Keith Gessen - A Terrible Country

“And where will I stay?” I said. Theoretically I could have stayed in the back room, but this would have meant walking through my grandmother’s little room to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. And anyway I didn’t feel like getting kicked out of my room for a week.

“This room will be fine for Dima,” I said. “He’ll like it.”

“Are you sure?”

And on and on it went. One afternoon I came home from the Coffee Grind to find that my grandmother had set the table for three. She’d brought out her nicest plates and even the half-empty bottle of red wine that was still in the fridge for special occasions. I had no idea how long it had been there and we had not yet made any progress in finishing it. “What’s this?” I asked.

“Dima is coming today,” said my grandmother proudly. “Do you know my grandson, Dima?”

“I do know him,” I said, “because he’s my brother, and he’s coming on Thursday.”

“Well, what’s today?”

“Monday.”

“Are you sure?”

That day I put a note on the fridge that said “Dima arrives Thursday,” but my grandmother took it down. “I know when Dima arrives,” she said. So we continued having these conversations until he was finally there.

Dima was my brother. We had emigrated together, acclimated to America together, we had attended our mother’s funeral together, and then we had helped my dad move out of our house together. We had had many arguments, but he was my brother; he had always been my brother. What else does one build a life out of if not people, and time? People multiplied by time. But people can change. Circumstances can change. Money can change—money can change everything.

He came in the late afternoon, off the British Airways flight from London. My grandmother had spent the entire previous day cooking. She made borscht and kotlety and kasha. Dima in general ate very little, he seemed to exist on an inexhaustible fund of nervous energy, but when he came in, with his rolling suitcase, in a beautiful gray coat and expensive leather boots, he immediately agreed to eat. This pleased my grandmother immensely. “Dima!” she said. “I am so proud of you!”

“Thank you, Grandma,” said Dima.

“You are a really impressive person!” my grandmother insisted. She was beaming. Here was Dima! “We heard you on the radio!” she said.

“Thank you, Grandma,” Dima said again.

“If only you’d get a haircut,” said my grandmother. Dima’s hair was a little on the long side. “And come see me more often!”

“I’m in London right now.”

“What?” My grandmother hadn’t heard him.

“London!” Dima said more loudly. “In England!”

“Ah!” said my grandmother. “England,” she said. “Yes, that is a nice place.” She had already forgotten why this was relevant. She said, sadly: “If only you would come see me once in a while. No one ever comes to see me.”

“I’m here right now,” said Dima.

“Yes,” said my grandmother, in the same sad tone.

Dima finished his borscht and saw that my grandmother had put water on to boil. He regarded the teakettle for a moment and then said to me accusingly, “Where’s the electric teakettle?”

“What?” I said.

“Grandma,” Dima said. “What’d you do with the electric teakettle I got you?”

My grandmother looked at him uncomprehendingly.

Dima got up. He started rifling through the kitchen cabinets. Finally, from behind some pots in one of them, he pulled out a brand-new electric teakettle.

“I got her this because she burned the last three of those,” he said, indicating the one in which water had just started boiling on the stove. Dima turned it off. “Grandma,” he said. “I got you this because it’s easier to use.”

“I don’t like it,” said my grandmother, waving it away. “It’s noisy.”

“It’s noisy ?!” Dima almost yelled. He shook his head. “It’s safer, Grandma. You should use it.”

He left it on the counter. I could see he was investigating the kitchen further. “Where’s the trash can?” he asked me.

“What?” I said again. “It’s under the sink.”

Dima looked under the sink, where my grandmother kept a tiny little trash can; it was so small that it usually filled up in a day, sometimes twice a day, but that was OK because the dumpster was nearby and I was glad to throw our bag out whenever it got full.

“Grandma,” Dima now said, “what did you do with the trash can I got you?”

“I don’t remember,” said my grandmother a little stubbornly.

Now Dima set off to look for his trash can. My grandmother and I sat in the kitchen like guilty children. Eventually Dima emerged from the back room with a large, modern, stainless steel trash can. “This was in the closet in the back room,” he told me.

“Grandma,” he said, “this is a nice trash can. Bugs can’t get in.” (We had had some flies in the kitchen in August.) “And it looks good.”

“I don’t like it,” said my grandmother. “It takes up too much space.”

“It fits right here,” said Dima. He put it next to the refrigerator. It almost fit there.

“Won’t you have some tea?” my grandmother said.

“I don’t have time,” Dima said to her. Then, to me: “I need to write some emails. After that maybe we can get a drink?”

I said sure. Dima got out his laptop and right on the kitchen table started banging away at it—apparently his computer communicated with the soldiers’ network just fine. I cleaned up from dinner and my grandmother, after trying and failing to get Dima’s attention a couple of times, went to her room. When Dima announced himself done with his emails and asked if I was ready, I felt like I was betraying my grandmother by saying yes, choosing him over her. But in truth I was also eager to get outside. I stuck my head into her room and said we’d be back in an hour. She was lying in bed, reading Chekhov. Without turning around, she gamely waved good-bye.

It was evening now, and Dima suggested we go to the strip club on the second floor above the bookstore. “Have you been already?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Wellll,” he said, drawing it out in disappointment. “ Nuuuu . You must change your life.”

We headed out. It was so strange walking down the street with Dima. He was thin and small and elegant and dark-haired, with a thin, very Semitic nose, the exact opposite of the big, ungainly, flat-faced Slavic men who walked down the street toward us. He was the opposite of a typical Russian, he was an anti-Russian, and yet he fit in here. He knew no one liked him, and it put him at ease.

The strip club was called Gentlemen of Fortune, after a famous Russian film of that name, and it consisted of two large rooms. The first was set up pretty much like a café, with tables and chairs and topless girls going around serving drinks, and the second room was an open space with benches along the walls, where the men sat and the girls danced for them. The girls looked like they ranged in age from about nineteen to twenty-four, and though some were blond and blue-eyed and others were dark-haired and brown-eyed, and in fact were of multiple nationalities, they were almost all uniformly slim, petite, and very attractive. I found it disturbing, in fact, how attractive and fresh-faced they all seemed. Dima and I sat down in the café part; Dima ordered an expensive drink and I ordered a beer, and then as I tried to ignore the topless girls he told me what was happening with his business. As he told me more I forgot all about the girls.

“Basically,” Dima was saying, “they’ve shut me down. I filed a lawsuit to demand an audit of the highway tender, and they didn’t like it. My stations started getting raided by the tax police. I tried to get in touch with the people I know in the Kremlin and they stopped answering my calls. The tax people closed my stations. There’s fucking police tape around them, like a murder took place there. I had to leave to avoid criminal prosecution, and they still have a case at the ready should they ever need it.”