‘I tore down dacha,’ he said, as we bounced over the rutted earth. ‘I never looked back.’
The size of the property was modest for a chicken tsar – about a hundred sotka (or two acres) – but more shocking was the state of it. The soil had been churned like butter, chewed over by JCB diggers and spat out into huge ugly mounds. Long, jagged cuts had been slashed around its trees. In some places rough ladders dropped down into the wounds as if into First World War trenches. The building itself had been reduced to rubble.
We stepped down from the Range Rover and into the open. The sun burned through the motionless air and ricocheted off the broken earth. The remaining oaks – unsettled by the digging – had lost their leaves, so offered little shade. Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, wrote Chekhov in Uncle Vanya, yet so often all he seems to do is destroy.
‘Why?’ I asked Dmitri as we walked alongside a shallow trench.
‘Because of mushroom,’ he replied.
‘Pipiska putina?’ I asked. ‘Here?’
‘Here,’ he answered, gesturing at the ground. ‘One metre deep.’
After the recession, Dmitri had faced eviction. His debtors were after his blood, on the point of seizing his property, threatening his life.
‘In Russia one life is worth nothing,’ he explained, snapping his fingers. ‘But if you owe money, Shylock Jews keep you alive to get it back.’
Dmitri’s debt seemed to have been compounded by offence (of what nature he would not be drawn but it seemed to involve at least one Kremlin official). As a result he was awoken every midnight by menacing phone calls. Chickens were impaled on the railings of his townhouse. His Learjet’s tyres were slashed. He began to suspect that he’d be murdered as soon as he settled the debt. So, with that ancient Russian sense of mission – and a defiant two-finger flick at his foes – he set about devaluing his greatest remaining asset. He demolished the Rublyovka dacha.
And that was his windfall, an inexplicable miracle of the sort that so often arises in – and possesses – this land. As he began to obliterate its foundations, one of his demolition men – a local woodsman – spotted in the newly exposed earth a blond, phallus-shaped ‘pecker’. And then another. And another.
‘My second fortune was under my nose.’
In parts of temperate Europe – central France, Croatia, Spain and even rural Wiltshire – truffles grow close to the surface, usually in alkaline soil around the bases of beech, hazel and oak trees. None can survive the harsh northern winter, or so most people believe. Yet Russia’s elite have long known that truffles like no other grow in the wild woods west of Moscow. Their remarkable Ascomycete fungus is said by them to be more potent than SS-X-29 Satan missiles, as irresistible as Tverskaya prostitutes, as unique as the nation itself. Of course the Russian variety is no common fungus, nestling among superficial surface roots. Instead it survives below the frost line, by wrapping itself around a tree’s primary taproot. At that depth it also protects itself from both wild boar and domesticated pigs, the latter having been used by generations of truffle hunters elsewhere in Europe.
In Rublyovka a series of clandestine test holes had revealed the hidden wealth of Dmitri’s land, and its enormous value. He ordered the digging-up of his whole property, sold the treasure in secret and paid off his debts – plus a bounty of bribes for safety’s sake.
‘I know I know, trees died,’ he admitted with a shrug. ‘But Putin’s Pecker made me rich again.’
I looked across the stark, walled wasteland. Dmitri’s crazy tale echoed Russians’ belief in themselves as a chosen people, as well as their willingness to ravage the land for a quick buck.
‘It is not this hot in Hell,’ he then said, leading me towards a lobster-red marquee that was as out of place as a merry-go-round on a battlefield. At its entrance waited our fellow mushroom hunters, changed into domestic uniform. Inside the air-conditioned tent, another member of his staff – in white chef’s apron and hat – sorted through the fungi, brushing away debris and cutting off the base of the stalks.
‘Now we talk, we drink, we eat,’ said Dmitri, gesturing to a nest of armchairs beside the field kitchen. Vasya stationed himself by the door as a raven-haired hostess approached us carrying a silver salver. Her boss snapped open the bottle and poured. ‘First and last glass you swallow in one,’ he instructed. ‘All others are up to you.’
As we talked, the cool air filled with the smell of fragrant lisichki and oily maslyata. Canned music played from somewhere at the back of the tent. When the first delicate plates were laid before us – delicious mouthfuls of fruity chanterelle with an aftertaste of apricots and pepper – I mentioned the difficulty in distinguishing poisonous from non-poisonous mushrooms.
‘You must have courage,’ advised Dmitri.
‘Like Putin?’ I asked to draw him out. The man was so wildly popular that no Russian seemed capable of having a conversation without mentioning his name.
‘I don’t like big word like patriotism but President Putin has vision. Your leaders have Twitter. They think in days, not years. Write this down,’ he instructed me. ‘Our president has fifteen-year plan. He chases it, no matter.’
I was taking notes, trying to catch his turn of phrase, yet I detected a slight guardedness in his response. I asked him, ‘What is his plan?’
‘To make Russia great again.’
‘I’ve heard that one before.’
‘In Russia is good plan.’ He knocked back another vodka and went on, ‘America and Europe always want to make Russia small, everyone knows. Remember “gift” of Bush legs? It was trick to destroy our chicken farmers.’
As well as strategic vision, Putin – who has ruled Russia longer than any leader since Stalin – was said to be loved for his modesty, a quality that might have been questioned had the Russian media been allowed to report on his billions or his estimated twenty residences including a couple of Black Sea palaces.
‘Plus he respects church,’ Dmitri added, as if quoting some official tract. ‘You know last Christmas he went as Mr Anybody to church in Nizhny Novgorod?’
I did know, and I pointed out that he had made sure that the networks knew as well. His private act of worship had been broadcast live on national television.
‘Listen, my friend. Russians never experience democracy in one thousand years. So he is best leader in one thousand years. Write this also please.’
‘Do you really believe that, Dmitri?’ I asked, the mechanical tone in his voice bringing to mind the old Soviet habit of praising communism in public while condemning it in private.
‘What I believe is my business. What you write is also my business.’
I didn’t trust Dmitri. It was all but impossible to back up his assertions. I simply had to take him at his word, and I did that for I was intrigued, not by his wealth or audacity, but rather by a part of him that he could not – or would not – expose. I sensed that through him I’d start to understand chippy, lying, modern Russia.
I also sensed something else in the air. It wasn’t the sudden buzz of the alcohol in my head or the aroma of honeyed opyonok bubbling in sour cream. I felt a rising pressure, a shift in the atmosphere outside the tent. Dmitri was too intent to notice it, carrying on blah blah blahing as he refilled our glasses.
‘I love my homeland but no one can know Russia with their brain. You can understand it only with heart. Lyubite Rodinu, mat’ vashu!’ he cried out, striking his chest like a well-dressed Tarzan. ‘Those words mean “Love your Homeland as your mother!” But to Russian ear it also sounds like “Love your Homeland, you motherfuckers!”’