It’s 2001, and I live in Slovakia, an overlookable country with a language light on vowels. I’ve been here in Bratislava, the capital city, long enough to decode the essentials and enjoy the superficial mastery that bleeds into a muted smugness peculiar to ex-pats. But I’ve not been here long enough for social fluency. Instead I know just enough to be humbled by all I will never decipher.
I teach journalism in this freshly minted country. My students are the Gen Y of post-Communist Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine. Such earnestness they generate; I am captivated by the forlorn moral weight of their history, by the task before them to reshape their countries and to labor relatively unmentored in fashioning a legacy that befits them.
We’ve been together for three months. Paul from Romania. Andras from Hungary. Henrieta from Slovakia. Vita from Lithuania. They sit before me, listening to my rap about who, what, when, where, why, how. I watch their inscrutable faces. I am unfamiliar with their solemn classroom manner.
This isn’t my first time teaching journalism abroad. I’ve airlifted into countries that never make it onto the Travel Channel. But those visits were short term—two weeks, three weeks. This is something else entirely. I live here. I collect phone messages on an answering machine and pay an electricity bill and grocery shop. These mundane rituals soothe and lull me into believing I know something about the life here. What I don’t know are the lives of my students, the details that separate them from one another, the tiny folds that form the individual contours of their lives. Paul from Romania. Andras from Hungary. Henrieta from Slovakia. Vita from Lithuania. Their inscrutable faces. Their solemn classroom manner.
Our university is in a small castle in a wine-growing village on the outskirts of Bratislava. Today snow falls—the first of winter—and the overzealous radiators in our classroom shimmy. Open windows welcome the compensating chilly air.
Class ends at 5 p.m. The students scatter. Dusk steals the scant daylight. I bundle up and leave through the arched front door of the university to make my way down the long main street of the village toward the bus stop on the highway. A light rain has iced the snow, leaving it glossy and treacherous. My boots don’t have treads, and I walk gingerly over the slippery surface of the unscraped sidewalk.
Someone jogs past me, crunching over the ice in three-quarter time. As he passes, he turns around. Juraj, one of my students, a gentle, shy soul.
“Oh, it is you,” Juraj says sheepishly. “I am running for the bus,” he adds, as he pulls down the hood from his coat. “Does it come soon,” I ask. “Yes,” he says.
He slows his gait to accompany me. I navigate slowly, irrationally fearful. I take baby steps; Mother may I? Juraj keeps pace. I am self-conscious and embarrassed that he may miss the bus. No. I am self-conscious and embarrassed that he sees me walking like this, unable to proceed with confidence. “Go ahead,” I tell him, “I am OK.” I force a chuckle to convey how good-natured I am about the notion of going along by myself. But I know that his cultural training precludes this. I am teacher. I am woman. He is obliged to help.
We make our way over the frozen sidewalk in silence. Snow and all its behavior modifications are a novelty. Each step is a question mark and a possible betrayal. Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall: This is my mantra.
We labor on and round the corner onto the highway. Snow comes now, whirling around us, blowing sideways in the wind. We spy the bus stop about 75 yards away and see the bus pull in. Red tail lights blink through the snowfall. The next bus is in an hour. A cold, snowing, dark, winter hour.
“Let’s go now,” Juraj says with conviction, extending his hand. We clasp our gloved hands and run. And run. I slide and slip but do not fall. He is my ballast, propelling me forward. The wind pinks our faces. Our breath labors with exertion. We laugh and run and laugh and run. I surge with fear and risk.
The bus doors close just before we reach them, but the driver sees us there and lets us in. We wade down the aisle of the crowded bus, shaking snow off our coats. I plop into a seat beside Juraj, chugging my breath, giddy with our victory. The bus rumbles down the highway. The snowy landscape blurs by, and we both look out the window, saying nothing. After a while our breathing takes on the same rhythm and we begin to talk softly, telling one another small stories all the way home.
