The Russian

Forgetting where I was, I waited, listening to the women who had come from church, and listening to the Russian man who had lived. He spoke no English but understood it and though the doctors said his name over and over again, passing by to check, before coming to Debbie and checking on her, smiling, saying sweet nothings about her eyes (and then on to the next), she forgot it every time. The beeping machines surrounded everyone. What he said came in translation to his son Sergei, who had lived in Colorado most his life and worked in computers, where his accent was respected. They kept talking. They talked to nurses who asked, to doctors, and to friends coming by. Like this Sergei sat there, continued to sit there beside his father, from early morning to late night, speaking in English to his father's Russian. I listened to everything naturally, as if it had been said to me purposely with seductive intent, hidden by only a curtain decorated in lilacs or flowers of that flowery sort. I usually do not listen much, not to my family or the President of the United States, but as I lay apparently dying well I listened to the Russian.

"Where were you born?" asked the son. A doctor passed. He listened.












Nathan Schneider studies religion at Brown University. He is commander-in-chief of Small's Clone Industries, an imaginary conglomerate and printing press (www.smallsclone.com), and editor of Ziggurat, the Brown journal of religion (www.brown.edu/ziggurat).






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