Hotel Moscow

by Talia Carner

  The driver engaged the gearshift, which protested with a screech. The bus wound its way out among airplane hangars and warehouses seemingly on their last legs. Minutes later, it rolled along the open road. The white line dividing the two lanes of the highway was crooked, as though a drunken crew had fought over the brush as they painted. Brooke took in a huge expanse of barley fields and a forest of birch trees beyond them. The Partisans. Her father had lived through freezing winters in such woods after he’d witnessed the massacre of his first wife and three children and before he’d been caught. For a split second Brooke had an image of Jews in tattered wool coats stumbling out of the tree line. She blinked to clear her head of the phantom vision.

  She closed her eyes. What had she learned already to advise her clients about this survival-of-the-fittest capitalism? To stay away. Just a few weeks before, someone pitched her firm to buy the K.G.B. photo archives, complete with confiscated photographs taken by disenchanted citizens of tortured gulag prisoners. It was a trove of documentation of profound suffering, and for the electronic rights alone, her team engaged Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg in a bidding war. In her heart, Brooke didn’t care whether Bill or Steve would win; she merely wanted to see this archive in safe hands, so that anxious relatives would finally learn the fate of their long-lost loved ones. But in the report Hoffenbach had sent to evaluate investments here he warned that when you bought something in Russia, it was unclear if it was the seller’s to sell and therefore far from guaranteed that it would stay sold rather than be reclaimed by a previously deceived owner. Since the defunct legal system of the Communist regime was yet to be replaced, there were no laws on the books—and no courts to adjudicate disputes.

  A lawless country, literally. A crack in the plastic armrest snagged Brooke’s sleeve. She released it and tucked a corner of her coat under her elbow. Could she have handled the incident at the customs office differently? Remembering the men’s odor, she brought the pink carnation to her nose. Its aroma smelled potent yet sweet, like the Russian well-wisher who had given it to her.

  An immense housing project popped up on the landscape: stark, cheerless gigantic structures with scores of small windows stretching for miles. Laundry hung on tiny balconies was the only sign of life. Not a park, not a playground, not even a tree broke the monotony of the bleak concrete landscape. It pained Brooke to think that Svetlana or Dr. Rozanova might be living in such dreary buildings.

  Soon, billboards in English lined the side of the road. Sony, BMW, Marlboro, IBM, Reebok, Coca-Cola, and Rolex alternated with dilapidated old houses whose formerly ornate facades of peeling blue or coral paint testified to the opulent past, before the czarist regime had been toppled. Moscow was the new frontier of the Wild West. It was the entry city into a vast land of eleven time zones, whose populations—reeling from seventy years of social engineering gone awry—were ready to consume everything modernity offered. Brooke decided that rather than hold on to her negative first impressions, she would keep an open mind. There must be great ways to reap profits here.

  She dozed off thinking that the deep-pocket advertisers on the billboards might also be good targets for supporting Amanda’s programs for women entrepreneurs. Brooke knew how to pitch those corporations.

  “This is a fucking Hollywood movie,” Jenny yelled, jolting Brooke awake.

  The driver uttered what sounded like a curse. He jerked the gearshift and yanked the wheel to the right. A horrible screech cried the gears’ defiance. The bus lurched to a stop on the curb, sending Brooke flying out of her seat. She hit her knee, then grabbed the nearest pole.

  In front of a green, semicircular building with white stone trim, hundreds of people shouted, their fists pounding the air.

  “What’s going on?” Brooke asked Aleksandr, who sat across the aisle.

  “These are the criminals. Demonstrating.” Aleksandr zipped his leather jacket.

  Svetlana moved to the front of the bus and peered out the driver’s window. “This is Moscow’s central train station.” Her face was pale.

  Aleksandr looked out again. “They’re just talking about what’s going on.”

  “You call that talking? Well, what is going on?” Brooke leaned forward. “What’s Yeltsin trying to achieve?”

  “Yeltsin is our hero of the 1991 coup.” Svetlana wrung her hands together. “He climbed the tank in defiance of Gorbachev—”

  Aleksandr interrupted her. “He will talk to the criminals in our White House. That’s our Russian parliament.”

  Brooke tore open a Wet-Nap and wiped the dusty window. “Why are you calling them criminals? If they are your legal representatives, they can’t be fired on Yeltsin’s whim.”

  He shrugged. “Normalno.”

  Dr. Rozanova came down the aisle and spoke to the driver. He restarted the engine and struggled with the gearshift, while she walked back.

  Brooke sat back, massaging her bruised knee. “Svetlana, would you please ask the driver to turn on the radio?”

  Svetlana reached over the driver and turned the dial, finding a station. As the driver freed the gearshift and rolled the bus into a U-turn, Svetlana cocked her ear, straining to hear.

  “What does it say?” Brooke asked. “What’s happening?”

  Before Svetlana responded, Aleksandr said something sharp to her in Russian. Svetlana slunk back to her seat without looking at Brooke.

  “We’ll take a longer route to the hotel through quieter parts of the city.” Aleksandr unzipped his leather jacket. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Sure.” Brooke let her head fall back. “This is normalno.”

  Chapter Three

  THE VAST LOBBY of Hotel Moscow was like no other Brooke had ever seen. Instead of carpeting, wood parquet, or marble flooring, linoleum in speckled eggshell hues gave the place an institutional appearance. High walls of intricate wrought iron crisscrossed the lobby, partitioning off the elevator bank, a darkened gift shop, and a deserted seating area with worn plastic benches suitable for a subway station. Two armed, gray-uniformed guards stood inside the hotel entrance, two more were planted on either side of an ornate gate leading to the reception area, and two others were stationed at the entrance to a back corridor shrouded in shadows. Guests could not move about the lobby without passing through checkpoints.

  Would she be able to sleep the night in such a place? During Brooke’s childhood, her mother’s talk about Nazis banging on the door in the middle of the night had kept her awake, lying stiff and listening for hard footfalls.

  Right now she needed a shower. The lobby’s musty odor and smell of disinfectant stuck to her skin. But for half an hour, the group still waited with their suitcases, talking in hushed voices.

  Finally Aleksandr approached, waving cards and keys. “The registration manager has assigned two to a room,” he declared. “I’ll read who goes where.”

  “We’ve paid in advance for single rooms,” Amanda told him. “Your travel agency made the arrangements. Twenty-five dollars a night per room.”

  His face dropped. “The manager here decides,” he mumbled.

  “The reception manager?” Brooke’s sympathy for Aleksandr turned into annoyance. “Don’t worry. Amanda, shall we take care of it?”

  “But the manager said you’re not allowed to switch. You can’t! Don’t get him upset.” Aleksandr looked miserably at his watch. “The chef is waiting for me. Yes? I can’t be late.”

  “The kitchen chef?” Brooke asked.

  “He’s important, you know. . . .”

  Amanda placed a hand on Brooke’s arm. “Welcome to Soviet hospitality.”

  Brooke felt she’d been dropped into a hall of funhouse mirrors. “I don’t get it. This is not a third world country.”

  “Will you be my roommate? Just like on our safari trip.”

  “Promise you won’t wake me up at dawn with your chanting and exercises.”

  “Yoga is good for your soul. Time you give it a try.”

  “Se
eking solace in my belly button?” Brooke lifted her suitcase. “I’d rather talk to a shrink.” Of course, she wouldn’t see a therapist, but she envied Amanda and others like her who embraced New Age spiritualism. And yet, Yom Kippur services had failed to give her such solace. The prayers were filled with so much fawning, self-flagellation, and fear of God’s fiery wrath that she had left devoid of the uplifting spirituality she had come seeking. Where was the gracious God from whom her mother expected an apology for what He’d done to His people? A God to be trusted?

  After ushering the rest of the group to the three elevators, Amanda distributed several five-dollar bills among the six guards. They accepted them without the crack of a grateful smile or even stiff words of thanks.

  Brooke dragged her suitcase and Amanda’s into the first elevator that came down and held the door open. As soon as Amanda entered, it swished shut, almost chopping off Brooke’s hand.

  “Is five bucks the standard bribe?” she asked Amanda. “And what does it get us?”

  “It ensures our safety.”

  Or would it make the guards greedy? Brooke’s eyes stung from fatigue.

  On the ninth floor, an old woman with a frayed flowery apron tied around her barrel-shaped middle blocked their way, glaring. Twin gray braids circled her head like a crown. A TV blared in the room behind her.

  “This is the floor matron.” Amanda nudged Brooke. “Got one of your lipsticks?”

  Brooke withdrew a prepacked Ziploc bag. The woman accepted it with an unsmiling nod and disappeared back into her room.

  Amanda led Brooke a few doors farther down the hall and fumbled with the skeleton key in the door. “In most Russian hotels this dezhurnayia is in charge of the room key and keeps a record of your comings and goings.” She pushed open the door and walked in.

  Two cots were set against facing walls. A tattered lace curtain framed a large window. The mirror over the desk was blotchy, and the colored pattern in the carpet had faded into a dull brown. The 1950s-style armoire and the desk with its lopsided drawer were scratched and stained, as though generations of vodka-drinking officials had partied there.

  Brooke took off her shoes and stretched out on one of the cots. It squeaked, and she could feel the wooden board underneath the five-inch foam mattress. “When do we get to meet our venerated host, Nikolai Sidorov?”

  “Aleksandr will let us know.”

  “After he checks with the kitchen chef, of course.” An image of the littered, broken-down bus flitted through Brooke’s mind. “Look, Amanda, I can tough it out if needed. But I’ve been invited to enough countries, and even the poorest ones know how to treat a guest. What kind of hospitality is this? First we get that pile of junk called a bus, and now this place is creepy. It feels more like an asylum than a hotel.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s take care of ourselves, starting by moving to better accommodations.”

  Amanda pinned up her hair and grabbed a bath towel from her open suitcase. The list of necessities she had given the group included good towels, insecticide, and flashlights. “This hotel is in Lenin Hills. It’s a residential area. With the parliament spat, Sidorov felt we’d be safer away from downtown.”

  Brooke sat up. One of the bed’s legs wobbled. “The armed standoff in front of the parliament is far more serious than ‘a spat.’ It’s a civil war about to erupt.” She changed her mind about sharing the tale of her brush with the customs officers. “Who is this Sidorov, anyway?”

  “He heads the Economic Authority and he’s in Yeltsin’s close circle of fiscal advisers. The press touts him as an example of the new breed of Russians.”

  “Corrupt?”

  “He’s considered a leader in market economy.” Amanda went into the bathroom.

  Rain spattered the windows, cutting off the outside world. Brooke lay down. Her glance swept the ceiling, then the corners where the stained and bubbled wallpaper ended. In the twilight of dozing off to sleep on top of the bedspread, she wondered whether she was being watched by a hidden camera.

  It wasn’t yet noontime when she woke up to Amanda stretching, inhaling, and exhaling like a pneumatic door as she moved from plank pose to cobra. Brooke swung her feet off the bed. It creaked, but stayed up. She undressed and stuffed her feet into a pair of slippers. “That was a good nap,” she announced.

  Amanda moved to downward-facing dog. “Join me?” she grunted, her head down.

  “A shower will help me face Russia.”

  When Brooke turned on the light in the bathroom, half a dozen cockroaches skittered over the sink, and an equal number scrambled into hiding on the floor. The small, round toilet seat did not cover the rim of the oblong bowl. There was no shower stall, but water, presumably from Amanda’s shower, glistened on the walls.

  It took Brooke some exploring to discover at the sink a clunky lever that diverted the water from the faucet to a side hose with a portable showerhead. The floor drain underneath the sink collected the waste water. She hung her towel on the hook outside the door, noticing that Amanda had left the toilet paper there also, and stood in front of the sink. Holding the sprayer high, she let the water cascade over her.

  She smelled her own fruity shampoo, glad to be rid of the last of the airport’s scents. She began to hum “I Will Survive,” then moved her limbs, swiveling in a dance while the water splashed on the walls and ceiling. I will survive, she thought, feeling alive as the words of the song cleansed her. She danced some more, singing, and thought she heard Amanda joining her from the room.

  When Brooke had scrubbed the past fifteen hours off her skin and out of her hair, she turned off the faucet, swept the errant water with her feet toward the drain, and toweled dry. She walked back into the room and retrieved her hair blower, the 220-watt one she kept for certain countries, and found the outlet in the opposite wall, too far from the mirror.

  “I see that you are managing,” Amanda said during a pause in a sun salutation.

  “What could be more exotic than camping in Moscow?” Brooke laughed as she fanned her hair. Time to start anew in this country. In fact, as she dressed in a tweed wool suit, she realized how much she was looking forward to seeing Svetlana’s factory and making things happen for that lovely young Russian.

  Chapter Four

  THE BUS STOPPED in a neighborhood of residential buildings interspersed with warehouses. Brooke peered at a decrepit concrete building that seemed to have been left unfinished during Stalin’s days. There was no visible main entrance, and the yard was packed mud, punctuated by black oil spills.

  “The Gorbachevskaya Street Factory,” said Svetlana in a voice that flipped between bravery and self-consciousness. “We have lunch ready.” She added shyly, “The British call it ‘dinner,’ but you call it ‘lunch,’ right?”

  “You know more than I do.” Brooke gave her a large smile. “Will Nikolai Sidorov join us?”

  “Oh, no.” Svetlana swallowed. “He is too important.”

  Brooke pushed aside her bafflement and lifted the tote in which she’d brought Ziploc bags, each prepacked with a lipstick, a vial of aspirin, and a collection of Western hotel amenities. Amanda had told Brooke that it was the baggies themselves that Russian women would cherish the most. They would recycle them until they fell apart.

  Brooke stepped off the bus. In front of her gaped the loading dock, a high cavernous hole in the structure’s facade. Jenny’s diminutive nose crinkled. “I smell piss,” she said, holding on to Brooke’s elbow, her steps tiny and measured lest her four-inch heels catch in the crack of rickety stones.

  The group followed Svetlana along a grimy wall toward a gray metal door fixed in the side of the building, and soon entered a small factory cafeteria.

  A long U-shaped table covered with faded oilcloth took up most of the floor space. The kitchen staff, wearing frayed yet freshly pressed bib aprons, stood behind a chest-high counter, smiling and nodding. Four other women in identical plaid skirts but different colorful cardigans waited by the door with welcoming s
miles. Svetlana introduced them as the factory supervisors, and within moments, Brooke found herself in a round of hugs.

  Jenny distributed large “Attitude Is Everything” buttons, and asked Svetlana to translate the words for her. Jenny tried to repeat the Russian, bringing the staff to laugh at her pronunciation.

  “I’m having fun,” Jenny said, then mumbled, still smiling into the Russians’ faces. “Jesus, look at their teeth. Green, brown, gray, yellow, gold—”

  “Shhhh.” Amanda glared at her. “Some may understand English.”

  Brooke sat down at the table. The rancid air and the sticky oilcloth bore testimony to the thousands of past meals served there. Under the scrutiny of her hostesses, Brooke ignored the tiny gnats flying about and picked up a miniature hard-boiled-egg sandwich smeared with a dollop of fish egg roe. It was something her mother would have served to guests. Brooke put it in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and picked up another. “Good.” She smiled at the servers and was rewarded with even broader smiles. Frank wonder showed in their expressions as they stared at the Americans. Brooke had encountered such adulation when visiting distant villages in southeast Asia, but had never expected to see it in Russia. After all, this was a developed country, with strong industry and science. The roles women played here in both professions and politics often surpassed those in most Western countries.

  Svetlana stood at the head of the table. Not a single strand escaped her coiffed hair, and her green eyes sparkled with the importance of the moment. Brooke admired how seriously she took this responsibility and, to give Svetlana her full attention, declined to hide behind Amanda’s video camera. “Your visit symbolizes the new peace between our people.” Svetlana’s tone sounded portentously grave, Soviet-like, as if meant for eavesdropping ears. “Women have the special compassion to put old grievances aside and find the common denominator of the many things we share, to be friends.”

  Amanda stood and raised a glass. “It’s our privilege, and we hope that one day you’ll visit us.”