“Ivor, in America, everybody commits a lot of crimes. You can’t ever use that word. It has a meaning of bigotry, hatred.” “But isn’t it true that many Americans don’t like blacks?” “No!” I said. I scanned my conscience on that. “Americans aren’t prejudiced at all. And we’re getting over it, too.” Ivor looked dubious. He was too Russian to believe it was really okay for some people to go around being, you know, different from other people. This is a country that considers Warsaw an exotic southern city whose hot-blooded natives are not quite to be trusted. Capitalist or socialist, there’s a stumbling-around-in-the-daylight quality to the Russians. Almost 7 million square miles of territory, and still they don’t get out enough. My six-hour flight to Siberia took two days. We were lined up to board six or eight times before we finally got on the plane. Airline employees circulated with walkie-talkies. Not satisfied with individual screwups, they apparently wanted to coordinate them. Fortunately, Russia is a country where you can bring your own vodka bottle, mixer, and highball glass right into the boarding lounge—bring your own dog and pony, for that matter. And, anyway, what were they going to do—send me to Siberia? Unfortunately, I had not packed the two-day-sized bottle. I tried to order a drink on the plane. “Vodka.” “Huh?” “Vodka. You invented it. Vod-ka.” “Water?” I consulted my Berlitz. The Russian word for vodka is vodka. She brought me a hard candy and a lime drink. Ivor showed me around Irkutsk, a city of half a million people that is 2,600 miles east of Moscow and still only two-thirds of the way to the Pacific. The modern parts of town were a mess, but the dumpy, old, run-down neighborhoods were “Everything’s unready to go in the cockpit.” “Roger that. We’ve got the baggage lost.” “Seat selection’s a mess.” “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Catering’s not fucked yet.”
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