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

“We can’t help you here, babulya , forgive us,” the receptionist said firmly.

I was beckoned into the doctor’s room at last, where she tapped my chest and asked me staccato questions. When she’d finished, she sighed and sat down.

“Half the population of this city is suffering from dizziness,” she said shortly. “They’re not eating enough fruit and vegetables, they’re not sleeping properly, their nerves are in a state of agitation, they’re exhausted. It’s the life we’re living these days. Just try and take better care of yourself, all right ?”

A final example of inflation fever: Arkady had left Voronezh before I arrived, headed for Moscow, and found a job in a brand-new casino. I heard how he was working as a croupier, how he was promoted to one of the tills. Once he came down to visit, a lanky man with indecisive features. He described the casino to us matter-of-factly, the owners in three-piece suits, the customers with their blonds, security who gave a guy brain damage the week before. (The man had been messing about with the croupier, a girl. If his crime had been anything more serious they’d have killed him.) He seemed to me to be unimpressed by it all.

Impressed or otherwise, however, it made no difference. For Arkady was a gambler. One quiet afternoon, when the owners were out, Arkady put eight thousand dollars from his till into a bag, walked to a different casino where no one knew him, played—with a look on his face as though he was slipping in and out of sleep—and lost it all. The whole episode was caught on closed-circuit TV. Then he disappeared.

Eight thousand dollars was not a great deal for the owners of a casino in Moscow, particularly then, when Russians flocked joyfully to the tables as though the times demanded it. But no casino owner would let an employee rob him and go unpunished. The owners searched, and when, after a few weeks, they did not find Arkady they sent someone to drop in on his parents in Voronezh.

“You’ll have to pay us back,” he told them. “Plus interest.”

Arkady’s parents were elderly. They’d moved to Voronezh when they retired and now they were living on their pensions. So his father found a job as a watchman, and told the casino owners that he would pay them back, a few dollars a month. Don’t worry, he said, you’ll get your money.

But the casino owners were not happy with the arrangement. Again they sent their man to Voronezh.

“I said, you’ll have to pay us back,” he told the old couple. “Not some miserable few dollars a month. All of it, now.”

And he smashed up the place a bit, so that they understood. They sold their apartment and paid off the debt. Then they rented a room in a communal apartment, where they live still. They suffer from the lack of privacy and the cockroaches, but they suffer most for the loss of their son. Arkady has never reappeared, although there was a rumor that he’d gone to Amsterdam; some say he’s still in Moscow, hiding; others that he’s dead.

In February I started going out again at night. It was dark by half past four, and once the offices had emptied, the streets were soon quiet. The atmosphere in the city had changed since the autumn, when Mitya and I used to walk all evening. Now there were stories of muggers, and a friend of ours had been set upon by a group of drunken teenagers—young boys—and beaten up. I carried a tiny canister of Mace and only told Emily where I was going. Russians would just have made a fuss and tried to stop me.

One night with my hood up and a scarf covering half my face against the cold, I ran out of the hostel gates, through First of May Park, and across Petrovsky Square. Just past the statue of Peter the Great, I turned down a steep little alley and arrived at an iron door. My knock sounded too loud; I restrained myself from looking over my shoulder. An eye appeared at the peephole, and in a second filled with the jangle of padlock and bolts I was suddenly certain I’d walked into a trap. Then Mitya opened the door, grinning.

“Look at this,” he said instantly, pulling me inside. “There’s a Jacuzzi—Chinese potato chips—and here, food for cosmonauts!”

Mitya had taken on the post of night watchman in a commission shop to earn some extra money. The job made him the envy of many; not only was it unusual to find part-time employment that actually paid, but he could spend all evening inspecting the strange and exotic goods that appeared on the shelves. There really was spacemen’s food, for example: vacuum-packed yellow tablets like dog biscuits, which described themselves as “High-nutrition sustenance for a gravity-free environment.”

“People buy them for the vitamins,” said Mitya gleefully. “Let’s try one.”

“No—”

“OK. Let’s try the Chinese potato chips then. I didn’t think they ate potato chips in China.”

“For goodness’ sake—” But he was already ripping open the packet. I don’t know why I felt so nervous. It was partly that the flutter of fear as I ran through the park hadn’t quite left me. But I was also wary of the owners of this shop, men who wore creaky leather jackets and looked their customers up and down with leaden aggression before serving them. They’d been drinking before they left for the night; a couple of empty brandy bottles and three smeared glasses stood behind the counter, along with two or three videos: Casanova in Russia, Schoolgirls’ Excursion. I couldn’t shake the thought that they were still there, watching Mitya make free with their property. Then I realized: the shop smelled of them, of old cigarettes and leather, overlaid by a powerful waft of aftershave.

The owners were making money that winter; they had all the right friends, who were also making money. The basic business plan was simple. You imported cheap goods from China, Poland, Romania—anywhere with an affordable economy—and you pegged the prices to the dollar. People still bought them. What else were they to do, if they needed a winter coat and Soviet goods had disappeared from the shops?

There was a thrill in this random, brightly colored array. Banana-flavored liqueur, books on acupuncture, marbled chocolate cakes in shiny wrappers, purple suspender belts, and marital aids in the shape of Elvis Presley—no one had ever seen anything like it. They poured in off the sludgy February streets, out of their fusty, cracked-Formica offices and the neon-lit crush on the trolleybus that stank of mildew and sweat; they crowded in to stare at the goods and to ask, timidly, if they might inspect a pair of boots made in India with a rubber logo on the ankle saying “Kikkers.” And in return the thug lounging against the shelves would narrow his eyes and expel a lungful of smoke in their direction, wondering whether, really, it was worth the effort to stretch his arm even the six inches necessary to fulfil their request.

“What are you looking like that for?” said Mitya, taking my hand. “Don’t worry, they’ve gone for the evening. Sit down, have some vodka.”

“I don’t want vodka, thanks.”

“All right, have a beer. Look, here’s what I’m going to get you as a present.”

On the counter was a pile of women’s underwear in various colors. A daisy with huge eyes and a pink dress decorated the packages.

“They’re made in North Korea,” Mitya told me. “I bet you don’t know anyone else who wears North Korean lingerie.”

I laughed. Mitya went on. “God, they’re going to be jealous!