© José Vicente

Tuesday, May 20

Where?

I was in St. Petersburg for a few months to conduct experimental research...

I was staying at a place that was both a college for international students and some kind of hostel for these same fellas (as a kind of short-term boarding school) but also for other foreign guests like me.
The campus and lab I was working on were at walking distance from this dorm and when compared to the average accommodation available on the private market, this was a quite privileged place to be.
A shit hole was my assessment when I arrived.
The building had several classrooms, offices for every step of the burocracy ladder, a cafeteria, a small shop, and a gym.
One of the wings was exclusively dedicated to small-shared flats. I was sharing one myself with a couple of those interns coming from Finland.
There were several nationality bubbles spread all over the different floors. And on mine it were indeed the Finns who made the biggest agglomeration. Other floors were more intensively populated with Germans or Kazaks for instance… The third floor was famous for a recent remodelling, meaning it was not indeed a shit hole, and also because it was where all the Americans were sent. It seems they also paid for their accommodations twice or more than everybody else.

But let me tell you about Kevin. He was one of the first persons I have a recollection of upon my arrival. I held the elevator door for him, he thanked in Russian, I welcomed in English. He was from somewhere in the U.S.
We never talked much more. But I liked him. I liked his face, I guess, he seemed a nice guy and we ran into each other a couple of times and we always smiled and nodded as partners in crime may do. I think he told me his name on that occasion but actually if you had asked me about it just before he went missing, I couldn’t tell…

Last time I saw him was at a rendez-vouz on the third floor with friends from all over the building, Americans included of course, to watch the UEFA cup final.
Zenit, one of the local soccer teams, made its way to the last game and eventually brought the cup home. That was actually the only time I saw him hanging around with other people. He had company though. He had his arms around a tall pretty Russian girl that understood our smile-and-nod-drill and joined it surprisingly well tuned.
A couple of days later I found he had no other friends there. Americans were leaving. They were all in the same program, which was over, their visas were expiring and nobody had seen Kevin ever since the soccer game. Including his roommate, which had no idea where he could be or could have been. Kevin had no mobile phone.I found all of this when some of us gathered on the hall to say goodbye. People were talking about this Kevin. Some girl thought she had just seen him on Nevsky Prospekt, had tried to tap him on the shoulder and he had just disappeared. His name was then written on a paper and put on the billboard of the hall.

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