The dogs are all right

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Teaching at Perm State University presents unique problems. Because you can never be too secure, every classroom at PSU is locked when not in use (and when in use many have a camera trained directly on the instructor). And every building has a key guard: an old woman in scrubs who sits behind a window and distributes keys. During the first week of class, the key guard of building 5 flatly refused me the key to room 107, until an angry call from my chair to give “the nice foreign gentleman” what he needed. Often, the key guard is absent, polishing the keys perhaps, and a line of professors - none of them in any particular hurry - forms. But I’m too critical. One of the most pleasant women I’ve met is the key guard of building 8. Once she brought a friend in to speak English with me. The friend wanted to know the correct pronunciation of the word “geyser.” I supplied and the key guard applauded.

Of all the facilities, building 3 possesses the most puzzling arrangement. I teach there in room 606 on Wednesdays. Once a week, I walk past the main entrance, which for reasons unknown to me is always locked, and enter on the far side and collect my key. On the door of nearby room 607 hangs a magic marker sign that reads: “toilet.” Actually, the magic marker sign is not correct. Room 607 is a functioning classroom. The advertised toilet is located in the back of the room, but to get to it you have to pass through 607. It’s the only toilet in the building, so all day long there's a line of students shuffling in and out of 607. My own 606 lacks a toilet, but it too has a door in the back. This door leads to another classroom, and every Wednesday a rumpled old professor and his charges march through my room and into theirs.

It’s a disruption, but a minor one, and I often forget that he and his class ever disturbed me. Once I was so forgetful that when I ended class I locked the door the door to 606, trapping the rumpled old professor and his class inside.

The next day department chair Elizaveta Vladimirovna took me aside and told me what I’d done.

“How did they get out?” I asked.

“I don’t know! Someone heard their cries, I guess.”

The next time I saw the rumpled old professor, he went straight for me. He wasn’t angry. He was apologetic. I think he was scared I might lock him up with his students again.

A week before imprisoning them, I had horrified Elizaveta Vladimirovna by leaving room 123 unlocked and its TV-VCR combo vulnerable. My struggles with Perm State entrances and exits continue. This week I tore the handle off of the door of 107.

This Wednesday I found a crowd of smiling students blocking the entryway to 606. They weren’t there for my class, but to admire and fuzz a dog that had strayed into building 3. I pushed my way through and opened the door, letting the dog in first. She was very cute.

“What do you think of our university?” my student Tola asked. “Toilets in rooms, dogs.”

I told him I liked the dog.

Kyril and Tola shooed (or, as they’re Russians, “fooed”) her out into the hall. But she waited, and after class she walked me to building 5. I later caught her mingling with students outside the economics faculty.

I wonder if she ran into the cat in building 1. A few years back in a Bulgakov-esque campaign, the university administration decided to purge the campus of cats. Predictably, this led to a rise in the mouse population. Sveta’s even seen one in the cafeteria, and sometimes it does taste as if someone has supplemented the schnitzel with some mouseloaf. And so the cats, or at least one, have been allowed to return and an old tom patrols the hallways, murdering mice.

Along with key guard, the most gender segregated jobs in Russia are bus driver and conductor. The bus driver is always a man (though tram and trolley bus drivers tend to be women) and the conductor always a woman.

The driver’s job is clear enough. He sits in the big chair, drives the bus, yells at cars, and competes with other bus drivers to see who can muscle into and blast out of the stop first. For the conductor, however, things are more complicated.

She collects the tickets. I board a bus and if I’m luck, find a seat. I next take out a ten ruble note and wait for the conductor. She walks down the aisle, takes my money and gives me a ticket. I study the ticket. If it is a magic ticket, I am supposed to eat it immediately. Magic tickets are those in which the sum first three digits on the ticket equal the sum of the last three digits. I pray I never encounter one. For the conductor, all this seems straightforward, but you must realize that most busses are horribly crowded and the aisle has been transformed from path to obstacle.. Most people stand, pressed up against the foggy windows, against the doors, and into each other. The crowd hangs tight to anything that’s nailed down and some things that aren’t. They sway and sometimes fall in unison when the driver makes a sharp turn or decides to beat the other bus to the stop. But the conductor, this woman with magic in her pouch, cannot cling - she must fight her way through the impenetrable and foul smelling mass. She must (and she always does) locate the new riders, take their fare, sometimes breaking 1,000 ruble notes while the bus screeches to a halt, and give the riders their tickets, magical or not. The conductor is always on her feet, always being crushed into some drunk or school kid, and almost always looking more haggard and beaten down than any of the street dogs.

When the bus reaches the end of the line, the driver enjoys his lunch. The conductor cleans the bus. It is a punishing job. Occasionally one encounters young and fresh conductors. They aren’t energetic, but not totally defeated either. I suppose it takes a couple days.

Along with my regular teaching duties, Perm State University has awarded Sveta and the honor of escorting a visiting American lawyer to the ballet Sunday. But I’m much more excited about tonight’s rock show at Druzya.

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Comments

[Sunny]

Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday, Chris! I hope all is still going well in Perm. I miss your blog entries. I try to fill my finals studying time with on-line distractions, and your blogging hiatus is not helping.