the watermelon

A sad time. My supervisor (who’s a Scottish Moscow-enthusiast, and speaks Russian with a Scottish accent in a way that I find quite disorientating) asked yesterday if I knew where the supermarket was.

And I replied ‘yes, yes’ in a reassuring sort of way, even with a little laugh in my voice, ha ha, how hilarious, imagine that, imagine if I hadn’t found a supermarket yet and I’d been living here for five days without being able to buy even the most basic groceries, hoo hoo, oh dearie me. Priceless.

NOT SO FUNNY WHEN IT’S TRUE THOUGH, IS IT. I should of course have said, ‘actually no – is there one near here?’ like a normal person who has been rendered faint and slightly woozy after living for many days solely off the stodgy white bread and processed cheese that was in the fridge upon arrival. So many days. So many cheese. So many bread. And cheese. Breadcheese. Fridge.

‘Ah, good, he continued, ‘and have you seen the street kiosks?’

‘No actually – is there one near here?’ I NOW replied, (to compensate for before? to check I was capable of framing this question? why?) and it turns out that there are many street kiosks in Moscow and that they all sell fantastic seasonal fresh fruit, peaches so sweet they taste like mangoes, watermelon picked in the Southern Republics such a stunning deep red and so crisp, cherries so.. but by this point I had drifted off into a world of exotic fruit, Madagascar maybe, or one of the “Southern Republics” (whatever the hell they might be) a glorious land of flavours, colours and textures, miles away from my flat and the fridgebreadcheese.

Anyway, by this point, I must have been starting to lose my mind. Three days of living on my own, malnourished, with just my own mind keeping me company somehow led me to believe that I had to go to a street kiosk after work and purchase a Seasonal Fruit. It was like I'd been hypnotised. I soon snapped out of it at about 7.30pm on Monday when I found myself laden with a plastic bag containing a watermelon about four times bigger than my own head and heavier than a professional bowling ball tearing into my hand. I heaved it all the way back to my flat, staggering along in my heels and ignoring the pity on the faces of onlookers - and set it down on the floor. And then sat on the floor next to it. Realised for the first time that I was now going to have to sit, by myself, in the kitchen, and eat watermelon for dinner. And dessert. And breakfast the next day. And all of the next week. Numbly, I lifted it up and launched it into my quite small fridge, which now looked as if it had been bought to house the watermelon. A lesser person might have cried. I just closed the fridge door quietly, wondering what would have been wrong with peaches, and walked away.

Tonight I’m going out for dinner with some of the other trainees (which might hopefully allay some of the dislocated first-week weirdness) but tomorrow is Find a Supermarket Day. It has to be.