Back to Moscow (9 page)

Sometimes it worked. And nothing compared to the feeling of gliding through face control, those first seconds after the bouncer has casually beckoned you in, and you step firmly onto the carpet,
and you enter a pafosni universe prohibited to mere mortals, chosen because you are handsome, special, and you walk towards the boom-boom beats with your heart full of anticipation and excitement
– feeling that you belong in Moscow and Moscow is the centre of the world.

When we were turned away, which was increasingly often, we would hail another car and move to one of the clubs whose prime had passed and which had been forced to adopt a more lenient door
policy.

Colin said, you find the best dyevs in these clubs, hot enough to make it through a second-rate face control but not as demanding as in trendier places. But some nights, for reasons we never
understood, even these démodé establishments would not let us in, so we would end up in safe old Real McCoy, or Karma Bar, which for years maintained an all-expats-welcome policy and
were always packed with young students.

These nights didn’t come cheap. I had to buy rounds of drinks for the brothers when it was my turn, but also for pretty dyevs and their entourage of not-so-pretty friends. I also bought
new clothes at the shopping mall in Okhotny Ryad, black shirts and shiny shoes, to fit in among the increasingly exclusive and well-uniformed tusovka.

I was blowing my stipend money fast, and it was meant to last the entire academic year, so, when Stepanov offered me a part-time job, I accepted it at once.

‘It’ll only take you a few hours a week,’ Stepanov said. Then, with a smirk, he added, ‘I’m sure it won’t distract you from your research.’

That was how I started working for Stepanov.

My job description: show up at business meetings wearing a suit, mutter a few words in English, hand out business cards with a smile and a strong handshake. Nothing else, really. Director of
Marketing, Insight Investments International, my business card said, good old Latin letters on one side, flashy Cyrillic on the other.

Other than Stepanov and me, Insight Investments International had two staff members, Pavel and Vova, Stepanov’s schoolmates. I was the third ‘I’ of the firm, the International,
a Western face investors could trust. But Stepanov was always the one to talk the talk.

I never fully grasped the intricacies of the business but, as far as I gathered from the meetings I was asked to attend, Insight Investments International sold Russian companies, or parts of
them, to foreign investors.

In business mode, Stepanov would try to hide his boyish face behind three-day stubble and sunglasses. He always wore a dark suit and a black shirt, a popular look among Russian men at the time,
inspired by TV series and movies where the protagonists were always Russian criminals.

‘I think the sunglasses might put some investors off,’ I told him once. We had just met a group of French businessmen who wanted to buy a dairy factory and produce brie and camembert
for the Russian market. The conversation had somehow drifted – the French businessmen seemed more interested in nightclubs than in Stepanov’s exposé of Russian cheeses.

‘Bullshit,’ Stepanov said. ‘They love the sunglasses. That’s how they know that I’m well connected, that I really understand business in Russia.’

Every time a deal went through, Stepanov handed me an envelope stuffed with dollars. I was never told how my salary was calculated but, with time, Stepanov’s envelopes got thicker, and I
ended up with plenty of cash to spend.

‘H
ERE
’
S A QUESTION
,’ C
OLIN SAYS
. ‘If you had to choose only one club to go to
for the rest of your time in Moscow, the one place you’re allowed to visit, which one would you choose?’

‘Only one?’ I ask.

‘Only one. You could not get into any other club. The only place for you to get drunk and meet dyevs.’

‘Propaganda.’

Colin takes a long sip and finishes his Long Island iced tea. His eyes are shiny, his half-smile wider than usual. ‘Come on, you must be kidding.’

‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘You know I like Propaganda.’

It’s Friday night and the Real McCoy is packed. The air is hot, shirts are sweaty. The windows by the entrance are coated in a layer of condensation. We are on our third Long Island iced
tea, in good spirits.

‘Sure,’ Colin says, ‘we all like Propaganda, but, come on, before McCoy? Be serious, man. We’ve met so many nice dyevs in here.’

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I say. ‘I really like the McCoy. What the fuck, I
love
the McCoy. Moscow wouldn’t be the same without it. But the McCoy would
probably be my second choice. Or my third, after Karma. If you ask for one single club, for me it’s Propaganda.’

Colin points up at two dyevs dancing on top of the bar, their high heels pounding away next to my drink. ‘You don’t get this atmosphere in Propaganda, the McCoy is always a feast.
This is the real Moscow, man. Wild and fucking honest!’

At that moment, as if to prove Colin’s point, the two dyevs, who are wearing short skirts and leather boots, start kissing each other. People around us raise their arms and cheer.

‘There’re plenty of hot dyevs in Propaganda,’ Colin says, ‘I give you that. The difference is, dyevs go to Propaganda to be seen, the Real McCoy they come to to get
laid.’

‘For an easy score,’ I say, ‘the Real McCoy is unbeatable. It totally deserves its three fuckies. But think of all the great nights we had in Propaganda. Propaganda’s a
Moscow legend.’

Colin is now ogling the dyevs dancing on the bar. ‘We
had
great nights in Propaganda,’ he says. ‘Not any more. Now it’s going all pafosni and exclusivni like the
rest of the city. These days you walk in and you could be in any club in the world. It’s been sanitised, Westernised. If that’s the type of club you enjoy, you may as well go back home.
Propaganda has lost the wildness of the real Moscow. If you think about it, how many Prop dyevs have you fucked lately?’

‘I met Lena in Propaganda.’

‘Yeah, all right, but how many
new
dyevs? You met Lena Propaganda ages ago, soon after you arrived. She doesn’t count. There is nothing like McCoy, man.’

Colin leaves the glass on the bar and – grabbing the leather boot of one of the dyevs – points at it so that she is careful not to kick it. The dyev looks down at us and smiles.

The music is now deafening.

‘Remember that dyev I met last week in Zeppelin?’ Colin asks. He’s sweating, rolling up the sleeves of his silky blue shirt.

‘The one with the big nose?’

‘But great legs, right?’

‘If you say so.’

I wave at the waiter and point at our empty glasses. He looks up and acknowledges my order.

‘So I met her on Tuesday. What a bitch!’

‘She did look bitchy,’ I say.

‘We’d agreed to meet in Teatralnaya, outside the Bolshoi. I came straight from the gym, so I was carrying my sports bag, and guess what the first thing this bitch said when she saw
me was, before hello or anything? “You are not bringing that ugly bag with us, are you?”’

‘Your sports bag?’

‘Yeah, my fucking sports bag.’

‘Why would she give a shit?’

‘Fuck knows,’ Colin says.

The waiter places two new glasses between the leather boots of the dancing dyevs, fills them with crushed ice and various shots. He then tops up the glasses with coke from a hose and a splash of
lime juice. I pay for the round, clink my glass with Colin’s and take a sip. The air feels balmier now, lacking oxygen. I welcome the freshness of the drink.

‘These drinks are loaded,’ I say.

‘Try getting a Long Island like this in Propaganda. These are the best drinks in town, I tell you. Anyway, so the dyev told me something about how carrying a sports bag around is so
working class, not kulturno in Moscow.’

‘What the fuck.’

‘I know,’ Colin says. ‘I told her I’d just been to the gym and I had nowhere to leave the bag. So we walked up Petrovka and I took her to this new café on the
corner with Stoleshnikov, you know, the new place with white tables and white chandeliers and the hot waitresses dressed in black. All pafosni and nice, right?’

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘I like it.’

‘This bitch didn’t. She asked me why I’m taking her to a café and not to a restaurant when I had promised to take her to a restaurant.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Fuck knows. I told her, “Listen, there’s nice food in here and a good atmosphere,” but she was all whiny because of my working-class bag and because I wasn’t
taking her to a real restaurant. Then we get the menu and the bitch starts complaining about the food. She orders a glass of French champagne, which was of course the most expensive item she could
find on the menu.’

‘Classic,’ I say. ‘What did you do?’

‘Wait.’ Colin drinks from his Long Island. ‘I told her I’d go home quickly to drop my bag and get changed, and be back in fifteen minutes to take her to a proper
restaurant. She seemed happy with that. So I go outside, take a taxi and, when I’m on my way home, I write her a text telling her to go fuck herself because I’m not coming back and I
don’t want to see her ever again.’

‘Well done, man, that’s great.’ I slap Colin’s back. ‘You made her pay for her own champagne.’

‘Not really,’ Colin says, shaking his head. ‘I did pay the bill on the way out. She was probably not carrying any cash. Anyway, you should write about this in your PhD, or if
you ever write your book about Moscow. I think it’s very representative of the new Russia.’

A popular Russian song from the 1980s comes on. Everyone in the club is now singing along and dancing. People gather, forming a circle, arms around each other, revolving around the dance
floor.

‘The city is changing fast,’ Colin shouts in my ear. ‘Not what it used to be. Remember when you could take a dyev to McDonald’s and expect to get laid in
return?’

‘Come on, it was never like that.’

‘It was, maybe before you arrived. Things are no longer the same, the good times will soon be over. One day we’ll look back on this time and realise that we got to live in this
special historical moment. We’re witnessing the disintegration of an entire society. We’re in the midst of a social and sexual revolution. Moscow is a jungle, man. People just care
about getting rich and getting laid. Money and sex. It’s all new to them.’

I take a sip of my drink. ‘Money, perhaps. But they must have fucked during soviet times.’

The ring of bouncing people, reaching critical mass, surges towards the bar, a human tornado razing everything in its path. To avoid a collision, Colin and I have to step back. A drunk girl is
now on the floor, her skirt halfway up her waist, a long rip in her tights. Colin helps her to her feet. She laughs, says spasibo and, singing along, rejoins the crowd.

Colin is holding his glass up in the air, so as not to spill it over his silky shirt. ‘In soviet times they only fucked for reproduction purposes,’ he says. ‘Free sex is one of
those things brought by the perestroika. That’s why Russians embraced the uncertainty of political change, because at least they were getting some. Hence the Duck.’

‘What has the Duck got to do with this?’

‘The Hungry Duck symbolised the social and political changes. Dyevs in the Duck were crazy sluts because sexuality was oppressed for seventy years by the old regime. Their sluttiness was a
form of unconscious protest against oppression.’

‘That’s crap,’ I say. ‘Look at Chekhov’s plays, everybody fools around.’

‘That’s in books,’ Colin says. ‘Free sex in real life is something new.’

At the end of the song, as the music quietens down, a table is knocked over at the back, glasses shattering on the floor. The crowd is silent for two seconds. Then someone screams vsyo khorosho,
everything’s good, and there is laughter and the dancing goes on.

‘Some things never change,’ I say. ‘One day, we’ll be gone from Moscow, but other guys will come to this very bar to pick up dyevs, and new dyevs will come to get drunk
and have fun. It’s the circle of life.’

‘No way,’ Colin says, undoing a button on his shiny blue shirt. ‘Come here in ten years and see. There might be a Real McCoy, but it won’t be like this. Look what
happened to the Duck.’

‘That’s different,’ I say. ‘The Duck was too wild. It couldn’t last.’

‘Nothing good lasts, man. Life’s a short bitch and we have to enjoy every fucking bit of it.’

I nod, taking a long sip of my drink.

‘This Moscow,’ Colin says, his arm hovering over the McCoy crowd, ‘
our
Moscow, will also disappear.’

W
ITH THE WARM WEATHER
, the trees around the university campus, which had been bare all winter, turned lush and green. The city was flooded with a
bizarre soft light that revealed a mesmerising range of faded colours, and you could now see pale pinks and greens and blues on the façades of old buildings. They were all turning into
white, these colours, sun-bleached, and Moscow at this time of the year felt polaroid-faded, dreamlike. Walking the older streets of the centre I was often under the impression that my surroundings
belonged to a discoloured guidebook.

You could find plenty of dyevs strolling around Okhotny Ryad and Aleksandrovsky Sad, or manoeuvring their high heels across the cobblestones of Red Square. They wore impossibly short skirts and
no bras, ate ice cream, and stared straight into your eyes for as long as you could hold their gaze.

To combat the heat, terraces and kiosks across the city sold bottles of beer which men carried proudly in their hands as they strolled along the boulevards or sat on park benches. If you
ventured under the archways of old buildings and into their courtyards, you would sometimes discover hidden cafés, temporary wooden structures that sold grilled shashliks and dried fish.

In the months I had spent in Moscow, new coffee shops had sprouted around Tverskaya, Bolshaya Dmitrovka and Bolshaya Nikitskaya, and in the smaller streets around Kuznetsky Most and Kitay-gorod.
They sold expensive cakes – eclairs, Napoleons, carrot cakes, brownies – and, for the first time in Russia, freshly brewed coffee. Dyevs sat in these trendy cafés for hours,
stuffing themselves with sugar and caffeine, reading women’s magazines and Akunin books, redoing their make-up every twenty minutes with the help of pocket mirrors. But they were never fully
focused on their reading, I realised. Even if seemingly absorbed in a book, dyevs were always attentive to their surroundings, ready to look up at any minor disturbance, like gazelles on the
savannah who don’t let their guard down while drinking from a pond.