My week as a Checkov Scholar

So many of your know that I have been delving into the glorious world of Checkov since arriving at Russian State University for the Humanities last fall and running into Margarita Odesskaya. I had somehow managed to major in Russian at Middlebury and never read a single word of the great doctor-playwright that Russians adore. With Margarita’s help I got on a steady diet of short stories, plays, films and various Moscow productions. Checkov has come to feel closer to me than the Russian writers in whose company I’d passed so much time. I spent several weekends thinking and reading on the role of color in his short story, The Black Monk. Reading my paper on this subject aloud in Russian to a room of scholars was absolutely terrifying, but after the first few sentences it went smoothly enough.
Aside from taking in the conference and stressing over our papers, we did a lot of enjoying the scenery. One day I walked all day in the company of two professors- Margarita and Sveta, from Brown, out to Lavadia (former palace of Nicolas II and site of the famous “Yalta Conference” where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt met before WWII). The walk along a nature trail was delicious in the warm sun- we spotted birds and a rather large black snake (briefly). We continued after the palace walking along this trail and ended at a castle structure on the coast where we drank espresso and watched dolphins frolic. Another night we did a sauna completed by jumps into the Black Sea.
On Friday I rallied everyone to go horseback riding at a ranch Sveta had located earlier in the week. I was excited to take a turn in the saddle after about an eight year leave of absence. Once informed of my four years riding experience, the handler said I would be riding his horse, Afinasi. I was pretty excited, as this horse was hands taller than all the others and looked like a dream, strong and shiny, bursting with life. He told me it was a recently castrated 3-year old male horse that was not fully trained. I did not expect to be sitting on what amounted to a live rocket. In the first five minutes of the ride he managed to bolt into the woods taking me literally jumping over some fallen logs and holding to his very closely cropped mane, struggling to stay on. This turned out to be a theme of the ride, during which I fell off twice. Honestly, under the circumstances, I’m sort of proud it was only twice. I was pretty shocked actually, as for all my previous years of riding I’d taken just one fall. I can’t say the horse evil but certainly playful and desperately unexercised. He seethed with pent up energy and strolling in the woods was not adequate release. Luckily my falls were relatively painless. For the first, I’d lost the stirrups and fell away from the horse onto some leaves. The second one I will remember longer, one foot got stuck in the stirrup, but luckily my shoe came off and the horse got away without stomping on my face. I got the wind mostly knocked out of me and nice series of bruises on my left side from above my elbow to below my knee. I’m happy to report they have already turned a sickening shade of yellow/green thanks to my “Black-and-blue-off” cream. Thinking of it later, the idea of jumping on this horse while out of practice to ride in an uncontrolled environment was remarkably stupid. Ah well, let this be a lesson to you- don’t go riding around on untrained horses in the woods without a helmet- even if you are a crazy rodeo-rider at heart! Ironically enough, all the first-time riders had tame old beasts that limbered along without event. Hannah’s horse did briefly bolt away when we ran across a group of children who thought that it was good idea to scream at the horses (grrrr), but she stayed on (way to go Hannah!)
Oddly enough I think one of my favorite memories of the trip was the train ride back. The six of us- an Italian, a Russian, a Croat-German, a Slovakian-German and 2 Americans- settled into the 4-person compartment, gobbling down amazing eggplant salad with lavash washed down with the sweet Crimean wine. As the sun set we noticed that the overhead lights did not work and so we sat in growing darkness and began to sing. It started with Nicola’s suggestion of Gardeamus igituous, which we squinted at in the fading light from Patricia’s Latin textbook and sung with great gusto, particularly the lines “Vive Academia, Vive Profesores!”. Once the singing began, conversation faded and soon it was an all-out sing-along. After I got everyone rocking to Rocka-My-Soul, Patricia laboriously taught us a fabulous Latin round “Libera nos domine”. I think after several dozen rehearsals we did manage to sing it properly together a few times. We sat many hours singing folk songs in a dozen languages, sort of moving around in a circle in the compartment, covering most of Europe along with America and Russia. I was grateful for my years of Peter, Paul and Mary and Joan Boaz- I recognized most all of the melodies, although sometimes the words were different. These hours rattling along, suspended between locations, sitting together in the darkness and sharing songs that bridge both time and place- this was a sort of dream.