Guillermo Erades - Back to Moscow

‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’ Vika was asking.

I cut open my chicken roll, melted butter flooded my plate.

‘I think I’ll go home,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m tired, I need some rest.’

‘But you wanted to get out. You can’t go home now, with such nice weather. Let’s finish eating. Then we can walk towards Aleksandrovsky Sad and have ice cream.’

I ate some chicken in silence. Vika said her salad was very nice.

‘I’d rather go home,’ I said. ‘I’m meeting some friends tonight.’

Vika looked at me, perplexed.

‘I can come with you.’

‘I need to rest, I’m quite tired from last night.’

She placed her fork facing down on her plate — her face suddenly transformed, her smile gone. Her brown eyes looked somewhat menacing.

‘So you want me to go home now? Is that what you are saying?’

‘Vika, I’m just saying I need to meet my friends later on and I would like to rest.’

‘I can also meet your friends.’

‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘Another day.’

‘Martin, you asked me to meet you today.’ Her voice sounded now coarser. ‘I want to spend time with you.’

‘But we have spent time together. We met at eleven, it’s four o’clock. That’s five whole hours we’ve spent together.’

‘You’ve been silent for the last hour,’ Vika said.

‘I need to be alone for a little while, that’s all.’

Vika took the sunglasses out of her handbag, placed them on her head as a hairband. Then she grabbed the fork and started picking at her salad.

I tried to finish my chicken as quickly as possible.

‘I shouldn’t have slept with you,’ she said.

‘I’m just tired. We’ll meet another day.’

‘You wanted to fuck me, that’s all.’

‘Vika, please.’

She now put her sunglasses on. They were far too large, the sunglasses. They made her look like an oversized insect.

‘Why don’t you want to spend more time with me?’ she said, softening her voice again.

I searched for something suitable to say, but at that moment the image of a fly flashed up in my head. Vika, with her giant sunglasses, transformed into an enormous fly.

‘We just met,’ she continued. ‘There is so much we can talk about. I don’t know anything about you. On Wednesday when we first met, you were talking all the time, it was so nice. I had a great time. And now you ask me to leave?’

‘Those glasses are too big for you,’ I said.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Vika, I had a great time with you today. But I’m just not in the mood. ‘Ia-ne-v-nastroenii,’ I said, probably raising my voice above what was appropriate. ‘Let’s meet another day.’

‘Why another day? I’m here now. Let’s spend this weekend together.’

‘But my friends—’

‘I can also meet your friends.’

‘Vika.’

‘If you don’t want to spend time with me, what’s the point?’

‘The point?’

Vika lowered her voice, looked at her salad. ‘The point of us being together.’

I stood up.

‘Are you married or something?’ she asked, gripping my arm. ‘I saw women’s stuff in your bathroom. If you are married, just tell me, but you should have told me before. I wouldn’t have slept with you.’

‘Vika, listen. I need to go now.’ I shook her hand off, threw a thousand-ruble note on the table. ‘I’ll call you.’

‘Go to hell.’

ON SUNDAY I WOKE UP just before noon. I put the percolator on the stove and two slices of bread in the toaster. I sat at the table, my head throbbing, waiting for the coffee. My mobile had been on the kitchen table all morning. I had six new text messages that had arrived during the night without my noticing. All from Vika.

privet, kak dela, sorry about earlier

why are you ignoring my message?

oh, maybe you are with your friends, have a good time

maybe we can meet tomorrow to talk

if you have time. otherwise another day

I’m thinking about you

I typed a short reply proposing to meet for coffee during the week, pressed send and immediately switched off the phone. After I finished my coffee and toast, I bundled the bedsheets into the washing machine, lay on the couch.

It had been a long night. I stopped drinking at about four in the morning, when I found myself on the basement dance floor in Karma, barely able to keep my eyes open. I said goodbye to Diego, who was slow-dancing with a fat dyev, but I was unable to find the others. I walked upstairs, into the open air, and was surprised to see daylight. I ignored the drivers waiting outside Karma and decided to walk, heading towards Petrovka Ulitsa. In summer I loved to walk home from a night out, crossing empty streets, breathing fresh air, observing how the night retreated and a new day took over the city. It was the only time of day when Moscow didn’t feel crowded.

I went back into the kitchen and made another cup of coffee. I hung the bed linen on the balcony. The sun was now hitting the western façade of my building. It would be dry in a couple of hours, I thought, just before Tatyana arrives.

I had a cold shower. Feeling refreshed, I lay back down on the couch, naked, observing the little white dots on my Indian tapestry. If I kept my eyes fixed on one of the dots that surrounded Lord Ganesh, the intricate painting seemed to shift slightly, the elephant head somehow peeking out of the wall. It was a bizarre visual effect I had noticed before, usually when drunk or hungover, and I wondered if that was the intentional purpose of the white dots — dots that otherwise didn’t add anything to the image. I closed my eyes, my mind drifted, and, in the sweet moment when my awareness was slipping away but I wasn’t yet asleep, a thought flitted across my mind: I missed Tatyana.

I stumbled to the kitchen, switched on my phone and sent Tatyana a text message: Miss you .

She replied in a minute: Me too, love you .

See you tonight.

At five, feeling a bit better, I decided to go out for some fresh air and to buy stuff for dinner. I walked into Eliseevksy, always comforting with its elegant gilded ceilings, chandeliers and wall paintings. The most beautiful place in the world to buy dried fish and imported biscuits. At the deli counter I got cured salmon, sturgeon, liver blinis, a jar of red caviar and smetana. On the way back I stopped at a booth in the perekhod and bought a film of the type Tatyana liked. The seller at the stand, who recognised me from previous purchases, assured me that the English subtitles worked well.

Pushkinskaya was bursting with life. Muscovites walked in and out of the metro, rushed through the perekhods, sat at the outdoor tables of Café Pyramida. I walked on among the crowd, towards my building, bag of groceries in one hand, movie in the other, feeling light-hearted at the thought of the night ahead — at the thought of Tatyana coming home.

STEPANOV WAVES HIS HAND at the waitress and points at his empty coffee mug. ‘But I don’t understand your problem,’ he says, turning back to me. ‘You can keep your girlfriend at home from Monday to Friday and enjoy your freedom on weekends.’

I glance around the garden. The morning is grey, threatening rain. A few ravens are pacing on the nearby grass, awaiting our departure to jump on the breakfast leftovers.

‘Russian women are forgiving,’ Stepanov says. ‘They accept that we have lovers on the side.’

The waitress fills our mugs with coffee, then heads off to attend to a table further away, where two white-haired expats are reading copies of the Moscow Times .