WAKING UP on a fresh new morning, cold and yet duvet-wrapped in my now familiar cabin, I’m at once reminded by the general silence that the ship I’m aboard is sailing no longer. Now we’re moored and docked it’s not only the engines and machinery that have ceased to function. The entire vessel is oddly empty. Since most of the passengers went ashore to continue their onward journey, the ship, just like the other liners moored at the waterfront, has turned into an exceedingly lethargic hotel – exactly like the grand hotels on the Venice Lido if you go there out of season, where the illusion of service somehow continues in a desultory fashion even while you can’t see why the place bothers to open at all. Here on board, a mood of tiredness has set in. Most of the crew has gone on a few days’ shore-leave. Those who have stayed behind to serve the few residentials have somehow changed in character. Lively stewards have turned into drab resentful hotel waiters, spry stewardesses into invisible chambermaids, as if the very fact of being in Russia has reminded them that a sullen hostility is the proper way of life. The bars that once pulsed with shouting and music have fallen quiet, left to the use of the odd gloomy drinker. The duty-free emporium is locked and barred, the Caviar Cabin firmly shuttered. The beauty shop retains just one magazine-addicted assistant who spends her long day doing simply nothing at all. The lounges and dining rooms have an air of dereliction, abandoned as they are to a few Japanese tourists, several tough German businessmen, and our own pilgrim selves.
And, I realize when I get down to the cavernous dining room for breakfast, some of the same dereliction is affecting our own party as well. The group at our special table seems strangely depleted – and that’s surely not just because I’ve come into breakfast late. It’s as if our serious dedicated company, which had set out so determinedly from Stockholm to take the great Enlightenment Trail, really isn’t that serious or dedicated after all. The group seems to be diversifying, fragmenting, maybe even dissolving entirely, splitting into quite different directions with quite different aims. Our Diderot lovers show no signs at all of being interested in Diderot, to the point where I’m beginning to wonder whether the whole confusing voyage was ever the kind of trip I’d supposed it was – or whether it was simply a cover for some much more mysterious and masonic enterprise to which everyone else other than myself had been made party.
For instance: for the last three days Jack-Paul Verso, our funky professor, has been telling me, over the various Jim Beams we’ve enjoyed together in the bar, about his own intentions: his interest in studying the future of Marxist-Leninist philosophy in Russia, now that it’s had to forget history and adapt to new gene-science and string theory, and the book or maybe article he means to write. Yet now I gather from the others at the table he’s already done an early bunk, leaving the ship first thing in a taxi, equipped with his Deconstructionist’s hat, several bottles of vodka and at least two and possibly three of his band of red-cheeked Tatyanas. According to unconfirmed rumour, they’ve set off on an extended excursion to the town of Pushkin (which was once called Tzarskoye Selo) and no one knows when they’re likely to come back.
Then, even as we drink our breakfast coffee (awful), and finish off our morning rolls (hard), a large black Zil limousine appears in the lens of the portholes, bouncing its way along the dockside. From it descends an elegant, black-caped, barrel-chested gentleman of distinguished bearing and late middle years. He carries a bunch of flowers, and looks up at our ship, waving frantically. Not very much later, our Swedish nightingale can be seen descending the gang-plank, clad in enfolding furs, looking yet more like a grand Brünnhilde. With appropriate gestures she accepts the proffered bouquet, and extravagantly embraces and fondly kisses the caped gent, who in turn takes up front-of-stage top tenor position. Behind her, evidently playing the old comedy role of extravagantly fussy servant, comes the obliging figure of Lars Person, bearing an armful of her topcoats and a couple of vanity cases. Having taken their bows, the entire trio get into the black limo with its grinning chrome grille, which then sweeps them off in the general direction of the city. Breakfast table gossip has it she’s going to attend some fabulous press conference at the Hotel Astoria, before being received at the Maryinsky Theatre – the place where, as it is well-known, all great divas now and then come to rest.
No sooner has she gone than Sven Sonnenberg and Agnes Falkman return from a trip to the bursar’s office which seems to have proved very productive. Gone, apparently, is the dark age when much of Russia was red-mapped and foreigner-hostile country, and where a journey off-course would inevitably lead to arrest. Personal touring is being encouraged, so Sven and Agnes have been able to arrange to rent bicycles and mean to set off into the countryside, hoping to find brute nature, the Russian spirit, the vastness of the steppes. In his very Swedish way, Sven has become quietly excited, saying he looks forward to meeting carpenters, and examining many tables; Agnes is longing to see the amazing achievements of the Russian co-operative farms. No sooner do we see them carrying their backpacks off on to the dockside than Anders Manders rises from the table, wipes his lips, and quietly excuses himself. He would, he says, have dearly loved to spend the day with the rest of us, looking round the shelves of the public library as Galina seems to have arranged. However, embassy contacts have arranged a diplomatic invitation for him to attend a grand banquet given by the mayor of Saint Petersburg, where, over champagne and Beluga caviar, various matters of Russo-Swedish co-operation will be discussed. Such a pity; but it really is one of those invitations a poor working diplomat can hardly refuse . . .
Glancing around the breakfast table, I suddenly realize that all this has stripped our party down to the very barest minimum. In fact there are only Bo, Alma and myself left to take care of reason and pursue the Enlightenment Trail. ‘I didn’t realize the others had been so busy making their own plans,’ I remark. ‘It looks as if our party to the public library is going to be pretty small after all.’
Bo and Alma look at each other.
‘Jo, jo,’ Alma agrees.
‘And what a pity we are not going to be able to spend the day with you either,’ says Bo.
‘Unfortunately Bo has been invited to Petersburg University to give a very important lecture,’ explains Alma.
‘As part of the Diderot Project?’
‘Nej, nej, not exactly,’ says Bo, taking up his paper napkin and wiping the crumbs from his lips. ‘I am giving a lecture about the great Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin and his role in the development of linguistics. I wish you could be there, but it is very specialist. Not your field, I fear.’
‘It’s just been arranged?’
‘Nej, nej, this was arranged many months ago. You see, it is always my habit to try to kill two different birds with one stone.’
‘It saves time,’ says Alma. ‘And you can use one grant for two things.’
‘Or even two grants for one thing?’
‘Some important professors are coming to meet us. Bo is famous, I think he is famous in every country in the world,’ says Alma complacently.
‘So was Carlos the Jackal,’ I say.
‘Pardon?’ says Alma, her face freezing.
Oh dear. Once again I’ve managed to say the wrong thing . . .
At any rate, all this explains why it is that, when Galina Solange-Stavaronova appears on the quayside at nine with the battered mini-bus, ready to guide her little party as arranged, I am the only member of the party waiting on the dockside.
‘Salut, mon cher,’ cries Galina, waving gaily, and wearing another splendid twenties outfit, a bright-red silk dress topped off with a lopsided beret with a pom-pom. Somewhere in the background I can see Bo and Alma being met by a group of grey-haired men in dull suits and put into the back seat of an old Lada; these must be the professors from the university.
‘Mais tu es seul?’ cries Galina, red dress fluttering, emanating the most wonderful fragrance of Chanel. Abjectly, I try my best to explain the situation. Galina shrugs her shoulders and shows no sign of surprise at all. Why not? Perhaps a lifetime spent inside the bitter framework of modern Russian history creates such saintly resignation. Perhaps she simply knows the ways of academics: a careless and unreliable bunch of wonderful people, who are capable of behaving like this anywhere in the world. Or perhaps the tour was never really intended in the first place, and she is continuing the charade only as a pleasant politeness to me.
At least that’s how she makes it seem.
‘N’importe, mon cher, c’est plus intime, oui?’ she cries, holding out her hands to me, and placing them in mine. ‘Then the two of us can spend a very nice day together! A delightful day all on our own! Remember, you are in a civilized city, you can do whatever you like. What do you like? Maybe you want to go to Pushkin? Return to the Hermitage? Or do you want to take coffee and cakes on the Nevsky Prospekt?’
‘I suppose I was really hoping to see the library.’
‘Oh, you mean those Didro books?’ asks Galina, as if this is a strange and absurd suggestion.
‘Yes. And his papers.’
‘But you really want to? You truly like our Monsieur Didro?’
‘Well, yes, I do. I’ve been reading him again on the voyage over and I start to like him more and more.’
Galina looks at me. ‘But don’t you want to see the writers’ Petersburg? The Pushkin Apartment Museum, the Dostoyevsky Apartment Museum?’
‘Well, yes, that would be nice.’
‘The Lermontov Apartment Museum, the Goncharov Apartment Museum?’
‘Yes, indeed. I’m fond of visiting writers’ houses. I might as well do the lot.’
‘And then you will want to go to the Alexander Nevsky cemetery and put a carnation flower on Dostoyevsky’s grave?’ says Galina, now bright-eyed with excitement over what she’s devising.
‘Well, yes, naturally.’
‘Also the graves of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Good, I think you are quite Russian,’ says Galina, looking utterly delighted. ‘But we will do everything properly. First we will start where everything in our city starts.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘At the Bronze Horseman, naturally. I will tell the driver to take us there. Then I will tell him for the rest of our day we will not need his bus at all.’
‘Very well, fine.’
Once we are aboard the bus, with the disappointed-looking driver bouncing us along the potholes of Bolshoi Prospekt, I ask Galina about today’s news. I’m still worrying about how the Russian drama is unfolding. Galina silently raises her eyes to the heavens.
‘The same. Everyone tries to betray everyone else. Russia is one coup after another.’
‘But Yeltsin survives?’
‘Sure, Yeltsin rules okay. He always rules okay. Yeltsin will continue to rule even when there is no more Russia to rule over.’
‘You don’t sound too hopeful.’
‘Hopeful? Please, I am Russian. I live in a land of mad hopes, long queues, lies and humiliations. They say about Russia we never had a happy present, only a cruel past and a quite amazing future. Of course we worship another crazy leader, another false tzar. We are used to being repressed. We are the people who invented the equality of misery. All we like here is one strong man who tells us what to do. Yeltsin, well, think, he survives because everyone else is so much worse. But maybe you understand why I prefer to spend my days with Voltaire and Didro?’
And so once again we pass along the embankment by the university, and take the Palace Bridge over the Neva. Today, though, instead of going as far as the Hermitage, we halt in a square beneath the spire of the Admiralty. In a mess of touristic confusion, passengers are descending in crowds from Intourist buses. We climb down from our own. From somewhere over the far side of the square there comes a noisy crackle of loudspeakers, a great booming of voices. Another demonstration has gathered, much bigger than yesterday’s. People are marching under a flurry of waving red flags, watched by police and soldiers. Then, coming from somewhere near the Hermitage, an alternative procession appears, old Russian tricolours in red, blue and white, waving, shouts and chants singing through the air. Jeep-style police vehicles buzz around them.
‘Something’s happening?’ I ask Galina.
‘Nothing is happening. It is not happening and it will not. It was Didro who said the best thing about Russia. He says everyone in Russia acts as if they live in a place that has just suffered an earthquake, so nobody can trust the ground under their feet.’
‘But what are these demonstrations?’
‘Nothing, I told you. This thing, that thing. The past, the future. Old style, new style. Socialism, shopping. There are always demonstrations around here. Because this used to be Decembrists’ Square.’
‘Where they had the Decembrist Revolution?’
‘There was our famous song, “Don’t you come to the square, Will you be there at the square?” Only in the end, like all of those things, the December revolution wasn’t a real revolution. It was just an idealistic confusion. The nobles had gathered to stop Nicholas from becoming tzar, because they preferred his nicer brother. One problem, they were already too late. Nicholas was tzar already. And he sent in the soldiers.’
‘So another bloodbath?’
‘Not at first. They drove the demonstrators out on to the ice over the Neva. They didn’t even need to fire the guns. The ice cracked and they were drowned. But today the square cannot be used for revolutions.’
‘It can’t?’
‘Don’t you see how neat it is, wide lawns and big gardens? Why do you think it is made like that?’
‘Ah, I see. Revolutionaries never walk on the grass and the flowerbeds?’
‘In Russia, they do not,’ says Galina firmly. ‘And now you can see him. There he is.’
I look upward. There he is indeed. Big Peter, high-hatted, trapped on his rock-pedestal, rises up high above us on his horse. He’s a flowing figure, as big as can be, big as bronze and Falconet can make him, dwarfing the squat Intourist buses parked all around him, and shrinking to nothing all these dressed-up Russian wedding parties that have gathered round his pediment, to have their photos taken, somehow hoping to link their Posterity with his.
‘You remember the poem of Pushkin, we all learn it at school?’ asks Galina. ‘“Where lonely waters strive to reach the sea, he stood / And gazed before him, mind filled with the greatest thoughts.”’
He’s not what I’ve expected; in fact he looks perfectly pleasant as he sits up there, staring out at the Baltic as if he’s expecting a fresh load of pictures, rising up out of his flowing rock pedestal, more civilized in looks than I imagined, more gallant, more – how can I put it? – French. The whole ensemble is so flowing and mobile it’s not hard to see why Pushkin imagined the horse leaping down from the pedestal, and Peter and his mount thundering through the streets and squares of the city, chasing the guilty, the unhappy, the anxious to their dooms.
The marching demonstrators are themselves heading for the Neva, though on this occasion they are wisely making the safer crossing by the bridge. But when I’m curious and make a move to follow the parade, Galina seizes my arm and steers me on my way.
‘Take no notice, it’s so tasteless. Those are two kinds of people who can never be happy. It’s not important. This is our new civil war. Now this enormous building in front, with the golden dome, don’t you think we really must go in?’
‘Why must we go in?’
‘It’s Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. It’s the highest place. From the top you can have the very best view of Petersburg. Let’s take a look. Or maybe you don’t like it?’
‘It’s just I prefer the churches with the onion domes.’
‘The Orthodox styles, of course. But this one is designed by another Frenchman. And oh, by the way, for a little fact Didro lived at the Narishkin Palace over there.’
I look across the square, but Galina is already steering me toward the church ahead.
‘What other Frenchman? Was he a friend of Didro?’
‘Not a bit, he lived much later. His name was Auguste Montferrand. He rebuilt the cathedral for our tzars. He wanted to be buried here, but Tzar Alexander refused him. He died as soon as the cathedral was finished, but his body went back to Paris.’
‘Why did the tzar refuse him?’
‘Because the cathedral finally took forty years to finish. The plans were wrong. Nothing fitted. He wasn’t a true architect, but even so he built the greatest dome in all the north of Europe. You can see him still, he is carved up there on the façade.’
On the huge marble steps leading up to the cathedral there stands a long line of wrapped beggars, their hands outstretched: old men on homemade crutches, babushkas in black dresses and headscarves. Galina halts and opens up her handbag.
‘I always give five kopecks, it brings us good luck,’ she says.
We walk inside, hand over an entrance fee to someone, and find ourselves in a vast cathedral that feels much too big for itself. It’s a great dark monster of rational baroque, a place of huge sculptures and mosaics, less a place of true worship than an opulent museum. High in the centre, above the crossing, there rises up Montferrand’s vast open dome, the third largest after St Peter’s and St Paul’s.
‘It’s a pity. Until two years ago you could have seen the Foucault Pendulum. It swung here to show the axis of the earth.’
‘Here? But I thought it was in Paris. Didn’t they hang it first in Soufflot’s Pantheon?’
‘Of course there was one in Paris. But the other was here. Didn’t you know Petersburg is supposed to lie on the true meridian, the heartline of the world?’
‘I thought that was Greenwich in London.’
‘No, this is the English, who are always cheating. Here is the real line that runs through the centre of the world.’
‘What happened to the pendulum? Why take it down?’
‘Perhaps because we don’t believe Russia is at the middle of things any more. But you can still go up on the roof and from the top of Petersburg look out at the entire world.’
So we go up and up, by the spiral staircase through the layers of the cold rational cathedral, across the iron ladder to the balconies of the roof. I look out onto the endless rooftops of copper and tin, the broken chimney stacks, the domes of the Smolny Convent, the fingers of big buildings; then, beyond that, spreading out to the wide horizon and the still wider world, the factory chimney stacks, the grim slabs of endless apartment blocks, the thick dirty smoke-plumes rising from distant power stations, the hint of far palaces and fortresses, the grey glint of the Baltic sea.
This is what I see. It’s somehow not quite what Galina sees. She sees a great city made of form and symmetry. For, as she carefully tries to show me, each part of this cunning and intricate city exactly balances some other. So two golden flèches, carefully matching each other on either bank of the Neva: one the Admiralty, the other the Peter and Paul Fortress. Two tzars on horseback, one on either side of the cathedral. One of them is Big Peter, pointing like a projectile out to sea on the surge of his great pedestal; the other is Tzar Nicholas, who slaughtered the Decembrists just on the other side of this building, a stiff straight autocrat set erectile on his highly high horse. In front of the Admiralty, a full-length Nikolay Gogol stares across at his stone opposite, Mikhail Lermontov. Down there in front of the Smolny Convent, where Tzarina Catherine Veliko took care of her noble girls, the figure of Karl Marx is exchanging glances with his old collaborator Friedrich Engels. There, glittering upside down and mirrored in the luminous water of the Neva, is a second Admiralty, a second Hermitage. On the Neva bridge, there marches one procession with waving flags, and then another procession.
‘You see, we are a city of doubles,’ says Galina. ‘Even our most famous books are books all about doubles. Of course so was Didro’s.’
True. When I really think about it, Galina is probably right after all.
And then, as we’re leaving the cathedral, coming down the steps into the square, heading towards the second statue – Tzar Nicholas of the bloodbath, high on his erectile pedestal – something rather unfortunate occurs. A swarm of gipsies in bright dresses appears and surrounds me, holding out their hands. All of them are female: two adult women, and maybe six or seven girls, of all ages from four to seventeen. My hand moves toward my pocket to give them something; I’m thinking of Galina’s superstition about good luck. Suddenly, screaming, shouting, they swarm all over me, the women trying to push me down, the children’s hands pulling at my clothes and pushing into my pockets. The children shove and tug; as I manage to pull loose from one, I’m grabbed by the others, or hit at by their many flailing hands. Passers-by stop, tourists halt, but nobody reacts.
Or nobody but Galina. Suddenly she’s in the middle of the fray: hitting, punching, slapping hard with her handbag and the guidebook she carries. Her red dress flies, her hat comes off, her hands grab. People start to come running toward us, and the gipsies give up. They run away across the square and down the gardens, in their long bright skirts, a dangerous squad. Galina helps me to my feet again.
‘Truly we are a friendly city,’ she feels obliged to say. ‘But so many criminals now. You must try hard to be careful, mon cher. And watch out for those people, the police don’t bother to stop them. Maybe they pay them a very good bribe. Did they take anything, your wallet, your passport? Have a look.’
I stare at the grey-haired lady in surprise, then check through my pockets. My wallet, fortunately, is still there, and so is my passport.
‘No, they took nothing. Thanks to you.’
‘You see! I told you if we gave to the beggars you would have very good luck.’
I don’t dispute this analysis. ‘You were completely amazing, Galina, I don’t know how you did that.’
‘You think I am too old to fight? Well, now you see, I am not.’
‘I think you’re the heroine of the occasion. Thank you, really.’
‘Come,’ she says, taking my by the arm, ‘I think you need a cognac. I will take you to a very nice place on Nevsky Prospekt. You have heard of the Nevsky Prospekt, I hope?’
Yes, indeed, I’ve heard of Nevsky Prospekt. Writer after writer, over the years, has introduced me to it. Pushkin has told me about its elegant parade of human lives and its imperial style, Gogol has created for me its strolling absurdities: those preening clerks in their well-brushed morning coats, those chancellory clerks with their magnificent briefcases, those persons of serious consequence; those elegant women with their leg of mutton sleeves, those cavalry officers, those protective watchmen, and the proud foreign governesses, who only come out, walking their noble charges, somewhere around lunchtime. I know from writer after writer about the men with their well-trimmed whiskers and their favourite barbers, the women with their red ankles showing under white petticoats, about the topknots and the elevated noses, the fine canes, the magnificent epaulettes, the splendid overcoats, worth saving a fortune to buy. And I know, thanks to the saddened Dostoyevsky, about the many others too: the drunkards and the gamblers, the noisy rakes and plaintive whores, the superfluous, the hidden, the insulted and injured.
We walk across the square, beside a canal, past the busy Aeroflot building. The traffic noise and the human chatter promise everything: except that the boulevard Galina brings me to bears no relation at all to the scene I’ve imagined. True, it’s broad, it’s grand, but not like Nevsky Prospekt. A long straight perspective, seemingly endless, runs the length of it, from the Neva end to the distant Moscow station. High façades interspersed with churches, bridges, theatres, narrow and fade off into the blurry faint snowfall. A great surge of traffic sweeps along it; trolley-buses swish under networks of sparking wires. But there’s no spirit of elegance, no touch of style, no social parade; the pedestrians trundle past us in blank solitude, blundering into each other, heads down, faces cramped, white, featureless, tight and anxious. A wet crowd smell comes off them. The shops and arcades of the imagination have gone; instead more ill-dressed crowds gather in queues and clumps outside drab storefronts that display almost no goods in their windows. Women stand impassively in doorways holding some single small possession – an aluminium kettle, a dress, a white kitten – for sale. Outside the long and rational façade of the Kazan Cathedral more beggars are waiting with their hands outstretched. Weeds are growing through the pavements outside the war-battered frontage of the Gostinny Dvor department store, the city’s grand arcade where once the world’s traders used to come and barter.
And when here and there you see a brighter spot, a more brilliant façade, it’s nearly always a western store: maybe Benetton or Gucci or Prada. These are not shops for the passing people: armed men, the civilian troops of some private army, stand outside in suede jackets, cradling Kalashnikovs. Just like in the old days, observes Galina; then it was dollar shops for the nomenklatura, now it’s western stores for the new rich, many of them the same people. We stand and watch as the shop assistants lock and unlock the shop doors to the new glitterati, whose frank flamboyant hints of wealth and fortune – a Rolex watch, a gold necklace, Nike trainers – are to be briefly glimpsed for just a few seconds as, like the old aristocrats, they flit quickly across the pavements and disappear into a slow-moving chauffeured Mercedes, coasting down the curb. And beside the stores are the Russian banks, doors closed, protected by yet more hard-headed, thick-jacketed armed attendants.
Close to the metro station there’s another angry but contained Communist protest. More crackling loudspeakers declaim, more red flags wave, more pamphlets are thrust out at the shrouded passers-by. We cross the road by the metro subway. Here, out of the blowing wind, the crowds push and jostle, stalls sell food in a stink of frying onions. There are bloodstains on the concrete, we stumble between the feet of drunks and oddly submissive children begging by the walls. We ascend to the pavement, then somehow dive downward again, into a quite different subterranean world. Galina opens a small doorway, then leads the way down a very long set of stairs. Down at the bottom it’s belle époque Paris – unless it’s turn-of-the-century Vienna or old Saint Petersburg. There’s a long zinc bar, with posters from Pernod and Byrrh and Vladivar Vodka. There are Turkish wall-hangings, art nouveau lamps, plenty of chinoiserie, drawings all done in the manner of the Secessionists and the Futurists: Bakst and Klimt and Schiele. There are waiters in white linen aprons; there is warmth and noise and money. There’s a flavour of taste. The people at the tables are young and laughing, a confident sure bourgeoisie of some sort, wearing western clothes, quite unlike the dismayed drab figures we’ve just seen on Nevsky Prospekt.
‘Garçon, ici,’ cries Galina, a little grey-haired empress, as we sit at a table to ourselves in the corner. The waiter comes at once, and quickly returns with two cognacs. Plainly this is Galina’s place. The waiters know her, many of the customers too. It’s evidently where she dresses for, and where she often comes. And now she’s explaining that in such splendid cafés, in this very best part of the Prospekt, the very best people of Petrograd (it’s not hard to see who she means) came, just as the Bolshevik Revolution, began to drink the last of the great champagnes. The dark days were about to start: the persecutions, executions, exterminations were already expected. But there was still time to buy expensive drinks at the most inflated prices, and maybe pick up a girl. Now to come here you should really have dollars, she says. At this I pick up the tab and take out the wallet Galina has saved for me.
‘Please, no, put it away,’ she says. ‘If you pay it will be ten times what I pay. This is for me, I am allowed to pay in roubles. You see they know me here, mon ami. Here and everywhere. Now, drink it quickly. Are you resurrected yet, mon ami? Eau de vie.’
I drink, get my breath back. ‘It’s okay, I’m fine now,’ I tell Galina.
‘This place, it is my oasis,’ she says, pleased, taking out a coloured cigarette and lighting it. ‘I come here, I read books, I speak in French. For me this is the real Saint Petersburg. Always such a civilized city, even if it had its dark side. Always so clever, so original, so beautiful. Now, don’t you agree?’
At this moment, the waiter comes back, and places two more glasses of cognac on the table in front of us. At the same time a youngish and roundish man comes to stand beside the table.
‘For you from me,’ he says, giving a small smile and sitting down.
I glance at Galina, who shakes her head.
‘Welcome to Russia, British I think,’ says the man, who wears a tweedish sort of jacket in an Englishy sort of cut. He has a clubby style of tie that goes with his somewhat Oxford shirt. His smile is brittle, his features heavily acne-ed, his hair firmly slicked down with grease. And he carries a worn leather briefcase which, with priestly veneration, he sets on his knee, and then clicks open with a hey-presto motion.
Galina looks at him dryly. ‘Qui est vous, who are you?’
‘I am Ruslan Chichikov,’ says the man, ignoring Galina, holding out his hand to me.
‘Chichikov, please, you are joking,’ says Galina.
‘I don’t think so. Now, sir, I know, you are an investor?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘A real smart businessman, I think.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Good, I am a real smart businessman too. Entrepreneur. Joint venturer.’
‘I am sure you are,’ says Galina.
The youngish man takes no notice of her. ‘I understand very well how it is with you, my friend,’ he tells me. ‘You have a project.’
‘No.’
‘You have tried everything. You knock on all the doors, visit all the offices, all the time you get nowhere. You can’t get a single thing sewn up. Tell me, isn’t it right?’
‘No. Really, I’m not a businessman.’
‘They send you everywhere, this official to that one. You never find the people in top job, you never find the one with the real power. Isn’t it right?’
‘No.’
‘You can’t get official permission to import or export, to start a business, open an office. Trouble with currency restrictions. Laws about hiring people. Maybe they don’t let you have a Petersburg apartment.’
‘I’m not trying to—’
From his briefcase the youngish man is now unloading sheaf after sheaf of typed out paper, sorting the pages into sets, pushing them into my hands. ‘Every official you meet wants to have a share. A holiday, a portion of the company, seat on the board. Business here is a tricky business, right? Why pay bribes to people who have no influence? True?’
‘Well, true.’
‘Now then, how much do you really have to invest?’
‘I’m not in Russia to invest.’
‘See there. Letter from the mayor of Petersburg. Telling you who I am.’
‘Amazing,’ says Galina.
‘Letter from the chief of the Narodny Bank. Telling you who I am.’
‘But how do you know who you are?’ asks Galina. ‘Not Chichikov.’
‘Da. See? Statement of property ownership, with my name on it.’
‘It isn’t your name,’ says Galina.
‘My commercial name, I work in companies, partnerships. I know everyone in this city. Officials, bankers, business types, security teams. A stranger cannot just walk into Petersburg, you know. It’s the Wild West here.’
‘Ruslan Chichikov, really?’ says Galina.
‘Ignore her. Look, I can introduce you to everyone, find you property. Arrange your imports, ship your exports. I can fix your permits, provide your protection. A businessman who doesn’t understand how it works can end up in the forest with a little hole in the back of his head.’
‘You don’t have to talk to this man,’ says Galina.
‘Of course, you must, if you want to know Russia. You have capital, I have organization,’ says the youngish man. ‘We make it a joint venture? I take twenty per cent? Do we shake?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘there’s nothing to shake on. I’m not what you think. I’m not a businessman at all.’
‘Everyone in the west is a businessman. You read the MBA manual? Wherever you go there is always a good business opportunity somewhere. If you look for it.’
‘I’m not looking for it.’
‘You have plenty capital?’
‘No.’
‘But you do want to invest?’
‘I don’t want to invest. I’m a visitor, a tourist.’
‘So you go somewhere. Where do you want to go?’
‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’
‘A tourist who doesn’t want to go somewhere. Maybe there’s something you’d like to buy?’
‘No, there’s nothing at all I’d like to buy.’
‘A tourist who doesn’t like to buy. So you have something to sell?’
‘Nothing to sell.’
‘Pleasure, you are looking for pleasure. It’s all here if you ask me.’
‘I’m not into pleasure.’
‘A tourist who is not into pleasure. Who do you need to see?’
‘I don’t need to see anyone. And I’m very nicely looked after.’
‘Now thank you for this brandy,’ says Galina. ‘We go.’
The youngish man looks me in the eye. ‘Oh, please, sir, make some use of me, only ask my help. I can arrange travel. Make introductions. Find you beautiful hostesses. What do you do?’
‘I’m a writer.’
‘Okay, maybe you need a movie crew.’
‘I don’t need a movie crew.’
‘You like cafés, I’m sure. I show you a better café. Come with me.’
‘Alors, mon brave, time to leave,’ says Galina, taking up her handbag.
‘No, wait, please,’ the youngish man says very urgently. ‘You write books? I can sell them for you. Only a small discount. I know every bookstore in Petersburg. They love to do me favours.’
‘I didn’t bring any books with me.’
‘I can be very useful. I studied literature at the university. I take you to the Pushkin House.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘You collect books?’
‘Yes, some.’
‘Good. Now we do business. I can get you books. Wonderful books. Treasures, books from the imperial collections, the city library.’
‘This is bad, really, it’s time to go,’ says Galina.
The youngish man seizes hold of my jacket sleeve. ‘Give me a list, anything at all you want. I know just what to do. I’ve worked for Americans. I can find you anything. Tell me which is your hotel and I can bring anything there before you leave, so you don’t have to pay me now. Then you can slip it under your shirts, you will have no problem.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
‘Listen, no time could be better. In Russia right now everything is for sale. Don’t go yet, listen to me, wait. There has to be something you want. Icons? Old cameras?’
‘Goodbye, Chichikov,’ says Galina, as we walk away from the table and head up the stairs.
‘That name, I heard it before,’ I say.
‘Of course, don’t you remember your Gogol? He’s the acquirer, the clever rogue who travels round the landowners and buys up all the dead souls.’
‘It’s a joke?’
‘In Russia even our crooks love our best writers.’
‘And every café has to have a nephew,’ I say.
‘Well, I am so sorry,’ says Galina, as we step out again on Nevsky Prospekt, ‘but I just don’t like you to see our bad new Russia. Not everything here is like this.’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Russia is full of good people, not like this ridiculous Chichikov.’
‘He was quite amusing.’
‘Then you are amused far too easily,’ she says. ‘When capitalism arrives, it produces only strange and morbid symptoms. You should have been here before, now you have come too late. You are visiting the ruins of a dying empire.’
‘Please, wait,’ says a voice behind us. The youngish man is there again, smiling. ‘You say you are a writer. Don’t you like to see the grave of Dostoyevsky? Not far away from here. Only the other end of Nevsky Prospekt.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘So let’s have a drink, yes? Give me a chance.’
‘Not now.’
‘Then sell me something that will cost you nothing,’ he says. ‘Sell me your name—’
‘My name?’
‘I will print here on my documents.’
‘Come,’ says Galina, taking me firmly by the arm. In her red dress and red pom-pommed hat, she dives right into the middle of the traffic. Horns hoot, tyres skid.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask.
‘I think I take you now to the Didro Library. You ought to see it in case our friend gets there first and it disappears completely.’
And thus, while the traffic honks and races around us, she drags me bodily to the other side of Nevsky Prospekt.