From Lenin’s Asylum: Two Years in Moldova, by A. A. Weiss (Everytime Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 193-195:
Riscani’s town birthday, a day festival called hram, fell on a Tuesday.
Only a handful of students had come to school; none of the kids higher than sixth grade or any of the village classes showed up that day. I was thankful that my older kids had taken the day off. They would have certainly arrived to class intoxicated. Instead, they wandered the streets with cans of beer, toasting anyone they recognized.
My fifth grade girls asked if I’d be celebrating in the town center. I assured them I wouldn’t be drunk.
“Why not?” asked Olia. “It is hram.”
“Do you realize that drinking so much can damage your health?”
“You are not little,” the class explained. “You can drink without problems.”
After school, I called my friends. I wouldn’t be going out into the hram without backup. Michael was in the capital, so he couldn’t help. With such short notice, Colin was the only one who could make it there in time. He was in Riscani an hour after I called, ready to take on the best the Russians could offer.
Colin was in the apartment for ten minutes before I realized he’d arrived. Dima had met him at the door and taken him to the kitchen for a shot of vodka in honor of Riscani. I walked into the kitchen and found Dima talking to Colin in broken Romanian. Dima pushed out a chair for me, explaining that he and Colin had started while I finished my nap. “Dude,” said Colin, his cheeks flushed. “I really like your father.”
Dima poured three more shots of vodka. We drank. Then Dima reached down to the cabinet below the sink and produced five different bottles: apple garilka, Moldovan samagon [самогон, self-distilled, i.e., homemade moonshine], cognac, high-class vodka, and red wine. We took a shot from each bottle. Then Dima took a bottle of cold beer from the ice box and we drank that. Colin had been a bartender in Virginia before joining the Peace Corps. Now he offered his professional commentary: “Dude, we just drank ten shots of alcohol in twenty minutes.”
“Go enjoy yourselves in the street,” said Dima. “It’s a party.”
…
Colin was already something of a celebrity in Riscani. The town folk who’d met him on his first visit recalled meeting the tallest man in the world. Those who hadn’t seen him carried in their minds an image akin to Big Foot.
From my front door we followed the techno music to its source at the Lenin statue. A crowd of a thousand cheered when we arrived. People hugged me and shook Colin’s hand, took pictures of us with their cell phones. In Russian, Colin said, “Good evening, Riscani,” and the crowd lost it. Students appeared holding beers for us to drink. I refused and told Colin not to accept anything from a minor—even former students like Edgar. Soon enough adults gave us drinks. The Riscanians gyrated to the techno music in disorganized, Russian-head-bobbing, non-circle dancing. Dariya appeared, only the second time I’d seen her since she went off to college. She’d dyed her hair black and wore even tighter clothes than she’d worn in high school. She kissed me on the cheek without her previous childhood awkwardness, whispered she’d see us back at the apartment, and then disappeared into the crowd.
…
Soon after hram, a well-known student from the Moldovan lyceum passed away from illness. My ninth graders had played with him as kids and weren’t in the mood to study, so I let class out early. With a handful of sunflower seeds, I walked down the main street. Live music carried through the air, trumpets and drums. I said hello to Katya at the bazaar and ate one of her sugar rolls. Outside the bazaar, I stepped into a tractor-trailer that had been converted into a shooting range, and I paid five lei to shoot twenty bee-bees at paper targets. I only hit one. Back on the main street, I decided to have a beer. As I walked toward the lake, the live music grew louder. The drumming vibrated my stomach. Then the funeral procession for the dead boy turned a corner into my view. Pedestrians stopped walking and removed their hats; I did the same. The casket was carried on the back of a flat-bed truck. His body was open to the air and slightly blue. Some type of jelly made his face look shiny. The priest walked directly behind; he made eye contact with me and smiled, placed his hand over his heart and bowed his head. I mirrored him, placing my hand on my heart and bowing my head. Several of my students were in the procession following the casket and the priest. They waved to me. Everyone looked sad, but no one cried. I continued on to the lake. The sounds of the trumpets and drums diminished until I only heard them in memory. At the bar they only had liters in the fridge, so that’s what I drank.
Far Outliers 