USSR journal, home again

Jan 28. When I returned home, I feasted most delicately on salmon flambéed with Madeira, garlic and soy, with sautéed red bell peppers, mushrooms, and crisp baby asparagus, washed down with a new Chardonnay. I finished my meal with Russian cognac spiked with Ukrainian cherries—the ones Dr. Shpak’s wife sent me. I was the unfortunate American who was so ill with the Moscow grippe while in Cherkassy, I need shoring up to build up my fortitude. She sent me remnants of deep summer locked in a jar.

I wear an antique embroidered Ukrainian linen dress, freshly laundered, and bleached, the pre-revolutionary stains of age give it character. In this case, it means the bloody revolutionary history of 1917. Coral beads about my neck, and Russian gold hearts on chains in my ears. You can feel spring in the air. And the end of an era.

I’m watching Rumpole of the Bailey on PBS, eating chocolate-filled biscuits, I wonder how soon Oleg would adapt to this lifestyle, this veritable harvest, so easily obtained from the local supermarket where I just had a ridiculous joust with the young greengrocer, asking him when’s the last time he had a real food fight. He said, many years.

The conversation must have released some latent teenage impulse in him because the overripe avocado I handed to him, he lobbed at the poor woman who bakes the breads and cakes I eat. She takes it all in stride. This hijinks. I don’t think she’s had a good food fight in years either. We all laugh. Lob grapes. We Americans are like spoiled children. We easily find mirth in the oddest of circumstances.

In my shopping cart, the evidence of tonight’s meal. I utterly splurged, I was a decadent westerner, and bought $91 worth of food with my valuta, my hard currency—more than what I spent during an entire month in the USSR. I’m in shell shock looking at all the bounty— after a month of deprivation during the darkest time of the year, I want to eat everything. My greed is insatiable and knows no bounds.