Paullina Simons - Six Days in Leningrad

The same muscular blond guy who had talked to my husband in Dallas walked by me shouting something to one of his friends, saw me and said, beaming, “See, I told you, you’d make the plane no problem.”

The plane taxied off at 2:30 p.m.

My head throbbed, my left eye throbbed, even six Advils later.

Aeroflot tried hard but they were hardly British Airways. Where was the back-of-the-chair TV screen? Where was the beautifully presented four-color brochure with a painting of a beach or a sunset, and inside a typed-up menu? Grilled salmon, exquisitely prepared with Hollandaise sauce and sautéed onions, served with new potatoes and string beans .

On Aeroflot they took a more informal approach. The man in blue and gray wheeled his trolley to my seat and barked in Russian, “Shto?” which means, “What?”

I looked at him inquiringly, but before I could ask, he said, “Fish or turkey.”

“What kind of fish?” I asked, also in Russian.

The man shrugged.

“I’ll take the fish,” I said.

The server came around with the drink tray, she said, “ Shto?”

“Please could I have some tomato juice and some water?”

She nodded — and poured me tomato juice and some water. Both were room temperature. Ice was not offered. I smiled. It was as if we were already in Russia. They had started assimilating me in transit so it wouldn’t be too much of a shock when I landed. They’ll give you ice if you ask, but it seems they have to go in the back and chip it off the air conditioning unit, which by the way, seemed to be running at full power. No matter how I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, I could not get warm.

When I had said tomato juice and water, I fully expected to be denied both. No. I was given both; that was a pleasant surprise. Like I was saying, Aeroflot tried hard to be western.

So what if the plastic glasses were filled only half way? I downed their contents and after eating the “fish” became thirsty. The fish was cod, I think . With rice and carrots. Served with plastic utensils of the cheap picnic set quality. I pressed too hard into a pea and one of the tines broke off. I ate the fish, I ate the Caesar salad with vinaigrette — no, vinegar — dressing, I ate the ham, pepper and potato salad in thick mayonnaise, I ate the small carrot cake, and then I started on the bread roll. I ate like I fully expected blockade-level conditions in Russia for the next six days. As if further preparing me, the roll was ice cold (oh, so something is ice cold!) and decidedly unfresh. I ate half of it with unsalted butter. Russians don’t eat salted butter; they consider that a travesty of the churning process, and they start breaking the Americans of the salted butter habit right on the plane.

When I eat on planes I always wonder what my husband would be able to eat. He hates mayo, salad dressing, vinegar and doesn’t like fish. He would have to eat the whole stale roll and leave the butter off because he doesn’t like butter either.

Does this roll of stale bread weigh more or less than 125 grams?

Thirsty, I stopped the stewardess in a garish red uniform walking by and asked in my politest Russian, “Could I get some more water, please?”

“No,” she barked. “Not now. Maybe later.” She walked away.

Later, she did come back to bring me half a cup of tepid water, which I drank gratefully and thanked God for having it.

I drank two cups of black tea with sugar. To Aeroflot’s credit, the sugar was not doled out in tiny western one-teaspoon increments, as it is on domestic flights and even on British Airways international flights, but in thick communist packets of a heaped tablespoon. Much better.

After dinner, I slept when I could shut out the bickering married couple sitting across from me. It was very hard to sleep because the husband and wife were immensely entertaining. They made up for lack of TV screens. Thoroughly Russian and in their sixties, they sat as far away from each other as was possible without actually sitting in different rows. The wife could not stop commenting on her husband’s every move. “Vova, why are you putting your hands there? This isn’t your magazine. Don’t touch it. They’re bringing our food soon.”

Slowly the man would pull out the flight magazine anyway.

“Why are you looking at that, Vova? What is so interesting about it?”

“Do you want to get a new suitcase?” Vova asked in his gruffly appeasing voice. His face was lined with resignation.

“Get a new suitcase? Vova, put the magazine down. I’ve had enough of your nonsense. And don’t drag the blanket on the floor.”

When the food came, Vova had the bad luck of dropping something his wife urgently needed. Both food trays were lowered, so it was impossible for him to bend down and retrieve it. All during their meal, she talked about nothing else. I missed what it was that he dropped, and I think the husband did too, because he continued to eat and said nothing in response the entire dinner.

After dinner, he wanted to have a smoke. Being Russian, he assumed where he was, was the smoking aisle.

“You can’t smoke in here, idiot,” she said to him. “Didn’t you hear the captain?”

So the man got up from his seat and, standing in the aisle, lit up.

“Idiot! What are you doing? They told you not to smoke here!”

The yielding husband shrugged and said in his quietest voice, “I just wanted to light up.”

“Idiot! What are you doing?”

He extinguished his cigarette and sat back down. She wanted him to pass her the blanket, but apparently he wasn’t moving fast enough. “Can you just give it to me? Can’t you see I’m cold? I’m getting a headache from the cold. Just pass it already.”

Kevin had suggested that on such a long flight maybe I could write a few beginning pages of The Bronze Horseman, perhaps the first chapter. Yeah, right. When I woke up, I read Good Housekeeping, Redbook, McCalls, InStyle, Reader’s Digest, People, and half of Shape before I got bored and finally picked up one of my research books, 900 Days, an account of the Siege of Leningrad.

What surprised me was how little the people around me read.

They read nothing. They sat staring catatonically into space, into the chair in front of them, or at me. The Russian woman entertained herself by yelling at her husband. The girl next to me just sat. I offered her my In Style magazine, which I thought would be perfect for her, because no reading was involved, just looking at the faces and houses of beautiful people.

“Yes,” she said, without much enthusiasm.

She leafed through it politely and gave it back to me. “Thank you.” Opening her journal, she took her pen out, placed the pen on the paper and did not write a word for five minutes. Then she closed her eyes. I looked at her blank piece of paper. So I wasn’t the only one with writer’s block, I thought.

For the entire flight, a very heavy girl in tight shorts across the aisle stared at me and my magazines and the food I ate, and the blanket that I had over my shoulders. I tried not to look at her. Apparently she didn’t need to read when she had me for entertainment. Motionless, I peered at her through my nearly closed eyelids. Still staring.

The first time I asked the steward to turn down the vents, he did so with a smile. The second time, he did so without a smile. The third time he did so, he did so with a grunt and a sigh, much like my ten-year-old daughter does when confronted with polite requests.

It was still blowing Arctic-like air down on me.

I drifted off with 900 Days opened, thinking that I would like to finish it in 900 days. I just might fail in that task.