Петр Померанцев - Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible - The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

Yana flashed the girl at reception a quick smile as if to say, “Hey, it’s no big deal, I work in pharmaceuticals, we deal with the FDCS all the time,” but the girl turned away.

Yana felt no panic. She had done nothing wrong, so why should she panic?

The FDCS had been visiting her office regularly over the last few months: the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry, along with illegal drugs, were regulated by them. Men in masks carrying Kalashnikovs had raided the accounts department. No big deal: that happens regularly in Russia, to every business—when the organs want to find something, anything wrong in your taxes or your forms and registrations and extract some bribes.

Yana had never worried about it. Her company had done nothing wrong. And if they had done nothing wrong, what did she have to fear? It would be fine.

Yana followed the men from the FDCS to the front door. They looked awkward in their cheap suits in the up-market gym. The main one was sweating, but he had calmed down once he realized she wasn’t putting up a fight. But why should she put up a fight?

Outside were two drivers. They had parked their old matchbox Soviet cars in front of her new Lexus so she wouldn’t be able to make a getaway. It made her smile; it was like in some cops and robbers TV show.

One of the drivers walked up to her. He looked her up and down.

“It’s nice to arrest decent looking people.”

“I’m being arrested?”

“Well… held.”

“I need to call my boyfriend.”

“No phone calls,” they told her.

They let her drive her own car to the FDCS headquarters. They sat in the back and let her drive. It was all very casual. She could sense she was entering a different world, one where the rules were different, where other people would tell her what to do. But she didn’t feel panic. Just strange. She was trying to work out what the rules of this new world were. It felt curious. It tingled.

The office of the FDCS was in the north of town, a large gray Stalin building like an elaborately carved gravestone with the heraldic sign of the Kremlin’s double-headed eagle at the entrance. The doors were heavy to push open. Inside were long office corridors and lots of men in polyester suits. They seemed to hush when they saw Yana, eyeing her as if she were someone terribly important.

They took her to an office room with a table and two chairs. They fussed over her: Did she want some tea? Something to eat? She asked for a chocolate bar, and they ran off to the local store to buy one. Her lawyer was there and told her to make calls. Yana phoned Alexey, but he wouldn’t pick up. So she texted instead: “I’ve been arrested.” And then a smiley face.

“You’d better ask him to bring you some clothes,” said the lawyer.

This struck Yana.

“You think I will be here a while?”

“Not too long. We’ll sort it out.”

Then the detective came in. His name was Vaselkov, which sounds like the Russian word for “daisy.” He had a face like a bulldog.

“We are charging you with a particularly serious crime,” said Vaselkov.

“Which one?”

“Read this,” he said and handed her a folder of ninety pages or so. “And then sign that you have understood everything.”

Yana looked at Vaselkov. He stared into nowhere like an automaton. She opened the folder. Inside were photocopies of her company’s accounts and transactions. Bills for buying and selling. Page after page of them. Just their accounts and bills. What they did normally every day. She couldn’t understand. What was she being charged with?

“You have been trading in diethyl ether,” said Vaselkov.

Diethyl ether was a chemical cleaning agent. Yakovleva’s company had built its business around it, importing it from France and selling it on.

“Yes.”

“It’s an illegal narcotic substance. You are being charged with the distribution of illegal narcotics.”

Some misunderstanding, thought Yana, just some misunderstanding.

“But we have a license for it,” answered Yana, almost laughing. She was being charged with trading what she traded. Since when was a cleaning agent used in every factory a narcotic substance? It didn’t make any sense. She had been trading in diethyl ether for over a decade. It was like telling a chocolate bar factory that chocolate was illegal. Or a jeans factory that jeans were illegal. She looked at Vaselkov, but he just stared back dumbly.

She continued reading through the charges. The paperwork was just her everyday accounts; that’s what the men in masks must have been taking from the office. In the folder, page after page said the same thing: “bought 150 liters of diethyl ether, sold 100 liters of diethyl ether.” It was what she did every day. What was she being charged with?

“If you have familiarized yourself with the charges, please sign,” said Vaselkov.

She signed, but she didn’t understand. Everything was starting to spin. Her synapses couldn’t make sense of what was going on, a short circuit in logic. Chairs seemed lighter, walls flimsier. The world around us is made up of the association of words to things, and hers was buckling. She kept on trying to square the logic in her head but kept slipping and falling whenever she tried.

She was still spinning as she walked into the corridor. Alexey was there. All she could see were his eyes. They steadied her. She moved toward him to embrace him, but someone pushed her on. “This isn’t some dinner date,” someone said. Alexey handed her a plastic bag with sneakers and jeans in it. Again someone pushed her to move on. She was losing control. She started crying. This time they put her in their own car, a broken-down old Lada.

They drove her to Petrovka 38, Moscow’s main police station. Outside it is a lovely old nineteenth-century palace, with a grand triangular portico like on a Greek temple, standing on the corner of one of the tree-draped boulevards right opposite the Galeria restaurant where gold diggers meet oligarchs and the Bentleys are quadruple-parked onto the pavement.

Yana was pushed inside Petrovka 38 into a hive of cops. She had never seen so many cops in one place, men and women, young and old. But all somehow pasty and semolina-like, as if they were all distantly related or from one village, and all wearing blue uniforms against the seaweed-green walls. They were leading criminals back and forth and into cells. You could tell they were criminals: drunks and youths with smashed-up faces, gypsy girls and junkies. Everywhere the sound of locks turning, keys jangling, doors slamming. Yana kept thinking of the Count of Monte Cristo. She was taken into one room and then another. She felt like she was becoming a parcel, passed from one cop to the next. Turn around! Bend down! Put your hands to your head!

Shoes off—belt off—socks off—panties off.

Body search.

She was crying all the time by now. All the time. Couldn’t they see she wasn’t a criminal? Every cop she looked at, she tried to catch his eye. Couldn’t they see she didn’t belong here among all these criminals? Wasn’t it obvious? Maybe if they could just see she wasn’t meant to be here, it would change something? Everything?

But they just looked at her as if she were a parcel. In the morning she had been a businesswoman driving a Lexus in a frilly white dress. Now she was a parcel.

They put her in a dark cell. There were three bunks. She lay there for a while, stunned. When she turned to the wall, someone called through the door: “Turn around so we can see you.” The next day they would take her to court to decide on bail.

“The court will sort it out,” thought Yana. “The court will sort it out”: she had grown up with that phrase. Courts were places where things were sorted out. She assumed she would get bail. She had no convictions. She had done nothing wrong. Why wouldn’t she get bail?