Hotel Moscow (6 page)

S
VETLANA WALKED THE
few blocks from the subway station down deserted streets, alert to all sights and sounds in the boulevard. In this older section of town, darkness lurked in hidden doorways, broken fences, scraggly shrubs, and debris-filled alleyways.

The familiar fears of unchanging days, of hopelessness, and an inescapable destiny descended on her. The terror she’d experienced at Gorbachevskaya Street Factory—and the pulsating pain in her jaw—had transformed into a dread of Nikolai Sidorov. He’d hold her responsible for ruining the Americans’ first day. Somehow he’d even blame her for the disaster, as if she could have prevented any of it. And her dreams for her cooperative’s success had been trashed today under the thugs’ feet as irreparably as the sewing machines. How could they work without equipment?

Behind Svetlana, the corner street light gave off a faint halo, but the two lampposts in the center of the block remained dark.
Their light bulbs had been stolen two years before, when Communist control had ended.

Keeping to the drier edges of the rutted pavement, she trudged around glistening mud puddles while glancing about her. Lately, talks of muggings and rapes had accelerated. Quickening her pace, she tried to push away the images of the wounded Pavel Borisovich and her battered workers. She touched the new “Attitude Is Everything” button on her lapel. It was easy for the American women to have a good attitude; they had everything. For them, life was to be enjoyed rather than endured.

Dr. Olga Leonidovna Rozanova, herself Russian, also possessed that positive outlook. Svetlana had been almost as excited about meeting the revered sociologist today as she was about the Americans. Just recently she had discovered that Dr. Rozanova had been the author of the underground newsletter “Women’s True Voice,” the
samizdat
that had given her so much hope during the Soviet days, scaffolding her spirit when she despaired with trying to envision a better future for Natasha.

Svetlana clutched her handbag, feeling its bulging contents. So many gifts. The hard candies and gums she would dole out to Natasha over the next year. The Snickers and Three Musketeers she would trade in the street for months of eggs and sausages. And Brooke had given her the most beautiful scarf she’d ever owned, a silk print. It would be a betrayal to sell it, yet the money it could fetch might pay for coal for the whole upcoming winter.

She stopped in front of the three-story building, feeling her skull contract. The facade, originally painted in peach, sported decades-old dark patches of mold. In places where the paint
peeled off, lighter patches of ancient plaster showed even in the wan light.

Back to the hell of the communal apartment. If only she could turn around, this very moment, and flee the five-room apartment in which five families lived—fifteen people sharing one toilet, one shower, and one small kitchen. The curse of Russian life. The walls that trapped them all for life in a web of intimacy and hatred—of smells and sounds so familiar, yet so utterly detestable—spoke only of old grievances and gripes yet to come.

Only the thought of her Natasha, waiting for her, made Svetlana push open the creaking stairway door. Again the light bulb was missing. She wound her way up, knowing in the dark how to avoid the broken stairs. Like the rest of the building, the staircase hadn’t been repaired in the seventy years since this once grandiose Stalin-era mansion had been converted into an anthill of rooms.

When Svetlana entered the room she shared with Natasha, the girl squealed and flung her stuffed rabbit aside. Her eyes searched for Svetlana’s
avoska,
the string basket in which she carried provisions. “What did you bring to eat?”

“With the Americans here, I didn’t have time to stand in lines.” Svetlana planted kisses on her daughter’s forehead and cheeks. It hurt her jaw to pucker her lips; she hoped it wasn’t broken. Feigning cheerfulness, she said, “You’ll have macaroni tonight.” The candy would be a surprise.

“I hate macaroni.”

“I’ll add white cheese.” Svetlana didn’t blame Natasha. The grayish pasta, made of rotted wheat, tasted foul unless laced with sugar, which she could no longer afford. Sometimes,
Lyalya, a pretty twenty-one-year old student who lived with her mother across the hall, paid her for English and German lessons with groceries; the young woman’s mother, a physician, received them as payment from patients.

Svetlana stepped next to the one bed in the room, removed the broomstick that held the hip-high refrigerator door closed, and crouched in front of it. She used a rag to scrape off ice that had formed on the exposed cooling pipe inside the refrigerator, and pressed it to her jaw. Natasha hung on her back while Svetlana peeked at the meager contents. “I’ll also add honey,” Svetlana said. “And we have potatoes from yesterday, and two eggs. I’ll boil both so you can take one to school tomorrow.”

“An egg?” Natasha’s eyes widened with anticipation. “
Vkusno
! Yummy.”

Someone tapped on the door, and without waiting for an invitation, opened it. Lyalya entered, dancing a jaunty jig. Svetlana gasped.

“What do you think?” Lyalya pirouetted. She was wearing a stunning, foreign-made, red Lycra dress that ended two centimeters below her crotch. It was topped with a matching jacket with a dozen gold-shimmering zippers. Her long legs, encased in fishnet stockings and tucked into black patent-leather high heels, completed the look of a pricey call girl. “I’ve joined an escort service,” she chanted, and waved a hand in front of Svetlana’s stunned face. “Earth to Svetlana?” she said in English, an expression they had picked up from an American magazine.

Svetlana swallowed. “Are you out of your mind?”

Lyalya’s brown eyes twinkled through their heavy makeup. “I’ll meet so many interesting people. Foreigners.”

“But what will you have to do?” Svetlana whispered. She twitched her brows to warn of Natasha’s presence.

“Oh, that?” Lyalya swung her hips and laughed. “Foreign men aren’t bad, not like the disgusting Russians. The girls I’ve met have a great time; they go to restaurants, bars, and clubs.” She giggled. “Have you ever been to a restaurant?”

“Once, for a wedding.”

“I’ll go every night and earn more money in one week—in one evening—than you’ll make in a year in that miserable factory.”

“But think of your future,” Svetlana murmured, wrapping her arms around Natasha, who stood gawking at Lyalya.

“My future? Like my mother’s? It’s a new era. I can study for years and be a stupid doctor or I can have it better now.”

Svetlana let go of Natasha and grabbed Lyalya’s arms with both her hands. “There’s a terrible price to pay for the road you’re choosing. You can still change your mind before—before you catch some horrible disease. There’s a new one, AIDS—” She searched her mind for ideas. “Remember when you wanted to be a journalist? Now you can apply again.”

“Are you kidding? I’m still a Jewess. The university hasn’t changed its policy or quota.” Lyalya’s voice mimicked an official’s authoritative baritone. “‘Jews are involved in international conspiracy; they can’t be trusted to work with foreigners.’” She pranced behind the laundry hung on a line across the bedroom, and her finger flicked Svetlana’s pink underwear, their crotch patched. “I’ll rent Mama a whole apartment. I want her out of this hell hole.”

“We’ll talk more later. I must make Natasha’s dinner.” Svetlana patted strands of her girl’s fair hair.

Swaying her hips, Lyalya walked out, blowing them a kiss.

Svetlana gave her daughter a gentle nudge. “Go to the kitchen and put the pots on to boil. Then come right back.” She began straightening the room while cocking her ear for the feared shuffling sounds of Zoya, the old woman who shared a room with a married daughter’s family.

A commotion erupted a few seconds before Natasha burst in, her face convulsed with sobs. “Zoya slapped me and shoved me out of the kitchen.”

“Baba Yaga, the witch.” Svetlana rushed down the long corridor and burst into the kitchen. “I’ve warned you not to touch my child!” she yelled at Zoya.

“Your brat’s always in my way,” Zoya said over her shoulder. Her cooking utensils were scattered over every centimeter of surface. Potato peels flew about from under her quick flicks. “And now you’re in my way.”

“Everyone is in everyone’s way,” Svetlana shouted. “You won’t get me to move out by hitting my daughter, you hear?” She clenched her fists and waved them in the woman’s face.

Zoya shrugged, but her smiling, toothless, wrinkled mouth revealed that she was resolute in her effort to claim Svetlana’s room. Since Zoya’s daughter had had a baby, their one room was simply too small for three generations.

All Svetlana could do was go back to her room and wait for Zoya to leave the kitchen.

“I’m hungry,” Natasha whined.

In her wash basin, Svetlana rinsed the two slices of salami and cheese she had managed to save from the cafeteria. The rest of the wasted leftover food—pieces of chicken, something none
of the workers had been able to purchase in months—had to be thrown away after the hoodlums had urinated on them.

While Natasha was occupied with the unexpected delicacies, Svetlana stepped to the communal phone in the corridor to call the injured workers’ families, and then her friend Katerina to thank her for lending her the leather coat so that she could look elegant when meeting the Americans. She was relieved that the coat hadn’t been ruined in the attack.

Katerina gushed with questions. How did each of the Americans style her hair? Who wore the most elegant clothes? What did they say about the leather coat? Who had the most expensive shoes? Who was the most feminine?

“You should see their teeth,” Svetlana said.

“Their teeth?”

Svetlana giggled in spite of the pain in her jaw. Teeth were something people had, then, in time, lost. If they had money, they ordered a gold front tooth, so everyone would know they could afford it. “Like in the magazines, Katerina. They’re not made of plastic as we thought. They are real, and so white.”

“All their teeth?”

“At least their front ones. Brooke has the best teeth. Tops and bottoms. She’s also the bravest one.” Even if Svetlana could speak about the attack—which she certainly couldn’t over the phone—she would never admit how she had been too scared to go back into the factory. But Brooke had. And Jenny had hugged Svetlana, and the two of them had wept together, crossing themselves. “I’ve made a friend. Jenny Alfredo. She’s full of fire. And her clothes—so many colors—you’d love them.”

Katerina giggled. “What color shoes did she wear?”

“Striped shoes decorated with cherries.” Svetlana smiled into the phone. “She gave away pins that say, ‘Attitude Is Everything.’ I got you one, too.”

Zoya emerged from the kitchen, carrying her plates and pots. “In the Soviet days the government took care of its elderly citizens,” she muttered.

The narrow hall barely left space for the Baba Yaga to pass by Svetlana without scalding her with her pots. Svetlana flattened herself against the wall, sending her nemesis a warning look. “I must go,” she told Katerina and hung up. As soon as Zoya closed the door to her room, Svetlana rushed to the kitchen. As she had dreaded, the old woman had left her potato and carrot peels strewn about and not bothered to wipe up the spills of oil and dishwater on the floor.

“Clean up after yourself, witch,” Svetlana muttered, wishing she were bolder and could raise her voice. The newspapers reported people who, desperate for extra rooms, murdered their neighbors. Zoya, on a warpath for her own survival, was capable of anything. After school each day, Natasha was home alone for hours; none of her friends had enough space in their single, crowded room for a visiting playmate. Their mothers, too, worked late or spent hours on food lines.

Her hands shaking with frustration, Svetlana lit two out of the four burners on the stove; a third burner that hadn’t worked for years had been fixed by one of the neighbors, who now claimed it as exclusively his. She filled her pots with water that trickled from the rusted faucet, and placed them on to boil. While she scoured the chipped enamel sink, Natasha came in and wrapped her arms around Svetlana’s hips. Through misty eyes, Svetlana
smiled down at her. Natasha’s emerald eyes, so like her own, seemed huge in her thin face, and her skin looked sallow, almost translucent. The freckles across the bridge of her nose had darkened since the school kitchen had closed months ago; the meals on which Svetlana had always relied to feed her daughter were no longer being served.

“One day we’ll have our own kitchen,” Svetlana said. “And plenty of food.”

“When I grow up, I want to be just like Lyalya.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Oh, yes, I do.”

“You’ll study law. Russia needs lawyers now. It’s a good profession.”

“When I grow up, I’ll do what I want to do.” Natasha stamped her foot. “You’ve said that’s why we have
demokratia.
”

Svetlana laughed and kissed her child’s head. Her beautiful daughter possessed the spirit that had been beaten out of Svetlana herself.

Natasha whined, “Why is it taking so long? I’m hungry.”

“Winter’s coming.” Svetlana tapped the dials on the stove as if to pump more gas. The flames were weaker than before. “Public Resources must have lowered the gas supply because people are using their kitchen stoves for warmth.”

The potatoes in the larger pot would take more than an hour, but when the water boiled in the smaller pot, she could double-use it to save time. First, she would put in the two eggs. When they were done, she would reuse the same hot water for the macaroni. Then she’d save that carbohydrate-soaked water. To
morrow, she’d fashion a meal from it by adding flour. With the apples she had picked in the park last weekend, she could make pancakes.

Also tomorrow she’d carry her tin container. After dining with the Americans, she could collect leftovers, even if it would be humiliating to reveal her poverty. Pride became irrelevant in the face of her child’s hunger.

“Watch the pots while I straighten up our room,” she told Natasha. “And scream if Zoya shows up.”