Back to Moscow (31 page)

We reached Patriarshiye Prudy. The trees in the square were golden brown. We circled the pond, our feet crunching on dead leaves. The sun sparkled on the water. We passed the playground, full of
children, then sat down on a bench facing the pond. Beneath the silvery surface, the water was dark and muddy. We stared at it in silence.

I wanted to tell Lena how it felt to know that I was going to become a father. I wanted to tell Lena how I had matured, how the person she used to know no longer existed. I wanted to tell Lena
how I had learned to accept my destiny.

‘Lena,’ I said, ‘you are a prostitute.’

She looked at me, her expression calm and peaceful. Then she bit her lower lip. ‘What do you mean?’

‘When I saw you last time,’ I said. ‘At the Boarhouse. With those guys.’

‘I’m not a prostitute.’ Her voice was soft.

A few metres away, a boy and a girl were feeding pieces of bread to a flock of excited ducks.

‘How long have you been doing this?’ I asked.

She shifted on the bench, as if hesitating between answering my question or standing up and walking away. ‘Why do you care?’ she said, staring at the pond. ‘I’m a free
person, Martin. I see whoever I want.’

‘Were you sleeping around when we were together?’

‘Is that why you wanted to see me?’ she said. ‘Bozhe moi.’

‘Were you?’ I insisted. ‘Were you seeing other guys back then?’

‘Of course not,’ she said, her tone restrained. ‘Martin, I was in love with you. I’m still in love with you. I don’t think my feelings for you will ever
change.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since when do I love you?’

‘Since when do you sleep with men for money?’

Lena was shaking her head, her eyes now fixed on a clump of brown leaves floating next to the shore.

‘Martin, do you know when I fell for you, when I first realised that one day you would hurt me?’

‘When we met in Propaganda and I whispered those lines from Pushkin in your ear?’

‘No, Martin. It wasn’t Pushkin. It was when I saw you the next day, when I caught you playing with plastic bricks in Dyetsky Mir. The night we met I thought you were interesting, but
not dangerous. But the next day, when I saw you in the toyshop playing with those bricks, so lost, like a child, I knew instantly that you had me, and that sooner or later you would cause me
pain.’

We remained in silence, staring at the pond. I didn’t know what to say.

‘Lena, you are a prostitute.’

‘I am not a prostitute. Sometimes, when I need money, I sleep with men. But it’s not my job.’ She turned to me, shrugged her shoulders.

‘You could work in a restaurant, like you did before.’

‘That’s not real money. You get nothing as a waitress in Moscow. I want to leave Russia, live abroad. I’m thinking about moving to London. How can I save enough if I earn five
hundred dollars a month?’

‘But Lena, there are many ways of earning money. You don’t need to do this.’

‘I do it for my own future. What difference does it make to you? You never wanted me. I will always love you, Martin, but you never took me seriously. Besides, this is not for ever. I just
want to save enough money to start a new life. I’m not doing any harm to anyone.’

‘You are harming yourself,’ I said.

She looked at me, shaking her head again. ‘But, Martin, you sleep with plenty of women.’

‘It’s not the same,’ I said. ‘I don’t do it for money.’

‘You sleep with girls you’re not in love with. Your sleeping around is no better than my sleeping around. It just happens that I need money and you don’t.’

‘It’s more complicated than that,’ I said.

‘It’s not. It’s simple. You go to a club, pick up a girl and sleep with her. I go to a club, pick up a guy and sleep with him. We are the same, you and me. The only difference
is that he might give me some cash, but that’s a very small difference. The rest of the night is the same for you and for me.’

‘It’s not the same.’

‘Would I be a better person in your eyes if I slept with many guys just like that, for the sake of it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think so. At least I have a reason. I want to leave Russia, start a new life. Here I have no future. But, you, Martin, why do you do it? Why do you go around sleeping with
women?’

I said nothing.

The kids by the pond ran out of bread. The ducks lost interest and swam away.

‘I didn’t sleep with anyone when we were together,’ Lena said. ‘I was so stupid. I thought you were serious about me. It was you who slept with other women.’

I didn’t know what Lena wanted to hear. I moved closer and took her hand.

Her eyes were fixed on the pond. ‘My friend who moved to London,’ she said after a few seconds, ‘she is dancing in a club. It’s very well paid. She asked her boss if I
could work with her. I can move in a few weeks and stay in her flat while I save enough to rent my own place.’

‘A strip club? Is that what you want to do?’

‘What I want is to leave Moscow. I’ll dance in a club if that’s what it takes, until I get something else. It’s a great opportunity. My friend is treated with respect.
It’s very civilised over there, not like Russia. Being a dancer in London is like a normal job. Customers don’t even touch you. All I’ll have to do is dance and show my tits. And
I can earn a few hundred dollars a night.’

‘Pounds.’

‘Money.’

I put my arm around her. She leaned her head on my shoulder. For a couple of minutes, we sat in silence.

‘Remember when you took me to the Chinese tearoom?’ I said. ‘The small underground place in Kitay-gorod.’

‘Of course. The day after we met.’

‘We were lying there among the cushions for hours, just drinking tea and listening to sitar music. It was dark.’

‘I remember,’ she said.

‘You told me there’s no place in the world like Moscow, that Moscow has a special energy. You were right, Lena. Moscow
is
the best place on Earth. Why would you want to
leave? Believe me, compared to Moscow, London is a dead city. Moscow is alive, changing fast, full of opportunities.’

‘Not for me,’ she said. ‘You like Moscow because you are an expat and you know you’ll leave one day. For you, this is nothing but a fun phase in your life. For people
like me, there is no future in this city. I’ve had enough of it. There is nothing, no one, holding me back.’

She stared at the water. ‘You Westerners are so full of prejudices,’ she said, ‘so hypocritical. You all go around saying you’re so open-minded and tolerant but then you
can’t accept other people’s choices when they don’t follow your own views of the world.’

‘If you stayed in Moscow,’ I said, ‘you could finish your degree. Become a teacher, or find a well-paid job in a Western firm.’

‘Martin, I can’t even meet a decent man in Moscow. There are too many beautiful women around. Here I’m just an average girl. Like when we met. Why would you want to be with me
when there are so many beautiful girls you can be with?’

‘Lena, you are very beautiful.’

‘Not enough. In Moscow men don’t appreciate women. There are too many of us.’

‘There are plenty of women in London as well.’

‘Western women are fat and ugly,’ she said. ‘That’s why Western men love Russian girls. I’m sure I can find a man in London who’ll take good care of me. I
don’t plan to be a dancer for ever.’

A young man passed by, pushing a boy on a bicycle. I wanted to tell Lena about Tatyana and the baby. About the joy of starting afresh. Get it off my chest, show her that my life had changed and
I was now a better man.

But when I looked at her, Lena was crying.

I said nothing.

She stood up, pulled her skirt down, readjusted her jacket.

We started to walk slowly out of the square, in silence, towards Mayakovskaya. When we reached the entrance of the metro I put my arms around her, pulled her body with all my strength against my
chest. We hugged in silence for two or three minutes. People pushed past around us. I felt her tears on my neck.

‘Lena, you won’t be happier if you leave Moscow.’

‘You don’t understand,’ she said, smiling, wiping her tears with her hand. ‘There is so much more to life than being happy.’

I tried to kiss her but she had turned away.

The last time I ever saw her she was walking down the stairs, swallowed by the metro, lost among the crowd.

I
N NOVELS
,
CHARACTERS ARE
often presented with a critical dilemma, the resolution of which will tell us something about their
moral composition. These dilemmas – and the choices the characters make – constitute pivotal moments in literature. Pushkin’s Tatyana decides to stick with her husband.
Tolstoy’s Karenina decides not to. Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov decides to murder the old pawnbroker. Turgenev’s Liza decides to link her fate to that of Lavretsky.

These characters are given a clear choice, act upon it, live with the consequences. Yet, to exploit their full dramatic potential, life-shattering choices in literature must be relevant, visibly
so – and the transcendental nature of the ensuing consequences must be recognisable.

In real life, things don’t work like that.

That morning I could have bought a pair of tickets for a play at the MKhAT, or perhaps the Stanislavsky, or any of the theatres scattered across central Moscow. Or, maybe,
after finishing my sandwich and coffee in Kamergersky, I could have returned home by a different street – through Bolshaya Dmitrovka, as was my habit. Or even, after I’d passed the
ticket kiosk and thought about treating Tatyana to a musical, I could have bought tickets for another day – say Thursday, instead of Wednesday. Thing is, these were all random, unimportant
decisions. Choices that involved no moral considerations.

‘Two tickets for Wednesday’s show,’ I say. ‘Centre stalls, please.’

The front and sides of the kiosk are completely covered with posters and calendars, Sellotaped to the inside of the glass. Through a tiny front window, a young man whose face I don’t see
grabs the money and hands me the pair of tickets. I walk home, thinking about Tatyana’s smile when she finds the tickets on the kitchen table. In my head she’s thanking me, kissing me,
and I can visualise the entire night out – Tatyana spends time in the bathroom doing her make-up, then slips into a fancy tight dress, perhaps her black one with tiny faux-diamonds around the
neck. We take a cab on Tverskaya, cross the city southwards. Her high heels sink into the theatre’s soft carpet. She says something about the wonderful seats we have, so close to the stage.
Then she sits upright, concentrating on the musical, her curls tied up in a loose knot, or perhaps dangling over her shoulders, her perfume mixing with that of the other women in the audience. We
enjoy the songs and the dancing and the joyful atmosphere. Then we take a cab home.

I think often about that cab we never took, the ride home that was not meant to be. That’s the thing with real life. Unlike literary characters, our future is mostly shaped by small,
trivial choices – seemingly insignificant, but deceptively fateful.

‘I
SWEAR TO
G
OD
,
WE
desire death more than you want life.’

The handsome bearded man was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed, wearing a black winter jacket and a black beanie. He stared into the camera. ‘We’ve come to Russia’s
capital to stop the war, or to die in the name of God.’ His voice was serene. His dark complexion and Caucasian accent called to mind a Moscow taxi driver. The TV titles said he was the
leader.

By now, the siege had been ongoing for almost a full day. The live broadcast from outside the theatre, which had begun around midnight, had been showing military trucks arriving at the scene and
Russian soldiers sealing off the perimeter. It was a grey October day and you could see the frozen rain dashing across the screen, falling on the police vans and the ambulances.

The entire world was now following the stream of news from Moscow. It was known that the night before, a group of armed Chechen militants had stormed the Dubrovkatheatre, interrupting the
performance of
Nord Ost
, a popular musical. About nine hundred people, staff, cast and audience, were being held hostage. Mixed into the live coverage, footage relating to previous
tragedies flashed up on the screen – the hospital hostages in Budyonnovsk, the bombed buildings in Pechatniki, the explosion in Pushkinskaya.

Then a new clip: this time the bearded man was clad in military fatigues. He sat on a stool inside the theatre, surrounded by armed men and women with their faces covered. ‘Either the
president orders the immediate retreat of Russian troops from Chechnya,’ he said, ‘or the theatre will be blown up with all the hostages inside.’

I often wonder what would have been my first reaction to the news had I seen it live on TV, from my couch. Surely I would have been disturbed by the scale of the drama, by the
thought of the impending tragedy. Sooner or later, though, I would no doubt have switched channels, turned off the TV, put my mind elsewhere.

But these images I only saw later, after everything was over. While the bearded man appeared on screen for the first time, Tatyana and I were inside the theatre, sitting in the stalls, eleventh
row, guarded by a group of women in black hijabs wearing belts of explosives strapped to their bodies.

I have a blurred recollection of those first hours. When I look back, I see a succession of images that never follow the same order, as if they were stored in different and remote corners of my
mind and could only be gathered with great effort. Besides, the memories of those eternal hours have melted into the nightmares of the nights that followed. The masked men wore military fatigues,
but I never saw their faces – not in my memories, not on the screen. Never in my dreams.

I do recall the moment when the armed men first walked onto the stage, shouting, shoving the actors around. Perhaps I remember this with clarity because for a few seconds I thought it was all
part of the show – and so, those seconds ended up being the last before my world shifted. Then I saw the terror on the faces of the child actors who had just been singing onstage and were now
being herded towards the stalls.