I don't know why this game was dubbed the name of my favorite novel, but its unpretentious rules seemed familiar to me. Having chosen a busier Broadway intersection, one of the two participants nods at a passer-by, making it clear that this is Russian ....

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I don't know why this game was dubbed the name of my favorite novel, but its unpretentious rules seemed familiar to me. Having chosen a busier Broadway intersection, one of the two participants nods at a passerby, making it clear that this is a Russian. If the second agrees to accept a dumb bet, the victim is asked what time it is - in their native language. The answer reveals the origin and determines the winner.

Being an old-timer, I can't play glass: it's not fair. I can learn Russian from the back, behind the wheel, in a wheelchair. I don't need to peer - an elbow or a knee is enough.

In the past, of course, it was easier. Only ours wore earflaps, in summer - sandals with socks. They walked puffed up, heavily loaded, smiling through their strength, cursing to themselves. Somehow a compatriot with still gold teeth approached me in New York to ask: “Metro, faith from?”. I answered in Russian. “Tank yu,” she thanked, happily deciding that English was no longer a problem.

But this is when it was. Now you will never meet such people - frightened, in a fur coat, with an Olympic bear on a bag. And I still recognize my own - in any crowd, including nudists, in any uniform - a policeman, a stewardess, a museum curator. Once I noticed a punk - prickly, like a sea mine. Friends did not believe me, but I was firm. And what - a minute had not passed before his mother called out: "Borya, I asked you."

Atheists think that the matter is in the body and in the face, of course: a low center of gravity, Slavic roundness of features. Well, what about the Hasid, with whom, as it turned out later, I went to the same school? Or the dazzling Yakut woman I recognized among the Asian fashion models? Or a Kazakh at a diplomatic reception in a far from Russian embassy? The black woman became the crown number, which, frankly, I doubted until she turned to her white son: “Shall we take sour cream?”

I confess: my boasting smacks of racism, like any priority of the universal over the personal. No one wants to be a member of a group of which he has not appointed himself a member. It is one thing to be known as a philatelist, and another thing to be known as a “person of Caucasian nationality”. I am justified only by the fact that, intuitively recognizing a compatriot, wherever he meets me, I violate political correctness involuntarily. Having come to terms with the tricks of the sixth sense of the motherland, I try in vain to understand its mechanism. What makes up that incomprehensible "Russianness" that, famously overcoming national strife, makes us all children of one, already collapsed empire?

Sometimes the same question torments foreigners. For example, the Japanese. Unable to distinguish themselves from the Koreans, they unmistakably distinguish us from other Europeans. “Over the Russians,” the Japanese say, “there is an aura of suffering.” Maybe that's why German films are loved here, not to mention Dostoevsky.

Like everything plausible, this is hardly true. They usually suffer alone, it's easier to laugh in unison. And Russian troubles have a lot of competitors.

There is also a collective subconscious, but I do not believe in it. Jung came up with another name for the "folk soul", which was pretty much compromised by stupid enthusiasts. Enumeration, however, does not describe souls. It is inexhaustible, albeit unique. The state, moreover, does not have it at all - it is not immortal. And who, at least until the Last Judgment, will undertake to glue labels. Solzhenitsyn refused to call Brezhnev a Russian. Brezhnev hardly considered Sharansky as such. But abroad, all three are united by origin. The foreign environment clarifies it like a developer clarifies a film.

Butter oil, I say, surrendering to empiricism. To comprehend the secret of a "Russian" person is no easier than a snowy one - the elusiveness is the same. It remains to rely on those small details that cause an undeniable resonance.

We no longer drink until the morning, but we still like to sit in the kitchen. We no longer read the classics, but we still leave it to the children. We already know foie gras, but we are still thrilled by chanterelles. We already tolerate democracy, but we still prefer extreme measures to all. We no longer say “we”, but we still cannot stand being alone. We no longer climb ahead, but we are still the first to enter the elevator. We no longer love ourselves, but we still despise others. We already speak without an accent, but we also call tea “tea”, beer “beer”, and vodka “it goes without saying”.

Hopelessly. Subtraction ends at zero, addition at infinity. But it doesn't work out.

About a year ago I came to Serbia. The level of the Balkan smoke was also characterized by the fact that my books were published in Belgrade. I liked the first one most of all - it came out in two alphabets at once. What about Russia was printed in Cyrillic; what about America is in Latin. This technique quite accurately corresponded to the structure of my life: half in my native font, half in foreign.

The meeting with readers began with questions. The first to stand was a dissident with a beard and a clear look.

— Is there a God? - he asked.

I looked around, hoping that the person being addressed was standing behind, but behind was only a wall with a realistic portrait of a cigarette butt.

“You see,” I began to mumble.

"No, we don't," the questioner said firmly. - And you?

- Why me?

- You Russians know better.

Then I realized that I was stuck.