Flint’s crew—that was really something.
The fucking corsairs! The fucking corsairs! The corsairs.
We thought that they were in opposition to the powers that be. That they weren’t any worse than the dissidents—fighters and heroes.
As a matter of fact, I don’t know what it was like in Moscow, but in Piter their relationship with the powers that be was precisely as if they were real corsairs.
The powers that be had been living off their thieving for quite some time.
In Piter all the cops were taken care of.
Once Sasha Bashlachov came up with this metaphor about us and the West: “You’re still between the spoon and the lie, and we’re still between the wolf and the louse.”
The wolves, you see, were these corsairs of ours.
The KGB of those days was probably the louse. Which didn’t hunt for real criminals, but for the shitty bohemians.
Catching poets was an entirely lousy occupation. And they gave you ten years for smoking a joint…
And the Wolves weren’t your usual criminals.
It was our Young Capitalism.
Our Nascent Bootlegging.
In our Northern Old Chicago.
The people were being dressed by the black-marketeers.
The hard-currency girls were teaching the Kama Sutra.
Shadow capitalists were setting up factories.
Somewhere in the depths of Kupchino, simple Soviet people were making fifteenth-century Saxon porcelain. Even the fact that porcelain wasn’t invented until the eighteenth century didn’t stop them.
Well, naturally, the Underwater Kingdom needed poets like it needed a hole in the head. But artists and musicians could sometimes find work. Somebody had to draw all those stencils and sketches, and the musicians attended to the leisure.
The life of a corsair is simple: battle on the seas, and an endless holiday on shore—that is, a tavern with some tunes and babes.
A lot of people worked in the taverns. And I’d been singing in one since I was sixteen…
It was right then, during that period, that everything was possible. Because nothing was impossible.
And the laws didn’t work for shit. I started singing a year and a half after that first appearance on the Nevsky…
Then the corsairs took us gently by the arm and led us away. And they led us to the Ulster, Fyoka’s port of hail. Flint’s crew gathered there every night.
We wept. We said that we were in the seventh grade. We said, “Guys, we won’t do it again…”
They didn’t beat us. This first time they explained that anyone who wanted to sell something on the Nevsky—no matter what—needed to come to an agreement with the corsairs and pay up. It was all very simple. Musicians were already working on the Nevsky. And the artists were pushing masks of some kind and pottery.
And everybody paid off the corsairs, while the corsairs paid off—again, not the cops, but higher up—the KGB itself. Everything concerned with hard cash was the fiefdom of the KGB. And not the cops. Although the cops of course also got in on the action sometimes.
The Nevsky started getting wild when the tourists arrived.
And when there weren’t any tourists, you had the Finnish construction workers.
But we were little schoolkids, so they took pity on us and let us go after we gave our word that we wouldn’t show our faces on the Nevsky with our music.
They threw us out like the trash.
We had such an immature look about us—skinny and underdeveloped.
But I very much wanted to be part of that life. I managed to fall in love with one of the guys, the one who held me by my collar as he led me there and back.
He was either Fyoka’s right hand… or the left one…
And I started going there. They would chase me away right when Fyoka would make his appearance. He was a well-known sadist. But he wasn’t a fucking pedophile.
He really liked manhandling girls. But all his girls were real blondes, with tits and asses…
These Russian Barbies. With long blond hair… These Barbie babes.
And then I was emaciated and tall—well, like I am now. Dark, short hair.
Definitely an underground look, just for him.
And the other corsairs found me to their liking.
Or did I simply like this circus around me?
They found it somewhat amusing that he wouldn’t allow me to go to the Ulster.
And I became particularly friendly with the barmen. I was always sitting there at the bar, drinking coffee with cognac.
Later, they stopped chasing me away. Even when Fyoka was there.
I would sit quietly and watch them. And listen to music.
And of course, just like in the movies, I knew by heart the entire repertoire of the group that played there.
Then one fine day I finally got up the nerve and butted in— they were playing cards. Twenty-one.
I said that I wanted to play one-on-one with Fyoka.
That was me showing off in front of the guy I was in love with. He didn’t give a fuck, but he laughed at the situation along with everyone else.
Fyoka said: “Let’s play. But if you lose, we’ll take you with us today. And then we’ll really play…”
There were rumors that they had taken one girl to some wasteland, poured gas on her, and set her on fire… I’m not sure if that’s true, but their working girls were always walking around broken and shattered and ending up in the hospital— those weren’t rumors.
I knew all that. Since I was fifteen.
And I didn’t need to brazen it out.
But in general there was no stopping me.
It was probably the effect of the coffee and cognac.
Of course I lost.
And then our Captain Flint said, “You’re a very brave girl. But now we’re going to test you and see what you’re made of. You don’t want us to take you with us? Well then, we can try this: our brave girl puts her little hands on the table now and we’ll put out our cigarettes on them. If the little girl doesn’t yell, we’ll let her go home. And if she yells—we’ll take her with us.”
There were seven corsairs besides him, and of course each one applied his cigarette for a second. Only for a second. But nobody refused to do it—-they had their own rules.
And then the captain said: “Now I’ll show you how to put out a cigarette.” He touched me with it and held it there, well, for what seemed like a hundred years. Probably all of a minute. But I didn’t cry out, I was determined to remain silent, like a partisan…
This scar here, the big round one from the captain’s cigarette, is always visible, while the other seven are small and faded.
But the point is, I didn’t cry out. And Fyoka said that I could go wherever I damn well pleased… since I’m such a brave girl.
My teeth were chattering, but I still had the strength to make out that I was okay, and I said that I’d sit for a bit and drink my coffee.
And I still had enough strength to get to the women’s bathroom. And there the girls started shouting at me: “Piss on her hands! Quick, piss!” Then they wrapped my hands in napkins soaked with urine. I felt such pain that I let out a howl and collapsed to the floor.
And there and then the barman flew into the women’s restroom, picked me up, got me outside, and took me to his place.
He lived with his mother, Larisa Mikhalna.
Of course, that wasn’t typical of the real corsairs, or of those who were simply real criminals. Well, just like in the Russian classics.
Here in our Petersburg swamp mafia—strange as it might seem—almost everybody had parents. After all, there were a lot of Jews and half-Jews. And a lot of Armenians among the newcomers to the city. Not so much your military peoples as your trading ones.
The Russian boys, on the whole, were from the intelligentsia. The hard-currency girls also somehow turned out to have mothers—hairdressers, nurses, teachers, shop assistants…