My husband is an alien

Ksenia Yelkin-about how she remained to live in a distant, far galaxy, on another planet, in France

Ksenia Elkin was born in a small Ural town, grew up in Yekaterinburg and, at 20, was transferred to study at a Moscow university. I met a Frenchman who worked at that time in Russia, and seven years after meeting she left to live in France, leaving friends in Moscow, her favorite work and a long gray winter. In her notes, she talks about life in a foreign country, shares pleasant surprises and is upset along the little things. Of all this, one small life of a person living in the modern world, where the boundaries, it would seem, have long been blurred by the Internet, and society still consists of national characteristics, varies in education, habits and generally accepted norms.

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Once, a cold March night, I met a Frenchman. He stood, drunk and joyful, at the exit of the toilet, and did not suspect that he would now encounter his fate. It was in one Moscow club, known for its violent parties. Since then, our lives were only the next three weeks, until I remembered that some Frenchman had started in my notebook, and did not decide to send him SMS.
We both came to the meeting “with the blacksmiths”: he was with one friend, and I gathered a camp of friends at once at the meeting place: I must admit that we both did not remember what we looked like, so we stocked up with ways to retreat. But there was nowhere to retreat, and literally two weeks later we plowed the expanses of Crimea with backpacks behind our backs.

The next couple of years I sincerely believed that the French-they were just like Russians, only speak in another language: my Frenchman, together with my friend-expanses, was happy to overgrow mud on campaigns, drank vodka at 11 a.m. with a grocery salesman on Lake Baikal, was resistant to the Crimean port, frolic on the Moscow taverns and lived, as we all then, from salary to salary.

A couple of years I sincerely believed that the French - they are just Russian, only speak another language

And then we went to France, to visit his family.

I don’t know where to start. Is it that the mother -in -law put me on a diet? Well, that is, as I planted. She did nothing on purpose. We just ate very small portions and strictly according to schedule. And on my chest hung a three-month-old son, who ate two or two and a half liters of my milk a day. But the mother-in-law, who did not feed any of the three sons, was not aware that between lunch, which was at 12-30, and it would be nice for me to eat at least something. The mother -in -law did not see in me a nursing mother. She saw a ninety -kilogram cabin, which needs to lose weight. Therefore, the afternoon snack (he at 16-30) was also canceled. There was a complete trouble with dinner: it was not. He was not in six, nor seven, nor eight. He could not be asked (indecent), he could not organize himself (indecent to disgrace). He had to wait. And dinner was waiting for me. In the literal sense: everyone was waiting for me to put a child to sleep. I had almost no milk with hunger in the evening. A child, hungry no less than his mother, yelled and did not want to sleep. As a result, when I went down, exhausted and angry, we sat down at the table. At ten. They ate a steak with a green salad on a side dish. It was impossible to get out of the table ahead of time. It was necessary to participate in the conversation. In a conversation in which I did not understand a word. But she had to participate in a silent ghost, because it was indecent to go out from the table before others. I went out anyway, and my husband blushed for me and made excuses, and tried to explain to me that they did not do that. I yelled at him in our bedroom, he looked at me with big, blue and very confused eyes, went down and justified himself again.

Fort La Rochelle; Saint-Brevan; picnic in November; Saint-Brevan beach; with the family on skiing; Pornik beach photo: from personal archive (5); Marina Fedyakova

On the third day, I said that I would die of hunger. The husband said that in two days we will go to the supermarket and buy food there. I said that I would not survive for two days. He said nothing. And then we went for a walk in the city. And there was a store. I went to the store and bought myself a bunch of bananas and four yogurts. And then the next end of the world came: my husband, who never once in many months of joint partys was noticed in special scrupulousness in relation to money, exclaimed with horror: “This is a city store! It is expensive in it! Didn't you wait until we go to the supermarket?! ” And at that moment I realized that I did not know my husband. At all.

He flew to Russia by accident from places where it is indecent to say "I want"

Then there was coffee that I bought on the street (“Why are you buying the most expensive coffee in the most expensive cafe?”), An attempt to eat something at four in the afternoon in the city (in one of the fifteen cafes that we went around in search of food at this wrong time, we sold two pieces of pizza-apparently, the remnants from someone’s table after lunch), a trip to the anniversary to the grandfather (“Oh, and you are still you. Feed the child, he is already quite large! oh, how thick he is, apparently you give him too much to eat! ”), A trip to the party to friends, where twenty -five -year -olds and childless people were already deep in fifty. In general, a complete and irrevocable immersion, after which it became obvious that this country is located somewhere in a distant galaxy, and my husband is an alien.

He flew to Russia by accident from places where it is indecent to say “I want”, where you can’t call a friend on the phone and just ask your question, we must first talk about weather and nature for half an hour; Where one-year-old babies are taken with them to restaurants, and there they hatch for two to three hours in such a calm regime as if they were chopped with drugs, like those children in the transitions of the Moscow metro; Where having come to visit even good friends, you can not lean on the sofa; where at exactly 12-30 in all cafes the lines are lined up for food, and at exactly 13-45 the receipt of orders ends (if you want to avoid queues, come to McDonald's at 14-15); where in houses they do not take off street shoes; Where there is a special manual for those who were left without work due to the fact that the spouse found a place in another city, and they moved.

Combat detachment; Nostalgia tortured; Brissak castle; Louvre photo: from personal archive (4)

He flew in, and then, after eight years and two children, flew back. And we flew after him. And now I live on this other planet in this distant, distant galaxy. I have been living for three years, and at times it seems to me that I slowly succeeded. And then I go into a cheese shop, I’m waiting for twenty minutes until a leisurely pensioner ask the seller about all the existing varieties of cheese, will try half and will get money from his purse for a long time. And until she puts her purchases in Avoska, the seller will not even look at me. Because it is indecent. And then I want to beat both the granny and the seller, because it also seems indecent to me that I have been hanging here for half an hour, and I didn’t even tell me “hello”. But no one asked me, because in Tula with his samovar, as you know, there is nothing to do.

In my notes of the involuntary emigrant, I will try to understand how the French dads manage to attend parent meetings, tell how I turned into a strange aunt without higher education from an educated and sought -after specialist, for which the Frenchman goes to the market, what a French cottage is, and how to use it. And a little about how, ultimately, this beautiful and arrogant country slowly becomes my home.

emigration