Back to Moscow

by Guillermo Erades

  Vika was breathing into my neck, her hair all over my face. She felt unusually warm, her skin sticky. Once naked, her petite body was somewhat softer than I’d expected. Unlike Tatyana’s, Vika’s thighs were round and fleshy.

  I was hit by a sudden urge to leave my flat.

  ‘Let’s go and grab some lunch,’ I said.

  ‘Now?’ She kissed my neck. ‘Maybe we can stay here for a little while, eat the watermelon.’

  ‘It’s too hot in here,’ I said.

  The voices from Scandinavia’s terrace came over the balcony. I could recognise some of the brothers’. If only Vika would leave now, I thought, I could go down and enjoy a cold beer and a hamburger with the brothers, then come back for some sleep.

  I felt dark clouds forming in my head. I stood up and went to the shower. It was that time of year when my building had no central hot water – the profilaktika, they called it, about three weeks every summer during which, I was told, the hot water of entire neighbourhoods was cut so that the pipes could be serviced. It was a collective purifying ritual of sorts that Muscovites seemed to endure without much protest.

  The icy water washed away some of my sorrow, brought me back to life.

  Back in the living room, I slipped back into my jeans, sat next to Vika. She lay inert and naked on the couch. I placed my hand between her legs – she was freshly shaved, the skin of her pubic area reddish and irritated. She smiled, placed her arms around me, kissed my ear. I concentrated hard on pushing Tatyana’s image out of my mind. Vika was a wonderful girl, I told myself, and, for the few seconds I could maintain the fantasy of Tatyana’s non-existence, I enjoyed Vika’s company. But as soon as Tatyana forced herself back into my head, my chest tightened and Vika’s presence in my flat felt oppressive.

  Vika stood up, walked into the bathroom, washed herself. Back in the living room, she let her yellow dress unfold over her head and cover her body. We went down to the street.

  ‘Why don’t we just have something to eat here?’ Vika said, pointing at the tables of Scandinavia. The waitresses, who knew me by sight, carried trays with grilled burgers, fresh salads, cold beer.

  ‘I feel like walking,’ I said. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

  We strolled down Tverskaya, turned left at the end and crossed the street into Teatralnaya Ploschad. We sat down at a summer terrace with orange plastic tables, next to the Metropol hotel.

  When the waitress brought our food, Vika was talking about her family, something about a brother, or a cousin – in Russian you never knew. I wasn’t really following what she was saying. At a nearby table a group of foreign businessmen, guests at the Metropol, I figured, were drinking beer and talking loudly, in English. They were accompanied by three young Russian women, who laughed wildly at each of their stupid comments.

  I was overcome by a wave of exhaustion. I didn’t feel like talking. It was as if all the anticipation, all the hunger, had evaporated in a matter of seconds on my couch. All I wanted now was to be left alone.

  I thought about Tatyana, about how she gave me space, even when she was in my flat, about the unobtrusiveness of her presence. Tomorrow evening she’ll be back home, I thought.

  ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’ Vika was asking.

  I cut open my chicken roll, melted butter flooded my plate.

  ‘I think I’ll go home,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m tired, I need some rest.’

  ‘But you wanted to get out. You can’t go home now, with such nice weather. Let’s finish eating. Then we can walk towards Aleksandrovsky Sad and have ice cream.’

  I ate some chicken in silence. Vika said her salad was very nice.

  ‘I’d rather go home,’ I said. ‘I’m meeting some friends tonight.’

  Vika looked at me, perplexed.

  ‘I can come with you.’

  ‘I need to rest, I’m quite tired from last night.’

  She placed her fork facing down on her plate – her face suddenly transformed, her smile gone. Her brown eyes looked somewhat menacing.

  ‘So you want me to go home now? Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘Vika, I’m just saying I need to meet my friends later on and I would like to rest.’

  ‘I can also meet your friends.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘Another day.’

  ‘Martin, you asked me to meet you today.’ Her voice sounded now coarser. ‘I want to spend time with you.’

  ‘But we have spent time together. We met at eleven, it’s four o’clock. That’s five whole hours we’ve spent together.’

  ‘You’ve been silent for the last hour,’ Vika said.

  ‘I need to be alone for a little while, that’s all.’

  Vika took the sunglasses out of her handbag, placed them on her head as a hairband. Then she grabbed the fork and started picking at her salad.

  I tried to finish my chicken as quickly as possible.

  ‘I shouldn’t have slept with you,’ she said.

  ‘I’m just tired. We’ll meet another day.’

  ‘You wanted to fuck me, that’s all.’

  ‘Vika, please.’

  She now put her sunglasses on. They were far too large, the sunglasses. They made her look like an oversized insect.

  ‘Why don’t you want to spend more time with me?’ she said, softening her voice again.

  I searched for something suitable to say, but at that moment the image of a fly flashed up in my head. Vika, with her giant sunglasses, transformed into an enormous fly.

  ‘We just met,’ she continued. ‘There is so much we can talk about. I don’t know anything about you. On Wednesday when we first met, you were talking all the time, it was so nice. I had a great time. And now you ask me to leave?’

  ‘Those glasses are too big for you,’ I said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Vika, I had a great time with you today. But I’m just not in the mood. ‘Ia-ne-v-nastroenii,’ I said, probably raising my voice above what was appropriate. ‘Let’s meet another day.’

  ‘Why another day? I’m here now. Let’s spend this weekend together.’

  ‘But my friends—’

  ‘I can also meet your friends.’

  ‘Vika.’

  ‘If you don’t want to spend time with me, what’s the point?’

  ‘The point?’

  Vika lowered her voice, looked at her salad. ‘The point of us being together.’

  I stood up.

  ‘Are you married or something?’ she asked, gripping my arm. ‘I saw women’s stuff in your bathroom. If you are married, just tell me, but you should have told me before. I wouldn’t have slept with you.’

  ‘Vika, listen. I need to go now.’ I shook her hand off, threw a thousand-ruble note on the table. ‘I’ll call you.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  49

  ON SUNDAY I WOKE UP just before noon. I put the percolator on the stove and two slices of bread in the toaster. I sat at the table, my head throbbing, waiting for the coffee. My mobile had been on the kitchen table all morning. I had six new text messages that had arrived during the night without my noticing. All from Vika.

  privet, kak dela, sorry about earlier

  why are you ignoring my message?

  oh, maybe you are with your friends, have a good time

  maybe we can meet tomorrow to talk

  if you have time. otherwise another day

  I’m thinking about you

  I typed a short reply proposing to meet for coffee during the week, pressed send and immediately switched off the phone. After I finished my coffee and toast, I bundled the bedsheets into the washing machine, lay on the couch.

  It had been a long night. I stopped drinking at about four in the morning, when I found myself on the basement dance floor in Karma, barely able to keep my eyes open. I said goodbye to Diego, who was slow-dancing with a fat dyev, but I was unable to find the others. I walked upstairs, i
nto the open air, and was surprised to see daylight. I ignored the drivers waiting outside Karma and decided to walk, heading towards Petrovka Ulitsa. In summer I loved to walk home from a night out, crossing empty streets, breathing fresh air, observing how the night retreated and a new day took over the city. It was the only time of day when Moscow didn’t feel crowded.

  I went back into the kitchen and made another cup of coffee. I hung the bed linen on the balcony. The sun was now hitting the western façade of my building. It would be dry in a couple of hours, I thought, just before Tatyana arrives.

  I had a cold shower. Feeling refreshed, I lay back down on the couch, naked, observing the little white dots on my Indian tapestry. If I kept my eyes fixed on one of the dots that surrounded Lord Ganesh, the intricate painting seemed to shift slightly, the elephant head somehow peeking out of the wall. It was a bizarre visual effect I had noticed before, usually when drunk or hungover, and I wondered if that was the intentional purpose of the white dots – dots that otherwise didn’t add anything to the image. I closed my eyes, my mind drifted, and, in the sweet moment when my awareness was slipping away but I wasn’t yet asleep, a thought flitted across my mind: I missed Tatyana.

  I stumbled to the kitchen, switched on my phone and sent Tatyana a text message: Miss you.

  She replied in a minute: Me too, love you.

  See you tonight.

  At five, feeling a bit better, I decided to go out for some fresh air and to buy stuff for dinner. I walked into Eliseevksy, always comforting with its elegant gilded ceilings, chandeliers and wall paintings. The most beautiful place in the world to buy dried fish and imported biscuits. At the deli counter I got cured salmon, sturgeon, liver blinis, a jar of red caviar and smetana. On the way back I stopped at a booth in the perekhod and bought a film of the type Tatyana liked. The seller at the stand, who recognised me from previous purchases, assured me that the English subtitles worked well.

  Pushkinskaya was bursting with life. Muscovites walked in and out of the metro, rushed through the perekhods, sat at the outdoor tables of Café Pyramida. I walked on among the crowd, towards my building, bag of groceries in one hand, movie in the other, feeling light-hearted at the thought of the night ahead – at the thought of Tatyana coming home.

  50

  STEPANOV WAVES HIS HAND at the waitress and points at his empty coffee mug. ‘But I don’t understand your problem,’ he says, turning back to me. ‘You can keep your girlfriend at home from Monday to Friday and enjoy your freedom on weekends.’

  I glance around the garden. The morning is grey, threatening rain. A few ravens are pacing on the nearby grass, awaiting our departure to jump on the breakfast leftovers.

  ‘Russian women are forgiving,’ Stepanov says. ‘They accept that we have lovers on the side.’

  The waitress fills our mugs with coffee, then heads off to attend to a table further away, where two white-haired expats are reading copies of the Moscow Times.

  ‘Not sure about that,’ I say. ‘I’ve met girls who were less trusting than Tatyana.’

  ‘Perhaps spoilt Muscovites,’ Stepanov says. ‘But real Russian women, from outside Moscow, it’s a different story. They understand that men need to chase women, that it’s in our nature and we can’t do shit about it. They don’t take it personally. They know it has nothing to do with feelings.’

  I take a sip of coffee.

  ‘Of course there are rules to observe,’ Stepanov says, ‘but as long as you don’t bring other women home, and you’re discreet and respectful, you’re allowed to sleep around.’

  ‘Like in Chekhov’s stories,’ I say.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not just that people cheat in Chekhov’s stories, adultery is old in literature. It’s the factual way Anton Pavlovich tells us his characters cheat. No moral consequences.’

  Stepanov adjusts his sunglasses, which today are large and greenish. ‘That’s my point. In Russia infidelity is something that can be addressed with a bit of discretion and mutual understanding.’

  I take a red notebook out of my bag, place it on the table, begin to scribble.

  Stepanov leans forward, takes his sunglasses off, places his elbows on both sides of his empty plate. His blue eyes are bloodshot. ‘We, Russians, accept cheating as part of life,’ he says, speaking slowly now, ‘because we accept life as it is. Some things you can’t change, you have to live with them.’

  I stop writing, look up. ‘You mean you just accept your sudba?’

  ‘Exactly. We’re fatalistic.’

  I drop the pen and take a sip of my coffee.

  ‘Russians are fatalistic,’ Stepanov repeats, tilting his head towards my red notebook.

  I nod. ‘Right.’

  Stepanov’s eyes stay fixed on my notebook, and it hits me that I’m expected to write down his acute insight into the Russian mentality. I lift the pen and write Russians = fatalistic. I circle the word ‘fatalistic’ so that Stepanov sees it.

  Stepanov nods with an approving smile. ‘You Westerners are always angry because you want to change everything in life. We Russians are always sad because we know that most things cannot be changed.’

  I feel Stepanov has been waiting for the right moment to squeeze this pearl of wisdom into our conversation. I’m about to write it down when I see Colin and Diego approaching our table.

  ‘Sorry we’re late,’ Diego says. He’s wearing a baseball cap, green, white and red, the word ‘Mexico’ stamped on the front.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Stepanov says. ‘I was sharing with Martin some of the secrets of the Mysterious Russian Soul.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Colin says, taking a seat at the table. ‘The Mysterious Russian Soul is—’ He doesn’t finish his sentence, distracted, glares at a raven that has approached our table begging for food. ‘Nothing but a marketing trick,’ he finally says, scaring the raven away with a wave of his hand. ‘An old slogan to promote a culture of laziness and alcoholism.’

  My mind drifts back to the moment when Lyudmila Aleksandrovna gave me her take on the Mysterious Russian Soul. The expression Russian Soul, as known today, had been coined in the 1840s by Belinsky, the influential literary critic. It was Russia’s reaction to German romanticism, an ideal to agglutinate a divided nation, to put Russian idiosyncrasies above those of other European states. Lyudmila Alek sand rovna told me how the expression had been part of the romanticising of Russian peasant life and how, in her view, it had been Fyodor Mikhailovich – good old Dostoyevsky – who had popularised the term later on, making the soul, she said, the depository of human contradictions, of the eternal struggle between God and evil. I had written down her exact words: In Dostoyevsky the soul is the depository of human contradictions, of the eternal struggle between God and evil.

  Stepanov reclines in his chair. ‘I was telling Martin how Russians accept life as it is.’

  Colin grabs the copy of The Exile. ‘Interesting,’ he says, referring either to The Exile cover – which shows a naked woman holding a hand grenade – or to Stepanov’s remark.

  ‘Martin is giving up dyevs,’ Stepanov says.

  ‘Again?’ Colin says. He’s wearing a brownish shirt, the logo of an expensive Italian designer stamped on his chest. ‘Is it because of your Siberian dyev?’

  ‘Tatyana,’ I say. ‘This time I’m really done. I need to take it easier.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Diego says, taking off his cap and rearranging his long hair. ‘I knew this was going to work. She’s beautiful.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Colin says. ‘You’ve said that before. How many Tatyanas have you been with?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, irritated by the question. ‘Two. Perhaps three.’

  ‘So,’ Colin says, ‘this is Tatyana Four?’

  In my mobile phone, I realise, she remains Tatyana Evans.

  ‘What’s your point?’ I say.

  Colin grabs my shoulder and looks at me with a half-smile. ‘We’ve been over this, there’s no point wasting
your time with one single dyev in Moscow.’

  ‘I can’t keep meeting new dyevs every week,’ I say. ‘I’m sick of all the plotting and scheming, of switching my phone off in the evenings, of having to come up with excuses all the time. I want to enjoy cooking at home, watching films, reading books, going to the theatre.’

  ‘You can do all that back in Europe,’ Colin says. ‘Why waste your Moscow time with books when you can enjoy real life?’

  ‘Maybe I’m not that excited about real life,’ I say. ‘Look at us. We get pissed, meet dyevs, then what? What’s the point of all this?’

  ‘Martin’s been reading Chekhov again,’ Stepanov says.

  Stepanov and Colin laugh. The ravens, which have been silently approaching our table, retreat a couple of metres, wings fluttering.

  Colin leans over the table. ‘Martin,’ he says, ‘fucking around is a great way to be happy.’ He glances over the terrace, then he drops his hand on my shoulder and looks into my eyes. ‘There is nothing sinful about fucking around.’

  ‘I just want a simpler life.’ I point at the copy of The Exile. ‘Maybe I’m getting too old for all this.’

  Colin moves The Exile away from me, as if my finger-pointing were desecrating a holy text.

  Diego is hiding behind one of Starlite’s laminated menus. ‘Martin is right,’ he says. ‘If he is happy with Tatyana, why should he meet other dyevs?’

  ‘So what,’ Colin says, ‘now you are giving up sex?’

  The white-haired expats are looking at us from the other table.

  ‘If you stop sleeping around,’ Stepanov says, ‘your life will lose all its excitement.’

  ‘Excitement,’ I say. ‘Is that what we’re after?’

  Stepanov shrugs his shoulders. ‘What’s wrong with excitement?’

  ‘Isn’t there anything more durable?’ I say. ‘More meaningful?’

  ‘Man, you need to stop reading Russian books,’ Colin says. ‘Excitement keeps you alive. It’s not the sex, it’s the chase. That’s the fun part of life. Do you know what the main difference between young and old men is?’

  I lean back in the chair. ‘Age?’

  ‘Older men have given up on the chase,’ Colin says. ‘Once you stop looking for sexual partners, that’s death, man. Life becomes this dull, boring experience.’