Rostov-On-Don/2

A few hours earlier Ugo and I had been sitting just a few seats away from two Russian girls in the almost empty canteen of the train. The canteen was located about 4 coaches away from ours and we had been seated for about 10minutes after having placed an order for a two course meal. There was not much to choose from as the only things on the menu was the pelmeni...a Russian dumpling filled with mince meat...and a Russian traditional soup called borsht; a red coloured vegetable soup, which people prefer to eat with bread.

As we waited for the food I could hear the giggles from the two girls, who kept on glancing in our direction. The girls...one a brunette and the other a red head...would have been in their late teens or early twenties and both had a lot of make-up on them, which gave each of them a rather tacky look; underneath the make-up they would have been naturally pretty, with the slightly slanted eyes of people from the Orient and yet with other facial features that suggested that in their veins coursed through the blood of many generations of inter-ethnic mixing.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Ugo said under his breath. He was smiling at the girls and had nodded back to them as they giggled at us.

I looked around the canteen and a young dark haired man, wearing a black leather jacket and sitting at one corner of the canteen, was occasionally puffing away on a thick wrap of tobacco. He was glaring at us with blood shot eyes that peered through the whiff of dirty grey smoke that curled upwards from the tip of his tobacco wrap. And he seemed to get angrier each time the girls giggled at us. A few seats away from him an elderly man, wearing a worn out black suit that had several large medals pinned near the breast pocket was also sitting. And he didn't seem to care about what was going on around him as he continued to eat; he would alternately bite a piece of brown bread that he held in his left hand after each spoonful of soup from a bowl, which was on the table in front of him; the soup must have been borsht because there was nothing else on the menu.

The red head was smiling at Ugo after he winked at her. “Do you speak English?” he asked, raising his voice a bit for the girls to hear him.
“Nyet!” I heard her say, shaking her head.
The dark haired man got up suddenly and sauntered towards the girls. From the slight wobble in his gait it was clear that he was a bit drunk. He stood in front of the girls and started to say something to them angrily in Russian. And the word “abezy’an” seemed to punctuate his every sentence. The girls got up from their table and started to argue with the man but the elderly man with the many medals suddenly barked something in Russian at the drunken fellow.

Whatever it is he had said to the man seemed to snap the fellow out of his drunkenness. Because he stopped arguing with the girls and, looking at Ugo and myself with a lot of contempt in his blood shot eyes, had spat out the word “abezy’an!” and then stormed angrily out of the canteen.

The elderly man had continued to drink his soup and eat his brown bread, while the girls who were now quite subdued had sat back at their table to finish their food. They had hurriedly finished their food without looking in our direction again and then left the canteen as Alexei Sergeivitch was pushing open the door and walking in.

Alexei Sergeivitch had heard of the little incident and had come to take us back to our coach once we had finished eating in order to avoid any further incidents. After finding out our version of what happened he gave us a little lecture of how every society had their own fare share of miscreants who misbehaves under the influence of alcohol. He emphasized the fact that things are a lot worse in the “Capitalist world where the exploited masses unleash their frustrations in acts of aggression”.

After he had exhausted himself talking about the problems in the “decadent West” I asked him the one question that was bothering me;
“So what does the word ‘abezy’an’ mean??
He had paused as If to grope for the exact meaning of the word in English.
“And where did you hear that word?” he eventually asked.
”The drunken guy had kept on saying it whenever he was referring to us.
“Well, he is uninformed and lacks the intelligence to properly express himself.”
“Yes I know, but what does it mean?” I insisted.”
“That’s the Russian word for monkey.” he said eventually.
"Hm…so we looked like monkeys to the guy ehn?!" Ugo had asked and burst out laughing. “No wonder he kept on looking at Kasi whenever he used that word!“ he said.
I winced when he said that. Of course I knew that Ugo was trying to make light of the whole thing, but he didn’t know that by his indirect, possibly unconscious, reference to my appearance, he had spoken to my insecurities…
“There’s nothing funny about being called a monkey!” I muttered.
“Na you sabi. The man is a fool. And fools are supposed to be ignored”. Ugo said as a frown gradually creased his face.
Alexei Sergeivitch had looked very puzzled at Ugo's initial reaction but had started to nod in agreement when he started to talk about the need to ignore fools. Its easier said than done, though. I thought as we sat in silence, still waiting for the food, which we had ordered and that seemed to be taking an eternity to arrive.