Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (11 page)

The cartoon was so successful Kalenik was introduced to senior government officials, and his career as a young spin doctor was launched. “Politics is the ability to use any situation to advance your own status,” Sergey told me with a smile that seemed to mimic Surkov’s (who in turn mimics the KGB men). “How do you define your political views?” I asked him. He looked at me like I was a fool to ask, then smiled: “I’m a liberal . . . it can mean anything!”

ACT II

CRACKS IN THE KREMLIN MATRIX

You think prison is something bad that happens to other people. And then you wake up and my God you’re a convict.

O
n the evening before her arrest, Yana Yakovleva was sitting in the garden of her country dacha. It was Sunday. The last of the summer was slowly draining out of the light. The guests had left; there were empty wine glasses and wine bottles and plates with cheese and sushi from the picnic lying on the mown grass. Yana leant back in the chaise longue to catch the last of the sun. It was getting cold fast. Suddenly, very suddenly, she had the sense something bad was about to happen. It was so strong Yana suddenly realized she was crying.

Alexey, her lover, was moving about the garden collecting things. Yana wanted to call out to him, then changed her mind. She couldn’t explain her sudden fear. They had been living together for two years, and she knew what he would say: he would tell her to snap out of it.

The next morning, a Monday, she drove the Lexus back into town still wearing the clothes from the weekend party: a short white frilly dress, pink heels, and a white handbag. They stopped for a cappuccino at the new coffeehouse on Frunzenskaya and skimmed through
Vedemosti
, the Russian version of the
Financial Times
. Then Alexey grabbed a cab to his job as a senior manager in one of the big new Russian energy companies, and Yana drove to the gym. All the while the sense that something bad was about to happen wouldn’t go away, like a distant but ever-present ringing in her ears.

At the reception desk she noticed the girl behind the counter was staring at her in a strange way. Yana thought it rude; this was a private gym, and it wasn’t the sort of stare members paid to receive. Near the door to the back office there was a small group of men in polyester suits. They didn’t look like they belonged here. One was pacing back and forth, wringing his hands.

Her trainer had Yana box, run, and then finish off with abs. It hurt after the weekend’s wine, and her trainer let her go easy on the abs. “See you Thursday,” the trainer said. She usually trained three times a week. “If I make it,” said Yana. It just came out; she wasn’t sure why she had said it. “Oh, there’s nowhere you could disappear to” laughed the trainer.

Yana showered and changed back into the white dress and pink heels. They would giggle behind her back at work, but it was her company, and there was no one to tell her what to wear. She had been running the company since she was twenty with one other partner. Now she was thirty-four, they had dozens of employees, and she could afford to turn up late wearing high heels. It was the sort of company the general public rarely notices but that makes good money: importing and reselling industrial cleaning fluids to factories and army bases. Yana came from a family of academic scientists; her father had taught chemistry, and now she made her money in the chemicals industry. Soviet knowledge transmuting smoothly to post-Soviet economics.

When she came out of the changing room the girl at the reception desk was staring at her even harder. It was embarrassing. Yana had decided enough was enough; she was going to tell her off. Then the men in polyester suits approached. The nervous one flashed his badge and said, “We’re from the FDCS [Drug Enforcement Agency]; you need to come with us.”

The first thought that went through Yana’s mind was: “That explains why the reception girl had been looking at me funny. ‘The FDCS have come for Yakovleva’—it makes me sound like I’m a drug dealer!”

Yana flashed the girl at reception a quick smile as if to say, “Hey, it’s no big deal, I work in pharmaceuticals, we deal with the FDCS all the time,” but the girl turned away.

Yana felt no panic. She had done nothing wrong, so why should she panic?

The FDCS had been visiting her office regularly over the last few months: the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry, along with illegal drugs, were regulated by them. Men in masks carrying Kalashnikovs had raided the accounts department. No big deal: that happens regularly in Russia, to every business—when the organs want to find something, anything wrong in your taxes or your forms and registrations and extract some bribes.

Yana had never worried about it. Her company had done nothing wrong. And if they had done nothing wrong, what did she have to fear? It would be fine.

Yana followed the men from the FDCS to the front door. They looked awkward in their cheap suits in the up-market gym. The main one was sweating, but he had calmed down once he realized she wasn’t putting up a fight. But why should she put up a fight?

Outside were two drivers. They had parked their old matchbox Soviet cars in front of her new Lexus so she wouldn’t be able to make a getaway. It made her smile; it was like in some cops and robbers TV show.

One of the drivers walked up to her. He looked her up and down.

“It’s nice to arrest decent looking people.”

“I’m being arrested?”

“Well . . . held.”

“I need to call my boyfriend.”

“No phone calls,” they told her.

They let her drive her own car to the FDCS headquarters. They sat in the back and let her drive. It was all very casual. She could sense she was entering a different world, one where the rules were different, where other people would tell her what to do. But she didn’t feel panic. Just strange. She was trying to work out what the rules of this new world were. It felt curious. It tingled.

The office of the FDCS was in the north of town, a large gray Stalin building like an elaborately carved gravestone with the heraldic sign of the Kremlin’s double-headed eagle at the entrance. The doors were heavy to push open. Inside were long office corridors and lots of men in polyester suits. They seemed to hush when they saw Yana, eyeing her as if she were someone terribly important.

They took her to an office room with a table and two chairs. They fussed over her: Did she want some tea? Something to eat? She asked for a chocolate bar, and they ran off to the local store to buy one. Her lawyer was there and told her to make calls. Yana phoned Alexey, but he wouldn’t pick up. So she texted instead: “I’ve been arrested.” And then a smiley face.

“You’d better ask him to bring you some clothes,” said the lawyer.

This struck Yana.

“You think I will be here a while?”

“Not too long. We’ll sort it out.”

Then the detective came in. His name was Vaselkov, which sounds like the Russian word for “daisy.” He had a face like a bulldog.

“We are charging you with a particularly serious crime,” said Vaselkov.

“Which one?”

“Read this,” he said and handed her a folder of ninety pages or so. “And then sign that you have understood everything.”

Yana looked at Vaselkov. He stared into nowhere like an automaton. She opened the folder. Inside were photocopies of her company’s accounts and transactions. Bills for buying and selling. Page after page of them. Just their accounts and bills. What they did normally every day. She couldn’t understand. What was she being charged with?

“You have been trading in diethyl ether,” said Vaselkov.

Diethyl ether was a chemical cleaning agent. Yakovleva’s company had built its business around it, importing it from France and selling it on.

“Yes.”

“It’s an illegal narcotic substance. You are being charged with the distribution of illegal narcotics.”

Some misunderstanding, thought Yana, just some misunderstanding.

“But we have a license for it,” answered Yana, almost laughing. She was being charged with trading what she traded. Since when was a cleaning agent used in every factory a narcotic substance? It didn’t make any sense. She had been trading in diethyl ether for over a decade. It was like telling a chocolate bar factory that chocolate was illegal. Or a jeans factory that jeans were illegal. She looked at Vaselkov, but he just stared back dumbly.

She continued reading through the charges. The paperwork was just her everyday accounts; that’s what the men in masks must have been taking from the office. In the folder, page after page said the same thing: “bought 150 liters of diethyl ether, sold 100 liters of diethyl ether.” It was what she did every day. What was she being charged with?

“If you have familiarized yourself with the charges, please sign,” said Vaselkov.

She signed, but she didn’t understand. Everything was starting to spin. Her synapses couldn’t make sense of what was going on, a short circuit in logic. Chairs seemed lighter, walls flimsier. The world around us is made up of the association of words to things, and hers was buckling. She kept on trying to square the logic in her head but kept slipping and falling whenever she tried.

She was still spinning as she walked into the corridor. Alexey was there. All she could see were his eyes. They steadied her. She moved toward him to embrace him, but someone pushed her on. “This isn’t some dinner date,” someone said. Alexey handed her a plastic bag with sneakers and jeans in it. Again someone pushed her to move on. She was losing control. She started crying. This time they put her in their own car, a broken-down old Lada.

They drove her to Petrovka 38, Moscow’s main police station. Outside it is a lovely old nineteenth-century palace, with a grand triangular portico like on a Greek temple, standing on the corner of one of the tree-draped boulevards right opposite the Galeria restaurant where gold diggers meet oligarchs and the Bentleys are quadruple-parked onto the pavement.

Yana was pushed inside Petrovka 38 into a hive of cops. She had never seen so many cops in one place, men and women, young and old. But all somehow pasty and semolina-like, as if they were all distantly related or from one village, and all wearing blue uniforms against the seaweed-green walls. They were leading criminals back and forth and into cells. You could tell they were criminals: drunks and youths with smashed-up faces, gypsy girls and junkies. Everywhere the sound of locks turning, keys jangling, doors slamming. Yana kept thinking of the Count of Monte Cristo. She was taken into one room and then another. She felt like she was becoming a parcel, passed from one cop to the next. Turn around! Bend down! Put your hands to your head!

Shoes off—belt off—socks off—panties off.

Body search.

She was crying all the time by now. All the time. Couldn’t they see she wasn’t a criminal? Every cop she looked at, she tried to catch his eye. Couldn’t they see she didn’t belong here among all these criminals? Wasn’t it obvious? Maybe if they could just see she wasn’t meant to be here, it would change something? Everything?

But they just looked at her as if she were a parcel. In the morning she had been a businesswoman driving a Lexus in a frilly white dress. Now she was a parcel.

They put her in a dark cell. There were three bunks. She lay there for a while, stunned. When she turned to the wall, someone called through the door: “Turn around so we can see you.” The next day they would take her to court to decide on bail.

“The court will sort it out,” thought Yana. “The court will sort it out”: she had grown up with that phrase. Courts were places where things were sorted out. She assumed she would get bail. She had no convictions. She had done nothing wrong. Why wouldn’t she get bail?

They drove her to court in the back of a van. She hadn’t slept or eaten. Her hair was a mess.

At court they put her in a cage in the accused stand. The judge looked matronly, with her hair in a bun and glasses. She looked like a sensible person. She would sort it out.

“Well?” said the judge.

“I don’t understand the charges,” Yana began. She tried to sound authoritative, but as she spoke she started to cry again. She didn’t want to, it was just the absurdity of it all. The tears came from the effort to make sense of it. “I’m being charged with trading what I trade. It doesn’t make sense. . . . ” She was sobbing now.

“All right,” said the judge. “Prosecution?”

The prosecutor was another man in a polyester suit.

“Yakovleva is a highly dangerous criminal. She has been hiding from us. We had to hunt her down. She needs to be put under arrest until the trial.”

What had he just said? Hiding? Where? Where had she been hiding? At the gym? At work? What were they talking about? The prosecutor just smiled at her. The judge nodded and repeated what he had said word for word and said no bail was granted. She would await trial in prison. The next hearing would be in two months.

Everything was spinning again. The prosecutor walked up to Yana and whispered, “Bad girl, why did you hide from us?”

Black is white and white is black. There is no reality. Whatever they say is reality. Yana began to scream. The more Yana screamed, the more guilty she looked: she saw herself for a second, a redhead with red eyes screaming in a cage in a courtroom.

They took her back to Petrovka. They took her prints. Her hands were covered with ink. She cried out for some soap. Some soap! They laughed at her. Then someone threw some soap at her: a gnarly corner of industrial soap that was dirtier than her hands. Then they said, “When you’re done with the soap we need it back.”

They put her in another police van and drove toward the prison.

There was a small barred window at the back of the van, and through it Yana could see Moscow. She put her face to the barred window. It was the dead of night, and the streets were empty. She felt like she was being smuggled, not just out of the city but out of reality itself into a nightmare fantasy land. Or was she just leaving the fantasy? We live in a world designed by the political technologists. A fragile reality show set that can seem, if you squint, almost genuine. We move from gym to open plan office to coffee bar to French movie to wine bar to holidays in Turkey, and it could seem better than Paris: better because it’s newer and more precious. And we can read
SNOB
or watch the reality shows on TNT, and it’s a simulacrum of the whole democratic thing. It feels almost real. But at the same time the other, real Russia rumbles on like a distant ringing in the ears. And it can grab us and pull us in at any moment.