Excerpt
“There won’t be any children, Mrs. White. It’s summer holidays,” Lona said with a smirk. Paul rolled his eyes skyward.
Jennifer felt a little sheepish. Lona was probably correct. However, it was irritating the way she always ensured that everyone knew she was correct. It was time to change the subject. “How did you happen to study Russian, David?” she said, leaning back in the grass, ignoring Lona and fixing on the young man. He had an intelligent, open face with sparkling white teeth but even at the age of 25, his hairline was just starting its slide toward the back of his head. She knew that his family was of English descent, not unlike her own history on her father’s side.
“My father’s in the Air Force,” said David, “and I guess we’ve lived on a dozen different bases as I grew up—Germany, Italy and NORAD in Colorado. I picked up a little of every language but never Russian.”
“So why Russian?” Lona asked.
“Well, six years ago I got chosen along with a lot of other army and air force brats to go on a teen cultural exchange to the U.S.S.R. I had no knowledge of the country before that. We were just supposed to be shining examples of North American kids. It was sure different than this tour. It had been organized by Sputnik—that’s the youth tour group—and we had cocky Komsomol leaders not much older than us in charge.”
“So you have more than a nodding acquaintance with Lenin?”
“And Marx. And Brezhnev. The Komsomol is seriously political, and this was before the signing of the SALT treaty so east-west tensions were high. Believe it or not, it’s more relaxed now.”
“But how did you learn the language?” Paul asked.
“Oh, we had a crash course before the trip. Then we stayed in a dormitory for four months and ate with the Eastern European kids, so we learned a lot that way. We didn’t visit the churches back then because they tried to pretend that they didn’t exist. Instead, we had to study in the dorm a lot and debate the class struggle or dialectical materialism with our team leader. Most of us didn’t have a clue!”
“My god, I’m not sure I could define them now,” laughed Jennifer. “But I bet we’ll know by the end of this trip.”
“Well, that was what sparked my interest in Russian. Learning by talking is the best way. That’s why I didn’t pack my Ozhegov.” This was a dig at Paul who had packed many weighty tomes to peruse in his spare …
Libros Libertad 