The next morning was a Monday and we were met at the hostel by Sergei Nikolayevich, our new teacher. Sergei Nikolayevich was a bald little man whose size dispelled the myth-which i was starting to believe- that all Russians are huge in size. He had that hair colour, which is common among the Russians and which i was later to understand is sometimes described as the colour "rus"in Russian. He also had those characteristic high cheek bones.
Sergei Nikolaivitch had already introduced himself to us on the day after we arrived when he had turned up at the hostel and later taken our group to buy some of the clothes and boots, which we needed for the fast approaching winter.
As it was not so cold that monday morning, Sergei Nikolayevich had suggested that we walk down to the faculty by way of the the park, which is located next to the hostel and which runs all the way up to Varashilovsky street; the very wide street on which the faculty building is located. He said that the faculty was about 30 minutes-of a reasonably paced walk-away from the hostel, but he had also wanted to use the opportunity to talk to us about the statues and their significance in Soviet history.
As we walked through the park I noticed that the busts of Vladimir Ilych Lenin-the leader of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917- were seen at very regular intervals. There were also some other statues of him standing and pointing with his right hand in front of him; Alexei Sergeivitch said that he had been pointing to the future. He showed statues of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and talked about their contributions to the Communist vision.
He then talked about the ills of Capitalism and how the revolution was the turning point in human history. And then he talked about how all human politico-economic development will eventually evolve into Communism after a transitory Socialist state. “The Vest knows that they are fighting a lost battle." he said "Nothing can stop the Socio-political evolution of mankind into one Communist Vorld…”He announced.
We had just emerged at the top end of the park on to Varashilovsky Street where the rectangular shaped cars were beeping their horns in the traffic jam that was forming on the carriage way leading towards Engels street. There was a bus stop just adjacent to where we had emerged from the park and a crowd was waiting for the trolley that had just pulled in to the stop. As the doors opened, the commuters struggled to push their way into the already crowded bus. After a while the doors tried to close but were obstructed by some passengers that were hanging on to the door and trying not to fall out. The driver tried to close the doors again and then started to shout something at those passengers obstructing the door but they seemed oblivious of what he was trying to do and continued to push their way in. Others passengers inside of the bus later joined the now irrate driver in the shouting, which continued for several minutes until the passengers started to step down. And the doors eventually closed.
"What does baran mean?"I asked Alexei Sergeivitch as I watched the bus pulling out of the stop. One visibly irritated elderly man who had been standing patiently at the bus stop had spat out the word at one of the obstinate commuters who had been refusing to step down from the bus. After he spat out the word, he had then shaken his head in apparent disgust.
"Baran is the Russian word for sheep" said Alexei Sergeivitch as the bus sped away towards the next stop.
Somebody's bag was still hanging out of the bus, whilst the owner struggled unsuccesfully to pull it in by the straps through the closed doors.
"Baran!" the elderly man spat out again.
The faculty building was an old three storeyed baroque brick building sandwiched in-between some other old buildings built in the same style and located next to the busy bus stop. The building looked like something that had weathered many storms and was now falling apart.
“Ve vill be moving to the new site very soon” stated Alexei Sergeivitch.
He then started to explain how the school had stopped expending money to maintain the building since they were planning to relocate to a new bigger and more modern building, which was located next to the hostel. He said that we were likely to be the last batch of students who will use that building.
We entered through the front door and I noticed that there were some cracks on the walls. We stepped on to the wooden stairs and they started to creak as we climbed our way to the second floor, but Sergei Nikolayevitch didn’t look concerned.
“I hope its not about to collapse!” Ugo said.
“No. It alvays creaks like zis” said Sergei Nikolaivitch trying to reassure us.
He took us to our classroom on the second floor. The room was just large enough to sit nine students and a teacher comfortably. There was a large blackboard in front of us on which he had already written the date in English and written it out in Russian words. He informed us that in addition to Russian language we were also going to take a few hours lessons in courses such as the History of the Communist party, Political Economics and Philosophy.
These courses would all be taught in English language for the first three months, after which we would sit for our winter exams. When we come back from a two weeks winter holiday, we would then continue with science-related subjects, which would prepare us for the medical school.
“These subjects vill all be in Russian language”. He stated.
"So what you're saying is that we'll learn Russian language for only three months?!" Eddy asked in disbelief.
"No" Sergei Nikolaivitch answered " You vill continue to learn Russian language for the whole academic year, but the focus for the first 3months vill be to teach you the basics on vich you vill be able to build but after the 3 months I vill stop understanding English!".
"That's not possible!"
"You vill see..."
After the preliminary talks we got down to the serious business of learning the Russian alphabet with the phonics.
During one of the break times, I caught a glimpse of Adelaide in a room several doors away from ours and for the rest of the day I couldn't concentrate on anything else but her sitting there looking ever so radiant; ever so desirable.
"What are you smiling at? Sergei Nikolayevich asked, interrupting my mid day reverie.I didn’t know what to tell him. How could I let him know that my mind was somewhere else; somewhere, a few doors away, locked on to someone that I certainly wasn't supposed to be thinking about?
“I em…”
“You need to pay attention or else you vill miss the basics”
But my mind was still on Adelaide. I wanted to believe that she was available in spite of the fact that in the last few days since we arrived I had seen her about two times in the company of that her male friend from the beryozka.
I knew that if she was involved with someone else then there was no point to continue dreaming about her, but that realization did not take away the fact that I desired her. And there was nothing much I could do about that; my mind knew that I should just let her go, but my heart could not. It was as if my heart was telling me that she is so within my reach and If i let her go, then I will lose her forever…
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