Easy for Tolstoy, but not for me

"Why are you studying Russian?" asks each new acquaintance I make in St. Petersburg.

"I am studying Russian," I confess, "because I love Tolstoy."

"Ah."

"I read all books by Tolstoy – books in English," I say in ungrammatical Russian, "and I want to read in books Tolstoy wrote only Russian."

In spite of the bad grammar, for once no one corrects me. My noble plan usually receives a nod of encouragement.

In my four-hour sessions with Albina, a young, earnest university lecturer, I, an English professor who has been teaching half my life, am not one of those cheerful, bright students who never misses a trick; who has revelations at each clever explanation the teacher offers; and who never slumps his shoulders in despair at the unexpected twists, back flips, and booby traps of Russian grammar.

No, in spite of Albina's talent as a teacher, in spite of how well she has assessed my deficiencies, and in spite of how well she paraphrases simple Russian into simpler Russian, I wince and shake my head, about to weep with frustration when she asks if now I understand about reflexive verbs.

Only a foundering student would resort to philosophical questions at such a moment. And so I think, "What is 'understanding' anyway? Is it knowing? Is it a blurry image? Is it being able to distinguish colors or shades? Depth? Is it having a vague idea?"

At best I have a vague idea, but I don't think I understand, and after a several-moment pause, during which my teacher patiently waits, I admit I'm still in the dark: "Izvenitiya, Albina! Ya yesho ni punimaiyu!" ("I'm sorry, Albina, I still don't get it!")

We sit in a seminar room at the school by ourselves because I have come for two weeks during the Russian holidays that extend from just before New Year's through a couple of days after Russian Christmas (Jan. 7).

Albina takes her job seriously; she keeps me at it, hour after hour, with a break for tea. She does not scold me for my bad pronunciation and poor grammar. She corrects me, but is not stern. She knows that American students expect cheerful encouragement, not annoyed shaming.

Even so, I am amazed when we spend 15 minutes one afternoon on my pronunciation of the Russian letter "x." The sound of it is touched here and there, corrected inside-outside, knocked a little to the left, further back to the right – now with even less "k" and more "h," then with smoother aspiration. I feel like the wrong substance for a sculptor. I won't or can't hold the shape I have been knocked into.

One day Albina tells me it's because I'm creative that I want to know why, for instance, the numbers 2, 3, and 4 are not plural in Russian grammar. I want to know why "to laugh" is reflexive but "to cry" is not.

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