открытый космос

а в 1996 году написать о себе было не то, что трудно, но вообще-таки казалось делом совершенно неприличным. как это так я буду писать о себе? да кто я такая и что о себе возомнила? пусть о себе я помолчу, а если надо будет, другие скажут.
американский университет требовал сочинение "о себе" одним из главных пунктов всупительных документов. что делать? было совершенно непонятно, чего они от меня хотят.
"Наверное, они хотят, чтобы ты похвасталась своими успехами," предположил папа.
никаких особых успехов не было. в феврале, когда работали над этими документами, было уже ясно, что по основным предметам матшколы, математика, физика, я иду на четвёрки. я была третьей в классе по успеваемости, но в школе класс считался плохоньким, и быть третьей в таком классе достижением не казалось. на последнем звонке янина максимовна вручила мне грамоту за успехи в литературе -- когда-нибудь янине максимовне я посвещу поэму роман в стихах эпическую сагу и сборник миниатюр в прозе -- но от этой грамоты веяло тоской. из успехов в русской литературе каши не сваришь. так или иначе, грамота появилась в мае, а в феврале и о русской литературе нечего было сказать.
"напиши, что ты пишешь в сочинениях по английскому. как ты провела свои летние каникулы. как ты помогаешь бабушке в огороде. какие у тебя хобби."
уж не помню, что я там, в результате, написала. вполне вероятно, это был полуфантастический опус о том, сколько килограмов яблок и картошки мы собираем на даче. делиться хотелось только рекордами.
потребовались годы жизни в америке, чтобы понять, чего же американцы добиваются подобными вопросами. дело вовсе не в хвастовстве, желании продать себя подороже, самовлюблённости и пр. дело в нарративе. в повествовании. в америке, где постоянно в одном классе группе компании кампании сталкиваются люди совершенно разных культур стран происхождения вероисповеданий образований убеждений ценностей, жизненно необходимо умение в двух словах быстро объяснить, кто ты такая, откуда вязлась, и что тебе надо от окружающих. чтобы окружающим было понятно, что они для тебя могут сделать. требуется всего лишь умение связать факты, положительные или отрицательные, в некий конкретный рассказ о себе.
меня зовут ольга. родилась и выросла в петербурге, в еврейской семье. училась в английской школе, закончила математическую. на своём пути встретила много трудностей и успела понять, что математика -- это не для меня. учительница литературы янинна максимовна доверила мне провести несколько уроков русской литературы. мои одноклассники так внимательно меня слушали и задавали такие хорошие вопросы, что в результате я мечтаю стать астрономом. если вы меня примете в школу бизнеса, я потом обязательно постраюсь как-нибудь выйти в открытый космос.

Quality Concepts

In the story of my RIT career, a special place will have to be dedicated to my nemesis, one of my business professors, let's call him Mr. P.J. He taught several of the Quality Concepts classes, a series all incoming business students were required to take.

Mr P.J. professed an informal approach to teaching, but decidedly didn't get it when I, trying to learn, reflected back to him the informality that he projected. Note the use of fonts in his assignment and the particular request at the end "to explore hitherto unexplored attributes and traits of your own self." I got in trouble with him (in another paper) for using funny fonts, and I daresay my reference to Voltaire here, in the futile attempt to describe my personality, didn't gain me any points with him.
He gave me a C for this draft, which was not acceptable. If I remember correctly, I got the whole dorm helping me revise this draft. It worked so well that then Mr. P.J. accused me of plagiarism. I was angry. In a personal meeting, I tried to explain to him how much work I put into it. I guess he believed me, though I don't remember him outright saying so. He let me pass the class with a B. This was one of only two Bs in my college career. The rest were As, and I graduated with the highest honors at the top of my class.
Mr. P.J.'s biggest offense though was that he decidedly did not get my sense of humor. I found myself pretty hilarious and made sure to spice each paragraph with a joke or two.

bucket brigade

the international student organization at RIT provided its own orientation and organized events to help us connect with one another. as one of the first activities, we were given team t-shirts and directed to the athletic fields. there, on the green, hundreds of locals already gathered and stood in loose rows, waiting for something to happen.
our "peer advisor leaders" (international sophomores who volunteered to help the freshmen) explained that RIT was trying to break a Guinness world record. the words "bucket brigade" meant nothing to me. I may have conflated the words "bucket" and "basket" and imagined a rounded wicker thing for gathering mushrooms and berries. "brigade" I pictured as a military unit, a small group of horsed riders with sabres.
but nothing at all was happening. we were standing, out in the field, in the full heat of the day, waiting. perhaps we were trying to form the world's longest line. to keep kids from getting bored, somebody turned on a boombox and we all danced the Macarena.
RIT archives explain, "In 1996, as part of the freshman Orientation program, a group interactive activity was held on the athletic fields. RIT students, faculty, staff and alumni attempted to break a Guinness world record for the longest fire bucket brigade. Teaming up with the Henrietta Volunteer Fire Company and Mumford Fire Department along a 2.5 mile course from a fire hydrant on campus, firefighters filled 50 two-gallon buckets from their hoses."
if I saw a fire hydrant, I wouldn't have known what it was. being in the middle of the line, I don't remember seeing either that or the fire department vehicles. at some point somebody handed me a white plastic bucket, very clean, half filled with clean water. I passed it on to the kid next to me. a few more buckets came my way. I remember thinking how bad it was for the grass, all of us trampling on it, spilling water on it in the full heat of the day. the grass was bound to get burned.
(fire hydrants, sprinklers: file as technology new to me)
there's a Russian saying, "to pour from an empty cup into another empty cup," used to describe a repetitive action that adds nothing to nothing (idle talk, for instance). I was so eager to do something! I wanted some action I could write home about.

air-conditioning

In August 1996, Rochester was oppressively hot and humid. The heat caused me considerable discomfort the following summer, and during all three summers that I spent in Rochester without air-conditioning, but when I think of my first summer days in Rochester, it's not the heat that comes to mind, but the cold.
I'd never been exposed to air-conditioning before. I'd hardly been aware of the existence of air-conditioning as a practical technology outside of science fiction novels. Not even my father's car had an air-conditioner. For one week a year when the weather in St. Petersburg climbed into the 70s, people took cold showers and made cold soup for dinner.
Every indoor space in Rochester seemed air-conditioned on high (except, later, it turned out, student housing). My host parents took me to Wegmans, K-Mart, Sam's Club, and all I remember is being extremely uncomfortable and wanting to get back outside into the heat. From the store to the back seat of the car, where I was also too cold. I soon learned that I wasn't supposed to open the car window when the air-conditioning was on. They explained that the air-conditioning had levels, and tried to adjust the blowers just right, but I wasn't used to having a blower directed at my face, and so couldn't tell whether the temperature was too hot or too cold. It was just wrong.
When the time came to go to orientation at RIT, I put on my stockings and heels, suffering through the day of being alternatively too cold inside and too hot outside. How did people manage stockings in these conditions? It turned out, they didn't. Most of the students around me, men and women, wore jeans with something that looked like oversized pajamas on top. T-shirt was a new word in my vocabulary. Another new word: sneakers. These were what I considered gym shoes. Few women wore make-up, unless they put it on so carefully that I didn't even notice.
I recalled having a conversation with a friend, back in St. Petersburg, about her aging grandmother, who, though she hadn't left the house in some years, began each day by putting on her powder and mascara and lipstick. "She just doesn't feel like a human being without it," my friend said. We both agreed: her grandmother was a strong old lady who didn't allow old age to get to her. Wearing make-up to one's dying day was the example of womanhood to aspire to.
The college students around me decidedly treated the college as though it was some kind of country village. The whole atmosphere was very country side. People rode their bikes, lay down to rest on the lawn, and, to my amazement, some even took off their shoes in the classrooms. Campus buildings were surrounded by nature: woods on one side of the property, swamp on the other. I saw a squirrel! There was talk of deer! Having spent every summer of my life in the countryside fifty kilometers north of Petersburg, I'd never seen a deer in my life.
My host family had a decently sized back yard, and it was a sign of true luxury that all of the plants they grew were purely decorative. They could've grown tomatoes and cherries and plums, but they didn't need to.
When the sun neared the horizon, the smell of freshly mowed grass stood in the air. The full sky was brightly lit with stars. I heard chirping of a myriad of voices, which from novels about Ukraine, I decided must've been the cicadas. It was a shame to have to sleep behind the closed window, but because of the air-conditioning, the windows were supposed to stay closed. Intimidated by the machinery of the blinds, I kept them shut too.

прыщи

в штатах частенько слышишь о подростках, которые режут себя. режут, видимо, бритвами или ножиками, по коже на руках, ногах, так, чтобы не слишком заметно или можно было закрыть одеждой. у меня для этого были прыщи и ногти. и ежедневный ритуал, перед сном, когда уже все в доме легли, закрывшись в ванне часа этак на два. прыщей было много, на лбу, носу, на груди и спине, но и их иногда не хватало, и тогда отыскивались ещё невидимые прыщи, которые надо было расковырять. впрочем, со временем прыщей становилось всё больше и больше. раскавыривались они, естественно, до крови, чем больнее, тем лучше
замечательно, что на следующий день кожа успевала подзатянуться и на кровоподтёки от прыщей никто особо не обращал никакого внимания: ну прыщи и прыщи, подростковое дело, пройдут сами. иногда мама или бабушка пыталась завести разговоры, что, наверное, не надо вот так вот уж. иногда в школе кто-нибудь скажет, "а кто это тебя так побил?" ну и потом я сама старалась лицо уж особенно не трогать, а фокусировалась на груди, плечах, даже до спины пыталась добраться. для этого и в ванной не надо было запираться. сидишь над домашним заданием, решаешь задачку, а вот он тут прыщ, сам под ноготь просится -- и вот тут целые пятнадцать минут пролетели, и ещё пятнацать.
в штатах это считается признаком депресии, частенько идёт бок о бок с анорекисей или булимией, проблемами body image. понятно, что в те годы в росссии с слов-то таких мы не знали. как вот, напр, этот body image переводится на русский? меня называли нервной, плаксой, "чрезвычайно эмоциональной девочкой, у которой, если она не научится контролировать себя, будут в жизни большие проблемы." понятно, что чем больше я пыталась себя контролировать, тем больше прыщей у меня находилось на груди.
родные говорили, ты же красивая девочка, что ты с собой делаешь? красивая? до сих пор я не могу слышать это слово, меня так и тянет найти у себя какой-нибудь хоть мало-мальский прыщик, который можно было бы вскрыть. слово красота указывала на мир ценностей, в котором я была телом, которое надо было уметь "подавать." причём подавать с умом, я же ведь была ещё и очень умной девочкой.
грудь у меня выглядела так, что, когда я начала встречаться с бойфрендом летом 1996, перед отъездом в штаты, страшно было представить себе её обнажённой на свету. было слишком стыдно. так что свитер или что-то там я не снимала, лучше пусть считает меня недотрогой.
в штатах, кстати, стало легче потому, что не надо было больше скрываться от родных, ну и вообщена некоторое время желание причинить себе боль поутихло. но прыщи не проходили, так что, когда надо было сделать что-то трудное, написать там сочинение или презентацию, за которые не хотелось браться -- прыщи всегда были под рукой, и можно было как следует поковыряться.
ближе к тридацати годам я решилась-таки сходить к дерматологу, кот прописал мне антибиотики, от которых прыщи, наконец, прошли.
а сейчас, ближе к сорока я решилась-таки пойти к психотерапевту, в результате разговоров с которым я начинаю понимать, что страхам надо учиться глядеть в лицо.
пост этот, думаю, принадлежит в категорию ‪#‎янебоюсьсказать‬ или что-то около, потому что писать его было страшно. опять-таки, подозреваю, что я была далеко не одна такая, и описанное выше -- вполне общий случай. общий случай, когда кажется проще причинить себе боль, чем вслух высказать свои чувства собеседнику, без страха за такую откровенность как-то оказаться наказанной.

cotton wool

the incident with the cats was fresh in my mind when I made it to Sears at the Marketplace Mall in Henrietta to buy my bedding, the sheets, the pillows, the blanket. i was moving into the dorms, and I needed everything.
what I wanted was a regular blanket, you know, the regular simple plain everyday blanket. I had had one at home. it had been just perfect, not too thin, not too thick, though it was thick enough, and so worked in the winter to keep the cool air out and in the summer to keep the cool air in. just the regular blanket please.
do you need help miss?
eeeh..
(I'm just looking for a blanket. not too thin, not too thick. made of packed cotton wool. "cotton-wool" is not in my vocabulary. slip cover please needs to be separate, so that it could be washed on a regular basis. "slip cover" is not a concept in my vocabulary.)
what we have are quilts throws fleece fleece throws plush throws downs comforters -- what exactly are you looking for?
Sears, according to my host family, was the quintessential American store that would carry anything I may have wanted at a reasonable price.
(the marketplace mall, i loved learning, has a particular distinction of having been the inspiration for Nicholson Baker's novel Mezzanine -- the novel that takes place in its entirety on an escalator ride to the second floor of a mall.)
two hours later, having studied the labels to each type of blanket in the store, having touched the blankets that weren't wrapped in plastic at all the options, i ended up deciding that too thin was much better than two thick. without the slip cover I would need to wash the thing regularly, and the experience of washing that thick comforter in my host parents' bathroom had been far from ideal.
cotton wool. how come it was not a thing in America? during my periods, a length of cotton wool was the only thing that worked at night, to absorb the extra heavy flow. what did American women do? lining up two or three pads always left room for blood to escape. virgins weren't supposed to use tampons. virgin or not, tampons weren't meant to be left in there for upwards twelve hours. i had some stock of rolls of cotton wool with me, but when i ran out, I was a mess.

и то, и то

писателей современной американской прозы учат выстраивать характер героини (или героя, но тут не наш случай) через нарратив её поступков, её действий. пошла в консульство, получила визу, попрощалась с друзьями, села в самолёт, полетела в Америку.
движет развитием сюжета некий конфликт, внутренний или внешний, или серия конфликтов, которые героиня решает. в ходе действия рассказа, а тем более романа, с героиней должно произойти существенное изменение. была неопытной -- приобрела жизненный опыт. или: была неопытной девочкой из города из страны за железным занавесом -- получила шанс посмотреть на себя и свой мир со стороны -- испугалась -- решила забыть о родном городе о стране как о страшном сне. или: не осозновала своей привязанности к дому, друзьям, родным -- оторвавшись ото всех, оказавшись среди непонятных и неблизких людей, осознала глубину своей привязанности к дому. но ни в коем случае не: никак не могла принять решение, всюду казалось интересно и было хорошо и там, и там, делала успехи в понимании незнакомой жизни и одновременно писала письма друзьям и родным, старалась не потерять контакта и общего языка. такой ответ не годится даже как устный рассказ. когда я приезжала в питер и меня спрашивали, а где тебе больше нравится? неужели не скучаешь по дому? (или наоборот, дом, наверное, совсем забыла?) и я отвечала, мне и там, и там хорошо -- собеседники мне не верили, одни решали, что я умираю с тоски, другие -- что я уже стала совсем американкой и далеко оторвалась от питерской жизни.

не устаю радоваться, что жизнь живётся не по правилам литературной мастерской, и что кроме нарративного мышления, т.е. мышления, кот из жизненного опыта конструирует рассказы по принципам популярных литературных жанров, есть и другие. да и кроме романов и рассказов, у нас есть и другие жанры, например, анекдоты Хармса.
среди моих университетских бумаг -- фотокопия каких-то старинных переводов Харма, кот я пыталась зачитывать своим новым американским друзьям. они, хоть убей, не понимали, о чём это и к чему. вот, например, первый из хармсовских анекдотов о Пушкине:
Pushkin was a poet and was always writing something. Once Zhukovsky caught him at his writing and exclaimed loudly: --You're not half a scribbler!
From then on Pushkin was very fond of Zhukovsky and started to call him simply Zhukov out of friendship.
сейчас, честно говоря, и я сама уже с трудом вспоминаю, почему в 1996 вот это казалось самым важным

life in suburbia

I don't know if the writing skills I've acquired in these twenty years are quite enough to describe the confusion I felt when in 1996, age seventeen, I was overnight transported from post-Perestroika Petersburg to suburban America.
Directly from the airport, my host family took me to Wegmans. The international news reports had so recently been filled with the lines for bread and milk in Russia, and they wanted to show me the best of what America had to offer. (Wegmans is a Rochester-based supermarket chain that was just coming into its prime.) I saw my host parents' desire to please, to impress, and I was duly impressed, no doubt, and I wanted to be grateful. I was also disturbed. Did they think I came to America for the food?
What I came to America for I couldn't have expressed succinctly if asked, but it had something to do with Mark Twain, Jack London, Mayne Reid, even Jules Verne and Alexander Dumas -- all the adventure literature I'd read as a child.
Food wasn't it, but food certainly overwhelmed. "What do you like to eat for breakfast?" my host parents asked. I didn't know how to answer this question. Whatever was available? "Buckwheat" was not yet in my vocabulary, and I didn't particularly want buckwheat. On Sundays, my father used to make eggs sunny-side-up with "hunters sausage"--but that was my father's specialty, and nobody, not I, not my mother, not either of my grandmothers, could quite replicate it. Anyway, I didn't come to America to eat what I was used to. What I was used to was boring; I wanted to try new things.
The host family set out a couple of boxes of cereal in front of me. Probably something like chex and apple jacks and cinnamon toast crunch. The cinnamon taste I decidedly didn't like; everything else was sweet and delicious. Once they left me alone in the house--eventually, in the two weeks that I stayed with them, they had to go to work--I went through every open box in the pantry and every open container in the fridge, trying and re-trying everything. I knew what I was doing was wrong: I was binging and I couldn't stop myself; I was sneaking in foods I hadn't been specifically offered--and I couldn't stop myself. I had few distractions from the fridge. There was nowhere to go from the house without a car. My host family had given me access to a computer and explained how to use a modem, but I didn't fully get it and, anyway, I had only one email address with me--my father's--and I had already written to him. Once I got some paper, I wrote letters to my friends, trying to turn my recent experiences into funny anecdotes. I browsed through the TV channels and watched a couple of shows without understanding what was going on. There were few books in the house, and, anyway, I didn't think my English was good enough to attempt a serious book. The couple of Russian-language books I'd brought with me seemed too outlandish to read in my present circumstances.
One other detail stands out from those two weeks. There were cats in the house--to me, entirely alien beings. I'd never been around cats before, and these two, I now understand, must've missed the previous inhabitant of my room, my host parents' daughter who'd gone off to college. They came into the room looking for her and climbed onto her bed. Of grief, one of them peed onto the blanket. When I discovered the puddle, I was terrified. Was something wrong with the cats? What did I do wrong? What would my host parents think of me? I couldn't face the idea of greeting them when they came home with, "I'm sorry, dear host parents, I'm loving my time in your house, and thank you for being such lovely hosts, but pardon me for saying so, one of your cats peed on my bed today." I didn't want to embarrass them, I didn't want to create a situation, I didn't want to attract even more attention to myself than they were already giving me, I didn't want to admit to not understanding all the things I didn't understand. They already had a lot to explain to me, a lot that I wasn't getting.
I don't know why I couldn't tell them the truth. I just couldn't. So I did the simplest thing I could do: I lugged the blanket to the bathroom and washed the peed-on part in the sink with hand soap. The blanket was a thick down comforter I'd never before encountered and had no idea of how such a thing could possibly be washed. I don't think my host parents had showed me the dryer yet, and even if they did, I would've been to scared to try using it on my own. Having washed the part of the comforter that got wet, I wrung it by hand as well as I could and then put it back on my bed. It was thick and it didn't dry well. I felt lucky that they didn't notice anything was off when they got home, and the cats seemed fine.
That night, I woke up wet and freezing in the middle of the night. My nightgown had soaked through. The airconditioner (another completely new piece of machinery to me) was on high. I got dressed, sneaked to the fridge for some milk and a piece of cheese, and then slept the rest of the night on the rug next to the bed. It was a comfortable cushy rug, perfectly clean except for some cat hair, and it seemed just the right thing for me. With rugs like that, who needed beds? Come the next day, when the comforter started to dry, the cat came back and peed on it again.
Don't get me wrong. I knew that, with time, I would learn and get used to all that seemed alien and strange at the moment. I knew these were misunderstandings I would eventually laugh about. Nevertheless, I was hugely relieved when the time came to move to the dorms.

виза

выйдя из консульства с американской визой в паспорте (16.8.1996) я прислонилась к какой-то стене, вынула паспорт из пакета и стала смотреть: все ли буковки прописаны, всё ли в порядке? читаю -- и замирает сердце. в графе Sex проставлена буква M. вот же моя фотка с длинными волосами и имя Olga, ан нет, М. что делать?
за полтора года до этого мои родители впервые собрались съездить в Хельсинки. взяли нас с собой. дело к ночи, на таможне огромная очередь. в конце концов, приближаемся к границе. папа отдаёт паспорта пограничнику, и тут выясняется, что никто не подумал о том, что т.к. мне только что исполнилось 16, мне нужна собственная виза. пограничники увели родителей в офис. в моей памяти -- часы ожидания. даже если и совсем непонятно, чего ждать от Хельсинки, за спиной -- проделанная дорога, часы ожидания, и чем дольше тут стоишь, тем больше представляется потеря, если придётся заворачивать обратно. время, силы, надежды, всё напрасно. а почему? только потому, что вот, оказывается май идёт после февраля и почему-то мир так по-дурацки устроен, что после полуночи принцесса превращается в золушку.
так и тут. М ну и М. я и сама о себе частенько думала, как об М. писала стихи от лица М. тем не менее. мне было уже семнадцать лет и за плечами какой-никакой опыт. а как прилечу я в Нью-Йорк, а там посмотрят на мой паспорт и на меня, и как завернут меня обратно? вернулась в консульство, попросилась внутрь без очереди. указала на ошибку. мне сказали, упс, приходите за паспортом на след неделе.
американское консульство находилось в паре кварталов от мат школы, которую я только что закончила. так и не получив паспорт, я пошла проведать школу. вечер в пятницу, двери плотно закрыты. впрочем, в школе мне было нечего делать. уже чуть ли не во время выпускных меня перестали узнавать охранники, не хотели пускать внутрь. не прошло и два месяца, и мат школа снова стала мне казаться неприступной крепостью, как когда-то во время поступления. вообще, в центре петербурга на меня нападало ощущение нелегальности: какое право девочка с окраин имеет на всё это? я не сдавалась, присваивала, снова и снова повторяла, я здесь родилась, я здесь выросла, мой город, моя река, моя школа, мои дворцы музеи сады тротуары серое небо университет большой дом заводы станции метро фонари книжные магазины. потом, в Рочестере я без конца объясняла всем знакомым, делала презентации, писала сочинения на тему, какой петербург замечательный город. заканчивались они примерно так: "не думаю, что вы туда когда-нибудь попадёте, но на всякий случай, имейте в виду. самое лучшее время для посещений -- июнь."
в тот вечер разбираться мой или не мой город не было сил. вообще с родными не прощаются, решила я. надо было на метро, по магазинам, готовить ужин.
американскую визу я, в результате, получила за три дня до отъезда.

Effective Communications

This composition is from winter or spring freshman year. When I write "occasionally" I mean "accidentally," and when I say "set off" I mean "turned off," etc etc.
(This assignment clearly didn't count for very much because I didn't have anyone proofread it.)
Later on, I got a third alarm clock.

calling my father

The reason I moved into the dorms so late, arriving there a full month after classes had started in August 1996, was that, according to the arrangement my father had made with the international student office, I was supposed to stay with a local Rochester family for the first year of my college career.
We had corresponded with the family ahead of time. They picked me up from the airport and drove me around town before showing me to their daughter's room, available after their daughter went off to Cornell in Ithaca just a few days earlier. They introduced me to their son, a high school senior, the grandmother who lived in her own apartment in the same house, and two cats. Two days later, they gently asked me whether I was planning to buy a car. A car? I laughed. My father had just bought his first car a couple of years earlier; buying a car was a major life event that surely came after graduation, marriage, apartment, and children.
How was I going to get to RIT then? The family lived in Penfield; RIT was in Henrietta; to get from one to the other I would need to take a bus to downtown Rochester, and from there to the suburban mall, where RIT's shuttle made a stop every hour. In the best case scenario, the route would take me two and a half hours one way. By car, it would take twenty five minutes, but they were not prepared to drive me, back and forth, for the whole year.
What to do? I was raised on my grandparents' stories of overcoming difficulties. My grandmother who survived the Leningrad blockade told a story about how during the war, when the trams had stopped, she had to walk for over an hour in the snow to get to work and an hour back. That narrative was prescient in my mind, and yet I could not quite fathom spending five hours in the bus each day. With a sinking heart, I asked my host parents if they had the bus schedules.
Why don't you call your father and ask if he would agree for you to move into the dorms? my host father suggested. (My host parents had hosted international high school students before, and they knew to speak slowly and in full clauses.)
The idea of calling my father terrified me. I had only been away from home for three days and placing this international call so soon after my departure felt like a major failure. I knew that the call would instantly alarm my entire household. My grandparents were likely to pick up the receiver and wouldn't let me talk to my father directly until I told them first what was wrong. Once I did, their confusion and fear for me would know no bounds. The whole arrangement of staying with the host family had been made just so I wouldn't have to stay in the dorms. Staying with a family and out of the dorms had been the key point, how my parents could convince themselves and my grandparents to let me go away in the first place. My grandparents had had enough of communal living in their lives, and they were forever marred by the experience. In the American dorms, I would surely be exposed to drugs, sex, AIDs. No dorms for the precious child, never. Clearly, they had been justified in thinking it a mistake to let the girl go to the United States. What a wild place it was turning out to be!How was it possible that a major university in a major city had not a better bus service? Surely, the girl had misunderstood something. Surely she was too young and too clueless to fend for herself. My grandparents would prevail and that would be the end of my American adventure. Next thing I knew, I would be on the plane back to Petersburg. Would they let me stay for at least two full weeks?
My host father gently pushed the telephone receiver into my hand and dialed the international connection. The telephone rang. I don't remember who picked up first. My father got to the phone. As coherently as I could, I explained the situation. I remember hearing my grandparents voices in the background, asking, "How is she? How is she?"
"I don't know what to tell you," my father said. "I'm here, and you're there. Do what you think is best."
The conversation didn't go on much longer after that. International telephony was expensive, and the connections scratchy with static. I hung up the phone and turned to my host parents. The decision was mine to make. "Ok. I'm moving into the dorms."
"We'll help you buy everything you'll need," they said.
The actual move, however, took a month to execute. By the time I showed up in the residential facility office, it turned out that no rooms were immediately available. RIT didn't keep a very good track of the dorm spaces they'd assigned. They had rooms, they just didn't know which ones. At the time, something like 60% of incoming freshman class dropped out in the first quarter. I would have to wait until the administration figured out who was still there and who'd already left.
Freshmen who needed housing were temporarily placed in a hotel just off the property. I spent full two weeks with my host family; then, for the next two weeks, I moved into the hotel, sharing a room with a girl from Jamaica.

навсегда

о том, насколько нарратив отъездов и возвращений витал в воздухе в 90ых, можно судить, в частности, по опусу "навсегда", который я сочинила в сентябре 1992 г, в возрасте 13 лет.
спустя 20 лет после отъезда, моя героиня возвращается домой и устраивается учительницей астрономии в родную школу. оказывается, её карьера великого ... астронома (?!) не состоялась из-за невнимательности. "Тогда в одной из последних операций ты упустила действие и..."
героиня становится учительницей и отвергает вернувшегося кавалера, таинственного Тера, ради благоприобретённого во время отсутствия равновесия. ("В твоём обществе я становлюсь такой же нервной, как в седьмом классе, а я с таким трудом приобрела равновесие.") О месте, где она провела 20 лет, сказано немного, но достаточно: университет в другом городе.

сюжет вполне себе по оводу и узнику замка иф, не слишком внимательно прочитанным.

mapping Rochester

in August 1996, on my Russian map of the world, Rochester, NY looked like a big black dot on the shore of lake Ontario: a city with over a million people. as my father was quick to remind me, in the Soviet Union, a city with over a million residents qualified for the construction of the underground metro. (In contemporary Russia, seven cities have at least one-line subways).
My family members tried to locate Rochester in an encyclopedia and in an atlas. Information was scant. My grandmother with the atlas reported that Rochester lay nearly on the same latitude as Yalta, Crimea: I was going far, far South! A good thing, because I had no room for a winter jacket in my luggage.
I couldn't think "Rochester" without picturing Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre: English, noble with major character flaws, blind.
What else did I know? The names of all the five Great Lakes--we'd memorized them for an exam in my English class. The Pathfinder, a much-beloved novel by James Fenimore Cooper, was set on the shore of Lake Ontario. Niagara Falls.
I recall being surprised that "New York" was a name of a state, as well as a city. I recall being confused about the nature of "states" (America is America is America.) I recall hearing rumors that cities in the US were so clean, people wore white socks outdoors.
Adventurers before me had set forth on far less information.
Rochester, however, turned out nearly beside the point. The town I landed in was Henrietta, NY, where Rochester Institute of Technology's campus was located.
Oh, and speaking of James Fenimore Cooper, let's not forget Mark Twain's essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." According to Twain, Cooper commits 114 out of possible 115 offenses against literary art. To summarize, Twain didn't think much of Cooper's attention to detail.

 

 

.

огни большого города

Отправив меня в Штаты в 1996ом году, моя семья начала заботиться о том, чтобы держать меня в курсе петербургской жизни. Родные слали мне вырезки из местных газет. Вырезок у меня накопилось много, одна чудеснее другой. Вот, например, статья (от, согласно пометке на газете, 24/10/96) о создании памятника фонарям разных эпох у Смольного. Что ж, идея хорошая.

Pager

in Dave's portrait circa 1996 one detail that soon fascinated me was the pager. I don't think I noticed it right away -- to notice, one must be aware as I had not been -- but eventually the pager attracted attention to itself. it would beep, Dave would tinker with the device attached to the belt of his jeans, and then reach for the nearest phone.
a junior, Dave was juggling three jobs. his main gig was off campus: he managed computers for a Rochester realtor who worked with low income and veterans housing projects. Dave didn't have a car, and took a bus to work, and, on occasion, his boss would drive him home. Dave's second job was on campus. Ethernet had just been laid to the residential halls, and students who had computers could connect to it. Dave took shifts to answer all the tech support questions that came up. His third job took up most of the floor space in his and Jason's room. He would custom-build computers for people, ordering all the boards and the cases separately and then assembling them all at once. The end result was a lot cheaper than a ready-made computer, and there was a decent profit margin in it for Dave.
(when I visited Dave in that room, the only place to sit was the bed, and to get to the bed, one had to kind of jump over the computer carcasses. I came over, climbed onto Dave's bed, Jason would put on a movie from his side of the room, and we would watch something while Dave half-watched, half-worked.)
"wouldn't your time be better spent studying?" i would ask him, meaning that if he studied hard, did well in school, and got a great job, he would have a greater earning potential down the road.
"i learn more at work that I do at school," Dave said.
i doubted that answer, but the fact was that most of the students at RIT worked, men and women. the food services, the library, the academic and admissions offices, pretty much every office relied on student labor--and kids with cars delighted that they could hold off-campus jobs that paid more.
one of my mentors in the international student program, a sophomore from India -- let's call him A for the purposes of this narrative (I'm working up to writing more about him) -- suggested that I was a spoiled privileged brat because not only had I never worked a day in my life, but I also claimed that none of my classmates in Russia worked. (there had been sordid rumors about a couple of kids who'd started working at the end of high school. nobody talked about this directly, not in 1996. tutoring was one thing, but serving food and even selling computer parts was another. service jobs seemed somehow embarrassing for future mathematicians and engineers.) seventeen, without a job? according to A, it turned out that I and all of my friends must've been not only incredibly rich, but also very lazy. don't even rich kids sometimes want to have their own income?
when I tried to convince A that in the Soviet Union people didn't commonly work until after the university, or at least, until after third or fourth year in the university, he laughed in my face. "You're such a daddy's girl."
that I couldn't deny. And yet, I didn't think his description of me as privileged fit, but in our many, many conversations about this, in person and in email, I could not convince him otherwise. at least I could prove to him that I wasn't lazy. i started thinking about getting a job.

desire vs decision

хотела ли я или не хотела уехать в Штаты в 1996ом году? мне было семнадцать лет, сама себе я казалась взрослым человеком.
в Рочестере меня с первого дня начали спрашивать Why did you decide to come to the US? меня этот вопрос вгонял в ступор. мои русскоязычные читатели, наверное, легче могут понять, как можно оказаться в Америке, не приняв ни одного решения. когда в феврале 1996г родители подняли вопрос, а не стоит ли попробовать поступить куда-нибудь в одной из англоязычных стран, я согласилась, ну почему бы не попробовать. от такой пробы до отъезда было как до луны. ну попробовали и забыли. а когда за пять дней до отъезда я получила визу, отступать было уже поздно. какие уж тут решения. (если верить дневнику, то создаётся впечатление, что единственным решением, кот я принимала было: брать или не брать с собой . . . дневник)

но вот хотела ли я уехать? с этим тоже далеко не всё так просто. чего может хотеть человек, который верит в то, что хотеть чего-то слишком сильно -- это значит сглазить, а мало хотеть -- проворонить?
в дневнике на этот счёт много всякой всячины.
"Америка -- свободная страна." наверное, хотела?
"я сейчас фантазирую: какие лица будут у моих друзей, когда я скажу, что уезжаю. В этом я вижу как бы вид мщения." скорее всего, не хотела (хотела, чтобы мои друзья не спорили со мной, когда я навязывала им книжки.)
мечтая о развитии отношений с мальчиком, в которого влюблена: "я всё время обрываю сеюя: лучше и не мечтай, не фантазируй, ты всё равно уезжаешь." отъезд -- как конец всего, обрыв.
но тут же и: "я страшно хочу уехать. искательство приключений -- вот, что мною движет и не надо придумывать никаких новых слов и определений. Приключения необходимы человеку, а мой возраст для этого самый подходящий."
"у меня есть новый горизонт -- Америка. Ведь там я не буду заниматься никакой математикой, а стану экономом. Что-нибудь в этом роде. За границей люди другие. Там меня ценят. Оценят." хм.
а накануне первого тура президентских выборов, "от результатов которых зависит моё будущее", я пишу вот что:
"Боюсь чего-нибудь определённого хотеть -- пусть всё будет как будет."
иными словами, Америка -- это открытый космос. а хотение оказывается тяжёлой эмоциональной работой, к которой я не готова. избавьте меня пожалуйста от неё. пусть всё будет как будет.

hangers

later that night in September 1996, on the day when I moved into the dorms, having helped me to find my way to my room, Dave came up to visit and brought his roommate, Jason.
my roommate hadn't moved in yet, so they sat on her empty mattress and stared at me. I sat on my bed across the room. I had a horrible suspicion that once we'd learned each others' names and where we were from, we had nothing else to say to each other. though this was my first night in the dorms, i'd been at RIT for a month, and had learned to explain right away that I was from "St. Petersburg, formerly known as Leningrad," and no, there were no white bears there. silence lingered.
I tried to study Dave and Jason without looking at them directly. at that time I didn't know how to look people in the eyes, and didn't think that I should. looking somebody in the eyes felt like such an intimate gesture, nearly a caress. so i looked either at the window or somewhere above their shoulders. at some point, the guitar must've come out as an aid through this awkwardness. (I studied business at RIT, and later on, the need to look people directly in the eyes came up in my classes: a revelation.)
did I see in Dave then what so many people have pointed out to me since, that he looks very much like my brother and several members of my mother's family? I don't think so. but I do remember being comforted by the name "David." I struggled with learning the names of my new friends at RIT, the names that represented so many ethnicities and histories. in Petersburg, i grew up among people named Masha, Misha, Alexei--names that repeated endlessly. I was always one of three or four Olgas at school. In comparison, English-speakers seemed to have endless imagination for names. But with David, I struck on something familiar: my grandfather's patronymic was Davidovich, son of David.
meantime, silence lingered.
this was awful, because I really did like these kids. they seemed cute. it was so sweet of them to visit. i was lonely and afraid to close the door and to remain completely alone in the strange room, when my thoughts would naturally turn to all the Mashas and Mishas whom I was missing.
but awful too was this lingering silence. if they stayed, and if conversation seemed unlikely, we needed to do something. did they feel this too?
at some point, I got up from the bed and continued to unpack my clothes. "what are you doing?" Jason stopped me.
"what?"
"how come you're putting all of your clothes on one hanger?"
"I only have five."
"why don't you get more?"
"i don't need more, look." I showed him the way it made sense to hang a skirt on a rod then a t-shirt on the shoulders of the same hanger, then a couple of button-downs on top, and cover all with a sweater.
"but don't you want to see all of your clothes?"
"why would i?"
the conversation is not verbatim--this all happened twenty years ago, and i had stopped keeping a diary when I arrived to Rochester. the fact is, aware now that I had a problem, I eventually accepted the guys's offer to fix it. they led me down to the corner store in the tunnels under the dorms, where Jason surprised me with a gift of a dozen hangers. I still have them, too.

бойфренд

тем летом 1996 г, за два месяца до отъезда в америку, у меня появился мой первый бойфренд.
я пишу эти заметки по следам флэшмоба ‪#‎янебоюсьсказать‬, и поэтому сейчас некоторые подробности этой истории с бойфрендом кажутся особенно выпуклыми. например, что важным обстоятельством моего отъезда, одной из причин, из-за которой я так стремилась в штаты, было неумение прямо сказать "нет".
познакомились мы с ним при очень, как мне казалось, романтичных обстоятельствах. на выпускной наш класс совместно ещё с двумя, отправился кататься на теплоходе по Неве. до этого, помню, что с одной из моих подруг мы распили бутылку шампанского в какой-то подворотне: поздравили друг друга с окончанием одной пытки и передышкой перед началом другой. на теплоходе я, соответсвенно, грустила. ко мне подошёл мальчик и спросил, А почему ты не танцуешь? (пишу по дневнику). играла медленная музыка и танцевало несколько пар. я замялась. "Наверное, потому что не приглашают," сказал он и пригласил. В дневнике: "о чудо!" белые ночи, туман, верхняя открытая палуба. мы танцевали полчаса, потом параход причалил и мы пошли в школу и целовались на окне у кабинета астрономии. как Fuck you всей школе. потом обменялись телефонами.
на следующее утро пошли гулять и потом гуляли несколько дней подряд.
ретроспективно, единственное, что я обо всём этом помню, это то, что от этого мальчика пахло, а особенно пахло у него изо рта, оттуда шла какая-то гниль и ещё что-то кислое, и чтобы целоваться с ним, мне приходилось как-то пересиливать себя. но сказать ему, что, милый, погуляли пару дней и всё, пока, я не умела. надо же дать человеку шанс. присмотреться, понять. выслушать.
за романтичное знакомство на корабле надо было расплачиваться. надо было отметиться перед подругами, вот такой мальчик, не простой, а из единички.
через четыре дня он уже признался мне в любви. в дневнике: "сказал, я тебя люблю -- а я промолчала. а что я могла ответить? любовь с первого взгляда? я не знаю. мне он нравится. мне приятно с ним беседовать."
после этого я уехала на дачу, засела читать Фрейда, Введение в психоанализ. молодой человек достал меня и там. приехал, пытался целоваться на моём любимом озере, это казалось очень не кстати. но опять-таки, сказать ему прямо, честно, что меня не устраивает я не умела. а обиняками, увиливаниями он отказывался меня понимать. я ему не звонила, но и не брать трубку, когда бабушка звала меня к телефону не могла.
надо отдать ему должное, мальчик был очень славный, очень заботливый. он не торопил меня особо и раздевал по фазам. но мне понятно было, что я оттягиваю момент, когда надо будет "дать". спать с ним не хотелось вот никак.
Когда речь заходит об отъезде в Штаты, в дневнике вот что: "А бойфренд? а, может быть, я теряю единственный шанс?"
Единственный шанс ЧЕГО, семнадцатилетняя Оля?
ниже, там же: "я страшно хочу уехать."
уехала -- уж точно значит, всё
а не проще всё-таки сказать человеку, ты мне не подходишь? как это делается корректно?
мне не хотелось его обидеть
он потом мне ещё где-то год писал письма в Штаты.
ему-то так никто и не объяснил, что, с моей точки зрения, мой отъезд означает полное окончание наших отношений.
его письма тут у меня лежат, но открывать и смотреть, что в них я ещё не готова. мне стыдно. в какой-то момент я просто перестала на них отвечать.

ESL

people frequently want to know how well i knew english when I came to the US in 1996.
here's an email conversation with Dave from October 25, 1996, two months after my arrival.
Dave> i woke up late today and only when my friend ted came in and told me he found a girl becky in the hallway at 4:30 in the morning, puking and bleeding out her nose, and covered in mud, and convulsing (shaking), and not speaking english, and he took her in his room . . . and she is almost conscious!

Olga> The story Ted told you was really nice, exept one moment which i didn't understand well: what was she doing in the corridor at 4:30? I mean, what had happened with her, that she was in so bad condition?
(AKA: Dave thought I wouldn't understand the word "convulsing" and so explained it as "shaking." In fact, "convulsing" may have been the only word of his email I understood quite well: its Latin root has spawned a Russian word with similar meaning. I must've understood "bleeding" and so knew he was describing somebody who was in "bad condition," but I was so confused about the emotional charge of this narrative that the most appropriate words I found in response were "the story was really nice." Nice!)
Dave> haha okay the girl was PISS DRUNK and she had alcohol poisoning :) i met her this morning. She is very cute and very FUCKED UP (please excuse my language). she is probably still asleep on our floor :)
i interpret Dave's "haha" and the smiley face as sheer incredulity at how much i didn't understand.
alcoholism was a major problem at RIT. people drank cheap beer in astonishing quantities. my roommate drank so much in the fall that by the spring she developed cirrhosis of the liver. but that's a different story.

Teffi's Memories

"Teffi, nom de plume of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, was born in 1872 into a prominent Russian family. Following in the footsteps of her older sister Maria—poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya—Teffi published poetry and prose from the age of 29. She soon rose to fame by practicing a unique brand of self-deprecating humor and topical social satire. In her 1907 hit one-act play The Woman Question, subtitled A Fantasy, Teffi imagined a world in which a women’s revolution against men achieves a full role reversal. Women come to occupy the prominent political, military, academic, professional, and bureaucratic roles, while men are subjugated to the childcare and household management tasks. Though the play’s ending largely dismisses this scenario and trivializes the feminist cause, through humor, the piece makes the point that bad behavior—infidelity, sexual harassment, excessive drinking, pettiness—is a function of social status rather than of biological sex.

By the time of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, Teffi had nearly a dozen books to her name, and new printings of her story collections sold out instantly. With Lenin at the helm of the government, her fame became a liability. Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea opens with Teffi being talked into going on tour to Ukraine (then outside of Lenin’s domain)."

Read the rest of the review in The Common.

письмо от дедушки

письмо от дедушки Исаака, первое, кот. он послал мне в Штаты.

тут, напр: "Оленька в нашей краткой прощальной беседе я акцентировал твоё внимание на вопросе умения общаться с людьми а главное уметь хорошо выслушивать собеседника, кем бы он не был. Этим искусством я владел в совершенстве и оно помогало мне быстро завоевывать уважение к себе и любовь и если хочешь знать, что в страшную годину моей жизни--находясь в плену среди порой очень опасных и страшных людей я чётко знал где и что сказать, где своевременно умолчать, а где блеснуть своей эрудицией (заблаговременно соответственно подготовившись к этому разговору). И вот я выжил и живу.

 

фрейд и драйзер

тут приближается 20ая годовщина моего отъезда в Штаты. интересно повспоминать 1996ой год.

3 июля состоялся второй тур президентских выборов, на которых победил Ельцин. победить, видимо, не должен был: рейтинг у него был крайне низкий. впрочем, альтернатива: Зюганов альтернативой не казался. потом, в Штатах, я использовала геологические метафоры, чтобы описать политическую напряжённость жизни в России (вулкан, землетрясение). меня никто не понимал.

мои одноклассники готовились к экзаменам в университеты, занимались с репетиторами. одна подруга по матшколе поступала на финоугорское отделение филфака--это казалось фантастической смелостью с её стороны, потому что про филфак было известно, что туда так просто не поступить. для меня вопрос с филфаком казался давно решённым--стоило ли тратить столько усилий на матшколу, чтобы потом-таки заняться филологией. тем более серьёзным казался её поступок: попытаться в возрасте 17 лет понять, чего ты по-настоящему хочешь от жизни. впрочем, финоугорское отделение филфака было, видимо, компромиссным решением. потянуться на другие было немыслимо.
 
я, дважды поступив на матмех, избегала каких-либо мыслей о будущем. жила с бабушкой на новой даче. бабушкин Паркинсон прогрессировал так сильно, что работать в саду она совсем не могла и не пыталась, что очень положитлеьно отразилось на наших с ней отношениях. я помогала бабушке готовить, а всё остальное время читала. друзей в окрестности у меня не было. зато была с собой гитара, и по вечерам я уходила на пляж и играла там Битлз (по нотам). а читала я Фрейда, Введение в психоанализ. "Очень увлекательно--об оговорках," записано в дневнике. "Я теперь внимательно слежу за речью дикторов, родителей, и т.д."
8 июля в дневнике запись: "Фрейд очень интересен, но после него думаю взяться за американских писателей -- Теодор Драйзер и всякое подобное. Посмотрим, можно ли это читать."
 
в начале августа объявлены сроки практики на матмехе -- надо отработать любые пять дней в Петергофе.
 
а через несколько дней пришли документы из Штатов, которые позволяли мне идти в консульство за визой. тогда в американское консульство попадали без записи--надо было отстоять в очереди.
 
события вдруг начали развиваться с невероятной скоростью. билеты в Штаты были забронированы на 23 августа, и только за неделю до этого я попала в консульство. визу я ходила получать самостоятельно. в дневнике: "теперь я практически убедила родителей, что не пропаду в Америке одна."
 
мама повела меня делать новые очки--и сделали, почему-то с розовыми стёклами.
Драйзера, кстати, я так до сих пор пока не прочитала.

anniversary

coming up this August is the 20th anniversary of my arrival to the United States. i'm giving myself a gift and a challenge of posting some about 1996, in Russian and English.

here's one image I'm working with. Rochester, New York. a dorm hallway. September, a month after classes started. it's late afternoon, lots of kids are at home, doors thrown open, music pouring from each room and clashing. most of the kids in this dorm are men and most of the men are programmers. in each room there's a computer or two. some computers are without their cases, wires exposed, boards flashing. many kids have TVs. the microwave is in the hallway, and from it emanates the smell of popcorn. many kids are on the telephone. many are simply hanging out in the hallway, talking to each other in their brand of English that might as well be Martian for how little I understand it. nobody appears to be studying. in any case, there are lots of people to ask for help. I'm moving in, and I'm lost. the longer I'm walking back and forth, the more attention I attract to myself. 

I'm looking for a staircase to the second floor. the building clearly has a second floor, my instructions clearly state that my room is on the second floor. where is the staircase?

in one end of the hallway, a tall man with long purple hair and wearing a gown of a 19th century grande dame is going on about something to his entourage. I've never seen cross dressers before; I'm not familiar with the idea of gender-fluidity, and so I interpret each of his gestures is a miniature drama. he is a beacon--I recognize this guy, which means I've gone the wrong way again.

(though I'm only now moving into the dorm, I've been at the school since August and have already had the traumatic experience of walking through a closed door marked "Exit" and setting off a terribly shrieking siren. for the moment being, I've decided to assume, incorrectly, that all doors marked "Exit" are armed. generally I prefer to walk only through doors that somebody else has already opened.)

I try not to attract too much attention, but I've got a lot of stuff and I'm making plenty of noise. i'm conscious that the guys are staring at me. I'm 17 years old, hair down below my waist, dressed in a polyester summer dress, black with bright paisley print. (the dress also has shoulder pads--it's 1996.) I'm carrying a large duffel bag over one shoulder, a guitar over the other, and I'm dragging a suitcase (it does NOT have wheels).

one of the kids approaches: hey, I'm Wesley. Do you need help? and then, after I try to explain, what's your accent? where are you from?

he then leads me down the hall and around the corner, where another guy asks if I need help. his name is Dave. apparently my room is just above his.

A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa

"War. Diamonds and oil and war. If in the United States we’ve heard anything about Angola, it’s likely related to the protracted bloodshed or to the trade in oil and diamonds. The seventh largest country in Africa, situated on the Atlantic coast just north of Namibia, Angola became a Portuguese colony in the 16th century. Fighting for self-government began in 1961 and went on until the 1974 Carnation Revolution and the end of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal led to the country’s withdrawal and, in 1975, Angolan independence. This did not end war in Angola, however. ...

Ludovica “Ludo” Fernandes Mano—whose true story became the basis for José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel, A General Theory of Oblivion—leaves Portugal and arrives in Luanda, Angola’s capital, months before Independence Day in 1975. She makes the move reluctantly, following her newly married sister, Odete, whose husband, Orlando, an Angolan mining engineer, works for a diamond company. A shut-in since early in her life, Ludo occupies her time cooking for the newlyweds and managing their luxury apartment on the 11th floor of a building in the center of Luanda. Life, even before the narrative turns dramatic, is a little too much for Ludo . . .

My review of José Eduardo Agualusa's novel A General Theory of Oblivion, in full, appears in The Common.