A week later I had to be at a press conference in connection with a special election to the municipal duma, I think. And there, quite unexpectedly, I met Tanya again. In our already rather structured and, as under the Soviets, cliquish society, owners of supermarkets just don’t go to political press conferences.
Tanya manifested herself to the world of journalists with never a hair out of place, in a classic black business suit and without a single diamond to be seen. David was there as well, and he, too, gave a topnotch performance, flawlessly playing the role of Tanya’s business secretary, modest but not ingratiating. No “girls” on this occasion.
I sat with the journalists. Tanya was on the other side of the barricades. Handed a microphone, she was the last to speak. She was one of the candidates running for a seat in the municipal duma. She told the journalists, including me, how she saw the problems of the homeless in Moscow, and promised to fight for their rights if the voters did her the honor of electing her to be a member of the legislative assembly.
“What on earth do you need this for? You’re rich already,” I asked Tanya when the press conference was over.
“I told you, I want to be even richer. It’s very simple: I don’t want to pay bribes to our councilor.”
“Is that all?”
“You have no idea of the level of corruption nowadays. Gangsters in Yeltsin’s time didn’t even dream of this. If I become a councilor, that will be one ‘tax’ less.”
“But why have you taken to defending the homeless in particular?” We wandered into a French café nearby. Tanya had chosen it; the place was too expensive for me.
“I think that backdrop will make me look good. Anyway, I really can help them pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I’ve done it myself.”
“And why at the press conference, at the end of your speech, did you talk about Putin? About how much you love and respect and trust him? Did your image makers tell you to say that? It’s in terrible taste.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s what you have to do nowadays. I know that, without any help from ‘image makers.’” Tanya stumbled over these difficult English words, which have immigrated into Russia along with the new life. “If I didn’t mention Putin, our local FSB man would be around to see me in the shop tomorrow to complain I wasn’t saying what everybody says. That’s the kind of life we businesspeople lead now.”
“So what if he came around and said that?”
“So nothing. He would just demand a bribe.”
“What for?”
“To ‘forget’ what I hadn’t said.”
“Listen, aren’t you tired of all this?”
“No. If I need to kiss Putin’s backside to get another couple of shops, I’ll do it.”
“But what do you mean by ‘get’? You just buy them, don’t you? Pay for them, and that’s it?”
“No, things are different now. To ‘get’ something, you have to earn the right from the bureaucrats to buy the shop with your own money. Russian capitalism, it’s called. Personally, I like it. When I tire of it, I’ll buy myself citizenship somewhere and move on.”
We parted. Of course Tanya got elected. She’s said to be not bad. She puts her heart into battling for the poor of Moscow. She’s organized another canteen for the homeless and refugees, she’s bought another three supermarkets, and she often speaks on television in praise of our modern times. She rang recently and asked me to write an article about her. I did. The one you are reading right now. She asked to read it before it was published, was horrified, and said, “It’s all true.” She made me promise not to publish it in Russia before her death.
“How about abroad?”
“Go ahead. Let them know what our money smells of.”
So now you do.
Misha and Lena
Misha was married to Lena, my school friend from early childhood. She had married him when they were at college in the late 1970s. At that time, Misha was a very clever, talented young man who translated from German, who dubbed films while still a student at the Institute of Foreign Languages, and whose future seemed very bright. When he graduated, he was inundated with attractive offers of employment, not something that happened often.
Misha landed a job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was very prestigious, especially toward the end of the Soviet period. It was unusual for a man without family connections to get into such a closed corporation as our MFA. Misha had none. He had been brought up by his grandmother, a humble cleaning woman. His mother had died suddenly, from a brain tumor, when Misha was only fourteen. His father had promptly abandoned his orphaned family and run off with another woman.
So there was Misha in the MFA. We were great friends. We would go on picnics together, grill kebabs in the forest over a campfire and enjoy ourselves thoroughly. Lena and I were very close, and Misha was keen to be friends, too.
Underpinning our relationship were my two small children. When Misha came visiting, he simply couldn’t take his eyes off them. He would watch them with delight no matter what nonsense they got up to, talk to them and play with them for hours at a time.
All our friends knew that Misha very much wanted to have children. He was obsessed with the idea, but Lena was a talented linguist. She was writing her dissertation and kept postponing having a baby until after she had graduated in philological sciences.
Misha was very jumpy as a result. He gradually developed a complex about the fact that they did not have any children. He began to suffer and to torment those around him, most of all Lena. However, Lena was made of stern stuff, and once she had made up her mind, nothing was going to change it. She would defend her dissertation and get her degree, and after that she would get pregnant. That was all there was to it.
Misha reacted by taking to the bottle. He put up with his disappointment for as long as he could but then just went off the rails. At first he didn’t drink a lot, and people laughed at his behavior and teased him, but then his bouts began to last for several days at a time. He would disappear, and goodness knows where he was spending his nights. Later still he would drink for weeks at a time. Lena thought that perhaps she should give in and not finish her dissertation, but how do you make a baby with a man who is permanently inebriated?
Then the new times came—Gorbachev, Yeltsin—and the only reason Misha wasn’t fired for his chronic drinking (he would have been sacked instantly under the Communists) was that there was no one to replace him. MFA staff who knew languages and had experience on the other side of the Iron Curtain were suddenly worth their weight in gold. They abandoned the cash-strapped MFA to work for the commercial firms and branches of foreign companies that were springing up. Misha got no offers, even though the Germans were the first to dash into the Russian market and translators fluent in German were the most sought after of all.
Even at the MFA, Misha’s days were numbered, and he was eventually fired. Late one night at the end of 1996, in December when there was around thirty degrees of frost, someone rang my doorbell. It was Lena, wearing only her nightdress under a coat. You just don’t walk around Moscow dressed like that in winter, and certainly not if you are Lena, who was always immaculately turned out. She was an equable, well brought up, and intelligent young woman. Now, however, one foot was bare, as if she were a destitute person without a home to go to, while on the other foot the top of a half-laced boot was flapping like a flag. My friend was shivering as if she had fallen through ice and just been pulled out of the freezing water. Something had frightened her half to death, and the shock had made her incoherent.