Russian anecdote - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Never a lender or borrower be

Published: 12 August 2021 ~ Russian Anecdote a Man Exempt from Coronavirus

As any of you who have read my blog post will know, I was married, here, in Kaliningrad, Russia. Before delivering my speech at the wedding reception, I passed the written draft to my wife for critical appraisal. As predicted, her response was, ‘OK but I do not think that Russian’s will understand your strange British humour’. Hmm, I thought, should I take the bit about holes in underpants out?

Nevertheless, with a little invisible mending, the speech went ahead, almost without me, which is not surprising considering the amount of vodka I had drunk, and if people were laughing at me instead of with me it did not matter as at least they were laughing at all the right moments.

Whilst some elements of British humour might miss the mark with Russians, Russian humour conveyed in the traditional form of an anecdote often ends as enigmatically as it has begun.

My first encounter with a Russian anecdote left me wondering if Tolstoy had written it to counteract criticism that War & Peace was too short. The question as to whether I found it funny or not was quite frankly immaterial. As the yanks would say, I never left first base. The plot, which had more twists, turns and red caviar in it than one of Agatha Christie’s who dunnits, was so convoluted that it is my opinion that even Poirot’s little grey cells would have struggled to have made sense of it. At the end of the anecdote, I was left with the question, ‘What?’

Since then, I have learnt to compose my own, simplistic version of the Russian anecdote, and this one, which I have the honour of presenting to you now, might even be a true story.

Now, are you sitting comfortably?

Russian Anecdote a Man Exempt from Coronavirus

A conversation with a Russian man about whether he had had the vaccine, wanted the vaccine or was avoiding the vaccine, led him to confide in me that the nature of his job was such that under the new laws he was ‘obliged’ to have the vaccine. And yet, he told me, he was vehemently opposed to it.

In this frame of mind, he attended one of the city’s mobile vaccination units. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than he demanded from the white-coated medic a vaccination exemption certificate (do such things exist?) on the grounds that since he had an allergy he could not have the vaccine.

When the medic nonchalantly replied that he need not worry as the van opposite was an intensive care unit, and in the unlikely event that he exhibited any untoward side-effects from the jab, they would rush him in there immediately, he promptly replied: “If I do not get my exemption certificate, it will be you who will need intensive care!”

It was not for nothing that this reasonable gentleman had decided that a career in the diplomatic core was not for him.

The vaccination certificate duly administered, but not the vaccine, our man with his certificate in his hand, walked into a nearby shop to purchase a bottle of peeva.

Arriving at checkout he was just in time to experience one of those peculiar mask-wearing confrontations that are unfortunately blighting our daily life. At the counter, a middle-aged woman was being lectured by the checkout girl to cover her face with a mask.

“But, I only have two items [to buy],” the woman complained bitterly, “and I have forgotten to bring my mask.”

“Then you must buy one,” said the shop assistant curtly.

“Buy one!” the woman exclaimed. “I’ve enough of the filthy rags hanging about my home already!”

The shop assistant, as shop assistants do in situations like this, kept shtum. But her pursed lips and the body language of a nightclub doorman left little doubt that no mask meant no sale!

The woman with a house full of masks but none on her person was about to remonstrate with the iron maiden again, when a nice elderly gentleman, who had just been served, lifted up his mask and said kindly from beneath it, with a bit of a sneeze and a splutter: “You can borrow my mask if you like.”

Another woman, standing in the queue seeing that no mask meant no service was searching frantically for a mask which she also did not have.

Meanwhile, the first woman, having turned down the gentleman’s magnanimous offer, suddenly found herself in the throes of one of those euphoric moments when brought to the cusp of despair by the realisation that you have no mask, you find one, thrust deep down in your jeans’ back pocket among the fluff, dust and grubby remnants of knotted old pieces of tissue.

Extracting it and holding it five inches from her nose, but not following the proprietary rules for mask application (who does?), the sight of a mask wherever it might be was sufficiently acceptable from the shop assistant’s point of view to make further objection unnecessary. The woman had a mask. The world was safe. The woman could be served.

The second woman in the queue, who, alas, had no snot-ridden mask concealed about her person, now almost besides herself with woe was promptly offered the loan of the gentleman’s mask, which was now sitting on his whiskery chin, and the first lady, who had dropped her mask twice on the floor before wiping her spectacles with it, also offered her mask. Oddly enough the second lady refused on both counts.

Now that she had left her full basket at the till and gone to the shop next door where they never asked for masks, our man fresh from the vaccination van made his debut. He, too, was sans maskee.

The shop assistant was just on the verge of exercising the only power that she had ever been invested with and was ever likely to have in her life, when our anecdotal hero stepped promptly forward, certificate proudly in hand.

“As you can see,” he asserted, “I have an exemption certificate. This means that I do not have to have the vaccine, and if I do not have to have the vaccine, then it stands to reason that I cannot catch or spread coronavirus. It also means that it is not necessary for me to wear a mask!” and with that, he slapped his bottle of beer loudly on the counter.

The shop assistant, who was a paragon of logic, immediately recognising that the validity of this argument trumped forgotten, shared and improperly worn face masks, picked up the bottle of beer as one would reverently touch the road to salvation (which, dear reader, beer most often is), and placing it into a bag allowed the wiley man to pass without further let or hinderance onto the other side. It was almost as if she was manning* the Pearly Gates like Peter (or is it Bill?) which, without wanting to spoil the end of the story, perhaps indeed she was.

*Any similarity to actual LGBT persons, living in the UK or it and otherwise, is purely coincidental

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