Flirting in Czech

The narrow walkway runs down the length of the car, separating our enclave from the others. On the other side of this walkway is another bench/bed and above that is another bunk (in which the four-year-old is now thoroughly tucked in). So each “compartment” potentially accommodates six passengers and there are nine compartments making up this third-class car. Essentially, traveling in third class Russian trains is like one big slumber party with 54 of your friends minus the fort-making, chocolate chip cookie eating and the fact that they are actually all strangers—nice strangers, mostly, but still strangers and Russian strangers at that, meaning strangers who don’t shower (not that there are showers in third class to give them the option to shower anyway).

I twist and kick until I’m on my back again, staring up at the blank white underside of the luggage rack an arm’s reach away. My right leg is turned awkwardly at the knee to avoid the chain attaching the bunk to the wall at my feet. I’m still wearing the lightweight khaki hiking pants and 100% polyester T-shirt purchased by my mother at a specialty backpacking retail store that I’ve had on since I boarded last night and it’s still too hot to lie under the only covers I have: a single, hospital-ish, plain white sheet. I try not to move around too much so I stop sweating, but that’s been a lost cause since I stepped onboard. I also have to pee but there’s a line for the bathroom and I don’t feel like going through the ordeal of hoisting myself back up here just yet. Russians have an innate talent for bunk-hoisting. I have already been shown up by a pair of four-foot-tall, eighty-year-old Russian grandmothers whose gravity-defying leaps into upper bunks would qualify them for Ripley’s Believe It Or Not if one of the producers of that show ever decides to take the Trans-Siberian railroad and happens to witness the feat. Maybe when it’s all said and done, I’ll be able to hold my own but for now I’ll just hold it and remain staring at the luggage rack above my head.

This lasts for all of three seconds. “Are you asleep?” I say, peering down at Yana.
“Yes,” she whispers.
«What are you reading?»
«Czech. I'm learning how to say 'I'm asleep'.»
«How do you say it?»
«Well, I haven't learned it exactly yet.»
«Ok, try.»
(shurpelnighgya).
«That's not it. You made that up.»
«Oh, so you speak Czech now?»
«Of course.»
«Say something.»
«What?»
«Say something in Czech.»
«I can't hear you.»
«Say something you know in Czech.»
«I could, but you probably wouldn't understand it if you can't say 'I'm asleep'.»
(Laughing) «Ok, well I'll keep practising.»
«Good. There will be a test tomorrow.»
«So I can test you in Russian, too?»
«Hmm?»
«I test you in Russian tomorrow, also?»
«This isn't a test already? You should probably just learn English. It would be much easier.»
«For you!»
«Yeah, for me!» I smile, looking upside down at her sitting up in the bed below me. She has a personal light on over her right shoulder and the dictionary is propped up on her knees which are tucked under her sheet.

I am flirting with an engaged Siberian girl but I don't care. She's sweet and nice and is, not to mention, currently the only one I can understand clearly on this whole damn train.

On an unspoken, creepy telepathic mind wavelength, Yana understands me. It’s the wavelength between two people who have walked down the frustrated path of handicapped communicative abilities that I imagine would exist in a similar manner between people who have lost the ability to properly express their thoughts, say, after a freak attack by an escaped hippopotamus from the San Diego Zoo renders a paddleboating couple temporarily deaf and mute, or between a prison inmate and his brother who comes to see him during prison visiting hours but knows that the whole conversation is being recorded because they are secretly running an underground cartel for importing illegally-accurate news reports on the dependence of the United States’ economy on Canadian donut hole recipes.

I had the same relationship with my first pet goldfish, Speedy. On a fundamental level, we understood each other’s thoughts even if we didn’t have a common avenue for expressing them. For example, Speedy’s way of communicating that he wanted to be placed back into his bowl was to flop around on the floor several times in the upward direction of his glass home. Likewise, my way of showing him my appreciation for his loyal friendship was to chase him around the bowl with my open-cupped hand (until he jumped in) so I could show him off to my jealous friends.

So, it’s basically the same thing. Yana’s fiancé does not speak Russian and she does not speak Czech. Their entire relationship is an exercise in patient diligence to the endeavor of mutual understanding, regardless of having a common medium of a familiar language, which is, as I am learning, all-to-easily taken for granted among people who speak the same one.

How much do you really need sounds organized into what we call ‘words’ and ‘sentences’ to understand someone else? Maybe the whole deal is over-hyped to begin with. Maybe meaningful understanding comes more from what is unsaid than from what our mouths can blabber on and on about in ever more creatively crafted ways, concealing our true intentions and revealing them again, manipulating at times then cursing when our own are twisted unknowingly, dancing about the flickering flames of the primal fire of ultimate reality and examined truth, of which we were born and to which we will always seek to return.