Guillermo Erades - Back to Moscow

With my eyes closed, I drifted towards unconsciousness, floating in that graceful state before sleep. Images of colourful plastic bricks began to pop into my head in time with the notes of the sitar.

The spell of the moment was broken by a beep from my phone. Message from Colin. Hey, lost you last night. banged the blonde dyev? Tonight: drinks at stepanov’s at 9.

I switched off the phone without answering.

When I returned from the toilets, I found Lena staring at the empty teacups, her face illuminated by the faint glow of the candles. The other couple had left — the dark cave was entirely ours. I sat between Lena and the wall, my legs around her waist, my arms beneath her breasts.

Lena didn’t move when my hands found their way under her sweater, or when my fingers slipped under her bra. She sat in silence, her eyes on the candle.

I kissed her neck. My heart was beating fast now. ‘It’s getting late,’ I said, ‘why don’t you show me where you live?’

For a long minute Lena kept gazing at the candle. ‘I can’t,’ she said at last. ‘Not today.’

We remained silent, listening to the sitar, my entire body focused and expectant.

All of a sudden, Lena turned round and grabbed my face with two hands. ‘Promise me something,’ she whispered, staring straight into my eyes. ‘I want you to always remember this moment.’

Next thing I knew, she was unbuttoning my jeans.

TRUTH IS, IT WASN’T Pushkin who introduced me to Russia. It was Katya. She was not even Russian Russian. Katya was from Minsk. I’d met her at a university party in Amsterdam and within two weeks she’d moved into my apartment, an arrangement that was partly down to the city’s housing scarcity. Though only two years older than me, Katya was, in my eyes, a real woman. She wore feminine, grown-up clothes and plenty of make-up. In the street, Katya didn’t walk — she paraded, her long black hair falling in waves over her shoulders, and I took pride in the way other men turned their heads to look at her, my Slavic goddess.

We lived in the small flat I was renting in Fokke Simonszstraat, a central Amsterdam street with no canal, on the third floor of an old house with narrow stairs that, like many buildings in the city, was tilted to one side. At home you could feel that the floor wasn’t entirely level, that there was a slight slope from the couch to the TV, and this, I think, might have contributed to the sense of instability I suffered from at the time.

It was Katya who introduced me to Russian thought. Not to philosophers or great writers — although she’d read them all in school — but to the way Russians look at life. She also taught me my first Russian words. You are such a babnik, she’d say, every time she caught me looking at other women. A babnik, she explained to me, was a man who liked women and was liked by women. Katya had a scary sixth sense for these things and, whenever we both walked into a student party or a bar, she would immediately spot the girl I was going to feel attracted to, even before I’d seen her.

I also learned many practicalities from Katya. She patiently instructed me on the endless medicinal applications of vodka; headaches, indigestion, insomnia — there was nothing a bit of good old vodka could not cure. Katya also used the magic liquor as stain remover, shoe polish — anything, really. Katya rubbed vodka on her forehead and tummy for a couple of days each month — the most effective method, she maintained, to relieve her atrocious menstrual pains.

With her spectacular beauty and her unique way of seeing the world, Katya embodied the promise of a vast cultural universe to be discovered. It was only after she’d gone from my life and I’d started my research in Moscow that I realised Katya must have been my first maternal whore. The maternal whore is a concept I kind of came up with later in my research, a recurring female character in Russian literature: a beautiful woman who uses her natural, God-given wisdom to nurture her man, to instruct him in the ways of life, without demanding a conventional commitment in return. Think of Raskolnikov’s Sonya in Crime and Punishment — except, of course, Sonya was also an actual whore.

So it was Katya who showed me the light. She was the prophet of my new faith, the beacon of my new world. For that, I’m grateful. Without Katya, Russia would have remained nothing more than a frozen far-off land that belonged to Cold War films and dusty history books.

CHOOSE ANY STREET IN Moscow. Stand at the kerb. Raise your arm. In a few seconds you have two or three cars at the side of the road offering their services. Set the price. A hundred, a hundred and fifty rubles, depends on the distance to be covered, the time of day, how shitty the car is. A ten-minute drive and you are in, say, Kitaisky Lyotchik. The Chinese Pilot.

The Lyotchik is a popular bar, at least among students and the arty crowd. They often host performances and live music. Great place to start the night. But if for some reason it’s not happening in the Lyotchik you all have a couple of drinks, maybe accompanied by a plate of chicken wings, take a piss, walk out and flag another car, perhaps a Volga this time, that will take you to Karma Bar.

You want to hit Karma just before midnight, when the dyevs are drunk but not taken. If you are lucky, the Volga’s radio is playing old soviet songs, Vysotsky or Okudzhava, but most often it will be blasting out trashy Russian pop, the kind of synthesiser sound abandoned by the West in the mid-1980s.

Colin is in the front seat talking to the driver.

Colin says, it’s from taxi drivers you learn about the real Moscow. Drivers are typically well-educated men — engineers, doctors, professors — whose jobs have become superfluous in the new Russia, and who need the extra cash to make ends meet. Often, the driver will admire Colin’s proficiency in Russian and his knowledge of local customs — surprised and pleased to hear he’s American — and, if we’ve grabbed the car after a few drinks, Colin and the driver often end up singing Russian songs, reciting poetry or telling anekdots, which are the equivalent of Western jokes but without a funny punch line.

Stepanov, Diego and I sit in the back seat. The car drops us outside Karma and we add a fifty-ruble tip to the agreed price. The driver wishes us a good night and we walk into the club.

Two hours in Karma. That’s four rounds of drinks. Colin doesn’t like wasting time. With the first drink in his hand, and while the rest of us stand at the bar, he carries out a complete inspection of the premises, scanning, taking mental notes. Then he returns and says, ‘Guys, let’s move to the back of the dance floor, between the Buddha and the small bar. That’s the spot tonight.’

We leave Karma and take another car, this one a zhiguli with a cracked windscreen and a chatty Georgian driver. Now we have Oksana and Irina squeezed into the back seat. Colin’s gone — it happens sometimes, a brother leaves the group, only to be met hours later for breakfast at Starlite Diner or the American Bar and Grill. Oksana is clearly Stepanov’s, but, at this point of the night, Irina remains up for grabs.

Our nights begin at Stepanov’s place, a high-ceilinged apartment on a side street off the Old Arbat, lavishly decorated in the late soviet style: piano in the living room, tapestries on the walls, a hand-coloured portrait of Brezhnev — chest covered in military medals. The tapestry above the couch depicts a popular Russian painting I’ve seen in one of my language books — three knights on horses, wearing pointy metal helmets. The knight in the middle, seemingly the leader, is riding a black horse, his hand shielding his eyes, gazing into the horizon.