And I stole.
We needed to buy food, cigarettes and – most importantly – vodka. It sometimes seemed that it was impossible to live in Tverskaya without alcohol and every night there were terrible arguments when somebody’s bottle was finished. We would hear the screams and the knife fights, and the next day there would often be fresh blood on the stairs. Those who couldn’t afford vodka got high on shoe polish. I’m not lying. They would spread it on bread and place it on a hot pipe, then breathe in the fumes.
No matter how much time I spent begging, we never had enough money and I wasn’t surprised to find myself back at Reznik’s, the pawnshop. With Dima’s help, I got fifteen rubles for my mother’s necklace; more than the earrings but less than I’d hoped. I was determined not to part with her ring. It was the only memory of her that I had left.
And so, inevitably, I turned to crime. One of Dima’s favourite tricks was to hang around outside an expensive shop, watching as the customers came out with their groceries. He would wait while they loaded up their car, then either Roman or Grigory would distract them while he snatched as much as he could out of the boot and then ran for it. I watched the operation a couple of times before Dima let me play the part of the decoy. Because I was so much younger than the other two boys, people were more sympathetic – and less suspicious. I would go up to them and pretend to be lost while Dima sneaked up to the back of their car.
The first three times, it worked perfectly and we found ourselves eating all sorts of things that we’d never tasted before. Roman and Grigory were getting used to me now. We’d begun playing cards together – a game that every Russian knows, called Durak or Fool. They’d even found a mattress for me. It wasn’t a lot softer than the floor and it was infested with insects, but I still appreciated the gesture.
The fourth time, however, was almost a disaster. And it changed everything.
It was the usual set-up. We were outside a shop in a quiet street. It was an area we hadn’t been to before. Our target was a chauffeur, obviously working for some big businessman who could afford to entertain. His car was a Daimler and there was enough food in the back to keep us going for a month. As usual, I went up to the man and, looking as innocent as possible, tried to engage him in conversation.
“Can you help me? I’m looking for Pushkin Square…”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dima scurry up the pavement and disappear behind the raised door of the boot.
The chauffeur glared at me. “Get lost!”
“I am lost! I need to get to Pushkin Square…”
All I had to do was keep up the conversation for about thirty seconds. By the end of that time, Dima would have gone and two or three bags would have gone with him. But suddenly I heard him cry out and I saw, with complete horror, that a policeman had appeared out of nowhere. To this day I don’t know where he had come from because we always checked the immediate area first, but I can only assume that he’d been expecting us, that the police must have decided to crack down on this sort of street theft and that he had been lying in wait all along. He was a huge man with the neck and the shoulders of a professional weightlifter. Dima was squirming in his jacket but he was like a fish caught in a net.
I saw the chauffeur making a grab for me but I ducked under his arms and ran round the back of the car. There was nothing I could do for Dima. The only sensible thing was to run away and leave him and just be thankful I’d had a lucky escape. But I couldn’t do it. Despite everything, I was grateful to him. I had been with him for six weeks now and he had protected me. I couldn’t have survived without him. I owed him something.
I threw myself at the policeman, who reacted in astonishment. I was honestly less than half his size and I barely even knocked him off balance. He didn’t let go of Dima… if anything he tightened his grip, bellowing at the chauffeur to come and join in. Dima lashed out with a fist but the policeman didn’t feel it. With his spare hand, he grabbed hold of my shirt so that we were both held captive and, seeing us unarmed and helpless, the chauffeur lumbered forward to help.
We would certainly have been taken prisoner and that would have been the end of my Moscow adventure. Indeed, if I were recognized, it might be the end of my life. But as I struggled, I saw that one of the shopping bags had fallen over, spilling out its contents. There was a plastic bag of red powder on the top. I snatched it up, split it open and hurled it into the policeman’s face, all in a single movement.
It was chilli powder. The policeman was instantly blinded and howled in pain, both hands rushing to cover his eyes. Dima was forgotten. In fact everything was forgotten. The policeman’s head was covered in red powder. He was spinning round on his feet. I grabbed Dima and the two of us began to run. At the same moment, a police car appeared at the far end of the street, speeding towards us, its lights blazing. We ran across the pavement and down a narrow alleyway between two shops. It was a cul-de-sac, blocked at the far end by a wall. We didn’t let it stop us, not for a second. We simply sprinted up the brickwork and over the top, crashing down onto an assortment of dustbins and cardboard boxes on the other side. Dima rolled over then got back on his feet. We could hear the siren behind us and knew that the police were only seconds away. We kept running – down another alleyway and across a main road with six lanes of traffic and cars, trucks, motorbikes and buses bearing down on us from every direction. It’s a miracle we weren’t killed. As it was, one car swerved out of our way and there was a screech and a crumpling of metal as a second car crashed into it. We didn’t slow down. We didn’t look back. We must have run half a mile across Moscow, ducking into side roads, chasing behind buildings, doing everything we could to keep out of sight. Eventually we came to a Metro entrance and darted into it, disappearing underground. There was a train waiting at the platform. We didn’t care where it was going. We dived in and sank, exhausted, into two seats.
Neither of us spoke again until we got back to our own station and climbed back up to our familiar streets. We didn’t go to the flat straight away. Dima took me to a coffee house and we bought a couple of glasses of kvass, a sweet, watery drink made from bread.
We sat next to the window. We were both still out of breath. I could hear Dima’s lungs rattling. Climbing the stairs was enough exercise for him and he had just run a marathon.
“Thank you, soldier,” he said eventually.
“We were unlucky,” I said.
“I was lucky you were there. You could have just left me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I hate this stupid city,” Dima said. “I never wanted to come here.”
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, then pointed to his broken nose. “My dad did this to me when I was six years old. He threw me out when I was seven. I ended up in an orphanage in Yaroslav and that was a horrible place… horrible. You don’t want to know.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “They used to tie the kids down to the beds, the troublemakers. They left them there until they were covered in their own dirt. And the noise! The screaming, the crying… It never stopped. I think half of them were mad.”
“Were you adopted?” I asked.
“Nobody wanted me. Not the way I looked. I ran away. Got out of Yaroslav and ended up on a train to Moscow… just like you.”
He fell silent.
“There’s something I want you to know,” he said. “That first day we met, at Kazansky Station.” He took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled blue smoke. “We took your money. It was Roman, Grig and me. We set you up.”
“I know,” I said.
He looked at me. “I thought you must have. But now I’m admitting it… OK?”