It was an awful struggle to leave Lindsay's peaceful, wi-fi equipped flat and drag myself through the downpour to Kievsky Station, there to catch the Sunday night electric train for the 2 hour journey back to Dubravushka.
Back at camp, I started planning seriously for English Day – which meant making some copies of the lyrics to 'We Will Rock You' and taking my laptop with the music to class, and then encouraging my students to pound on their desks until the Russian teachers stuck their heads in to see what was up.
On Monday afternoon, in between classes, I was treated to the gut-punch irony of curling up for a 15 minute nap - just the briefest, blessedest respite from hours upon hours of yelling children – only to have 25 of them suddenly descend upon the piano outside my door, banging amusically and howling. Then two of them pulled open my door (which I stupidly hadn't locked) and discovered me lying on my couch under the chalkboard.
"Look, it's Leely!"
"SHUT THE DOOR!" I screamed in Russian, and they withdrew.
But the other 23 had heard me, and they all started shrieking.
"LEELY LEELY LEELY!"
Oh God. I got up and locked the door and went back and pulled the pillow over my head.
I heard a teacher come back to round them up, and felt a stir of hope – maybe they were going away now? Maybe they were going to do arts and crafts or some other really soothing thing?
But no. On the count of 'Raz, dva, tre!' the teacher started playing, and the children launched into some kind of shrill Pioneer chorus, accompanied by a 7-year old soloist keyed to dog-whistle range.
The song went on and on. When they were finished, there was a pause and then –
'Again!' the teacher cried.
I had that song in my head for the next three days.
Later, some students, prompted by their instructor, actually asked my permission before playing in the afternoon, but since they barged into my room without knocking in order to ask, I wasn't impressed.
Finally, it was Wednesday. The usual frantic morning was enlivened by the arrival of a 3rd teacher, Andrew from Moscow. We were surprised; they had warned us to expect a Polish girl from Warsaw. So was Andrew; they hadn't bothered to tell him he was coming until the day before.
At 3.30 Olga summoned me and Ariel into her office and gave us handfuls of Chupa-Chup lollipops, to be used as prizes for the English Day games. We took them and went back out to wait on a bench, but nobody came. The counselors were nowhere to be seen, no kids wandered the grounds – nothing anywhere, except the presence of me and Ariel on our park bench, suggested that an English Carnival was imminent.
Then, like a sweaty shambling teddy bear of doom, Alexander Borisovich appeared.
"Ah yes! At last! Here you are! Lily, I have your tongue -twisters, and Ari – the translations!"
He shoved fistfuls of paper at each of us.
My station was to sit and listen to students attempt to read English tongue-twisters. If I judged their pronunciation satisfactory, they got a Chupa-Chup.
"But remember!" cried AB, tapping his nose and twinkling his eye, "This game should be about fun, yes, the joy of the day, not sweets and things!"
I think he was alluding to the fact that Olga had been stingy and not given us nearly enough lollipops, so I just shrugged and went off to find my station on the porch of Bungalow Six.
At first all remained silent and peaceful. Off in the distance hordes of children had begun galloping about, but I didn't really connect them with myself until suddenly 20 teenagers stampeded onto the porch and leaned over the chair I was sitting in.
"Mozhno ya? May I?"
"No, may I first?"
"May I?"
"May I?"
I waved my arms to clear them off a little and picked a kid at random.
"You – try a tongue twister!"
I didn't recognize him from any of our classes, and the reason became evident: he didn't speak or read English.
"That was a great try," I said, and handed another twister to a second kid, who did a little better, and then to a third, the best of all. At this point, I made a strategic mistake: I reached into my teacher's satchel and took out a pineapple-mango Chupa-Chup.
"Congratulations!" I told the third student. "This is for you."
The girl's eyes lit up. She seized the lollipop, and at once the whole crowd surged in around my chair again.
"Ooooh, Chupa-Chups!"
"I want!"
"Me me me!"
They blotted out the sun; their elbows were in my eye sockets. I fought free and climbed up on a table.
"One at a time!"
When they had all had a go – two tries each – most of them wandered off, still lollipopless, except a few diehard 15 year old boys who clasped their hands and whined,
"Pleeeez….Chuuuuupa-Chups!"
"No!" I said. "Go away! No Chupa-Chups!"
Then another wave of children, and another, and another. When my 25 tiniest crowded onto the porch, I held my breath, lest even the rustle of a wrapper betray the sacred presence and spark a riot – because I didn't have 25 Chupa-Chups to hand out
Then they were gone and that, thank God, was that.
I went off to dinner – plain cold spaghetti and chopped cucumbers – and at 8 we reconvened in the hall for the skits program. Ari was already there, looking harassed as he ran his middle-schoolers through another reading of Shakespeare. I was watching Sevyeron, the skinny jugheared savant that they had translating everything into Russian, when AB swooped in and steered me into a seat at a table near the stage, which had been draped with a red-and-white English flag.
"I know, I know, you are American, you and Andrew!" he said. 'But today – ha ha! – we are all English in our hearts!"
I sat down without comment. Ariel and Andrew joined me, and shortly thereafter all the students filed in. The tiny ones spotted me and waved with hysterical enthusiasm, as if it had been 2 years instead of 2 hours since we had last met. When everyone was quiet, Olga bounded onto the stage, looking more fanatical than ever. She was still wearing the sweater vest.
"Good evening students, citizens of our beloved Dubravushka!" she screamed, to tumultuous applause. "Are You. Ready. For ENGLISH!"
Apparently they were. She retreated and the first performers, a group of girls in pink and yellow shifts, came up to do some kind of folk dance to the shrill tootling of a recorder.
At the end of this dance, they danced over to our table with a huge lump of black bread and bowl of salt.
"It is traditional,' explained Sevyeron the savant, "to welcome Russian guests with bread and salt…"
With the eyes of the whole school pinned on us, we each ripped off a chunk of bread with our bare hands and dunked it in the salt, then tried not to choke on the resultant saline frosting.
After this little ceremony, the primary schoolers came forward with a crown of oak leaves.
"This is for you, Leely!" said Sasha, their spokeswoman. "Because you are our queen!"
I bent and let them put the leafy crown on my head, then all the kids applauded and 10 or 12 of them rushed forward to hug me before their hatchet-faced Russian counselors hustled them back into their seats.
The show continued. A group of boys pantomimed a traditional Russian market day, complete with a flute playing, fights, juggling, and an openly rigged shell game. Sevyeron sang a little folk ditty that had been translated and considerably bowdlerized for the occasion. At the end of this skit we teachers were presented with a plate of blini and a bowl of sour cream. I nibbled at a blin, but soon had to desist, feeling the longing eyes of children at my back. They'd only had cold spaghetti too…
Finally it was time for what Olga had billed as our 'English Surprise."
We went onstage and summoned all our students to join us. The first strains of Queen, 'We Will Rock You,' began to thud in the background. My students, God help them, were all watching to take their dance cues from me, so I clapped and stamped my feet, and dragged them into it, until we were all clapping and stamping together – except my oak crown kept slipping my eyes. No matter.
At the end I herded them offstage with many cheers of congratulation and attempted high-fives. I say attempted because hardly any of them recognized the gesture: they got confused and we ended up gravely shaking hands instead.
Then it was time for Ariel's Shakespeare production, all but incomprehensible because half had forgotten their lines and the rest couldn't pronounce the words.
"Oh Yuliet, Yuliet…"
"Forget the fazzer and forsek thu nem…"
But Sevyeron's translation at least got big laughs, as did the bawdy little joke of holding up a discreet sheet for the newlywed Romeo and Juliet to duck behind, following the wedding scene. Olga was the only one who wasn't amused. The next day she would scold Ariel for allowing off-color elements into the production (off color? Shakespeare? Never!)…but that was all later. For the moment, all was triumphant. The curtain fell to rousing applause, and English Day was over. For another two weeks at least.
