Guillermo Erades - Back to Moscow

‘Not that good.’

I had learned by now that, whenever confronted by a ‘how are you’ or ‘how are things’, Russians rarely answered with a simple ‘fine, thanks’. They saw the question not as a polite greeting formula, but as a welcome chance to enumerate the many problems life had recently dumped on them.

‘What’s wrong?’ I was dissecting the chicken with my knife and fork, trying to extract some meat from the skinny thigh.

‘Sergey.’ Ira slurped a spoonful of soup. ‘He does nothing all day, just drinks beer, watches TV.’

‘What about the photography?’

‘Not even that any more. Not inspired, he says.’

‘What can you do,’ I said, smiling. ‘Sergey’s an artist.’

‘He’s my boyfriend,’ Ira said, gesturing at me with a piece of black bread, ‘and I love him with all my heart, but I’m tired of his laziness.’

‘Give him a break. He’s probably just going through a difficult phase.’

She held up the piece of black bread, which seemed to stand for Sergey in our conversation. ‘I don’t care if he wants to do photography or painting or whatever he wants, but he could have finished his degree and got a real job as well. In the end all he does is talk and talk and no action. I don’t know, sometimes I question the whole thing between us.’

I realised what looked different about Ira. She was wearing make-up. Eyeliner, shadow, powder — you could hardly see the dark circles around her eyes.

‘All talk and no action,’ I said. ‘Sergey’s a dreamer, a classic Russian idealist.’

Ira bit into her black bread. ‘A what?’

‘A Russian idealist. You know, a typical character in Chekhov’s works. Nabokov writes about this in his Lectures on Russian Literature .’ I took my red notebook out of my backpack and started to flip through the pages.

‘You and your Chekhov. The world is not a book, Martin. There is literature and there is reality.’

‘Here it is,’ I said, pointing at my own handwriting. ‘The Russian idealist, Nabokov says, is an intellectual who combines lofty dreams and human decency with an inability to put his ideals into action. Just like Sergey.’

I smiled.

Ira didn’t. She stared down at my notebook, lost in thought. ‘Sergey’s a drunk,’ she said. ‘He has no lofty dreams, he just wants to drink all day and maybe, one day, if he feels like it, take his stupid black and white photographs that nobody needs.’

A group of young students sat on the other side of our table.

‘Lucky you can support him.’

‘I don’t earn that much,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘They exploit the Russian staff in our firm. American colleagues doing the same job as me get three or four times my salary. It’s so unfair. In the end, after sending money to my family and paying the bills, I can’t really save much. And, you know, I would like to rent my own apartment one day. Sergey’s mother is very nice, but the place is too small for the three of us.’

‘This chicken is all bone,’ I said. ‘There’s no flesh.’

‘Welcome to Russia,’ Ira said, in English.

Through the large window, I saw five or six students having a snowball fight. They seemed to be having fun, running after each other. I thought it would be nice to join them. There was something about fresh snow, a promise of renewal and peace.

‘By the way,’ I said, ‘Lena left me.’

‘Again?’

I nodded. ‘Yesterday. I think this time it’s for real.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You must have done something.’

‘I didn’t do anything. She found a hair in my bed.’

‘Another girl’s hair?’ Ira asked.

‘I guess. Long and black.’

‘You’re such an asshole.’

‘I told Lena it was probably an old hair caught in the blanket, but she didn’t want to listen. She just started to cry.’

‘And she left? Just like that?’

‘First she asked me if I loved her,’ I said.

‘What did you say?’

‘What was I supposed to say? Anyway, she was all emotional, not listening.’

‘Western men, you’re all pussies.’

‘Then it occurred to me that the hair could be from my cleaning lady.’

‘Is that possible?’ Ira asked.

‘Maybe, who knows.’

‘You don’t know what your cleaning lady looks like?’

‘Perhaps it was her hair. Anyway, I told Lena I thought the hair belonged to the cleaning lady, but it was too late. She was too pissed off.’

‘Of course,’ Ira said, ‘she didn’t believe your bullshit.’

‘It’s not that she didn’t believe me. She chose not to believe me.’

Ira put her empty soup plate aside. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, she preferred the drama of finding another lover’s hair over the triviality of finding a hair from my cleaning lady.’

‘I see.’ Ira shook her head. ‘And, I presume, that’s because she’s a woman?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘That’s because she’s Russian.’

WHEN THE INTERCOM RANG I was lying on the couch, reading a book. I glanced at my watch — almost midnight. I placed the book on the coffee table, face down so as not to lose the page, walked over to the entrance, picked up the receiver.

‘Martin, it’s Sergey. Are you alone?’

‘Sergey? Come up.’

I pulled a pair of jeans on over my underpants and opened the two front doors of my flat.

A minute later Sergey knocked at the open door.

‘Come in, come in,’ I said.

‘Sorry to show up this late.’ Sergey made sure he was fully inside the apartment before shaking my hand — some odd superstition about not greeting under a threshold. Since I last saw him, Sergey’s thick stubble had grown to almost a full beard. His eyes were bloodshot. He smelled of vodka.

‘Everything OK?’

‘It’s so hot in here,’ he said.

‘The heating is on high these days. I have to open the windows so as not to boil to death. It cools off later at night.’

‘You’re lucky to live in the centre,’ he said, taking his shoes off. ‘We don’t get that much heating in the northern suburbs.’

I hung his coat behind the door and directed him into the kitchen. ‘You all right?’

‘It’s good for your health to get some cold air into the apartment,’ he said. ‘Even now, in the heart of winter. My mum opens the windows every morning, it helps clean the air and get the infections out of the house.’

‘It would be easier if I could regulate the temperature myself.’

Sergey glanced around the kitchen, as if searching for something. ‘Do you have a beer?’

‘Sure.’ I opened the fridge, took out two bottles of Baltika and a plastic box of salt cucumbers. I sliced a cucumber and arranged the slices on a small plate. Sitting at the table, I moved a pile of books to one side and opened the two bottles.

Sergey stared at his bottle, saying nothing.

‘Do you want a glass?’ I asked.

‘No, thanks. It’s all right.’

‘Davay,’ I said. We clinked our beers.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘in Georgia people never toast with beer.’

I took a sip. ‘Why’s that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sergey said. ‘Bad omen, I suppose. Did you know my father was Georgian?’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘From Gori, like Stalin. Came to Moscow in the late 1960s, to study at MGU. Of course back then it was all the same country so things were easier. Besides, half of Moscow’s intelligentsia were Georgians. Artists, poets, singers. Many came to Moscow.’

‘But your mum is Russian.’

‘Half Ukrainian, half Russian. That makes me a perfect soviet specimen. Except of course there is no Soviet Union any more.’ He glanced down at his Baltika and shook his head.