Шарлотта Хобсон - Black Earth City - When Russia Ran Wild (and So Did We)

“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.”

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 center, 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 champagne, out of sight. Edik was obviously doing well for himself.

At last, Valya and Masha brought in the rest of the dishes and Edik’s mother announced, “It’s time to start. Sit down, everyone.” She plumped down next to me, touching my shoulder kindly. The Uvarov parents sat next to Emily, the sisters next to them; the 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 departed 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 vest, 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, went on to vodka and helped ourselves to a little more cheese, it occurred to me that Edik had switched roles. 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, but a story in some pleasant French market town. Next to him sat the sisters, Masha inclining her head toward him, Valya glowering. The two mothers gossiped, 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 center, Edik beamed. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his vest, puffing out his stomach. I could see why. A little paunch would suit his new persona.

Edik’s happiness, as far as it could be pinpointed, began with the purchase of that beautiful suit. 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 onto a cobbled street full of Parisians behaving exactly as he hoped Parisians would—café owners sweeping the sidewalk, 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 wellspring of bourgeois medicine. He asked directions of a well-dressed, middle-aged lady.

“Yves Saint Laurent? Just down that street there,” she answered, looking him up and down.

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

“Dress me!”

In October, a boy I had not seen before appeared in the hostel 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 over one of his films, I forget which.

“Come and watch Psycho with me tonight,” he said suddenly.

“No thanks. I hated that film.” I realized 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 stopped at 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 for 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, people still followed the old-fashioned practice of sealing the windows for winter; refitting the double glazing which had been taken out in spring and cramming rags into the cracks. In the hostel, the heating was cranked 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 , the small high casement window, and felt it: a cold, steady wind blowing from the east. The Russian winter was on the move.

“Oh, what a draft,” murmured Ira, stirring. “It’ll snow soon.” She sat up, wrapping her robe 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 kilometers from town, and snow fell overnight.”

I shivered.

“Are you cold? Shut the window, would you? We’ll have flu by evening otherwise.” Ira got up and opened the refrigerator. “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.”