Londongrad

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

That night, after Tolya left for New York, I was on the roof of Pravda22, his London club. For each club, he had announced, he would add a 2. The buzz of excitement mixed with the whoosh of girls’ silky skirts in the breeze of an early summer evening, the sounds of voices, the buzz of traffic.

Below were the streets, low houses, deep gardens. People were sitting out on balconies, on the street, spilling onto the sidewalk from pubs and cafes. A kid whizzed by on a skateboard. From nearby, a motorbike roared.

I felt somebody watching, as if from the houses, behind the lights, up in the trees, as if there were people looking at me from all around, the way you might in a forest, the birds, the monkeys staring at you. Or ghosts. Ghosts in the green summer trees. The air was heavy on my skin, humid, and somewhere a streak of thunder rumbled.

Downstairs inside the club I wondered if he was in New York yet. I looked at my phone. Nothing.

It was jammed, the air full of Russian voices. The waiters glided among the tables, with huge buckets of champagne on ice and platters of sushi. I introduced myself to the bartender.

“Yeah, mate, good to meet you,” said the bartender when I introduced myself. “Mr Sverdloff said you’d be in, said to give you whatever, you know?”

Roland was his name, he said, and I remembered Tolya saying I could trust this guy if I needed somebody. Trust him, more or less, Tolya had said.

Roland was his name, he said again, and I nodded, “Yeah, thanks,” I said, and he said, “They call me Rolly. Australian. Read Russian at uni. Everyone calls me Rolly. Anything you need, mate.” He was a skinny guy, striped shirt, long humorous face. Mate. Matey. Like a sailor doing a jig.

At the far end of the bar was a guy in his fifties, long hair, straggly beard, sloping shoulders, paunch, cheap gray shoes. A second-hand book was propped on the bar. Crime and Punishment the guy was reading in Russian.

“Mr Sverdloff’s poet, like his Pindar, mate,” said Rolly. I looked again.

What kind of poet? I wondered did he write odes to Tolya? Was he some kind of praise singer in Tolya’s pay? Before I could get away, he detained me, and started talking at me in Russian, about Russians in London, about the true believers, the communists, the democrats, the nationalists, on and on and on, Putin, the anti-Putinistas, the Kasparovites, who believed Gary Kasparov wasn’t a chess player but a god. Decried money, pissed on capitalism. I tossed some money on the bar. Finally he left.

From behind the bar, Rolly held up a glass to make sure it was clean. He beckoned me back to his end, and said, “Mr Sverdloff tells me to serve him, give him drinks and food, don’t charge him. Says he can be our conscience. I think he’s our pain in the royal, you know?” He put the glass down and reached for a bottle of vodka. “He comes in early, I keep him at the end of the bar so he doesn’t bother the others with his bullshit, but he leaves early, knows a good thing, mate, so he doesn’t make a fuss much,” said Rolly. “He’s been in London a while. Teaches, I think.” He was making a martini while we talked.

“You ever meet Valentina Sverdloff, Sverdloff’s daughter?”

He hesitated.

“What is it?”

“You’re Mr Sverdloff’s friend, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s tough to say exactly.”

“Try.”

“She was a knockout,” he said.

“That’s not what you were thinking.”

“You mean because I’m gay? I can see what a girl looks like can’t