Over the Counter by Paul Kimm

Over the Counter by Paul Kimm

Paul went to live in Russia on the fifth day of January in 1998. He was thirty years old. The Russian Federation was six years old, or to be more precise six years and twelve days old. The biggest country in the world was also the youngest, a time of transition, a country whose present was being pulled apart by its past and future. A time of crime, crime in everything, at extremes, Moscow having an average of one hundred murders a day. News headlines spoke of atrocities war times couldn’t have imagined.

At that time of year the days were four hours long. Minus fifteen degrees Celsius was a warm day. It was the coldest weather he’d ever known. On arrival the boss of his school picked him up from the airport, drove him to the apartment he was to live in, handed over a plastic bag of dry biscuits, two half-litre bottles of water, and a box of tea bags. She told him someone would come around the next morning to pick him up, show him around, and how to get to the school the day after that to start his first day of teaching. Within five minutes of dropping him off, she said goodbye, he thanked her, and he then looked around the apartment. It had very little; no phone, no fridge, no TV or radio, no sofa, no armchairs, no washing machine. Paul figured it was much quicker to list what the place had than what it didn’t; it had a stove, a bed and a table with a wooden chair tucked under it.

Paul peered into the bag of biscuits. They didn’t make him hungry, so he tied up the handles and left the bag on the table. He unscrewed a bottle of water and took a swig, then decided to lie down and wait to be picked up the next day to learn more. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep but was unconscious within minutes and didn’t wake until ten o’clock the next morning. A firm knock rapped on the door at ten-thirty. Paul opened it to a man, his hand outstretched, waiting for Paul to return his hand, so he reached out his palm in return. The man’s face beamed a wide smile whilst clasping Paul’s hand in a vigorous handshake.

‘Hello, it is Paul, yes? I am Mikhail, from the school to meet you and show you local area, and how use metro for work.’

‘Hello, yes, I’m Paul. Thank you for coming. Please come in.’

‘No, it’s okay. I keep my shoes and hat on, very cold outside. Minus of twenty-two today. Put on your shoes and clothes and we go.’

‘Ah, alright. No problem. Five minutes. Is that okay?’

‘Yes, Paul. Five minutes is okay.’

During this first meeting between Mikhail and Paul the handshake had continued with the same enthusiasm. Within less than twenty-four hours in Russia, Paul had experienced the coldest weather, the shortest day, and the longest handshake of his life. When Paul was ready, Mikhail was still waiting outside the front door, large smile intact.

‘First, we go to local shop. I will show you how it works. Then we go to metro, and I show you how metro works. We go to school after metro and show how to enter tomorrow for your teaching, and then we go for lunch, and I show you how ordering lunch works.’

As they walked Mikhail explained the city had a population of five million people, but no supermarkets. There was one food shop in Paul’s local area. They peered into the shop through the window in the doorway, and Mikhail explained that each of the identical metal and bulbous plastic counters represented a kind of food group: fruit and vegetables, dairy, meat, dried goods, bread, and alcohol. Mikhail gave the instructions on how this shop worked on the old kassa system and along with that a mini history lesson.

‘During Soviet Union was zero unemployment. Everyone had job to do. Better to say zero unemployment was invented. Kassa system was best example of this. In past all counters had individual seller. Customer goes in, to dairy counter, you say you want cheese, you want milk, seller tells you price, you remember counter number, price for cheese and milk, go to kassa box, tell woman in box counter number, and price, you pay this, she gives you little receipt, you go back to counter two, give receipt to seller, seller gives you milk and cheese. When you want bread, you go to bread counter, number three, tell which bread you want, hear price, go again to kassa and same. Then for meat, same, then for fruit, same, then for beer, vodka, same, and repeat. Each counter like new shop, not same shop, and each one pay woman in the kassa box, get receipt, and collect food, and so on. Not difficult I think, okay? Now, we go to metro. Now you know this system you can shop later, good for practice Russian language. This is good shop.’

After leaving the shop Mikhail took Paul to the nearest metro station, showed him how to buy a token, how to read the metro system map, how to get on the train, and off, and how to exit, and then they went to visit the school. It being Sunday, the school was closed, but Mikhail wanted Paul to know where it was, and told him he’d start teaching at four o’clock the next day, but best to come in early, midday, and Mikhail would meet him at the same front door. By this time, at three o’clock in the afternoon, it was already dark, so Mikhail suggested a cheap meal nearby then he’d walk back Paul back to the metro. As they tucked into their steaming bowls of meat filled dumplings lathered in sour cream, and 500ml bottle of local beer each, Mikhail reminded him about the local shop, that it’d be open on Paul’s way back and he should go in to get some water at least, and perhaps something for breakfast, it’d stay open until at least ten, and he shouldn’t drink the tap water, absolutely not.

When Mikhail said goodbye and Paul stood on the incredibly deep escalator to take him down to his metro train, he realised he was on his own, outside, in public, in a foreign country for the first time in his life. Not just any country either, this was Russia, the collapsed Soviet Union, St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, for a few years Petrograd, a city just over three-hundred years old. His feet planted on the same soil, in the same city a revolution had kicked off, less than a mile from where he was at that moment, fewer than eighty years before. Everything physical told him where he was, but he couldn’t get his mind around it. Once on the train, for the ten stops back to his district, he thought about how to handle the kassa system in the shop, some bread and cheese would do, but for sure some water.

When he entered the store, he looked around, and was grateful to see no other customers were there, both the cashier kiosks were empty. A solitary woman was standing behind the dairy counter, her arms crossing her chest in a bicep swelling, lung compressing self-hug. Her lips closed into a razor width cut. Paul walked up and looked at the cheeses ranging in colour, he thought, from a pale yellow to an extremely similar pale yellow. Paul looked at her. She looked at him, but he felt she was staring at his forehead rather than his eyes. She didn’t speak so he placed his index finger on the thick glass pointing at a faint yellow block of cheese.

‘Shto?’

The word sounded more like a noise designed to scare off an unwelcome animal than something from an actual language. Paul levelled his finger to point at a particular block of cheese.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t speak Russian. Can I have that cheese please?’

She picked up the cheese, uttered a few clipped words and strode over to the cashier box nearest her. From inside it she banged on the glass and with a curling finger called Paul over. He pushed the rouble notes he had through the slot in the Perspex window. She fished a few out and gave him a receipt the size of a postage stamp and left the box. She went back to the dairy counter, put his ordered cheese in a small plastic bag on top of the glass. Paul wasn’t sure if he should follow her until she motioned for him to give her the receipt. After collecting his little bag of cheese, he went over to the bakery counter, but she didn’t follow him neither with her feet nor eyes. He waited in front of the bread counter for half a minute, in the now completely silent shop, but the woman wouldn’t move. Paul made a polite cough, and then her eyes turned to him.

‘Shto?’

‘I’m so sorry, can I please have some bread as well please? Then I’ll need water. I know you don’t understand, and I’m sorry.’

She stomped over, to him. Paul pointed at the loaf nearest him in order to make it clear which one. He didn’t care which one. He wanted the easiest loaf. It took another ten or fifteen minutes, but between the barked ‘shto’s, the refusals to follow Paul when he changed from one counter to the next, and the marches to and from the cashier kiosk, Paul managed to leave the shop with his cheese, bread, and a two-litre bottle of water.

Irina wasn’t having a good day. Good days were few. Ever since Victor had acquired the shop two years ago things had gone from bad to worse. A deep worse. Today the cashier had called in sick, so she was doing seven jobs. One more than the usual six she did. The last thing she needed was a foreigner walking in who didn’t even know how to ask for a piece of cheese. He just stood there, his nervous, foreign smile, and his pointing finger asking for the two hundred grams of cheese falsely labelled as three hundred grams. She took him over to the kassa, and for some reason he didn’t follow her, and she had to beckon him. She sifted out the twenty needed for his purchase from the pile of notes he produced from his pocket and gave him the chit. She went back to the dairy counter and waited as the foreigner stayed next to the kassa, not moving back to get his cheese for some reason. Only once she held out her palm, like asking a dog for its paw, did he walk over and hand her the receipt. She was glad when he left, after his pointing at bread and water, and she hoped he was just passing by. She didn’t want Victor knowing a foreigner had been in.

The next day Mikhail was waiting outside the front door for Paul. From the moment Paul had turned the corner he could see Mikhail’s clouds of breath billowing in the cold. When he got up to him Mikhail took his hands from his pockets, removed his right glove, and shook Paul’s hand.

‘Good, you are not late. Midday is good. All is okay?’

‘Yes, thank you. All is fine. I have a question. What is ‘shto’?’

‘What is ‘shto’.’

‘I’m asking you, what is it? What is ‘shto’?’

‘Yes, ‘shto’ is ‘what’.’

‘I don’t understand, Mikhail. I want to know what ‘shto’ means.’

‘It means ‘what’, ‘shto’ is ‘what’.’

‘’Shto’ is ‘what’?’

‘You asked me many times already! ‘Shto’ is Russian word for ‘what’!’

‘Okay, I’ve got it. ‘Shto’ is ‘what’.’

‘Yes, ‘what’ is ‘shto’. You say it correct. Molodets.’

‘Molodets?’

‘Yes, molodets. It means like ‘well done’, ‘good job’.’

‘Okay, thanks, Mikhail.’

The first day of teaching went quickly for Paul. It was a blur, teaching three groups of students, different levels of English, different ages, but the day seemed to go well. One of the teachers explained Mikhail was the school gopher, the man who sorted everything, liked to help all new arrivals out, would happily help with anything extra, which wasn’t that common a trait. The teachers told him most of them went out for a meal and drinks on Fridays after the last class and he should come. Then they’d work out the weekend, what he might want to do with his first full weekend in Russia as well.

Mikhail was at the exit when Paul left, and he offered to walk with him to the metro.

‘It was funny about ‘what’ before, and with ‘shto’, also funny.’

‘Ha! Yes! I get it now. ‘Shto’ is the Russian word for ‘what’. Shto, shto, shto.’

‘Yes, that is it. Another good word is ‘mozhna’. This word is like Switzerland army knife of words. It gives many ways to say something.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘’Mozhno’ is like ‘is it possible?’, ‘can I have?’, ‘is this available?’ You can use mozhna in the shop easily, just point to foods and say ‘mozhno’.

‘Okay, mozhna. Thank you, Mikhail. Mozhna, mozhna, mozhna.’

‘That’s it. Molodets. Yes, you can use it in the shop. Today if you want, when going home now. Shop will be open. Use mozhna and shop woman will be happy. In Russia, people like if foreigners use Russian language, because usually Russian people not happy all the time.’

Paul decided he would try the shop again on the way home and try Mikhail’s ‘mozhna’. Maybe the shop assistant would be more helpful if he showed he was trying to use Russian already, even though it was only his third day, little more than forty-eight hours since he’d arrived in Russia. He still had some of the bread left, enough water, and most of the tasteless, pale-yellow cheese, so decided he’d try to buy some kind of spread to put on the bread for the next day’s breakfast. By the time he arrived at the shop it was close to ten o’clock, but still open. Once again it was a relief to walk in and see no other shoppers, and the same woman, in the same pose, still behind the dairy counter. Two counters along there was one with numerous jars on show behind the glass. The display ranged from pickled vegetables he knew, gherkins, onions, cabbage, beetroot, through to those he’d never considered pickleable, carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes, and then towards the left jars of ingredients he couldn’t recognise, some of them shredded, or odd shapes he had no idea the origin off, or some just a jar of either orange, purple, or off-white mush. Then finally there seemed to be a few jars of jam, their only evidence of this being a cartoon picture of each fruit on the label. He opted for a small jar of what promised to be apricot jam. The woman hadn’t moved an inch since he walked in, so he shuffled his feet, and coughed gently again. She didn’t come over, but spat out a few angry words, none of them sounding like ‘shto’ or ‘mozhno’, and then looked ahead again, not meeting Paul’s eyes, and resumed her seemingly permanent position, as though a guard of the dairy counter. Paul wanted to buy the jam. He wanted to use his ‘mozhno’, so he coughed again, pointed his finger at the place the jar he wanted was and said out loud, ‘mozhno’. The woman let out a lung emptying sigh, looked down, for a moment, shook her head to herself and muttered a few words, walked around the back of the counters, stood in front of Paul, and shouted ‘shto?’ His finger was still pressing on the glass where the jam was, only a couple of inches away from it. He repeated ‘mozhno’ and she went to the cashier box, Paul followed, fumbled some rouble notes in front of her, she took the ones needed to pay for the jam, pushed a miniscule receipt in his direction, and went back to the counter. Paul knew to follow her back this time, and when she slammed the apricot jam jar on the top, Paul took it, smiled at her, and left with his second purchase in Russia.

That foreign boy came in again, wanting something from the preserves department. Why he came back so soon Irina had no idea. How unpleasant did she need to be to stop him coming? Victor had been in, asking who’d been coming in. Anyone of interest, anyone new. He’d kept pressing her about it, but she couldn’t tell Victor about the foreigner. So, when the foreigner came back, she realised perhaps he wasn’t there in passing. She did her best to ignore him, to make him aware she wanted nothing to do with him. But, when he even gave a feeble ‘can I?’ with his finger fixed on his jam she decided to serve him, yet to be as rude as she could. Ignoring his existence, the heavy sigh, slamming his jam jar down hard enough to almost break the countertop, not smiling back at him, hopefully all that was enough to deter him from coming back. There are other shops after all. He’ll be much, much better off using those.

For breakfast the next morning Paul had more of the bread, cheese, and the extraordinarily sweet apricot jam, but with the cheese and jam on bread it wasn’t a shocking combination. He figured a coffee would be nice each morning, and he needed some salt and pepper, so figured he’d ask Mikhail how to ask for those. If he could learn two or three new words a day, he’d be soon able to shop in the local place and be less of a bother to the mean woman there. He’d already understood that Russian people didn’t seem to smile all that much, but couldn’t figure out why the woman seemed to find such distaste in helping him, like he was the worst job he’d ever given her. All the same, her attitude towards him was a good motivator for learning the language, and the kassa system in the shop made him do this. As horrible as it was going in there, it felt like this was good for him ultimately, and the shop could double as a grocery supply and a Russian language teacher.

Paul managed to get the few words he wanted to use later from Mikhail. In fact, they were quite easy with ‘salt’ being almost the same but leaving off the ‘t’ at the end, so ‘sol’. ‘Coffee’ was also practically the same, but not to use a long ‘e’ on the end, just ‘kofay’. ‘Pepper’ was the only trickier one with ‘perets’, and Mikhail took some time explaining there were different types of ‘perets’ and so ‘not to get vegetable pepper, you need to say colour of ‘perets’.’ In the end, Paul decided buying some salt and coffee was enough for his trip back to the shop after work. He’d learn more the next day, when the cheese and bread had run out, but it would be good to sprinkle a little salt on the jam to unsweeten it, and have a coffee with the next morning’s breakfast. Throughout the day at work, Paul repeated in his head the little group of Russian words he’d learned. He started to feel like he was on a mission to make the local shop his local shop, to be welcomed in there at some point.

‘Mozhna sol. Mozhna kofay. Shto. Shto, Shto.’

He left work the minute his last class finished and headed straight to the metro, bought a token, got on the train, and maintained a good pace. By the time he was walking into the shop it was just past nine-thirty. All he wanted was two things, but that meant navigating her from the dairy counter and then to two separate ones to get his salt and coffee. She was there again, behind the collection of yellow cheeses and bags of milk, in her assumed statue-like position. He looked around to find coffee first, and when he did, once again pointed his finger, and called out ‘mozhna kofay’. She didn’t move, so he repeated it with more volume. She still didn’t move. He was the only one in the shop and he felt like he’d become the Invisible Man. He was about to repeat for the third time his ’mozhna kofay’ when a thickset man, shaved head, leather trousers and waistcoat came out from the back and nudged his knuckles into her back, and nodded towards Paul. She came over to him immediately, took the indicated packet of coffee out and put it on top of the counter. Paul smiled at her, but no reply to that, and before she went to the cashier box, he blurted out ‘mozhna sol’ to which she replied, quieter than previously ‘shto?’ Paul repeated ‘mozhna sol’ and she looked at him again with a blank expression. The bald, mostly dressed in leather man, shouted across at her, ‘Irina, sol! Sol!’. She then went to another part of the shop, took a small blue and white box, and placed that on the counter there. Paul guessed it must be salt, and followed her to the kassa, paid, collected his two items, and left, all the time the bald guy kept grinning at him.

It happened then. She’d tried, but Victor saw the foreigner and asked Irina about him. He asked her how many times he’d been in. When had he first come in. He repeated questioning her, as though trying to catch her out. There was no more harm that could be done by giving Victor the answers. He knew about the foreign boy now. She had intended not to serve him when he came in. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t serve him at all the next time he came in, pretend he wasn’t there, no matter how long he stayed in the shop, or what he said, she simply would not serve him. It was absurd, but it was the only way she could stop him coming in. So, it was only when Victor came through that she had no choice, but to sell him the stuff he wanted, which he now seemed to know the words for. It didn’t help either of them that he was learning some Russian words.  She also knew what Victor could and would do to make a few more roubles was unspeakable. He had his finger in a lot of pies, and she knew what was in some of those pies. It was a knowledge that equally protected her and enslaved her. An unwanted, unasked for complicity in Victor’s dealings, that imprisoned her, and her feigned ignorance of his deeds was the only way she stayed safe. All the same, she resolved to try one more time with the foreigner. Next time he came in she would completely walk away. Flat out refuse his existence. It was probably his final chance.

As the week went on Paul learned a few more words from Mikhail. He was pleased to hear that the word for ‘bacon’ was practically identical but pronounced like ‘beckon’. The word for ‘bread’ was tougher, ‘khleb’, but Paul resolved his weekend breakfast treat would be a bacon sandwich as the cheese, that tasted like a distant cousin of cheese, would be a bit of a depressing treat meal for the start of his weekend. Mikhail also gave him the word for ‘girl’; ‘deervushka’. He’d heard it already a few times during the week, and he’d also asked colleagues about it. It didn’t feel polite, but this was the universal word used to get the attention of any woman working somewhere, regardless of age, regardless of context, the word was ‘girl’. Whether speaking to a young woman working in a bank, a woman in her forties in front of you in a queue, or a woman close to retirement working in for the metro system, they were all ‘deervushka’s. He hoped he wouldn’t need to use it because it seemed so wrong to him, but apparently to Russians, and the Russian women who had it said them, it didn’t matter.

On the walk from his metro stop to the shop Paul repeated the words ‘mozhna bekon’, ‘mozhna khleb’ to himself, reaching at least a hundred iterations in his mind. Before entering the shop he said them one more time out loud to see how the words felt in his mouth. She was in her regular spot, her regular stance, and with her regular unmoved face. He knew by now she wouldn’t look at him, so he chose to go to the counter with the easier word first. He scanned the array of meats, a couple of rather skinny looking whole chickens with their heads intact, something else that he figured to be pork chops, then to the right more cured meats, sausages, salamis, different bacons with different hues from pink to purple and brown. Beyond that there were tubs of meat scraps he couldn’t identify at all, but hoped they were for dogs at least. He positioned himself in front of what he was confident was bacon, looked over at her, and said out loud ‘mozhna bekon’. Her sigh was so strong he almost expected to feel the breeze from it across the shop. She started moving towards his counter though, but then, before reaching him, she opened a curtain and went through the back leaving Paul standing there. He was the only person in the whole shop.

She had done all she could. He came in again and she did exactly as she had planned and walked through to the back and left him. Left him standing there, letting him know she wasn’t prepared to serve him anymore, he should find elsewhere, she was done helping him. Why he kept coming when she was so horrible to him, she couldn’t fathom, but hoped her latest tactic would do the trick. Sure, she had to sit with Victor and his friend in the back, and she truly couldn’t stand the sight of Victor, but she told him there were no customers and she wanted a quick sit-down break while it was quiet.

Paul wanted the bacon, he wanted the bread, he wanted his Saturday morning bacon sandwich. He’d almost completed his first week of teaching. He’d done his best to be less useless in the shop. He was already close to knowing and using ten words in six days. He wanted the bacon. He decided to go for it, to use the ‘girl’ word. He filled his lungs, let some air out through his nose, and yelled:

‘DEER-VUSH-KA! MOZHNA BEKON!’

Victor jumped to his feet and glared at Irina. She hated Victor in a way that made her feel ill. She knew what he would do. The sick bastard got a kick out of it because there couldn’t be much money in it. She’d tried to help the foreigner. She really had. She couldn’t understand why he’d kept coming back. She’d been as mean and unkind as she could. Irina made to stand, but Victor motioned her to stay sitting down. Victor nodded a knowing look, a fat smile on his lips, towards his old friend, Mikhail.

‘Molodets, Mikhail. Molodets.’

Irina knew not to move. Victor told his friend, Mikhail, to go out the back door, and run around the front to lock the shop door. He would go through and see to the bacon. Before he did, he winked at Irina, and she knew what that meant. She took her coat from the peg, grabbed her hat, and left through the same door Mikhail had just gone through. The shop was closing for the rest of the day, and Irina would return for her next shift, looking after the whole kassa system by herself, at nine o’clock again the next day.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Paul Kimm 2024