Vodka (15 page)

“My ears are swollen,” he told them eventually. “I’m tired of listening.”

“You’re an uncompromising bastard,” Alice said.

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all day.” He was genuinely pleased.

Alice goaded and goaded Lev; even she’d had enough of going nowhere. Lev’s face began to flush red; Alice almost looked under the table to see if he was pawing the ground. Bob tried to interject, then Sabirzhan, and finally Harry, but they were all brushed aside.

“You think I’m going to be shunted out of the way just like that?” Lev snapped. “You think I’m
so
stupid that I can’t see what you’re trying to do?”

“What am I trying to do?”

“Wreck the Russian economy, that’s what; maintain Russia in some kind of semicolonial tutelage to the West. You can keep your expertise and your theories. The only thing capitalists are creating is misery. People begging on the streets, folks dying faster than they can make the coffins, no potatoes in the stores, babies born with only half a face, people who can’t take a piss because they’ve got the clap, pensions worth shit. You knock us to the ground and then want to buy the wreckage. That’s not just shit, it’s
insulting.”

Alice held her hand up to try and interrupt the flow, but she might as well have tried to hold off a tsunami.

“You were pushing each other out of the way to get on the plane when that fool Gorbachev rode off into the sunset. ‘Shock therapy,’ you tell us. ‘A few months of pain and it’ll all be over.’ Yes, well, we’re getting the shock all right, but I don’t see much therapy. And what’s the West doing? You sweep in here as if you’re emissaries of light, bringing salvation to the natives living in the dark forest. You think you’re heroes because people give you free drinks and ask your advice. You think that what works for you will automatically work for everyone else. Your teeth are whiter than ours and your clothes
better, so suddenly you’re the arbiters of public morality. You assume America’s the ultimate model, and so you judge everything simply by how close it comes to your own ideal. You think you’ve carte blanche to remake Russia in your own image. You don’t, and you won’t—not here.”

She was drunk now, very drunk, riled and losing it. “You are backward, lazy, devoid of initiative and living in the past,” she yelled.

“And you, Mrs. Liddell, are blinkered, imperialist, patronizing and rapacious. I don’t like being treated as an aboriginal in my own country, and I don’t like the prospect of your privatizing this factory merely to make money. You’re trying to rape us, pure and simple.”

And with that, Lev pushed his chair back and stormed out of the room. If the door had been shut, his fury would surely have propelled him straight through it.

Lewis was shaking Alice awake with enough force to make her slap his hand away in irritation. “What time is it?” she slurred.

“Half past ten. Where have you been, to get this drunk?”

Alice felt synthetic fabric against her cheek; the sofa in their room at the Metropol. When she lifted her head, a line of saliva stretched from the corner of her mouth to the upholstery.

“Where have you
been?”
he asked again.

“Red October.”

“That was this morning.”

“Lasted all day … Lev … Fucking asshole.”

“Why’s he an asshole?”

“Fucking fuckstick.”

“You got hammered with this guy?”

“Trying to get him to agree to privatization.” Lewis’s face swam in her vision. The skin under his chin was beginning to pouch, she saw; he was going to get jowly if he wasn’t careful.

“You could have done that without getting drunk.”

“I’m a Westerner. I’m a woman. Why make things harder than they already are?”

“Did Harry and Bob get drunk?”

“’Course not.”

“So why did you?”

“Had to drink their share for them.” She giggled.

“Alice, getting drunk at work is not the way normal people behave.”

She forced herself to focus on him. He was being patronizing; she wanted to slap him again, harder. “Lewis, it’s a
distillery.
That’s what they do in distilleries: they make vodka, then they drink it.” Alice giggled again, a hand to her mouth like a naughty teenager. “And if you had to deal with someone like Lev, you’d be drunk too.” She wagged a finger. “I’m gonna get him, Lewis. I’m gonna get Lev, I’m gonna teach that fuckstick not to mess with me. Next time will be different.”

Tuesday, January 7, 1992

T
he temperature had dropped again, down to minus twelve. Everywhere, like a mantra, could be heard the phrase
golod y kholod:
famine and freezing.

It was Orthodox Christmas, the first in almost three quarters of a century reclaimed from the godless embrace of communism. The first, then, when worshipers needn’t fear a visit from the ubiquitous KGB. Lev and his phalanx of bodyguards—he always took twenty men wherever he went; no gang leader in Moscow ever took his safety for granted—went to the Kazan Cathedral at the northeast corner of Red Square. “Cathedral” is something of a misnomer; the Kazan is little bigger than a church and painted as brightly pink as a child’s birthday cake. Stalin had destroyed the original and replaced it with a public toilet; only the quick thinking of the architect Pyotr Baranovksy, who had made plans of the cathedral even as Moustaches was tearing it down, had enabled Gorbachev to rebuild it as original, right down to the ornate window frames, ogee-shaped gables and domes in green and gold.

Lev bowed three times before the icon of Jesus above the door, and between each bow stood and crossed himself, from head to stomach and right shoulder to left, using three fingers rather than two in the approved Orthodox fashion. Inside the cathedral, it was almost dark; the only light came from candles and weak wall-brackets. The air was close and quiet, heavy with
incense and short on oxygen. From the walls, icons looked dolefully and impassively down, unsteady in the flickering haze.

As in all Orthodox churches, there were no pews; the congregation stood. Feet shuffled, clothes rustled; no one spoke. In the murk, Lev’s bodyguards forced worshipers into the corners, meeting resistance only from an old woman dressed in black and holding a brass contribution plate covered in red felt. A can of oil to keep the flames alight was at her feet; in her free hand was a box of candles in various sizes. The prices for each size had been crossed out and marked over several times. When she tutted at the wrestler who’d tried to move her, Lev came over and placed five hundred dollars on the contribution plate.

“We pray for Russia’s future,” he said, “and for its soul.”

Alice heard the key click-clack in the lock, and Lewis came in trailing cold.

“Raw out there, huh?” she said.

“And the traffic was awful,” he replied. He took off his coat and rubbed his shoulders. “I’d give anything to be back in New Orleans again. How long does winter last here?”

“Till May, sometimes.”

“May? No chance. This goes on till May, I’m out of here. Oh.” He felt in his jacket pocket. “I brought you this.”

He handed her a banknote in fuchsia pink. It was a five-hundred-ruble bill, officially issued yesterday, the first she’d seen; the previous highest denomination had been two hundred. The banknote was folded and creased
from being in his pocket; she had to put down her vodka glass to straighten it out and examine it properly.

“What are you watching?” he asked.

“News.” The reporter was saying that those coping best were country people who, having chickens and gardens, could feed themselves. It was not hard to detect a note of schadenfreude in the reporter’s voice; Moscow has always been resented by the rest of Russia.

Alice switched channels. Now Borzov was touring the upmarket Arbat Gastronom. Its red-and-white awnings were cheerful and clean. The shelves and floors had been swept free of litter. Clerks in spotless aprons stood in front of rows of canned food, imported vegetables and jars of pickled spices, all neatly sorted by category and size. Cellophane-wrapped packages of meat and poultry were piled invitingly in a large, modern freezer. Two pounds of chicken was forty-eight rubles, two pounds of smoked fish, forty; eggs were selling at twelve rubles for ten. The place radiated enterprise and profit. It was the kind of blatant propaganda that would have made any Soviet commissar proud.

“I don’t care how much food they’ve got,” Lewis said. “This place is Third World until I can find a muffuletta.” If there was one thing above all others that Lewis missed about New Orleans it was the cuisine, and the muffuletta sandwich—a round seeded loaf split and filled with ham, Genoa salami, mortadella, Provolone cheese and marinated olive salad—was a particular favorite. “So they got vegetables?” The word had four syllables—vedgetibbles. “Bully for them.”

Back in the Kremlin, tricolor at his shoulder, Borzov addressed the nation. “The hardest time is from now until the summer. After that, there will be stabilization
and improvement. Next winter will be easier than this one. Today we must all make a choice: well-fed slavery or hungry freedom? To make this decision requires the will and wisdom of the people, the courage of politicians, the knowledge of experts…”

He looked sincere and pained; Alice fancied that he was addressing her personally.

“Your president has made this choice. He has never looked for easy roads, but the next months will be the most difficult. If he has your support and trust, he is ready to travel this road to the end with you.”

Borzov took a sip from the glass on his desk—Alice hoped and doubted that it was water. He narrowed his eyes. “For too long, our economy has been run on lines that can only be described as antihuman. As a result, we have inherited a devastated Russia. But we mustn’t despair. We have the chance to climb out of this pit and to stop our constant preparation for war with the whole world. This will be a special year. We will create the foundations of a new life. We are abandoning mirages and illusions, but we are not going to lose hope. Hope we do have.”

Vladimir Kullam was hurrying home. Brezhnev had once boasted that Moscow was the only capital city in the world where a person could walk the streets at any hour without fear of attack; no more. Vladimir had made good money on the kiosk today, more than he wanted to carry alone for too long. When he thought of the Chechens who’d threatened him yesterday, he upped his pace a little more and checked to make sure they weren’t following him. The streets were badly lit; if anyone was there, he might not see them until it was too late. His youthful imagination ran merry riot in his
head; he’d heard tell of what the black-asses did to people who’d crossed them.

An exclamation—“Vova!”—cut through Vladimir’s thoughts. He was off before he knew it, three strides into a sprint, when the voice said “Vova!” again, and he realized who it was. He stopped running. “You want to be careful, coming up on people like that—you almost gave me a heart attack!”

The streetlight caught the dull glint of a vodka bottle. “You want to take a hundred grams with me?”

Vladimir shook his head. “I haven’t the head for that stuff.”

“Good lad—” And then Vladimir felt a sharp pain at the base of his skull, saw an explosion of light entirely at odds with the smoggy blackness of a Moscow winter and heard his own sharp cry of surprise give way to a yawning silence.

Wednesday, January 8, 1992