A Vodka Comedy; A Tourist’s Encounter with Vodka in Moscow
by F.G Baker
Harry woke up, vodka enhanced, to the sound of a woman screaming at close quarters. He did not understand how the screaming was related to the rather intimate scene he was dreaming about with the slender, blond Aeroflot stewardess, who had shed a portion of her flame red uniform and revealed red lace panties with a hammer and sickle pattern on them. Her “Da! Da!” had metamorphosed into the shill complaint of the young woman whose bed he now appeared to occupy. He did not understand her Russian but realized that something was wrong and she thought that he was the cause of that concern. His leaden eyes searched around the unfamiliar ship’s cabin in search of an explanation. He sat up and swiveled his head to take in the view, which was not the right thing to do when you have a migraine headache and a monumental hangover. In doing so he put out his hand to brace himself and put his hand in something wet that smelled really bad, like vomit laced with vodka. It was vomit laced with vodka! And then he had to get up and rush into the tiny en suite bathroom where he unleashed an ungodly amount of bile into the porcelain fixture.
He stepped back out into the cabin and surveyed the damage to a room that he did not recognize as his own. Somehow he had gotten into the cabin, been sick extensively and then fallen asleep in the bed which he now realized belonged to the woman with the huge lungs and unusual range of bellowed verbiage. She returned to the room then with a man in dark uniform who surveyed the scene and then set his focus on the disheveled, drunken and unruly man to whom the shrieking woman pointed. Harry enquired if this was the good ship Ingvar which set both persons to cursing at him loudly. He retreated back into the bathroom to evade the shouting. He locked the door, put the lid down and sat on the toilet to reflect on what could have possibly gone wrong and to sample his fragile memories of the preceding night’s activities. Through the excruciating pain in mind and body, he began to piece the evening together. The events did not align the way he had thought they would on this vacation, supposed to be the best time ever on his Moscow river cruise.
He was sure that the starting point was the vodka tasting event he had attended late in the afternoon yesterday. He had sampled many different flavors of vodka that day along with several other people from his tour boat. They had all had a wonderful time laughing with their host Sergei, the retired ex-Spetsnaz captain who was the size of a human boxcar. He had instructed them on how to hold their breath properly while downing shot after shot of vodka in varying flavors from hot pepper to citrus to the final one that tasted like diesel fuel. They had all been very drunk by the time Sergei had finished with them.
Several of the group from the vodka session had gone on to attend a presentation of the Cossack dance troupe that had been performing in a large tent nearby on shore. They had had a very good time at the show and more vodka had been provided throughout the show, included in the price of admission. So they all partook of several more shots there and a few of them, including Harry, had volunteered when the Cossacks asked for volunteers from the audience to come up on stage to participate in the classic folk dances of these good people. Harry could look back at it now and see that he may have been getting a little out of control during that scene as far as he could remember it. He remembered tripping on one of the female dancers while trying to show off how high he could leap during one dance. He had staggered and propelled them both off the stage and onto an unwilling videographer standing by the stage and landing hard on him, laying him out flat. But the dancer was ok, if a little angry with him, and Harry had only damaged his knee and hand on impact, courtesy of the unexpected tourist that they landed on. He had been very disturbed and Harry and his new-found cohorts scampered out of the tent to avoid repercussions. The tourist apparently chased them once he had been able to get his feet beneath him and a security guard also gave chase.
To their good fortune, a tour bus was just preparing to leave the dockside area to take tourists downtown for a tour of Red Square at night with the many buildings lighted up for nighttime viewing. They joined the line of participants who had queued up to board at the rear of the bus and climbed on just as the security man came around looking for them. They had a rollicking good time in the rear of the bus joking and carrying on with some equally inebriated people from another cruise ship that they met there. Those people were drinking Baltic Beer and offered some to the thirsty vodka samplers who had had nothing to eat or drink save the vodka. Now as a general rule, you should never drink beer after downing vast quantities of the devine fluid of the Russian gods. But they made an exception and soon found that the beer acted as a booster for their vodka induced highs, carrying them to new levels of lunacy and mayhem.
At Red Square, they lost a few of their comrades from the tasting session. But no matter, they pressed on and separated from their new-found drinking buddies in the tour group. Three undaunted pilgrims set out to stagger around the square and marvel at the buildings in the artificial light and the fading late night sun. They were having a great time but were beginning to fade as the euphoria of the occasion began to pass and some serious side effects began to present themselves to the intrepid trio. The beer they had consumed now presented a problem of an urgent nature and they could see no portable toilets in view. The nearest probable area where they could relieve the pressure was a shadowy area next to the well-lighted GUM department store, the pride of Soviet Union revisionists who claimed that the store was always well-stocked with reasonably priced food, ignoring the fact that only Party members of a certain standing were ever allowed to shop there.
Just when the current crisis was resolved and they stepped out of the shadows, a police patrol happened by to interrupt their relief. Apparently they were engaged in an activity that was frowned upon by the keepers of order and a foot chase ensued, with the revelers splitting up like cockroaches discovered under a fruit basket. Just then the hour of midnight arrived and all the lights in the square began to go out as gang switches were thrown by zone of coverage, leaving the whole area dark as night. Harry had run as fast as he could in the dark, losing his associates and banging into the side of Lenin’s mausoleum on the side of the square that was dominated by the great wall of the Kremlin. The combination of the running and the banging caused Harry to get sick for the first time that night. He dragged himself around behind the mausoleum to rest and inadvertently found the place where it was apparently considered acceptable to relieve yourself after an evening of extended drinking. That is where Harry passed out the first time that night, or morning as it was then a new day.
Things became fuzzy then and Harry remembered being scared out of his wits when he awoke in the night and saw Lenin’s ghost step out of the mausoleum. The apparition was dressed in the classic grey officer’s hat with a red star in front and the long coat that were his trademarks in the good old days when he was sending people to labor camps and ordering summary executions. Harry tripped on something while backing away from the ghost and fell down, striking the granite slab he was on with the back of his head. By the time he rose up to run, the ghost had vanished and he stumbled out from behind the tomb and into the arms of a night watchman, who looked remarkably like Joseph Stalin.
After that Harry was taken to a police station where he was given a strong lecture in Russian about the dangers of drinking too much vodka and wandering aimlessly at night. Or that is what Harry interpreted the lecture to be about. But in the end they put him in a taxi and sent him back to the dock where the tour boats were tied up. He remembered pushing a fist full of Rubles at the cab driver when he pulled his sleeping body from the back seat and pushed him toward the gangplank of the nearest ship. Harry had staggered about the hallway of the boat until he found an open door and that was all he could piece together.
During the brief period of time it required for Harry to compile his memories, the woman and man had taken to not only shouting, but to pounding on the door of the bathroom. He could now hear other voices on the other side of the door and knew that they were undoubtedly planning how to breech his lair. He felt there was nothing to do now but to exit the room and claim that he was kidnapped or some other story that he would have to invent in the next few minutes. He managed to stand up in front of the full length mirror and stare at the apparition that he had become. The blood-shot eyes, bloody scalp, unkempt beard and hair, dirty and smelly clothes with authentic tears and blotches of unknown origin lent him a certain disenfranchised charm that he knew he could use to good effect on his potential captors. With that he took a pause in the infernal hammering on the door as his queue to exit the premises. He unlatched the bathroom door, threw it open and in his best English enquired. “Who the hell are you people and what have you done to me?”
