Guillermo Erades - Back to Moscow

A waitress I knew by sight was setting up the terrace of the Starlite, opening the sun umbrellas and placing ketchup bottles and napkins on the tables. As I passed, she greeted me with a smile. ‘Your friend is inside,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’ I stepped into the diner and found Stepanov slouched at a corner booth, wearing a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses I’d never seen before, sliding eggs and bacon around a greasy plate.

‘Sorry, brother, I couldn’t wait,’ he said. ‘I needed something solid in my stomach.’

We shook hands and I sat opposite him. ‘You look like shit,’ I said.

‘Yeah, fucking great night.’

Because we’d met through the brothers, Stepanov and I always spoke in English. I found this slightly disconcerting, as if, by using a foreign language instead of his native Russian, Stepanov was trying to be something he was not. It was an unfair thought, I knew, because to Russian native speakers, my simplified version of their language would also sound artificial.

A waitress approached our booth. I ordered a salmon and cheese omelette and a cup of coffee.

‘Straight from the club?’ I asked.

Nodding, Stepanov forked a piece of egg into his mouth. ‘You should have come. We ended up in this new place, next to the river, on the south bank. They’ve installed a huge tent. It was real elitni, full of celebrities.’

‘Sounds good.’ I had decided to take a night off and stay at home. Now I wondered whether I should have gone out instead.

‘Plenty of models and actresses, all very exclusivni. Pasha Face Control on the door.’ Stepanov swallowed his last piece of egg and dumped his toast on the plate to soak up the grease.

‘If you want the best crowd,’ I said, ‘it’s gotta be Pasha on the door.’

‘He was on top form. He turned a minister away.’

‘Good for Pasha. A government kind of minister?’

‘The fucking minister of housing or social issues or something like that.’ Stepanov took a bite of bread and, still chewing, a sip of coffee. ‘He showed up with this great-looking baba, surely a prostitute. Pasha didn’t let him through, so the minister started to make a scene, shouting that he was going to call the president at the Kremlin, shut the club down.’

‘Pasha held his ground, I hope.’

‘Of course,’ Stepanov said, ‘but the minister kept on screaming that he knew everybody personally, the chief of police and all that. Pasha remained calm and said something like, “Sorry, your Excellency, but this is a private party.”’

‘“Sorry, your Excellency”?’

‘Yes.’ Stepanov laughed. ‘Can you imagine? So the minister got furious and took his phone and started to make calls. He shouted for a while, saying someone needs to cut the legs off this fucking kid, looking at Pasha, you know.’

‘Sure.’

‘But no one ever arrived. In the meantime, Pasha was letting other people into the club. We hardly had to wait.’

The waitress brought me a steaming mug of coffee.

‘Before I forget,’ Stepanov said, ‘this is for you.’ He placed a brown sealed envelope on the table.

I took the envelope and tucked it into the back of my jeans.

‘The deal with the Americans went through,’ he said.

‘Congratulations. Breakfast’s on me.’

Insight Investments International was a firm with no office — all business meetings took place in bars and restaurants. The Starlite was kind of our corporate headquarters. Stepanov was of the opinion that, being an American diner, the Starlite put Western investors at ease.

‘That last meeting went very well,’ Stepanov said. ‘You did a good job.’

‘Those guys seemed pretty interested.’

‘They were interested. It’s always so much easier to do business with Americans. Americans know how to make money. They trust people. Trusting mode is their default position. Unlike fucking Europeans. Europeans are always suspicious, thinking all Russians are crooks. They don’t get that foreign investors need our help to understand the local business environment.’

The waitress topped up my mug of coffee, which was almost full, and smiled at me.

I smiled back. ‘Spasibo.’

‘It’s normal that foreign investors are cautious,’ I said. ‘They better be careful doing business in this country. Russia is a lawless jungle.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ Stepanov said. ‘Russia might be a jungle, but even jungles have their own laws. There are many rules here. It just happens that they are different rules from yours, and most of them are not written. In the end our system is no worse or better than the West’s. Just different.’

I could see Stepanov was still drunk. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said.

‘Anyway, foreigners are getting more reluctant to invest in Russia. The sweet chaos of the 1990s is over. They’re afraid of the new political climate, intimidated by all this posturing and nationalist shit from our politicians. It scares them off. So I want to start tapping into the local market.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oligarchs.’ Stepanov was pointing his fork at me. ‘They’ve got the real money these days. And they don’t know how to spend it. I’ve been looking into car dealerships. With the cash from Insight Investments we could set up an operation to import luxury vehicles from Europe.’

‘Not easy, I presume.’

‘There are ways. I found out I can avoid customs duties if the firm I set up is legally owned by a handicapped person. Some bizarre old rule. I just need to find a cripple to own the firm on paper. Of course I can let you into the business if you are interested. Oligarchs love to mingle with foreigners.’

‘Always happy to help.’

The waitress came with my omelette and a side bowl of chips I hadn’t ordered. ‘On the house,’ she said, in English, pointing at the chips with a smile.

‘Have you heard the news about the sunken submarine?’ I asked. ‘Poor bastards.’

‘They’re all dead by now.’

‘But they said there might be some survivors.’

‘I bet you, no survivors,’ Stepanov said. ‘No one gives a shit about those poor fuckers. Most sailors are peasants, poor people who join the navy because they can’t afford to live normal lives. Nobody gives a fuck about them.’

‘But they sent a rescue team,’ I protested. ‘I saw it on TV.’

‘I doubt it. That’s what the government says to keep the mums and babushkas happy. They probably don’t even know where the fucking submarine is. This country is a joke. In soviet times we had the best navy in the world. We were feared and respected. And look, now, outside Moscow, the country is in ruins. We can’t even keep our ships afloat.’

In the afternoon, after a short nap, I watched the news. They were now saying that the rescue team had reached the sunken submarine and had heard noises and tapping from inside the hull. According to the news, government experts were considering different options to get the sailors out alive. But now I wondered if the government was making all this stuff up — if, as Stepanov had told me, it was all a media montage to keep families happy and to pretend they cared. They interviewed a handful of experts, who said that the survivors had just a few more hours of air left. I turned off the TV.

I texted Lena and asked her to come over for dinner. I hadn’t seen her since the day of the bomb in Pushkinskaya. She came over and was in good spirits. I was glad she didn’t mention the CD incident. After tea on the couch, we moved to the kitchen to prepare dinner. My fridge was almost empty so we boiled some frozen pelmenis and served them with smetana. I opened a bottle of wine.

While we were eating at the kitchen table, I mentioned the submarine.