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It's unclear why the museum workers can't simply improvise by giving us, say, handwritten notes granting
entrance. But they don't.
Instead, we continue standing in place for another fifteen minutes, during which time not a single person
succeeds in buying a ticket. We would leave, but at this point we're less interested in the museum than in
the resolution of this dadaist one-act play. In a new plot twist, one of the Koreans—speaking English, as
it's the closest thing anyone here has to a shared language—has loudly declared his group a “special guided
tour,” in the vain hope that they might thereby circumvent all ticketing procedures.
“I'm doing a thought experiment,” says Rebecca, hands on hips. “I'm trying to imagine what this would
look like if it happened at MoMA.”
“And?” I ask.
“It's not working. I can't picture it at all. By now, the ticket lady would have been fired. And someone
in line would be taking witness depositions for a class-action lawsuit.”
Eventually, the impasse is broken. A batch of uncut, unprinted tickets is produced from a back office,
and the ticket lady begins to tear them out individually—using a ruler as a guide, and maddeningly licking
her fingertip before each careful rip.
After all this drama, the museum's collection is of course anticlimactic. Though it does feature some
fabulous Communist Party- approved art. It's all broad-shouldered Russian peasants together forging steel
and harvesting grain in beautiful harmony.
Rebecca—never a huge fan of abstraction—discovers she has a soft spot for social realism. “First of
all, the spirit of group endeavor here is sort of inspiring, if you ignore what actually happened,” she notes.
“And second of all, these guys are really hot!” She points to a sculpture of a beefy, chisel-faced worker
wearing overalls and wielding a sledgehammer. “Look at those biceps!”
IN the late afternoon, we take the Moscow metro to the official government railway ticket office. It's like
stepping back in technological time: the scraping noises of the dot-matrix printers, the amber glow of the
monochrome computer screens. We ask at the information desk if there's anyone here who speaks English.
Our question is met with indifferent shrugging and frowning. We'll have to wing it.
We check the timetables, write down specific numbers for the trains we want, unfold a map so we can
point to our desired destinations, and approach one of the ticket windows. As we'd pretty much anticipated,
things do not go smoothly. The clerk speaks zero English (which is fine—I don't expect people in other
countries to speak my language) and seems disinclined to make any effort to understand our map-pointing
or our elaborate pantomimes (I'm less forgiving about her unwillingness to meet us halfway). When she
eventually prints out tickets for us, we examine them and determine they're for a train that leaves a month
from now, instead of for the one we want that leaves tomorrow. It takes several minutes, with much arm
waving on both sides of the window, to explain this.
After the clerk rips up those tickets and prints new ones, we once again pore over the details, deciphering
the Cyrillic. This time we discover that the tickets are round-trip instead of one-way. It takes several more
minutes, and lots more arm waving, to make her understand that we don't want to return to Moscow (pos-
sibly ever, I'm beginning to think). She cancels this set of tickets and tries again. Third time's the charm.
By now we're hungry for dinner. But at this point we can't face the wearying thought that ordering our
food will necessitate further charades and require us to endure the inevitable frowns and shrugs of the
waiter. When we pass a McDonald's on the way back to our hotel, we break down and enter—mostly just
to remember what it's like to have an effortless transaction with a service worker.
I cannot tell you how cathartic it is to pronounce “McNuggets” in a confident tone and, an instant later,
receive exactly what I've asked for.
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