Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

“The university president?” Ingvill said meekly.

“That’s right. And you know how he feels about this department and the subjects you all teach. He’s no fan . Let’s just put it that way.”

“Is including him really necessary?” Peter asked hoarsely.

“It is,” the chair said. “It is.”

We all got up, but the chair didn’t move. She stood there, leaning over the table.

“Ingrid, stick around for a minute,” she instructed without looking at me.

I desperately tried to catch Peter’s eye, but as usual all I saw was his back as he hightailed it out of the room.

Meanwhile, the chair indicated that I should take a seat closer to her, then sat down and studied my face.

“I am particularly disappointed in you, Ingrid,” she finally said. “And I think now would be a good time for you to stop and reflect, really stop and reflect. Thoroughly. Give a little thought to how you want to spend the next twenty years and what you want to be doing. Research? Or teaching ‘Old MacDonald’ on the guitar? It’s your call. Luckily there’s a place where you can take some time to reflect.”

“There is?”

She nodded slowly.

“Uh, where?”

“Russia.”

“Russia?”

“We’re trying to reach a cooperative agreement with Saint Petersburg State University. I’m sure you’ve been following that.”

“I—”

“As I’m sure you know, the university’s motto is innovation . But we also support internationalization, and especially with an eye to the east. So we’re sending a delegation to spend a week at the state university.”

“But the delegation has already been selected, right? I thought Frank—”

“That’s right: Frank, Ingvill, and Peter. Three people. The Russians prefer three-person delegations. They don’t like two. And certainly not four.”

“But there are already three people going, right?”

“But it’s two men and one woman. That’s no good.”

“The Russians don’t like men?”

“They like men, but we don’t. Two men and one woman doesn’t look good. It sends mixed signals about where we stand on gender-equality issues. That’s why I’ve decided Frank will stay home. You’re taking his place.”

“But I’m going to a conference in a month, and—”

“And next week you’re going to Russia.”

She looked at me over her reading glasses.

“In Russia they don’t look lightly on things like ‘mindfucking’ or this whole ‘bad-cop’ mentality. Nor do they have adjustable-height desks or special chairs. So, I want you to go there and do a little reflecting, give a little thought to what I want. And what I want right now is good feedback about networking progress, synergistic internationalization, and bilateral cooperation. You got it?”

“Got it. But I—”

“Good. That will be all.”

In my head I tried to figure out if there was any way at all to get out of this, but it was like I was having an out-of-body experience. As if the desk demand had created a chasm inside me that couldn’t be crossed, by myself or anyone else. So I stood up and took a few steps toward the door.

“Oh, by the way, you need a visa to travel to Russia,” the chair said without looking up. “I suggest you go to Oslo this week and get that taken care of. I’m sure they must have some kind of same-day expedited visa application. Good luck!”

“Russia?” Bjørnar repeated, as if he hadn’t really been clear that such a place existed.

“The worst place on earth,” I said. “But I have no choice, not after the desk fiasco. If I don’t go, I’m going to end up teaching preschool. And you don’t need to remind me that it’s only a few weeks until we move, and that there are a thousand things to be done. Packing, cleaning, potential private showings, and we have to get ahold of a big truck to haul some stuff to the dump.”

My voice broke and I glanced up at him. He stared at the wall behind me, looking like he was still wondering what Russia even was or just how low we were going to sink into financial and emotional ruin. The thought made my thighs start trembling, something which had gradually come to be my new normal.

“We’ll have to hope I don’t get the visa,” I said.

“Have to hope,” he repeated, like a lethargic parrot, “have to hope.”

And I was still repeating it to myself three days later as I stood shivering outside the closed Russian embassy. A lady in a pink down jacket hurried past me, down the little walkway that led to the entrance, opened the door, and disappeared into the building. A few minutes later a man in a black leather jacket arrived and did the same thing. Even though it said in bold all-caps on the embassy’s Web page that it did not open until nine o’clock and that NO ONE should even consider approaching the door before that time.

There was absolutely no point in standing there in the autumnal darkness like some fool. So I, too, slowly made my way down the walkway and cautiously opened the heavy front door, which turned out to lead into a small brown waiting room predominantly furnished with plastic chairs and empty water jugs. Even though there was still half an hour to go before they opened, there were already groups of people by the bulletproof windows, babbling away in Russian into the microphones mounted on the wall. I also noticed that all the written information was in the Cyrillic alphabet, including whatever it said on the enormous take-a-number machine in the middle of the room.

“Hello, Hal,” I mumbled stiffly to the machine.

Indecipherable letters blinked at me above a square clearly meant for entering numbers.

I entered my confirmation code.

No reaction.

My phone number.

No reaction.

Passport number.

No reaction.

1-2-3-4-5-6.

When I entered that, an alarm started going off, which caused everyone to turn around. I desperately entered more numbers, until a door opened at the other end of the room and a large woman with a fluffy perm pushed me out of the way, unplugged the machine, and then plugged it in again.

“Never enter random numbers,” she scolded and disappeared back to where she’d come from.

“I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do,” I called after her. “I can’t read Russian!”

“Birthday,” another man in a black leather jacket, who had just entered the room to the accompaniment of the hysterical alarm, informed me. Trembling, I entered the six numbers in question and in response received a ticket on which it said “113.” A moment later it was magically my turn, even though there were at least fifteen Russians slurping coffee while they waited in the randomly placed plastic chairs all over the room.

Meanwhile, my sense of accomplishment was dampened by the man behind the window who exhibited zero interest in acknowledging the physical manifestation of number 113. Instead, he sat gesturing to a young man in a glossy mafia suit, whom I’d seen smoking out on the front walkway ten minutes earlier. The two were clearly disagreeing about something. Mafia Suit explained something at length, while my guy alternated between frenetically shaking his head and resting it in his hands.

I thought two things. The first was that Mafia Suit was basically crocodile food. My guy’s black hair came from a bottle and he was definitely from the Soviet era, while Mafia Suit looked like he was born in the nineties and probably didn’t even know there was a pit of crocodiles waiting under the floor. He was likely under the impression that the world he’d been born into was full of perestroika and possibility.

The second was that their disagreement might soon boil over onto me. Even though I didn’t want the visa—like, at all—I also knew that coming back empty-handed would instantly demote me to teaching preschool. Plus, I estimated the chances that I, too, was standing over a trapdoor to be well over 50 percent, so Mafia Suit and I would probably end up being crocodile food together.