It turned out that my educational mission was failing right before my eyes.

The three of us were sitting in McDonald's, listening to the rain that had been pouring over the city for the second hour. It was nearing midnight and closing time; there were no other customers besides us, and from the outside, the restaurant looked like a bright ship illuminated from within in the middle of the night sea. Cars occasionally sailed across the sea.

Bill, a local taxi driver, was enthusiastically telling me about chess and Garry Kasparov, and suddenly asked: Is it true that Kasparov was Putin's opponent in the presidential elections?

Ahem, yeah. First of all, I remembered that Putin, as it turns out, had opponents, and then immediately that they were all nominal—which I now had to explain to a citizen of a democratic country. Secondly, I was hearing about Kasparov as a politician for the first time, let alone an opposition one. In fact, it was the first time I'd heard that there could be others besides the permanent heroes of our political soap opera (Zhirinovsky, Yavlinsky, Mironov, and Zyuganov, plus Prokhorov this time).

In the end, I decided that Kasparov was not an opponent, so I answered:

• I don't know.

But I immediately felt that something was missing. After all, we were in America, and such an answer didn't fly here.

• ...but I can find out! - I remembered and beamed.

I was beamed back at, and from that reaction, it became clear that everything was correct.

Getting ahead of myself, I will say that Kasparov did run for office in one of Putin's elections, I don't even remember which one. He withdrew his candidacy even before that due to insufficient support from voters, which was strange for such a popular person as Kasparov turned out to be. Turned out to be, I confess with shame, for me. In the course of searching for the answer, I learned a lot about this person for the first time. And Kasparov's organization was not just opposition-minded, but anti-You-Know-Who, which is why it was not announced in the media, and I, like many I think, had not heard about it.

Chrissy sat in thought and was silent the whole time. She was not very interested in the modern life of Russia, let alone political life. Then the conversation turned to another channel; we began to discuss our professional future. Chrissy was studying to be a doctor, a specialist in mental disorders; everything related to this topic interested her terribly and—which delighted me—did not scare her; her dream was to meet some famous prisoner who, in an inadequate state, had committed more than one murder, and to understand what prompted him to do this, how one can come to such a state.

Her question also sounded sudden to me.

• Have you read Crime and Punishment?

• What did you read?

• Crime and Punishment, by Dast... Do...Dostoevsky, I guess?

Now that was something.

Last year in Texas, I encountered a sheet of crystal purity in the minds of Americans regarding everything related to Russia. Have you read books? No. Movies? Music? Yes, I know the songs of a Russian group, one friend rejoiced and began to sing O-ZONE. So I prepared thoroughly for this summer, taking with me a couple of discs with Soviet cinema and a page from the English-language Wikipedia about the wives of the Decembrists. But that turned out not to be entirely necessary!, which I never tire of rejoicing at.

Yes, Maine turned out to be an intellectual state. In conversations, I happened to hear references to such realities of ours as the Civil War, the revolution, the Chernobyl accident, the collapse of the USSR, modern musical groups, and others. These were not stereotypes; basically, Americans already knew the essence of the phenomenon—as happened with Kasparov and Dostoevsky. It is strange that it turned out differently in Texas, and this apparently concerns precisely knowledge about our country, because in general, the people there are also very interesting.

...That's how it is. Of course, I still continue the age of Russian enlightenment in America :) I showed Soviet cartoons (they didn't make the proper impression, alas), I teach the alphabet and words. I like that colleagues here ask how to say "hello" in Russian, or "sorry", "thank you". They are still shy to ask about "I love you", but by the end of the summer, we will definitely come to that.

By the way, Chrissy started reading "The Idiot" :)