Galicia, somewhere in northern Spain, May 17, 2010 -- I’ve got a bloody toothache! Barely a month before I fly to the states, where the son of my host is a dentist, I’ve got a toothache. What should I do? Go to a Spanish dentist and spend Díos sabe how much money on a root canal, or should I try to stick it out?
So far, it’s the latter. I tried dousing my aching gum in 40% vodka several times a day – a la the advice of dead buddy Dave Wagner. That hasn’t helped. I learned how to say cotton swabs – bastoncillos – and bought some of them to bathe the aching void in oil of cloves that one of my former Moscow students had brought back from the States – to no avail. Finally, when I woke up with my tooth hurting at 4:44 (you notice this kind of thing when you’ve got a toothache) this morning, I got up, dissolved an aspirin in the hole that used to be my tooth, and rinsed it out with vodka after an hour or so.
When I woke up at 9:30 this morning, my tooth wasn’t aching. I’ve had breakfast – muesli and juice with a cup of sort-of capuchino – and it still isn’t hurting. Maybe, maybe….. We’ll see!
I should explain that all the carefully planted fillings placed by my Seattle Providence Hospital dentist 20 years ago have come out. Still, up to this week, none of them have hurt. I had begun to assume that he had deadened the nerves In all of them, until this week I was reminded that he hadn’t. Wonder of wonders, the bridge that he put in my upper incisors is still intact, and I am “praying” – to the extent an agnostic does – that they will hang in there at least till I get back to the U.S. So far so good. Fortunately, my lost fillings are all hidden by my cheeks and jowls, so I don’t have to hide my mouth behind my hand when I talk.
Anyway, I’m feeling better now, and will try to hold out for another month and four days till I get to the States.
This came on top of a burst blood vessel in my left eye that was very noticeable Friday morning. Drushka and Pili (yes, they really have names like that in Spain) suggested that I get something like artificial tears to bring it back to normal. But when I went to the pharmacy to ask what she recommended, she asked “does it hurt?” When I told her no, she said, “Just wait; it will get back to normal. Don’t do anything.” More money saved!
Well, scratch one off my “possibles” list! I got an e-mail from Greg Wagner, the son of the aforementioned Dave (see above), whom I waxed wistfully about in my last episode (Greg, not Dave – are you following this?), stating that he may be many things, but he is not gay. Okay. I thanked him for being upfront and candid with me.
On to the next!
Still, it would have been nice. And I hate losing fantasies!
This is a holiday in Spain – at least in Galicia. Seems it’s the birthday of some famous Galician writer whom I never heard of. But they are very proud of him, and looking for new days to take off, so his birthday is as good as any.
And I thought Russia had lots of holidays!
Speaking of birthdays, Drushka’s is tomorrow. He is inviting my landlady and teacher, Elvira, and Pili. He is celebrating Russian style: That is, the birthday boy invites his guests for a dinner and they all bring him gifts.
We agreed that I will pay for my own dinner, and won’t bring him a gift. I hate buying gifts more that anything else I can think of. So it works out perfectly.
It’s also the middle of May and time for proms. I think I must live near a high school, because the last two nights I’ve heard lots of loud music until 1 and 2 in the morning! And throughout the day firecrackers that sound more like cannons. Madre de díos! And me, a poor working girl!
I’m having very serious doubts about the viability of our new “school.” My student Maria has gone to Madrid for a job, and Valle hasn’t shown up but three times in the last two months. Monica, a journalist who wanted help with translations, has quit. So right now I’m left with only Carlos and Bouzo -- one class a week each if they both show. At best, I’m not quite breaking even between the rent I pay and the money I earn from the classes I give.
So the only thing arguing for my returning to Spain permanently this fall is the possibility that Misha might show up. We’ll see what happens in the States.
Incidentally, I had an e-mail from Misha. But he simply gave the name and address to which my request for help for him should be sent. Snail mail, I assume. But in what language – Russian or English? And help for what – finances, documents, what? And when? I once again wrote him asking for the answers to these questions, and explained that he really must wait until I return this fall before I can help him financially.
Oops! I re-read his last e-mail today. It turns out that the Dmitry he was asking me to write to is his old lover, my old friend, a lawyer for Russia’s biggest oil company. So I’m sending Dmitry a letter explaining that I want very much for Misha to come, but not till after I return from the states for a couple of reasons: 1) I don’t have the money right now and 2) he doesn’t speak Spanish or English. He could starve to death or get into serious trouble without me to take care of him.
I sent the letter to Dmitry this morning. My god, what a bureauracy! First of all, there is only one post office to service this entire section of the city. In Moscow, there are dozens, if not hundreds. So I had to stand in line for half an hour to mail a single letter to Moscow. It cost about 75 centavos, or centimes, or whatever. No problem with the cost. The Greek financial crisis has brought the euro down sharply – from about 1.45 per dollar in January to less that 1.24 now. Of course, the exchange rate is changing in my favor. When I first came, my pension was worth less than 750 euros. Now it’s worth 894 – almost 900. That’s almost 150 euros more a month than I had when I came!
Most Russians think bribery is the best way to solve problems, confirmed a new Russian poll picked up by Western news sources this past week. Of course, that’s hardly news to those of us who have lived there. I encountered it very rarely, because I was not in a position to bribe – for automobile registration or ecological tests, for schools, for medical care, and all the things that most Russians must accept as a way of life. The bureaucrats take the position that, yes, you’re entitled to these services – when I can get around to it. If you want to step up the pace, you have to bribe me.
According to the poll by the Levada Center, probably the only national poll not yet controlled by the government, 55% of Russians said they believed that “bribes are given by everyone who comes across officials” in Russia.
According to the account given on Yahoo news, the polling service found that Russians routinely pay bribes “to obtain better medical services, prefer to ‘buy’ their driving licenses, bribe police when caught violating traffic rules, or pay to ensure their child can dodge the draft or get a place at the right school.”
Ten percent said they had even paid bribes to arrange funerals. Thirty percent said those offering cash in envelopes were simply “ordinary people who have no other way to solve their problem.”
All of these are, I know from experience, true.
Andrei Sh. had to pay a bribe to get his mother’s ashes into a wall in the cemetery.
Former student Darya called before I left to see if I knew the name of anyone at School No. 69 where I formerly taught, and which is considered one of the best elementary schools in Moscow. She wanted to start talks about enrolling her four-year-old son in school. I’m certain that if she was able to get him into the school, it took a bribe to do it.
Former student Andrei K., whose wife Marcia and I still correspond, is the CEO of a 20-million-dollar IT (information technology) firm. He often comes up against these problems. He once told me that to be the police chief of a district in Moscow costs the police colonel, let’s say, $ 100,000 a year in bribes. He simply parcels a percentage of that to his police captains – say he has 10 of them – at $ 10,000 apiece. The police captain in turn collects bribes from his policemen on the beat so that he can pay his $ 10,000 bribe to the police colonel every year. Whatever the cop collects on top of that, he can keep.
It explains why 80% of the Russians don’t trust their uniformed “finest.” If you accept “fine” as a penalty you pay, that’s undoubtedly true. Anyway, that’s the way “justice” operates in Russia.
There was an article a couple of years ago in The Moscow Times saying that cabinet posts went for a minimum of $ 1 million. Cabinet officers get their money back from bribes. It’s simply the way things are done in Moscow, dahling!
So Dmitry Medvedov, Putin’s hand-picked heir to the Moscow presidency, may be absolutely sincere in his pledge to fight this ingrained system that since tsarist times has been the oil that makes government machinery work, and which Communist Secretary Brezhnev polished to perfection during his puppet years as head of the Communist government, but I’m betting against any but token success.
The Russians are too used to it. Even Andrei K. defended it, saying the same thing is practiced in America, only at much higher levels. And looking at the lobbying results over the past few decades, he may well be right. Perhaps it’s, after all, only the little bureaucrat that gets screwed out of bribes in America. The corporate moguls see that their senators and congressmen are well bribed for the services they perform for them.
This day years ago:
2007-5-21: Chapt. #249 - “Illegal Moldovans” threaten apartment crisis
