Dmitri raised his glass to homelands, taking in both his united Russia and my fractured Europe. The toast brought tears to his eyes as more mushrooms arrived at our table, including a salver of black trumpets sautéed in garlic and topped with chopped parsley.
‘All people who eat mushrooms are stupid,’ he declared, propelling himself further into good spirits. ‘But people who do not eat mushrooms – who do not have courage – are more stupid. They become grey people, grey dust.’
I closed my notebook. I laid down my pen. I took in my host, warts and all. I met his eyes and said, ‘That is why I want to taste the pecker.’
Dmitri’s face darkened in a heartbeat. He fell as quiet as he had done in his Moscow office. A whiff of menace – and alcoholic breath – hung between us. He repeated, syllable by syllable: ‘One million dollars.’
‘I don’t have anything like that sort of money,’ I admitted.
‘Then you write for me one book,’ he replied with a victorious laugh.
Oligarchs were meant to be ‘uncultured ignoramuses’. They ‘don’t read books. They don’t have time. They don’t go to art exhibitions. They think the only way to impress anyone is to buy a yacht,’ according to Alexander Lebedev, owner of the London Evening Standard and the Independent. Yet Dmitri wanted me to think him different. Yes, his character could transform itself in the blink of an eye. Yes, his volatility heightened my sense of unease. But as he started to recite a piece of prose from memory, my view of him began to change. His Russian was suddenly rich and pliable, flowing straight from the heart. His voice rose in joy and fell in sorrow, whether recalling an extract from a Gogol novel, a portrait of a sad, romantic Turgenev hero, or indeed an article on Gazprom from the Weekend FT.
‘I grew up with books. We all grew up hungry for books. Every new book was way to escape Soviet grey,’ he confessed in English, talking of how literature had opened a door out of the closed country.
In his voice was real passion and I was impressed. At the same time I recalled the Russian saying that free cheese is only found in mousetraps.
‘Now don’t be frightened,’ he said to me. ‘We work together.’ Then he called over his shoulder, ‘Anna?’
The raven-haired hostess glided to his side. He spoke softly to her and she – a serious twenty-year-old with child-like eyes set in a pale face – stepped away then returned with a small silver box. Dmitri opened it to reveal a solitary truffle. It was the colour of ripe wheat. It had no smell. It was pipiska putina.
‘It doesn’t look special,’ I said.
‘Wait,’ said Dmitri.
He brushed off a speck of soil. He reached for a small walnut-handled knife. He did not peel the truffle. He cut off a wafer-thin slice and laid it on the middle finger of Anna’s outstretched hand.
‘Try,’ he said, as she lifted her hand towards me.
I thought it was a joke.
Dmitri rolled his eyes and spoke again in Russian. In response Anna turned back to him, lifted her finger to his lips and he sucked the truffle off it.
‘Like so,’ he said, then cut a second sliver and laid it on her index finger. He added, ‘Her hands are very clean.’
Again Anna raised her fingers to me. We bent towards each other. I opened my mouth. I took the fungus. On my tongue it tasted of musk and earth, darkness and even sex, if sex has an aftertaste of vanilla.
‘Now give time,’ said Dmitri, leaning back in his armchair and casually mentioning that the effect could last for weeks, even months. I relaxed into my seat as well.
‘Today I tell you all, and you write all, because all is finished,’ he admitted, gesturing towards the silver box. ‘No more secrets. No more guard at gate. No more putina on my land.’
I hazarded a guess that his Rublyovka neighbours might also be sitting on a fortune of fungi.
‘Maybe they become even richer but you know, I don’t give fuck for them.’ He laughed again – a deep, animal cackle – then he turned to Anna and said, ‘Dance’.
The words were spoken with a trace of tenderness but in a way that could not be mistaken for anything other than a command. The woman obeyed without question. She stood before us and moved with taut grace, not so much dancing as unwinding herself, twisting and turning to some inner tension as Vasya cranked up the volume on the sound system.
Dmitri knew the song – the corny Slavic hit ‘Combine Harvester’ – and started to sing along to the lyrics, paraphrasing them while rocking his head back and forth in happy intoxication.
‘I feed pig, I plough field, I beat barley…’ he crooned. ‘I am not fool who dreams of glitzy life…’
I was struck by the ditty’s simplistic sentimentality and the naff notion of unappreciated ‘real guys’ who spit on modern culture and defend the Motherland.
‘We are real guys who man the army,’ he sang on. ‘Driver of harvester! Driver of tractor! Packer of watermelon truck!’
Another song followed with even more idiotic lyrics and Dmitri sprang to his feet, casting off his reserve as the truffle began to take hold of him.
‘Russia, my Russia, from Volga to Yenisei…’ he piped, taking into his heart Rossiya, moya Rossiya. The lead singer of Putin’s favourite rock band – whose other hits include ‘Soldier’ and ‘Kombat’ – often wore a Second World War uniform at his jingoistic performances. Dmitri’s emotions swelled with the music as he sang of accordions playing and girls smiling at their sweethearts under the moonlight.
Then we heard the thunder. It silenced Dmitri, shook Anna out of her submissive routine. In an instant they made for the entrance like animals on a scent, bursting out into the naked heat.
I followed.
Enormous black clouds massed on the horizon, spilling towards us, bloated with rain. A fresh breeze stirred the air. Moscow – with its humid continental climate – can be subject to sudden summer downpours, and we were in for a drenching.
As the storm rolled forward, a madness overcame us. The vodka and dance had been hypnotic. The loony lyrics had moved us even though they were quite meaningless. On top of which I could not judge – I was not capable of judging – the effect of the truffle on my now-sizzling brain.
Dmitri did not hold himself back. Thrill shot through him like an electric shock. As the first raindrops hissed onto the baked earth, he began to dance again, while tearing off his clothes. Off came his Church’s brogues and Harvie & Hudson shirt. Away went his Hackett chinos and the camouflage cravat. As the skies opened he was all but naked, gesticulating to the beat of the rain and Russian rock. A whopping tattoo of another wolf leapt across his torso, its breath raging red up his arm, its ruff and throat slashed with Russian pine trees.
Anna – whether hostess, companion or concubine – followed him, to an extent. She slipped off her uniform jacket and rolled her bare shoulders against the cooling drops, giving nothing of herself away.
Then the rain grew much heavier, thundering against the marquee, drumming off the black Range Rovers. Rivulets began to form underfoot, snaking across the churned ground, turning the site into a mud bath. Vasya stepped across the pools with an open umbrella but Dmitri batted it away. Lightning flashed in the gloom, freezing his dance in crazy gestures: a disco jerk, an air guitar riff, a lunge at both Anna and Vasya. He splattered their uniforms with mud, pushed them onto their knees, and ran his filthy hands through their sodden hair. At least that’s what I thought happened. I couldn’t be sure. By then I could hardly see a thing.