poly_chromatic

Entry tags:

star trek xi - pavel chekov

audio;

[Filtered to the Deities]

If I may discuss yet another exchange with you, please, I would be grateful.

[Public]

It is nice to have the City quiet again, but yesterday was too quiet. Why are people so reckless about what they lick?

[City: don't answer that question.]

The snow is good. It reminds me of home, but warmer, and with more sun. If we were in Petersburg, there would be less than eight hours of daylight today, and we would likely not see the sun for the clouds. The temperature would be maybe twenty below, Celsius, without wind--possibly colder. I think the Neva would be frozen by now.

This is March, April weather. Anyone who is cold now should be glad that the City is so mild.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Leningrad? It's Petrograd, where I'm from.

[He shakes his head.]

I'll never get used to this different times thing, I don't think.

Petrograd? No, no one calls it that, although I have heard it.

You don't like it? I think it is very illuminating.

It's fascinating, yeah, but the way I see it, people from the "future" always have a lot of explaining to do, and people from the "past" always look like idiots.

I never think anyone from the past looks like an idiot. It is hardly your fault that you are over three hundred years behind.

Doesn't mean I like being confused about most things.

Do I confuse you? I will try not to.

No, you're okay. Maybe it's our shared nationality.

[He's joking, mostly.]

Of course. No one understands a Russian so well as a Russian... or a Belarusian.

You're not Jewish, by any chance?

Yes, on both sides of my family. You are, also?

With a name like Meyer Lansky? It'd be a crime not to be.

There are stranger things in the universe.

Are you practicing?

Not anymore. As a child, I was very observant, but...

[A small shrug.]

Things changed. And you?

As they do.

[He shakes his head and smiles.]

No, never. I have never had time for religion, and there is little pressure to subscribe to a faith at home.

[He nods.]

Do you speak Yiddish? Or, for that matter, anything other than Russian and English?

I know very little Yiddish... only what I have heard at family gatherings. But I know several languages, yes--Belarusian, both Ukrainian dialects, although those three are so close to Russian that that is no accomplishment. I know Polish and Latvian from having family there, German from attending Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg... some Greek, Vulcan, Latin. A few others.

Although I am told that I am unintelligible in most languages, German especially.

[He laughs, looking somewhat impressed.]

Well, you've got me beat.

Not at all! Your English is much better than mine, and languages only count for half if your accent is so terrible that no one understands.

[His English is very good -- there's no trace of his former Russian accent at all. Still, he shrugs.]

I think that's how my business partner back home feels about my Italian. Only counts for half due to a terrible accent.

Are you very fluent in Italian?

About as fluent as he is in Yiddish, which is to say, I know if someone's insulting me, and I can insult them right back. That, and order food.

Now you only need to learn to say, "I don't know how to speak Italian." That is an important thing to know in any language, I think. That and vulgarities.

The first thing I learned how to say in Italian was when I was ten. It was "go fuck yourself."

[He's definitely got the vulgarities covered.]

Truthfully, I understand Italian a lot better than I speak it.

[Which is just great for listening in to conversations you're not supposed to be able to understand.]

Do you speak any Italian, or is that one of the few languages you didn't manage to pick up?

Very useful--that phrase and understanding a language. I'm not fluent in all of the languages I mentioned, but they are decipherable.

[Eavesdropping? Why, they do have something in common besides their heritage!]

You found me out. I am wholly ignorant when it comes to Italian.

Well, you can't know every language. Although I get the feeling that someone like you would probably like to try.

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