Interesting night
Friday, May 2, 2008/2:34 pm
So, last night was an interesting occasion. I spent the evening hours doing push ups, situps and stretching on the floor of my spartan room while I watched a recap of yesterday's Manchester United/FC Barcelona footie match of the UEFA Cup Championships and then some Russian professional volleyball (all in Russian, mind you). A typical evening, really. I'd actually already seen the football match, but when your other 8 channels are things you really don't understand... I then did some reading/planning about Moscow and St. Petersburg from the travel books that I've brought with me (I'm planning on spending some time there vacationing when I'm done here) and I turned out somewhere between 10 and 11 with the alarm set for 5:50 in the am. All, as I said, usual.
I don't know how long the rustling was going on outside my door. I slowly realized, though, that it had been more than a few dozens of minutes. My neighbor was trying to get into his room, which was slightly confusing, because the keys to our rooms are big and bulky, like antique keys, with big and bulky keyholes. Even in the dark it shouldn't be difficult to figure out. But still, my neighbor kept pounding on his door, sliding keys around somewhere, and mumbling and bumbling in Russian - I imagined him saying things like "Good for nothin. Stupid keys. What the? C'mon. C'mon." And more pounding. As I kept passing in and out of sleep, I finally realized that this guy was drunk. So, I got up to offer my assistance.
Upon opening my door, yes, there was my drunk neighbor in the hall, but not trying to get into his room as I had thought. He was trying to get out of our rooms into the main hall. Let me explain my dormitory. My room is at the end of a main hall, with rooms on both sides of the main hall. Upon opening my door you step in to a small 4' by 5' private hall with three additional doors (you have four total doors to this hall if you include the one you just came through). My door is to the left. My neighbor's door is straight ahead of you. The bathroom is the door on your right. We share the bathroom.
My neighbor was on his knees against the wall and door of the bathroom facing the keylock to the door leading to the main hall. He could not unlock the door. In his defense, this keylock is a bit tricky. It's tough to get the key in, it's tough to turn the key, and you have to turn the key over several times to unlock the door. This lock is what I call a European style lock in which each successive turnover of the key in the lock drives three pins successively deeper and deeper into the door frame. I remember being annoyed with these locks when I first arrived in Europe years ago, as you never knew how many times you had to turn over a key to unlock a door. Being drunk and confronted with such a lock, one might turn the lock over back and forth repeatedly, and ever increasingly frustatingly, and never unlock the door. This, I believe was what my neighbor was doing. So, here was my neighbor fiddling with the lock, trying to get out of his room and not in. The real surprise, though, was that his nose was swollen, probably broken, he had a three-inch gash across the bridge of his nose, and he had blood on his shirt and jeans. The keylock had roughed him up pretty good.
On seeing me he kind of sat back on his calves, exhausted or frustrated, and looked to me as if we were trapped. I asked him, in English, if he was okay. "Okay. Are you okay?" I've learned a few Russian words in my weeks here, but they all failed me at this moment. Besides, asking him for some lumpy porridge or beet soup, please, in Russian wouldn't have helped the situation much. Neither would have counting to four. Fortunately, he spit out, in English, "I need help." Then, "Fuck." And I do mean, literally, that he spit these phrases. On me, on the floor, pretty much on the whole hall. After my neighbor so succinctly summarized the situation I stepped back into my room for my key, stepped back into the hall, and unlocked and opened the door to the main hall. My neighbor looked at me in utter amazement. To him I had just parted the Red Sea, turned water into wine, recited verbatim every line from Army of Darkness. He got up and walked out.
I went back into my room and crawled back into my bed. I thought about locking my door, but then thought better of it, in case he needed to get into my room. I looked at my clock. 1:50 am. For some reason I was impressed with his request. I thought, if I were stuck somewhere in Russia, drunk and bleeding, I'll be damned if I thought I could come up with "I need help. Fuck." in Russki. I also wondered what my neighbor was doing drunk in his room, and, was he even my neighbor? It dawned on me that I had never seen my neighbor before, only heard him in his room or the bathroom (This is due to my work schedule, which is almost always.). Maybe he was a visitor, had been hanging out, and was going home. 1:51 am, back asleep.
I vaguely recall hearing my neighbor return, I think not much later. He must be my neighbor. I heard him rustling with keys again, and this time I was pretty certain he was trying to get into his room.
5:50 am, alarm bell ringing, time to get up, stretch, pushups, situps. I was a bit tired but not too bad. Fortunately, even though my neighbor was probably making ruckus for an hour or two I think I only lost sleep for ten minutes, possibly 12. I hope my neighbor has a good day today.
So, last night was an interesting night, for 10 or 12 minutes.