders, unwittingly kicked him in the face with her boot, setting off a chain reaction of indignant shouting (A, EB, Lula) which I capped off with a finale of shrieks and curses. We were the expat family who had lost their minds, in hysterics on the sidewalk. Our plan to go to Gorbushka collapsed, we all stomped home, and ended up back in the kitchen stewing, waiting for the fight that did, in short order, come. We touched bottom today, I think, and it has helped us remember priorities, but it's been exhausting. So by the time we got to strolling down Old Arbat Street this afternoon, and reached the block where the shivering animals (puppies, kittens, guinea pigs, rabbits) are waiting to be sold to tourists, and saw the grim woman sitting on a short stool next to a plastic basket of cats (nearby, black marker on an old piece of a cardboard box offered passersby the chance to take a photo, 20 rubles), and I reached down to touch one, and the woman seized my wrist and shoved my arm away without speaking (you have to pay to touch, I guess), I did not cry. A few yards further down, when I said to a man who was also exposing a sickly litter of kittens to the raw wind just to make a buck, "It's pretty cold, no?" And he replied, after saying "Meow!" in a catfight sort of way, "Oh, you're making me cry." At which point I did begin to cry, but only after I walked away. And A said, pushing the stroller recklessly fast to keep up, "What is it? Is it the all the cute little animals?" -- sounding sarcastic even if he did not mean to be. And as usual I am wondering why I am so sure, in this category of experience, unlike most others, that the problem is NOT me, and as usual I feel that eventually this kind of entertainment will be understood as barbaric, even here, even in Russia. So many have to suffer before we arrive there, though.
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I might also mention that EB, who's been triumphant lately in potty training, wet her pants no fewer than FOUR times this afternoon, once in a puddle in a grocery store, no doubt in response to the morning upheaval.
just for the record: i gave C. some space when she was looking at the animals for sale, and completely missed the episode with the woman shoving her. Had C. told me about it right there and then, instead of me reading about it on her blog (whoever is in charge of the communications department in our marriage is great, aren't they), I would have run straight to the old baba and shover her right back. I may not think of animals' plights quite in holocaust terms, but I do have a pretty straight policy: you shove my wife, I shove you right back.
I recall walking down the Arbat, lo these many years ago, and seeing few live animals, but all manner of tchotchkes, Russian military gear, countless bits of Lenin swag. (This was, for the record, less than 12 months before the дерьмо hit the вентилятор.)
There were always two prices then: one in rubles, and one in dollars, the preferred hard currency. Of course, conducting business in anything but the ruble was illegal and immediately transmogrified you from tourist to imperialist criminal. I remember buying a pencil sketch with the illegal greenbacks from an old baba who disappeared the money into her blouse as fast as you can blink.
I figure the probability is at least even that it's the same old pirate now, only she's moved from vaguely cheesy folk art to live animals.
What a bitch. Sorry. I want to punch her from clear across the pond.
Listen: DO NOT anthropomorphize. You know this. You know not to do that. You've shivered in the cold wind, too, and it sucked and you adapted. Yep, it's a bad life, and for some of them it's worse than others, but do not underestimate the warmth of a fur coat on a chilly day or the stray's ability to find what it needs. Let your heart break a little, but good God do not OVERestimate a kitten's ability to feel the sadness you feel. True?
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