Moscow Noir, page 22
I glanced at my watch and walked down the street, slowly making my way over to a fountain that looked like the remaining evidence of the recent shower; I wanted to turn it off. Some people had already sat down, sticking backpacks and plastic bags under their behinds, on the steps of this stunted amphitheater. Others peeled off their jackets or simply shook the water from their soaking heads; this hot spot for the young filled up quickly. I remembered that I had waited for Yanka here; I remembered that, stretching my hood as far as it would go and trying to light up underneath it, I had regretted my choice of meeting places. When the St. Petersburg girl had finally arrived, I took her to the new pedestrian bridge, where we blended in with other couples.
Together with them we staggered through the stuffy glass passageway from one side of the bridge to the other—I pointed with my finger, explaining that this was probably the only place in the city where you could see, more or less up close, four of the seven Stalin skyscrapers at once. Nodding at the MID building with a coat of arms on it, I explained that according to the original design it was to have been the only one without a spire. At the last minute Stalin announced that it looked too much like an American skyscraper that way. It was too late to change the design—the building was almost finished; but who would be the one to contradict Stalin’s wishes? So they ran a gigantic metal rod through the top floors, and placed a ridge-roofed tower on top of that, painted to look like stone. After Khrushchev unmasked the cult of personality, he was reminded that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to remove this idiotic detail of Stalin’s gloomy legacy. Nikita snorted and ordered that it stay right there, as a monument to the tastelessness of the generalissimo.
On the left side we moved onto a path that led along a high, grassy slope past the Turkish embassy toward the Borodinsky Bridge. Europe Square was now below and opposite us.
I like this place.
Here, the river and the open space in front of Kiev station leave a large expanse open to view. Here, you can really see the sky, which is rare in this capital city that squeezes you between enormous stone slabs. The view that spreads out before you here—the Gothic silhouette of the university on a distant bluff to the left, the palisade of mighty pipes on top of the Radisson, the spire of the Hotel Ukraine perpendicular to layers of lilac clouds—is one of those typical and utterly urban landscapes that create the face of a city, which Moscow, monstrous and vague with its eroded individuality, so lacks.
That’s what I said to Yanka, trying to show her the city from its most presentable perspective, trying to be amusing and casual, not pressuring her. I knew my role and my place. When I met her a year before in her native Petersburg, I invited her out of politeness (but not only that, not only …)—I invited her (that is to say, them, her and Igor) to “visit us in our capital with no culture,” promising to show them around and entertain them. Of course, they didn’t jump at the opportunity—not because they had anything against me, but because in the absence of any other attractions in the city, the prospect of hanging out with me was not sufficient inducement to overcome a distance of six hundred kilometers. Then, suddenly, Yanka found a reason—the wedding of a college friend. The event was to take place over several days (the newlyweds belonged to circles that had money to waste on lavish parties). But the other guests weren’t really to Yanka’s taste; and that’s when she remembered me.
Exceedingly pretty, with a slight, charming unevenness in her features, and with that rare combination of intelligence and spontaneity, that balance of self-assurance and sincere goodwill that you sometimes find in people from very well-to-do families—smart, prosperous, and affable; that was Yanka.
During those three days, I mobilized all my meager resources of joie de vivre and sociability. My guest was as open and friendly as ever; she listened attentively and meekly tasted the shark at Viet-Café, but on the whole she seemed fairly indifferent. As I later became convinced, people who feel that they are equal to life’s demands don’t experience an excess of curiosity about the range of its phenomena: they already know exactly what they need from it.
I had absolutely no chance of ever landing on the list of things that those people wanted from life. Back then I hadn’t abandoned my rock and roll efforts. Officially, I was supposed to be a journalist, which is how I presented myself (I was a freelancer). I was also acquainted with progressive, and sometimes even high-profile people; and I was, after all, a Muscovite. Theoretically, I belonged to practically the same circle as my female contemporary from the Petersburg theater crowd; the sense of insurmountable social and psychological distance was completely unfounded.
I felt not only a distance, though—I felt an abyss. In our relations, which seemed on the surface to be relaxed, there was something reminiscent of a conversation in the lingua franca of a Norwegian and a Malaysian who sit side by side on a flight in a transcontinental Boeing; however well-disposed they might be toward each other, they are still from different worlds. At that time, a little over four years ago, I had only begun to guess about the nature of that difference.
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 last 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.
