Chapter 5: Friday Picnic
Friday, like all of their days in Suzdal, was brilliantly sunny and warm. On this day, the warmest, instead of trooping down to the cafeteria, they picnicked in the rough green around the water pump. Igor and Tall Igor had heard the crew, especially the boys, talking about wanting to finish the floor on their last day—meaning finish off the existing floor, completely destroy it, haul it away in bits, and clear the way for Aleksandr Vladimirovich, their local host and boss, to pour new concrete and lay new tile. Rudy wished he could stay and progress from demolition to construction, but he understood that even his eagerness couldn’t break concrete any faster. He also understood that organizing volunteers for short-term labor in projects overseas was hard enough; timing their arrival coincide with specific stages of construction requiring specific skills was pretty much impossible. Maybe, Rudy wondered, if he worked for Plowshare, he could develop a plan for smaller groups of specialists, longer stays, more flexible travel times….
Or maybe Plowshare and boss Marty would view leaving the group to tear around the countryside on a motorcycle as a sign of not being cut out for leading naïve American tourists around a foreign country.
The workers had finally reached the end of the tricky top level of brick—they couldn’t efficiently punch shovels into the rubble, so they had to move every small bit by hand—and were now smashing softer concrete. They settled into a method that allowed them to really swing their big hammers, get their long wrecking bars into the concrete, and release and smash big chunks for easier digging and hauling. Rudy and the five other guys, all Americans, swung the hammers and punched the wrecking bars into the concrete; the couple dozen gals, American and Russian, came and went in a steady stream, loading big broken chunks onto hand carts, carrying them out to the courtyard in two-person teams, and dumping them onto the rubble pile that Aleksandr Vladimirovich would later clear with a front-end loader. After struggling with the brick the last three days, they could now fall into a strong rhythm. The brick had taken longer to break and to collect, meaning wreckers, pickers, and haulers spent too much time waiting and not moving. Now into concrete, the women could pick and haul the debris as fast as the men could make it. They removed over a third of the floor in the morning, and Rudy was sure that they could remove the rest in the afternoon. He sensed that that goal inspired most of the team around him, too. Unless some more brick surprised them, he felt he could count on his new friends to keep up and clear that floor.
Igor and Tall Igor had planned all their meals at the cafeteria, but they had watched the team, Americans and Russians, getting into a new groove right away, watched them eat up that hard floor under their clouds of dust, and thought they could arrange a treat for lunch. The guides heard Brenda and several others among the Americans rhapsodize about fresh bread and missed not being able to track down an open bakery during their working hours. The bakeries in town had their own struggles, and their hours were limited and unpredictable.
Igor and Tall Igor left the third guide, Marina, to supervise the group and hurried across town to the smaller bakery, which managed to keep its shelves stocked longer than the shop in the center of town. They bought fifteen loaves of bread in dollars. Tall Igor stowed eight of the loaves in his backpack; he could feel their fresh warmth through the canvas. He carried the other seven in his string bags. As they hiked back toward the center, Igor packed his totes with a hodgepodge of sausage, cheese, garden fruit, and homemade jams from two shops and four outdoor vendors. When Igor went indoors, Tall Igor stayed outside to guard their hoard of bread.
At the open-air market on Ulitsa Lenina, Tall Igor spotted a set of seven plastic platters, one for each rainbow color, among the rummage one woman was selling. They weren’t enough for each of work crew, but they’d do for passing food around. And the woman beside her appeared to have simply hauled a couple kitchen drawers straight out of her kitchen to sell her assorted utensils. Igor bought four spoons, each a different style, for the jam.
A year ago, the Igors would never have considered subjecting guests from the West to such an ad hoc meal. Westerners were to be served with style and efficiency in exemplary Soviet facilities, in contained, controlled, monitorable settings, segregable from citizens on the street, most certainly not in the open air, on the ground. But knowing these Americans and their goal for the day, knowing the time it took to troop down to the cafeteria and be seated and served (the cafeteria staff offered an exemplary demonstration of the lingering Soviet efficiency that doomed the Union) the Igors overcame their training and reinterpreted their deeper Russian hospitality to gamble that a picnic was just the thing to reward these workers and actually give them more rest time before their last shift.
And was it!
When the Americans and their Russian helpers came trooping up the dirt path, Ken trotting ahead in the lead with his trusty water filter and a stringer of bottles, when they spotted the loaves piled on a couple overturned crates in the grass, the cry went up, from goggle-eyed Ken first, and then the whole crew, “Bread! Bread! Khleb! Bread!” They could have had their own bread riot, but in the collegiality of sore muscles, they managed to check their stampede, gently take up the loaves and the platters of sausage and cheese and fruit that Igor had spent a half-hour slicing and arranging with a couple of knives borrowed from the cafeteria (whose workers needed little convincing that they need not fuss over the change in plans, as they could take the planned Americans’ lunch home to their families), and distribute them fairly to all the scattered spots they chose for their repast in the grass. Ken grabbed a couple sausage slices and started with his usual regime of pumping and bottle filling, until Carter came up five minutes later, shoved one more hunk of bread in his mouth and a third of a loaf in Ken’s hand, and said, “Here, my turn. Go eat this bread. And get some of that white cheese. That’s good strong cheese.”
“Goat cheese?” Ken asked.
“Strong cheese,” Carter said. He pointed to the platter on the ground between Lily and Brenda. “Go try it, see if it tastes familiar.”
So Carter finished filling everyone’s bottles, and Ken got some cheese. It wasn’t goat, but it was good. Most sat and joked and got up to pass platters and loaves and jam jars around. Some of the workers finished eating and flopped down in the shade to nap. Brad snoozed against a young oak tree, clutching the crusty end of a loaf in his still dusty hand.
Rudy ate a little of every item that came his way, even the rhubarb jam. It was the best meal he’d ever eaten on a job site, and it was the happiest job site he’d ever eaten on.
Marty sat beside him. He was the group coleader—Brenda, Ken’s prof, was their cultural attaché, while Marty was Plowshare’s boss. The non-profit usually had three or four trips going at a time, and Marty couldn’t oversee all of them in person, but he’d come to Russia to personally manage this inaugural post-Soviet trip and learn lessons for future Russian work excursions. After Marty, Brenda, and Elaine, Rudy was the next oldest person on the trip. For the first time in his life, Rudy felt his adulthood, in contrast with the youthful exuberance of some of the college students on the trip. But alongside Marty, Rudy felt green.
Marty was very cool, very quiet. Marty had the beard and the eyes of Chuck Norris, and the Americans joked that he would karate chop the KGB and Mafia both if they tried to mess with their group. Marty had said nothing about having any fight skills, but Rudy had watched Marty’s hands on the tools. He had watched Marty’s hands clenching as he looked around the lobby of their first dorm, back in Moscow, as they led Brenda to the elevator and away from the goons who harassed her and pierced her sense from Soviet times that women could stroll freely and safely alone in Moscow. Rudy had gotten the impression that, if a fight ever did break out, staying close to Marty would be smart tactic #1.
At the Friday picnic, Marty and Rudy sat a bit apart from the rest of the crew, and a little breeze rustled the leaves above to shade their conversation from anyone else. They talked just a little at first, and only about the work. “Getting the haulers into two lines was a good idea,” Rudy said.
“Ksenia did that,” Marty replied. “That brick slowed us down all week. We never needed two lines. But you saw how the rubble was piling up today. Ksenia saw it, too. I went out to ask Marina about the bus trip, and Ksenia was out organizing the carriers into two lines and leading her second team out that second door.”
They both looked across the rough picnic ground, across nappers and jokers and continuing chowers, to where Ksenia sat amidst the unkept grass with her friend Yulia and young Americans Ashley and Brad. “She’s smart,” Marty said. “She pays attention.”
“All these Russian girls do,” Rudy said. “But they all look to Ksenia, and she keeps them together.”
Marty nodded. They ate some more, washed it down with cool, filtered well water. Marty bit into a small, sour apple. “I thought about what you told me last night.”
Rudy knew a conversation about the ride to Galich, on a motorcycle, with Ksenia, was coming. Rudy had gone to Marty right after they got back from the park last night and told him what he had done and what he was planning. Marty’s cool expression didn’t change; he just thought a moment, stretched, and said, “Let me think about that. We’ll talk tomorrow. Get some sleep, brother.” Rudy slept restlessly—What if Marty says no? What if we blow a tire? What if I can’t find a gas station?—but in the morning he got his mind off the road and the motorcycle and deflected all questions by throwing himself into the work and pulling everyone else along with his muscular enthusiasm. Marty hadn’t mentioned anything while they’d worked; he’d just kept swinging his hammer like a regular machine. But Rudy had waited for Marty to come talk to him before running down to the shop to pay the Captain his $300.
“You dig that, whatever Russian law is left, your riding a motorcycle to Galich and back breaks multiple sections of it.”
Rudy nodded.
“And you dig that the waiver you signed means our organization bears no legal responsibility for whatever might happen to you if you take off on your own.”
Rudy nodded.
“O.K.” Marty took another bite of that green apple and chewed slowly. He looked around at the picnickers until he finished that bite. “This isn’t the principal’s office. I’m not your boss. But if any of these other kids suggested doing what you’re doing, I’d pull rank I don’t have and say no way. Are you sure this is a good idea?”
In response to Marty’s respect, Rudy tamped back his impulse to make a joke about expanding the mission and making world peace through motorcycle rides. He might be asking Marty for a job someday. He thought instead about his motives and the risks, more consciously than he had last night when he had strolled down the street and hopped on the Captain’s motorcycle.
“If it weren’t a good idea, I don’t think Ksenia would have said yes.”
Marty turned his apple to eye the last bright green skin. “So you’re doing this for her?”
“No—” Rudy surprised himself with this quick response. He stammered to catch up with what his gut was admitting. “—I mean, yeah, but… it’s not just her. It’s… the bashnya, the bell tower.”
Marty gave Rudy a puzzled look.
Rudy pointed up the path, past the crumbling stone wall. They could see the gold spire a few blocks away. “What we saw up there. The road. The country. I gotta go see it. And I’ll have Ksenia with me.” Rudy laughed softly. “I think she’ll keep me safe.”
“You’re not just plotting to keep Ashley’s hands off her and have her for yourself?”
Their eyes had drifted across the clearing to where Ksenia sat before Ashley’s exuberant re-enactment of some portion of the day’s work. She indulged him for a moment, content to be entertained as she ate a piece of bread with rhubarb jam. But then Yulia interjected, and Ksenia laughed and warmly bumped her, shoulder to shoulder, and turned to Brad to coax him to speak.
“That’s not my style,” Rudy said. “She’d see right through me if it were, just like she sees right through him. She wouldn’t get on a motorcycle with me if she didn’t trust me, and I’m not going to break that trust.”
Marty took a last bite from his apple and pitched the browning core into their trash bucket ten feet away. “I guess we both can yield to her judgment.”
They looked around at their happy crew. Rudy said, “The Igors had a good idea with this picnic.”
“Lots to be said for being out under the open sky. But the road is dangerous. Be smart. Come home alive, brother.”
Brother—the way Marty said the word made Rudy feel a little pang at stepping away from the group, from the picnic now and from the group’s planned weekend excursion, on the big bus to the big city of Vladimir and some nearby rural churches. But Rudy had made a promise, and Marty understood. “Will do,” Rudy answered. “Thanks, brother.”
Marty checked his watch, sparking Rudy to do the same. 13:40.
“I should go chat with Aleksandr Vladimirovich.”
“And I should go pay for a motorcycle.”
They got up. Marty brushed his jeans and slung his pouch with his leather gloves and water bottle over his shoulder. “Be back by two. No joyriding until we finish our work.”
“Absolutely,” Rudy said. They headed opposite directions.
Ken caught up with Rudy at the edge of the clearing, at the east gate to the street. “Hey! You going to see the mechanics?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Here.” Ken looked around, stepped close, and stuck a folded bill in Rudy’s hand. Rudy glanced down and saw it was an American fifty.
“What? You don’t—”
“Yes, I do,” Ken said. “Hell of a thing you’re doing. I want to help.”
Rudy looked at the bill, then at Ken. “Won’t you need—”
“I don’t need anything. My bag’s already full of Russian hats. You might get a ticket for driving while American and have to bribe your way out of jail.”
After a few seconds, Rudy tucked the fifty into his front pocket. “All right. Thanks, man.”
“No problem. But—” Ken looked around, toward Ksenia, who now was telling the boys some story in tandem with Yulia, then leaned toward Rudy “—you gotta tell me everything you see when you get back.”
“So you can put it in your journal?”
“Every fuckin’ word. It’s gonna be awesome.”
They laughed at each other. “Get moving,” Ken said, punching Rudy’s shoulder. “I’m not busting all that concrete without you.”