—…likable people. His wife, by the way, is almost Romanian, but her granddad’s buried in a mound on our side.
—…me and Natasha are walking around the ponds at Chistye Prudy, like, just strolling. This lady walks by, nice-looking, comes up: “Hey, girls, do you have a lighter?” I give her the lighter from my pocket, I’m getting it out, giving it to her, and she’s like: “Thanks,” lights up. Then it hits me, I’m like: “Whoa, how did you guess that we smoke?” She gives me the lighter back and is like: “Probably same as how your mama guessed.” And took off, I mean, she left, and Natasha screams after her: “Go to hell! You snake, I’m not coming home at all today!”—crazy, right, like I’m never coming home, and she yelled something else too: “Go to hell, trying to follow me around, I’m not coming home at all!”—like, screw you, right. And she’s standing there shaking, like there’s tears running down her face, I say: “Wow, holy crap,” and she’s like: “Whatever, fuck her!” like, let’s go, come on. What are you dragging me for, I say, where do you want us to go, what are we even doing, I’m going home, I totally said I’d be home by now.
—…I spilled tea in the bed. A warm wet spot. I thought, screw it, went to sleep lying down like kind of around the spot; fifteen minutes later I woke up sobbing, can’t remember what I dreamed.
—…There’s nothing worse than Israeli men. I mean, I travel a lot, right? Well, so some places they’re one way, some places another, but Israeli men—that’s just some irredeemable, barefaced fuckery. A month ago, in Paris, I’m going along in a piss-poor mood, it had gotten really hot all of a sudden, I’m schlepping to the hotel, been on my feet all day long. And it’s hot, all the cafés have their tables set up outside. So I’m walking by, right, and suddenly I hear someone saying behind me: “Eizu rusia kusit!” I don’t know how to translate it, I mean basically it’s like a dirty compliment, but the point is, it has “Russian woman” in it. Like, look at that Russian, you know. That is, he saw that I was Russian, well, fine, but this isn’t home in Tel Aviv, it’s in Paris for crying out loud—that is, they just, he and his little friend he was talking to—they really had no idea that I understand Hebrew. They were such pigs, I can’t even tell you. I mean they weren’t even hoping that I would understand, it wasn’t an attempt to make a connection—they were just being pigs, just pigs, total pigs. And so I’m walking along, and it was hot already to begin with, and I’m so fucking pissed, and I think: you really don’t see that anywhere else in the world, well, maybe among savages, but this is supposedly a civilized country, look at the export numbers. And I keep walking and thinking: I mean, it’s just shameful, it makes me personally ashamed for my country, you know? I keep going and I think: dammit, I’m thirty-two, I’m running around, all frazzled, in my old jeans, no heels, no makeup, my hair’s a rat’s nest, wearing glasses—and I get people saying “Eizu rusia kusit!” behind my back. Oh, thank you God, thank you, thank you, thank you thank you thank you!
—…we have a family tradition—doing idiotic deeds for absolutely no personal benefit. For instance, my grandfather was the first Gypsy in history to die in a plane crash.
For Tigger
—…we get some interesting class-related scenes in the ward as well. Like for instance we have this girl in with us, real positive, cheerful, with a giant black eye. And every day she sits down and puts on mascara for half an hour. Layer after layer, piles it on and on, makes them gigaaaantic, so thick. Then she’ll do her mouth up with bright red lipstick and go out to the bench to smoke. With her black eye and lashes. Same thing every day. Yesterday I went down—I think someone came to check on me—she’s sitting there flicking her flip-flop. She says: “Well, don’t I look pretty?” And I think to myself: “Uh-huh, just like a salesgirl!” I mean, I didn’t say that, of course. I went three more steps, something keeps running through my head, and then—bang!—I remembered: damn, she is a salesgirl. We have this old lady, too, she says—they’re giving us cheap pills, they’re bitter, probably made of wormwood.
—…because all of this is a chain of unforgivable crimes we’ve committed against each other.
—…I don’t go to class reunions so as not to fall into pride. Otherwise you always come out of there feeling, well, a decent person isn’t supposed to experience that kind of feeling. Like, the majority of them are living these lives, like, even Google isn’t looking for them.
—…don’t get distracted by bullshit, Pasha. You’re always getting distracted by bullshit. Me too, this one time I saw this lady, just some stranger, but then I looked closer and I knew her, she used to work in my office, it was just a bad angle and she’d cut her hair, you know, a bob, she’s got a bob now. I adjust the sight a bit, look again: well, she’s changed, of course, time takes its toll. She was eating something. I zoom in again: popcorn. She’s walking down the street eating popcorn, where’d she get it? I even got kind of hung up on it: where’d she get the popcorn? I started picturing it: that’s really something, she gets a craving for popcorn, goes into a popcorn, I mean a movie theater, she goes into a movie theater, like, buys popcorn and leaves so she can eat it on the go. I could picture the whole thing, and she was always like that, stubborn as a mule. She was walking across the square and eating. I followed her to the corner, focused the sight again, she’s got a ring on. See how distracted I got? I got that distracted, and they’re talking in my ear: “Mr. Blue, what’s the delay, Mr. Blue, are you working or what?” And the guy had taken off while I was distracted. I got him, of course, but you see, sometimes you get distracted by some bullshit and then you walk around all pissed off for two days afterward.
—…what’s it like in Dagestan? In Dagestan you take a funnel and walk and walk until the water doesn’t go in a circle at all anymore—that’s where the equator is. They have different constellations there, it’s the southern hemisphere, after all; and grapes, pineapples, figs, and gingerbread too, and these enormous birds, and forests, waterfalls, ice cream, girls, dwarves too, and penguins. You should really try to stay awhile, sonny.
For K.R.
—…I said, can you give me something to put on. He gave me one of his t-shirts, thin material, really soft. Then he went into the closet and said, “You want pants too?” I said, “Sure.” He comes out wearing these like soft brown sweatpants, and gives me another pair of the same kind, and goes to take a shower. I pulled on the pants, they were so soft, and I’m standing there kind of tripping on them and I heard him turn the water on, and then he suddenly comes back out and says, “OK, no way, matching pants is just too much, I can’t do it.” He took those away and gave me a different pair.
—…What a life we had, Natasha! I remember this one time, I called him up and he was in the supermarket, and I said to him: “Buy that bread with holes and the black cheese.” Meaning, sodium-free bread and truffled cheese.
—…What did I learn from that relationship? What I learned is that the corner of a pillow can leave a bruise.
—…how do you say “nails” in Hebrew? Like, all those nails, nuts and bolts, all that shrapnel?
For T.
—…I don’t know what to tell you about therapists. Like I had this thing, right? I started waking up with my head in the wrong direction. I would fall asleep normally, but then I’d wake up with my feet on the pillow. Right away, the therapist says: “Uh-oh.” But I’d already figured it out for myself: I was looking for Zhenya in my sleep. I’d slept next to him for so many years, and now I’m alone in the bed. And so all night long I’m trying to put my arm around him, like reaching to the left—and turning a little bit in my sleep. Then I reach again, turn a little bit further, and then I wake up with my feet on the pillow. I got so fucking sick of it. Said to myself: you’re just doing a crappy job looking for him! Don’t give up, keep on looking! What’re you giving up for! And that was all it took, now I wake up normally again.
—…we actually support the idea that you can talk to children about absolutely everything, about illness, about wa
r, as long as you’re positive about it. Like, we talk to Kusya a lot about the Second World War, but for instance, at the end we always say that all the legs and arms that got blown off came back home to the soldiers afterwards.
—…friends and other loved ones! And Mama! I invited you all to come to this restaurant, this excellent restaurant, because I have a story that’s connected to this place. And I want to share it with you now. Do you see the little hutch there at the end of the veranda? Usually that hutch is for rabbits. But not because of what you might think—wait a sec, wait a sec!—the rabbits are just there so that the guests can pet and feed them. And there’s this special hay kept beside the hutch for feeding them. But right now there aren’t any rabbits there. But it’s not what you think—let me finish, quit giggling!—it’s because right now they’re detoxing the rabbits. That’s right: the restaurant guests fed the rabbits so much, they got overfed, and now they’ve been taken away: they’re on a diet and detox regimen. You get it, right? At the restaurant, everyone fed the rabbits so much they got overfed, and now they’ve put the rabbits on a diet, and then they’ll bring them back to live here again in peace and happiness, and to eat more hay. Because right now in our country we are living in this wonderful time of peace. So listen: I brought you to this particular restaurant very symbolically, because this is my dearest wish: that our parents get to live out their lives without ever having to experience war.
—…I have this friend who’s a Protestant. Me, I’m a boxer, I got into it on the train—the dude was getting beat by some hoods, I stepped in, and I got stabbed, look, I have this hole here, like a cavity. My wife yelled at me afterwards: “Why’d you get involved?” She loves me. I said: “How can you say that, you should be proud, you have a real man!” And I didn’t hit her. Vitalik, he’s an important guy, one of the top Protestants in Moscow, I went over to see him and he said: “Pray with me.” Got down on his knees. But I can’t do knees. I mean, I’m wearing a hundred twenty-six grams of gold, see, bracelets, this ring—and I drive around the city like this, at night too, and nobody’s ever even touched me, you know? No one’s ever lifted a finger. That’s how tough I am. So Vitalik says: “That’s fine, just stand then, but just repeat after me word for word, we have the same Bible, after all.” I have this one woman, Tonya, Little Tonya, she’s Korean. She got me into “Amway”—it means “American Way”—she got me in with them, brought me over there. People say to me, “Ew, America!” But what is Amway really? Like, there was this ad: “Then we’ll come to you!”—and they wouldn’t say something like that in Europe, something so direct, they like to reel you in. That’s how Amway works, you know? I’m not just giving you detergent, I’m reeling you in, I give you a sample and say: “I’m not going to tell you anything, try it yourself, you’ll see.” Like, you think I’m just selling detergent? I’m on a mission: I’m using this good product and educating my friends, I’m teaching them something good. I tell them: try it for yourselves, read about it for yourself, don’t let anyone blow smoke. And then I teach them how to properly represent the company, too, I don’t need people with those crappy plaid shopping bags who ride the trains, I ride the same damn trains, I’m a boxer, too, believe you me, the shit that goes down there…My wife, her brother, he was a priest. He rode those trains all the time…I don’t care if people say this is women’s work, for a dude to be talking about makeup. I couldn’t care less. That’s what Koreans say, it’s a Korean saying. I showed my knife right away, it was that kind of conversation. The point was: the main thing is to try to be good. To do your work well, day after day. And not “Then we’ll come to you!” What kind of a scam are they trying to pull? Let people take a sample, let them read it all themselves. Like me, I drive a foreign car, because I do my job well. I have to turn my phone off ’cause so many people want to drive around with me. I work nights and days, my wife yells—it’s ’cause she loves me, she misses me. But I tell her: “You should be proud of me, bitch, I’m a boxer, I’m wearing a hundred and twenty-six grams of gold, I’m not just driving a cab, this isn’t just detergent—I’m on a mission. I’m teaching people good things. Lots of people are jealous.” Protestants don’t have that envy. Not for my gold, or anything else. This woman, Little Tonya, Tonya’s her name, she brought me to Vitalik, he’s the number one Protestant in Moscow. I can’t kiss a priest’s hand, he’s just a guy like me, right. But Vitalik got me. “You,” he said, “you don’t have to get on your knees, that doesn’t matter. The main thing is,” he said, “repeat after me, word for word.”
—…had to buy a couple of diamond pendants so I could wear them with something simple.
—…looking for a woman the way you’re doing it, Sergei—you’re doomed. The kids’ll ask you: “Where did you and Mama meet?” And what’ll you say? “At karaoke”? I recommend only doing it through mutual friends. Then, like, if you leave her—somebody remembers some detail about you, they can tell her later, tell the kids. A human drama is under way and you’re not just a blank spot.
—…turns out when I was little my parents taught me how to play Mortal Kombat, strip poker and the first “Prince of Persia” on the computer, because the nanny dumped me when I was four months old and from that point on they had to figure out some way of systematically tuning me out.
—…remember that strange little girl, who wouldn’t nod or smile? So get this, that was Brezhnev’s daughter. And the little one was Brezhnev’s granddaughter, Brezhnev’s daughter and granddaughter. I said: “Thank you, but I don’t want to see this stuff, I don’t need this, I didn’t ask for any of this.” Why did they make me dream it? I guess they just didn’t have a choice.
—…everyone knows how to talk big, but it’s really hard to get a brand going in developing markets. A whole lot depends on everyone’s concrete participation, on turning the situation to your advantage. Like us, we’re moving vodka from Iran into Iraq. It’s a nightmare. Most of our stuff is in Russia, but for that region production is concentrated in Iran. And so at first we had two couriers, former mountaineers. They’d take backpacks, pack the bottles and take off on foot, making their way through. But one of them got blown up, there’s minefields, you know, and the other one still got shot, in the end. So now we have a donkey doing it. He’s so smart, such a cutie, does it all himself without anybody else. He goes along the path between the minefields, clip-clop, gets there all by himself and comes back all by himself. You know how much we love him? We adore him. Treat him like a king.
—…complain about my kids, but sometimes I just can’t help it. It can really hurt. We raised them as equals, well, like everybody does now—with respect, we spoke politely, didn’t order them around. But that comes with some big minuses. Because they also respond to you as equals, that is, they can just ignore you, they can just be cold. That hurts, of course. ’Cause you think that actually it’s not just that you’re equals, but that you’re equals plus something else, plus some special something that doesn’t need to be explained. And that’s how it really is! But not always. And then it’s really hard. I didn’t order them around, I never dragged anybody out of bed, I didn’t even say: “Hop to it!” I just said in a calm voice: “Boys, Mama doesn’t feel good, who wants to go to the store to get Mama some beer?” And nothing happened. That kind of thing really hurts, of course.
—…What could I possibly pass on? I don’t expect anything from myself anymore. Not counting on it. Two days ago I turned on the TV and saw my father playing some asshole in a series. And even there, someone came up and popped him—and there he goes, sliding down the wall.
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