Back to Moscow (2 page)

More people arrived and joined the queue, bouncing on their feet to keep warm. As far as I could tell, they were all guys, all expats, all about our age.

After pouring more vodka into our plastic glasses, Colin grabbed my shoulder and said, ‘Believe me, man, there is no better place to be young, foreign and male.’ I couldn’t
tell if he was talking about the club or the city, but I agreed with a wide smile.

I glanced at other guys in the queue. They were drinking, smoking, chatting. I couldn’t stop smiling and they returned the smile, with little nods. By the time we were done with the bottle
of vodka, I felt an unspoken but strong connection among all of us in the queue – a sense of camaraderie and shared anticipation.

Suddenly I was no longer thinking about Katya or Amsterdam. The thirsty little Cossack was cheerful: up on his horse, rattling his sabre, ready for battle.

At eleven sharp the door of the club was opened from the inside and I found myself carried through the entrance by an all-male stampede. I was pushed into a corridor lined with mirrors, where
some of the guys hurriedly retouched their hair, and there was a booth where we paid the cover and a cloakroom where we dropped our jackets.

At the far end of the bright corridor, a black metal door throbbed with loud music. As we approached, my heart pumping fast, I was taken aback by the stench of spilt beer and vomit. I held my
breath.

Colin pulled the door and beckoned me in. ‘Welcome to the Duck.’

Stepping into the main room, I was slapped by a wave of wet heat. It was balmy and smoky and dark, and at first I saw only the colours of the disco lights – laser reds and greens and
purples – but as my eyes adapted to darkness, I started to discern what, I later learned,
The Exile
was describing as the wildest clubbing scene in the Northern Hemisphere.

Hundreds of dyevs dancing under the strobe lights. On the chairs. On the tables. Singing, screaming, their eyes red and watery, their clothes drenched in sweat. A bunch of them danced topless on
the bar, bouncing their shiny young breasts, waving their bras over the all-female crowd.

They had arrived at the Duck hours earlier, from all over the city, from the most remote metro stations and trashy suburbs, and by the time we guys were allowed to enter – Tuesday night,
eleven sharp – they had drunk themselves into submission.

These were the same dyevs who just a few months later would wear fake designer clothes with glittering logos to make it into Zeppelin or Shambala, and would only talk to us if we bought them
overpriced cocktails and glasses of champagne; but back then, at the Hungry Duck, they gulped down tons of free beer, vomited on the carpets, stumbled among the tables and, when they were so wasted
they could no longer stand on their cheap high heels, they threw themselves into the arms of those of us blessed with the chance to live, at such a turbulent moment of its history, in the wonderful
city of Moscow.

O
N
8 J
UNE
1880, shortly before he died, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky walked onto a stage in central Moscow and, in front of a
cheering crowd, delivered a long and emotional speech to celebrate the unveiling of Pushkin’s statue. According to several accounts of the event, which were captured in the diaries and
journals of the time, the atmosphere was electrifying. Fyodor Mikhailovich himself wrote later that day that the crowd kept interrupting him, applauding enthusiastically every few sentences,
standing up in ovation.

At the very end of the speech, the audience completely lost it when Dostoyevsky made his impassioned call to follow Pushkin’s example and embrace both the uniqueness of Mother Russia and
the oneness of humanity.

What came to be known as the Pushkin Speech had an enormous impact on Russia’s intelligentsia at the time. It soon became one of the defining moments in the cultural history of the country
– a new chapter in Russia’s endless debate between those in favour of a Western course for their country and those, such as Fyodor Mikhailovich himself, who saw Russia as a unique
nation with a crucial role to play in the history of humanity.

By the time he delivered the speech, Fyodor Mikhailovich was an old man in poor health. He felt this was his last opportunity to set the record straight on Pushkin, to prove that, to Russians,
Pushkin was much more than ‘just’ the national poet. In a letter he wrote to his wife a few days before the speech, Dostoyevsky had said his participation in the event would be
essential, as ‘the others’ were not only determined to downplay the importance of Pushkin in Russia’s national identity, they were also ready to deny the very existence of this
identity.

My voice will carry weight, Dostoyevsky wrote.

That day in June, Fyodor Mikhailovich talked about Pushkin’s prophetic existence, and his role in understanding and defining the Russian character. Dostoyevsky made it clear that, without
Pushkin’s genius, there would be no Russian literature, at least not as the world knew it.

The speech was dedicated in great part to Pushkin’s masterpiece,
Evgeny Onegin
. Dostoyevsky focused on the character of Tatyana, after whom, he said, Pushkin’s verse novel
should have been named. After all, Tatyana, not Onegin, is the central character of Russia’s most famous love story.

Tatyana Larina, an innocent girl living in the provinces, has a crush on Onegin, a sophisticated dandy visiting from the capital. She writes him a rather tacky love letter, but Onegin, who had
somehow misled Tatyana, doesn’t write back as she’d expected. Instead, he rejects her in a cruel and condescending manner, causing her pain, humiliation and a lot of very Russian
sorrow. There are some complications – and a duel, of course – and then Onegin splits.

The years go by and one day Onegin bumps into Tatyana in Peter, which back then was the capital of the empire and not the provincial backwater it is today. She’s all pafosni and elitni,
Tatyana, because she’s managed to snag an aristocrat. Onegin now realises how hot Tatyana is and tells her he really really wants her. This time for real.

In spite of the years, Pushkin tells us, Tatyana remains in love with Onegin. Now, finally, she has a real chance to be with him. So, what does Tatyana do? Does she ditch her husband and elope
with her true love?

Nyet, she doesn’t. In the culminating scenes of Pushkin’s long poem, Tatyana decides to stick with her husband and, in her own nineteenth-century way, tells Onegin to fuck off.

A simple love story which most Russians know by heart. Many are even able to recite entire chapters – ‘ya k vam pishu’, Tatyana’s letter, being an especially popular
passage.

The symbolism of the story should not be ignored. Tatyana, the pure girl from the countryside, embodies the essence of Russianness, while Onegin, the cosmopolitan
bon vivant
, is a
cynical fucker corrupted by modern European values. Onegin’s life is about superficial pleasures. Tatyana’s is all about meaning.

Why does Tatyana reject Onegin? Dostoyevsky asks in his speech. Pushkin had made Tatyana’s feelings clear. Wouldn’t she be happier if she dumped her husband and took off with her
true love? Fyodor Mikhailovich pushes his case further. What would have happened, he asks his Moscow audience, if Tatyana had been free when Onegin finally made a pass at her? If she had been a
widow? She would still have rejected him, Fyodor Mikhailovich says.

Russian as she is, Tatyana knows that there is more to life than happiness.

‘T
ELL ME
, M
ARTIN
,
WHAT
impact has Aleksandr Sergeyevich had on your life?’

We were sitting in Lyudmila Aleksandrovna’s office in the humanities faculty, a cramped room with ceiling-high bookshelves that lined every wall and partially covered the room’s only
window. It was a couple of days after my arrival in Moscow, and we were meeting to discuss my research project. With her fleecy moustache and thick glasses, Lyudmila Aleksandrovna matched the
preconceptions I had of Russian professors.

For her, asking about Aleksandr Sergeyevich was not a simple icebreaker – it was her way of testing my commitment to the research project and, in a wider sense, my devotion to the world of
Russian literature. But I was newly arrived and unaware that Lyudmila Aleksandrovna was on a first-name-patronymic basis with Russian authors, so it took me a while to realise she was not asking
about a mutual acquaintance – she was talking about Pushkin.

You mean
that
Aleksandr Sergeyevich!

Once I understood the implications of Lyudmila Aleksandrovna’s question I could not bring myself to tell her that I – a doctoral student in Russian literature, a scholarship
laureate, a soon-to-be-called expert – had never read a single line by the national poet, the father of modern Russian language, the very incarnation of the Russian soul. She would be
devastated and I would be uncovered as a fraud.

She stared at me across the books piled up on her desk, awaiting an answer, her smile revealing the sparkle of a gold tooth.

Of course I had read
about
Pushkin – he was all over the place when I drafted my project proposal. I just never got around to reading what the illustrious man himself had
written.

Sitting on the wobbly visitor’s chair, pondering what to say, I glanced around the office. The window, half-blocked by books, had been sealed around the frame with brown adhesive tape
– a deliberate attempt, I imagined, to further isolate the academic space from the outside world.

‘Pushkin,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

Then, looking into Lyudmila Aleksandrovna’s magnified eyes, I launched into an improvised answer on the impact
Evgeny Onegin
had had on me. The greatest love story, I said, so
much truth in it. I added that I’d read Nabokov’s famous translation, and that it had so moved me that I’d resolved to learn Russian in order to absorb the poetry as originally
written by Aleksandr Sergeyevich.

Lyudmila Aleksandrovna nodded slowly, visibly touched. She removed her glasses and wiped her teary eyes.

She believed me. How could she not believe in a foreigner who loved Pushkin?

‘T
HIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS
,’ Colin says, his finger resting on an open page of
The Exile
. ‘I can’t believe they gave
Propaganda two fuckies.’

Stepanov lifts his sunglasses, leans over Colin’s shoulder, glances down at the newspaper. ‘Propaganda is definitely no match for the likes of Cube or Papa Johns.’

‘Papa Johns
deserves
its two fuckies.’ Colin flips the page carelessly, ripping the edge. ‘They pack the dance floor every Sunday night with dyevs from Samara and Tula
and fuck knows where.’

‘But there are very nice girls in Propaganda,’ I say, not fully understanding Colin’s point.

Colin looks at me, his Irish-blue eyes reddish from the night. ‘Sure,’ he says, half smiling, ‘but when it comes to taking them home, man, they are uptight. Propaganda is full
of spoilt Muscovites. They’ve picked up stupid ideas from the West.’

The waitress is now refilling our coffee mugs.

‘What do you mean, stupid ideas?’ I ask.

Colin takes a sip of coffee, wipes his mouth. Then he takes a swig from his beer glass. ‘You know, they got it into their heads that decent women must make themselves
unavailable.’

My head is throbbing, I feel sick. I look around for the fastest path to the toilet and see that the place is empty, aside from a table at the back where three Russian men are drinking cocktails
and laughing loudly. For a moment I can’t tell where we are, or how we got here. My ears are buzzing. The lack of music fills me with sudden regret that we are no longer in a club. I see a
buffalo head on the wall staring straight into my eyes, which scares the shit out of me, but then it makes me realise that we are at the American Bar and Grill, in Mayakovskaya.

‘Man, you should take that shapka off,’ Colin says, gripping Diego’s shoulder. ‘It’s fucking hot in here.’

Diego grabs his hat by the earflaps and pulls it further down on his head, though it still doesn’t cover his long hair at the sides. ‘My shapka is part of my look,’ he says,
grinning. ‘It gives me an edge.’

We all laugh. Diego has only recently switched his Latino image, which involved heavily gelled hair and unbuttoned black shirts, for the furry shapka look, anticipating – he would later
claim – the style Pasha Face Control was to make popular during the elitni era. But, no matter what he wears, Diego’s large hairy body and clumsy moves give him the air of a big placid
bear.

‘This shapka makes you look like a tourist,’ Colin says. ‘Russians don’t wear those hats any more.’

‘Precisely,’ Diego says, raising his thick dark eyebrows. ‘The shapka gives me a foreign and exotic air. Besides, it’s a great conversation piece. All the dyevs ask me
about it.’

‘That’s not even real fur,’ Stepanov says. ‘Where did you get that piece of shit? On a matryoshka stand by Red Square?’

I look at my watch and realise it’s six in the morning. My vodka-flooded brain is shutting down. The thirsty little Cossack is exhausted from battle, stumbling next to his horse, ready to
crash in his tent. I can hardly keep my eyes open. I ponder whether to go to the toilet first or wait for my eggs and bacon.

This is two months into my stay.

In a way, Colin was right about Propaganda. It was at that time that Propaganda introduced a kind of face control. Not a strict door policy – that would come later
– but they made an effort to keep the trashiest dyevs out on the street. Expats were always welcome, of course, all we had to do was say a few words in English to the bouncer and we were in.
But Propaganda’s face control – which heralded the arrival of the post-Duck elitni era – distorted the night’s demographics, which had, up until then, played to our
advantage. There were fewer dyevs inside the club now, and the ones who made it in somehow felt they could afford to be more demanding.