She stared at me across the books piled up on her desk, awaiting an answer, her smile revealing the sparkle of a gold tooth.
Of course I had read about Pushkin – he was all over the place when I drafted my project proposal. I just never got around to reading what the illustrious man himself had written.
Sitting on the wobbly visitor’s chair, pondering what to say, I glanced around the office. The window, half-blocked by books, had been sealed around the frame with brown adhesive tape – a deliberate attempt, I imagined, to further isolate the academic space from the outside world.
‘Pushkin,’ I said. ‘Of course.’
Then, looking into Lyudmila Aleksandrovna’s magnified eyes, I launched into an improvised answer on the impact Evgeny Onegin had had on me. The greatest love story, I said, so much truth in it. I added that I’d read Nabokov’s famous translation, and that it had so moved me that I’d resolved to learn Russian in order to absorb the poetry as originally written by Aleksandr Sergeyevich.
Lyudmila Aleksandrovna nodded slowly, visibly touched. She removed her glasses and wiped her teary eyes.
She believed me. How could she not believe in a foreigner who loved Pushkin?
3
‘THIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS,’ Colin says, his finger resting on an open page of The Exile. ‘I can’t believe they gave Propaganda two fuckies.’
Stepanov lifts his sunglasses, leans over Colin’s shoulder, glances down at the newspaper. ‘Propaganda is definitely no match for the likes of Cube or Papa Johns.’
‘Papa Johns deserves its two fuckies.’ Colin flips the page carelessly, ripping the edge. ‘They pack the dance floor every Sunday night with dyevs from Samara and Tula and fuck knows where.’
‘But there are very nice girls in Propaganda,’ I say, not fully understanding Colin’s point.
Colin looks at me, his Irish-blue eyes reddish from the night. ‘Sure,’ he says, half smiling, ‘but when it comes to taking them home, man, they are uptight. Propaganda is full of spoilt Muscovites. They’ve picked up stupid ideas from the West.’
The waitress is now refilling our coffee mugs.
‘What do you mean, stupid ideas?’ I ask.
Colin takes a sip of coffee, wipes his mouth. Then he takes a swig from his beer glass. ‘You know, they got it into their heads that decent women must make themselves unavailable.’
My head is throbbing, I feel sick. I look around for the fastest path to the toilet and see that the place is empty, aside from a table at the back where three Russian men are drinking cocktails and laughing loudly. For a moment I can’t tell where we are, or how we got here. My ears are buzzing. The lack of music fills me with sudden regret that we are no longer in a club. I see a buffalo head on the wall staring straight into my eyes, which scares the shit out of me, but then it makes me realise that we are at the American Bar and Grill, in Mayakovskaya.
‘Man, you should take that shapka off,’ Colin says, gripping Diego’s shoulder. ‘It’s fucking hot in here.’
Diego grabs his hat by the earflaps and pulls it further down on his head, though it still doesn’t cover his long hair at the sides. ‘My shapka is part of my look,’ he says, grinning. ‘It gives me an edge.’
We all laugh. Diego has only recently switched his Latino image, which involved heavily gelled hair and unbuttoned black shirts, for the furry shapka look, anticipating – he would later claim – the style Pasha Face Control was to make popular during the elitni era. But, no matter what he wears, Diego’s large hairy body and clumsy moves give him the air of a big placid bear.
‘This shapka makes you look like a tourist,’ Colin says. ‘Russians don’t wear those hats any more.’
‘Precisely,’ Diego says, raising his thick dark eyebrows. ‘The shapka gives me a foreign and exotic air. Besides, it’s a great conversation piece. All the dyevs ask me about it.’
‘That’s not even real fur,’ Stepanov says. ‘Where did you get that piece of shit? On a matryoshka stand by Red Square?’
I look at my watch and realise it’s six in the morning. My vodka-flooded brain is shutting down. The thirsty little Cossack is exhausted from battle, stumbling next to his horse, ready to crash in his tent. I can hardly keep my eyes open. I ponder whether to go to the toilet first or wait for my eggs and bacon.
This is two months into my stay.
In a way, Colin was right about Propaganda. It was at that time that Propaganda introduced a kind of face control. Not a strict door policy – that would come later – but they made an effort to keep the trashiest dyevs out on the street. Expats were always welcome, of course, all we had to do was say a few words in English to the bouncer and we were in. But Propaganda’s face control – which heralded the arrival of the post-Duck elitni era – distorted the night’s demographics, which had, up until then, played to our advantage. There were fewer dyevs inside the club now, and the ones who made it in somehow felt they could afford to be more demanding.
In any case, as The Exile famously wrote back then, Propaganda remained the best place in Moscow to meet dyevs who were out of your league.
It was in Propaganda that I met Lena.
Thursday night: Propaganda night. I’d been drinking with the brothers, vodka and whisky shots at Stepanov’s place, then vodka shots and beer in Propaganda. After a piss run, I found myself standing by the bar, captivated by a pair of big blue eyes. Straight blonde hair falling over her forehead, stopping in a perfect line just above her eyelashes. Classic Propaganda haircut.
‘I’m Helen,’ Lena said.
The music was loud, so Lena and I had to talk into each other’s ears. Lena’s hair smelled of rose water and cotton candy. Her voice was soft and sensual.
I ordered two shots of vodka and we toasted za vstrechu, to our encounter. I held my breath, drained the vodka glass, bit the lemon slice, breathed again. The alcohol made a lovely burning pang in my stomach.
Lena took a small sip and left her glass, almost full, on the bar. ‘I like the DJ,’ she said.
I looked at the dance floor and saw Colin and the other brothers forming a circle around what I assumed were Lena’s uglier friends. The music was a tedious techno beat I didn’t really care for.
‘I love the DJ,’ I said.
Lena and I talked for two or three minutes, which, back then, was as long as I could go before my Russian started to fail.
She didn’t smile, Lenushka, not even at the very moment when we first met, and, as I tried to make conversation, I couldn’t help but think she was somehow distracted and absent. Lena was distracted and absent, I imagined, because she’s a nice dyev and we’re in Propaganda and, whatever The Exile said, nice dyevs come to Propaganda to listen to the DJ and dance with friends. Not to meet foreign men. In her eyes, I thought, I’m nothing but a shallow Westerner, a soulless pleasure-seeker looking for an easy fuck.
‘So you’re an expat,’ she said.
Our cheeks touched accidentally. My entire body stiffened.
‘Student,’ I replied.
Lena was now fiddling with the lemon slice that came with her vodka. She looked towards her friends on the dance floor and for a moment I thought: she’s about to walk away.
Then she turned to me and finally asked The Question.
‘Why Russia?’
Now, I could tell Lena about my studies in Amsterdam. I could tell her about Katya and how she’d ripped my heart out and eaten it, leaving a hole in my chest. I could tell her how I’d had no choice but to leave the city. I could tell her how Moscow had not even been near the top of the list of universities I’d initially applied for. But that’s not what I told her. That was not a good story for Propaganda.
Instead, I carefully placed my hand on Lena’s shoulder, stared into her big blue eyes, and pronounced the magic word.
‘Pushkin,’ I said. To make sure she fully absorbed the sweetness of the sound, I separated the two syllables. Push. Kin.
Lena was now intrigued. I carried on and delivered
the Propaganda version of my coming-to-Moscow story, telling Lena how the poetry of Aleksandr Sergeyevich had changed my life. I’d practised most of the sentences at language class with Nadezhda Nikolaevna so I didn’t find it too difficult to describe, in my simplified Russian, how I’d gone from discovering Pushkin to being interested in Russian literature to obtaining a research scholarship in Moscow. My story was a good story.
Colin said, with Moscow dyevs you just need a beautiful story that makes sense, it doesn’t need to be true.
To my surprise, I found myself whispering some Pushkin verses in Lena’s ears. Ya vas lyubil and so on.
Then, for a brief moment, Lena smiled. Lena smiled with her lips, with her big blue eyes, but also with her entire body. She pulled her shoulders back and I caught a glimpse of a small golden cross dangling above her cleavage, sheltered by the lovely curve of her breasts.
Lena smiled, I thought, because she now trusted me. How could she not trust a foreigner who loved Pushkin?
4
AS FAR AS I COULD tell, Nadezhda Nikolaevna was the oldest person I’d ever met. With ashy hair and deep wrinkles, she had reached that age where old people start to shrink and look pitiful. Yet, like most babushkas in Moscow, she radiated determination, a historical toughness visible in the way she pressed her lips together firmly and looked straight into your eyes.
I was meeting Nadezhda Nikolaevna four times a week in a small classroom at the humanities faculty. If I had been out the night before, which was often the case, I would spend our three academic hours – which each lasted forty minutes – struggling to keep my eyes open while she read bits from old soviet books and made me repeat words such as perpadavaltelnotsa, prepadavaltelnetsa, prepodavatelnitsa, which I couldn’t quite pronounce but just meant teacher, for chrissake.
But, against my own expectations, the combination of lessons at university and chatting up dyevs in nightclubs seemed to be working – I was picking up the language. During our lessons, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, who had been teaching Russian to foreigners for decades, spoke simple Russian and mimed vividly, so, after a few weeks, I was able to figure out, if not exactly what she was saying, at least the general idea she was trying to convey.
Sometimes I got it badly wrong though. One day Nadezhda Nikolaevna walked into the classroom looking particularly morose and told me she was devastated because her cherepakha had just passed away. I’d been to the Duck the night before, so cherepakha day must have been a Wednesday. The remains of vodka in my blood had put me in a dark mood and Nadezhda Nikolaevna’s tragic loss made a strong impression on me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, regretting my inability to express proper condolences in Russian.
I didn’t know the word cherepakha. In my mind, I went through all family-related vocabulary I had learned so far, which at the time was limited: brat, brother; sestra, sister; syn, son; dochka, daughter. As far as I could tell, cherepakha had not entered my lexicon.
‘Life goes on,’ Nadezhda Nikolaevna said. ‘Let’s get to work.’
At that moment, confused by my unexpected encounter with death at such an early hour of the day, I couldn’t help but admire what I identified as yet another example of Russian resilience. I found myself thinking of Ilyusha’s death in The Brothers Karamazov, about The Death of Ivan Illich, about the natural and yet intimate relationship Russians have with mortality.
‘Cherepakha?’ Nadezhda Nikolaevna asked.
‘I don’t think I know the word.’
‘Yes, Martin, you know, something that something slow and something hard.’
‘I’m sorry, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, I don’t understand.’
Then, in a gesture I will never forget, Nadezhda Nikolaevna raised her elbows and moved her arms in a slow crawling motion. She tilted her head, inflated her wrinkled cheeks, and stuck her tongue out. It made a gruesome sight.
‘Cherepakha, cherepakha!’ she repeated.
She took my notebook, started to draw. First she made a big circle. Then, with the precision of an architect, she drew two short perpendicular lines on each side, followed by a smaller pear-shaped figure on top, a head, I realised, and I gradually understood what she was trying to draw.
That’s when I learned that cherepakha means turtle.
From then on, every time I encountered the word cherepakha, what came to my mind first was the image of Nadezhda Nikolaevna sticking her tongue out, and not the reptile she had mimicked for my understanding.
One day, at the end of our language class, Nadezhda Nikolaevna proposed that we go on an excursion into town later in the week. She thought that, as a prospective Russian literature expert, I’d be interested to see Gorky’s house, a beautiful art nouveau building in central Moscow which had been turned into a museum. I wasn’t wild about the idea of having to get up earlier to spend the morning in a museum, but Nadezhda Nikolaevna seemed really keen so we made plans to take our last lesson of the week to the city centre.
On Friday morning, I stood in the middle of the Arbatskaya station platform, among the rush of Muscovites, waiting for Nadezhda Nikolaevna. It was the day after I’d first met Lena in Propaganda and I’d had barely two hours’ sleep. My head was aching and clouded; my throat dry. Yet, as I tried to identify Nadezhda Nikolaevna in the moving mass of people, I felt a cheerful tickle in my chest, an unusual feeling of excitement, provoked not so much by the prospect of visiting Gorky’s house as of meeting Lena later in the day.
Nadezhda Nikolaevna emerged from the crowd wearing a babushka headscarf and carrying a plastic bag. Out in the street, we walked slowly along the frozen pavement of the Boulevard. The temperatures had dropped in the last few days and we were both tucked into our winter coats. Nadezhda Nikolaevna’s gait was stooped and – in my head – turtle-like. For a brief moment, it crossed my mind to offer her my arm, but then I thought the gesture condescending, a bit ridiculous, and I continued walking at arm’s length.
We turned left at Malaya Nikitskaya and soon reached Gorky’s house. The babushkas taking care of the museum were almost as old as Nadezhda Nikolaevna. After paying for the tickets, we were ordered to wear giant felt slippers over our shoes so as not to damage the original parquet floors. Slippers strapped on, we glided carefully over the polished floors of the museum. I was particularly impressed by the large library, which, according to a laminated leaflet in faulty English, contained Gorky’s own books, most of which were annotated in the margins by the great writer himself.
Despite my Propaganda hangover, I tried my best to follow Nadezhda Nikolaevna’s enthusiastic explanations about the beautiful house and Gorky’s life. The mansion, she was saying, had been commissioned in the early 1900s by a wealthy banker called Ryabushinsky. After 1917, the building had been expropriated by the Bolsheviks and used as headquarters for several soviet institutions. When, in the early 1930s, Gorky returned from Italy, he was bestowed with plenty of honours, including, Nadezhda Nikolaevna said, renaming both Tverskaya Street and the city of Nizhny Novgorod after him. Stalin awarded him the Ryabushinsky mansion, with the intention that it would become an intellectual hub for soviet writers.
As I listened to her talk, I pictured Gorky and his illustrious visitors – which, I was told, included Stalin himself – discussing literature and socialism beneath the stained-glass windows and carved wooden frames. Every now and then, my mind would temporarily drift from Gorky to Propaganda, as I was bombarded by flashes of the previous night. The big blue eyes. The goodbye kiss.
Nadezhda Nikolaevna seemed proud of the museum. I made sure that I looked impressed by everything she was telling me, even if I missed some of her explanations. When we were done with the first floor, we tackled the spectacular staircase, which had a wavy banister that ended in a bronze jellyfish-like lamp. I let her go first, and discreetly positioned myself behind, worried that, with the cumbersome slippers, she might trip and roll down this fine but slippery example of Russian art nouveau.
Half an hour later, as we walked back towards Arbatska
ya, Nadezhda Nikolaevna suggested that we find a café and sit for some tea. ‘The visit only took us one hour,’ she said, ‘we still have time left.’
I was hoping to stay around the centre, see if Stepanov was at home so that I could crash on his couch for a couple of hours before meeting Lena.
‘It was a very interesting visit,’ I said. ‘I think we can consider it a full lesson. Let’s stop here and meet next week.’
‘Martin, I would prefer if we finish our lesson time. I’m paid for a three-hour lesson and it’s my job to give it to you.’
She looked determined. Not wanting to offend her sense of duty or make her feel I didn’t value her teaching, I agreed to continue our lesson.
We walked into the Old Arbat. A few stands stood in the middle of the pedestrian street, selling wares for tourists: soviet flags, matryoshka dolls, lacquered boxes, painted eggs. We walked into the first café we saw. It was warm and cosy inside. The wood-panelled decor imitated a traditional Russian country house and included, near the entrance, a real stuffed cow. We sat at a small table by the window, facing each other, and ordered a pot of black tea.
I was afraid we wouldn’t have much to talk about, but Nadezhda Nikolaevna continued speaking about Gorky. To my surprise, in the intimacy of the café, she was giving me an entirely different spin on Gorky’s story. As I understood it, Nadezhda Nikolaevna was now telling me that Gorky was a sell-out. While he’d written very interesting stuff in his early years, after 1917 he’d become a puppet of the soviet regime, especially following his return from Italy. The house we’d just visited, I was being told, was unworthy of a writer who claimed to represent the proletariat. In exchange for supporting Stalin’s increasingly totalitarian regime, Gorky had been granted plenty of favours, including a position as president of the Writers’ Union.
‘And for what?’ Nadezhda Nikolaevna said. ‘He didn’t write a single good line after the revolution.’
I wondered why Nadezhda Nikolaevna hadn’t told me this version of Gorky’s story while we were inside the museum. Perhaps, I thought, she was afraid that the dezhurnayas following us across the rooms – to ensure that we didn’t break or steal anything, I’d assumed – would intervene if she deviated from the official version of Gorky’s story as presented by the museum.
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