Tom recalled Iryna’s parting rendition of Pushkin’s dramatic lines from ‘The Bronze Horseman’:
How different it was today, he thought. Sour rain, like yellow dribble from a cretin’s drooling mouth, was falling. There was no cataclysmic flood like in 1824. It was so-postmodern, so insipid, so T S Eliot:
He stopped on the flat expanse, a solitary figure in a land of granite. A rusty van pulled up, its driver getting out, scurrying to an open doorway at the base of a wall that stretched away into a silk screen of fog and mist. Cranky hinges pierced the air as the door slammed. Young soldiers walked aimlessly back and forth, new recruits in ill-fitting greatcoats and circular hats, lighting cigarettes, laughing and swapping stories. They were at a loss for something to do. They eyed girls and hassled tourists as their only self-indulgence.
Tom felt like he was in the middle of an opera. From the Imperial Tsars to the insatiable Stalin, this square had been at the centre of Russia’s political theatre. It was the very stage upon which the Revolution had opened, the epicentre of long-mourned tragedies, the consequences of which were still carved into the gaunt features passed down from generation to generation.
He was like a chess piece in some Grand Master’s last game, sensing his own decline, but also bearing witness to the debris of the moral and physical decay around him. He was thinking that all things come to an end. Empires and individuals alike experience the highs and lows of Spengler’s lifecycle. All bloom, all die, and gradually fade into dust. How would this end, he asked himself, in fire or flood?
• The Europe-Asia bridge over the Ural River in Orenburg is the scene for a symbolic welcoming by President Babel, opening Russia up to the peoples of the East. He simultaneously announces the expansion of Orenburg’s Tsentralny Airport to increase its capacity to meet the waves of migration from the south;
• Humanitarian agencies warn of the need to provide even more food and clothing for the mass exodus of people through Manzhouli in China’s Xinjiang province into Zabaykalsky Krai;
• Standardised railway gauges are retro-fitted to speed up migrant transportation, funded jointly by the World Bank and Beijing;
• Frustrated with the Duma’s inaction, nationalist vigilante groups launch Operation Optor (Repulse), a range of civil defence actions in Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, and Yekaterinburg.
Tom eyed a couple walking along the Gorokhovaya. The man was wearing a black leather jacket; his partner, a long fur coat. He wondered about their lives. Where did they live and work, and did they have enough money to get by? He realised that superficial outward signs were no indicator of real material wealth. Perfumes could be black-market, fashions could be replicated. There was an entire subculture working away under the surface, behind the shop fronts, in the back alleys around the city. Nevsky may have once showcased only the finest imported clothes, silverware, and furniture but the underground economy had still thrived in the shadows, because here appearance was all. Like everywhere else, image, perception, and the opulent display of wealth, once flaunted tastelessly in long stretch limos driving around the city centre, was expected; indeed, insisted upon. Nobody was exempt. Crass consumerism was a disease regardless of the recession. The little Sashas and Ludas were disgorged at birth into this pantomime of posturing. They had grown up surrounded by the notion of self-worth being measured by your paycheque and the idea that anything could be bought and sold. Everything was up for sale and everyone had a price. Blat, low level corruption, was everywhere and always would be.
Strolling through beating rain, moving on beyond the square, the tall buildings began to corral him. Damp, brown, brick faces were pressing in, looming large, almost threatening after the wide-open atmosphere of Dvortsovaya Ploschad. To his left, the busy Nevsky disgorged itself into the muddy Neva. Locals and tourists were making for cover. To his right, the gravel gardens of the Admiralty stretched in a diarrhoea quagmire along the roadside. Raindrops were drilling gullies in the pathways, the wind whistling along the stone-ridged embankment. Tom wrapped his overcoat more tightly around himself and crossed the road in the face of oncoming traffic, seeking the shelter of the trees.
Teenage couples perched like love-birds on wooden benches, held hands, and talked furtively under the canopy of leaves. Their Goth-style makeup turned nervously towards him as he came along the path. Their pale, parasitical expressions eyed him suspiciously through dreary half-light. He noticed their conversations ceased as he approached, resuming as he passed, as if he represented the adult world they had come here to escape. Perhaps they thought he was a plainclothes policeman? He could see and smell the blue cigarette smoke drifting in the moist air. Behind him, the sound of a radio blared from wet undergrowth. He glanced over his shoulder. Above, the Admiralty’s golden needle struck like a knife through the heart of a heavy black cloud, its baroque radiance dissipating in the hail. Uniformed militia guards took shelter under arched stone. A mother and her elfin daughter, wrestling with an umbrella, followed in his wake.
Two young girls were urging each other on, summoning up the courage to approach him. One held out a small, golden tin with red Cyrillic lettering on the lid.
‘Would you like to buy best Russian caviar?’ Tom looked at the object being thrust towards him. ‘It is the very best in Russia’, they continued, ‘would you like to try?’ They popped the top to reveal two small lumps wrapped in cellophane.
‘What is it, Turkish delight?’ he quipped.
‘Call it what you like’, one girl giggled. ‘It is three hundred roubles…’
‘I don’t think so.’ He went to walk on, but they stepped in front of him.
‘This is a good deal.’
‘I am sure it is, but I’m not interested, thank you.’ Out of the corner of his eye, the Englishman caught sight of an older man, thick-set in tight leather jacket, his angry, boiled head emerging from the bushes. He shouted something to the girls and they tried to grab the Professor’s sleeve. Tom pulled away, a runic cufflink tinkling to the ground. He moved quickly towards the main road at the rear of the Cathedral. The light was better there and commuters stood en masse waiting for trams. Behind him he could hear the pimp cursing, but no one paid him any mind.
• The heroin and cocaine trade is estimated to be worth 2.7 trillion roubles a year;
• Synthetic marijuana, known as ‘spice’, kills 2,000 people a month;
• Disciples of Vladimir Zhirinovsky assemble a coalition from across the United Russia, A Just Russia, and Yabloko political parties, standing shoulder to shoulder under the great glass cupola, looking towards the Alexander Gardens in Moscow. Their speeches highlight the impending final battle between Christianity and Islam, symbolically represented by the looming statue of St George and the Dragon, close by;
• The city of Gudermes holds its second Islamic Caliphate Council which decrees that the gazavat, holy war, demands the execution of all Christian soldiers held in the prisoner of war camps around Samashki;
• Heavy shelling is reported in Duba-Yurt, where a small number of Russian troops, being supplied by air, continues to hold out against overwhelming odds;