We Take a Taxi
by
Agnes Wall
My daughter, Cathy, my niece, Lilly, and I spent the day in the huge Exhibition Grounds situated on the edge of Moscow. It's the showplace of technical and scientific achievements of the Soviet Union.
"I'm tired," I said to Lilly. "Let's take a taxi back to the hotel." She lived in Russia and spoke the language, so she hailed a nearby cab. When the driver found out we wanted to go to the Hotel Berlin, he shook his head.
"What's the problem?" I asked Lilly.
"He doesn't want to go there."
"Why not?"
"Maybe he's afraid to have anything to do with foreigners. He's not going to give us an explanation. If he doesn't want to go, he doesn't want to go. In our country we've become used to peculiar behavior. I'll see if the next fellow will be more cooperative."
This one was willing to take us anywhere we wished to go. The girls sat in back and I in front where I had a good look at him. He appeared to be pleasant and good-natured. He sported a handsome mustache which hung down on either side of his mouth and curled up beautifully at the ends. He looked straight ahead and acted as if he didn't even see me sitting there next to him. Still, he looked harmless and somehow innocent.
Actually he wasn't as passive as I'd thought. As soon as we were settled, he changed into a wild creature. First he made a sharp U-turn in the middle of the street. Then he took off like a bat out of hell. At the first red traffic light he rolled down his window and said something to someone sitting on the motorcycle beside us. When the light turned green we knew that he'd challenged the motorcyclist to a race. I craned my neck and noted the odometer showed 125 kilometers an hour.
"Where are this city's traffic cops who should arrest madmen who screech along the streets at break-neck speed endangering unsuspecting tourists?" I thought to myself, and began to sweat a little.
The girls in back weren't so comfortable either. "Could we not drive a bit slower?" Lilly asked him.
"Oh, no, I can't do that," he replied. Lilly translated. He kept his eye on the motorcycle which turned into a side street and was gone. Still our man went just as fast, perhaps even faster.
I saw us all dismembered and battered, stretched out on the road breathing our last. Silently I prayed, "Dear Lord, surely you don't mean to destroy us here on the streets of Moscow, far away from home!"
Cathy and Lilly began to giggle nervously, then started to laugh. There was nothing left for me to do except say to Cathy in English, "At this speed we'll soon be flying. Does our cabbie think he's a cosmonaut?"
He probably understood the word, cosmonaut, for he speeded up even more. Perhaps he thought he might go into orbit?
It was surely a miracle that we got to our hotel safe and sound, and very rapidly. After we'd stopped, our man looked at me for the first time. It was as if he wanted to say, "You need not have been so scared!"
I shook his hand and said, "Korosho," which means "thank you." These two Russian words, all that I knew, weren't exactly appropriate for the occasion, but I think for one short moment in time we understood each other perfectly.