Black Earth City Page 5

  Yet he was not to be thwarted. At the beginning of winter he went to Moscow to stay with the aunt he’d been counting on, a cheerful lady who had been widowed twenty years before and recently had found love with a chubby Pole. While she was in Krakow, Edik stayed in her flat, crammed in between her belongings: nineteenth-century armoires stuffed with dried fish and old newspapers, pickle jars and plastic bags. The whole was coated with an inch of greasy dust that made Edik smell like an old man. He returned to Voronezh at weekends to be fed and washed by his mother, and to boast about the big city.

  ‘It’s quite true what they say about Moscow being just a big village,’ he’d say airily. On Edik’s lips there were few worse insults. ‘A huge, filthy village! But you know I see it as a stepping stone.’

  So it was that quite soon he came to visit us in the hostel. He hummed and giggled; he obviously had something to tell us.

  ‘How’s things, Edik?’

  ‘Oh fine, fine … I’ve got a lot to do organising my visa,’ he said, studying his nails.

  ‘Where to, Edik?’

  ‘Well, I’ve had a job offer –’

  ‘You’re going abroad!’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I’ve got a job in the leisure industry in Malta – at the Royal Malta Hotel.’

  Edik’s preparations were elaborate. He fussed about his suitcase, his English, his clothes. He visited everyone to ask if there was anything they needed from the West, a kindness which was misinterpreted by some who took pleasure in thinking up the most implausible and complicated errands: ‘My mother asks if you could bring her a tin of Maltese grapes, for her lumbago.’ ‘My great-great-uncle was a Knight of the Cross – find out about my inheritance, would you, Edik?’

  There was a party for him in the hostel the evening that he left. He perched on the edge of a bed, clearly in a state of wild excitement, though he sighed wearily when Viktor opened another bottle of vodka and said, ‘How uncouth. In Malta they won’t believe me when I describe it …’ Poor Edik. Even on this triumphant day, we couldn’t resist teasing him.

  ‘So tell us about Malta, Edik.’

  ‘Well, it’s an ancient Mediterranean civilisation, very cosmopolitan …’

  ‘What’s the population of Malta, Edik?’ someone asked in a casual voice. ‘About five hundred thousand, isn’t it?’

  ‘Five hundred thousand!’ someone else spluttered. ‘But that’s half the population of Voronezh. About the same number as live on the left bank!’

  There was a pause and everyone started laughing.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Edik sniffily. ‘It’s quality, not quantity.’

  But someone sang, ‘Leaving the small town, heading for the bright lights –’ which made us laugh even more. Eyes were wiped and beds were thumped. Still giggling, we accompanied Edik to the station, sliding over the slushy platform, installing him in his coupé to Moscow. We kissed him and gave him one last shot of vodka (so he’d sleep well), and waved goodbye to his pale, tense face framed by the train window with its two little embroidered curtains. And when the big green train had finally lumbered out of the station, someone said, ‘Well, there he goes, off to civilisation,’ and we were forced to sit down on a nearby bench and stamp our feet to gain control of ourselves. Viktor pinched himself so hard he had a bruise for a week. But the girls weren’t allowed to sit for long, because the cold is a danger to the ovaries, and so we returned to the hostel.

  *

  Much later, Edik described his stay in Malta to me. Coming out of the airport building on a late autumn day, he was astonished by the heat. In Moscow it had snowed some weeks before; here it was still late summer. He took a gulp of salty Maltese air and thought to himself simply, I’ve made it.

  The hotel had sent a car for him, driven by a laconic character who did not respond to Edik’s attempts at conversation. So Edik sat quietly in his new cream mac with his briefcase tucked under his feet, and relaxed for the first time since he’d left Voronezh. Before they had left the urban sprawl that enclosed the airport, he was asleep.

  When he woke more than an hour later, they were still winding their way through industrial estates, roundabouts and half-built tower blocks. ‘Almost there,’ said the driver finally, turning down a brand new road. They drove under a ranch-style gate, proclaiming ‘Majestic Tourist Complex’. On the right was an area of waste ground pegged out with orange twine; up ahead a digger swivelled, depositing sand beside a concrete structure. The driver swerved around a pile of building materials and accelerated towards a white block with a sign: the Royal Malta Hotel. Here Edik had been employed as a night porter.

  The next afternoon, a coachload of off-season holidaymakers arrived. Edik watched as they spilled rowdily into the foyer to be issued their room keys and a list of rules: ‘It is forbidden to consume alcohol in the lifts and corridors. Guests are responsible for clearing up their own vomit. Any damage to room fittings is not covered by the package and must be paid for separately …’ He went and changed into his hotel uniform – a cheap white shirt and black polyester trousers – and looked at himself in the mirror. After a moment’s thought, he took out a small, sky-blue silk scarf and tied it around his neck, tucking it under his collar. Then he took up his post in reception.

  For a month he watched drunken tourists retching into the ornamental fountain. They’d been promised sun and sea, but of course at that time of year there was not enough of the first and too much of the second, and the drinking took on a reckless edge. They thought Edik was hilarious. When he spoke his careful English to them, they hooted. The more generous gave him tips which made him blush. In his time off, he wandered through the souvenir shops and sunbathed when he could, although it gave him a rash. Needless to say, he never found tinned Maltese grapes, nor the mythical inheritance. Nor did he find the civilisation he was looking for.

  When he returned, it was some time before we heard from him. His aunt returned from Kracow with her Pole, and there was no room for Edik in her flat. He came back to Voronezh and worked for a few weeks on an EU project, interpreting for two Germans, although he complained about them, saying, ‘The Germans have a problem with taste.’ Then, without saying goodbye, he disappeared to Moscow to stay with another cousin.

  *

  It was already spring the next time I saw Edik. He was picking his way though the slush in the streets, wearing imported spectacles and the blue overcoat of an international financier. He had an air of having returned from a better world.

  ‘My God, Edik, look at you!’ I exclaimed.

  But he pretended not to know what I was talking about, saying only, ‘How scrawny you’ve become. You look terrible! Come and see the Uvarovs this evening, we’ll feed you up.’

  Edik hadn’t lost his way with words. Yet at half past six Emily and I were at the Uvarovs’ door, holding a cake called Occasion and a bottle of Cagor, the communion wine, which stained the glasses purple. It was considered rather a delicacy in Voronezh.

  ‘Entrez, girls!’ Mrs Uvarov said, throwing the door open. ‘It’s Paris in here tonight. Edichka has come fresh from Paris two days ago, he’s brought it all with him.’

  ‘Paris? What was he doing there?’

  ‘Oh, you know he’s working for a bank now, they sent him on a business trip. Don’t ask me what he does there, it’s far too complicated for me. Sit down, girls, it’ll be ready in a minute.’

  In the sitting room the large round table, covered with a white cloth, was piled with Parisian gourmandise. There were plates of charcuterie and cheeses, and, in the centre, a tin of foie gras on a plate of ice. On a side table stood four bottles of glistening French champagne. I slid our bottle of Cagor behind the other bottles, out of sight.

  At last Valya and Masha brought in the last dishes and Edik’s mother announced, ‘It’s time to start. Sit down, everyone, let’s begin.’ She plumped down next to me, touching my shoulder kindly. The Uvarov parents sat next to Emily, the sisters next to them, in front of the piano; th
e seat beside the bust of Plato awaited its occupant. At last Edik appeared; he stood for a minute with one hand on Plato’s head and surveyed the table with a restrained smile. He was wearing a dark blue suit, with a trouser crease that detracted just once from the vertical, near the shoe. Underneath the jacket was a white shirt and a sky-blue silk tie that fell in one voluptuous fold before vanishing into a waistcoat, buttoned rather high. ‘Well, eat up,’ he said. ‘Of course none of this French stuff can really compare with good Russian produce …’

  As we exclaimed and toasted, polished our plates with bread and filled them up again, moved on to vodka and helped ourselves to a little more cheese, it occurred to me that Edik had switched roles since I first met him. In fact he had moved into a different play. Chekhovian characters don’t go to Moscow, certainly don’t return dapper and prosperous. No, this Edik came as the rich uncle in a comedy – not a Russian play at all, a story in some pleasant French market town. Next to him sat the sisters, Masha inclining her head towards him, Valya glowering. The two mothers gossiped together, rolling their eyes at Edik – they were making a plan. Mr Uvarov, crushed by long exclusion, was trying to put in a few practical queries – length of flight, cost of Parisian Métro – but Edik was halfway through telling the girls a story. I heard him say ‘… and they saw Idiot on my passport, and let me straight through! I didn’t declare a thing!’ A burst of laughter swamped all talk; Edik’s mother roared, clutching her bosom, Masha flung her head back, even Valya giggled. In the centre, Edik beamed. He loosened his sky-blue tie and unbuttoned his waistcoat, puffing out his stomach. He was right. A bit of weight would suit his new persona.

  *

  A few days later, Edik described his first day in Paris to me, and it became clear as he talked that his happiness, as far as it could be pinpointed, began with the purchase of that beautiful suit. He was not met at the airport on this trip. He arrived at Charles de Gaulle in the early morning and thought at first he would go to his hotel and have some breakfast. But when he stepped off the bus in the centre, onto a cobbled street full of Parisians behaving exactly as he hoped Parisians would – café owners sweeping the pavement, boys running with baguettes, old ladies walking small dogs – he began to explore. Soon he found himself on a wide avenue – the Champs Elysées.

  Edik walked faster. There was a particular shop he planned to visit near here, a destination, the very wellspring of bourgeois medicine. He asked directions of a smart, middle-aged lady.

  ‘Yves St Laurent? Just down that street there,’ she answered, looking him up and down.

  The doors of Yves St Laurent rotated silently and Edik entered a large, hot, minimally decorated shop; two assistants approached him, unsmiling, from opposite corners, to ask if assistance was what he required, or perhaps something else. And Edik took a breath, gestured to himself from head to toe, and uttered the two words he had prepared.

  ‘Dress me,’ he said.

  · 5 ·

  The Triangle Player

  I once believed that

  Books are made like this:

  Along comes a poet

  Gently unlocks his lips and

  The simple soul at once bursts forth in song.

  God save us!

  But it seems in fact

  Before they sing

  They tramp for days, restlessly rubbing up blisters …

  Vladimir Mayakovsky,

  ‘A Cloud in Trousers’, 1915

  In October, a boy I had not seen before appeared in the corridor. He was drawing fiercely on the last of a cigarette, and I noticed a scar in the shadow of one of his cheekbones. He started to talk about Hitchcock; we disagreed about one of his films, I forget which.

  ‘Come and watch Psycho with me tonight,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘No thanks. I hated that film.’ I realised as the words came out that I’d never even seen it.

  ‘Oh,’ said the boy. ‘OK.’

  ‘I mean … For some reason, I just –’

  ‘Hated it,’ he supplied. ‘Well, see you around then.’

  When he had disappeared down the stairs, I asked Ira who he was. ‘Oh, that’s Mitya,’ she said. ‘Good-looking, isn’t he?’

  Half an hour later, I dropped in on the Uvarovs on the way to the market. Mrs Uvarov and Masha were cooking a stew for Mr Uvarov’s birthday, standing over it and filling it with wishes. ‘Come in, Charlottochka, come in. Now you can stir with us … I’ve asked for a distinction in my exams and the sweetest little pair of red boots I saw on Ulyanovskaya. Mama’s asked to be able to get into her black dress.’ Masha pushed the spoon into my hand, but when I shut my eyes I could only think of the ridiculous way I’d talked to that boy.

  ‘So, what did you wish?’ they asked together.

  ‘Oh – in England we think that if you say your wish out loud, it won’t come true –’

  ‘No!’ Mrs Uvarov looked horrified. ‘Then what shall I wear for our dinner?’

  ‘Tell us what you wished for, Charlotte,’ said Masha. ‘Or perhaps I should say who?’

  ‘Oh, nothing like that … I wished for – strawberries.’

  ‘Strawberries!’ they squawked in unison. ‘But it’s October!’

  *

  A still, bright autumn had given way to the unsettled weather that heralded winter. For a week, the city lay under low cloud; it rained, then blew. In a few of the wooden houses down by the river, they still followed the old-fashioned practice of sealing the windows for winter: refitting the double glazing which had been taken out in spring, cramming rags into the cracks. In the hostel, they cranked the heating up another five degrees; we flung the windows open and wore T-shirts. Gusts of tepid air blew tatters of plastic across the hostel entrance, stopped, then swept them back again.

  Everyone is affected by the changes of season in Russia. You feel a little anxious, and yet a general lassitude prevents you from identifying the cause; you are irritable and yawning, but alert to the smallest sounds, which seem unbearably repetitious. One afternoon I fell asleep and woke just as the light was going. Ira and Joe were dozing on Ira’s bed, and for once the corridor was quiet. Something had altered. I opened the fortochka and felt it: a cold, steady wind blowing from the east. The Russian winter was on the move.

  ‘Oh, what a draught,’ murmured Ira, stirring. ‘It’ll snow soon.’ She sat up, wrapping her dressing gown more closely about herself. Joe slept on. ‘I saw Mitya in class. He said he’d been at a friend’s dacha last week, only thirty kilometres out of town, and snow had fallen in the night.’

  I shivered.

  ‘Are you cold? Shut the window, would you? We’ll have flu by evening otherwise.’ Ira got up and opened the fridge. ‘He asked after you.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much.’

  ‘Ira –’

  There was a laugh in her voice. ‘He said, How’s Charlotte? And I said, Fine … He says he’s going to drop in.’

  It isn’t only me, I’m sure, that associates the arrival of winter with impatience.

  *

  The first time Mitya and I went out, we got tickets to a reading by Garkusha, punk poet, dancer for the band Auktsyon and something of a cult figure for young Russians. Wet early snow had been blown in on the east wind the day before, hardly settling on the ground, but picking out the city in white. It coated the east-facing sides of trees and buildings, the 3-D lettering above the shops, and one of Peter the Great’s rotund cheeks.

  The yard outside the theatre was packed with boys hoping for spare tickets. They were in their best gear, smoking papirosy, Russian cigarettes with a long tube of cardboard for a filter. Most of them were no older than sixteen. Slouched against the walls and chewing on their cigarettes, deadpan as cowboys, they looked adorable. We squeezed past them and into an auditorium wedged solid with people.

  ‘Over to the left,’ Mitya said in my ear. He took my hand and pulled me over to a corner where two guys were leaning against the wall and rolling a joint. ‘Priv
yet, Lapochka, how’s life? Hello, Horse.’

  They shook hands and the Horse looked up from the joint and grinned. He had a strange, knobbly head, hairless apart from a little blond fur in places, bulging brown eyes, a nose like a potato on the end of a stick, ears that seemed to have gone to seed, and a smile of great charm.

  ‘A gift for Garkusha,’ uttered the Horse, gesturing at the joint, and Lapochka laughed and waved his arms about, as far as he was able in the crush. He was small and excitable, dressed in a ragged suit.

  ‘There’s nothing so educational as good grass. Re-education of the people is our aim. In the great struggle for the enlightenment of the people, we shall be tireless,’ he gabbled.

  ‘Et cetera,’ spoke the Horse.

  ‘Precisely,’ agreed Lapochka. ‘Et cetera, and so on.’

  Garkusha entered and the hall went off like an alarm clock. A gangly figure in white, he stood in the centre of the stage looking vaguely about him. Flowers landed at his feet, followed by a bucket. There was a surge from the back that knocked all the air out of me; a lad behind was yelling Gark—! A familiar figure appeared on the stage – the Horse, who gave Garkusha the joint and loped off again. The crowd exploded with joy. Garkusha, tucking the gift behind his ear, pulled a pile of tiny pieces of paper from his pocket and began to read his poems.

  I was finding it hard to concentrate on the performance. Mitya and I were squashed so close together, his face was no more than six inches away from mine. As the crowd surged against us, I was acutely aware of his arm around my back, holding me away from the flailing arms behind. He turned towards me and for a second I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead he just said, ‘Shall we leave?’

  I blushed. ‘OK. I can’t hear a thing.’

  The cold made me gasp as we left the building. The temperature had dropped and outside the theatre the snow, half-melted and then frozen, drooped and swagged from the railings like icing. Lacy frou-frou dressed the statues and the trees. Mitya and I fell silent. It was as though we had stepped into the set of a musical, the still air humming with romantic expectation. We both spoke at the same time, and stopped.