This is a traditional Russian Evangelical hymn, based the Lord's Prayer. This copy is from a collection of Russian songs from my undergraduate coursework. I went to a Christian private university.
***
When I was in the thick of things and so much going on I didn't think about this, but afterwards I did. That is, I wondered what I could have done differently or whether it was my fault. I think, though, what had transpired up to this point could not be attributed to me, I don't think. It was the mission who was treating me so intentionally badly, and I hadn't done anything to deserve it. So then one has to look at the mission, I think, and try to figure out why they were doing these things if it wasn't a response to anything I had done. Up to this point it looks to me, in hindsight, that it would probably have to be socialization. That is, the apartment and work issues especially.
The other thing, though, is that I think they intended for my spending so much time just reading software manuals to lead to frustration or some reaction like that that could lead to me opening up and them guiding me into their kind of logic (way of thinking) and the like. All it did though was plant seeds of distrust in them, I think, because I couldn't think of an acceptable reason for them doing these things. If the idea was to lure me in they took the wrong tack with me.
***
After the junior high kids left I joined the other singles in celebrating one of the secretary's birthday's (the one whose jumper I'm wearing). I don't know what we did for her birthday, but I do know that we often went out to dinner and then got standing places for live plays at the Burgtheater. We would pay for the birthday person's ticket and dinner.
The next day I may have gone swimming with one of the other gals at the mission, whose sending mission was the one I'd had connections with before.
Tuesday my landlady took me out to dinner. My calendar says either Chinese food or a heuriger.
Wednesday July 29 one of the other secretaries, the one from Alaska, had me over for dinner.
Then July 30 I might have had dinner at the head of the women's ministry's apartment. I have "tentative" written on the calendar.
***
As you can see, people were very welcoming and social, inviting me over and treating me to dinner and the like. I do remember the first little while like that, being overwhelmed by the welcome, but it eventually wore off. Also, this needs to be seen in contrast to the work I was doing, which was basically nothing - typing a few letters, reading software manuals, etc.
The other thing that started happening somewhere around this time was that my meetings with my boss seemed strange. It felt like I was supposed to have sort of an emotional attachment to him and having a relationship with his family felt like it was a counterbalance to that. But there were a couple things he did in my meetings with him in his office that were really strange. First of all, it felt like he would just be staring at me like with enlarged eyes or something and the other thing is he would scratch his crotch. Really, I'm serious. This happened at least a few times - three or so. I talked about this to a friend in the States who'd had some contact with the mission I worked with before and she said she thought she'd experienced the thing with the eyes there too in meetings with individuals there. I've never experienced anything else like this... ever, and I'm not making it up either.
So what was going on with that? One was the crotch scratching made me think that maybe they knew about that unwise relationship I'd had with the Russian emigrant back in the States (if they knew about it it would have been via the mission I had connections with at that time, and that mission was one of the 15 member missions of the Vienna mission). So in that way it made me feel like they might know more about me than I thought (so then you might wonder what they do know), but it also could mean they thought that was a vulnerable spot for me, to be tempted by men.
As for the eyes, that was just unsettling, so if a person was not coping very well maybe that could unnerve them so that they'd capitulate, if you will. (Really, it did seem like a battle of the wills - them against me.)
So then having both of these things going on made me have to concentrate more on what was said - the spoken words - and try to ignore the body language. That was hard to do, really, though, because Americans (and we were both Americans) generally look people in the eyes a lot of the time when talking to a person, although I tend to look at a person's nose more than their eyes. To avert my eyes away from his face and eyes, however meant I also shouldn't look down because then you'd have that crotch scratching. So what are you supposed to do, stare at the ceiling or walls? That also would seem a bit strange. I think I managed to ignore it enough, however, for them to realize that that approach also wasn't going to work with me. This did happen several times though. In any case, I never "broke down" with confessions, struggles, or the like, which is what I think they wanted, because then they'd have me in a spot to start guiding me into what they wanted me to be like.
So what did we talk about in those meetings? I don't remember a lot about it, except talking about a letter he wasn't typing up or his plans or what he wanted to do or maybe how I'm settling in... small talk and a little about work thrown in.
I felt like I was supposed to have a relationship with my boss that had an intimacy to it, but was respectable and above board otherwise. But it was supposed to be something, I think, that had a strong level of commitment involved too. I could also see this with the other secretaries and their bosses too, this relationship, although I don't know what happened behind closed doors between them. But their interactions were such that it was almost like they knew their boss as well as the wife did, and vice versa, too, of course. In fact, the boss probably knew even more about the secretary than she knew about him. So there was definitely a vulnerability involved in that relationship and having made oneself so mutually vulnerable was a strong safeguard, I think, against doing anything that might cause a problem.
I think that maybe the wives knew about this aspect of the secretary-boss relationship, which made the secretary-wife relationship even more important than it would have been otherwise. It felt like if the wife wasn't connected with the secretary there would be a suspicion of having an affair (an "appearance of evil"), just because of the vulnerability and emotional attachment between the secretary and boss. But there wasn't anything actually going on that could be called an affair. Nevertheless, the flesh being what it was it would be better to have the wife in the picture.
I'm just telling you now how it seemed to me. I know this is strange, and that's how it seemed to me too, especially the meetings with my boss. I just didn't let anything rattle me. But I didn't know who I was dealing with yet, either, because I "hadn't seen nothin' yet" as the saying goes. So if this seems strange, this is only the beginning.
Also, I would just like to add that I came to the understanding about secretary-boss relationships at the mission based on 1) my experience(s) with my boss and 2) observation of the other secretaries and their bosses and how they interrelated.
***
The other thing I would like to say about all these invitations out is that they were mostly instrumental. That is, the people who invited me out were intended to have a relationship with me. Sometimes this was more instrumental than others though. For example, the singles get togethers weren't so much this way, I don't think. Also my relationship to a family from the mission that lived pretty close to me wasn't like that either; that is, we didn't work closely in the mission and so our work didn't require that we socialize together.
I think of all the invitations out that I've covered so far, the ones that would be the most instrumental in nature would be the dinner with the two secretaries (June 29), the dinner with the director of human resources and his wife (June 30), the dinner with my boss' family (July 15) and the dinner with the had of the women's ministry (June 30, tentative). So these weren't invitations just for straight friendliness, but for some work-related reason.
This gives you a little insight into how at least some of the relationships were at the mission, that is, instrumental. You were supposed to understand who in the mission you should be closest to and these people would be part of your control network - that is keeping each other in line according to the mission's norms. Also, invitations can also, then have other meanings to them, such as the invitation (tentative) to have dinner with the head of the women's ministry. This might indicate that they were considering me for some role in the women's ministry, and if I was alert and tentative to this kind of thing, I would understand that meaning of the invitation. At the same time, I might also realize that my dinner with her could have a similar significance as a job interview, for example.
So there was this kind of thing going on too. There was a huge amount of social control that was sort of in the unspoken realm of the mission's consciousness. This meant too, that social control could also include a disciplinary or negative reinforcement element too, which I found out at the end of my time with the mission.
