Lisa Dickey - Bears in the Streets

I rang the bell, and Vladimir, Natalya’s husband, opened the door looking exactly the same, except that his hair had turned white. He looked at me blankly, and I said, “Hello. I’m Liza, an American journalist who was here ten years ago. Do you remember me?” He smiled, a casually confident little grin that I suddenly recalled from 1995. “Yeah, I remember you,” he said. “Come in.”

Natalya didn’t recognize me, but once she realized who I was, she took me into the living room to show me the photo of Zhenya. It was still prominently displayed, now with a medal he’d been awarded posthumously—the Medal of Courage.

We sat at the kitchen table, which Natalya proceeded to load up with food and drink—a beef-and-potato casserole, salted tomatoes, brown bread, a basket of chocolates and cookies, and shot glasses that Vladimir filled with vodka. We toasted our meeting, and Natalya began to tell me what had changed, and what hadn’t, over the previous decade.

Natasha K., Zhenya’s fiancée, still came to visit, though she was married to another man and had a daughter now. “She still goes down to the cemetery,” Natalya said. “I sometimes see flowers she’s left. Her husband has even taken her there.” She thought for a moment, then added, “She had to move on; I’m not sorry she did. We’re glad she’s happy.”

Zhenya’s brother Denis was 22 now, and I asked whether he’d been drafted into the army. “They can’t draft him because of Zhenya,” Natalya told me, “but twice a year, every fall and every spring, they try to anyway. We call and tell them, ‘His brother died in Chechnya! He’s exempt!’ but they always want us to send more paperwork.”

Denis was a young businessman, buying and selling goods and splitting his time between Kazan and the Moscow suburbs. He was out of town, so we didn’t get a chance to see him, but I got the impression that even when he was here his parents didn’t see much of him. “He’s different than Zhenya was,” Natalya told me. “He’s got his own friends and his own life.”

Time had eased Natalya’s pain. In 1995, she seemed always on the brink of tears, her eyes puffy and red. Now she was able to talk about Zhenya with a kind of warm melancholy, rather than the piercing sorrow of those early days.

“On New Year’s Eve,” she said, “exactly a year after he died, we had more than a hundred people here for a celebration. Everyone came, all his friends, to remember him.” She smiled. “It’s gotten easier. Life goes on. But of course, we miss my Zhenka.”

And now the tears welled in her eyes. “The pain doesn’t go away,” she said. “He was my son.”

Ten years later, as I was making my way across Russia for the third time, I almost couldn’t stand the thought of reaching out again to Natalya. By 2015, her son had been dead for longer than he’d been alive; was I really going to ask her to dip into that well of grief again? The one saving grace was that I now had a cell phone number for her, so at least I wouldn’t just be dropping in on the family again. Even so, arriving in Kazan, I decided to put off the call for a day, and instead took a stroll around the city.

A man on the train had told me I wouldn’t recognize Kazan now, that it had become like a European city. I assumed he was exaggerating, but walking down central Bauman Street, I had to admit he had a point. Kazan was gorgeous. The Italianate-architecture buildings were brightly painted and spotlessly clean, the vibe was prosperous and calm, and scores of inviting shops, museums, and theaters lined the street. Short of St. Petersburg, Kazan is the most beautiful city I’ve seen in Russia.

Like Vladivostok, Kazan had a new bridge—the Millennium Bridge, erected in celebration of the anniversary, with a superstructure in the shape of an “M.” And across the Kazanka River from downtown, a new Palace of Weddings had been built in the shape of a giant cauldron—arguably not the most appropriate choice of wedding imagery.

Downtown, Western stores and restaurants abounded, from Emporio Armani to Cinnabon to Coyote Ugly. Students from the nearby Kazan Federal University strolled around wearing backpacks, popping into cafeterias serving Tatar staples such as dried horse meat, rice pilaf, and a honey-glazed fried dough confection called chak-chak . In 1995, I’d noticed a number of people wearing traditional Tatar clothing of long coats and round hats, but now—at least in the city center—this was a rarity.

Souvenir shops peddled traditional leather slippers next to rows of T-shirts showing Putin riding a bear (slogan: “Not gonna get us”). And quirky museums abounded—the Museum of Illusions, the Museum of Happy Childhood, the House of Entertaining Science and Technology. Perhaps it was the abundance of students, or the influx of cash for the anniversary, but for a 1,000-year-old city (give or take), Kazan seemed unexpectedly young, hip, and fun. I was happy to be back here, even though the story we’d chosen to tell was a sad one.

After breakfast the next morning, I dialed Natalya’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Natalya?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Liza Dickey, the American journalist from ten years ago. Do you remember me?”

“Ah, Liza. Of course I remember you.”

“I’m in Kazan, and I’d like to see you.”

“Ohhh… we’re far from Kazan. We’re on vacation, very far from the city.”

“Ah, that’s too bad. When will you be back?”

“Not until the end of next week.”

It was Friday. Could I stay in Kazan for a whole week or more, for the sake of seeing Natalya? I pondered for a moment, then decided I could.

“So, will you be back on that Friday? Or Saturday?”

A pause.

“Maybe not until Sunday. OK, Liza, good luck. Bye-bye.”

Click .

And that was it.

I can’t be certain, but I do believe that Natalya was out of town. Yet I also suspect she made a quick calculation that she’d rather not relive the story of her son’s death for me one more time.

Eight weeks and nine cities into the trip, Natalya was the first “20 years later” person who declined to speak with me. After hanging up, I felt a swirl of emotions—guilty at having intruded into her life one too many times; stung by her reluctance to talk (though I certainly couldn’t blame her); and relieved that I wouldn’t be prying open that wound again.

Primarily, though, I felt grateful. There was never a guarantee that any of the people I contacted over all these years would speak with me. Getting turned down, though uncomfortable, made it starkly obvious how fortunate I was that it only happened once.

The man on stage at Master Discotec was a multicolored sensation, decked out in baggy pants, a double-breasted purple-striped jacket, and a red paisley shirt. Three female dancers gyrated nearby, wearing black go-go shorts and white button-downs knotted at the waist. “Yo! Yo!” the man shouted, as a funky beat filled the packed hall. “Let’s dance!”

This was Alexei Pavlov, AKA MD&C Pavlov, the godfather of Russian rap. [1] He started out as MC Pavlov, then changed it to MD&C Pavlov, though now the two names appear to be interchangeable. For the sake of consistency, I’ll call him MC Pavlov from here out. A skinny, white, vegetarian Muscovite, he’d taken it upon himself to bring rap to the musically uneducated Russian masses. “People don’t understand rhythm,” he told me in 1995, in Russian-accented, vaguely hip-hop-flavored English. “They only know how to clap on the first and third beat. But they will learn. We’re gonna teach the people !”