The Angel of Aeroflot
It was hot in Siberia. The heat has stolen the bite from your tumbler of Stoly, and the caviar is hatching. Even the moon, in a kindly gesture, covers the sun as we observe from the banks of the Ob reservoir, but fails to relieve the heat.
Up and down the hotel hallway, my comrades are sleeping with their doors open. In Novosibirsk, we don’t believe in air conditionski. I think I hear a distant tapping on the perspiring radiator: "Roskolnikov is arrested," and I fall into a restless, damp sleep. Tomorrow night, I sleep in Amsterdam.
I had two bags to check, a large,
rolling monster, weighing about 65 pounds, and a large, hard camera case. We
were crammed into a bus in waves of around sixty people, and driven from the
terminal. Then the Ilushyn IL-82 came into view – Buck Roger’s space ship.
Three staircases under the fuselage, people marching up stairways in three long
lines like ants devouring a mantis. At the top of the stairs, a room full of
luggage racks where I deposited my carry-on bag, and continued up a second
flight of stairs into the massive cabin.
We were seated nine across , three by three, by three, staring dead ahead into a blank wall, like so many automatons waiting silently in a warehouse. Next to me, the center group of seats was displaced by the staircase I had ascended. Like many things I had noticed in Russia, the interior of this whale was practical and drab, and time moved slowly in the vacuum of a language I didn’t understand.
Presently, a flight attendant appeared. She climbed down the stairs, secured the outer door, then closed a hatch over the inner stairs, and snapped a rope across the railings that now emerged from the floor.
The Siberian heat permeated the cabin. I estimated that each of the three cabins could carry 150 sweaty travelers, and incredulously, I couldn’t detect any connecting passageway between them. For all I knew, it was us and our one attendant. Finally, we were in the air, and she came by with a cart of drinks. I busied myself with trying to keep my "Coke Light" balanced on my tray which rested at an angle on my belly. Underneath the tray, I tried to uncross my feet, rolling sideways in the narrow seat, and holding my empty Coke can under my chin. Lukewarm coke dribbled down my chest. She took her station, guarding the hatchway, about ten feet or so away from me.
I got the tray out of the way, found the damp napkin and wiped my neck. I looked over at the young woman, solid but poised. She turned to look at me, and she smiled an incredibly radiant smile. She was very attractive, kind of looked like Demi Moore – next size up. She had dark hair and thick, Siberian eyebrows – big eyes and delicate features. Her skin, the translucent hue of sweet Siberian goat’s milk. She wore the woolen Aeroflot suit with lanky style. I smiled back. She nodded her head.
The sound of those big engines changed as we made our approach into Sheremetyevo airport just north of Moscow. Sheremetyevo has two terminals that share the same runways. Sheremetyevo 2 is for international flights.
After recovering my bags, I walked out the revolving door into the smoky Moscow sunlight. I knew that I had to find the shuttle bus to Sheremetyevo 2. Surely, there would be some kind of a sign. There was none, at least none I could understand by Cyrillic transliteration. A half-hearted rain began to fall in random glops. I squeezed against the building with Russian smokers emphatically holding the precious spaces next to the slop bucket. A huge dog snoozed on top of a steaming vent. Vehicles of every persuasion stopped, picked up, dropped off. "Sheremetyevo two!" I screamed, holding up two sticky digits. They roared away in a cloud of black, choking fumes.
It seemed like much too long, so I banged on the door of a bus. The driver shook his head and I steered my baggage away from an annoyed crowd waiting to get on. Should I try to hire a taxi? They seemed to careen through this passageway, not stopping. My feet began to ache, and I edged into a space in front of the building, guarding my luggage.
Three large busses pulled up, and people jammed into the doorways, clutching passes or rubles, shoving and grunting. Which bus? The engines began to rev, and the first bus slammed its door and ground through the crowd. I was ready for plan "B." But I didn’t have a plan "B." I was reluctant to leave my bags and chase a taxi.
Suddenly, the revolving door emitted a ray of sunshine. It was my smiling cabin attendant – I’ll call her "V. Pushkin." I croaked, "Sheremetyevo two!"
In a flash, she had the handle of my big bag, and I followed her to the second bus. She moved like a running back, and mowed down all comers, pushing my big suitcase like battering ram. Other Russians, sensing that she was on an official, state mission, flew out of her way, and she dragged that leaden box full of dirty clothes, Matryoshka dolls, plastic Balalykas and a tripod, up the steps. She argued briefly with the driver, and I held out a handful of rubles. She selected some and pressed them into the driver’s filthy hand.
She passed through a turnstile and signaled me to follow. My bags wouldn’t fit through, but she did not give up. She placed a sturdy shoe against the turnstile and drew that bag under the bars with me following like a sausage through an industrial vacuum cleaner hose. My watch came apart and I lost three buttons. I found a seat and held on to my bags in the aisle. V. Pushkin stood, holding on to an overhead strap.
In a neck-snapping wave, the passengers flew forward in chorus as the transport skidded to an atonal stop at a rural kiosk where several riders got off, and more got on. I realized that this was not a "shuttle." The Muscovites cursed as they grappled their way around my baggage in the aisle. They stopped short of ripping my neck out – they looked over at V. Pushkin who was glaring an official, uniformed, authoritarian eye that pierced them to the kishkas.
At the next stop, a Babushka climbed over my cases and sat next to me. Chicken feet poked out of a rolled-up package she held tightly on her lap. Her multilingual look warned me to stay away from her pullets. The driver screeched away from the stop, slamming the door shut almost before the opening was clear of humanity. As we tore out, we snapped back in unison. Where, oh, where was Sheremetyevo 2?
The large terminal building loomed before us, and several pilgrims leaped to their feet, anticipating a very brief stop. The door flew open, and massed humanity clogged the doorway like egg whites in a bowl of Borscht. As the manswarm cleared, I found myself at the top of a steep, narrow stairway. There was no way that I could safely climb down and manage my three bags. Suddenly, V. Pushkin appeared at the foot of the steps, arms outstretched – Our Lady of Perpetual Baggage Relief. From the top of the stairs, I threw her my carry-on, and then the camera case, I couldn’t totally lift the 65 pounder, the doors began to oscillate impatiently. The driver said something nasty over the crackling PA. Behind me, a burly Bolshevik snatched the handle of the bulging bag and effortlessly threw it out the door.
Like Willy Mays at his finest, V. Pushkin – not a hair out of place, a slight blush on her creamy cheeks - faded back and made a perfect basket catch. Looking down, I carefully descended those slippery steps and hit the curb as the doors clawed across my back and the bus caromed away in a cloud of exhaust. I looked up, expecting to see V. Pushkin, but she was gone. Instead, my bags were neatly stacked, waiting for me at the object of my quest – Sheremetyevo number 2.
Much later, I realized that V. Pushkin probably made that trip totally for my sake, to watch over me in an act of unselfish kindness. She needed to jump back on that grimy bus and return to Sheremetyevo. Wherever you are, V. Pushkin, I wish you safe landings and the kindness of strangers.
--end--