Excerpt from Book:
The certified interpreter of dreams and
afflictions draws a green stick figure with a
sad stub of a crayon. “This is you,” he explains
to his granddaughter. The interpreter draws a
smaller stick figure next, with an equally
diminutive purple crayon. “That’s your
kukla.
Kukla
is a doll in Russian.”
The girl repeats
kukla
obediently. She points with her finger. “Green
hair. Purple hair. Very pretty.” She claps.
The stick hair is not quite pretty, but the
interpreter never refuses a compliment from any
quarters. “Do you want me to draw your sister?”
“No, no, no. Only me.”
“How old are you?”
“Two.”
“How old is your sister?”
“One.”
“But aren’t you twins?”
“Yeap. Twins.”
The interpreter is patient. That’s a part of
both of his jobs descriptions. He draws another
green stick figure, identical to the first. They
are
identical twins, so he’s not cheating.
Then he draws a much bigger figure, in
black. The figure is mostly bald but has a
luxuriant mustache. “This is
Deda.
Grandfather.”
He draws a horizontal line attached to the
figure. “That’s
Deda’s
gun. To protect you.”
The twin’s mother, the interpreter’s daughter,
is nursing the other twin in the bedroom
upstairs.
The interpreter and his wife are
babysitters, maids, cooks, laundry attendants,
and chauffeurs at his daughter’s household. They
spend five days and nights a week here and go
home to Boston for the weekends.
The interpreter’s daughter comes back into the
room, and the interpreter goes upstairs to his
office, to his paying job. While his wife spends
100% of her time helping with the grandkids, he
spends only 50% of his. He negotiated that much.
His daughter and her husband are generous enough
to give him an office in their house to use over
the weekdays. A powerful nor’easter paints the
outdoors surreal white. The interpreter’s happy
he need not drive. He’s happy the house still
has power though the trees keep losing their
limbs to the wind and heavy snow, and the wires
could be next. It’s hard to operate a computer
with no juice.
He puts on his headset and smiles into the
camera. They trained him how to smile. Sincere
and business-like at the same time. His bosses
are strict and check on him all the time.
Remotely, of course.
“Hi. My ID number is 555-123456. I’m your
Russian video interpreter.”
He wears a business shirt and sweatpants. Since
he’s seated at his desk, they only see his top
half.
A few hours after the workday, in bed, he has
one of his usual nightmares. He’s a doctor
talking to a patient in her hospital bed.
“Do you know that they found you unconscious on
the floor?”
The patient glares at him. “Of course, they
found me unconscious on the floor. That’s
because I was unconscious on the floor… Wait a
minute… I know you. You’re not really a doctor.
You’re an imposter…. I saw you in my nightmares.
You’re the interpreter of dreams….”
In the morning, after sitting with the kids for
a couple of hours, the interpreter goes back to
work. Some of his patients are recent immigrants
and haven’t learned English yet. Some are
old-timers who have been in this country for
ten, twenty years or more. Almost as long as the
interpreter himself. They will never learn
English.
The doctor tells him the patients’ names and the
interpreter greets them in Russian.
Now, an old female patient is clapping in
delight. “The man on the TV knows my name!”
She’s thin as a Popsicle stick. Her eyes
are as dull as an old butter knife. Her hair is
disheveled. Not pretty.
The interpreter is super patient. That’s a part
of one of his job descriptions, though the word
‘super’ is only implied. He doesn’t want to get
fired. At his age, he won’t find another job. He
interprets the woman’s words dutifully but only
in English: “The man on the TV knows my name!”
The
doctor doesn’t laugh. Though young, she looks
tired. She might have little kids at home.
Her
babysitter draws stick figures for them.
Her
babysitter’s thoughts are somewhere else. It’s
only a paying job for
her.
On Friday, on his way home to Boston, the
interpreter stops at a single-story antique
store on Route 9 East, identical to every other
antique store along the road. His wife is
already home now. She took a train.
He’s never visited an antique store before. The
interpreter has recently paid over two thousand
bucks for removing two broken air conditioners
and isn’t in the mood for spending more. He’s
never been interested not just in antique stores
but in any antiques. Period. What’s the point in
buying a previously owned thing and paying more
than the new one cost?
But this store grabs his attention. The
gridlocked traffic is slow, so he notices that
there is a bust of Vladimir Lenin displayed on a
stand next to the door. He drives in the right
lane, so it’s easy to stop. The interpreter
touches the bust with his middle finger. It
doesn’t look or feel like marble. Something
cheap. Most probably terracotta. He can’t find
the price sticker, so he goes inside to inquire.
Lenin wasn’t as bad as Stalin, who sent his
grandparents to Siberia. A Russian historian Roy
Medvedev estimated the number of victims of
Stalin’s regime at 40 million people. In the
interpreter’s family, Stalin stands one step
below Hitler on the hate scale. Lenin sits
several steps below, but the interpreter is
curious.
Once inside, the interpreter changes his mind
about asking the bust price or otherwise
bothering the saleswoman. What would he do with
the bust? Break it? Spit on it? Threw stones at
it? No. Let someone else have it.
In the corner of the room, there is an
emperor-sized four-poster bed, piled high with
quilts and pillows of all colors of the rainbow.
They all look appealing, but one of them,
square, pitch-black, with flaming-red
needlepoint depicting the Russian Imperial
two-headed eagle, speaks to his heart. It looks
dreamy as all pillows should, but most don’t. He
doesn’t need it. Neither his daughters nor his
wife needs it. As for the twins, their interests
are unpredictable at their age.
He won’t sleep on it, he decides, but use it as
objet d’art; in the room inaccessible to his
granddaughters, of course, or they would take it
apart before he blinks.
The pillow is only $49.99 plus tax. A bargain in
the world of antiques, as far as he knows. He
pays cash.
“Why do we need it?” his wife asks when he shows
her the pillow.
A few years ago, when they had come to Boston
from the semi-rural area of Upstate New York,
they traded their four-bedroom house in the best
part of town for the two-bedroom condo less than
half as expansive but twice as expensive. They
wanted to be closer to their married daughters
who were by now old Bostonians.
The condo is situated in a converted
turn-of-the-twentieth-century mansion, currently
subdivided into seven properties, each with a
tiny parking spot, a luxury in overcrowded
Boston. Their condo takes up a section of two
floors at the end of the building, with the
neighbors behind the thin wall and above the
ceiling. The floors are connected by a black
ironwork spiral staircase that took some time to
get used to but that looks vaguely castle-like.
The interpreter loves to stop inside the
staircase after a few steps up, when he can see
nothing but the white walls, and hear nothing
but his own breath, and to imagine himself a
baron or a count rushing toward the waiting
countess on a bed covered by silk sheets, in a
floor-length silk dress, a countess whose face
is covered by a veil but whose eyes shine
through like two LED candles.
Once he talked about the stairs to one of the
patients he was interpreting for. They were
waiting for the doctor who had told them he
would
be back in a minute.
About ten minutes into the small talk, the
patient, a woman a few years older than the
interpreter, said: “You speak Russian like a TV
anchor.”
The interpreter was compelled to return the
favor somehow. He said the first thing that came
to mind. He learned a long time ago that this
was the best way to be social.
“The spiral staircase makes my house look
like a castle in the skies.”
The woman laughed. “And I live in section 8, a
subsidized apartment. It’s like the eighth
heaven. Too good to be true, but still nothing
like the regular seven heavens.”
Back Upstate, the interpreter and his wife used
to be surrounded by the owner-occupied houses
and had lawyers and doctors for neighbors. Now,
the neighbors are primarily renters, mostly
students. Unlike lawyers and doctors, they still
have
the strength to
party.
“Why do we need it?” his wife asks when he shows
her the newly acquired pillow.
“Why do
we need anything besides the basics?”
“Don’t you philosophize with me.” She looks
tired. Too many hours, days, and nights without
sleep watching the twins.
“I’m not philosophizing. I’m trying to answer
your question. It’s not the question of needs
but wants.”
“Why would you want something that has no
value?”
“It does have value. $49.99 plus tax. A bargain
in the world of antiques.”
She closes her eyes. “OK. It’s your money.”
“It’s our money.”
The interpreter takes a pic of the pillow and
posts it on Facebook and Twitter. He realizes
that bragging about his purchases is childish,
but he can’t help it. The pic was badly lit and
ill-composed, but he got two “likes” on each
platform.
He decides that the shooting angle is wrong.
Rearranging the pillow, he finds a lump inside.
He palpates it carefully. It feels like a box.
He takes a pocketknife, cuts the stitches, and
pulls out a small wooden jewelry box. It’s
locked, but he Googles how-to, and picks the
lock with two paper clips. It’s a simple lock
anyway.
Inside the box, he discovers seven of the
largest pearls he has ever seen. Deep
yellowish-orange pearls, reflect his
open-mouthed face.
He takes a ruler and measures them. 13
millimeters each. Probably would cost a fortune
if they are natural. But who would hide faux
jewelry in a pillow? From the kids? From the
spouse? From the IRS?
$49.99 plus tax, huh. A bargain in the world of
antiques.
He tells no one about the pearls, not even his
wife, not his daughters, not his grandkids.
His wife would probably ask him to find the
rightful owner, his daughters would advise to
sell them quietly and put the money in the
trust, and the toddlers would fight among
themselves how to divide the pearls between
their dolls. The interpreter puts the jewels
back, hides the box inside the pillow again, and
sews the pillow back as carefully as he can.
A couple of weeks later, the doorbell rings at
his condo. There is an older man and a younger
woman on the threshold. The man, stooped and
sour-faced, looks hardly taller than his
companion.
But the interpreter’s eyes are caught by the
woman. Her skin is the color of fresh milk with
a good measure of blood. A diamond stud pierces
her left ear. Her gaze probes the inner layers
of the interpreter’s brain.
She oozes the charisma of a Hollywood
starlet, a Twitter-savvy politician, or a real
estate saleswoman of the month. Some could call
it charisma. Russians call it
simpatichnaya.
Behind the couple, in the next yard, half-fenced
and wooded, a beautiful bluebird is making an
indecent proposal to his mate on a limb. A
flock of wild turkeys, including a gangly
teenager, is watching. As all real Bostonians
know all too well, wild turkeys and geese are
common in this part of Boston, to the detriment
of traffic, and the detriment of the street
cleaners dealing with the bloody remains.
Whether or not the human couple is surprised by
the wildlife of a metropolis, the interpreter
will never find out.
The woman, who stands in front of the man,
flashes a wide smile, showing off her shiny,
sharp, exceedingly white teeth, extends her
hand, and says
dobry
den’. You don’t need to be a certified
medical interpreter who works with Russian
patients to know that it means “good day” in
Russian.
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