Travel Journals by Hilary Hopkins

Part 2 - Slavko in New York City

Monday 11 June 90

John drives us to South Station early in the morning to get the train to New York.  I'm proud of the station; it's a lovely space, airy, elegant, and working very well.  I have a cup of coffee but he won't take one.  Later someone tells me that Slavko said sometimes he doesn't take something to be polite.  People should learn that accepting a gift graciously is one of the politest things one can do!

The train is fine, too, comfortable and clean.  I wonder what the train he rode from Lviv to Moscow was like.  What his feelings were.  Later he tells me how all the family--Maria, Natalya, and Mama--saw him off, and cried and cried, and how gay and excited he was: Bye-bye! he waved. 

I know that now that he is back home, and all the trip is over except the memories and a few tokens, now that there's no dream to work toward, now that he knows it's come and gone--surely one of the most anguished feelings one can experience--he is suffering. 

For a while we keep track of our progress down the coast with maps and timetable, but he is weary and nods off now and then.   When he is more wakeful, and the scenes of harbors and small boats pass by, he is especially responsive.  I explain how John's brother lives along the route.  He looks and looks.  As we approach the city and pass those great horrible towering apartment tracts, I gesture and joke, Soviet.  He laughs and agrees.

Then the train begins its final wonderful approach to Manhattan, beginning that sweeping curve above Long Island City.  As Slavko catches his first glimpse of the great city, he is transfixed.  Tears come to his eyes and moisten his cheeks.  He gestures with his hand swirling around his torso: I am filled with feeling.  I too, I too.

I will not forget this moment, not forget the extraordinary privilege of sharing this great sight, with its mind-expanding power, with the prisoner.  New York!  New York!

We arrive in Penn Station and I pick up a bus map and a subway map.  The city, making the city work for me, begins immediately to energize me. 

My plan is to hustle over to the West Side and take the three-hour Circle Line boat tour around the island.  It's a very windy day, and the sky is dark grey and blue, but rain holds off.  As we step out along the street, Slavko quickly follows my lead: no traffic coming? hustle on across.  It takes him about three crossings and he's jaywalking like a native New Yorker.  His walk is even faster than mine.  He strides out briskly like an American.  I'm delighted, and I feel delight in him too.  Here I am, he's thinking, in New York, being a New Yorker. 

At the boat, I buy tickets and we have some time to wait.  I get us both hot dogs and Cokes.  There's a battleship moored next to the tour area, turns out it's a museum.  I enjoy the irony of taking Slavko's picture drinking a Coke and standing in front of the American battleship.  Giddiness is beginning to overtake me.  As we board the boat, we get our picture taken.  This is my cousin, from the Soviet Union, I tell the young women doing the picture taking.  Oh! they exclaim.  Welcome to America! they tell him.  "Thank you verymuch," he responds. 

Languages swirl around us; I tell Slavko, Not English, but he gestures, All the same to me.  We set out, downtown, past the great monuments to vision, determination, and audacity.  I take pictures.  I am coming to the end of the roll of film, and we are approaching the Statue of Liberty.  For weeks I have had in my head the picture I want to take to send him home with: Slavko and the Statue of Liberty behind.  I take the last picture and the camera rewinds.  The boat moves along.  Suddenly I realize we need to be outside more, on the deck, so he can really see, really be close to, our great symbol to the world.

We push our way into the crowded deck.  Everyone has the same idea.  I feel a rush of emotion around me as we come closer and closer to Her.

Crowded on every side, I frantically try to reload the camera.

I can't load it.  Something is wrong. 

Slavko tries to help.  No!  No!  Please, please ignore this and SEE HER!  That is what I have brought you here for!

In sick desperation I run downstairs to where they sell film, for help.  No one can help me.

I run back to Slavko.  Tears pour down my face. 

He takes me in his arms and hugs me tightly.  We turn to see Her, arms around each other.  We watch in reverent silence, tears sliding away unheeded.  All around us the people hold their hearts out, their faces intense with feeling.

As we circle slowly around Her, and the terrible pain of frustration and disappointment fills me, Slavko says, firmly, "”I am here." 

Yes.  He speaks the truth.  I am quieted. 

He dictionaries gently to me, Peace, peace.

We move around the tip of the island and up the East Side, under the bridges.  To my astonishment, Slavko takes the camera and recalcitrant film from me, examines it for a minute, gives the reloading a try, another try...and it's done. 

Too late.

The city is beautiful against the darkly clouded sky, and I take more and more pictures.  As we pass through the narrow watercourse all the way uptown, and down the Hudson, I think to take a shot of him in front of the American flag whipping off the stern.  A small group has had the same idea; they pose, the photographer snaps the picture, and the next thing I know, Slavko has trotted up to them and they are all speaking animatedly.  From Siberia!  Now living in New York.  They share a brief conversation, in Russian I believe, and I take pictures.  I believe I hear them ask if he is Ukrainian. 

At the end of the trip, the picture taken of us when we boarded is available to buy.  We go to check it out, and it's wonderful, irresistible, so I buy two of them.  We stride off towards Grand Central, through Times Square.  Slavko unerringly follows my slight hand signals: turn here, cross the street.  I remind myself of the pilot of the tiny plane we flew to Ayers Rock, who gestured gracefully ahead of each bank and turn, so we would be ready for them. 

Grand Central looks great, commuters swarming through in orderly fashion.  I buy tickets to Pelham Manor, find the gate, and when the train comes, we get on. 

I love New York.  Its people have class.  They're proud and resourceful.  There's a certain jauntiness.  Rituals for doing things, even insults.  My adrenalin level is high.  I'm high.

As the train passes along the upper West Side, past the tenements and the littered streets, I tell Slavko, "Black.  Poor."  He nods and understands, but does not comment. 

At the Pelham station, as I'm about to call Aunt Olga to come fetch us, my cousin Ted appears.  He's come from the City been on the same train.  We go together to the car where his wife Peri is waiting.  I am feeling light and energetic.

I have cautioned Slavko not to embrace Olga, but to shake hands.  I dictionary, She is reserved.  He understands.  What I am not prepared for, and neither is she, is that when she comes out to greet us formally on her front steps, Slavko kisses her hand, in the way I recall from my visits in Ukraine.  He does it gracefully and respectfully, and she is clearly touched and complimented.  I am pleased.  It is a good beginning.

All the family gathers in the livingroom for snacks and drinks.  To my amusement and gratification, I am cast in the role of translator.  "Ask him--"  "Tell him"  And I do.  Cousin Ted's grown children, Lisa and Edward, have prepared questions.  They ask about the political situation, and about how we are all related.  Slavko and I discover that our grandmothers were sisters.  I had not really known we were that closely related.  There is more political talk, and family talk.  And I translate.  The dictionary is beginning to develop dog-ears.

There's a lot of talk in English, too.  Every once in a while, as he sits listening, I smile over and gesture, Sorry.  Every once in a while, too, he and I share conversation by wording, silently.  We are beginning to get pretty tight with each other, now, wording back and forth.  And I am his means of communicating with the world. 

The dinner, which is delicious, is a great success.  He asks me when to give the gifts he has brought (and carried all day on the boat).  He presents these in the same touching way as those he brought for us: a little pile for each person, artistically arranged.  Olga, Ted, Peri, Lisa.  I am delighted by their generous response to the things he has brought, the embroidery, wooden ware, a bottle of pepper vodka for Ted. 

I am filled with pride in my family, that they should be able to love and to understand, across all the barriers of culture, language, class, history, wealth. 

I lie awake a long time, worrying about the next day.

 

Tuesday 12 June 1990

Before Slavko came, I spent many hours with maps and guidebooks of New York, making plans for this day.  I figured which subways and buses to take to get from place to place, and when it would be best to walk, how to show him a variety of the most important or representative sights, and typed all this up in a kind of schedule, which I rehearsed in my mind's eye several times and brought with me.

We leave Pelham early, taking the train into the city with a platform full of "capitalists" in their business suits.  The first order of business is to descend into the subway and buy a roll of tokens. Crowds flow in rivers through the turnstiles, uptown, downtown.  I inquire of a couple of transit police about getting downtown to the World Trade Center; I think I know, but I need to orient myself. Pleasantly they direct us.  Their casual courtesy in the midst of this ocean of people is impressive, and I see it through Slavko's eyes and am pleased.

A short walk after the subway ride takes us to the grand plaza in front of the towers.  After the dark day yesterday, the sky is a deep pure blue, and the two towers draw our eyes up to the heavens.   I haven't been here before, and I'm as impressed as he is.  We cross the plaza in leisurely fashion to see about going up to the observation deck; it's half an hour till it opens.

Incongruously, in this hard-edged vision of the future, there's a farmers' market, the real thing, people's trucks from New Jersey, the handsome produce displayed on small tables behind each truck. Slavko, who has a little plot at home, walks up and down inspecting the vegetables with an appraising eye.  We stop to look at the goods of an Amish farmer and his young son, each wearing the clothes of a past time.  I word to Slavko: "Religion."  Then I chat with the farmer and his boy, explaining it's my cousin from the Soviet Union, we don't share a language, and it's hard to explain to him about Amish.  I buy a small bottle of cider from them. 

As we walk along, sharing the very good cider, a young fellow in a spiffy suit stops us: Do we know where some office building is?  I have a map to consult.  I hand him my cider to hold and I find the place on the map.  He's cheerful, and I'm already giddy, this early in the morning, with the beautiful day and the beautiful city.  The deep blue sky persists, and I feel like a sun dancing in it.

Time to check in at the observatory ticket counter.  We cross the great plaza again.  There are inviting places to sit, informational signs, and other small amenities.  I make a long dictionary: “America is designed for people.  The Soviet Union is not."  He understands immediately and agrees fervently.

Alas, dammit: after we've stood in the small line for a few minutes, and I've handed some money over to him to make the ticket purchase himself, it turns out that something is amiss with the elevator and we will not be able to make the trip to the top.  I'm furious and embarrassed.  Of all days!  I make reference to a little joke we've made up between us:  "Sovietski," I say grimly, meaning, something's broken, doesn't work, is inconvenient or inferior.  He laughs, and we walk back to the subway.

OK, scrub that, go directly to the second objective, the Ukrainian neighborhood around the East Village.  Here I am on less certain ground.  I have a few addresses, of Surma, a Ukrainian gift store, and Veselka, a restaurant.  But I'm also looking for another shop, Arka, and I haven't done my homework on that one, and don't know where it is.  We find Surma, but it will not open for another hour.

We find a beautiful Ukrainian church, on Taras Shevchenko Place, and Slavko asks me to take his picture there.  A few shops have signs in Ukrainian, and their windows are plastered with notices also in Ukrainian.  We try to find our way to Arka.  I make a dozen inquiries, and finally a couple of school girls outside the church school direct us, sending us off a number of blocks away.  With my map-reading difficulties, I have trouble orienting myself about streets and avenues. 

The rising sun is getting hotter and my spirits are sinking a little lower. 

Finally we find Arka, but it too is closed, without even a sign to say when it will open.  OK, back then to Surma, which if we go slowly, will be open.  I find the neighborhood absorbing to read.  On First Avenue there are restaurants of all nations, from Africa to Asia to the Middle East to Europe.  We pass along Fourth Street, and although there is a lot of litter, it seems a pleasant city neighborhood to me.  Later I find that Slavko has seen the trash much more clearly than I; to him, New York is "dirty."  Well, it is. 

In the Surma store, I withdraw, for Slavko is finding delight and relief in speaking and hearing his own tongue.  The clerk converses with him at length and asks if I speak Ukrainian.  "How do you communicate?" she asks in surprise when I say no.  I show the dictionary, but really that's an inadequate description.  We just do, is all. 

Intently Slavko examines embroidery thread, red and black, and two shades of yellow.  I find it pathetically ironic that he's been directed to buy this in America, for his wife to work at the quintessentially Ukrainian craft.  When he hesitates over which shade of yellow to buy, and how much of the red and black, I tell the clerk, for goodness' sake, just get a couple boxes of each.  I can't bear it that something so trivial as a few skeins of thread should be such an important item.  Give us all of it, I tell her.  I'm deeply pleased that the first thing I should help him obtain is the makings of that beautiful art that I grew up with.

Now it appears that we are to return to Arka.   There seems some kind of urgency to this.  I begin to get the idea that he is in search of something, though I don't know what.  Back we go through the heated streets.  I'm uncertain again where it is, but Slavko seems to know exactly.  He reads off the street signs and turns here, here, and there. 

Arka is a tiny shop, and it's full of people.  I can't tell who are customers and who are clerks, for it has the atmosphere of a club.  I stand apart as Slavko has a long conversation with an elderly man.  Clearly information is being requested and received.  A phone number is given, which he writes down.  The elderly man turns to me and speaks in minimal English.  I gather he is talking about some distant relatives of ours who live? used to live? in the neighborhood.  Something about Scarsdale.  I don't understand what's going on, but it's clear some kind of errand is being done.  I'm impressed by how businesslike Slavko is with these strangers. 

Back on the street, I gather we are to visit another place of business, a travel agency is it?  I imagine this is to confirm his flight home.  It's the Kobasniuk Travel, Inc., on Second Avenue.  We ring the bell to get let in.  The man at the front desk, who speaks unaccented English, also, it turns out, speaks Ukrainian.

To my dismayed amazement, it turns out that what they are talking about is not tickets, but VCRs.  This man, who spends at least twenty minutes with us between taking business calls and directing other customers, is giving Slavko and me the addresses of places nearby which sell electronics.  In desperation I ask, do they speak Ukrainian?  Do they speak English?  Do they take credit cards? (for I hadn't come prepared for a large expenditure)   Patiently he answers our questions in two languages.  I am touched by his willingness to help in what seems to me to be a scary task.  I know nothing of VCRs.  How am I going to help Slavko get what he needs if he can't talk about it in English? 

The man writes some vague directions on my map. 

I now understand that searching for and purchasing a VCR is something we are going to do here in New York.  Slavko's determination and persistence are moving to me.  I see that he has gotten some vital information in Surma and Arka about how to fill this need, and I trust his sense of what to do.  I put my carefully planned schedule away.  His needs are more important.

"OK," I say.  I gesture, first to Veselka to eat, and then we'll go downtown to find the VCR.  I feel good again.  We have a charge to accomplish, and we'll do it together, and I'll give him all the help I possibly can, in whatever he needs to do.

Veselka is a great place, a casual lunch counter, some tables, lots of good food, some American, some Ukrainian.  We sit with relief at the counter.  I order blintzes with cheese and fruit.  The elderly man behind the counter speaks with a strong accent. 

I take a sympathetic look at Slavko.  He looks anxious and all his cheerfulness is gone.  I dictionary: Worried?  His eyes fill, he nods; my perception touches him.  I word: Don't worry.  I will take care of you. 

We eat well, we feel refreshed.  We set out for the lower East Side, in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge.  Delancey Street, Broome Street, Orchard Street.  I am delighted, I have never been here before, though I know these names from history and literature.  We follow the map to Essex Cameras and Electronics.

Down a few stairs to a tiny narrow store just below ground level. Electronic household devices of every description crowd the shelves on one wall, floor to low ceiling.  The glass cases on the other side are piled haphazardly with smaller items.  Behind the back counter are more shelves in parallel rows, library stack fashion, piled to the ceiling and more boxes on the floor.  The place crackles with loud talk, customers and people behind the counter shouting back and forth at each other, the phone ringing, more shouted one-way conversations.  We take a hasty look around.  There's a dark young man at the far end of the counter.  He actually asks what he can do for us.  "I don't know," I say.  "I'm sure the answer is no, but by any chance does anybody here speak Ukrainian?" 

To my complete astonishment, he responds with amusement, "Sure, tak, tak [yes, yes], a little, enough." 

Hope rising, I begin to explain as best I can what Slavko wants.  The dark man interrupts me.

"I know what he wants," he says.  He addresses himself to Slavko in a funny mixture of Ukrainian and English and the universal language of electronics.  "You wanna VCR, right?  To take home, right?  You want one with 220 volts/50 Mhz, right?"  etc. etc.

Slavko nearly cries, he's so relieved.  I'm so relieved.

I am determined that we won't buy the Panasonic VCR we've settled on until all the questions we both have are answered.  I am the mediator here, and I take this as an important responsibility. 

For the next half hour, the salesman is attentive to all our questions, though he also takes phone calls two at a time, argues with a visiting friend, answers customer questions and writes up bills, and carries on a running sotto voce dialogue with the other salesman, an Orthodox Jew with sidecurls, hat, extravagant in word and gesture.

Slavko has many questions, mostly about the compatibility of the thing with the electrical supply at home.  Our salesman shows us a big book, with a color-coded map which shows what kinds of configurations are compatible where, all over the world.  Where I come from, he comments, you need thus-and-so.  Where do you come from? I ask.  India, he says. 

What a wonderful place, New York. 

I interpret Slavko's questions as best I can.  I ask questions, too.  One of my questions is, Are there going to be people over there who can understand how to make the thing work?  No problem, no problem, our man says.  "The instructions are in Ukrainian."

Well, as far as I'm concerned, that clinches it.  Thank you, Panasonic.

We ask that the carton be opened so that we can see the VCR, and the Ukrainian instructions.  Slavko watches intently as the Indian slits open the box and lifts the thing out.  There in a plastic bag are two instruction manuals, one in English and, sure enough, one in Ukrainian, which Slavko reads closely and with apparent satisfaction. His face clears for the first time. 

It turns out he also wishes to purchase a small "boom box", a little portable cassette player/recorder.  That need, too, is easily filled by our Indian hero-salesman. 

Now I get down to the financing part.  I explain how we have some AmEx checks, and what about my credit card or personal check?  Turns out he only takes AMEx cards, which I don't have, but the check is fine.  "You're good for the check?" he asks with a straight face.  I solemnly assure him I am.  So he writes up the bills, one for the real amount and one for an amount much less, "For Customs," he tells Slavko.

Amid the litter of paperwork on the counter, Slavko signs over his AmEx checks, and I write my personal check.  I ask that the VCR be wrapped for carrying, for we're going to have to lug it with us the rest of the day.

"Satisfied?" I word.  Yes, he says.  Thumbs up, he gestures.  A big smile.  A hug around my shoulders.  "Relief," I word back. 

Slavko carrying his prized bundles, we emerge onto Essex Street.  "Say," I accost a passerby, "where's the uptown subway?"   Well-being steals over me.  I begin to smile, and I smile all the rest of the day.

I am so proud of Slavko.  He had set himself a task to do in a strange land among strangers.  He persisted and persisted until he found out how to do it.  With determination and intelligence he approached the task, and accomplished it.

We sit close together on the subway.  I gesture that he should guard the precious things, the VCR with its wooden carrying handle and the boom-box in a pink plastic bag.  "I know," he laughs.  I get the idea, though I'm not sure how, that he means, I know, I've heard all the propaganda about the dangerous streets of New York.

At 50th Street we come up out of the subway.  The sun is still shining brightly in a deep blue sky.  The earlier heat seems to have subsided.  It's Rockefeller Center.  We take pictures of each other in front of the great golden figures above the skating pond, now filled with festive diners.  All the tension of the morning is gone.  I'm back on track with my schedule.  Slavko insists on carrying both the box and the bag, but allows me to carry our dictionary in my purse.

Over on Fifth Avenue is St. Patrick's Cathedral.  The steps are arrayed with small groups and solitary people eating and drinking, talking, lounging, near a prominent sign which says, For Safety Reasons, Do Not Eat Or Drink Here.  We enter the church.  The pews and aisles are dotted with visitors, gaping upward and taking pictures.  I lead him slowly around the outside aisle to the front, past side chapels each done in a different style.  Behind the altar we find a small chapel in which people are actually worshipping.  We pause here, and stand in reverent silence.  Beautiful, beautiful, he murmurs.  It occurs to me, suddenly, that perhaps he has never been inside a Gothic church before.  St. Patrick's is indeed very beautiful.  The windows of deepest blue seem to float within the walls, rather than puncturing them.  

There is a graduation practice going on in the main aisle, the straggling, giggling lines of uniformed adolescents directed by a nun with a raspy, authoritative voice and a microphone. 

As we leave and walk farther up the avenue he suddenly stops and reads aloud the cross street.  "Aeroflot," he announces.  Sure enough, we're clearly in the little enclave of foreign airline offices.  I'm amazed.  I didn't know we were going to Aeroflot.  But then I didn't know we were going to buy a VCR that day, either.  I'm learning to trust Slavko, though, and I march into the FinnAir office to inquire where is Aeroflot.  One street back, they tell me.

I wait for him to do his Aeroflot errand.  I decide there's no point in advertising to them that he's got his VCR and so on, so I keep the box and bag while he goes to do his business.  I imagine him in there, confronting the Soviets.  I don't like it.  He will be going all grim, gray, hard, and pushy, like them, to get done what he has to get done.  In a little while he comes out and asks me to write my name and phone number for them.  I'm suspicious about this but later on I decide that it's only in case they need to notify him of any changes in the flight, just as we have to give such information to a travel agent here.  I still don't like it.  Hands off him, you gray people!  He belongs to us for now!

I'm so glad when he returns: OK?  OK.  I don't want them to have even a tiny piece of him while he's here. 

My next destination is the Museum of Modern Art.  The museums are good places to go, I think, partly because they are beautiful spaces and partly because we can check the heavy VCR.  We wander through a chain of galleries, filled with paintings many of which thrill me by their familiarity.  Another time when I am in New York I want to return and spend a long time here in contemplation.  But I'm not certain of Slavko's interest in such things, and I want to offer as many kinds of experience as I can, in the hours we have left.

To my surprise, however, he looks closely at many of the images.  He goes so far as to dictionary thoughtful comments on several.  We come to one, a horror-filled dark canvas that hints of dying children and blackened landscape.  "Ecologia" in Ukraine, he says grimly. 

We pass by Brancusi sculptures, the bird, the fish, other sensuous airy shapes.  I begin to get giddy.  The play of shape and line and surface and idea makes me giddy.  I am filled with lightness.

It is time for a little snack.  We find the pleasant cafeteria overlooking the sculpture garden.  I have coffee.  In front of the soda dispenser, I gesture which does he want?  Bypassing the familiar Coke and Pepsi logos, he points to the Sprite. 

At our table, I consult my New York guidebook and map, and make my plan for the rest of the day.  He watches me with affection.

People sit quietly beyond the window in the garden, reading, meditating in the sun.  I ask Slavko to describe Americans.  His response is immediate:  "'Please'," he says, putting on a big smile.  "'Thank you.'  'Excuse me.'"  At home, "Sovietsky," he pulls a stern, hard face.  He makes a vicious downward slice of a fist, with a harsh grunt.  There is nothing more to say.

Before we leave MOMA I pause in the gift shop to buy a pair of postcards of images he has commented upon, including the wasted landscape.  I want to send him home with as many prompts to memory as I can.

We cross Fifth Avenue and walk over to the IBM building lobby atrium, with its bamboo forest.  We're both amused by this fantasy and take pictures of each other among the bamboo.  I make him stand behind the trees and peer through them.  He laughs and plays at this.  We laugh uninhibitedly like a couple of kids.

How can they still play?  How could he have learned to be playful?

We catch an uptown bus on Madison Avenue and ride for blocks past a profusion of shops.  Each one promising elegance, sleekness, the highest of fashion or desirability.  Seeing through my second pair of eyes, I feel swamped by goods.  Drowning in a sea of goods.  People of every race and condition get on the bus, get off the bus, pass on the sidewalks. 

At 89th Street we get out and walk over to Fifth Avenue; I just want to walk past the Guggenheim before visiting the Met.  I always think of this part of the city as being its most classically elegant: the great mansions of the 19th century, the walled park opposite, the splendid facade of the Museum. 

At the Met once again we check the VCR and the pink bag with the boom box.  I know what I want to see, I've been waiting to see it ever since it opened: the new wing with the Egyptian temple in it. 

Ah!  Yes!  What a sublime space!  A glass wall on one side and overhead, looking into the green and blue outdoors.  Along the opposite side, a powerful straightness of line, like the horizon at sea, running low and strong along the pale wall.  A quiet rectangle of water.  And thus cleanly presented, the Temple.  Alone in the great space. 

This space fills me with happiness.  I show Slavko my feeling with gesture: hand on my heart, intake of breath, eyes closed.

Let me take your picture, he shows back.

I sit cross-legged on the softly glowing floor, at rest.  And he takes my picture.

Back in the great rotunda at the entrance, I learn to my dismay that counter to what my guidebook says, the museum is about to close.  I don't really mind, because I've seen what I came for.  We collect our bundles and go out.  There on the steps festooned with garlands of peoples a bit of street theatre is going on, a lady mime who is cleverly enacting a windup dancing doll.  The spectators watch from the steps.  But we pass behind her and sit so that we can see both her and her watchers.  I take pictures.  Slavko smokes a cigarette. We sit quietly together, at leisure together.  Our day in New York is winding down.

My final destination is the Empire State Building, for I am determined that he shall see the majestic panorama of the city. 

As we're standing in line for the tickets to the observatory, it suddenly occurs to me that maybe he doesn't like heights, but too late now, we're going up. 

At the top he gasps and immediately steps excitedly right to the edge of the railing.  The view is twenty-five miles in today's clarity.  Both of us are enthralled by the power of the sight.  We walk slowly around to all sides, and I take pictures.  He takes a picture for another couple.  I love it.  I show him all where we have been today.

Oh, I'm content now, I'm content.

It's a fast walk back to Grand Central to catch our train to Olga's.  But he's more than equal to the sprint, and we make it with almost ten minutes to spare, enough to buy tickets and find a pair of seats together.  We ride in companionable silence.

At Pelham station, I call Olga to pick us up.  While we wait in the slanting sunlight, I trot around in figure eights, working off my high, and he smokes. 

Around Olga's diningroom table we make a small meal of good soup and crackers, show our prizes, tell of the day, and tuck into bed.   

 

Wednesday 13 June 1990

In the morning, while waiting to go to the station to catch our train home, we take a little stroll around Olga's neighborhood.  I had not realized it before, but she is on the edge of an enclave of monstrous mansions, each one a parody of itself, bigger than the one before it, lawns painstakingly manicured like expensive useless show poodles.  It is hard to imagine the real people that live in these seamless places.  It's like a movie set of cardboard and plastic.  I am amused and faintly disgusted or embarrassed at the slick ostentation; but to Slavko I think they seem real, or at least real symbols of how a person might aspire to live, here in America.  As we pass by one after another, he tells me in word and gesture, "Capitalism YES! [thumbs up]  Socialism NO! [grimace, gesture of thrusting away in disgust and anger]"

We return to Olga's house, and prepare to leave.  Before we leave, she asks me to bring my book, the dictionary, and we should come to the livingroom.  There she invites me to tell Slavko how much she has enjoyed meeting him, how glad she is that he has come to America, how she sends her greetings to his family, and how she extends her best wishes to him and hopes for his good luck at home.  Before I have a chance to translate, Slavko says in Ukrainian, "I understand, I understand."  And in English, "Thank you verymuch."  I feel happy that there has been this formal blessing.  People on the other side place far greater store on such things, on the formalities by which people greet each other and say farewell, and I know that Olga's instinctive sense of ceremony has meant a great deal to Slavko.

At the station she embraces him and he kisses her on each cheek in the European manner.  I am so proud of both of them.

Thinking that perhaps there would not be space on the morning train for us to sit together, I have splurged and bought reserved club car seats.  They are very nice indeed, soft and large, and a meal comes with the ticket.  This time Slavko watches intently all the way to Boston.  The sailboats and wetlands especially affect him.  He keeps making despairing comments about the ecology in Ukraine.  And we think we have problems! 

After a while I feel very sleepy.  I give his hand a squeeze and curl up in my seat, my back to him.  He leans over my shoulder and whispers, "'Night."  What a nice way to go to rest!  I feel fine; I've done what I wanted to, in New York, and Slavko and I feel very tight with each other, having shared so much.

In a while I order the meal, a suprisingly tasty cold pasta and fresh vegetable salad, and some beer, one bottle which we share.  After the meal, quite luxurious I thought; Slavko indicates it's like being on a plane instead of a train, and I wonder grimly what kind of train he's going to have to ride from Moscow 24 hours home to Lviv. 

After the meal I settle to rest quietly again.  It's pretty chilly though; the air conditioning is right overhead and blowing away unnecessarily.  Slavko gestures if I would like his jacket.  No, that's ok.  Then in a little while, I all sleepy and happy, he puts his arm around me and pulls me gently to rest my head on his nice shoulder.  He holds me firmly and comfortably and it feels very good to me.  His smell is strong but clean and somehow immensely comforting, and his hand is warm on my chilly arm.  I relax blissfully and breathe very slowly, all the way to Boston.

On the subway home we hold hands tightly and he points out our reflection in the window opposite.

When I finally came to bed that night, my own big bed, and lay down, I realized how Slavko and me in New York had affected me.  I felt as if every nerve in my body were stimulated, every muscle from my scalp to my toes were alight, and my mind racing, stuck in high gear.  I had not realized until then how fully and totally and completely I was turned inside out, awash in the experience. 

I am not describing any of this very well.  The thing is that it was a totally shared experience, a journey shared equally.  A difficult thing surmounted with another person, a challenge to be met and faced with a companion, and I think I was as moved by the sharing as by Slavko's experience only.  An adventure.  I crave adventure.  The experience was so focused on feeling (as opposed to focusing on, say, the strange sights of travel in new places) that it is quite evanescent, very difficult to capture and pin in words.  But I am trying.  Being in New York with Slavko made me feel full of happiness, radiant with pleasure and satisfaction.  I smiled and smiled and was very happy.