The years went by and my family returned to Chile, except for my younger sister, who married a Russian; my father died in Santiago and had a beautiful funeral, or so they told me in the letters; Jimmy Fodeba went on living in Moscow and working in a hospital (his father went back to the Central African Republic, where he was killed), while Pultakov and I went scurrying like a pair of rats around the gyms and sports complexes. With the arrival of democracy and the end of the Soviet Union (not that I’ve ever been interested in politics) came freedom and the mafias. Moscow became a charming, exuberant city, buzzing with that fierce, typically Russian sort of exuberance. I can’t explain it, you have to understand the Slavic soul, and I don’t think you do, however many books you’ve read. Suddenly it all got too big for us. Pultakov, who was a Stalinist at heart (I still don’t get that, because under Stalin he would have ended up in Siberia for sure), was nostalgic for the old days. But I adapted to the new situation, and decided to save some money, now that it was possible, so I could get out of there for good and start exploring the world, Europe to begin with, then Africa, which, in spite of my age — by then I was over thirty and old enough to know better — I imagined as the kingdom of adventure, an endless frontier, a new story book where I could begin again, be happy, and find myself, as we used to say when we were kids back in Santiago in 1973. And that was how I joined Misha Pavlov’s staff, almost without realizing it. At the time his nickname was Billy the Kid. Don’t ask me why. Billy the Kid was quick on the draw; Misha never did anything quickly, not even pulling out his credit card. Billy the Kid was brave and, at least in the movies I’ve seen, agile and thin; Misha was brave too, but built like a Buddha, obese even by Russian standards, and allergic to all forms of physical exercise. I went on being a bookmaker, but soon I began to do other kinds of work for him. Sometimes he’d give me a bundle of cash and send me to see a player I knew to get him to throw a game. On one occasion I managed to bribe half a soccer team, one by one, flattering the more cooperative players and using veiled threats on the others. Sometimes he sent me to persuade other gamblers to withdraw their bets or not to make waves. But most of the time my work consisted of providing reports on athletes, one after another, without any evident rhyme or reason, which Pavlov’s IT expert would tirelessly key into his computer.
There was, however, something else I used to do for him. Most of the Moscow gangsters’ girls were nightclub hostesses or striptease artists, actresses or wannabes. No surprises there; that’s the way it’s always been. But Pavlov’s taste in women was for athletes: long jumpers, sprinters, middle-distance runners, triple jumpers. . he fell in love with the occasional javelin thrower, but his real favorites were the high jumpers. He said they were like gazelles, ideal women, and he wasn’t wrong. I was the one who organized it all. I went to the training camps and set up dates for him. Some of the girls were delighted at the prospect of spending a weekend with Misha Pavlov, poor things, but others, most of them, weren’t. Still, I always got him the girls he wanted, even if it meant spending my own money or resorting to threats. And so it happened that one afternoon he told me he wanted Natalia Mijailovna Chuikova, an eighteen-year-old from the Volgograd region, who had just arrived n Moscow, hoping to get a place on the Olympic team. I don’t know what it was exactly, but right from the start I realized that there was something different in the way Pavlov was talking about this Chuikova girl. When he told me to get her, he was with two of his buddies, and they winked at me as if to say: Make sure you do exactly what he’s telling you, Roger Strada, because this time Billy the Kid is serious.
Two days later I got to talk to Natalia Chuikova. It was at the Spartanovka indoor track, on the Boulevard of Sport, at nine a.m., and I’m definitely not a morning person, but it was the only time I could meet her there. First I saw her in the distance: she was about to start running to the high jump, and she was concentrating, clenching her fists and looking up, as if she was praying or watching for an angel. Then I went over to her and introduced myself. Roger Strada? she said, So you must be Italian. I didn’t have the courage to destroy her illusions altogether: I said I was Chilean and that there were lots of Italians in Chile. She was five-foot-ten and can’t have weighed more than 120 pounds. She had long brown hair, and her simple ponytail gathered all the grace in the world. Her eyes were almost jet black and she had, I swear, the longest, most beautiful legs I have ever seen.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the reason for my visit. I bought her a Pepsi, told her I liked her technique and left. That night I didn’t know what I was going to say to Pavlov, what lie I was going to invent. In the end I decided to keep it simple. I said we’d have to give Natalia Chuikova a little time, she wasn’t like his usual kind of girl. Misha looked at me with that face of his, somewhere between a seal and a spoiled child, and said OK, I’ll give you three days. When Misha gave you three days, you had to fix it in three days, not one day more. So I spent a few hours thinking it over, asking myself what my problem was, what was holding me back, and eventually I decided to settle the matter as quickly as possible. Very early the next morning, I saw Natalia again. I was one of the first to arrive at the track. I spent a long time watching the athletes coming and going, all half asleep like me, chatting and arguing, though all I could hear of their voices was a senseless murmur, or shouts in an incomprehensible Russian, as if I’d forgotten the language, until Natalia appeared in the group and started doing warm-up exercises. Her trainer was taking notes in a little book. There were two other high jumpers talking with her. Sometimes they laughed. Sometimes, after jumping, they’d sit down and put on blue and red tracksuits, which they soon took off again. Sometimes they drank water. After half an hour of happiness I realized I was in love. It was the first time it had happened to me. Before that, I’d loved a couple of whores. I’d treated them wrong, or right, it didn’t matter. Now I was really in love. I spoke to her. I explained the situation with Misha Pavlov, who he was, what he wanted. Natalia was shocked, then she thought it was funny. She agreed to see him, against my advice. I made the date for as late as I could. In the meantime, I took her to see a Bruce Willis movie — he was one of her favorite actors — and then to dinner at a good restaurant. We talked and talked. Her life, with its hardships and disappointments, was a model of perseverance and willpower, just the opposite of mine. Her tastes were simple; it was happiness she wanted, not wealth. Her attitude to sex, which is what I was really hoping to get out of her, was broad-minded. That depressed me at first: I thought Natalia would be easy game for Pavlov, I imagined her sleeping with all his bodyguards, one by one, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it. But then I understood that Natalia was talking about a kind of sexuality that I just didn’t understand (and still don’t), and it didn’t mean she had to go to bed with all the gang. I also understood that in spite of everything, I had to protect her.