The Warlock Rewritten

Now, as you might guess from Ortho's logo, I'm a coffee addict.  The Russians drink coffee only rarely; instead, they drink tea—by the glass, and they have special holders for hot tea glasses.  My hosts asked me what kind of tea I drank, and I told them my wife's and my current favorite—?Russian" tea.  They stared, then fell all over the room laughing.  They explained to me that Russia doesn't grow any tea themselves—they import it.  Makes sense—but somebody's doing a great job of re-labeling it and selling it to us innocent Americans.

Fortunately, I like tea.  I learned to when I was in London for a convention.  I walked into a blue-collar café run by a couple of guys with Italian accents.  They poured me a cuppa from a huge stainless-steel pot, black as Harry Dresden's duster.  I took one sip and grabbed for the milk and sugar.  That stuff was STRONG!  Ever since then, I drink coffee by day and tea in the evenings, though my wife insists that it's not tea, it's substitute coffee.

At any rate, I'd spent four days in Russia with no java!  Or cappuccino or latte or mocha, for that matter.  So I was delighted and relieved when a small group of fans invited me up for a cup of coffee.  The aroma wafted delectably to me halfway down the hall.  It wasn't quite ready when I arrived, so I got a good look at their coffeemaker—a tray with inch-high sides, to hold in the sand, heated by a built-in hot plate.  Nestled in the sand were six demitasse cups of very finely-ground coffee with some hot water stirred in.  It was novel, it was strong, and it was DELICIOUS!  I think that brew was the really authentic Turkish coffee.  I've always been grateful to those Russian fans.

In the evening of the last day, a Russian radio announcer interviewed me.  It was a nice long conversation, with a half-dozen or so fans gathering around.  Finally the nice lady asked me, ?Stasheff - What kind of name is that?  What nationality??

?Oh, it's Russian,? I said.

?Russian??  She stared in surprise and disbelief—so did the fans. 

?Yes," I said.  "My grandfather changed it when he came to America.  The original was 'Korostasheffsky.'?

?But that's Jewish!? she cried, somewhat scandalized.  So did the fans.  Then, catching her breath and changing the quality of her stare, ?Are you Jewish??

I tried to explain that my father and his family were Russian Jewish, but my mother and her family were mostly Irish Catholic.  Then I told them the story of how my great-uncle Yasha was sent to Siberia for teaching peasants to read and write—that halfway through Russian grammar, the lookout called, ?The Cossacks are coming!? They didn't understand why this was a problem.  After all, to them, the Cossacks aren't ferocious soldiers—they're those nice guys who live down the road a few miles.  The interviewer finally gave up trying to understand and went on to the next question.

Afterwards, I discussed with some of the fans whether my original family name meant ?People from Korostesh" (a big town in southern Russia) or ?Children of Stanley.? That one didn't surprise me—I'd known for some time that ?Stash? is Polish for ?Stanley.?

They also asked me why we Americans liked Gorbachev so much, when he couldn't even speak proper Russian (to them, it was like a Californian hearing some people from Atlanta).  I said, ?Because he stopped the Cold War.? The fans stared, startled.  I think the commissars had been telling them that the Americans were out to conquer Russia or bomb it off the map.  Turned out that, Russian or American, we all wanted the same thing—a secure and lasting peace.

Volgacon had to be one of the highlights of my career, even though I found out that it was ending a day sooner than I had expected.  I asked the interpreter to change my plane reservation, which she did, and off I went to Moscow.  I found out later that the convention committee had a full day of sightseeing scheduled for the authors.  I missed out on that.

I also found out that instead of coming into Moscow, I could have selected Odessa as my port of entry—and exit.  Since my father's family came from that city, and since I'd heard that it was the humor capital of Russia as well as being the Greenwich Village of Russia, I really wished I had known ahead of time so that I could have gone there.

Then I found out that there was a cholera outbreak there.  Guess not.  Maybe another time.

But Odessa being the humor capital struck a nerve, since in science fiction, I have the reputation of being a humorist (surprise to me—I thought I only put in some comic relief).  Also, my father had an even better talent for humor than I do—in his eighties, he won a pun contest at ConFusion—so when I arrived back in the U.S., I called my father and asked if his dad had a good sense of humor.  He said, ?Oh, yes, wonderful sense of humor!?

So that's where I got it from.  It runs in the family.  I'm a little concerned about the next generation.

Next week, I'll tell you the final part of the story—the trip home, which was just as exciting and bizzare as the rest of the journey.