I always eye Alex with a vague sentimentality of jingoism and suspicious, even though we’ve talked for years. The reason being is that Alex is Russian, he has a Russian accent, and he looks Russian. I assume he speaks Russian in the confines of his concrete embankment or some other heavily armed, heavily guarded lair. While, I assure myself that he, like myself is just another college student, my mind drifts into the Cold War mentality of the Reagan years, stacking haggard bricks up onto the Old Wall. Or at least in my mind the wall is there.
I picture each one of our awkward interactions where we've talked about civil engineering, the Red Army, Republicans, sports events and the wonders of the Internet to be another brick in our imaginary Berlin Wall. Another brick each time I toss a passing glance at his obtrusive, Fabergé of an Adam’s apple. A batch of mortar each time his squinting, bespectacled eyes hone in on my Hasidic nose, curved like the Bald Eagle that flies over my head. Floodlights and crow’s nest every time the mention of conflict comes up, be they on the Georgian border or in the Kandahar desert.
As it stands, Alex and I both have embraced the universality of college liberalism, and this is our point of departure past the normal customer-worker relationship. We both nod our heads gravely at the news of American deaths in whatever desert we’re attempting to take over. We’ve both expressed solidarity for a black president. We’ve both championed the idea of more money spent on our university.
However, through all these interactions with Alex and MSNBC as our mediator, I still have a lingering suspicious every time his accent, subtle yet remarkably and stereotypically Russian breaks through. His voice was dry like the crystalline vodka I pictured him drinking everclear vodka filtered through Eastern Bloc newspapers and potatoes under his Lenin poster while reading the Brothers Karamazov.
It took me some time to hear his voice, his true voice; husky and morose like the Kremlin era spies heard in a James Bond film. At first I thought he as slow, or drunk. I actually still thinks he drunk, on potato vodka, but that’s just me. But when he says juice, (he likes a fresh-squeezed orange juice) I hear the word “Jews”.
Now, I know logically that he wouldn’t ask for a fresh-squeezed Jews. It would be a fresh-squeezed Jew and I know logically that anti-Semitism is awful and doesn’t occur in college liberals like us. But I still hear it and I still picture him in deerskin ushanka with a dazzling hammer and sickle patch in center asking for a freshly-squeezed Jew as some sort of spy code for you’ve been caught and we’re taking you to the gulag.
Whenever he comes in we greet with a smile and passive wave then exchange hellos. I throw out my typical service industry greeting: “Hey, insert name here. How’s it going?” Alex has his greeting: “Hey Matt, good.” It would seem that a large amount of my suspicious come from action films and general misanthropy. At times though, not remembering someone’s name draws out my suspicions. My name has not, and will never be Matt. Nor Jerry, which he had a stint of calling me too.
There was a month or so when he acknowledged my name was in fact Mike and he used it. His accent made “Mike” sound like “meek”. This came across as an under-handed insult, chalk full of the dreary Russian sarcasm. Meek wasn’t as big as an insult as him calling me Matt. I pictured him calling me Matt was some sort of name-calling native to the bitter, windswept plains of Siberia. As though calling me meek was slowly breaking down what was left of my American fortitude. After so many corrections, I gave up and let myself be called Matt. It’s better than meek.
I can trace my dislike of Alex to his treatment of his girlfriend. Although she is a rather plain girl, she makes up for it with cheeriness and an affirmative attitude that foils his somber demeanor. When the two come in together he sits at the café table and she orders for the two. I’m pro-his girlfriend (I still haven’t learned her name) based on the fact that she smiles. It’s a white-toothed, red-lipped American smile that has yet to break across the jowls of Russia’s finest exchange student.
American Girlfriend orders for the two and waits with certain pensiveness for their drinks. When I finish she takes them back to the table where she usually doesn’t sit down. After dropping off the ceramic mugs filled with steaming black coffee she is sent back for milk. I picture him waving his wrist at her and simply saying, “Milk, I need this,” before sending her away.
Admittedly, I don’t know how the Russians or shall I say Russian men treat they’re women. My knowledge of Russian women come from the dejected mail-order brides paraded across the night-time headline news and Bridgette Neilson as Ivan Drago’s wife in Rocky IV. I pictured Alex having one of these women by his side, completing his twitchy, small mouth and gangly limbs. I’m not sure if these fictional Russian women would put up with his passive-aggressive demanding like his current girlfriend. But then again, I’m not sure about Alex in general.
Alex’s mother once came in and the two were speaking Russian. She was not like these stereotypes that have been cast onto the American audience. She looked tired, had an uneven haircut, crow’s feet circling her eyes and drooping mouth. She looked like Alex. I wonder if she used to waiting on some man, Alex’s father perhaps, much like the American Girlfriend. Alex, however, waited on his mother. She sat and sent him off to the counter so he could order two of the fresh-squeezed Jews that he spoke of with reverence. Alex hung about his mother's side with a pensiveness similar to American Girlfriend. When they left the café he held her hand like a child after punishment, dejected and clingy, walking pigeon toed in his leather sandals. He never brought in his mother again.
The longest conversation I had with Alex about his Russianness lasted about twenty minutes. He was born in Siberia in a small village. I picture Siberia being a plague of small villages speckled with frozen military wreckage from the Kremlin’s heyday. His father had left the family, at some point in his youth, for the burning skies of California. Alex followed suit some point after his adulthood. Now we go to the same university in southern California. That’s as much as he offered me that afternoon. Perhaps the heat, the lack of subservient American Girlfriend and the wool socks/leather sandals combination drove him into my café where he could open up to a stranger. An American stranger at that.
While he talked about his father, a proud look washed over him. His normally rounded and oddly small chin seemed to jut out with dignity. As though a square chin is reserved for talks about Russian fathers and hero's. His usually brown, pebble-like eyes were bold and glowing. I picture his father being a handsome, scientist-spy or state dignitary. The little details that Alex offered about his father made him seem like a character in a novel, some ex-patriot who escaped when life was cruel. His father worked in a lab in Russia, he was respected, now he lives in San Jose. He doesn’t like the Sharks hockey team.
Once we talked about the Second World War, a subject that should never be brought up between people of differing nationalities. While I cut the navel oranges for his fresh-squeezed Jew, a Ken Burns documentary heralded from the television mounted above the sink of my café. “It makes me proud,” Alex said as he stood twitching on the opposite side of the marble counter. I turned and looked at him, knife in hand, apron soaked in orange pulp and we met eyes. “What’s that?” I asked him, hoping to avoid a rant of the Communistic flavor. “I’m proud as a Russian because the Red Army defeated Hitler and ended the war,” he said with an added clenched fist and head nod for full cinematic effect.
While I am not the history buff I believe most young people should be, I know Alex and I were bound to have learned different versions of this War’s outcome. My history lessons on this War ends with two bombs named after body types dropped on the island of Japan. Alex’s history lesson ends with the Russian winter that crippled the German offensive. This moment between us, at the counter in my café was the flair of Cold War-Era Relations. We stacked bricks between us, one by one, with each second that passed. I was holding a knife and he, I fantasize had a Kalashnikov strung to his back by a surplus, canvas strap.
“It’s good the German’s lost,” I said, hoping to ease the awkward tension springing up. I pictured Gorbachev’s purple beauty mark spreading across Alex's head and shining emerald paper George Washington’s spilling out of my mouth and nostrils. His Russianness and my Americanism were bold, with the marble counter as our Bering Strait. These things didn’t happen and we agreed at least it wasn’t the Germans. While people of nationalities will always have tension, they can always converge with a severe dislike for other nationalities. Alex and I bonded over a ephemeral hatred of Germans until we realized, or at least I did, that we are in California, our President is black, that schnitzel is a stupid name for a food snack and that Alex and I are both bonded by the universality of college liberalism.
Alex still comes in and gets his fresh-squeezed Jew. He sometimes ventures into the coffee side of things (his pronunciation of latte isn’t amusing in the least bit). Alex, along with American Girlfriend still exit his silver Honda Civic customized with a Russian Empire Coat of Arms on the hood. We still nod heads about the grave and serious issues that affect the United States. Alex still calls me Matt. I still find him to be a shifty, more-likely-than-not spy.
As I hand him his juice or coffee, which ever it may be, our hands might briefly touch. The contact between our grazing knuckles reaches across our imaginary wall, across the border of vague ideologies and minor suspicious. We are straddling the invisible wall with uncomfortable bodily contact, fingers touching might one day lead to a handshake. A handshake might lead to a beer at the campus pub. We’ll break down our imaginary wall, brick by brick, addressing each strange Cold War notion that us, as children of the 1980’s had ingrained in our heads.
We might hug and I might learn his American Girlfriend's name and we can be great friends. Or I graduate college and quit my job at the café, leaving behind thoughts of Alex, his beady, doubting Russian eyes and our great imaginary wall that represents little more than strange social interactions and garish nationalism by two liberal college students.
