by Mitch Silver
“Is that your final word?”
“Prostitye, I’m sorry, it is.”
The man turned to go. Lara went back to the lectern to gather up her things. She heard the door to the classroom close.
Lara turned out the lights and left the room. In the crowded corridor, with students hurrying in all directions to change classes, the scruffy young man was nowhere to be seen. Lara took a step toward her office down the hall and her foot bumped into something on the floor, a shopping bag filled with Dictaphone recordings.
Chapter 11
The Radisson Slavyanskaya, put up in the first wave of glasnost, loomed ahead of Lara against the threatening sky. There was more than a hint of autumn’s coming chill in the breeze blowing off the Moskva, and Lara, hurrying because she was late, did up the next highest button of her light coat.
Other, newer hotels were located closer to Red Square, so the Slavyanskaya’s proprietors were determined that dining should be their marketing angle. One could choose the Talavera Restaurant, featuring Mediterranean cuisine, or one of the two cafés catering to mitteleuropeans. To the left of the lobby, Sumosan boasted “the best Japanese sushi in Moscow.”
A rack near the door of the bookshop/newsstand held the German-language version of the afternoon paper, Izvestia. Its banner headline read, KREMLIN SET TO WELCOME WORLD LEADERS. Really? This week? Lara made a mental note to lift her nose out of her books every once in a while.
She quickly picked up the paper. A not particularly flattering picture of the Russian head of state was placed next to that of the American president. Lara noticed another headline, below the fold: WEST CONDEMNS USE OF FORCE AGAINST RED SQUARE PROTESTERS. She put the paper back in the rack.
In the vast Russky restaurant, “serving authentic Russian cuisine from the time of the tsars,” Lara handed her coat and the unwanted shopping bag full of metal tins to the garderob, who must have been ninety if she was a day. Maybe, Lara thought, she’d leave the bag there on the shelf when she got her coat.
The woman on the phone taking a reservation was the “Maitresse D,” according to the plastic card on her blouse. Lara noticed the freestanding sign nearby announcing: THE RADISSON SLAVYANSKAYA CELEBRATES INTERNATIONAL WEEK. Below it was the special “global menu” the chef had prepared in honor of the visiting dignitaries, which seemed to be mostly familiar Russian entrées paired with other countries’ vegetables, starting with shashlik and Brussels sprouts. Hmm.
Next to it, a smaller sign announced: THE RADISSON SLAVYANSKAYA WELCOMES … TOR. A quick glance around failed to disclose at which tables sat the reforming firebrands of Garry Kasparov’s opposition coalition, The Other Russia. Dismissed as a debating team years ago because they were unable to agree on a candidate to run against Putin, TOR was now, ironically, the official bogeyman, blamed for orchestrating the popular antigovernment protests that were popping up everywhere.
Political dissidents? The people having lunch here seemed accustomed to the nicer things, people who liked things just the way they were. Like the fact that the tablecloths were actually white, and they weren’t shiny with too much washing, the way they were in the places the tourists never saw.
The officious Maitresse put down the phone. Lara gave her name, and the woman deigned to smile at this academic in sober clothes standing before her. Their host must have pull. “Dr. Klimt, your party is already here.”
Pavel, in his one presentable jacket, stood up only because the other man did, a striking someone in an expensive suit. Lara took him at first to be Pierce Brosnan from the James Bond films. Pavel was saying, too familiarly, “Grigoriy Aleksandrovich, this is the woman I was telling you about, my friend, Professor Klimt. Larissa Mendelova, may I introduce my boss’s boss’s boss, Director Gerasimov.”
“Prostitye … I was delayed.”
“Not at all.” The head of the Russian State TV and Radio Company Ostankino—more familiarly known by its old name, Gosteleradio—held Lara’s chair for her. This was altogether a different sort of Russian man than she was used to. When they were seated he announced, “I took the liberty of ordering a bottle of wine, Dr. Klimt. I hope you won’t mind.”
Hmm, she thought, wine with lunch … not your typical Tuesday.
He went on, in English. “Pavel has been singing your praises. He tells me you are one of our largest historians.”
She turned to Pavel and, in Russian, reproached him with a smile. “Largest? Really?”
Immediately, Gerasimov understood his mistake. “Prostitye, forgive me, Larissa Mendelova.” The tops of his ears were pink with embarrassment. “This is what happens when you teach yourself English by watching U.S. television. I know all the words but, still, my sentences … permit me to try my compliment again: I am honored to meet one of Moscow’s greatest historians.”
Also in English, she replied, “Thank you, but that’s only because all our truly great historians are still in the Urals, in the camps.”
The man seemed about to laugh, but stopped himself. She figured he could hear English well enough. “Surely not anymore.”
“No, I make the occasional joke.” Lara watched the waiter open the wine bottle before adding, “Of course, actual history has only been allowed to occur in the last twenty years, so I suppose I got in on the ground floor.”
Now the man did laugh. Pavel, on the other hand, looked stricken.
Gerasimov changed the subject. “I’ve spent the last couple of days with your writing, Dr. Klimt.”
She quickly put in, “Please, it’s Lara.”
“All right, Lara. Your text on Soviet history … to have come at it from such a different angle, to have done so much, broken so much new ground while we were still under Gorbachev and his crowd …”
It wasn’t phrased as a question, but he seemed to be waiting for a response. Lara said, “I was a junior instructor in America, earning a few dollars a month in hard currency from New York University for the Soviet Union, when my dissertation was published. I suppose I had the benefit of distance.”
She thought about that for a moment. “If you’ve read me, then you know my specialty is geohistory. How geography—rivers, mountains, climate, and especially the presence, or absence, of natural resources—determines a people’s history far more than we like to think … and political dogma, of any kind, far less.”
Gerasimov smiled. “Not something the children of Lenin wanted to have get around.”
Lara smiled back. “No, I suppose not. As far as having done so much? Well, historians are thinkers, not doers. We need that distance I mentioned, whether it’s measured in years or miles, so the things other people do can arrange themselves in patterns we’re able to perceive. Still, thank you for the nice words, Director.”
“My friends call me Grisha.”
“Thank you … Grisha.”
They ordered some impossibly expensive dishes. Then, back in the mother tongue, Gerasimov said, “I’ve been going to school on you. I know you’ve been a ‘talking head’ once or twice on a couple of our political panel shows. One thing isn’t clear. You were the girls’ chess champion of Russia, weren’t you?”
In the moment it took her to frame a response, Pavel jumped in. “Not just Russia, the whole Soviet Union. Once, she even beat Kasparov!”
She shot him what she hoped was a withering look. “No cheerleading at lunch, Pavel, please.” She added, “He was playing ten boards at the time. I was just one of the ten.”
Gerasimov, impressed, leaned in a little. “Okay … why? Why drop chess for History when you were so good at it?”
She thought for a moment. Why, indeed? “I guess … I guess I stopped believing everything was either black or white.”
The man nodded in understanding. “I changed careers as well, but for a different reason: I wasn’t good enough to be an actor, so I settled for being a weatherman. Now I give both the actors and the weathermen a living on television.”
Over soup, Lara decided this would be her last lunch da
te with Pavel. She’d paid her dues. Her parents had been friends with his parents, that was all; taught them to speak Russian when they were booted out of England after the war. Then, when the Colemans died, Paul—now Pavel—had attached himself to her family as an older “stepson.” He had no conversational skills, no manners. A nothing-special job in the broadcast office’s online division, maybe a little computer hacking on the side, like half the Russian guys she knew. When he wasn’t running errands for the higher-ups, he was buying duty-free cigarettes for resale from his backdoor contacts at the embassies. A couple of times she’d seen his rusty Vespa, before it gave up the ghost, shoved against the wall of the British Embassy on Smolenskaya.
Look at him now, elbows on the table. He wasn’t a brother or a boyfriend. Not even a colleague. Just an old vlozhenii … an attachment.
Grigoriy Aleksandrovich Gerasimov had been sitting back in his chair. Now he leaned forward again and said, “I have a proposition for you, Dr. Klimt … Lara … one that comes with a rather generous stipend. What are you doing Friday?”
Pavel seemed as puzzled as Lara. She guessed he’d only been told to set up the luncheon without being told why. Wait, the man wasn’t talking about Conception Day, was he? About making babies?
Gerasimov reached beneath his chair and picked up a thin calfskin portfolio. From it he took a single sheet of paper, which he turned toward Lara. It looked like the TV listings from one of the daily papers. “There, near the bottom, the one that’s highlighted.”
It wasn’t about sex. Relieved, Lara read aloud from the page. “Friday, 0930 hours … NTV, Channel One, RTR, ORT, Seaside Public Television … Moscow schoolchildren question the American president.” She looked up. “Okay, but what’s it got to do with me?”
“In America, I understand it’s called an ‘interactive Town Hall’ … viewers call or text in questions during the live show. A moderator sits beside the person being interviewed, to take what the students send in and translate them in real time for the President.
“Well, at the networks we find ourselves in sort of a bind. Our in-house moderator, the person we would have used, rang up two days ago to say he has the flu. Even if he recovers in time, the doctors won’t let him near the president. So we need a sort of ‘substitute teacher.’
“And who better to fill in, to translate the students’ questions, than someone who’s not only fluent in English but actually lived for years in America? And in the president’s own city, no less? Lara, you’re perfect!”
Right through her olive skin, Lara blushed the deep, ripe-peach blush her family always made fun of. “Perfect? Hardly. Sir, I—”
“It’s Grisha, remember?”
She blushed all over again. “Grisha … thank you for the kind words, but intrigued as I am, I have to decline. Perhaps Pavel told you, I have a new position at the University. The show trials—excuse me, classes—started this week. I lecture Tuesdays at noon and Fridays at ten. This thing … it’s a direct conflict.”
“I understand perfectly.” The faint smile on Gerasimov’s lips never changed. “He did tell me. So I was able to arrange a few things. As it happens, your Friday class has been given to a colleague. So you see, you’re free to—”
“What? My class … ?”
“The Superintendant was very understanding. A twenty-four-hour sabbatical, she called it.”
“But you, she, can’t. Not without telling me. The material … it’s a very precise lesson plan.”
“But I am telling you. An honorarium to the History Department in your name seems to have necessitated a last minute reworking of faculty schedules. They’re being posted in the Department right now. But never fear—your position, your students, your research, they’ll all be there next week, once you’ve done your patriotic duty.
“Because that’s what this is, a chance to expose young Russian minds to democratic ideas, face to face! It’s the very thing hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens are demanding, out there in the streets, and you’ll be part of it. We’ll be on five networks, with millions of viewers, piping it into classrooms from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. Also, all the social media—YouTube and the rest. So I wouldn’t turn it down if I were you.”
Lara had a congenital dislike of the phrase “if I were you.” And a deeper, more intense dislike of the Superintendent who had promoted her, reluctantly, finally, only after two male colleagues had died over the summer and she’d had no one else with testosterone to choose over Lara. Still, if it was just the one missed class …
The man was dialing a number on his mobile, right there in the restaurant. He held it out to her. “I wouldn’t be coming to you if we weren’t in a fix. Here, ask Superintendent Nazimova if I’m not telling the truth.”
She waved her hand at the phone. “That won’t be necessary.” She sighed. ”Tell me where to meet you on Friday.”
“No.”
This time it was Pavel, the bystander, who blurted out, “No?”
“No, it’s not quite that simple. Tell me Lara, have you ever worked with a prompter?”
“You mean a man holding cue cards?”
Gerasimov smiled indulgently. “We’re a little more up-to-date. These days it’s all electronic: the TelePrompTer operator types the questions as they’re sent in from the schools around the country, and they show up on a clear glass monitor that sits right over the camera lens. You read the words a moment before you say them, trying not to look like you’re reading, and translate them for the president. It’s a little tricky, because you have to keep looking away when you speak with your guest, and then glance back to the camera for the next question.”
Lara frowned. “Gee, I don’t know …”
Gerasimov smiled. “All you need is an hour of practice in a studio and you’ll do fine. I know where one’s available; I could drive over and pick you up tomorrow.”
Lara sighed. What choice did she have? “I’ll call you when I’m free.”
“Wonderful!” He looked over to the waiter and snapped his fingers for the check. “And better bring a few changes of clothes. We’ll have to see what works best on camera.”
The waiter quickly put down the check on a small silver tray, and Gerasimov signed it with the gold Montblanc pen he took from his pocket. He scribbled his phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Lara.
The three of them rose from the table. “I’m really looking forward to working with you, Dr. Klimt. Until tomorrow.” Unexpectedly, he took her hand in his and kissed it. Then he looked up at her, and Lara saw that one of his eyes was blue-gray, the other blue-green.
Waiting behind another woman at the coat check, Lara was dismayed to see Pavel say goodbye to his boss and circle back.
“I was hoping you’d still be here. Larissa Mendelova, I have something important to tell you.”
Uh-oh.
“I’ve been wanting to say this, Lara, ever since you returned from America, and, well, at first I was too shy. I mean, you were a big shot at the University and who was I? Just a guy from your hometown, you know, the boy next door, so to speak.”
The other woman was putting on her coat now, slowly, so she could listen in. Without thinking, Lara stabbed both claim checks into the hand of the old garderob in the booth. This was going to be bad enough without a stranger eavesdropping.
Pavel, as usual, was oblivious. “And then you met Viktor, and all of a sudden you were married and, uh, the moment was gone.”
She eyed him evenly. “And now it’s back?”
He seemed to take her words for encouragement. “Yes, it’s back! With you and Viktor, um, not together for much longer, I want you to know I have the deepest feelings for you. I always have, even before you left for America.”
The stranger, her coat fully on, was still hovering. Lara turned to look directly at her. The woman, startled, smiled confidentially before walking away.
Lara decided to make this painless for both of them. “Pavel, I have only the strongest feelings
for you.” Which, technically, was true. “But not romantic ones. I consider you the brother I never had.”
“But, Lara, you already have a brother.”
The coat check lady was holding her wrap out to her, and she took it. “Exactly. Lev is the brother I do have; you’re the brother I don’t have.”
“Huh?”
She pecked him on both cheeks, Russian style, and was about to leave him there, befuddled, when the coat check woman produced her shopping bag and slid it across the wooden barrier to Lara. Not wanting to stand there for another moment with Pavel, Lara picked it up and walked out of the restaurant.
Afterward, crossing the Crystal Bridge on her way back to the Metro, Lara didn’t notice the tins as they rattled around in the bag. She wasn’t thinking of Pavel, either, or Gerasimov. Nor the changes she’d have to make in her meticulously crafted lesson plans. No, her brain was focused on something else entirely: In less than three days she’d be sitting beside the world’s most powerful man on national television—not just the leader of the free world, but a world-class womanizer who’d been with beauty queens from all over the globe—and she was going to look like a complete mouse.
Chapter 12
A handful of dignitaries greeted the American president as he touched down at Sheremetyevo, people chosen because they spoke English, however haltingly. To prove it, they all had to say something longwinded out there on the tarmac. Then it was into the limos—late model, heavily tinted Lincolns and Mercedes—for the flying trip into town. The road they traveled was half a football field wide, lined with banners showing the American’s picture alongside that of his Russian counterpart.
That was his up moment of the day. Downer Number One came when he took a call in the limo from Carl back in Alaska, one more proof that if you give a government bureaucrat a chance to mess up, he’ll make the most of it. Apparently, some idiot up in Prudhoe blew it and started pumping oil into the pipeline from one of the tankers. Before the deal was actually signed.