When the tea arrived, Nadezhda Nikolaevna took a small foil-wrapped parcel from her plastic bag and placed it at the centre of the table. ‘A little surprise,’ she said, smiling. She unwrapped the parcel, uncovering a napkin with a few rolled-up blinis.
‘I made them myself for our little excursion,’ she said proudly, as she extended the napkin with the blinis next to the teapot. ‘I hope you like blinis with tvorog.’
Noticing my hesitation, Nadezhda Nikolaevna explained that it was fine to bring your own food to cafés in Moscow. ‘The food in these places is expensive and not very good,’ she said.
I could see from the menu that it was possible to order an entire meal for two for the price of a cocktail in Propaganda.
I took one of the blinis and had a bite. Buttery, sweet, delicious.
‘They are lovely,’ I said.
Over tea and blinis, Nadezhda Nikolaevna continued with Gorky’s story, telling me how, in the end, the great soviet writer had fallen out of favour with Stalin and had probably been killed by the secret services.
‘They painted the walls of his bedroom with poisonous paint,’ she said. ‘So Gorky fell ill and died.’
‘Interesno,’ I said, nodding. I wondered why Stalin’s people, who had kidnapped, tortured and killed with pleasure, would resort to such creative methods to murder an ageing and not particularly dangerous writer. But I was getting accustomed to the myths and parables Russians used to explain their recent history. When the official version of historical events seemed artificial, the emergence of alternative narratives was only natural. These stories, some of which might have held a grain of truth, spread by word of mouth through Moscow’s many shared kitchens.
The hot tea was bringing me back to life. I was really enjoying our excursion. The Gorky Museum, the stories, the chilly air outside. I was particularly touched by the home-made blinis.
As Nadezhda Nikolaevna was finishing the story of Gorky’s death, the young waiter who had brought the teapot came over and planted himself next to our table.
‘Woman,’ he said, addressing Nadezhda Nikolaevna.
I had learned that, ever since the perestroika, Russians had had a problem addressing each other. The word tovarisch – comrade – previously used to address any fellow soviet citizen, had become politically obsolete. But pre-revolutionary language was not really an option: during the seven decades of communism, the old words for sir and madam were deemed too bourgeois and had fallen into disuse. Now, when addressing a stranger, Russians were left with little choice but to say man, woman, boy, girl, or – to people around my age – young person.
Nadezhda Nikolaevna, wrapped up in telling Gorky’s story, didn’t seem to notice the waiter.
‘Woman,’ the waiter repeated, now louder, without the slightest trace of a smile. ‘You can’t bring outside food into this café.’
‘Oh,’ Nadezhda Nikolaevna said, looking up and smiling, ‘but these are blinis that I made at home.’
‘I don’t care what they are,’ he said. ‘You need to order food from our menu.’
Nadezhda Nikolaevna blushed, embarrassed at having been talked down to – or perhaps, I thought, at having provided me with the wrong information about Moscow’s customs. The cheerfulness she had shown all morning dissolved at once. She looked down, started to wrap the rest of the blinis.
‘Woman,’ the waiter said, not moving an inch from the table, ‘if you can’t afford the food in here, just stay home.’
‘Go fuck yourself!’ I found myself saying, in plain English, as I jumped up to face him, knocking over my chair.
The waiter, confused, stepped back and disappeared into the kitchen.
A few minutes later Nadezhda Nikolaevna and I were walking in silence along the Old Arbat. ‘I’m sorry I snapped in the café,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t my intention to make a scene.’
‘Moscow is changing,’ she murmured, gaze fixed on the pavement, a sad tone in her voice.
She seemed even older, more fragile – walking now with difficulty. As we moved along the pedestrian street, I offered Nadezhda Nikolaevna my arm. We made our way towards Smolenskaya, flanked by families and tourists. With one hand she clutched my elbow, with the other she carried the plastic bag with the unfinished blinis.
5
LEAVING NADEZHDA NIKOLAEVNA at Smolenskaya, where she unexpectedly kissed me goodbye, I decided to avoid the metro and take a walk. I had some time to kill before meeting Lena.
The sky was brighter now, almost blue, but the sun didn’t seem powerful enough to dissipate the late autumn chill. As I marched among the towering constructions of the New Arbat, I remembered how, on a previous stroll, I had been told that the large buildings on the southern side were meant to represent open books. Each structure was formed by two flat wings joined at a wide angle, but, as far as I could see, nothing else in their design suggested the shape of a book. Glancing at their plain façades, I now wondered if the architect’s intention had really been to emulate books or if, more likely, the alleged resemblance had been an afterthought.
I sat for a while in the Internet café in Okhotny Ryad, read the news, answered long-overdue emails. Back in the street, the air seemed even cooler.
I reached Lubyanka with some twenty minutes to spare. At dawn, just before saying goodbye, Lena and I had agreed to meet outside Dyetsky Mir, the big toyshop on the northwestern side of the square. To warm myself a little, I entered the shop. The spacious central atrium was deserted. I wandered among rows of plastic cars, skates, balls, dolls, stuffed animals. A couple of shop assistants hid behind the stands, avoiding eye contact with customers, as was the practice in Moscow. I passed through the bicycle section and, thinking that my legs could do with a rest, sat on a child-size stool near the entrance. Next to the stool, a low table was covered in piles of small plastic bricks, identical to those I’d played with in my childhood. I gathered a few colourful pieces and, without giving it much thought, began interlocking the bricks to form a wall. I then built four corners, joined them into a square which could serve as the base of a tower. I kept adding bricks, layer by layer, enjoying the simplicity of the task, trying not only to create a solid foundation for my tower, but also to match the colours in symmetrical patterns as the structure grew taller.
‘Do you need more time to finish?’
I looked up. Lena was wearing a dark green anorak and tight jeans. Her blonde hair was airier than the night before.
I wasn’t sure how much time I’d spent playing with the bricks. I stood up, awkward and embarrassed. ‘I thought we were meeting outside,’ I said. ‘What’s the time?’
Lena stared at me in silence, her blue gaze so intense that I had to look away, afraid she could read my thoughts.
‘Come with me,’ she said finally. ‘I’m going to show you my favourite place in Moscow.’
She grabbed my arm and walked me out of the shop. As we crossed the street through the underground passage they called perekhod, I told her about my unusual Russian lesson in the morning, and how Nadezhda Nikolaevna and I had been kicked out of the café.
‘Moscow is changing,’ Lena said. ‘In soviet times, communism gave us values to live by, a sense of community. People helped each other. That’s gone now.’
She spoke deliberately, aware of my language limitations. I was glad to notice that, in broad daylight, without vodka, I still understood most of what she said.
‘Russia is lost,’ she continued. ‘People here need guidance. First we had God. Then we had Lenin. Now we have nothing.’
We emerged on the other side of Lubyanka.
‘See that?’ Lena was now pointing at the square. The enormous roundabout was circled by dozens of vehicles that poured in from all over Moscow. Across the square, opposite the dreamy world of Dyetsky Mir, stood the infamous headquarters of the secret services, where, I had been told, thousands of people had been tortured and murdered.
‘The Lubyanka building,’ I said, nodding, frowning, trying to convey my und
erstanding of the historical suffering associated with the building.
‘Not that,’ Lena said. ‘I mean in the middle of the roundabout. What do you see?’
All I saw among the fuming vehicles was an empty traffic island.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Exactly. There used to be a statue. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the soviet secret services.’
‘I see.’
‘The statue disappeared with the perestroika,’ Lena said. ‘It was never replaced. That’s what I mean: after the fall of communism, Russia’s soul is empty, like Lubyanka Square.’
We walked along Nikolskaya, then turned left into a narrow side street crammed with double-parked cars. I had visited these old streets of Kitay-gorod at night with the brothers, searching for clubs, but in daylight the entire neighbourhood felt like part of a different, sleepier city. Lena stopped in front of a residential building that had no signs.
‘Here we are,’ she said, indicating a brown metal door.
She rang a bell and the door was opened. Descending a flight of stairs, we entered a dimly lit underground room. A young bearded man with a ponytail sat behind a counter, reading in near darkness. He greeted Lena with a curt nod, seemingly annoyed by our interruption, and reluctantly placed his book on the counter next to a burning incense stick. The counter was covered with cheap booklets on Buddhism, Taoism, meditation, yoga. All the books bore handwritten price tags.
We removed our shoes and handed over our coats. Lena was wearing a white woollen jumper. At the sight of her curves, I had a sharp feeling of inadequacy – as if Lena were a real woman and I were just a boy pretending to be a man.
We were led into a larger underground room – the only light provided by candles flickering in the dark. The candles stood on eight or nine low tables, each of which was surrounded by piles of cushions. The floor was covered with rugs from wall to wall, giving the entire setting a gloomy oriental feel. All the tables were unoccupied, except one at the far end, where another couple cuddled and spoke in murmurs.
Lena placed our order with the bearded man. We sat among the cushions, our backs leaning on the wall. Gentle sitar music filled the air. The atmosphere was sepulchral, holy.
I put my arm around Lena. She leaned her head on my shoulder. Absorbing the sweetness of her perfume, my mind flashed back to Propaganda. An hour or so after we’d met by the bar, I had followed Lena outside the club, through a side alley, into an old building. After climbing a few flights of unlit stairs impregnated with the stench of cat piss, I had found myself perched on a rooftop – Lena was showing me the night-time view over Moscow. Look how beautiful and special this city is, she’d said. It was dark and cold, and I was wasted, but I understood what she meant.
A waitress in a kimono slid into the room carrying our tray and kneeled at our table. The tea ceremony Lena had ordered involved hot water being poured from a large jar into the teapot, from the teapot into thimble-sized cups, then all back to the jar. The circulation of steaming water had a hypnotic effect on me. At some point, tea leaves were ceremoniously added to the teapot and, after a minute or so, we were presented with two tiny cups of green tea. Lena grabbed her cup with two hands, bowing slightly, and expertly placed it under her nose. ‘Beautiful,’ she said.
I lifted my cup with the tips of my fingers. The tea had a damp-earth aroma and, once in my mouth, a faint taste of mud.
‘I love this place,’ Lena said after the kimono lady was gone. ‘So quiet and peaceful, you wouldn’t believe we are in the centre of Moscow.’
Lena spoke in whispers, which made the sound of her Russian serene, soothing.
‘Moscow is full of surprises,’ I said.
‘Moscow is the best place in the world. The city has its own cosmic energy, you can feel it through your entire body.’
Lena took care of refilling our teacups. As I took a sip, I felt the strength draining away from my limbs. I placed my cup on the table and lay down among the oriental cushions, my head on Lena’s thigh. Lena stroked my hair, her nails making sweet ripples through my skin. There was a reassuring tranquillity about Lena’s presence, her mellow voice and graceful gestures. It was as if her body had a different density and she were forced to move in slow motion.
With my eyes closed, I drifted towards unconsciousness, floating in that graceful state before sleep. Images of colourful plastic bricks began to pop into my head in time with the notes of the sitar.
The spell of the moment was broken by a beep from my phone. Message from Colin. Hey, lost you last night. banged the blonde dyev? Tonight: drinks at stepanov’s at 9.
I switched off the phone without answering.
When I returned from the toilets, I found Lena staring at the empty teacups, her face illuminated by the faint glow of the candles. The other couple had left – the dark cave was entirely ours. I sat between Lena and the wall, my legs around her waist, my arms beneath her breasts.
Lena didn’t move when my hands found their way under her sweater, or when my fingers slipped under her bra. She sat in silence, her eyes on the candle.
I kissed her neck. My heart was beating fast now. ‘It’s getting late,’ I said, ‘why don’t you show me where you live?’
For a long minute Lena kept gazing at the candle. ‘I can’t,’ she said at last. ‘Not today.’
We remained silent, listening to the sitar, my entire body focused and expectant.
All of a sudden, Lena turned round and grabbed my face with two hands. ‘Promise me something,’ she whispered, staring straight into my eyes. ‘I want you to always remember this moment.’
Next thing I knew, she was unbuttoning my jeans.
6
TRUTH IS, IT WASN’T Pushkin who introduced me to Russia. It was Katya. She was not even Russian Russian. Katya was from Minsk. I’d met her at a university party in Amsterdam and within two weeks she’d moved into my apartment, an arrangement that was partly down to the city’s housing scarcity. Though only two years older than me, Katya was, in my eyes, a real woman. She wore feminine, grown-up clothes and plenty of make-up. In the street, Katya didn’t walk – she paraded, her long black hair falling in waves over her shoulders, and I took pride in the way other men turned their heads to look at her, my Slavic goddess.
We lived in the small flat I was renting in Fokke Simonszstraat, a central Amsterdam street with no canal, on the third floor of an old house with narrow stairs that, like many buildings in the city, was tilted to one side. At home you could feel that the floor wasn’t entirely level, that there was a slight slope from the couch to the TV, and this, I think, might have contributed to the sense of instability I suffered from at the time.
It was Katya who introduced me to Russian thought. Not to philosophers or great writers – although she’d read them all in school – but to the way Russians look at life. She also taught me my first Russian words. You are such a babnik, she’d say, every time she caught me looking at other women. A babnik, she explained to me, was a man who liked women and was liked by women. Katya had a scary sixth sense for these things and, whenever we both walked into a student party or a bar, she would immediately spot the girl I was going to feel attracted to, even before I’d seen her.
I also learned many practicalities from Katya. She patiently instructed me on the endless medicinal applications of vodka; headaches, indigestion, insomnia – there was nothing a bit of good old vodka could not cure. Katya also used the magic liquor as stain remover, shoe polish – anything, really. Katya rubbed vodka on her forehead and tummy for a couple of days each month – the most effective method, she maintained, to relieve her atrocious menstrual pains.
With her spectacular beauty and her unique way of seeing the world, Katya embodied the promise of a vast cultural universe to be discovered. It was only after she’d gone from my life and I’d started my research in Moscow that I realised Katya must have been my first maternal whore. The maternal whore is a concept I kind of came up with later in my research, a recurring fe
male character in Russian literature: a beautiful woman who uses her natural, God-given wisdom to nurture her man, to instruct him in the ways of life, without demanding a conventional commitment in return. Think of Raskolnikov’s Sonya in Crime and Punishment – except, of course, Sonya was also an actual whore.
So it was Katya who showed me the light. She was the prophet of my new faith, the beacon of my new world. For that, I’m grateful. Without Katya, Russia would have remained nothing more than a frozen far-off land that belonged to Cold War films and dusty history books.
7
CHOOSE ANY STREET IN Moscow. Stand at the kerb. Raise your arm. In a few seconds you have two or three cars at the side of the road offering their services. Set the price. A hundred, a hundred and fifty rubles, depends on the distance to be covered, the time of day, how shitty the car is. A ten-minute drive and you are in, say, Kitaisky Lyotchik. The Chinese Pilot.
The Lyotchik is a popular bar, at least among students and the arty crowd. They often host performances and live music. Great place to start the night. But if for some reason it’s not happening in the Lyotchik you all have a couple of drinks, maybe accompanied by a plate of chicken wings, take a piss, walk out and flag another car, perhaps a Volga this time, that will take you to Karma Bar.
You want to hit Karma just before midnight, when the dyevs are drunk but not taken. If you are lucky, the Volga’s radio is playing old soviet songs, Vysotsky or Okudzhava, but most often it will be blasting out trashy Russian pop, the kind of synthesiser sound abandoned by the West in the mid-1980s.
Colin is in the front seat talking to the driver.
Colin says, it’s from taxi drivers you learn about the real Moscow. Drivers are typically well-educated men – engineers, doctors, professors – whose jobs have become superfluous in the new Russia, and who need the extra cash to make ends meet. Often, the driver will admire Colin’s proficiency in Russian and his knowledge of local customs – surprised and pleased to hear he’s American – and, if we’ve grabbed the car after a few drinks, Colin and the driver often end up singing Russian songs, reciting poetry or telling anekdots, which are the equivalent of Western jokes but without a funny punch line.
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