Авторские статьи и книги по английскому языку

October 3, 1993.  Moscow

  16.00-17.00 

Events  occur in real time.

  It was raining again.  I had always felt the weather knew what people were doing. When people were  giving each other hard times, the weather knew it, and it was sad.

  I had one metro stop to go. I am a private  English teacher and never go far from my house. If I travelled far, I would  earn nothing, because my time is my money. The more lessons I have, the more I  earn, it’s that simple. So I had to go only one metro stop.

  My student’s name was Yura. He was a nice teenager.  It was a pleasure to have lessons with him. He wasn’t very bright, but his mind  was working all the time. And he had his own opinions. It is a rare thing among  teenagers these days – to have their own opinions.  Usually they get their opinions from God knows  where but their own minds.

  He was fourteen, and  his school teachers were strict. So we had to work hard to help him with his  English.  His parents were nice people,  and they had money. That was important for me, because most people in Russia  didn’t have money at that time. So they couldn’t pay for private English  lessons. When Yura’s parents were young, they were seriously in sport. His  father Yury was a professional  cyclist and  his mother  Helen was a swimmer. Now  there business was expensive cars. People who wanted expensive cars from Europe  came to them, because it was cheaper than anything else. They paid the money,  then some people in Europe found a car that was wanted. Then Yura’s parents  found a man who worked abroad for more than a year. Such people were allowed to  bring cars into Russia without taxes, which were high. Then this man was paid a  little money to agree to give his name and ID to register the car. Then the car  was brought into Russia, and that man formally sold it to Yura’s parents. And  that was it. Of course, the scheme was more complicated and had many risks. But  anyone in Russia who had money had to take risks. The bigger the money, the  higher the risk. I’m afraid it’s still the case now.

  Helen was an open woman, and her language was  very dirty. She swore a lot, it was natural to her. As the Russians say,  ‘She doesn’t swear, that’s the way she talks’.  I learned about their business partly from her, partly from the conversations I  overheard. Once or twice I was asked to speak English to somebody about cars,  taxes and things like that. That was how I got the whole picture.

  When I came to Yura’s flat in a big block of  flats, he was alone. His parents were out on business. So we started our lesson  as usual. We didn’t knowit was going to  end in five minutes.

  In five minutes we heard a strange noise. It  was coming from the corridor. Yura’s parents had five cats, and we thought it  was them. We were wrong.

  Suddenly the front door opened with a bang,  and three people stormed in. They had black masks on their faces and guns in  their hands. One of them pointed his gun at us, the other two searched the flat.  Then they came back.

  - Where are your parents,  kid?, asked the shortest of them. Then he looked at me.
  - And who the hell are you? he asked, and I went cold.

I knew we both were very close to death.