Edik had no problem with his external passport—his mother had seen to that—but he did not have an invitation. He never asked me for one—even if it wasn’t for the drawback of an invitation from a girl, he was much too diffident to ask—and no one, including me, offered. The others thought his Chekhovian tendencies were simply pretentious, and somehow my patience ran out too. I grew irritable, while Edik indulged his talent for subtle insult.
“Why is it that your country sends us only junk?” he said when I brought his mother a Mars bar.
At our parties, he’d announce loudly, “For someone like me, it is very hard to talk to uncultured people. It gives me a physical pain, in the kidneys—my kidneys are very sensitive.”
And after I met Mitya, he’d shake his head and say sorrowfully, “Poor Charlotte. She has been spoilt by that vulgar boy.”
Yet he was not to be thwarted. At the beginning of winter he went to Moscow to stay with the aunt he’d been counting on, a cheerful lady who had been widowed twenty years before and recently had found love with a chubby Pole. While she was in Krakow, Edik stayed in her apartment, crammed in between her belongings: nineteenth-century armoires stuffed with dried fish and old newspapers, pickle jars and plastic bags. Everything was coated with an inch of greasy dust that made Edik smell like an old man. He returned to Voronezh on weekends to be fed and washed by his mother and to boast about the big city.
“It’s quite true what they say about Moscow being just a big village,” he’d say airily. On Edik’s lips there were few worse insults. “A huge, filthy village! But you know, I see it as a stepping-stone.”
So it was that quite soon he came to visit us in the hostel. He hummed and giggled; he obviously had something to tell us.
“How’re things, Edik?”
“Oh fine, fine. I’ve got a lot to do organizing my visa,” he said, studying his nails.
“Where to, Edik?”
“Well, I’ve had a job offer.”
“You’re going abroad!”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I’ve got a job in the leisure industry in Malta—at the Royal Malta Hotel.”
Edik’s preparations were elaborate. He fussed about his suitcase, his English, his clothes. He visited everyone to ask if there was anything they needed from the West, a kindness misinterpreted by some, who took pleasure in thinking up the most implausible and complicated errands: “My mother asks if you could bring her a can of Maltese grapes, for her lumbago.” Or: “My great-great-uncle was a Knight of the Cross. Find out about my inheritance, would you, Edik?”
There was a party for him in the hostel the evening he left. He perched on the edge of a bed, clearly in a state of wild excitement, though he sighed wearily when Viktor opened another bottle of vodka. “How uncouth,” he said. “In Malta they won’t believe me when I describe it.” Poor Edik. Even on this triumphant day, we couldn’t resist teasing him.
“So tell us about Malta, Edik.”
“Well, it’s an ancient Mediterranean civilization, very cosmopolitan.”
“What’s the population of Malta, Edik?” someone asked in a casual voice. “About five hundred thousand, isn’t it?”
“Five hundred thousand!” someone else spluttered. “But that’s half the population of Voronezh. About the same number as live on the left bank!”
There was a pause and everyone started laughing.
“Don’t be silly,” said Edik sniffily. “It’s quality, not quantity.”
Still giggling, we accompanied Edik to the station, sliding over the slushy platform, installing him in his coupé to Moscow. We kissed him and gave him one last shot of vodka (so he’d sleep well) and waved good-bye to his pale, tense face framed by the train window with its two little embroidered curtains. And when the green train had finally lumbered out of the station, someone said, “Well, there he goes, off to civilization,” and we were forced to sit down on a nearby bench and stamp our feet to gain control of ourselves. Viktor pinched himself so hard he had a bruise for a week. But the girls weren’t allowed to sit for long because, as any Russian knows, the cold is a danger to the ovaries, and so we returned to the hostel.
Much later, Edik described his stay in Malta. Coming out of the airport building on a late-autumn day, he was astonished by the heat. In Moscow snow had fallen some weeks before; here it was still late summer. He took a gulp of salty Maltese air and thought to himself simply, I’ve made it.
The hotel had sent a car for him, driven by a laconic character who did not respond to Edik’s attempts at conversation. So Edik sat quietly in his new cream raincoat with his briefcase tucked under his feet, and relaxed for the first time since he’d left Voronezh. Before they had gone five miles, he was asleep.
When he woke more than an hour later, the car was winding its way through industrial strips, roundabouts and half-built tower apartments. “Almost there,” said the driver finally, turning down a brand-new road. He drove under a ranch-style gate painted with the words “Majestic Tourist Complex.” On the right was an area pegged out with orange twine; up ahead a digger swiveled, depositing sand beside a concrete structure. The driver swerved around a pile of building materials and accelerated toward a white block with a sign: Royal Malta Hotel. Here Edik had been hired as a night porter.
The next afternoon, a busload of off-season holiday-makers arrived. Edik watched as they spilled rowdily into the lobby to be issued their room keys and a list of rules: “The consumption of alcohol in the lifts and corridors is forbidden. Guests are responsible for clearing up their own vomit. Any damage to room fittings is not covered by the package and must be paid for separately.” Edik went and changed into his hotel uniform—a cheap white shirt and black polyester trousers—and looked at himself in the mirror. After a moment’s thought, he took out a small sky-blue silk scarf and tied it around his neck, tucking it under his collar. Then he took up his post in reception.
For a month he watched drunken tourists retching into the ornamental fountain. They’d been promised sun and sea, but at that time of year there was not enough of the first and too much of the second, and the drinking took on a reckless edge. The tourists thought Edik was hilarious. When he spoke his careful English, they hooted. The more generous gave him tips that made him blush. In his time off, he wandered through the souvenir shops and sunbathed when he could, although the heat gave him a rash. Needless to say, he never found canned Maltese grapes, nor the mythical inheritance. Nor did he find the civilization he was looking for.
It was already spring the next time I saw Edik. I’d heard he had been staying with another cousin in Moscow, working as an interpreter. Now, however, he was picking his way though the slush in the streets, wearing imported spectacles and the navy blue overcoat of an international financier.
“My God, Edik, look at you!” I exclaimed.