My girl was the liveliest of them all, running over to photograph us with her mobile phone. She laughed and asked me, “Is that difficult? Don’t your arms get tired? Did you study it somewhere?” I smiled back and she ran off, laughing some more. She had a pleasant, open face. I pictured her in jeans, a T-shirt and baseball cap and decided we could become friends. I was looking at her so much I lost track of what we were playing.
“Roma, does this song ever come to an end?” I heard Tolya whisper. Roma carried on swaying and singing, his eyes completely closed. They say there comes a point where you don’t need grass any more, you are just high all the time. Jah will give us everything, eh, Roma?
Madame finally came swanning back in with a smile and much jangling, her tan glistening and her teeth gleaming, and whispered to Roma to wind it up. He stopped instantly, rose and walked towards the exit. We finished off with a drum roll, in some confusion.
Our place was immediately taken by other musicians, real negroes, and we could only gape in amazement: these were serious jazzmen, international celebrities. “How many bucks do you need to get these guys to come back to their roots?” Tolya chuckled, when he did finally stop gaping. “Hell, Roma, we’ve sold ourselves too cheap here.” Roma looked at him smiling, the song still on his lips.
Tolya had underestimated them: these cats were playing real jazz. We, the waiters, the maids, the make-up artists and the cooks in their aprons crowded round the partly opened door to the hall and listened. The people who worked here were comparing this party with earlier ones. We quickly ran to wipe off our make-up and came back. Tolya had lost no time in getting in with the cooks in the kitchen and the waiters from the bar and was strolling around with a full wine glass. A little later he invited us to the ‘dressing room’ where dinner awaited us on disposable plates. “Learn from me, Rastamans,” he said exultantly, “and Jah will give you everything.”
While we were eating and listening to African saxophones, Madame came floating in, slipped Roma two hundred-dollar bills, and headed back towards the door. “Madame, when are we getting a lift back?” Tolya called after her. “It’s getting late.” She turned round flinty faced, but said finally, “The driver is going home. Find him. He’ll give you a lift to Moscow.” Tolya whistled. “Well guys, I’m off to find the driver, or before you know it…”
We went back to the door. At that moment I was feeling insanely jealous of the girls. There they were sitting cheek by jowl with real jazz greats! These were major musicians, living classics! Did they have any idea how lucky they were? It was a double door through to the hall and there was a gap. I wished I could squeeze through and see everything, the musicians and the enraptured face of my girl. I was sure it would be enraptured.
I slowly worked my way forward and had just reached the gap when the crowd gasped, “They’re coming!” and everyone rushed to get out of the way. I had the gap to myself but only had time to see clothing an inch away. I jumped back and managed not to get my head hit by the doors as they burst open. One of the men came out of the hall with my girl. She was holding his hand by the little finger.
There was an inconspicuous door opposite which led to stairs to the first floor. With two steps they had crossed the corridor and disappeared through it, but in those two steps my girl flashed me a dazzling smile with her predator’s teeth. She wore her smile like a queen might wear a marriage diadem before her wedding, a fixed, glittering smile of triumph. She started climbing the stairs and I heard the clatter of her amulet-heels.
“Roma, grab Titch before the driver goes without us!” Tolya was drunk but more firmly grounded in reality than I was. It was the same driver, but in his own new indigo Lada-6. He was as uncommunicative as ever, although with Tolya sitting in front now he did acknowledge that they were namesakes. This new Tolya was from a Moscow suburb, somewhere on the other side of town. He drove us until our ways parted, then dropped us on the outer ring road and drove on towards the exit. He dropped us at a bus stop, not registering that it was one in the morning and raining. The exit he was turning off at was another three kilometres down the road. He evidently thought he was doing us a favour, our new Tolya.
“I say, young lady! You really shouldn’t be hitchhiking. Men will be trying to pick you up!” Tolya is convulsed, laughing at Roma. With the wet dreadlocks framing his face, Roma really does look like a girl. He has maidenly brown and very clear eyes, but beneath his nose is unshaved ginger stubble.
“I say, young lady! Perhaps you could all the same just raise your regal little hand? After all, you are the professional. Perhaps you could just flag down some old jalopy for us, you soul of Rasta mother plucker!”
Tolya is talking sense: Roma Jah is fully familiar with the open road. Every year he hitchhikes down to the Crimea or the Caucasus or wherever. In May he collects three months’ rent in advance from his tenants in the commune and takes off for the summer. He’s got a girlfriend down there and a son who must be three by now. I saw a photo: a strange little creature with a scorched face and hair bleached by the sun. It was completely unkempt and now you probably couldn’t run a comb through it. Historically that’s where dreadlocks came from — tangles of hair, matted over a lifetime. Roma never tells anyone anything about his non-Muscovite family. All I know about them is that they exist.
“Listen, dude, what is it you want?” Roma says, suddenly turning and speaking quietly right into Tolya’s face, in order not to have to yell through the rain. “Have you any idea how much they would fleece you for taking you to the city centre? Do you want to hand them everything we’ve earned tonight?”
“What do you mean?” Tolya asks in surprise, stepping uncertainly to one side. “Can’t we just say we haven’t got any money, if you grudge paying?”
“You don’t understand. Hitching is not a way of travelling for nothing because you’re a cheapskate. You don’t tell lies on the road. On the road you have to be open with everyone, understand? But what sort of road do you think this is? Do you think these are long-distance drivers on a job? This is Moscow, man.”
He turns away and walks on, but we immediately hear, “Well, I hate Moscow!” Tolya’s voice explodes in a shriek. “I hate this Moscow of yours, this greedy, gorging, stinking Moscow!” We turn round. He is standing there like a giant humpbacked bird with broken wings, his arms hanging down under his rucksack, water dripping from them.
“Do you hear? You! I hate Moscow!”
“Sure, we hear. So why were you so keen to come to Moscow?” I shout into the rain. I can feel he is beginning to get to me too because we still have a long, long way to walk, we’re not even sure where we’re going, and he has to choose this time and this place to let rip. “Why didn’t you just stay in Petropavlovsk? What brought you here?”
“I’ll screw this place yet! I’ll screw all of them, you know?” Tolya yells. ”Have you seen the map of Moscow? Come to our showroom, we’ve got these maps of mobile phone networks on the wall. Have you seen them? It’s a spider’s web! This is a spider’s web and we all fly here and get stuck like insects. We are stuck, struggling and just waiting to be devoured. Only that’s not going to happen! That’s why I came here: I’ll screw them all yet, do you hear me? I’ll screw everyone, and you too, everyone, everyone!”
Tolya lives in our room and sleeps under the piano. He makes pictures out of beer caps, fragments of glass, small change, broken bits and pieces, and rubbish he finds in the street. He comes back with boxloads of trash and keeps it under the piano, then crafts it all on to a thin layer of modelling clay on a board. He can recreate the crowds in the metro, the view from our window on to the garbage skips in the yard, the Red October Chocolate Factory, the statue of Peter the Great conjuring the sea on his embankment… an urbanist world evoked through its own refuse. Tolya knows what he is doing.