Life is a non-stop holiday...
(or wild dogs, curry and lockjaw)

I was hungry. I'd heard talk of an oasis in a desert of grey, a culinary nirvana offering fabulous curries with warm nans and sweet and hot chutnies. That's for me I thought as I jumped out at Biblioteka Lenina for lunch and walked towards the new and shiny Bombay Palace located right next to the Wobla. I was salivating at the idea of some good traditional English Indian and fairly bounded up to the door with a spring in my step only to be knocked back by a lock and Zakrita and the prospect of another beetroot cum kartoshka affair from the local produkti. I found comfort however in my little black bag fresh from Anglia books with a lovely copy of Steinbeck's "Tortilla Flat" which I happily swung to and fro as I set off towards Tverskaya. The street was strangely quiet with little fluffy snowflakes fluttering about and nothing to disturb me except a nice little breeze blowing to and fro, aimlessly. Suddenly however there was disquiet. From behind there appeared out of the white, a f***ing big Alsation (gadka sabaka) and he made a little nip for the bag. Now that book cost 350 rubes so nobody was gonna take it off me, savage frothy dog or not. So I got all "North-East" with him and he wasn't too impressed and decided to have a little nip at me. Anyway, I picked up a clemmy (rock: colloquial) and he decided to roll while the going was good. I checked my strides (pants) and the little s*** had put a tiny hole in them. Barely a scratch on the leg itself mind, just a tiny speck of blood, but you know us Westerners with our bit of knowledge, I started to think Rabies man, RABIES.!!! Like fear of beer and foam and wild fits and moodswings, like classic hangover times 10 and then you die I think. And so began the Odyssey (with the assistance of the beautiful Katya from Tverskaya) of locating a hospital in the Moscow metropolitan region who could save me from my fear.

For those who haven't experienced the Russian public healthcare system I can only say "stay lucky." The first one was closed, the second one was blessed with a clinically mad doctor and several severely drunk, severely injured war veterans. They fixed me up however, and gave me my first shot of six for rabies and a tetanus shot. The news that I can't drink alcohol for three months was greeted with dismay! That, you would think, would be the end of this sad tale, but this is Moscow, f***ed-up , beautiful, sick, dangerous etc. etc. Moscow where nothing is straight or obvious. So when I finally got back to Tverskaya and news came that I had to go to another hospital in a different part of town because there might be some "problems" I wasn't shocked or suprised. I just got my coat and taxied out to Prospect Mira where one of the New Russian doctors explained the advantages of her $50 treatment (the previous hospital was free) and that I would be better off at her hospital, like some saleswoman flogging timeshare or something. This hospital is the main accident and emergency hospital and they were piled up everywhere, like some terrible enormous accident had happened on the highway and all the damage needed to be put in this special place. Only one doctor there and she was trying to do a bit of "business" with me.

We finally left (no dollars were exchanged) and for our suffering we were embraced by a beautiful night, all white and new, nothing to do but go to our safe warm homes and laugh and wonder, pondering the strange magic of these blessed lives we live, careless in the comfort of our relative wealth, ignorant of health until it fails, and consumed by the deliciousness of it all, of love, of happiness and of flesh.

A. E. Flint