Words’ End

Then there are good days. Today, Grandma and I started up a new activity: I read Russian classics to her. This benefits both of us, as I’ve been meaning to read more of these but haven’t had time. On her part, Grandma seems to be happier and doesn’t call us over to her room quite as often as usual. At least, that was the case today; we’ll see how long it lasts. Today’s reading was a short story by Chekhov and some poems by Pasternak at bedtime. Can’t say I’m complaining; besides being generally pleasurable, this also trains me to speak for long periods of time. Since I’m planning to conduct a few sessions of my humanities computing course as more or less lectures, this is great practice.

We had her a foot bath; we ate tasty food; she even let me work for over an hour with surprisingly few interruptions. (Today my imaginary monkey and I learned about lists and arrays in Perl.) Mom was relaxed when she came home from work, we ate more good food and watched Russian TV. Usually I tolerate it and/or try to tune it out (hm, funny; I’ve been reading DeLillo’s White Noise lately). Today, however, I enjoyed watching not only a film based on Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades, but also – to my surprise – a game show.

I don’t know, does Disney’s Pinocchio have the Field of Miracles in it? In the Italian original, as in the Russian version named Burattino ["puppet" in Italian], Pinocchio meets a deceitful Fox and Cat, who tell him about the Field of Miracles, located in the Land of Fools. You bury your money there and pour some water over, and overnight it grows into a biiig tree full of money! Then you’re rich and can buy Geppetto (or Papa Carlo) that new jacket and all.

Well. Pole Chudes is the name of the Russian take on The Wheel of Fortune – with four important exceptions. First, everyone gets a participation prize. Three-times-three people play in each half-hour show, and they all get the same prize, although the prize changes show to show. They’re all practical prizes: microwaves, vacuum cleaners, what-not. Second, this must be a tradition that has evolved over the show’s near-decade-long run so far: the participants bring gifts to the charming host. Gift-giving has taken on a life of its own; sometimes a whole town or village (if it’s small enough) from which the participant hails participates in the gift. For example, some of the gifts brought out today were:

- two live rabbits and some Armenian cognac;

- a drop of crude oil encased in glass, from a town near the Baikal;

- homemade Ukrainian vodka-like drink;

- children’s drawings of Moscow done specifically for the occasion;

- a full assortment of non-perishable products from a dairy factory, including powdered soy milk;

- homemade smetana (thick Russian sour cream, tasty stuff, and homemade it is well loved) – this was specifically for the beautiful helper girls on the show, as they were proclaimed too thin;

- a beautifully-done icon of some saint or other;

- and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember now.

The host cracks jokes, lewd to a greater or lesser degree, and never lewd with children. That’s the third thing: many people, participants and audience members alike, bring along children, who announce commercial breaks. The fourth and final difference is that this isn’t really about money so much as it is about prizes and banter. The puzzles are all single words, never phrases; and the clues given to them are not, say, “thing” or “sport” but rather interesting trivia questions. For each show, there is a theme to the questions; today’s was symbology. (Is this the right word?) For example: what did the walnut mean in ancient Greece? What was the meaning of this other particular nut (I think it was hazelnut) for the ancient Germanic peoples? What does the almond tree symbolize most often all over the world? Finding out the answers is left as an exercise for the curious reader.

All of these particulars make the show homey, interesting. Nobody seems to care how much money they’ve won, it’s not about that. Fun stuff.