Russian Birds
I decided to learn Russian around the same time I decided I wanted to become knowledgeable about bird species, buy binoculars and a field guide and sit in my garden watching honeyeaters maraud through the guava tree. So the sum of my two new obsessions should mean that I’m preparing for a birdwatching tour of Russia.
Not being able to do Russian at university without a lot of bother, I decided to do an introductory course at community college. I like the earnestness of community college, the fact that people do courses for all sorts of reasons besides an interest in the subject. Sometimes it’s an interest in meeting potential partners, or because their counsellor suggested they meet some new people, engage with the world in the reduced form of fifteen people in a classroom.
My first Russian class was made up of English travellers, a journalist who writes real estate blurbs for local papers, a girl doing a PHD in mathematics, a lady who is exporting goods to Russia, and others who confessed to be doing it just because they like the idea of learning Russian.
Upon opening the textbook, the letters looked devilish. They looked like the soybeans I left for too long in the beans sprouter, they were horned and mean and resisted any attempt to makes sense of them. Slowly I sounded my way through the alphabet, the many subtly different yo’s, ya’s, ye’s, e’s, y as in buy’s and y as in marry’s. This was my only preparation for class, I figured that Level 1 indicated that nothing was assumed.
I was half an hour early because I’d misread my enrolment form. I read the address of the college about ten times, but ignored the starting time stated on the line underneath. One very eager girl was already waiting when I arrived, she had a Russian boyfriend, she said, and the only word she could say in Russian was the word for toad. I didn’t ask why he had only taught her that particular word. Soon she started to converse with the next arrival, the mathematics girl, and I flipped through the Drum Media, worrying that I looked too haughty not trying to share in their conversation. I always prefer not to hover on the edges of conversations, either I’m a part of it or I give up and find something else to concentrate on.
As the hour approached, a brusque woman entered balancing a box and a tape recorder. This was Olga. Olga had a brisk, energetic way of speaking, and moved very fast around the classroom. First she handed around a roll of toilet paper and told us to take as many squares as we needed. I pulled off a long piece, unsure of what this had to do with Russian. She explained that we had to take the toilet paper, and for each square we tore off it we had to say something about ourselves. My piece was too long, thus people found out that my favourite vegetable is the pumpkin. I always feel as if it is my duty to entertain people in getting to know you exercises, I must desire their approval. When people complained about how long their pieces of toilet paper were, Olga said that was your choice and made them keep spouting facts. This was my first indication that she was a tough nut.
Her English was convoluted, I found myself wishing I had a dictaphone hidden in my bag so I could record the way she spoke. She swiftly covered the whiteboard with the Russian alphabet and for one of the characters she said something like, it is good in the class if each week I teach a swear. Not a very bad swear, so I think back to school, and I think this one, you know the Christmas tree? Well the woodcutters go out and cut up the tree into- she indicates a distance of a few feet, and then they leave mess. And we call this ’yolky polkeh’, you say when you get home and there is no champagne and nice bath for you, and your husband not cooked dinner. Most of the lesson was conducted in a similar rush of words, sometimes I found that I understood nothing of what she was explaining. I felt very lost.
I haven’t dabbled in many languages in my life. I learnt Latin in high school because it was the only language where there wasn’t speaking exams. I was shy, so the idea of a purely written language appealed to me. Then a few years ago I developed a crush on the Mexican Day of the Dead and learnt Spanish for a while. I learnt how to order food in a restaurant, and talk about going to the cinema. With Russian, the first chapter in the textbook is about passport control and features an exchange between the severe passport guard and Peter Green the English businessman, then Marina Petrova, the student.
Your passport, please! What is your surname?
My surname is Petrova. Marina Petrova.
Petrova? This Russian surname. Are you Russian?
Yes, my father – Russian. My mother – English.
Interesting. Are you tourist?
No, I am a student, a student at the Moscow State University.
Moscow State University? This is good!
In the stilted world of Beginners Russian, people have a constant need to repeat things. It is sober and matter of fact, I don’t get the same joyful feeling that I got when a Spanish textbook person said interesante, instead I am scared that Marina Petrova will be taken in for further questioning about her mixed heritage. I’m relieved when the guard is pleased she’s a student. These sinister undertones are part of the reason I want to learn Russian. I no longer want to learn a fun language, like Spanish. Spanish is not difficult, you don’t have to contort your mouth into shapes as if you are tumbling a large stone between your tongue and palate, and you definitely don’t have seizures when you open up the textbook because it looks impossible.
In the class were several of Olga’s returning students, one of which she was sweet on. Dominic the tall, classic looking German fellow was consistently picked out by Olga for everything from reading segments of the passport control section to helping with the cassette player. Olga poked at it for a moment, before throwing her hands down and saying Dominic, help! Dominic looked as if he would much rather stay seated, and in fact didn’t seem very cluey about the tape player, but eventually got it working. At the break, I asked Dominic how he had found Russian so far. He looked miserable and lost and said it was difficult. He said that Olga was a hard teacher, and I felt sorry for him being under her scrutiny.
I will not be one of Olga’s favourite students. The only thing I can say in Russian at the moment is ’goodbye’, an auspicious first word. How soon will I be saying goodbye to Olga after Russian well and truly confounds me?

Week 3
Olga has worn the same tight olive green trousers every week so far. Although she is not slim, she manages to wear the trousers well, their tightness gives her an air of authority, they are remeniscent of the type of pants mounted police might wear. She wears shoes with pointy toes and stiletto heels, which pitch her body forward and cause her to walk violently. She wears her glasses at the end of her nose, they make her look like an obscure species of owl.
This week she brought in her video of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. It began with an immensely dated animation of Ancient Greeks running in droves towards Athens, which Olga reminded us was made in Russia, despite the English voice over. The opening ceremony itself sent Olga into a frenzy of patriotism. She admitted that at the time she was "interested in other things" at the time of the Olympics, to which Norma said something about "good looking men". She made three or four mentions of good looking men during the class. It is her running joke, delivered in her signature style – after the punchline, she sticks out her tongue as if she’s trying to touch the end of her chin with it. I never know how to respond so I quickly look away.
"There is a lot of money here. Wigs, costumes, actors, sandals. " Olga points out the impressive features of the Russian Ancient Greeks. In the audience, a seam of people holding up connecting boards form a path for a runner to jog up with the Olympic flame. I think of how that stunt could have gone horribly wrong. Norma asks if he is a well known athlete, and when Olga says she doesn't know him, Norma says something about how she must have noticed his muscular physique at the time.
I’m uncomfortable. Despite hours of study, I cannot speak Russian very well. I can write it proficiently, but trying to speak it each word is iceberg like, lumpen and huge. I am envious of the people in my class who are able to speak it without giant pauses and gross mistakes of pronounciation. I left class feeling very miserable about the whole endeavour, even the dated appearance of the Olympians failed to cheer me.
Olga was late for class today. "My husband has blown up his knee. He is sort of injured, " she explained. Almost immediately she began to cover the white board in angry blue letters and though I copied them down faithfully, they meant nothing.
Her persecution of Dominic continues. Today she chastised him for taking shortcuts with his homework, and sent him to the photocopy room to make copies of sports related vocabulary sheets. Then, later, she sent him off to get a cd player. Poor Dominic. I usually sit next to him because it means I escape Olga’s attention, but also because he is very kind and well mannered. He doesn't ask me silly questions about what I’m doing with my life, and for that I am thankful.
For my homework, I wrote a stunning descriptive passage about my house.
"My name is Vanessa and this is my house. This is my room. My desk is very important because I am a writer. This is the kitchen. I love to cook. I collect plates and have many. This is the bedroom. It is messy! I have many clothes. This is the living room. I have an old stereo system. This is the garden and rabbit."
I couldn’t quite get the last sentence right, but it didn’t matter, I avoided reading it out to the class anyway. I know that it is no way to learn, and I’d spent hours on it and should have presented it, but I am scared of reading things out.
The birdwatching isn’t progressing either. I borrowed Amber’s bird book but haven’t yet looked up what species it is that craps on my washing in giant black splatters. I am too scared to use my laptop outside in case one of the splatters falls on the keyboard, I can picture it all over the crisp, white keyboard, I can hear my anguished howl.

Week 4

Olga’s wearing something different – a grey dress with black boots and flat heels, perhaps a concession to the rainy weather. This week she’s brought in a cd of Russian music, and when I enter the classroom late after a frustrating train ride sandwiched in amongst everyone who left work at North Sydney at six o’clock, the room is quiet but for the orchestra leaking from the cd player. Everyone is working industriously on something, which Dominic tells me is the translation on page 28 (about how it is difficult to study Russian and how I watch the Russian news but find it difficult to understand but interesting nevertheless).
After we stutter through the translation, in which everyone is frustratingly slow and makes mistakes, Olga hands out sheafs of photocopied pages, which she refers to as "your literature". "Keep it in your pocket when you’re travelling and you will be absolutely happy," she says of the sheet of paper that tells us how to greet people and say "I am hungry/thirsty".
By the fourth lesson, I’ve had enough time to resolve the characters of my classmates. The last few indistinct faces have resolved, for example Athena the proficient Greek girl, to whom Olga looks to for confirmation now that it is obvious Dominic isn’t striding ahead in great bounds. In fact I’m quicker than Dominic. But he is polite and handsome, and during the break we looked at the children’s book Olga gave him to translate. It is an alphabet book featuring kittens. It is from the mid seventies, and I laughed at the page where a kitten was in a jar, along with some perky Russian text. "It is small, it fits," Dominic said, but I said that no kids book today would have pictures of kittens in jars.
Dominic asked whether I was going to the concert on the weeked. One of the members of the class works for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, "administration" he had been quick to qualify, in case we thought he was a star bassoonist or second violin. Last week he mentioned that a Tchaikovsky concert was to be held soon, and tickets were selling fast. I told Dominic it was too expensive, plus I’d been to a lot of concerts in my life, and now go to them rarely. He said that he was yet to be inside the Sydney Opera House, but he was thinking of going to a concert soon. I privately ruminated upon the fact our conversation sounded like the text from the "The Theatre" chapter in our textbook.
At the end of the class, Olga announced that there was a Russian performer coming to Australia and doing a concert in November. The Symphony guy could perhaps get us a group discount. The idea of going on a group outing to the theatre with people from my Russian class was both repellant and curious. Although this lesson didn’t leave me feeling totally despondent as the week before had, I am still wary of Olga. If we were to fight, verbally or physically, she would definitely win. And whilst I don’t only feel comfortable around people who I think I could defeat, Olga seems dangerous. We haven’t bonded like she and Norma, who steal out for cigarettes at the break. I’m not a handsome man, and I’m not quick at picking up the language. Plus, she uses my name as the first guess for anyone’s name that she doesn’t know. She called four people in the class Vanessa this lesson, and only one of them was me.
The night after Russian I have a dream that I’m in Russia. It resembles an overgrown, scrappy Melbourne, with all the signs in Russian. I’m approaching a kind of camp or commune at the outskirts of the city, where I’m staying. People in evening wear are standing outside with guns. They are herding out the usual occupants. I hide behind a haystack with a girl whose only concern is having a cigarette. She decides to smoke the hay "although it’s cancerous". A German guy resembling Dominic joins us, he has a gun and is shooting the people in evening wear over the top of the haystack. The seige soon ends and we can return to the the commune building. The girl shrugs. "These things happen all the time in Russia." She and the German fellow become great pals very quickly and I’m left telling stories to kids with cerebral palsy in my parents’ bedroom from 1986.

Week 5
The class had hit a nadir. I haven’t learnt anything new either this week or last. This time, Olga was late. I entered the room on time and sat in uncomfortable silence with the other people in my class, none of whom I could think of anything to say to. The import export lady was there, so was the maths genius and the stressed nurse and the Greek girl and the English girl and the Japanese girl and the girl who writes real estate advertisements for my local paper. Out of all these choices, I had nothing to say. I sat down and opened my text book, feigning great interest in Chapter 3: "The Hotel ’Russia’. Where is the snack bar?"
When Olga arrives, her hair has turned a violet grey colour, and she’s wearing a tight blue dress. As I’m sitting closest to her, she directs her explanation to me, something about car accidents and waiting on the station. I’m disappointed that her husband hasn’t blown up his knee again.
She is wielding the Moscow Olympics video again. "First with pleasure," she announces, fussing over the combined tv/video machine. It is the closing ceremony, and the girl next to me cannot control her mirth. It is pretty funny. The climax arrives when a large inflatable bear attached to multicoloured helium balloons is conveyed from some chasm under the stadium into a formation of teenaged gymnasts. Olga asks us what the bear’s name is, and someone knows – Misha. Misha looks as if he’s been extracted from a 1980 greeting card. The Olympic flame is extinguished, and Misha is set free.
"Well, he never landed," said Olga cryptically. He must have landed. He can’t still be floating above Russia. I liked the idea of someone finding Misha tangled up in their back garden, or splattered across their balcony. As Misha rose, the cameras focussed on girls crying in the audience. I wasn’t convinced by Misha, he was like what a humourless nanny might consider cute and fun. Had he been the Olympic mascot? Why was he launched into the sky? Those Russians had already done it with Laika – can’t they keep animals on the ground where they’re meant to be?
After Misha, Olga handed out photocopies of "our numerical system", and we read out some things in Russian for a while. Then Norma and Olga argued about our final assignment, which was to present to the class the main story from a Russian children’s book. Norma’s book was too hard, and none of the words were in her dictionary. She had given it to a Russian friend to translate for her.
"And she told you?" Olga asked.
"He! I’m not friends with women," Norma said, weirdly. They argued about it for ten minutes, and I started packing up my things and raising my eyebrows at the people on either side of me. I decided for the final class I would bring in the Lomo and some photographs and translate bits of the manual whilst showing them the artfully blurred photos it takes.

Week 6
I was already late, but to my great perplexity, the lift refused to register my request for the fifth floor. I presssed the button, no light appeared in the halo around the number. I tried both lifts, then stood in the foyer looking bemused. I figured that the lift wouldn’t work because I was late, one time a few weeks back the people who’d gone out for a smoke break at half time had experienced a similar problem. I looked around for some kind of telephone that I could pick up and be instantly connected with help. There was one next to the fire hose cupboard, but it was red, and looked too important for me to try it. I didn’t want the fire brigade to come screaming up, just because I couldn’t get to level five.
I took to asking the people ascending to the market research sessions on level 11 if they could help me. Their reactions ranged from outright rudeness ("I have no idea" a woman snapped at me as she went through the important ritual of turning off her mobile phone) to suspicion. I was wearing a red knitted hat with a green knitted leaf sprouting from the top, but otherwise I looked respectable. Eventually I went up to 11 and asked the guy at the market research desk if he could help. What was wrong with these people? He acted as if I was accusing him of not having control of the building. I took up his suggestion and tried the fire stairs, although I was worried about being trapped. He smugly assured me I wouldn’t get stuck inside them, that being fire stairs you can get out at street level, and I wanted to remind him of the story of the old firefighter with dementia who was stuck in a shopping centre’s fire stairs for weeks and perished. I find this story chilling, especially how news reports had to include the fact he was a firefighter. Oh the irony!
Descending the fire stairs felt like spinning around with my eye shut, I felt dizzy by the time I was at the right door. I knocked for a while, sat on the step dejectedly, then gave up and went down to street level. The door opened into a pile of office trash in translucent blue bags. I could see that they were full of paper, cake-stained foil boards from morning teas, drinking straws, tissues. I went into the foyer to try again, and as I stood looking at the list of businesses on the different floors I realised I was in the wrong building.
The building my classes were in was next door, separated by a camera goods store. I’d made this mistake a few times previously, but had always realised within a few seconds. Damn these city buildings – they all look the same. I felt pleased that I hadn’t been more assertive with my request for level 5, which was no doubt empty, full of dreaming computers.
At the same time, I felt very embarrassed. I felt as if these things only happen to me, that I bumble through life whilst others glide. I pick the wrong doors, don’t know what to do with the worksheets, and feel too ashamed to ask obvious questions. I have the demeanour of a dork: I never know quite what to do. I can’t use mobile phones! I don’t know the meaning of new slang words until they make it into the dictionary!
Bob, the security guy, was dozing at his desk as I tiptoed down the corridor to my lesson. Olga was waving a worksheet with a list of nouns and adjectives on it (homework, which I’d left at home, making me feeling even more useless) as I slipped into a spare seat. We had to match them up: I was praised for "closed post office" whilst Dominic was scorned for "good bus". "Anything but good!" Olga pleaded.
During Olga’s cigarette break, Dominic resumed telling Athena how he was going overseas in a few weeks, for an "exhibition". Was Dominic an artist? No, he said, and mumbled something else. "Refugees?" Katya heard. "No, refridgeration." I was immediately very interested by the refridgeration exhibition, imagining it in a giant pavilion like the Crystal Palace, full of refridgeration experts from different countries. I wanted to ask questions, but I thought Dominic might not take it well, he might think I was mocking him. Instead I asked him how his translation of the kitten alphabet book was going. "I have not looked at it," he said.
I brought out the Russian newspaper I’d bought earlier that day, and showed him the article I was trying to translate. It has a picture of a bearded man in a checked shirt, holding a very handsome chicken. The headline reads "$100 for rooster", although at first, when I was looking up the last word in the dictionary I said "cock! $100 for cock!", although I am loathe to make rooster/cock jokes. I hadn’t done very well with my translation: "For the first time he has seen them on exhibition in moscow and in the first moment he adopted them behind peacocks", was one of my more successful sentences. "In Moscow I travel with his pidgeon/dove speak genius" was less so.

The front page had Olympians and a picture of a man being held up by a petrol bowser (the pump is sticking into his back and he has his hands up) on it, and a two page article about having dogs as pets. It will probably take me five years to be able to translate this dog article.
When she returned, Olga showed us how to write "congratulations on father’s day" in our fathers day cards. She told us she was going to Cairns for father’s day over the weekend, so she’ll "be a little bit tinted" when she comes back. Her warped English was in fine form, I noted such words as "discomfortable". I feel a bit mean and lazy making fun of Olga’s English. After all, I can barely say anything in Russian, and the only word I understand on the Russian news is "Moscow". Still, I’m not really making fun of her, I relish her odd expressions. I like the idea that words are mutable, I get sick of saying things in the same way, and can’t step outside English enough to warp it.
The next chapter of the book is "At the Cafe". Peter Green has vanished, and we are now following Marina and her boyfriend Misha, who are ordering lunch. Marina loves mushrooms and sour cream. She is a vegetarian, whilst Misha orders a steak. Steak in Russian is "beefschyteks", which feels strange to say, as if my voice is being played through a slow tape recorder, so it is low and stretched. In the translation exercise at the end of the chapter I had to translate: "My favourite dish is steak, a nice, big steak!" something I have never, and will never say. I liked translating it though, it felt as if I was acting.
Olga described to us what a "kompot" is. The dictionary had said fruit salad, but she said it was dried fruits boiled with sugar and then chilled. She seemed to miss it, she said it was delicious, and, in the final quote of the lesson told us that some people "make it as a conservative. Underneath all of the house."

Week 7
Olga has been replaced! What could have happened? The replacement Olga was a neat, quiet lady who immediately upon entering the room wrote something on the board in Russian. "Olga Bolna" we read out, and guessed that it meant "Olga is sick". We were correct.
This lady, whose name I never found out, was Olga’s son’s piano teacher. She taught us the different words for piano in Russian, as well as the word for sneeze and the Russian equivalent of "bless you", which is "be healthy". She was quick to provide the answers to these trivia questions, as Olga had been a few weeks earlier when she was showing people how to write their name in Russian. The name episode made me feel like I was at a party with an exchange student in high school. It was always very prestigous to be friends with one of the exchange students; I never was. They were mostly from northern European countries, and upon their arrival were quickly absorbed by the most popular groups of girls. They’d have the exchange student write things in other languages on their pencilcases.
At the beginning of the lesson she handed out a copy of the Moscow rail system, with an asterisk at the station where the terrorist bomb went off. She described the rail system as "like a spider", perhaps she meant a spider’s web, because it did resemble one. It looked impossible to negotiate. She then started fumbling with a plastic bag, in which I thought I could see a half eaten sushi roll. It turned out to be a candle, which she lit in commemoration of those who had died in Beslan. She showed us a piece of black bread and said that traditionally, when someone dies, they put some black bread, some vodka and a candle on a little dish, and light the candle. We all stood and upheld a moment of silence, after which the piano teacher thanked us, and told us we were now a part of ’the history’.
The class went smoothly until Norma turned up half way through. She seemed intent on grilling this new lady, even though she was not even a language teacher, and was following Olga’s instructions. After we’d gone through a short, confusing explanation of the short forms of adjectives and moved on to directions, Norma grumbled "that’s it, five minutes of one thing then it’s on to the next." She then asked irrelevant questions about adjectives whilst bragging that she was the only one that ever asked questions (untrue) and that sometimes she asked questions she knew the answers to for the good of the class. She was getting righteous and heated! I exchanged looks with other people in the class, looks that said "this lady is a thorny old rosebush that has long quit flowering".
The piano teacher was flustered. She had a tiny pad of post it notes and wrote down Norma’s questions to pass on to Olga, and managed to escape by teaching us numbes and playing what Russians call lotto and what we call bingo. The lotto set had belonged to Olga’s grandmother, I pictured an old lady wearing a headscarf in a dark, dingy apartment. We each had a card and she pulled the numbers out of a bag. The numbers were stamped in wooden shapes that resembled little barrels. She was probably the most enthusiastic participant of the game, even though it was almost time to go she insisted we stay until someone won. Dominic won, and got to choose what colour lollies he wanted. We’d only learnt one colour – red, so that’s what he asked for. The teacher said that we had to ask for the colour we wanted in Russian, and I lost no time in looking up ’yellow’ in the back of my textbook. I uttered the first syllable and she completed it for me, looking very impressed with my knowledge. The lollies were uninspiring, I think they may have been sugar free. They’re the kind of lolly an old lady might give you to suck on a plane to stop your eardrums from bursting.
My highlight of the lesson came during the break, when I asked Dominic about Heino. I’d been researching record collecting for a presentation, and I’d read about Heino in an interview with Jello Biafra in Incredibly Strange Music Vol.2. Heino is a freaky looking German singer who has large, almost square looking eyes (like those kids in the TDK ads) and always wears dark glasses. He has a rousing baritone, and his music is best described as what you’d put on if you want people to leave your home. As soon as I opened the book to Heino Dominic groaned and said "oh no". "This music is very embarrassing to any young people in Germany," he said. I was full of questions. I found out that Heino is an albino, he is now bald (but wears a wig), and that Dominic is from the same town as Heino. I asked if there was a statue, but apparently he only owns a cafe. No prizes for guessing what kind of music is pumping out of the speakers whilst ladies enjoy their gugelhoffs. Dominic took the book into the photocopy room next door, which he was quite familiar with because Olga was always getting him to copy things, in order to copy the pages with Heino on them. "There will be many laughs tonight," he said, tucking the pages into his meticulously organised folder.

Week 8
So how did it end? The last lesson Olga had promised was "all for pleasure", in which we were to present our five minute explanation of allocated Russian children’s books, and eat sweets. I had been working on my rogue presentation, shirking the kiddy books for a Lomo Slideshow, in which I had gathered together photographs and written short Russian sentences for each of them. "This is me an a shark," for example, or "This is my friend and his dog". In other words, completely self explanatory sentences that nevertheless had me searching various dictionaries for the correct words. I have found out that it is very difficult to work out how to say "I am brushing my teeth."
I had arranged all this, I had the photos and had practised, but then disaster struck and I couldn’t go to class. I was called back to where I came from, I drained back to the suburbs, to the hospital I used to see winking with light on top of the hill at night. I sat in the garden outside drinking multi vitamin juice that stained my mouth orange. My sister and I shared a piece of cake from the cafeteria, before taking deep breaths and walking back inside.
I missed out on Russian. I felt sad for missing it, and tried to imagine everyone in the class delivering their presentation in faltering, uncertain voices, and Olga being far too enthusiastic, saying "there you have it, you speak in Russian!" with a goggle eyed look on her face that says "it’s just that easy!"
The last Russian I learnt was the numerals one to ten, memorised last week at a bus stop whilst waiting for the 413. It was raining, and I said each number aloud to set it in my mind. Carl was on the bus when I boarded it, and when he asked me what I’d been doing I was very literal and said "learning the Russian alphabet".
"As you do," he laughed.
Will it be the last Russian I ever learn? Will it fizzle out like other language attempts? I can’t afford to do Level 2 next semester, unless I find a hundred dollar note in the gutter tomorrow morning, so I guess that’s it for now. I never found out about that man and his chicken. I did see a woman on the bus reading another issue of that Russian paper I bought. She was wearing very tight clothes that showed every bulge, had a giant web of red brown dyed hair and bright lipstick. She was about fifty. The thought of approaching her with my pathetic Russian was farcical.
Stop Press! Twenty minutes of eavesdropping on a Russian couple on a train yields understanding of one word, depressive slump follows.