“That’s too bad.”
“I know—I really liked having it first thing in the morning. But don’t worry, I think we live in the same building. Matthews, right? I’m on the fourth floor. I think we’ll end up seeing a lot of each other.” I felt moved and flattered by how sure she sounded. I wrote her phone number on my hand, while she wrote mine in her daily planner. Already I was the impetuous one in our friendship—the one who cared less about tradition and personal safety, who evaluted every situation from scratch, as if it had arisen for the first time—while Svetlana was the one who subscribed to rules and systems, who wrote things in the designated spaces, and saw herself as the inheritor of centuries of human history and responsibilities. Already we were comparing to see whose way of doing things was better. But it wasn’t a competition so much as an experiment, because neither of us was capable of acting differently, and each viewed the other with an admiration that was inseparable from pity.
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In the second half of Constructed Worlds, we went to the Museum of Natural History, where we saw a brace of pheasants that had belonged to George Washington, a turtle collected by Thoreau, and “about a million ants,” described as “E. O. Wilson’s favorites.” I was impressed that E. O. Wilson had been able to identify, in this world of seemingly infinite ants, his one million favorites. We saw what was believed to be the largest skull of a living crocodile species in any collection. When they cut open the crocodile’s stomach, they found a horse and 150 pounds of rocks.
After an hour of bugging the people at the front desk and standing around while people made phone calls, we got someone to show us the back room, where they kept things that weren’t on display. There was a New Zealand diorama—a plaster meadow littered with decrepit stuffed sheep, as well as an emu and a kiwi bird—that had become infested with moths. “We’ve mostly been disinfecting, and patching up with acrylic,” a museum employee told us.
“Acrylic? Why don’t you use wool?” asked Gary.
“Mm, we tried wool first, but acrylic holds better.”
“Do you see?” Gary demanded, turning to the class. “Do you see the artifice?”
We saw a lot of broken plaster Native Americans. School groups often tried to fight them.
“So this is what the curators are hiding from us,” Ham remarked of a bison that had stuffing pouring out of its guts.
Gary laughed mirthlessly. “You think it’s really any different at the Whitney or the Met? Let me tell you, kid, it’s all blood and guts in the back room, in one form or another.”
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Ralph’s roommate’s name was Ira, which was short for Iron Dog. He was Native American and actually did a lot of ironing, early in the morning. Other than that he was the perfect roommate: gentle, polite, with an older girlfriend at the law school, so he was almost never home, really only coming in at dawn sometimes to iron his shirts.
One evening when Ira was at the law school, I went over to Ralph’s room to study. Ralph was reading the Federalist Papers. I was reading “Nina in Siberia,” a Russian text written specially for beginning students. The first part was called “The Letter.”
1. The Letter
Ivan’s father opened the door. “Who’s there?”
“Good morning, Alexei Alexeich,” said Nina. “Is Ivan at home?”
Ivan’s father didn’t answer. He just stood there and looked at her.
“Excuse me,” said Nina, and repeated her question. “Is Ivan at home?”
“Why did we never understand him?” asked Ivan’s father, very slowly.
“Excuse me, but I don’t understand you,” said Nina. “Where is Ivan?”
“God alone knows,” said Ivan’s father. He sighed. “You know where his room is. There, on the table, is a letter.”
In Ivan’s room, something was not quite right. The window was open. The chair lay on the floor. Nina’s photograph lay on the table. The frame was broken.
“My photograph!” Nina picked up the letter, opened it, and read.
Nina!
When you receive this letter, I will be in Siberia. I’m dropping my dissertation, because particle physics no longer interests me. I will live and work in Novosibirsk, on the collective farm “Siberian Spark,” where my uncle lives. I think it will be better this way. I know that you will understand me. Please forget me. I will never forget you.
Your Ivan
Nina looked at Ivan’s father. “What is this?” she asked. “Is it a joke? I know Ivan, and I know he wants to finish his dissertation. How can he drop physics? He writes that I will understand him, but I don’t understand.”
Ivan’s father read the letter, too. “Yes,” he said.
“Do you think he wrote this letter seriously?”
“Only God knows.”
“But if Ivan is really in Siberia, we must find him.”
Ivan’s father looked at her.
“Don’t you want to find your son?” asked Nina.
Ivan’s father was silent.
“Goodbye,” said Nina.
Ivan’s father did not reply.
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The story was ingeniously written, using only the grammar that we had learned so far. Because we hadn’t learned the dative case, Ivan’s father, instead of handing the letter to Nina, had to say, “There, on the table, is a letter.” Because we hadn’t learned the verbs of motion, nobody said outright, “Ivan went to Siberia.” Instead, Ivan wrote, “When you receive this letter, I will be in Siberia.”
The story had a stilted feel, and yet while you were reading you felt totally inside its world, a world where reality mirrored the grammar constraints, and what Slavic 101 couldn’t name didn’t exist. There was no “went” or “sent,” no intention or causality—just unexplained appearances and disappearances.
I found myself reading and rereading Ivan’s letter as if he’d written it to me, trying to figure out where he was and whether he cared about me or not.
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For the nonfiction film seminar, we watched Man of Aran, a silent movie from the 1930s, set on an Irish island. First, a woman rocked a baby in a cradle. This went on for a long time. Next, a man harpooned a whale and then scraped something with a knife. The intertitle read: “Making soap.” Finally, the man and woman dug in the ground with sticks: “The people of Aran must farm for potatoes in the inhospitable soil.”