“It’s true,” she said. “They think we’re backward, like we have bears wandering in the streets or something.” Despite my irritation, I had to laugh.
I wish I could report that this exchange led to a warm and lasting détente, but then the conversation turned to 9/11. When Masha noted that in Italy, where she often vacationed, many people believed the U.S. government had purposefully knocked down the Twin Towers to boost the stock market, it was all I could do not to hurl the remains of my sandwich across the table. Anya was staring studiously at her phone, unwilling to get anywhere near this conversation. Mercifully, the server at last brought the check, and Anya quickly paid the bill.
I figured this would be the last time we saw each other, so I asked Masha if we could take a ten-years-later photo of her and Anya together. None of us were in the mood—at least, I wasn’t—but the sisters dutifully posed in a little square across the street from the restaurant.
To my surprise, Masha then invited me to come see her apartment. Anya drove us there, and although the place was magnificent, with spectacular views over the whole city, what caught my eye was the vast assortment of American toys in Nikita’s room, including two Buzz Lightyears, a Woody doll, and a stuffed Garfield the Cat. As Nikita proudly showed them to me, I found myself amazed that Masha allowed them in her home. But I refrained from commenting, having already had that particular can of worms for lunch.
Back in Anya’s car, we discussed the lunchtime contretemps. “Masha’s at home all day every day with a five-year-old,” she said, with a laugh. “She needs to have more conversations with people. Don’t think anything of it.” Then she asked me if I’d like to spend the night at the dacha. I felt like a child who’s been offered a cookie after choking down my spinach.
We picked up Max that evening and drove to Lake Chebarkul. Sergei and Lyuba were out there too, of course, and they invited us to have dinner with them. It was already dark as we drove, so there wasn’t much to see; we just rode along in the blackness to an endless soundtrack of pop music. Like the “nice, gentle” humor of Friends, Anya also enjoyed old love songs. She wouldn’t have said it in front of Max, but later she told me, “When I was younger, I used to think such songs were stupid and sentimental. But now I feel differently. I understand what they’re about, because I’ve lived it.” This cool Russian beauty truly was a romantic at heart.
After a little more than an hour, we arrived at the gate outside Anya’s dacha. Before we pulled in, she pointed across the street at a red-brick church with a gold cupola on top. “My mother built that,” she said, as I gaped. I knew the family had built a chapel, but I hadn’t realized it was a full-fledged onion-domed church. “She did it after her brother died,” Anya told me. “Also, so people here would have a place to pray.”
When we walked into the dacha, I found myself gaping again. The first floor had 15-foot ceilings, a chandelier, and a vast open living room and kitchen, and the walls were covered in contemporary art. Anya gave me a tour while Busya and her other dog, a mutt named Knopa, scampered about. On the second floor, she showed me several bedrooms before we got to mine, which had a curved-wall bedchamber (it was located in the dacha’s turret) with a giant round double bed. The floors were heated, even in my private bathroom, and silk curtains surrounded the bed. I put down my backpack, and Anya said, “Do you want to see the cinema room?” Seriously?
She took me up to the third floor, where a giant screen covered one wall, with a row of cushy reclining chairs facing it. This was a “dacha” in the same sense that a Cadillac limousine is a “car,” and as I oohed and aahed my way around, Anya smiled, seeming pleased.
Sergei and Lyuba’s place was a short walk away, past a banya, through a gate, then past a fire pit and gazebo. Their dacha was equally huge, and the interior was chockablock with art, tchotchkes, and shelves full of books. Lyuba shuffled about the kitchen in a purple housedress and slippers while Sergei gave me the tour.
Like Anya’s, this dacha had multiple bedrooms, all of them—as Sergei proudly pointed out—with en suite bathrooms. “The builders told me it would be impossible for each room to have its own bathroom, because of the plumbing,” he said. “But I insisted. And now my friends all ask for pictures so they can show their own architects that it can be done.” He showed me his “man cave,” a book-lined study with curved walls and a view of the lake, and back down on the first floor, the indoor swimming pool. I thought of Anya’s grandmother’s joke, and while Putin probably does have a bigger dacha, you could totally have him over to this one and not feel self-conscious.
Sergei’s hair and mustache had grayed, but other than that he looked great—slimmer than in 2005, and with a perpetual grin on his ruddy face. As we waited for Lyuba to finish making dinner, he fetched a Russian army officer’s hat and thrust it into my hands. “Try it on!” he said. I did, and saluted—not like a Pionerka, that much I knew—while Sergei guffawed. He disappeared and returned with a cowboy hat bearing a silver sheriff’s star, and we giggled and took photos together in the opulent living room. For a man who’d made so much money and lived in relative splendor, he gave off the air of your favorite goofy uncle.
Lyuba called us to the table, and we sat down to a meal of pork chops, sliced ham, potato casserole, and that Russian classic: pod shuboy salad. Pod shuboy, or “under a fur coat,” is so named because a layer of herring is covered by an “overcoat” of sliced vegetables, eggs, beets, and mayonnaise. As he took a heaping spoonful, Sergei said, “Lyuba’s pod shuboy is better. Someone else brought us this one.” Then, as if loath to insult an innocent salad, he said, “But you know, this one is OK too.”
We drank wine and champagne out of crystal goblets, while Sergei tossed back vodka shots. The more he drank, the more red-faced and voluble he became, until the evening settled into a rhythm: Sergei would tell a story, waving his arms wildly, and Lyuba would add dry commentary as the rest of us laughed. It was as if we were playing out a Russian version of the sitcom Roseanne.
Toward the end of dinner, Sergei wanted to show me some videos from the old days. We settled into the living room to watch, and the first one flickered onto the TV screen: It was from a friend’s fortieth birthday party on October 7, 1995—just three weeks before Gary and I met them. “We’re still friends with that couple… and that guy,” Lyuba said, as the camera panned around the dinner table. “We still see all the same people.”
Then there were videos from the years when Anya and Masha were children. The girls wore stretchy knit pants over their diapers, and in nearly every clip, Masha was eating, and little Anya was mimicking washing clothes. “Why am I always washing?” Anya asked, laughing. “And why are our dresses so short?” It was true—in every scene, the girls’ little dresses barely came past their hips. “Ah, that was the style then,” said Lyuba, laconically.
It occurred to me that Sergei and Lyuba had told the truth, that if you plopped them down anywhere—into a 1970s communalka, say, or a Tsarist village—they’d behave no differently than now. They made corny jokes (Sergei: “I lost ten kilograms… and Lyuba found it!”) while the dogs scrabbled around and barked. They were quick to laugh at themselves, and at each other. At one point, Sergei announced that he had a piece of the Chelyabinsk meteor,[3] and after rummaging around upstairs for ten minutes, he came back down and proudly handed me a small, clear plastic container with a sliver of gray rock. “That’s not it!” exclaimed Lyuba. “That’s a piece of the Berlin Wall.”
3
Thousands of tiny fragments of the meteor were found in the area around Chelyabinsk, many of which were boxed up and sold as souvenirs.