Natalia Smirnova - Moscow Noir

“What’s with the gloomy face?” he asked as we were coming out of the underground crossing on Butyrsky Street. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“No, but I can tell from just looking at you that you think it is. Honestly, though, you can’t blame me for the fact that you didn’t have a single manuscript in your file! That, my man, is just plain bad luck.”

It was like this: the head of our university was approached by the organizers of a certain literary prize, who had requested a few examples of the more interesting manuscripts that the student body had produced. All of this (reading and submitting the text) had to be done in a matter of hours, because the deadline for novels and stories had almost arrived. They chose Tatchuk, myself, and one other student. They checked our files, but mine was empty. Unlike Tatchuk’s, which was stuffed full of work. So I missed my chance. A month later, I found out that my roommate was a nominee for nationwide fame, and a tidy little sum of money to boot.

The 29-K trolley pulled up to the stop and we squeezed into the coach, filled with scum and lowlifes.

“Cut it out,” he said, hunching up his shoulders squeamishly, shoving away the people crowding into the trolley. “If you want, I can help you get a job at Profile . Let’s go there together tomorrow, I’ll tell them you’re a better man for the job,” he suggested.

“What about you?” I said.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get a job in Business Primer , they’re offering a better salary there.”

While others spent months looking for a job, he always had a choice between four or five attractive offers. All he had to do was cross the threshold of an editorial office, and the woman in charge went wild. “What a sweet young man!” He possessed qualities that piqued the sexual interest of young ladies and mature matrons alike: a sharply defined jawline, the playful brow of a caryatid, the sweet eyes of an angel, with the muscular hands and other features characteristic of a dominant male. If you only knew the way the girls at the university stared at him adoringly, burning with desire to give themselves to him.

But the newly won position had no value for him, and he ignored the obligations it entailed. In fact, he never stayed on with the same publication for longer than three or four weeks. Yet each time he found himself another job without the least bit of effort, as if Moscow employers were constantly creating new vacancies just for him. It was as though he had some kind of aura about him, like some sort of mythical deer with jewels pouring out of its hooves. Indeed, I owed several good jobs to his lucky charm.

We got out at 2 Goncharny Proezd, passed the bookstore named, quite idiotically, Page Turner, past Pharmacy and Optics, one right after the other according to phonetic logic, and they were soon behind us.

“Let’s get something to eat,” he said, nodding at the neon sign over the grocery store where young writers went to buy ingredients for breakfast and dinner (individually wrapped crab sticks and a packet of mayonnaise, occasionally allowing themselves some disgusting treat like liverwurst, or a string of glossy, suspiciously natural-looking pink hot dogs). He bought a pound of choice ham, half a pound of Dutch cheese, canned olives, and two bottles of Chilean red wine.

“What do you think?” he said as we were leaving. “Isn’t it about time I started writing a new narrative, a story at least? I haven’t submitted anything in a while, and spring is just around the corner—exams are coming up. I’d like to do a narrative using the stylistic techniques of Nabokov and combine that with the magical realism of Márquez. What do you say?”

“How about the sexual candor of Miller,” I couldn’t resist suggesting. “Maybe you can work that in?”

“No, not Miller,” he said, flustered. “Intimacy is too vulgar in his writing. I would go for more refined love scenes. Nuanced, partly hidden in shadow. All of that I screwed her stuff you can save for your own writing. That’s just your speed,” he laughed. “The pornographic fantasy that never becomes reality.”

When did this begin, and why did it always happen this way? At college they called us the twins from Novoshakhtinsk. We came to the capital together, and the only time we weren’t with each other was in the bathroom. We had a deadly addiction to one another.

At last we came to our dwelling—a pale, carrot-colored, sooty, seven-floor building. You there in your faraway, big-time America, can you even imagine our Literary House, packed full of budding talents? Nope, it’s only possible in Russia: a special university dedicated to teaching young people how to put words together, minding their congruity of course. Though invisible, the nearby presence of the Ostankino TV tower can be felt here in strange ways. They say that magnetic waves coming from that accursed needle are to blame for suicidal urges among the locals. In the case of our dormitory’s inhabitants, the waves acted as a pied piper, enticing unrecognized literary genius into the realm of comfortable nonexistence. I think the whole thing is ridiculous. Magnetic fields have nothing to do with it.

Here we were in our room. An old-fashioned but functional refrigerator of a place, it sported fresh wallpaper, thick maroon curtains (that became a menacing blood-red when the light penetrated them at sunset and sunrise), a new hardwood floor, and prints of van Gogh and Bosch paintings on the walls that had been cut out of magazines by the room’s former tenants.

Having scarcely entered, he sniffed the air and said, “Hey, how many times have I told you not to smoke in the hallway outside the door? You know I can’t stand it, and you do it on purpose!”

“I was smoking by the staircase,” I replied. “But you can’t forbid other people from lighting up wherever they want. They still smoke at the end of the building by the window.”

“It wouldn’t hurt them to follow your example. Let’s rip off the No Smoking sign from the college bathrooms! We could hang it up next to our door. I’ve dreamed of getting one of those signs for ages. Hey, you could snatch one, couldn’t you? You’ve always been good at stealing random junk. Remember those books you stole from the school library? I didn’t tell on you; I took pity on you then. Why should I ruin your life? I thought. It may seem funny now, but back then it was a criminal offense. You should keep that in mind. What would have become of you if you’d been caught? Now you’re a student at an elite college in the capital, but you could have ended up in prison, a TB case coughing up blood… What are you laughing about? Cynic! You think you’re off the hook now? You think that because no one’s going to come after you now that you can take a deep breath and relax? What a fool you were, two years ago. What made you do it, anyway?”

“A thirst for beauty,” I said seriously. “I loved those books with an almost sensual passion. The gold lettering, the leather binding. And when I ran my hand down the page, I could feel every letter, like Braille to the blind.”

“You’re supposed to love women with sensual passion,” he chuckled. “Honestly, I think people like you have a knack for crime in your genes. You have the same lowly origins as the majority of people we went to school with. But you’ve done all right for yourself, you haven’t become a plebeian like the thugs back home.”

He’d had my number for half a year now, because I was guilty of childish mischief for which there was a very adult punishment. But was this the real reason I was so dependent on him?

It had all started three years before in the world of shabby apartment blocks, at our school in Novoshakhtinsk. It was a world of severe, crudely carved faces, a world of thieves, violence, and the ceaseless toil of a miner’s existence.