Hotel Moscow

by Talia Carner

  “History, fiction, biographies, philosophy. Some poetry. These books are our most precious possession.” Still sitting, Olga stroked the tomes’ spines. Pride resonated in her voice. “For thirty years, Viktor and I hunted for books in back alleys and in the homes of unemployed refuseniks.”

  Refuseniks. Jews who had demanded the right to leave, but while being denied exit visas, lost their jobs and all attached benefits. “Were books unavailable?” Brooke asked. “Russians are so highly educated.”

  “If people wanted something, our government made sure to hold back its production. Scarcity makes citizens needy and vulnerable. It makes them dependent on the government’s favoritism and selective hand-outs.”

  Viktor raised his glass in silent salute, and Brooke, imitating him and Olga, sipped from hers. The almond liqueur tasted delicious.

  Olga pushed a plate of dumplings toward her. “These are stuffed with chopped lamb. Eat, eat.”

  “Pirozhki,” Brooke said, accepting the familiar food her mother adored. She took a bite. “Delicious!” Pointing at the old TV set, she said, “I hope you won’t consider me rude, but is there an English-speaking station where I might hear some news?”

  Viktor found the BBC, but the commentary was about domestic British topics.

  “How about CNN?” Brooke asked.

  He surfed the channels. CNN came on in Russian.

  “Isn’t it supposed to be in English?”

  “You get the censored Russian version here. Only a couple of European hotels get direct broadcast.”

  “This must be the European version, in this time zone, but dubbed,” Brooke said as she looked at the pictures of curiosity-seekers who ambled around the ring of police, barbed wire, and steel roadblocks. “In New York, in a report issued probably by Yeltsin’s camp, it said that the parliament deputies wanted to keep their jobs only because they preferred to live in Moscow, in large luxurious apartments, with chauffeured cars and generous salaries.”

  “No! These are lies.” Olga banged her fist on the arm of her chair. “They stay in the White House for the highest moral values of our country: law and order. They would not spit on the Constitution.”

  “Sorry,” Brooke said. “I know it’s a touchy subject.”

  “Only the lies are. But now you are here to learn firsthand.”

  Not for long. “Except no one tells me anything. I have been unable to get either English TV or newspapers.”

  Olga looked surprised. “The Moscow Times is in English.”

  “For two days our escort, Aleksandr, has been saying it’s too dangerous to go downtown to get it, yet Viktor and I just drove through the thick of it.”

  “Danger is relative,” Olga said, hooking her gaze into Brooke’s eyes.

  Brooke surreptitiously touched her Star of David. She wouldn’t be around to help in the dangerous investigation and must let Olga know out of Viktor’s earshot. “I need to speak with you—”

  Olga raised her hand. “Now we eat. No topics that interfere with digestion.”

  Brooke felt as if she were deceiving Olga as, for the next hour, the Russian introduced her to homemade blinis, their golden surface spread with sour cream and sprinkled with black caviar, and cabbage soup thick with kohlrabi root and pieces of lamb, and flavored with plums and onions that were first fried in lard.

  “You’re an incredible cook. What a feast,” Brooke said, thinking that this meal must have also cost a bundle of rubles. “How long did it take you?”

  “The neighbors helped. We do that for one another.” Olga pushed toward Brooke plates of pickled eggplants, sliced sausage, and sturgeon in cream. “Eat, eat. It can’t possibly be healthy to be so thin.”

  Brooke laughed. “You sound like my mother.” Imitating Viktor, she tore a piece of brown bread and dunked it into the remains of her soup, then wiped the bowl clean. She tasted the herring, the salty farmer’s cheese, and the cucumbers marinated in vinegar. Finally, she patted her stomach. “No more.”

  Viktor spoke little during dinner in spite of Brooke’s efforts to engage him in conversation about his work at the Academy of Sciences. He chewed slowly. Suddenly, as if awakened by a thought, he waved his fork in a warning gesture. “Be careful. They tap your phone and search your room while you’re out. Commit even a minor violation, and they’ll use it against you when it suits them.”

  Brooke looked at him. “Suits them? Who are ‘they’?”

  “Same as before. Officials have the same jobs, just new titles. The K.G.B. still operates, but under a new name.” He shook his head and rose to clear the dishes.

  “Let me help.” Brooke grabbed some plates.

  “He’ll only stack them. It’s rude to wash dishes while guests are still in the house,” Olga said. She wobbled to the buffet, where a polished-brass samovar hissed, and poured hot water into tall, clear, tea glasses, each resting in a silver-handled holder, the kind Brooke’s parents still used daily. “I inherited this samovar from my mother. Look.” Olga pointed at several embossed seals.

  “Seventeen eighty-eight?” Brooke studied the seal, its edges eroded from years of polishing. “Over two hundred years old.”

  “My mother got it from her grandmother.” Olga’s eyes were wistful. “This is how we pass on our Russian values. Mothers carry the traditions of home and family. By handing over the samovar, they make sure their daughters do so, too.” She opened a door in the buffet below, took out a set of matryoshka nesting dolls, and presented it to Brooke. “I want you to have this. Another heirloom. We are all products of our mothers, and carry their joys and sorrows inside us.”

  “Yes.” Brooke’s throat contracted. “Don’t we?”

  The finely painted egg-shaped wooden doll of a maiden with a long, blond braid was beautifully done. Unlike other matryoshka dolls Brooke had seen, hastily painted in broad brush strokes in primary colors, this one was exquisitely detailed by a fine artist. The outside figure carried a wooden pail in her right hand. Behind her stretched a scene of meadows.

  Brooke twisted open the doll. The figure nesting inside carried a loaf of bread, and the scene behind her was of a forest. The next doll held a washboard, and the one after her, a crock of cheese. “Oh, Olga. It’s beautiful.”

  “I’m glad to give it to my new American friend. It represents our women: delicate, survivors, curators of home and country. There isn’t much we can do to reciprocate your generosity, coming here to help us.”

  Brooke cringed. “Well, it’s really a very short visit. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “Not so soon!”

  Just then the record ended, and Viktor returned from the kitchen. He stepped to the piano and glanced at the open music sheets. “Rimsky-Korsakov?” he asked Brooke. “Or Schubert?”

  “Which of you plays?”

  “Both of us.” Olga lifted the top of the bench and searched the music sheets. “Fantaisie for four hands?”

  Moments later, buoyant, enchanted notes tumbled from the couple’s fingers. Brooke watched them, envious of their close relationship, their shared history and values.

  And their talent. She couldn’t help thinking of her own failure at mastering the piano. The long hours she practiced, hating every moment of it, had stretched into years of frustration when she tried to please her father. When one teacher despaired, her father hired another; someone must be able to tease the music out of his tone-deaf Bertha.

  At thirteen, along with puberty, Bertha became conscious that she wasn’t merely a replacement for her father’s lost children and her mother’s dead family, that she was more than their entrusted carrier of memories. She was her own person! She stopped the piano lessons and changed her first name. She hadn’t been aware yet that within a few years, at Berkeley, she would fail her parents on a grander scale.

  Brooke was so carried away by her thoughts that only when Olga and Viktor played the finale of the piece did it bring her back to reality. She clapped. “Bravo. Bravo.”

  “You should come to o
ur weekly musical evening.” Olga turned around on the piano bench. “Viktor also plays the violin.”

  Brooke watched him walk to the bedroom. “A good husband and a friend,” she said.

  “Yes, and I don’t beat up my woman,” he called from the door with a twitch of a smile.

  Brooke laughed at his unexpected humor.

  Olga didn’t join in. “That is one more of our national tragedies. Wife-beating is a shameful nonsecret. Women here are punching bags for their drunken, angry men. At least before perestroika, women who had their bones broken too frequently could complain to their husband’s supervisor at the factory or appeal to the local party official. Now even those measures are gone.”

  Brooke picked up the matryoshka and opened the fifth doll. The figure held up a red apple. Behind her, a river tumbled over rocks. Brooke twisted the doll open to reveal the smallest wooden matryoshka, the size of an olive pit, who was waving a spoon. Behind her was the opening of a tunnel.

  “We Russian women often must dig a tunnel with nothing but a spoon,” Olga remarked. “I understood your message about the Economic Authority. I’ve taken steps already.” She looked around as though concerned that Viktor might hear. “I asked Svetlana to get their files for me.”

  “Will she?” Brooke asked. The poor young woman had been through so much this week. Even without the shock, would she be up to the task?

  “She has a friend who has access. But getting the files is merely the first step.” Olga gave a rare smile. “I am thinking bigger.”

  Brooke studied her. “What are you planning?”

  Olga broke into a cough that convulsed her body. When the attack stopped, she said, “It’s time I run for a seat in parliament. If Yeltsin gets his way, he’ll announce new elections in December. There’s a lot that needs to be done for our women.”

  Brooke felt small next to this feisty woman. Her own challenges seemed insignificant and self-indulgent. She hugged Olga. “That’s wonderful.”

  “I keep complaining about how women’s interests are underrepresented in the Duma, our lower house of representatives. I’m determined to do something concrete. I have some supporters.” She tapped on her cigarette packet. “As much as I disagree with Yeltsin’s methods, I admit that he was right that more competent, educated, and democratic people should fill our parliament.”

  “Amen.”

  Olga lit a cigarette. “There’s a lot you and I will be able to do if your hunch about the Economic Authority’s correct.”

  Brooke winced. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  “So you’ve said. But you were going to participate in my symposium on Tuesday!”

  “I’m sorry.” Brooke felt her face redden. “Life is calling me back.”

  Olga’s eyebrows pressed together. “You can’t leave yet. I’ll need your help with the investigation.”

  “I’m so sorry to disappoint you.” Guilt clutched Brooke’s insides. “But we’ll keep in touch—”

  “How? By phone? We can’t trust it.” Olga scrambled back to her feet. “Come with me.” She stepped into the kitchen and returned within a minute with a covered dish.

  “Where to?”

  But Olga was already in her tiny foyer, where she removed Brooke’s coat as well as her own off the hook.

  “Where are we going?” Brooke asked again.

  “You’ll see why Russia must join the twentieth century—or we go back to the eighteenth.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  THE APARTMENT BUILDING was quiet tonight. On Saturdays, some neighbors went visiting friends. Svetlana could steal private time in the communal bathroom. She needed to think. And she needed to cleanse herself from Sidorov’s filth that had burrowed since yesterday under her skin like maggots.

  She removed her oversize laundry tub, vanna, from its hook high on the wall and placed it on the old checkered linoleum. She would never bathe in the claw-foot tub, whose fifty-year-old yellowed enamel had chipped down to the black cast iron and was covered with layers of grime. She brought two pots of boiling water from the kitchen, poured them into the vanna, and then added as much warm water as she could get from the faucet.

  “Attitude is everything,” Jenny had said. Svetlana threw in petals from two wilted roses she had taken from the Hotel Moscow dining room, and lit two stubs of her remaining scented candles. When she turned off the one bare light bulb, the warped and moldy plaster on the walls disappeared into the shadows.

  Slowly, she lowered herself into the water, savoring its feel against her skin. In the short vanna her legs crossed at the ankles, and her bent knees dropped to the sides. She leaned back and wriggled her toes as warmth crept up her body. Brooke had given her a soap bar. The name, Lux, was as delicious as it smelled, and Svetlana would save the satiny wrapper to scent her lingerie and sweaters drawer. She closed her eyes.

  “Attitude is everything.” Tonight, in her tub, she would think only happy thoughts, like an American woman. Not a single thought about Sidorov. She would think of Natasha, her girl who was smart and, despite the malnutrition, healthy. And, as she had told Dr. Rozanova, she was happy about democracy, even if it turned out to be different from what she had expected. But Dr. Rozanova wanted her to take part in making new dreams happen. What did she stand to gain? Saving her cooperative and the livelihood of the women who trusted her. What did she have to lose? Everything, including her life.

  To fend off the chill in the air, Svetlana used a plastic bowl to splash water over her back and arms and leaned back again, leisurely cupping more warm water and pouring it over her shoulders and chest. Because of democracy, she had been given the chance to meet the Americans, and they turned out to be more wonderful than the magazines had written. Important women like Brooke and Jenny made her feel she was one of them. That, too, was democracy: Everyone was equal—more equal than under communism. Under communism, important people made sure that everyone knew they were above others by reducing the others to little ants.

  Rubbing the soap over a Georgian loofah, soft from years of use, Svetlana created mounds of foam over her breasts and upper arms. The candlelight reflected in the iridescent bubbles. She lathered the tufts of hair under her arms and rinsed well. Ads in Western magazines advertised deodorant. She wasn’t sure how that product did the job. Did one spray stop the body’s production of perspiration? Everywhere, or just on the patch of skin that was sprayed? True, American women emitted no body odor. Interestingly, according to the magazines, American men, too, used deodorant after their daily gym exercises. A couple of times she had stood close to Judd Kornblum and sniffed surreptitiously. He smelled good.

  What would it feel like to breathe in the aroma of a fresh, clean, masculine body? What would it feel like to have a handsome man hovering over her, lowering himself tenderly onto her, like she’d seen on TV’s Simple Maria?

  Was it only yesterday that Nikolai Sidorov had violated her? Last night she had scoured herself to remove the muck and had douched against a chance of pregnancy. Even as she scrubbed again now, the despicable, vile act still dwelled under her skin. But most businessmen behaved this way. That was the reason she hadn’t applied for a job as a secretary, where she could use her language skills. All Help Wanted advertisements stated clearly what was expected: “Long legs. No inhibitions.”

  Maybe now that the factory was ruined and Sidorov held her responsible, she would have no choice. Lots of women got used to giving their bosses the personal attention they demanded.

  No, Svetlana chided herself. Her thoughts were transgressing into a negative attitude. She should think of happy things, like this instant, treating herself to a luxurious bath with an American soap. Reaching down, she touched her raised mound, the curly, honey-colored hair stirring softly just below the surface of the water. The velvety folds flared, opening with hunger. Heat spread through her veins, mounting, surging. A tight knot contracted deep inside her, bearing downward, demanding relief.

  Svetlana arched her back and stretched a
rigid leg over the rim of the tub, opening herself, allowing deeper access, blood rushing to her nerve-endings, her breath coming in short gasps. Then time stopped and hung, motionless, waiting for her. Her insides quivered in sweet tremors.

  She barely caught her breath when Sidorov’s face popped out of the shadows behind the candles and hung in the air, leering at her.

  The banging on the door made her climb out of the tub. She was no closer to deciding what to do about Dr. Rozanova’s request.

  On the other side of the door, Zoya grunted and rattled the handle. Any moment, the latch installed after previous locks had been broken would dislodge.

  “Just a minute!” Svetlana called. She dropped her weekly laundry into the vanna. The warm water, seeped with the remnant of the soap’s fragrance, was too precious to waste.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I WAS PLANNING TO visit my friend, Vera, after you left,” Olga told Brooke as they trekked around the block, Olga carrying her covered plate of delicacies. “But I know how blessed she’ll feel to meet you.”

  Holding onto Olga’s elbow to steady her, Brooke fixed the beam of her flashlight at the partially paved sidewalk. The night had turned cold. As Olga described Vera’s encounter with the mafia, Brooke’s skin tightened, and dread crawled to her scalp.

  Still, she was unprepared for the sight of the woman in bed, her abdomen exposed. Vera’s burned flesh glistened like raw meat. Brooke fought to keep her face composed, but the pain she felt was physical. She became conscious of every stitch of her own clothing: her bra was too tight over her rib cage, the waistband of her pantyhose cut into her skin, her scarf choked her.

  Her fists closed, nails digging into her palm. The word beating had been repeated so often when Bertha was younger that it had lost its visual effect. Now, it blasted in its full meaning. This was what torture looked like. This was a version of what her parents had endured. In a split second, her mind’s eye conjured a Nazi guard beating her mother with a stick—a senseless, brutal thrashing that had left her mother limping for the rest of her life. Brooke saw her father being hung with his arms tied backward until he fainted, the reason for the surgeries on his shoulders over the years. This was why her mother had always railed about Americans’ naïveté, about their shutting themselves off from the truth while seeking hedonistic pleasures in moronic TV entertainment. They watched Fiddler on the Roof and thought they knew what a pogrom was.