As I’ve mentioned a few times in previous posts, part of my job at the university entails simply “being American.” Actually that seems to be my job in general here. I get asked to come to classes and events all the time just so that they can have a real life American there. This past Saturday was not really any different. The university was holding an event titled “Armchair Across America,” and as it was explained to me, would be a fantastic day full of school children and university students putting on plays, singing songs, and giving presentations about the United States. In other words, 6 hours of torture. They begged me all month to come to this event, trying to lure me in with promises of apple pie and banana bread. I asked if the banana bread would have walnuts in it, to which there was no general consensus. I said I would probably come, and they asked me to give my own presentation at the end, restating over and over how excited people would be, and that there would be apple pie and banana bread (with or without walnuts). Then I found out they invited some otherrrrr American who is doing something or other at the American Embassy in Novisibirsk (a city located a 4 hour drive away from here). Fuck. That. I want to be the only American, so I retracted my previous probablys in favour of “no.” Plus the woman I work for assured me that it lasts all day and is in general a snooze fest.
Despite my repeated answers of no, the begging continued, and I compromised by saying I would arrive for the second half…maybe. No one really ever checks up on what I do at the university, so sometimes I show up to events just to make sure she knows (or thinks) that I am doing something. It will be good leverage when I decide to ask for a higher salary. When Saturday morning rolled around I was very hungover, but figured I should show up anyways in case the dean of the department was there. I would have much rather spent the day walking around with my friend, but I was good and went to the university. Sometimes when I’m hungover it feels somewhat like being stoned and I just sit there with not much going through my mind. I sat through some inaccurate presentations about American civic groups, Indians (of the feather variety), fast food, and a rendition of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” that resembled sober and shameful karaoke. I had to look away so that I wouldn’t laugh. Pro tip: If you can’t access the upper register of your voice, you probably shouldn’t choose that song to sing in front of an audience. But to her credit, she at least didn’t mess up that key change there at the end.
When the performances had ended and the judges were tallying up the votes, I conversed with some of my more mature and interesting students (the kind that don’t invade my life or gossip). I also talked to some sorority type girl from Indiana who is here to do her teacher training. She wanted to “do something outside of her comfort zone,” so they shipped that bitch here to Siberia. She doesn’t speak any Russian. Coincidentally, I ran into her on the street slutting it up with an Ivan Dragov knock-off. Then John Silver (the American from the Embassy) tried to talk to me, but my desire to be wantonly rude got the best of me so our conversation didn’t get very far passed the question “So, how did you get here?” to which I dryly responded “On an airplane, and you?” I unfortunately missed my opportunity to make any Long John Silver cracks. What a pity.
After sitting through the awards, which always consist of “prizes” which are actually just leftover text books and teaching materials from the office, I left with some friends of mine. As we came around the bend by the main building, we noticed a large congregation of police, students, and police vehicles by the main gates of the university. Large gatherings of police aren’t really unusual in Russia, but that they were on campus and that there was a large gathering of students set off some alarms. We approached slowly and were directed around the vehicles towards the gates. As we passed by the cars, it became apparent that something awful had taken place. In the center of the ring of vehicles were two huge pools of blood and some blood soaked rags. In the woods next to the entrance, a few police officers searched the surrounding area with search dogs.
We stood by the main gates not really knowing what to do. Obviously we wanted to know what had happened, but Russian police are in general not very friendly people. One girl, Natasha, debated as to whether or not she should ask, and finally I went with her to ask a police officer. He stated simply that something bad had happened, eerily smiled and told us to leave. Natasha said we have a right to know what happened but once again he told us to leave. Natasha then asked if he would at least tell us if whatever happened had happened to a person or a dog (I’m not really sure why she asked this, but she was perhaps hoping that maybe someone had killed a stray dog). He smiled and said it wasn’t a dog, and to go home. We stood there for a bit longer and the police began to disperse, leaving the two pools of blood unattended. A large orange power sprayer had been brought in to clean up the scene. Natasha and her friend then walked over to a group of students who had just been questioned by the police. When she came back she had a horrified look on her face. She informed us that two students, a male and a female, had been attacked and stabbed in the neck by one of their classmates. The attacker then fled the scene, which explained why the police were searching with dogs. The reason for the stabbing wasn’t known, but according to the students, the attacker had always been fairly mentally unstable. They also said that the victims had been alive when they were taken away, but that the girl in particular had lost a lot of blood and was in bad condition.
Once we heard this, we decided it was best to just leave. Staying there a few yards away from such a scene just made us kind of sick. We walked down the street and stopped outside of the movie theatre to get some free snacks from two guys passing out cracker samples. While there, one of the girls in our group got a text from one of her friends stating that apparently the female victim had died, but I still haven’t been able to confirm this. True or not, it made my mood for the rest of the day rather melancholy. If the girl had died, it makes me really uncomfortable to have seen the remnants of her life spread out there on the pavement. It’s too intimate for me to have shared in the last moments of someone I didn’t know, and to see their life giving fluids splattered everywhere, knowing that the loss of those fluids had caused their death in such a public way. I don’t even know quite how to put these thoughts into words.
Besides having to see the scene, another thing that upset me was the way the whole thing was, and is being (not) handled. The fact the police didn’t tell us what had happened isn’t exactly surprising, but in the context of the situation, the public definitely should have been informed that there was an armed psychopath on the loose who had already stabbed two people. Universities in the United States would probably be put on a state of alert or lockdown. Also, the media outlets have chosen to completely ignore the event, in favour of stories such as May Day celebrations, or pickets at the main square by angry mothers. I’ve been searching the news sites in hopes of finding out if the girl lived or died, but nothing is mentioned at all. I don’t work at the university on Monday, but I’ll be very interested to see how this tragedy is handled. I’m guessing they will also gloss over it as if nothing had happened. That seems to be a trend here.
