Mermaid in a Pickle Jar - Russian short story

This story was written in collaboration with several couchsurfers and a colleague.  It explores that old Russian stereotypes - ; pickles and vodka frame the story. These subjects were chosen by Russians without my influence. I only added the mermaid.



Человек должен выпивать 3 литра воды в день! Это норма согласно теории. Потомy что человек состоит на 90 % из воды, а может быть и нет. А может быть, это вовсе и не человек, а огурец.

"Ну, и неважно какой - всё равно", - сказал Миша. Ведь он же будет огурец есть, и таким образом огурец может стать человеком.

Миша подумал об этом, и банка стала открываться.

Там, в банке, он увидел рycалку и влюбился в неё. У русалки были прекрасные зелёные волосы, а на носу нелепые очки. Миша подумал, что с такими очками она уж точно учёная дева, академию закончила. Он и не подозревал, что за этими очками скрываются жгучие очи морской красавицы.

Как она тyда попала, в банку?

Возможно, потому что американский президент охотился на русалок. Он сказал, что русалки опасны для цивилизации.

Русалка тоже влюбилась. И именно поэтому она решила навсегда исчезнуть с глаз людей . Так что мы их больше никогда не увидим, разве что после пятой стопки.

The Drunken Pianos

As I walked towards Nevskiy with a vegan, teetotal Russian friend (almost a freak of nature in this harsh borsch-some shampanskoyed tsardom but that's another article)we encountered a crowd of inebriated men hanging around.  They jumped out on my friend with a plastic beer bottle, in  a gawkish, harmless way. On Nevskiy another man wandered by disposessedly and the vegan said, 'There are lots of strange people here.'

I whispered confidentially, with beautiful British sarcasm and worldly wisdom , 'You know, that's because they're pianos and people act like that when they're pianos'.

You may be surprised to learn that I hadn't intended to say exactly this. There should have been something more to do with beer and the resulting consequences of consuming it and less to do with musical instruments, as lovely as they are. You see , пьяный (Piyaniy) and пианино (Pianino) sound more or less the same to me; all in all, the drunken P softens up a little and the a is slurred to ya and then a -no is added on but these -n's and -kas and -shkas suffixedly suffuse themselves all over Russian.  In short, what's a vowel or too between an Englishwoman and the Russian language? Negligible.

Of course, these subtle differences only seem subtle when you're a foreigner and not very au fait with the language. To native speakers they are as humiliatingly obvious as the difference between sheep and ship - which so many learners of English cannot distinguish so that students often travel to France on a sheep or remark that there are lots of ships in Wales - or artery and armory if I change about the same amount of letters as needed to switch 'Piyanaya to Pianina.

I composed a song which only makes sense in Russian because a drunk piano is in no way such a flowing  exquisitely attired creature as a пьяное пианино (Piyanaya Pianino.)



пьяное пианино
что ты делаеш, что ты думаеш?


композитор - он оффисиант
ты закаcашь шостоковичый виски
после шампанское чайковскый

ты играeш кандинский

пьяное пианино
бесстыдное да чудесное







Plastered Piano
What are doing, what are you thinking?

The composer is a waiter
You order  your Shostakovich with Whisky
Then Tchaikovskian Champagne

You play Kandinsky

Plastered Piano
Unbeatable, yes wonderful

Clair-Obscur in the Telegraph Office

Paperia - Illustrations for a fairy tale

In some measured inspired by the amount of wasted, squandered and scorned  scraps of paper involved in EFL teaching; especially to young learners this fairy-tale is about a world made of paper.

Smoke your Hearts Out - a free-writing fragment

In the outside corridor of the Galeria, there is a flurry of life. The workers and consumers and loungers and students from the nearby college stand under here. As I walk along it  there is a symphony of cigarettes, as they are raised in the air like the violin bows. Smoke is ubiquitous here, Much cheaper than such unwholesome pursuits as swimming. Clubs drown  in smoke and menus have a whole page dedicated to tobacco products . They are smoking their hearts out.

Smoke your Hearts Out

Here you'll find a closer sort of cafe

There are bar stools and fags across the way

Here amongst mahogany we proffer hearts

And sanguine delicacies such as strawberry tarts.

Hearts constructed of plastic or ebony

Decorated like mobile phones from last century

In the Bar of Vaporised Hearts, it was smoky and dark like any other bar but here the punters dipped long tubes into their own heart or the heart of others.

I sat  in the bar, smoking my own heart. I pulled the pipe our slowly , drawing the melancholy out and then took it into my mouth and let the remainder drift listlessly into the air. It was a limpid smoke, with only the slightest hint of blue. A man to the left, with the most exrcruciatingly beautiful shadows on his cheekbones  was blowing coal black smoke and it made me shiver. I looked at him. It wasn't the shadows that were beautiful but the bones that formed them. He caught me looking at him but continued to smoke and read a journal. From here, I couldn't see what it was. About rocket advances, I assumed, as that's what most men on London  tend to read if they read anything.

It wasn't. I looked closer. It was a Dickens.  I'd heard about that myself, and people say London wasn't so very different then. I showed him my own book of Robert Browning, a fancifuller sort of Victorian nostalgia. 'Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,

May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely ..' I read huskily, distractedly, as if to myself. He looked up through his black smoke.

Writing in Russian - Poem to a chewing gum wrapper

In a bistro, I  restlessly began chain writing poems on pepper packets.  Upon  reading them  to some Russian boys the next day, they handed me some 'good' chewing gum(Wrigleys cyclone) for their further amusement. This is what I wrote on the packet:

Я выпотрошила твое еластичное сердце
У тебя будет просто угрюмая некрасивая кожа.
Жила была жевачка моя
Сияла как капитализм
Потом лишенный как феодолизм

To my chewing gum wrapper

I  tore out your elastic heart

Now you have only morose  skin, not quite red.

Once upon a time you lived dear chewing gum;

Now that Capitalist shine

Is dulled to lack, Feudalism.

Proletariat bay or Champanskoe and Pets in the Fontanka

There was no need for a heavy winter coat this Satuday weekend and I strolled along in a  Soviet summer dress - with thick tights and fleeced lined boots admittedly - admiring the waters of the Fontanka, newly unveiled from snow and ice and shimmering with  the beautiful sunshine which scarcely appeared for the whole of winter.  Spotting a bay, I layed my coat down not far from a group of  quiet revellers  and prepared to enjoy my victuals of smoked trout, rye and parsley ( easy food to grab from a corner store). As I rustled my plastic bags a lady from the revellers  asked , 'Debushka, Shampanskoe?' I hesitated just a little ; cheap soviet champagne has more ethanol than grape but it's sweet enough to be pleasant. It was mostly a case of accepting a social contract so I said, 'Yes, thankyou..'

'You will?' I think they were surprised I agreed to the  alcoholic fare.

'Just a little.'

'Beer or Champagne?'

'Champagne.' They poured me a plastic cup and asked if I was alone; well, I suppose it was more of a statement as I clearly was on my own, not being availed of any invisible friends at this minor stage of alcohol consumption.

Now I noticed the composition of  the group; two middle aged ladies and two young men in their twenties, all in indistinct mud coloured clothes, of the sports-wear type(that would be from Walmart or ASDA in America or England), the sort of people who are more concentrated on the metro as you head towards the poorer outskirts.

Of course, they were curious about what I was doing in St Petersburg and asked why I would teach in Russia when the salaries must be much better in the Uk. I explained that it was interesting and I wanted to learn Russian and the salary -rent differential made it more or less the same in both countries anyway. 'She's here for the interest.' They repeated to the boys who were further away. Clearly it was a little bit of  a puzzle to understand my bad Russian. They tried to give me a chocolate cake roll in that babushka-ish manner which is almost aggressive, when you making sure have everything you apparently need is like fighting for a point in a game.





As I quietly ate, two women plodded along to the bay with  a german shepard cross and threw it into the river. The poor thing looked sligthly stunned and automatically waded through the water in self-preservation from the freezing water  moving towards the other side and unsure what to do. My champagne companions reprimanded the dog owners and for a while they were all beckoning the dog back and had to heave him out of the water after moving the little picnic aside. As he grateful leapt from his owners arms onto the bay he spilt the beer and spread water.  There was a lot ot tut-tutting  about how cruel this was to the poor pet. 'Petersburg! In April.'

The sun went behind the ever-near clouds and with it the temporary warmth. They were worried I would be ill and a middle-aged man who introduced himself asDima put his  big rain coat around my shoulders. I tried to protest that I was sitting on my coat but clearly I needed to be helped by this gentlemen of the gutters.

Then a questions I often get asked at market stalls, 'How old are you?'; 'Are you married?.' They were sure I looked nineteen and assured me that there were plenty of good men in St Petersburg ,' but not Dima here, he's too old.'

I left to go to an exhibition . They insisted on pouring me some more champagne and it splashed against my dress as I walked. I wanted to pour it in the Fontanki water as a beautiful symbol to extend symbol because the name Champagne carries a certain glamour to it which can't be dispelled by its ethanolic reality..  It would be dirt into dirt, chemicalised substance with little relation to grapes into the polluted river, and glory into glory, the royal drink tippled at Operas and Birthdays and New Years with the name pronounced as if it really was champagne and then the river which had its role in so many murders and  love affairs.

I met a teetotal  Belorussian friend  for the exhibition and told her how pleased I was to experience this display of the warm Russian hospitality - out there in a the temporary home of a bay - which travel guides are always chattering about. She couldn't empathise, as she  would never accept cake or champagne from people because she doesn't want either.