Moscow Noir

by Natalia Smirnova

  Yanka’s generosity of spirit, which so impressed me at first, gradually began to disturb me. It was difficult, if not impossible, for me to share a perspective in which the world appears to be acceptably, if not optimally arranged.

  I became suspicious of Yanka’s self-sufficiency. I understood perfectly the origins of this feeling, since I’d had the opportunity to glimpse from afar the reality which the girl had inhabited for a long time already—the reality of her beloved theater, where she was highly regarded, with its well-established, intimate, exclusive company of actors. The same company was home, as well, to Igor; an amicable, handsome, easygoing guy who had a promising career ahead of him. In short, this world was so harmonious that at a certain moment it began to feel absolutely artificial to me.

  Then I understood that I was merely deceiving myself. All I really wanted to do was expose the futility of affluence—so that I would see one advantage in my own deprived and uncomfortable existence. The advantage of authenticity.

  A not uncommon compensatory trick.

  Actually, all lives are equally real or unreal. The quality of everyday private and public loathsomeness in one of them affords no metaphysical bonuses to others.

  It’s just that for some people, everything in life works out. For others, it doesn’t. And you can’t draw any moral lesson from it. Other than: Grief to the vanquished.

  I looked at my watch again and frowned. I couldn’t do anything about my habit of turning up early for every appointment, whether important or completely inconsequential; even appointments with people who never show up on time anywhere in their lives.

  And really, what’s the hurry?

  “But you can always try—”

  “Look, Felix, Yanka was a very gregarious young woman. She could have met up with anyone… Plus, it’s been over a year already.”

  “Maybe you’ll think of someone else.”

  “Oh, I don’t know… Well, there was Pasha from Moscow—she met him shortly before that, I think…”

  “Who’s this Pasha guy?”

  “Uh, what’s his name—Korenev or something. Just an acquaintance. A long time ago, maybe five years ago, he went to Petersburg, and then, I guess, Yanka saw him in Moscow.”

  “So he went back to Petersburg?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “What did Yanka say about meeting him?”

  “Oh god, I don’t remember…”

  “Do you have any idea where he lives? A phone number?”

  I walked around the square, stomped around on one spot, and sat on the damp stone. I started to smoke, paying close attention to my movements. I remember very clearly how one time, when she was watching me smoke, Tatiana mentioned that I had the gestures of an ex-convict. She didn’t know anything at that time, though. She didn’t know anything yet.

  Feeling a moist caress on my face, I raised my head, but it was just the spray from the fountain.

  Tin cans rolled around under my feet; empty beer bottles stuck up everywhere.

  Suddenly, a dozen or so guys in orange pants sprang up out of nowhere and fell upon them. They quickly tossed the clanking bottles and cans into black plastic bags and hurled them into the maw of a toy tractor.

  The struggle for cleanliness continued, apparently in an effort to live up to the name of the place—Europe Square.

  Gleb, I remembered, was moved to laughter at the inscription on a plaque by the fountain: As a sign of the strengthening friendship and unity of the countries of Europe, the administration of Moscow endeavored on such-and-such a date to create the ensemble of Europe Square.

  There was not much to be said about the friendship between the countries of Europe and Moscow—but most touching of all was the clear sense of identification of the bald mayor of Moscow and Co. with the European Union (immortalizing this was just as logical in Phnom Penh as it was in Moscow, in Gleb’s opinion). We discussed the sacred conviction of our fellow citizens that they live in a brilliant European capital—as evidence for which they usually cite the number of high-end boutiques. Gleb, a dyed-in-the-wool “westernizer,” said that the sincere incomprehension of the difference is the clearest evidence of the difference itself.

  Having traveled from one end of the continent to the other and lived in London, with a multientry Shengen visa, Gleb considered himself to be in a position to judge and compare. As an indigenous Moscow resident, he just didn’t like it enough; and he categorically refused to recognize it as a part of Europe. His basic argument was the flagrant disproportion of the size of Moscow to the human being, a point that was difficult to counter.

  It was rare that anyone wanted to argue with him. I have hardly ever met a person with such sound and penetrating points of view. Also, his talent for expressing them with charm and panache, both verbally and in writing, made Gleb the soul of any gathering, and the star of liberal journalism.

  Liberal, in his case, didn’t refer to a position regarding civil society, but was a synonym for measured restraint. As a matter of fact, for Gleb, this restraint stood surrogate for political views to a certain degree—he wrote equally well, and with equal conviction, in both servile and seditious (and, naturally, glossy) publications. The logic of his ideas was so unassailable that even in the preelection hysteria, the most patriotic bosses didn’t find fault with the author on the subject of his loyalty. Indeed, Gleb possessed the talent (without a tinge of sycophantism) of making every boss like him. I still remember back in school, where he and I became friends, how I looked on in amusement as the slightly wilted schoolmarms of a certain age fell involuntarily in love with the straight-A student.

  Gleb began publishing at the age of fourteen; at fifteen he had already made it into print in the prestigious union-wide Soviet journals. At twenty he became the head of a weekly magazine, where I too—after trying to make a living as a homegrown punk rocker and from various meager supplemental earnings—got my first steady and meaningful employment (though I was never officially on the payroll).

  Many people back then (and not just friends) said that I was a fine writer. In addition to everything else, I worked a lot, carried out all the assignments from the higher-ups, and got everything in on time. Nevertheless, both my articles and myself (no matter the subject, genre, or depth of pathos) were greeted (and published—if they agreed to publish them) by all managers with some vague initial skepticism, as though they were suppressing (and, later, no longer trying to suppress) the instinct to shrug their shoulders. When I asked point blank one day why they hadn’t printed any of my reviews for more than a week, and some fat-assed jerk of a deputy editor muttered in slight exasperation, “You always pan everything, but, you know, people watch those movies and read those books; you just turn up your nose at them!”—I finally decided that it was time to call it quits.

  And I did. For two years. Though I firmly believe this had nothing to do with journalism itself.

  Of course, in a frenzy of self-searching, I acknowledged (according to an elementary logic) my own mediocrity. But to be honest, I never believed it. And I don’t think it was only due to self-love. I knew I was good at what I did. The fact that no one needed it was another matter altogether. It was precisely my product that they had no need for. Someone else’s—Gleb’s, for instance—of the same subject and quality would be snatched up immediately.

  I never understood why. I ultimately came to the conclusion that there was no reason. There are no rules, and no laws. It’s just that some people make it in their jobs, while others don’t. And this work has no objective value. More than that—nothing has objective value.

  He should’ve been here already, I thought, looking around and trying to match a person with the voice from the phone yesterday—but none of the men there were paying any attention to me, and one of the two girls sitting right across from me frowned slightly and looked away.

  “Dmitry?”

  “Felix?”

  “Yeah, Dmitry, hi. I called you earlier and you told me you saw Pasha l
ast week.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I came down from Petersburg just to meet him and I can’t find him. People say he just dropped out of sight; no one seems to know where he is.”

  “Uh-huh, that’s what I heard too; that he, like, disappeared, about a year or so ago. So I called around without much hope of finding him; but what do you know, I got through right away. He’s in Moscow. We got together at that… what’s it called, by Kiev station? You know, Europe Square. We used to hang out there a lot. We used to cross the river and drink beer on that slope, on the grass, with the view…”

  “But you don’t see him much these days. Is that right?”

  “No, we don’t hang out at all anymore. Almost two years now. When Pasha got out we cooked something up together, but we got busted pretty fast. Somehow, we never saw each other after that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘got out’? Did he do time or something?”

  “Well, yeah. For something incredibly stupid… A few joints, can you believe it? What bullshit—getting sent up for something like that is truly an art. There was a raid. And he hardly ever smoked. I shit you not, man, they dragged him in purely to meet their quota. For a few measly sticks of weed… but that’s how it works here, right? They can throw you in jail for anything they want. Article 228, section 1: acquisition and storage. The most they can give you is three years, I think—and that’s what they slapped on him. I don’t know why—the judge probably didn’t like his face or something. He did two of the three. Actually, it’s really not that long; but the pen did a number on him. He kind of jitters and jerks a bit when he moves now. See, Pasha always gets, you know, screwed over, somehow. Things never go his way. If you get mixed up with him, you’re gonna get caught red-handed, no matter what. Not because he’s low-down, or a cheat—on the contrary, he’s always honest; in fact, he’s way too honest. He’s a real German, you know—a pedant. Just has bad luck, that’s all. I got burned once because of him, and I started to avoid him after that.”

  “What else happened to him?”

  “What didn’t happen to him? I’m telling you. He never had a real, bona fide job; never had any money. He wrote for the papers—but he was never on any payroll. All his attempts at business failed. He wrote some kind of novel—same thing. Every publisher he contacted about it—eleven in all, I think—turned it down. Then, six years later or so, one publisher took it on. A minuscule print run; they paid him less than a thousand bucks. No one took any notice of it, naturally. Though Pasha himself said that’s par for the course here in Russia.”

  “Why did you decide to get together again, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “He left behind some documents for that company we registered two years ago. And I wanted to see him again—see how the years have treated him. I just wanted to find out, you know, if his karma had taken a turn for the better.”

  “So?”

  “Well, same as ever. He’s gotten really weird… he’s drinking, I guess. Or shooting up. Not too good, anyway, from what I could see. But I tell you, I did enjoy seeing him. In the sense that, you know, nothing has changed. Because sometimes you think, you know, everything’s okay for me, things are working out, money’s piling up. You’ve got everything you need. And then suddenly something unexpected happens—just out of the blue. And, boom, you’re totally broke, your pockets are empty. Or the meter’s ticking. And so I took a look at Korenev, and, you know, I was convinced: if someone has bad luck, it’ll always be that way. And if your life has always worked out well, most likely it will continue that way…”

  “Do you know a Gleb Mezentsev?”

  “A little. Through Pasha.”

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “No…”

  “He was in a car crash. Two months ago.”

  “Whoa… what happened to him?”

  “He’s in the hospital.”

  “Hurt bad?”

  “Pretty serious.”

  “Hmmm… I guess that’s how it goes.”

  “Pasha and Gleb were friends, weren’t they? I’d like to see Pasha, to talk to him. Could you give me his phone number—the one you reached him at? I’m looking for him, but everyone says he disappeared…”

  “His number? Sure.”

  I tossed my cigarette butt away, folded my arms behind my head, and stretched. A girl sitting directly across from me glanced over and then mechanically turned away. I just as mechanically slid my gaze above her head, a bit to the right: slid it along the concave façade of the Radisson, along the pseudoclassical colonnade of the station, along the bent stainless steel pipes in the center of the fountain, which were supposed to represent the horns of the bull who abducted Europa, according to the Belgian sculptor. A gift, you understand, to the city.

  They’d probably be ashamed to erect something like that in the middle of Brussels.

  A shaggy black dog gulped voraciously from the fountain. Little children waded in up to their knees. The girls sitting across from me finally stood up and walked by me, passing to my left toward the bridge, their heels clicking along. I thought to myself that if I had been here with Dmitry, like in the old days, an exciting little encounter with them would have taken place—at least a 70 to 80 percent chance of it.

  I can’t say that I really envied his garrulous nature. His ability to get along with anyone, anywhere, at any time, and talk about whatever came up could be tiresome. But his very communicativeness bewitched me sometimes—in its universality and inexplicability. I couldn’t figure out what attraction Dmitry held for people of all ages, social backgrounds, and IQs. He didn’t have, say, Gleb’s brains. He wasn’t especially charming or handsome. He didn’t have the rudeness that is so attractive to girls. On the contrary, Dmitry’s manner and appearance were characterized by a faint, slightly intentional goofiness. A person without much education and wit, he played the role of an enfant terrible. And in this niche he enjoyed condescending but indubitable success, even when he behaved like a complete idiot. Everyone teased him, but at the same time they sought him out and called him incessantly (often without any reason whatsoever), and gathered around him in remarkably large, motley crowds. He affected people like a beautiful woman or free drinks: in his presence people began to chatter loudly, guffaw, and swagger. Guys gave themselves over as drinking buddies, girls as lovers. From the day he was born, Dmitry hadn’t had to lift a finger to find either business partners or bedfellows—in spite of the fact that the guy never stayed loyal to either.

  I was no different from his other friends. I was glad to drink with him, prepared to lower my standards of intellect and wit, and was forgiving about minor and not so minor character flaws; I generally took on a protective role, even when our social and financial status suggested the exact opposite…

  I thought about our spontaneous encounter last week. There was something very strange, and at the same time very predictable, in the repetition of the classic scenarios of the old days—two people with a bottle on the grassy slope across from Europe Square. Right above the station we saw a golden slash through the gray clouds. Dullish rays fell in fan-shaped sheaves on the shimmery heights of the construction site, its signal lights winking on the straining arms of the giant insectlike cranes. (When we used to sit here back then, there weren’t any cranes.) Below, from the Rostov embankment, a steady hum rose up, interspersed with bellowing horns and the gunning of engines. A Miller beer ad the size of a small building hung above the square, where everything ended for me…

  We sat and drank, like before—both of us understanding perfectly well that it would never again be like it used to be. And then it dawned on me that Dmitry had started this phony demonstration of solidarity to prove to himself the absolute and fundamental inequality between us; two people who don’t differ in any fundamental way, neither superior to the other, yet one of them receives everything and everyone without asking, and the other is shunned and doesn’t even get what he has honestly earned. And neither one is
to blame for this. And this is nobody’s fault. No one is to blame for anything—actually, there is never rhyme or reason to anything whatsoever.

  It’s all just the way it is. For no reason. Just because. Just—because.

  I looked up and met someone’s searing gaze. A fairly unpleasant one. It belonged to a burly man who had suddenly materialized in front of me; someone of about fifty with the broad, crudely chiseled mug of a charismatic antihero. The fellow was walking toward me—uncertainly at first, but with every step more and more purposeful. I realized right away who it was. I was about to get up when the guy stopped abruptly, shoved his hand inside his coat, and, staring at me from under his brow, clapped a cell phone to his ear.

  * * *

  Kostya from the Criminal Investigation Department called; he was a great resource for Felix here in Moscow.

  “Hello?” Felix answered in a quiet, curt voice, not taking his eyes off Pasha Korenev.

  “You’re trying to find out about Dmitry Lisin?” Kostya asked cautiously, his voice full of concern.

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you able to see him?”

  “Yes. Yesterday.”

  “Well, that’s lucky,” Kostya snickered. “Just in time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I happened across his name this morning. I thought of you right away. The report on the explosion on Sirenevy Boulevard came in from the eastern precinct.”

  “What explosion?”

  “You haven’t heard? At 2 Sirenevy Boulevard. It looks like a gas main burst. Several apartments were destroyed, three people died. One of them was Lisin. He lived in the apartment right above the one that blew up.”

  “A gas main?” Felix repeated slowly, looking at Korenev, who sat serenely in the same spot.