"What would you do if you woke up and there was a beautiful black woman sitting on your face?"

The following Wednesday, the same two bodybuilder students (see previous post) come back for their afternoon class.
"What did you guys do on the weekend?"
"Banya."
"Great. Tell me about it."
"We went to banya, we suggest to you good banya, beautiful women there."
"What do women have to do with the banya? Do you have sex in the banya?"
"Yes."
"But your heart- it could explode, you could die." I can never tell when anyone here is trying to fuck with my head.
"We are alive! Don't worry, you don't need to get girls, you just need..." Igor pulls out his palm pilot and starts typing... "Steam!"
"Right. What is nice about the banya?"
"Steam- good for skin. You steam and then you jump in cold pool. Then you steam again. You drink vodka. We will suggest good banya to you, we find address. You can to join us next time."
"Is it expensive?"
"800 rubles. 200 rubles for- venniki." He punches on his palm pilot again. "Switch. Pine switch, birch switch, oak switch," he continues, tapping away.
"What are they for?"
"You are in steam room, you lay and hit to you the back with... switches. Then you jump into cold pool."
"OK- we have some grammar to talk about today. Do you guys know the conditional?"
"Yes, yes, we talked about this in school. We want to know more."
I walk to the board. "OK, you know the conditional is used to talk about imaginary situations, not real situations." To keep them focused on grammar, I writing a boring sentence on the whiteboard: What would you do if you had a million dollars? " So- guys- let's divide the sentence in two. The first part ends at if, the second part starts after if. Vladimir- in the first part of the sentence, which verb tense do you see?"
He looks attentively- his English is a half-step higher than Igor's- and says, "Conditional."
"Right. Conditional means,  would + infinitive." It's an oversimplification, but a useful one. "Now, which verb tense is in the second part of the sentence- Igor?"
"Past simple."
"Great. Which part of the sentence is about cause, and which is about effect- Vladimir?"
"First part- cause. Second part- result."
"Good. Igor- can you do this?" I erase first part of the sentence and rewrite it at the end, resulting in - If you had a million dollars what would you do-.
"Yes."
"Good. Now- what would you do if the school replaced me with a black teacher?"
"If he is good teacher..."
"Please use the conditional."
"If he were a good teacher, we would accept him!" Igor tells me. There statements from the previous class felt parroted and maybe insincere. I am relieved.
"What would you do if you were blind," -I let Igor look up 'blind' on his palm pilot- "and discovered that your girlfriend of two years was black?"
"I would know!"
I feel my heart sink a little. "How?" I ask, anticipating a comment about facial structure.
"The smell!"
"What?"
"The smell!"
"Guys, I live in a country where a good proportion of the people are black. If there were a smell, I would know about it, or have heard something about at least. There is no smell. Do you ever go out and eat curry?"
"Yes, we love curry!"
"How do you smell the next day?"
"Terrible!" they burst out laughing.
"So- when Indians eat curry, do they smell, or does the garlic running down their armpits smell?"
"Garlic!"
"If a black person smells, do you think it is the person, or maybe something they're eating? And seriously, I would have heard something about this smell if it were true."
They seem surprised.
I can't really blame these guys- they are not stupid, but not drawn to anything intellectual, either, and probably are just repeating the few things they have heard about a topic they have nothing to do with. This discussion is all quanta and if a black guy walked into the room right now with some beer they would just drink with him like anyone else. This is the unsatisfying part of being an English teacher- we are action only to the extent that speech is an action.
I need to get the conversation going again. My boss is a serious rat, and I'm not sure if she is going to pay me next month. I can say whatever I want.
"Guys- what would you do if you woke up and there was a beautiful black woman sitting on your face?"
"I never sleep with black woman!"
"Igor- please remember- this is an imaginary situation. It's the conditional. Now please answer- Vladimir. What would you do?"
They break up laughing, and I spend the rest of class in a paid discussion about various sexual adventures.
I love this job.

"The black man can run"

My personality came about in a place where everything exciting was in my mind, which is why I'm a permanent rube who notices everything, no matter how much is going on. Among the ambient information in a city like Moscow, I till over especially print.
Early in my sojourn a fashionable young man with gelled hedgehog hair and aviator glasses tuned my mind to fascism by walking past in an anational camo tanktop with "Waffen SS Sports Club" written on it in Fraktur. All across the city, I started to read similar thoughts- the most frequent one smattered mens' and womens' chests with "Winners are not Judged... Winners are not Judged.... Winners are not Judged" in fonts different on every shirt I saw, which proved that this was a cultural exclamation shared by more than one factory owner.
I prolonged the conversation through my students, who I used as a survey group.
I went to my students at an international cosmetics company and asked them what they thought. Most of them were pretty cultivated people, and the first group of students, most of them over 30, was able to discuss immigrant labor as an accountancy question, but because of foreign business trips and French colleagues these Russians were diluted. One of them relieved me by exclaiming, "I do not understand this!" when I probed his group about the hate of blacks I often encountered.
Igor and Vladimir were bodybuilder telephone-salesmen in their early 30's who were treated to my classes by their benevolent boss. They didn't have complexes about suggesting their favorite whores to me, so I figured they would speak freely with me about my topic of interest, which they brought up themselves.
"Do you think black man can be president?" The 2008 election was still two years ahead and it seemed to me that McCain was most likely to win.
"I don't see why not."
"He is nigger. Can he get votes?" In Russian, the n-word is just another word, but I still wasn't sure if they wanted to ask if it a black man could win, or if he should win.
"You know that is a very hard word, don't you?"
"Can he get votes?" The way they don't even perceive my objection says a lot.
"Sure, why not?"
"White people vote black people?"
"Sure, if the black guy acts more or less white."
"Black people- it's people?" I want to correct him, but feel strange writing the correct version on the board.
"Yes, they are."
"People like us?"
"Who is us?"
"Why black people have no money? Why Africa has no money?"
My job is not to talk to my students, but rather to make them talk, but in this situation I feel obliged to make an exception, and go into a forty-minute explanation of the geographical and climatic situation that has led to a poor Africa. My explanation (actually Jared Diamond's) deepens- Africa is full of tropical illnesses and below the Sahara has no native draft animals, a key factor which prevented them from building more complex civilizations; Europeans had guns; they furrow their brows and begin to blink less- they must be listening closely. I am changing their minds. When I finish, class time is nearly over, but we continue because the conversation is so interesting for them, and I correct the grammar mistakes they've made in the course of the class. Finally they leave, and tell me with a laugh as they walk out, "We have expression in Russia." Even before they've spoken, I understand that my work has been in vain. "The black man can run, but the white man can shoot."
I have never like my own culture or any others, but the belief that other people are born less human than us is dangerous, and since I'm getting paid 20 dollars an hour anyway, I decide to use the time to enrich them, too.

A Russian Stranger's Generosity

That night

I have a full day of classes which finishes at 830, then a leisurely dinner at Il Patio. I wonder what will happen when I get home- will I be able to sleep? Will there be an angry discussion? I suppose he’ll just act like nothing happened, he’s too much a coward to face his problems.

When at 11pm I arrive at the ground floor of our building, it occurs to me that he may just not let me in. I ring the bell and there is no answer. I ring again. No answer. I take out my cellphone, which only has a few rubles on it, and call him. No answer. It is freezing cold outside and snow is falling, it’s maybe minus 30 Celsius. This is the suburbs- all the stores where I could load my phone are empty. The pizza joint closed a half hour ago. Virtually everyone is already home from work, so the chance of somebody coming or going and opening the door is low. Wait- the door opens! I run in and go up to our floor in the elevator. The hallway is warmer, maybe 14 degrees Celsius, and I enjoy the warmth, although the idea of spending the night on the floor is daunting- there are also harsh neon lights glowing overhead. I knock on our door, then begin pounding. I can hear music playing there behind the doors, and call him again. He goes to bed at midnight. Did he just go to sleep earlier? I phone again while alternately pounding on the door and ringing the doorbell. No answer. What to do? I have four rubles on my phone, and a fair amount of cash in my wallet.

I go to the end of the hallway where the reception is better and text Julia. She immediately calls back and I explain the situation. She says her cousin Maxim, who I have never heard of, lives thirty kilometers away and that he can come help. Ten minutes later she calls back and says he will be on the way as soon as I send my address. I remember it, and she says he should be here in an hour or so. I wait for the first forty minutes inside, and then go outside- it could be extremely difficult for Maxim to find the right address in the driving snow. I immediately realize this is a mistake when the bitter cold of the pavement goes right through the soles of my shoes and my legs start to freeze. A car drives past and stops for me, but it’s just a taxi; this happens four times and two entire hours of painful cold before Maxim arrives. It is burning hot in the car. He looks a little tired, but completely calm, and I begin to thank him profusely. We make a loop onto a highway, then onto a paved but unlit forest road that leads to a region of one and two-story wooden and brick houses. After about forty minutes, we are home- at a two-story wooden boarding home with sizeable gaps between the panels. We enter, go up some creaky stairs to the second floor and enter his family’s apartment. It’s dark, but the first thing I notice is that his family had brought their entire library of classic Russian literature up from the Caucasus, which they had fled several months earlier to get away from the possibility of another war there and make a new life in Moscow as immigrants in their own country. I hear a quiet voice from the corner- it’s Maxim’s 90-year old grandmother, who is laying in bed in the corner. She tells me to come to her, and when I go to her bed, she says she will be my grandmother tonight, sits up in bed and gives me big hug. I don’t have my toothbrush with me so they give me some chewing gum and I crash on the sofa for three hours. Maxim and I get up to find his mother already preparing tea for us. She acts like they have done nothing for me and just quietly waves good bye when we leave together.

I have a full day of classes, and don’t know where I’ll sleep tonight. Throughout the day I call Charlemagne, but his phone has been turned off, so I call the director of our school, who offers to have my things moved by a hired car from his apartment, but until Charlemagne picks up the phone or drops by the school, no one can make anything happen. All my books are there, along with a good part of my clothing. I have given enough lessons that I have whole chapters of material memorized, but what worries me is the clothes. What am I going to do, and what will I wear? Christian is out of Moscow. Teabag is MIA in Kursk with his wife and kid. This leaves Andrei and Julia. Again. They agree, and Andrei tells me I can even borrow some of his clothes. They are good people, and I am lucky to have them as friends. I wish I could pay them back somehow.