‘But, Paul Mikhailovich,’ Romanov had exclaimed, ‘that’s the very place my own grandfather came from. I’ve never been there myself. Come to Moscow, my friend,’ he had said warmly, ‘and we’ll go there together.’
And now here he was, with Romanov coming to collect him.
They had agreed to meet in front of the hotel at six-fifteen. Too early to get breakfast in the cavernous dining room, but Paul had noticed the previous evening that on the fifth floor there was a little bar that opened at six, and he made his way there now.
It was a small place, typical of such refreshment rooms. Under the glass counter would be laid out plates of sliced cheese, sliced salami, pirozhki, hard boiled eggs and, of course, white and black bread. There were large jugs of apple juice and grape juice, a coffee machine and a samovar. By the window was a counter where one could stand to eat; down one wall there were four small tables. The big glass doors meant that one could see the people inside, and the opening times were pasted on the glass.
It was five minutes after six when he got there. Inside he could see the food being laid out by a pretty but bored-looking blonde girl of about twenty. Behind her, a large, grumpy woman in her fifties was grimly inspecting the bread. He tried to open the glass door. It was locked.
The girl glanced at him and said something to the older woman, who did not even deign to look at him. Paul glanced at his watch, tapped on the glass and pointed to the opening times. The girl just stared at him. Then the big woman turned and shouted at him: ‘Zakryt.’ The word most familiar to any tourist in Russia. ‘Zakryt.’ We’re shut.
And then the girl smiled.
‘Mnye skuchno.’ I’m bored.
‘Mnye skuchno, skuchno, skuchno.’
She used to mutter the words to herself by the hour, every day, almost as monks used to mutter the Jesus prayer. ‘Myne skuchno.’ It was a litany.
Ludmilla Suvorin was intelligent: her father Peter had been too, until he took to drink; and Peter’s father had been Suvorin the composer. Only, until a few years ago, one wasn’t supposed to mention him, because he’d been sent to the gulags. And though his work, including the final Suite, was reinstated nowadays, that fact did little good for her. Peter had died when Ludmilla was five; her mother had married a railwayman, and they lived in a drab, four-room apartment which they shared with another family, in a big, peeling concrete block in the wastelands of the city outskirts. There were four of these blocks on that street, standing in an isolated row, and across the top of them in large metal letters painted red were the words: COMMUNISM’S BUILDING A BETTER WORLD. Her building bore the letters: WORLD.
Ludmilla was also lazy. She should have been doing something better than this, but she couldn’t be bothered. She liked to dance. She had a good figure, slim and strong. Sometimes she had thought of selling her body like the leggy girls in the lobby. Several of those were students. One was married and saving to get a dacha in the country. Years ago, such girls often used to dream of snaring a westerner who’d fall in love with them, marry them, and get them out of Russia. But they were wiser now: it never happened. They took the money – hard currency – and were grateful.
She hadn’t done so, though. So here she was, with Varya.
And now Ludmilla watched the American with mild amusement on her sulky face. The American did not understand what he was up against as he gesticulated impatiently out there. But then, how would he?
For Varya had her own very clear ideas abut the running of the bar. On two things in particular she was inflexible, the first of which was opening hours.
If the bar was due to open at six, she understood, then that was when she arrived. ‘They don’t pay you for coming early, do they?’ she would say. ‘And after we open at six,’ she explained, ‘then we have to get ready.’ During this time, while she put the food out on the trays and brewed the coffee, she naturally did not allow any customers in, since they would only be in the way. For some fifteen to twenty minutes therefore, every morning, there was an interval during which she explained, with no sense of contradiction: ‘The bar is open, but it is shut.’
And similarly, of course, in the evenings, when the bar closed at nine, customers ceased to be served some twenty minutes before that time. ‘Otherwise,’ she would say severely to Ludmilla, ‘we should be closing late.’
‘Zakryt!’ therefore, she shouted, as Paul waited irritably outside.
And only at thirteen minutes past six did Varya relent and tell Ludmilla to open the door.
The American spoke extraordinary Russian. Beautiful to hear. Even Varya looked awkward now and seemed anxious to make up for keeping him outside. They gave him a cup of coffee, salami, an egg. And bread, of course.
‘You’re Russian?’
‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘American.’
‘So you’ve come back to see?’ She had met one or two of these emigrés in the hotel before. They all spoke this beautiful language: just listening to them could almost make you weep. ‘There’s not much of your Russia left, they tell me,’ she added. She couldn’t think of anything else to keep him there. He went over to the table and sat down. He drank some coffee; then ate a piece of bread. Then frowned.
Ludmilla smiled. ‘Something wrong?’
He made a small grimace. ‘Nothing much. It’s just that the bread’s a little stale.’ He glanced at her. ‘Haven’t you really anything better?’
And Ludmilla looked at Varya. For this was Varya’s second strange idea.
When had it first begun? Ludmilla had only been working there six months, so she did not know. But somehow the bar had finished one day with too much bread. Anyone else would have taken the bread, or thrown it away the next day. But for some reason known only to herself, Varya had insisted on serving the old bread the following day, until it was all used up – which, as it happened, was not until closing time. The fresh bread delivered that morning, therefore, had still remained untouched in the kitchen behind the bar. The following day she repeated the process. The previous day’s bread was served; the fresh, delivered sliced, was left in the kitchen. And within a short time this curious procedure had set into a pattern which had developed rules of its own.
No one was allowed to touch the bread. If you did, Varya would know. Nor could anyone tell the people downstairs not to deliver one day, to clear the backlog. ‘Then they’d start asking questions.’ Nor, even, could you use any of the fresh bread if you ran out of the stale bread during the day. ‘We use so much a day, no more, no less,’ she said firmly. So it was, in the fifth-floor bar, that the bread served was always exactly one day old.
Paul only stayed another two minutes. Then, with a nod to Ludmilla, he hurried off. It never occurred to either of them that they were related.
It was an easy journey down. The huge, broad street leading out of Moscow soon gave way to modest two-carriage highways; within an hour the two had merged into a single road, broad enough for two cars to drive abreast each side, but with no markings upon it of any kind. ‘We don’t have your freeways,’ Sergei remarked apologetically.