Raw Goods Inventory

Resort

resort This is no vacation. Breakfast made us sick, maybe some air will do us good. We’ll walk to the Ob Sea, but it’s not really a sea, just a dammed river where little yellow birds fly in a circle and a circle and never land. In Borovöe nothing is easy. The mosquitoes are murder. The phone is dead the bored receptionist insists and then it rings. The doctor shuffles in his office. Behind locked doors there are machines that help the students breathe. Nobody told us the Russian word for resort is sanatorium. They say, you should relax, we have a hydroelectric bath, we say nyet spasibo. How much does a place affect a person? These kids are from a city not marked on any map, where uranium and premature babies are made. Where Kan River means Blood River, the water laced with iron, the soil and air as bad. But the songs the girls sing about the cold and lost 67 husbands, about dead horses make you forget your complaints. At dinner, I say, no soup for me please, move your elbows. Comrade, are you going to eat that meat? From the dark kitchen, the nurse carries off a tray with food samples sealed in sterilized test tubes. Look how wonderfully the light plays off that cucumber! Oh, how the mind can fool you! Haven’t we had enough for today? We should rest a while. We’ll take the night off, go to the banya, take a dip in the pool. Together we’ll sit in a steaming closet and later, to improve our health we’ll beat each other with sticks. 68 ...