Hotel Moscow (4 page)

She dozed off thinking that the deep-pocket advertisers on the billboards might also be good targets for supporting Amanda’s programs for women entrepreneurs. Brooke knew how to pitch those corporations.

“This is a fucking Hollywood movie,” Jenny yelled, jolting Brooke awake.

The driver uttered what sounded like a curse. He jerked the gearshift and yanked the wheel to the right. A horrible screech cried the gears’ defiance. The bus lurched to a stop on the curb,
sending Brooke flying out of her seat. She hit her knee, then grabbed the nearest pole.

In front of a green, semicircular building with white stone trim, hundreds of people shouted, their fists pounding the air.

“What’s going on?” Brooke asked Aleksandr, who sat across the aisle.

“These are the criminals. Demonstrating.” Aleksandr zipped his leather jacket.

Svetlana moved to the front of the bus and peered out the driver’s window. “This is Moscow’s central train station.” Her face was pale.

Aleksandr looked out again. “They’re just talking about what’s going on.”

“You call that talking? Well, what is going on?” Brooke leaned forward. “What’s Yeltsin trying to achieve?”

“Yeltsin is our hero of the 1991 coup.” Svetlana wrung her hands together. “He climbed the tank in defiance of Gorbachev—”

Aleksandr interrupted her. “He will talk to the criminals in our White House. That’s our Russian parliament.”

Brooke tore open a Wet-Nap and wiped the dusty window. “Why are you calling them criminals? If they are your legal representatives, they can’t be fired on Yeltsin’s whim.”

He shrugged. “
Normalno.
”

Dr. Rozanova came down the aisle and spoke to the driver. He restarted the engine and struggled with the gearshift, while she walked back.

Brooke sat back, massaging her bruised knee. “Svetlana, would you please ask the driver to turn on the radio?”

Svetlana reached over the driver and turned the dial, finding a station. As the driver freed the gearshift and rolled the bus into a U-turn, Svetlana cocked her ear, straining to hear.

“What does it say?” Brooke asked. “What’s happening?”

Before Svetlana responded, Aleksandr said something sharp to her in Russian. Svetlana slunk back to her seat without looking at Brooke.

“We’ll take a longer route to the hotel through quieter parts of the city.” Aleksandr unzipped his leather jacket. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Sure.” Brooke let her head fall back. “This is
normalno.
”

T
HE VAST LOBBY
of Hotel Moscow was like no other Brooke had ever seen. Instead of carpeting, wood parquet, or marble flooring, linoleum in speckled eggshell hues gave the place an institutional appearance. High walls of intricate wrought iron crisscrossed the lobby, partitioning off the elevator bank, a darkened gift shop, and a deserted seating area with worn plastic benches suitable for a subway station. Two armed, gray-uniformed guards stood inside the hotel entrance, two more were planted on either side of an ornate gate leading to the reception area, and two others were stationed at the entrance to a back corridor shrouded in shadows. Guests could not move about the lobby without passing through checkpoints.

Would she be able to sleep the night in such a place? During Brooke’s childhood, her mother’s talk about Nazis banging on the door in the middle of the night had kept her awake, lying stiff and listening for hard footfalls.

Right now she needed a shower. The lobby’s musty odor and
smell of disinfectant stuck to her skin. But for half an hour, the group still waited with their suitcases, talking in hushed voices.

Finally Aleksandr approached, waving cards and keys. “The registration manager has assigned two to a room,” he declared. “I’ll read who goes where.”

“We’ve paid in advance for single rooms,” Amanda told him. “Your travel agency made the arrangements. Twenty-five dollars a night per room.”

His face dropped. “The manager here decides,” he mumbled.

“The reception manager?” Brooke’s sympathy for Aleksandr turned into annoyance. “Don’t worry. Amanda, shall we take care of it?”

“But the manager said you’re not allowed to switch. You can’t! Don’t get him upset.” Aleksandr looked miserably at his watch. “The chef is waiting for me. Yes? I can’t be late.”

“The
kitchen
chef?” Brooke asked.

“He’s important, you know. . . .”

Amanda placed a hand on Brooke’s arm. “Welcome to Soviet hospitality.”

Brooke felt she’d been dropped into a hall of funhouse mirrors. “I don’t get it. This is not a third world country.”

“Will you be my roommate? Just like on our safari trip.”

“Promise you won’t wake me up at dawn with your chanting and exercises.”

“Yoga is good for your soul. Time you give it a try.”

“Seeking solace in my belly button?” Brooke lifted her suitcase. “I’d rather talk to a shrink.” Of course, she wouldn’t see a therapist, but she envied Amanda and others like her who embraced New Age spiritualism. And yet, Yom Kippur services
had failed to give her such solace. The prayers were filled with so much fawning, self-flagellation, and fear of God’s fiery wrath that she had left devoid of the uplifting spirituality she had come seeking. Where was the gracious God from whom her mother expected an apology for what He’d done to His people? A God to be trusted?

After ushering the rest of the group to the three elevators, Amanda distributed several five-dollar bills among the six guards. They accepted them without the crack of a grateful smile or even stiff words of thanks.

Brooke dragged her suitcase and Amanda’s into the first elevator that came down and held the door open. As soon as Amanda entered, it swished shut, almost chopping off Brooke’s hand.

“Is five bucks the standard bribe?” she asked Amanda. “And what does it get us?”

“It ensures our safety.”

Or would it make the guards greedy? Brooke’s eyes stung from fatigue.

On the ninth floor, an old woman with a frayed flowery apron tied around her barrel-shaped middle blocked their way, glaring. Twin gray braids circled her head like a crown. A TV blared in the room behind her.

“This is the floor matron.” Amanda nudged Brooke. “Got one of your lipsticks?”

Brooke withdrew a prepacked Ziploc bag. The woman accepted it with an unsmiling nod and disappeared back into her room.

Amanda led Brooke a few doors farther down the hall and fumbled with the skeleton key in the door. “In most Russian
hotels this
dezhurnayia
is in charge of the room key and keeps a record of your comings and goings.” She pushed open the door and walked in.

Two cots were set against facing walls. A tattered lace curtain framed a large window. The mirror over the desk was blotchy, and the colored pattern in the carpet had faded into a dull brown. The 1950s-style armoire and the desk with its lopsided drawer were scratched and stained, as though generations of vodka-drinking officials had partied there.

Brooke took off her shoes and stretched out on one of the cots. It squeaked, and she could feel the wooden board underneath the five-inch foam mattress. “When do we get to meet our venerated host, Nikolai Sidorov?”

“Aleksandr will let us know.”

“After he checks with the kitchen chef, of course.” An image of the littered, broken-down bus flitted through Brooke’s mind. “Look, Amanda, I can tough it out if needed. But I’ve been invited to enough countries, and even the poorest ones know how to treat a guest. What kind of hospitality is this? First we get that pile of junk called a bus, and now this place is creepy. It feels more like an asylum than a hotel.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s take care of ourselves, starting by moving to better accommodations.”

Amanda pinned up her hair and grabbed a bath towel from her open suitcase. The list of necessities she had given the group included good towels, insecticide, and flashlights. “This hotel is in Lenin Hills. It’s a residential area. With the parliament spat, Sidorov felt we’d be safer away from downtown.”

Brooke sat up. One of the bed’s legs wobbled. “The armed
standoff in front of the parliament is far more serious than ‘a spat.’ It’s a civil war about to erupt.” She changed her mind about sharing the tale of her brush with the customs officers. “Who is this Sidorov, anyway?”

“He heads the Economic Authority and he’s in Yeltsin’s close circle of fiscal advisers. The press touts him as an example of the new breed of Russians.”

“Corrupt?”

“He’s considered a leader in market economy.” Amanda went into the bathroom.

Rain spattered the windows, cutting off the outside world. Brooke lay down. Her glance swept the ceiling, then the corners where the stained and bubbled wallpaper ended. In the twilight of dozing off to sleep on top of the bedspread, she wondered whether she was being watched by a hidden camera.

It wasn’t yet noontime when she woke up to Amanda stretching, inhaling, and exhaling like a pneumatic door as she moved from plank pose to cobra. Brooke swung her feet off the bed. It creaked, but stayed up. She undressed and stuffed her feet into a pair of slippers. “That was a good nap,” she announced.

Amanda moved to downward-facing dog. “Join me?” she grunted, her head down.

“A shower will help me face Russia.”

When Brooke turned on the light in the bathroom, half a dozen cockroaches skittered over the sink, and an equal number scrambled into hiding on the floor. The small, round toilet seat did not cover the rim of the oblong bowl. There was no shower stall, but water, presumably from Amanda’s shower, glistened on the walls.

It took Brooke some exploring to discover at the sink a clunky lever that diverted the water from the faucet to a side hose with a portable showerhead. The floor drain underneath the sink collected the waste water. She hung her towel on the hook outside the door, noticing that Amanda had left the toilet paper there also, and stood in front of the sink. Holding the sprayer high, she let the water cascade over her.

She smelled her own fruity shampoo, glad to be rid of the last of the airport’s scents. She began to hum “I Will Survive,” then moved her limbs, swiveling in a dance while the water splashed on the walls and ceiling.
I will survive,
she thought, feeling alive as the words of the song cleansed her. She danced some more, singing, and thought she heard Amanda joining her from the room.

When Brooke had scrubbed the past fifteen hours off her skin and out of her hair, she turned off the faucet, swept the errant water with her feet toward the drain, and toweled dry. She walked back into the room and retrieved her hair blower, the 220-watt one she kept for certain countries, and found the outlet in the opposite wall, too far from the mirror.

“I see that you are managing,” Amanda said during a pause in a sun salutation.

“What could be more exotic than camping in Moscow?” Brooke laughed as she fanned her hair. Time to start anew in this country. In fact, as she dressed in a tweed wool suit, she realized how much she was looking forward to seeing Svetlana’s factory and making things happen for that lovely young Russian.

T
HE BUS STOPPED
in a neighborhood of residential buildings interspersed with warehouses. Brooke peered at a decrepit concrete building that seemed to have been left unfinished during Stalin’s days. There was no visible main entrance, and the yard was packed mud, punctuated by black oil spills.

“The Gorbachevskaya Street Factory,” said Svetlana in a voice that flipped between bravery and self-consciousness. “We have lunch ready.” She added shyly, “The British call it ‘dinner,’ but you call it ‘lunch,’ right?”

“You know more than I do.” Brooke gave her a large smile. “Will Nikolai Sidorov join us?”

“Oh, no.” Svetlana swallowed. “He is too important.”

Brooke pushed aside her bafflement and lifted the tote in which she’d brought Ziploc bags, each prepacked with a lipstick, a vial of aspirin, and a collection of Western hotel amenities. Amanda had told Brooke that it was the baggies themselves that
Russian women would cherish the most. They would recycle them until they fell apart.

Brooke stepped off the bus. In front of her gaped the loading dock, a high cavernous hole in the structure’s facade. Jenny’s diminutive nose crinkled. “I smell piss,” she said, holding on to Brooke’s elbow, her steps tiny and measured lest her four-inch heels catch in the crack of rickety stones.

The group followed Svetlana along a grimy wall toward a gray metal door fixed in the side of the building, and soon entered a small factory cafeteria.

A long U-shaped table covered with faded oilcloth took up most of the floor space. The kitchen staff, wearing frayed yet freshly pressed bib aprons, stood behind a chest-high counter, smiling and nodding. Four other women in identical plaid skirts but different colorful cardigans waited by the door with welcoming smiles. Svetlana introduced them as the factory supervisors, and within moments, Brooke found herself in a round of hugs.

Jenny distributed large “Attitude Is Everything” buttons, and asked Svetlana to translate the words for her. Jenny tried to repeat the Russian, bringing the staff to laugh at her pronunciation.

“I’m having fun,” Jenny said, then mumbled, still smiling into the Russians’ faces. “Jesus, look at their teeth. Green, brown, gray, yellow, gold—”

“Shhhh.” Amanda glared at her. “Some may understand English.”

Brooke sat down at the table. The rancid air and the sticky oilcloth bore testimony to the thousands of past meals served there. Under the scrutiny of her hostesses, Brooke ignored the
tiny gnats flying about and picked up a miniature hard-boiled-egg sandwich smeared with a dollop of fish egg roe. It was something her mother would have served to guests. Brooke put it in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and picked up another. “Good.” She smiled at the servers and was rewarded with even broader smiles. Frank wonder showed in their expressions as they stared at the Americans. Brooke had encountered such adulation when visiting distant villages in southeast Asia, but had never expected to see it in Russia. After all, this was a developed country, with strong industry and science. The roles women played here in both professions and politics often surpassed those in most Western countries.

Svetlana stood at the head of the table. Not a single strand escaped her coiffed hair, and her green eyes sparkled with the importance of the moment. Brooke admired how seriously she took this responsibility and, to give Svetlana her full attention, declined to hide behind Amanda’s video camera. “Your visit symbolizes the new peace between our people.” Svetlana’s tone sounded portentously grave, Soviet-like, as if meant for eavesdropping ears. “Women have the special compassion to put old grievances aside and find the common denominator of the many things we share, to be friends.”

Amanda stood and raised a glass. “It’s
our
privilege, and we hope that one day you’ll visit us.”

More speeches followed, delivered with ceremonial flair by each of the supervisors and then by a male official whose role as district local administrator for internal affairs remained unclear. He poured small glasses of vodka and offered them to each of the Americans, but not to Svetlana or her colleagues.
Brooke tried to pass, but Svetlana whispered to her that she must accept it.

“You are the sirens singing in the flowery meadow,” the man said, and Svetlana translated. He raised the glass on the back of his hand and tipped its contents into his mouth. Brooke just let the vodka wet her lower lip and felt its heat.

Finally the group trooped up an unlit, narrow metal staircase to the second floor.

Crude swipes of trowels were imprinted in the bare concrete floor on which dozens of sewing machines occupied a quarter of the huge loft. Exposed light bulbs poured a yellow glow on long worktables. Two dozen seamstresses scrambled to their feet and beamed at the guests.

“For years, millions of Soviet women labored in these factories for meager salaries,” Svetlana announced, sounding again as if reading from a script. “Now, privatization handed us the factories and gave us a chance to become their owners.”

Next to each “new owner” rested a stack of white cotton pieces. The finished products, looking like giant girls’ panties, lay piled by size on another long table where Svetlana led the group next. More underwear gleamed in white from clusters of open boxes.

“Before privatization we manufactured these for the navy.” Svetlana touched her hair. “They gave us the fabric, placed the orders, and bought the finished product. Now that we’re on our own, we buy the fabric and manufacture the same underwear, but we don’t know where to sell them. Can you help us export them to America?”

Jenny picked up one and examined it. “Is this a
man’s
brief?
No fly, no front reinforcement, no slack to hold the precious Russian navy balls. You see?” She passed samples around. “The elastic is sewn on each side separately. Cheap.”

A small man with bottle-thick glasses entered the room and stood plastered against the wall. A pocket protector protruded from his shirt and black rubber bands held up his sleeves. Svetlana motioned him away, and he glided out through the door.

“Who do you think he is?” Brooke whispered to Amanda.

Svetlana overheard her. “The economist.”

“Isn’t he the one working on pricing?”

“His job is in the back office,” Svetlana replied pointedly. “Only a manager gets to talk to important guests.”

Brooke let it pass. “Who besides the navy wears these briefs in Russia?”

“All men wear underwear, even in America, don’t they?” Svetlana’s brow showed her bewilderment.

“Here’s a business problem right up your alley,” Amanda told Brooke.

Dim midday light dripped through the soot-covered windows on three sides of the loft. Brooke settled at the nearest worktable and pulled out a yellow legal pad and a pen. “Svetlana, there’s a whole bunch of issues we can discuss.”

“We’ll go ahead and check the leatherwear department two more floors up.” Amanda motioned to the others, and they followed a supervisor. The sound of their shoes hitting the metal steps echoed in the hollow stairwell.

Jenny, who had broken away from the group, was roaming the production line, chatting with the seamstresses with dramatic
hand animation as she inspected their work. Brooke watched her. If only the woman could curb her tongue.

She turned to Svetlana. “In America we first research the demand in the marketplace for a specific product design and usage, and also assess the competition. What are the features of their products? How do their products sell? What do consumers want—and how much are they willing to pay? We study all of that
before
we manufacture.”

Svetlana’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “That’s the economist’s job. I’m the director.”

“You’re the director of the
whole
factory. You are not only the production manager, right? In the new system, which we call ‘market economy,’ you must learn every aspect of the business.” Brooke smiled as she wrote down a list of her points. “That’s what managers in America do. Costs and pricing, too, are crucial.”

Svetlana bit her lower lip. “Numbers and money? I wasn’t very good at it in school.” Then her face brightened. “But if that’s what I must do to become a capitalist, I’ll learn.”

“You’ll be a great capitalist,” Brooke said. “Let’s start with the most important elements: product, and the flow of money, in and out.” She would explain distribution later. “Jenny will discuss product design with you. It must meet European or U.S. standards. For the revenues, let’s talk to the economist. Together we’ll go over costs and evaluate the pricing strategies so you, the director, can participate in the decisions—”

A woman’s sudden scream reverberated up the stairwell and into the work loft. Blood surged in Brooke’s chest. Shouts and
angry male voices followed. Svetlana’s porcelain skin turned ashy pale. Her eyes widened as furious shouts became louder, closer.

The economist, his glasses askew at the tip of his nose, stumbled into the room. His shirt was hanging out of his pants, and his hand clutched his side as blood spread under his fingers.

Three thugs in bright red-and-green jogging suits and Nike sneakers burst through the door behind him. Their faces looked flushed, their foreheads shiny with sweat, their eyes fierce.

Svetlana jumped to her feet and gripped the nearest pillar, her lips moving in silent discourse. Brooke sprang to the deep end of the loft, where Jenny stood rooted to her spot. Brooke grabbed her, and together they skittered to the farthest wall, away from the thugs but also too far from the door to escape.

The economist stumbled forward, then regained his footing. One of the ruffians with shoulders so massive that his big head seemed to be attached to them without the benefit of a neck, shoved him. “
Chort
!”

The economist fell down. Brooke heard the bang as his head hit the hard concrete floor.
Nazis.
That’s how they must have smashed the heads of her father’s three children while he watched. Brooke imagined him lying wounded on the ground as the economist did now. He must have looked dead or the Nazis would have shot him.

Pressed against the wall, she felt his helplessness. Minute details crowded into her awareness: screws on the sewing machines, the rough lumber of the worktables, the rust of the support steel columns, the sagging electric wires overhead. She must flee. But how? To where?

Another thug, with a Slavic face and porkchop sideburns, dragged a woman into the loft. Brooke recognized the blue-and-brown plaid skirt of a factory supervisor she had hugged in the cafeteria. The woman clutched at the doorframe. “
Yob tvoyu mat,
” the man cursed, kicking at her. A spasm ran through her, then she crumpled to the floor, listless.

Before her mind could stop her, Brooke’s body sprang into action. “Hey.” She stepped forward. “Stop it!”

Jenny pulled her back, reaching up to clasp a hand over Brooke’s mouth. “Are you nuts?” She wheeled Brooke around. “Don’t even think of it.”

Brooke struggled to get free, then stopped. Jenny was right.

Svetlana seemed to have found her voice. Her palms gathered in supplication, she called out something to the third gang member barreling toward her, who looked like a rooster with his red pomaded hair. Her tone was a cross between an argument and a plea.

Brooke saw the neckless man wave a can of gasoline and douse his path with splashes of liquid. Her skin prickled. Her gaze darted between him, Svetlana, and the seamstresses clustered behind the farthest support pillars. It would take only one match to turn all of them into live torches. Beside her, clutching at her arm, Jenny started to whimper.

Svetlana cried out in Russian, her lips trembling. Brooke’s knees buckled. “We must get help,” she whispered to Jenny.

“
Pizda.
” The rooster man was so close, Brooke could count the freckles that covered his pinkish skin. He had taken off his jacket, and his arm, tufted with red fuzz, bulged from under a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt.

“Americans.” Svetlana held up her hands in surrender, then added something in Russian.

Rooster glanced at Brooke and Jenny, but moved on to Svetlana. Without warning, he punched her jaw, upward and back. She stumbled and fell against a steel column, but she recovered her breath and continued to plead as she held her jaw.

The smell of gasoline filled Brooke’s nostrils. She pulled Jenny along the wall toward the door. The cinder block’s jagged roughness caught at the threads of her tweed suit jacket. At the far end of the workroom, the Slav porkchop lifted and hurled sewing machines and smashed chairs. Rooster shifted his attention from Svetlana as he joined his friends in destroying the place. The neckless thug poured gasoline on the finished piles of navy briefs.

Svetlana slid along the wall toward Brooke, stealthy as an alley cat. Brooke’s body shook as she and Jenny continued to edge their way along.
Thirty more feet to the door.

But when they were almost at the door, a thought flashed through Brooke’s head. How could she flee, a coward, and leave the other women to fend for themselves? She struggled to free herself from Jenny’s clutches, but Jenny shoved her toward the door with surprising strength. “Don’t you dare.”

Jenny was right. What could she do? She’d better get help, Brooke decided just as Svetlana reached them, grabbed her other arm, and pulled her into the dark stairwell. Brooke threw a last glance at the hoodlums. They were hurling chairs at the windows. Glass shattered.

“Call the police,” Brooke cried out.

Jenny crossed herself, pulled off her pumps, and sprinted
with unexpected agility down the stairs. Following her cue, Brooke yanked off her shoes, pressed them to her chest, and ran. “Amanda!” she screamed upward into the stairwell. At least the hoodlums hadn’t lit a match yet. Once they did, they’d run down right behind them, through the only stairwell here. Her friend and the rest of the group would be trapped in a burning building. “Amanda!”

A gust of cold air swept over Brooke as she, Jenny, and Svetlana fled to a back office. After a quick exchange with more trembling workers who huddled there, Svetlana reported that someone had run over to fetch their protection gang.