I was now living in the heart of Moscow. Everything I needed was here: shops, restaurants, cafés, cinemas. Most places stayed open all night and it felt great to know that I could walk down to the street at midnight to buy milk or books or blinis. There were always plenty of people on the street, day and night. So much life that you never felt alone.
My building stood just a few steps away from Pushkinskaya. This was convenient because, as I had discovered during my first months in Moscow, Pushkin’s bronze monument at the centre of the square – the very statue Dostoyevsky had unveiled in 1880 – was Moscow’s favourite meeting point for couples, being both centrally located and, in a Russian way, romantichno. On warm days I would often wait for a dyev beneath the petrified but somehow disapproving regard of Aleksandr Sergeyevich. I would be the only man in the square not holding a bouquet of flowers, stingy foreigner, and I would be scanning the faces of arriving dyevs, trying to recognise the one I had met a few nights earlier, with whom I had probably exchanged a couple of kisses on the dance floor of a nightclub and a few messages in the days that followed.
If I didn’t remember what she looked like, which was often the case, I would wait patiently beneath Pushkin’s statue, looking distracted, leaving her the task of recognising me. Then, once we saw each other, we would say privet privet and I would take her across the square to Café Pyramida, which had an actual glass pyramid for a roof and lounge music and sushi and cocktails, and dyevs liked it, and we would chat for a while. If after an hour or so things were not happening, I would walk the dyev back to the metro, say poka poka, and that would be, most likely, the last time we saw each other. But if the dyev was friendly, and she didn’t order the most expensive thing on the menu, I would invite her for a cup of tea in my apartment, conveniently located across the street, with that enormous couch that I usually left open as a bed, and the spectacular views of the west of the city.
18
AS HARD AS I TRIED to understand her, I could never predict Lena’s outbursts. Nor could I grasp the reasons behind her frequent mood swings. One moment she was sweet and calm – the next she was hurt or hostile.
One hot summer evening we were in my apartment getting ready to go out for dinner. I had just showered and slipped into my jeans, and Lena was waiting for me by the door. I rushed around the flat, shirtless, looking for my mobile phone. I turned over the cushions and pillows on the couch, looked in the kitchen, checked the pockets of the trousers piled on the old leather armchair. The phone was nowhere to be found. The air in the apartment was warm and I was losing patience. ‘What the fuck,’ I said, in English.
‘What are you looking for?’ Lena asked.
‘My phone. Have you seen it?’
‘Did you check your pockets?’
‘Of course.’
‘Let me call you.’ Lena extracted her phone from her handbag and rang me. In a few seconds a faint ringtone emerged from a pair of jeans that lay draped over the wooden stool by the front door. Lena took my phone from the pocket and handed it to me.
Twenty minutes later we were sitting on cushiony white sofas on a new summer terrace on the Boulevard, waiting for our salads. I was having a beer, enjoying the warm evening. The sky was bright, pinkish, almost purple behind the buildings. But Lena was not in the mood. She was sipping her glass of chilled white wine, hardly speaking.
I knew she wanted me to ask what was wrong with her. But I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to reward her childish attitude. If she had a problem with something I’d done or said, let her bring it up. So I kept talking, pretending not to notice the way she was avoiding conversation.
I was saying something about how nice it was to live in the centre, how glad I was that I’d moved out of the university. Then I told her about my idea of writing a book about Moscow, a fictionalised account of my life in the city. She was looking down at her glass of wine, her blonde fringe, which she’d let grow a little, falling over her eyelashes and covering her eyes.
When I took a long sip from my beer, she finally jumped in.
‘Martin, tell me, why does it say Lena Propaganda in your phone?’
So this was it. The cause of her misery.
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘When I called you before, in your place. On the screen of your phone, it said Lena Propaganda.’
‘That’s where we met,’ I said. ‘Propaganda. Remember?’
‘You could just write Lena.’
I smiled. ‘It’s not such an original name in Moscow, you know.’
Her eyes remained fixed on her glass of white wine. I grabbed her hand across the table. ‘I just want to be sure it’s you I call.’
She removed her hand and stared at me – her big blue eyes now moist.
‘Who are the other Lenas?’
‘I don’t know. Old friends. I’m no longer in contact with them.’
‘Why do you keep their numbers then?’
‘Does it bother you?’
‘I don’t want to be Lena Propaganda.’
‘If it makes you happy, I can change it. Would you like me to add your surname? Or perhaps your patronymic?’ I took the phone out of my pocket, placed it on the table, between my beer and her wine. ‘What is it? Sergeyevna? Borisovna? What’s your father’s name?’
‘I don’t want you to write anything but my name.’
‘Is it my fault that so many girls in Moscow share the same few names? It’s all Katyas, Mashas, Lenas, Tanyas, Olyas, Natashas.’
She looked at me, now on the verge of tears. Then, in a shaky, soft voice she said, ‘I just want to be Lena.’
‘In my heart,’ I said, ‘you’re just Lena. Besides, it could be worse. You could be Lena Beefeater, or Lena Hungry Duck. Propaganda is classy, elegant, refined.’
‘It’s not funny, Martin. I know I’m not that important to you, but at least I would like to think that I’m more than just someone on a list.’
‘But, Lenushka, you are important to me. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here, right now. Listen, if I ever write my book about Moscow, you’ll be the only Lena in it. I promise.’
‘You have no heart,’ she said, a tear rolling down her cheek. ‘And my mistake is that I let you have me too easily.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You never had to fight for me.’ She took a sip of wine, then placed the glass in front of her. ‘You never bought me flowers.’
‘When the hell was I supposed to buy you flowers?’
She didn’t answer. She lifted her glass, swirled it, drank all the wine at once. ‘Now it’s too late,’ she said, eyes down, shaking her head. ‘For you, I will always be Lena Propaganda.’
In a way, Lena, you were right. Now I know. Had we met anywhere else but Moscow – had there been no other Lenas in my mobile phone – things would have turned out differently. Truth is, Moscow brought us together, but Moscow kept us apart. What can I say now? Sorry, Lena, I wish I’d bought you flowers.
19
THREE WEEKS AFTER MOVING into my new flat, I decided to drop my language lessons. The daily commute to the university took up too much of my time – I had to free my agenda from unnecessary distractions.
I knew I would miss Nadezhda Nikolaevna. I would miss the hours in which we inhabited the structured world of language textbooks. I would miss her enthusiasm and dedication – which kept me awake, most of the time, despite my hangovers and chronic lack of sleep – and I would also miss the little sweets she brought me once a week, usually on Fridays – blinis, syrnikis, home-made preserves. She, too, must have felt sad about finishing our classes because she wept a little when we hugged goodbye after our last lesson.
Without language classes to attend, I only had to visit the university to see Lyudmila Aleksandrovna and discuss my research. Following my suggestion, and despite her initial resistance, we had now agreed to meet less often – once a month. She had taken some convincing though, as I hadn’t really told her about my plans to use the Russian women I me
t as a primary source for my research, an original approach I suspected she would disapprove of.
My discussions with Lyudmila Aleksandrovna, which covered the more orthodox aspects of my investigation, helped me understand the different interpretations that scholars had given to crucial events in Russian novels. Reading the articles she recommended, I understood that every Russian literature scholar had to develop an original opinion about the key moments of seminal novels.
Why, ultimately, had Anna Karenina thrown herself under a train?
This question was discussed at length in several papers, with so much fervour that I often wondered if the fact that Anna Karenina was a fictional character was lost on the authors. But talking to Lyudmila Aleksandrovna I realised it was expected of me, as a prospective expert on Russian literature, to come up with my own unique interpretation of these fictional events.
With my mornings free, I would now sit in central cafés to read Russian books with the help of a dictionary, taking notes in my little red notebooks. I tried to understand why Russian authors made their heroines behave the way they did and, ultimately, how these heroines tried to make sense of the world they lived in. In the long term, I thought, all I needed to do was to compare these notes with my observations on Russian women, which were conveniently written in the same red notebooks.
I gave a lot of thought, for instance, to Tatyana’s actions at the end of Evgeny Onegin. Her decision to reject Onegin, which seemed so true and inevitable in the context of the story, had originated, after all, in Aleksandr Sergeyevich’s mind – a mind moulded by his particular life experience.
Something worried me. When talking about Tatyana in the Pushkin Speech, Dostoyevsky had endowed her with the capacity to choose, the possibility to decide her own destiny. This didn’t feel totally credible. Not just because Tatyana is a literary character at the mercy of her creator – in itself a major obstacle to choosing your own path – but because, unlike in books, real life doesn’t always involve such clear choices.
And yet, any other ending to Evgeny Onegin – one in which Tatyana had not been presented with clear alternatives – would have lacked the literary quality that gave Pushkin’s work part of its greatness.
Tatyana’s story, her lesson to the world, only made sense as long as she had a choice.
20
WHEN I FIRST SAW YULYA Karma she was over by the fat Buddha statue, taking a break from dancing, leaning against the wall. Roundish Slavic face, enormous eyes. Even in the darkness of Karma’s underground dance floor, Yulya’s bright eyes, framed by thick eyeliner, resembled pure crystal. A glance at her eyes and I could feel a revolution raging in my chest, a horde of tiny Bolsheviks taking over my entire body, making Yulya the one concern of my night. I approached her and we chatted, and she seemed naive and shy, probably because her friends were around, I thought, and at some point she told me she was nineteen. When her friends were distracted at the bar, Yulya gave me her phone number, which she asked me to memorise without writing it down, so that nobody noticed. At the end of the night, just before heading out of the club, I found her again and, when nobody was looking, I stole a kiss. Her lips were full and soft and in the days that followed I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
We arranged to meet a couple of days later, at Pushkin’s statue. She was as beautiful as I remembered, even if, in plain daylight, her round figure was edging on plumpness. I took her to Pyramida. We had a drink and she told me about the elitni economics institute she attended, the best in Moscow, she said. She was interested in politics, and in what I, as a foreigner, thought about Russia’s shaky transition to democracy. She told me she read international newspapers online, to practise her English and to keep up with global affairs. I found her smart and witty but, the more she talked, the more I felt she was uncomfortable, as if something were nagging at the back of her mind. When we finished our drinks and our shared tray of sushi, I suggested we go to my place for a cup of tea.
‘Sure,’ she said, ‘but I have to tell you something.’
Then, as we walked through the perekhod, Yulya Karma informed me that first, she had a boyfriend, for two years now, and second, she didn’t intend to leave him. She did say first and second, and I imagined this formal way of conveying what she considered essential information was the result of her privileged schooling.
‘Right,’ I said, not knowing how to react.
‘And another thing,’ she added, as we came out on the other side of Tverskaya and walked towards my building. ‘Today I have my period.’
‘Your period?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We won’t be able to have sex.’
I was taken aback.
Yulya clutched my arm.
‘It doesn’t mean that I can’t see you again another day,’ she said, smiling.
Up in my flat, I poured fresh water into the samovar and plugged it into the wall socket. While the samovar was heating up, I joined Yulya in the living room. She asked about the Indian tapestry on the wall. I told her the story of Lord Ganesh, how he got his elephant head, and how he used the small brush in his hand to remove obstacles from the path of life. I didn’t mention that the tapestry was a birthday present from Lena.
‘Interesno,’ Yulya said. ‘So you hung an elephant above your couch to make your life easier?’
‘It’s not an elephant. It’s a Hindu god. He brushes all my problems away.’
‘What a boring life you must have,’ she said, laughing.
The samovar rattled. Back in the kitchen, I carefully opened its tiny tap and poured boiling water into two mugs. I returned with the steaming mugs to the living room. While the tea was brewing, we stepped onto the balcony. Yulya was impressed by the view from my flat.
‘You can even see the New Arbat from here,’ she said, pointing at the cluster of buildings to the south.
‘I love how the buildings in the New Arbat look like open books,’ I said, as I stepped behind Yulya and put my hands around her waist.
She pushed my hands away, turned, and kissed me. We kissed for a couple of minutes on the balcony, then moved inside to the couch. I took her shirt off. But when I tried to unfasten her bra, she stood up and said, ‘Ne nado.’
Ne nado. It meant no need or don’t bother, except Muscovites used the expression all the time, in awkward and quite diverse situations. Ne nado, I don’t need the change back. Ne nado, I can walk myself back to the metro. Ne nado, I’m not giving you my phone number. Ne nado, you are not getting laid today.
‘I told you,’ she said, ‘I have my period. Wait for next time.’
I was sweaty.
‘Davay pit’ chai,’ she said, sitting forward on the couch. Let’s drink tea.
I took the tea bags out of the mugs and placed them on a napkin. She took a sip of tea, then placed her mug back on the coffee table. She grabbed my hand and smiled.
‘How often would you like to see me?’ she asked.
‘In what sense?’ My heart was still pumping fast.
‘If we become lovers,’ she said, ‘how many times a week would you like to see me?’
I wasn’t sure I understood. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘One, two, three times a week?’
‘Twice a week,’ I said, without giving it much thought.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell my boyfriend that I’m taking English lessons. Then I can come to see you on two different days for a couple of hours.’
And so Yulya Karma started to visit me on Mondays and Wednesdays from five till seven. The second time she came, after tea, we went down to the Moskva Bookshop in Tverskaya and I bought her two English language books, one with grammar lessons and one with exercises, and also a small Oxford dictionary. From then on, when she came to my place, she always carried her English books. And a few times she did bring some essays she’d written in English for her studies, things on international trade or finances, and we would go through the text lying on my couch and later, when she was getting dressed, she
would say, ‘Very nice class, professor.’
One day Yulya Karma broke our schedule. She sent me a text on a Thursday around midnight saying I miss you and asking if she could come over. She showed up at my place an hour later, wasted, barely able to stay on her feet. She’d been drinking cocktails with some girlfriends, she said. For the first time, she spent the night in my flat.
Next morning, as she was getting ready to leave, she asked if I had a spare toothbrush. I looked around but couldn’t find one.
‘You are not ready for all your lovers,’ she said, which struck me as odd because we had never talked about other people.
The next time she came to my place – Monday at five, as per the schedule – she brought me a present. ‘Open it,’ she said, excited. It was a box containing a set of colourful toothbrushes. In fact, after a closer look, I realised the box contained only one toothbrush handle but five different heads, identical in shape but different in colour.
‘This is for you and all your lovers,’ Yulya said, laughing. ‘You can change the heads. Each of us can have a different colour.’
‘Spasibo,’ I said. ‘Very thoughtful.’
‘I pick red,’ she said and at the end of the two hours, as if to mark her territory, she fitted the red head to the handle and brushed her teeth before leaving.
For weeks I left the multiheaded toothbrush next to my sink, and offered it to anyone who came home. When dyevs asked which colour they could use, I would say that any colour was fine, they were all new. This was, I thought, the right thing to say. They didn’t seem to notice that one of the brushes had been used and, for some reason I never understood, they all picked red and ended up brushing their teeth with the same head.
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