| JULY 28 - AUGUST 3 // COPYRIGHT 1997 THE ST PETERSBURG TIMES |
F I V E C O R N E R S
By Charles Digges
AT ONE POINT in this column, not so long ago, I constructed a snide system by which expats-on-the-run can get rid of any visitors from their native land that might have arrived here during the summer tourist boom.
The basic premise was to make them get lost by giving them indecipherable maps and, quite literally, making them get lost.
One trick I hadn't included, though, was how to locate them afterward.
I faced this problem earlier this week when my brother and his girlfriend - here on a two-week vacation - disappeared into the St. Petersburg night.
For nearly nine hours, I was frantically working the phones to morgues, ambulance services, police stations, and consulates, searching for a pair of dead New York photography students who can't make sense of so much as a Russian street sign.
They were supposed to meet me early in the evening at my apartment, a plan - judging by the cuts and scrapes and stink of cheap wine that eventually they brought home with them - they had at some point abandoned.
At about 2 a.m. I frantically called the central ambulance dispatch and gave their descriptions.
"He's an American who's got two nose rings in his left nostril and she's a Canadian of Ghanaian-Welsh descent," I told the dispatcher.
"They're what!!?" she said, trying to imagine the picture. I told her again.
"Well, frankly, I'd see if they've been arrested first, because they haven't been here. But keep calling. They may well get beaten."
I did in fact call the police next, and a dispatcher told me my only chance was to call each and every separate precinct in the city to see if anyone matching their description had been arrested.
"If they have been arrested, will they be allowed a phone call?" I asked.
"Depends on how the officers relate to the way they look and their behavior," he told me frankly. "But if they don't speak Russian I doubt you'll hear anything until their consulates are called."
The first five precincts I called had no one matching their descriptions.
"You can have a drunken Ukrainian we picked up," said one. "But he's the only foreigner we have."
The sixth call, to another precinct in the central district, was worse than fruitless. Two hours later it yielded a knock at my front door from two officers - one of whom smelled drunker than my brother later turned out to be.
They were initially more interested in my documents than in a description of the two kids who had gone missing. After several minutes of discussion on topics ranging from where I worked, why I was here and how much a Jeep Cherokee costs in America, they finally remembered why they had come.
I showed them a picture I had of my brother and gave them a verbal description of his girlfriend.
"They can't walk around town looking like that," said one. "They'll be beaten. They're probably lying in a ditch somewhere by now, with a big punch to the face - call the hospitals."
Then they left.
I called the ambulance service back and the legendary looks of the young couple had spread through the dispatch office like wild-fire.
"You're calling about that pair," another woman said. "They haven't turned up yet, but we'll surely recognize them."
My last resort was the American Consulate's late night duty marine, who without knowing it, laid out the scene with uncanny clairvoyance.
"He's probably stopped somewhere and had a couple of drinks and lost track of time, sir," he said. "I wouldn't worry about it too much."
I explained however, that my brother was far too responsible to do anything as misguided as going out on a bender in a city where he didn't know the language, that he would have called, that - even according to the police - he was probably dying or dead.
He took descriptions and promised to call if any corpses turned up.
Sometime around 6 a.m., having done all I could, I heard a key in the door and he and his girlfriend staggered in. My brother was banged up and cut.
Apparently, after drinking several bottles of Armenian wine from kiosks, my brother had fallen into a manhole. After emerging with help from his girlfriend, he had spent several hours puking in a park.
But after that the history grows hazy, which is why I am here to embarrass him in print, and also congratulate him for so quickly acclimatizing himself to the ropes of a local binge, despite his alien appearance.
After all, what are big brothers for?