Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER SEVENTY THREE – THE MOSCOW EXPERIMENT: INTERESTING SITUATIONS. WORK AND LIFE (PART 1)
1. Interesting situations
Although Tbilisi and Moscow were cities of the same country (USSR), the customs, views and behavior of the people in them were so different that it seemed to me that sometimes in Moscow I was communicating with Martians. Perhaps they felt the same way.
I will try to recall different cases and situations for illustration.
The first situation arose a couple of months after the start of residency. The local military registration and enlistment office sent me a summons, that is, an order, to appear there.
It’s time to tell you that in addition to police control and registration, all men, as well as female doctors, were registered at the military registration and enlistment office – the military office at the place of residence. From time to time, the military registration and enlistment office called them to training camps (or classes for retraining), but could also draft them into the army.
When changing your living place registration, you first had to complete your registration at the military enlistment office. The men were deregistered at one military enlistment office and registered at a new one. Until he showed the police a new stamp on his military ID, he could not count on receiving a residence permit, of course, in those cases where he was entitled to one.
For sure, I did everything as expected, and two months later I was called to the military registration and enlistment office for an interview, as it was called, “to fill out a questionnaire.” The purpose of such a meeting was to collect all possible information about the person liable for military service by carefully reviewing all available documents.
First of all, the officer chuckled as he opened my military ID. What can I do, he didn’t like the surname. Then he sniffed all over my brand new marriage certificate.
“Yeah, the husband’s last name after registering the marriage is Neiman, the wife’s last name after registering the marriage is Neiman…” he nodded to his thoughts, “You recently got married… okay. Do you have children?” he smiled widely at his own joke.
Usually, after two months of marriage, newlyweds do not have children, although they may have them, and we had a child, so I answered:
“Yes sir! The daughter.”
The officer was speechless.
“Show me her birth certificate!” he commanded.
I was pleased to present this example of bureaucratic creativity.
He read slowly and with obvious tension,
“Ana Nikolaevna Malinik… Yeah (after a short pause), I understand… Your family adopted a girl.”
“No way, sir!” I objected.
He plunged back into studying the birth certificate:
“Father is Nikolay Neiman, mother is Lilya Malinik,” then looked at the marriage certificate again, “Mother’s name before marriage is Lilya Malinik, mother’s name after registration of marriage is Lilya Neiman.” Yeah, I got it! The daughter bears her mother’s surname, which means she is your wife’s daughter from her first marriage,” the warrior concluded.
“From this marriage,” I objected with a hint of sadism in my voice.
“But how is this possible? The girl is five years old, and you have only been married for two months?”
He undoubtedly had gaps in the understanding laws of the nature.
“We got married five years after the birth of our daughter,” I explained.
The officer blushed deeply. Perhaps he was opposed to extramarital sex, or perhaps he was angry that he chose difficult solutions instead of the simplest ones. Or maybe because he didn’t have the power to take this filthy doctor from a paramilitary institution, take him to the soldiers’ parade ground and demonstrate to him the superiority of brute force over his cunning-assed thoughts.
The second funny story happened a couple of years later, when we were about to leave Moscow. I wanted to complete the unification of all the surnames in the family and went to the civil status department to correct the birth certificate issued here for my daughter. To shorten the explanation, I showed birth certificate of Ana and our marriage certificate and said,
“The father’s last name is Neiman, the mother’s last name is Neiman, and the daughter’s last name is Malinik. Please change it to Neiman.”
“How is this possible!” the woman squealed as if in a fit.
“I have no idea. Your registry office made a mistake several years ago. I’m just asking that the mistake be corrected today.”
“Even if you kill me, I can’t!” the epileptic woman screamed.
Fortunately for me, perestroika was in full bloom. I said,
“Lunch break in 30 minutes. Why should we rush? I’ll leave the documents and 50 rubles and come back after lunch. Think, consult with your colleagues and help me, or I will cross the street, go into the office of the local prosecutor and ask him,
“What should the daughter’s last name be if the last name of both parents is Neiman?”
She did a great job. When I returned after lunch, she greeted me with the words,
“Oh, here’s the dad who lost his daughter’s birth certificate. We have issued you a duplicate.”
And she handed me a new corrected birth certificate with a stamp – “Repeated”. From that day on, everyone in our family has the same last name.
2. Work and life (Part 1)
All Moscow stories can be divided into two groups – “at work” and “in life”, as if work were not a part of life. In fact, a person’s life became his work, and he went home only for a short rest before a new working day.
Previously, in Georgia and later in America, I saw that work and leisure overlap in some way: employees are happy to meet whole families, show photographs, inquire about household members, and vice versa, your house members start asking about your coworkers.
This was not accepted in Moscow. Work and home were two isolated parts of reality that had little contact with each other. Perhaps the reason for this was the collective memory of the general “knock” (euphemism for denunciations) of the Stalin years, which still limited contacts between employees. There was another, not so comprehensive reason: due to the lack of free time, romantic connections were formed at work, so contact between the two worlds was avoided so as not to cause unnecessary trouble. As they say, who is protect self is protected by God.
On the other hand, almost any meeting with friends had to be planned: busyness and long distances prevented chance meetings and surprises. The old joke-recipe: “If friends unexpectedly came to your place, cut off the leg of lamb, add salt and pepper…” was not appreciated – friends did not come unexpectedly here. I later encountered the same type of planned communication in America, but I was already prepared for it.
What stories do I remember about work?
I remember how I caught employees having sex in the most incredible corners of the institute; I remember how the general ordered to broke down the door to the nurse’s duty room, from behind which obscene moans and sighs were heard, and found a tape recorder turned on instead of people.
I remember how the general’s wife got into an argument with his secretary; I remember how I ate a piece of lard – the lunch of an employee who mocked the Jewish “fear of pork.”
“You’ve got something wrong!” I said, “Here I am, a Jew and I’m not afraid of any food!” and I ate her lard.
And she, left without lunch, choking with resentment and indignation, said,
“You are not a Jew! You are an anti… Semite!”
I remember how the head of childhood trauma, an old Armenian, told me,
“Life at first will seem completely alien to you here, not the same as in our dear Caucasus. But decent people are everywhere. If you suddenly need cash, I always have a thousand to intercept for a while.”
It was nice to hear such unexpected support.
While practicing in this department, I saw a striking picture at a children’s party. Three disabled children performed ditties. In the center of the group, on a chair, was sitting a boy whose leg was about to be operated on, with hands growing from his shoulders. He sang and flapped them like wings, and on either side of him two girls sang and danced along. Both were wearing headscarves, both after surgery for obstetric paralysis of the arms. With a healthy hand, each symmetrically supported the cheek, while resting its elbow on the plaster splint of the operated hand. At first the picture seemed surreal and even blasphemous to me, but when I saw how the children were sincerely happy and laughing, I realized that their appearance did not play any role! I felt ashamed of my initial thoughts and, in order to make amends to the children, I went to my boss – not for money, but for boxes of chocolates that he kept in case of unexpected guests. He was a kind man, and for every box purchased from him, he donated the same one from himself to the children. What can I say – their holiday was a success!
CONTINUATION IN THE NEXT CHAPTER…
Nick Neim's Stories 