A Student Says Everything We Read Is Depressing

So I point out the crisp sheets under the dead body, how the autumn leaves crunched underfoot, even as one man pressed the muzzle of a gun to the other’s back.

I would like to draw the student’s attention to the tourist’s plaid shorts, the dark socks with his sandals. Haven’t we all seen this?

Once in the Soviet Union, traveling by myself at age eighteen, when most Americans didn’t think that was even possible, I ate in a hotel restaurant. Most everything on the menu was met with a nyet. Still I couldn’t believe my good fortune to be here in this country whose literature I loved.

At a table close to mine sat an American couple, Texan (I guessed). The man, speaking to his wife in a tone much too loud, said, “I can accept some things, but I saw Brezhnev kiss another man right on the lips!”

I only hoped the waitress did not speak English; I certainly pretended I didn’t. Next day on a train chugging toward the cities of the Golden Ring, a stranger presented me with an orange, an expensive gift. My Russian was not good, but I still remember the fragrance of that fruit, so hard to come by in a Soviet winter. The sweetness of it.