Russian Roulette

ТВЕРСКАЯ – TVERSKAYA

I went back to Kazansky Station.

In a way, it was a mad decision. The police knew I was in Moscow and they would certainly be watching all the major stations – just as they had in Rosna and Kirsk. But I wasn’t leaving. The truth was that in the whole of Russia, I had nowhere to go and no one to look after me. I couldn’t go back to Estrov, obviously, and although I remembered my mother once telling me that she had relations in a city called Kazan, I had no idea where it was or how to get there.

No, it was much better to stay in Moscow, but first of all I would need to change my appearance. That was easy enough. I stripped off my Pioneer uniform and dumped it in a bin. Then I got my hair cut short. Although the bulk of my money had gone, I had managed to find eighteen kopecks scattered through my pockets and I used nine of them at a barber’s shop, a dank little place in a backstreet with old hair strewn over the floor. As I stepped out again, feeling the unfamiliar cool of the breeze on my head and the back of my neck, a police car rushed past – but I wasn’t worried. Even today, I am aware of how little you need to change to lose yourself in a city. A haircut, different clothes, perhaps a pair of sunglasses… it is enough.

I still had enough kopecks for the return journey and as I sat once again in the Metro, I tried to work out some sort of plan. The most immediate problem was accommodation. Where would I sleep when night came? If I stayed out on the street, I would be at my most vulnerable. And then there was the question of food. Without money, I couldn’t eat. Of course, I could steal but the one thing I most dreaded was falling back into the hands of the police. If they recognized me, I was finished. And even if they didn’t, I had heard enough stories about the prison camps all over Russia, built specially for children. Did I want to end up with the rest of my hair shaved off, stuck behind barbed wire in the middle of nowhere? There were thousands of Russian boys whose lives were exactly that.

This time I barely even noticed the stations, no matter how superbly they were decorated. I was utterly miserable. My parents had believed in Misha Dementyev and they had sent me to him, even though it had cost them their lives. But the moment I had walked into his office, he had thought only of saving his own skin. It seemed to me that there was nobody in the world I could trust. Even Dima, the boy I had met when I got off the train, had only been interested in robbing me.

But perhaps Dima was the answer.

The more I thought about it, the more I decided he might not be all bad. Certainly, when we had met, he had been pleasant enough, smiling and friendly, even if he was simply setting me up for his friends. But maybe I was partly to blame for what had happened, coming off the train and flashing my money around all the different stalls. Dima was living on the street. He had to survive. I’d made myself an obvious target and he’d done what he had to.

At the same time, I remembered what he’d said to me. It’s good to have a friend. We all need friends. Could it be possible that he actually meant it? He was, after all, only a few years older than me and we were both in the same situation. Part of me knew that I was fooling myself. Dima was probably miles away by now, laughing at me for being such a fool. But at the end of the day, he was the only person in the city I actually knew. If I could find him again, perhaps I could persuade him to help me.

And there was something else. I still had my mother’s jewels.

Half an hour later, I climbed up to street level and found myself back where I had begun. The women were still there at their food stalls but they almost seemed to be taunting me. Before, they had been welcoming. Now, all their pies and ice creams were beyond my reach. I found a bench and sat down, watching the crowds around me. Stations are strange places. When you pass through them, travelling somewhere, you barely notice them. They simply help you on your way. But stand outside with nowhere to go and they make you feel worthless. You should not be here, they shout at you. If you are not a passenger, you do not belong here.

To start with, I did nothing at all. I just sat there, staring at the traffic, letting people stream past me on all sides. The children I had seen were still dotted around and I wondered what they would do with themselves when night fell. That could only be a few hours away. The light was barely changing, the sun trapped behind unbroken cloud, but there were already commuters arriving at the station, on their way home. There was no sign of Dima. In the end, I went over to a couple of boys, the ten-year-olds that I had seen before.

“Excuse me,” I said.

Two pairs of very sly and malevolent eyes turned on me. One of the children had snot running out of his nose. Both of them looked worn out, unhealthy.

“I’m looking for someone I was talking to earlier,” I went on. “He was wearing a black leather jacket. His name is Dima.”

The boys glanced at each other. “You got any money?” one of them asked.

“No.”

“Then get lost!” Those weren’t his actual words. This little boy, whose voice hadn’t even broken, used the filthiest language I’d ever heard. I saw that he had terrible teeth with gaps where half of them had fallen out. His friend hissed at me like an animal and at that moment the two of them weren’t children at all. They were like horrible old men, not even human. I was glad to leave them on their own.

I tried to ask some of the other street kids the same question but as I approached them, they moved away. It was as if they all knew that I was from out of town, that I wasn’t one of them, and for that reason they would have nothing to do with me. And now the light really was beginning to disappear. I was starting to feel the threat of nightfall and knew that I couldn’t stay here for much longer. I would have to find a doorway – or perhaps I could sleep in one of the subways beneath the streets. I had four kopecks left in my pocket. Barely enough for a cup of hot tea.

And then, quite unexpectedly, I saw him. Dima – with his oversized leather jacket and his half-handsome, half-ugly face – had turned the corner, smoking a cigarette, flicking away the match. There was another boy with him and I recognized him too. He had been one of the two who had robbed me. Dima said something and they laughed. It looked as if they were heading for the Metro, presumably on their way home.

I didn’t hesitate. It was now or never. I crossed the concourse in front of the station and stood in their path.

Dima saw me first and stopped with the cigarette halfway to his lips. I had taken him by surprise and he thought I was going to make trouble. I could see it at once. He was tense, wary. But I was completely relaxed. I’d already worked it out. He’d tricked me. He’d robbed me. But I had to treat him as my friend.

“Hi, Dima.” I greeted him as if the three of us had arranged to meet here for coffee.

He smiled a little but he was still suspicious. And there was something else. I wasn’t quite sure what it was but he was looking at me almost as if he had expected me to come back, as if there was something he knew that I didn’t. “Soldier!” he exclaimed. “How are you doing? What happened to your hair?”

“I got it cut.”

“Did you meet your friend?”

“No. He wasn’t there. It seems he’s left Moscow.”

“That’s too bad.”

I nodded. “In fact, I’ve got a real problem. He was going to put me up but now I don’t have anywhere to go.”

I was hoping he might offer to help. That was the idea, anyway. Why not? He was seventy rubles richer than me. Thanks to him, I had nothing. He could at least have offered me a bed for the night. But he didn’t speak and I realized I was wasting my time. He was street-hardened, the sort of person who would have never helped anyone in his life. His friend muttered something and pushed past me, disappearing into the Metro, but I stood my ground. “Can you help me?” I said. “I just need somewhere to stay for a few nights.” And then – my last chance. “I can pay you.”

“You’ve got money?” That surprised him. He thought he’d taken it all already.

“Not any more,” I said. I shrugged as if to let him know that it didn’t matter, that I’d already forgotten about it. “But I’ve got this.” I went on. I took out the black velvet bag that my mother had given me and that I’d used to trick Dementyev. I opened it and poured the contents – the necklace, the ring and the earrings – into my hand. “There must be a pawnshop somewhere. I’ll sell them and then I can pay you for a room.”

Dima examined the jewellery, the brightly coloured stones in their silver and gold settings, and I could already see the light stirring in his eyes as he made the calculations. How much were they worth and how was he going to separate them from me? He dropped his cigarette and reached out, picking up one of the earrings. He let it hang from his finger and thumb. “This won’t get you much,” he said. “It’s cheap.”

Right then, I thought of my mother and I could feel the anger rising in my blood. I wanted to punch him but still I forced myself to stay calm. “I was told they were valuable,” I said. “That’s gold. And those stones are emeralds. Take me to a pawnshop and we can find out.”

“I don’t know…” He was pretending otherwise but he knew that the jewels were worth more than the money he had already stolen. “Give me the stuff and I’ll take it to a pawnbroker for you. But I don’t think you’ll get more than five rubles.”

He’d get fifty. I’d get five… if I was lucky. I could see how his mind worked. I held out my hand and, reluctantly, he gave me the earring back. “I can find a pawnbroker on my own,” I said.

“There’s no need to be like that, soldier! I’m only trying to help.” He gave me a crooked smile, made all the more crooked by his broken nose. “Listen, I’ve got a room and you’re welcome to stay with me. You know… we’re all friends, here in Moscow, right? But you’ll have to pay rent.”

“How much rent?”

“Two rubles a week.”

I pretended to consider. “I’ll have to see it first.”

“Whatever you say. We can go there now if you like.”

“Sure. Why not?”

He took me back down into the Metro. He even paid my fare again. I knew I was taking a risk. He could lead me to some faraway corner of the city, take me into an alleyway, put a knife into me and steal the jewels. But I had a feeling that wasn’t the way he worked. Dima was a hustler, a thief – but at the end of the day, he just didn’t have the look of someone who was ready to kill. He would get the jewellery in the end anyway. I would pay it to him as rent or he would steal it from me while I slept. My plan was simply to make myself useful to him, to become part of his gang. If I could do this quickly enough, he might let me stay with him, even when I had nothing more to give. That was my hope.

He took me to a place just off Tverskaya Street, one of the main thoroughfares in Moscow, which leads all the way down to the Kremlin and Red Square. Today, there is a hotel on that same corner – the nine-storey Marriott Grand, where American tourists stay in total luxury. But when I came there, following Dima and still wondering if I wasn’t making another bad mistake, it was very different. Moscow has changed so much, so quickly. It was another world back then.

Dima lived in what had once been a block of flats but which had long been abandoned and left to rot. All the colour had faded from the brickwork, which was damp and mouldy, and covered with graffiti – not artwork but political slogans, swear words, and the names of city football teams. The windows were so dirty that they looked more like rusting metal than glass. The building rose up twelve floors, three more than the hotel that would one day replace it, and whole thing seemed to be sagging in on itself, hardly bothering to stay upright. It was surrounded by other blocks that were similar… they looked like old men standing out in the cold, having a last cigarette together before they died. The streets here were very narrow; more like alleyways, twisting together in the darkness, covered with rubbish and mud. The block of flats had shops on the ground floor – an empty grocery store, a chemist and a massage parlour – but the further up you went, the more desolate it became. It had no lifts, of course. Just a concrete staircase that had been used as a toilet so many times that it stank. By the time you got to the top, there was no electricity, no proper heating. The only water came dribbling, cold, out of the taps.

We climbed up together. I noticed that Dima was wheezing when we got to the top and I wondered if he was ill – although it could just have been all those cigarettes. On the way, we passed a couple of people, a man and a woman, lying on top of each other, unconscious. I couldn’t even be sure they were actually alive. Dima just stepped over them and I did the same, wondering what I was getting myself into. My village had been a place of poverty and hardship but it was somehow more shocking here, in the middle of a city.

Dima’s room was on the eighth floor. Since there was no lighting, he had taken out a torch and used it to find the way. We went down a corridor that was missing its carpet with gaping holes showing the pipework and wiring. There were doors on either side, most of them locked, one or two reinforced with metal plating. Somewhere, I could hear a baby crying. A man shouted out a swear word. Another laughed. The sounds that echoed around me only added to the nightmare, the sense that I was being sucked into a dark and alien world.

“This is me,” Dima said.

We’d come to a door marked with a number 83. Somebody had added DIMA’S PLACE in bright red letters but the paint hadn’t been allowed to dry and it had trickled down like blood. Perhaps the effect was deliberate. There was a hole where the lock should have been but Dima used a padlock and a chain to keep the place secure. At the moment, it was hanging open. His friends had arrived ahead of us.

“Welcome home!” he said to me. “This is my place. Come in and meet my mates…”

He pushed the door open. We went in.

The flat was tiny. Most of it was in a single room, which he shared with the two boys who had robbed me. On the floor were three mattresses and some filthy pillows on a carpet which was mouldy and colourless. The place was lit by candles and my first thought was that if one of them toppled over in the night, we would all burn to death. A single table and four chairs stood on one side. Otherwise there was no furniture of any description. A few bits of the kitchen were still in place but I could tell at a glance that the sink hadn’t been used for years and without electricity the fridge was no more than an oversized cupboard. The smell in the room was unpleasant; a mixture of human sweat, unwashed clothes, dirt and decay.

Dima waved me over to the table. “This is Yasha,” he announced. “He’s going to be staying with us for a while.” His two friends were already sitting there playing Snap with a deck that was so worn that the cards hung limp in their hands. They didn’t look pleased as I joined them. “He’s going to pay,” Dima added. “Two rubles a week.”

Dima opened the fridge and took out a bottle of vodka and some black bread. He found some dirty glasses in the sink and poured drinks for us all. He lit a cigarette for himself, then offered me one, which I accepted gratefully. It wasn’t just that I wanted to smoke. It was a gesture of friendship and that was what I most needed.

Dima introduced the two boys. “This is Roman. That’s Grigory.” Roman was tall and thin. He looked as if he had been deliberately stretched. Grigory was round-faced, pock-marked with oily, black hair. All three of them looked not just adult but old, as if they had forgotten their true age… which was about seventeen. Roman collected the cards and put them away. It was obvious who was the leader here. So long as Dima said I could stay, they weren’t going to argue.

“Tell us about yourself, soldier,” Dima said. “I’d like to know what brought you to Moscow.” He winked at me. “And I’d particularly like to know why the police are so interested in you.”

“What?”

So I’d been right. When I’d got back to the station I’d thought the children had been behaving strangely and now I knew why. The police had been there, looking for me.

“That’s right. Tell him, Grig.” Grigory said nothing so Dima went on. “They’re looking for someone new to town. Someone who might have come into Kazansky Station, dressed up like a Young Pioneer. They’ve been asking everyone.” He tapped ash. “They’re offering a reward for information.”

My heart sank. I wondered if I had walked into another trap. Had Dima invited me here to have me arrested? But there was no sound coming from outside; no footsteps in the corridor, no sirens in the street.

“Don’t worry, soldier! No one’s going to turn you in. Not even for the money. They never pay up anyway.

“I hate the p-p-p-police.” Roman had a stutter. I watched his face contort as he tried to spit out the last word.

“What do they want with you?” Grigory asked. He sounded hostile. Maybe he was afraid that I was bringing more trouble into his life. He probably had enough already.

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I didn’t want to lie but I was afraid of telling the truth. In the end, I kept it as short as I could. “They killed my parents,” I said. “My dad knew something he wasn’t meant to know. They wanted to kill me too. I escaped.”

“What about your friend at the university?” Dima asked.

“He wasn’t my friend.” I was on safer ground here. I told them everything that had happened in Misha Dementyev’s office. When I described how I had beaten Dementyev off using the arm of the skeleton, Dima laughed out loud. “I wish I’d seen that,” he said. “You certainly gave him the elbow!”

It was a weak joke but we all laughed. Dima refilled our glasses and once again we drank the Russian way, throwing the liquid back in a single gulp. It didn’t take us long to finish the bottle and about an hour later we all went to bed… if you can call bed a square of carpet with a pile of old clothes as a pillow. I was just glad to have a roof over my head and, helped by the vodka, I was asleep almost at once.

The next morning, Dima took me to the pawnbroker he had mentioned. It was a tiny shop with a cracked front window and an old, half-shaven man sitting behind a counter that was stacked with watches and jewellery. I handed across my mother’s earrings and stood there, watching him examine them briefly through an eyeglass which he screwed into his face as if it was part of him. Right then, a little part of me died. It had been a pawnbroker that the hero had murdered in Crime and Punishment, the book I had been forced to read at school. I could almost have done the same.

He wanted to give me eight rubles for the earrings but Dima talked him up to twelve. The two of them knew each other well.

“You’re a crook, Reznik,” Dima scowled.

“And you’re a thief, Dima,” Reznik replied.

“One day someone will stick a knife in you.”

“I don’t mind. So long as they buy it from me first.”

Dima took the money and we went back out into the sunlight. He gave me three rubles, keeping nine for himself, and when I looked down reproachfully at the crumpled notes he clapped me on the back. “That’s three weeks’ rent, soldier,” he said.

“What about the other three rubles?”

“That’s my commission. If you hadn’t had me with you, that old crook would have ripped you off.”

I’d been ripped off anyway but I didn’t complain. Dima had said I could stay with him for three weeks. It was exactly what I wanted to hear.

“Let’s get some breakfast!” he said.

We ate breakfast in the smallest, grimiest restaurant it would be possible to imagine. Somehow, I ended up paying for that too.

So began my stay in Moscow. I adapted very quickly to the way of life. The truth is that nobody did anything very much. They stole, they ate, they survived. I spent long hours outside the station with Dima, Roman and Grigory. The two boys didn’t warm to me but gradually they began to accept that I was there. At the same time, Dima had made me his special project. I wondered if he might have had a younger brother at some time. He never spoke about his past life but that was how he treated me. When I write about him now, I still see him with the sleeves of his precious leather jacket falling over his hands, his smile, the way he swaggered along the street, and I wonder if he is alive or dead. Dead most probably. Homeless kids in Moscow never survived long.

Dima taught me how to beg. You had to be careful because if the police saw you they would pick you up and throw you into jail. But my fair hair, and the fact that I looked so young, helped. If I stood outside the Bolshoi Theatre at night, I could earn as much as five rubles from the rich people coming out. There were tourists in Red Square and I would position myself outside St Basil’s Cathedral with its towers and twisting, multicoloured domes. I didn’t even have to speak. Once, an American gave me five dollars, which I passed on to Dima. He gave me fifty kopecks back but that was his own special exchange rate. I knew it was worth a lot more.

I got used to the city. Streets that had seemed huge and threatening became familiar. I could find my way around on the Metro. I visited Lenin, lying dead in his tomb, although Dima told me that most of the body was made of wax. I also saw the grave of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. Not that he meant anything to me now. I went to the big shops – GUM department store and Yeliseev’s Food Hall and stared at all the amazing food I would never be able to afford. Just once, I visited a bathhouse near the Bolshoi and enjoyed the total luxury of sitting in the steam, breathing in the scent of eucalyptus leaves and feeling warm and clean.

And I stole.

We needed to buy food, cigarettes and – most importantly – vodka. It sometimes seemed that it was impossible to live in Tverskaya without alcohol and every night there were terrible arguments when somebody’s bottle was finished. We would hear the screams and the knife fights, and the next day there would often be fresh blood on the stairs. Those who couldn’t afford vodka got high on shoe polish. I’m not lying. They would spread it on bread and place it on a hot pipe, then breathe in the fumes.

No matter how much time I spent begging, we never had enough money and I wasn’t surprised to find myself back at Reznik’s, the pawnshop. With Dima’s help, I got fifteen rubles for my mother’s necklace; more than the earrings but less than I’d hoped. I was determined not to part with her ring. It was the only memory of her that I had left.

And so, inevitably, I turned to crime. One of Dima’s favourite tricks was to hang around outside an expensive shop, watching as the customers came out with their groceries. He would wait while they loaded up their car, then either Roman or Grigory would distract them while he snatched as much as he could out of the boot and then ran for it. I watched the operation a couple of times before Dima let me play the part of the decoy. Because I was so much younger than the other two boys, people were more sympathetic – and less suspicious. I would go up to them and pretend to be lost while Dima sneaked up to the back of their car.

The first three times, it worked perfectly and we found ourselves eating all sorts of things that we’d never tasted before. Roman and Grigory were getting used to me now. We’d begun playing cards together – a game that every Russian knows, called Durak or Fool. They’d even found a mattress for me. It wasn’t a lot softer than the floor and it was infested with insects, but I still appreciated the gesture.

The fourth time, however, was almost a disaster. And it changed everything.

It was the usual set-up. We were outside a shop in a quiet street. It was an area we hadn’t been to before. Our target was a chauffeur, obviously working for some big businessman who could afford to entertain. His car was a Daimler and there was enough food in the back to keep us going for a month. As usual, I went up to the man and, looking as innocent as possible, tried to engage him in conversation.

“Can you help me? I’m looking for Pushkin Square…”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dima scurry up the pavement and disappear behind the raised door of the boot.

The chauffeur glared at me. “Get lost!”

“I am lost! I need to get to Pushkin Square…”

All I had to do was keep up the conversation for about thirty seconds. By the end of that time, Dima would have gone and two or three bags would have gone with him. But suddenly I heard him cry out and I saw, with complete horror, that a policeman had appeared out of nowhere. To this day I don’t know where he had come from because we always checked the immediate area first, but I can only assume that he’d been expecting us, that the police must have decided to crack down on this sort of street theft and that he had been lying in wait all along. He was a huge man with the neck and the shoulders of a professional weightlifter. Dima was squirming in his jacket but he was like a fish caught in a net.

I saw the chauffeur making a grab for me but I ducked under his arms and ran round the back of the car. There was nothing I could do for Dima. The only sensible thing was to run away and leave him and just be thankful I’d had a lucky escape. But I couldn’t do it. Despite everything, I was grateful to him. I had been with him for six weeks now and he had protected me. I couldn’t have survived without him. I owed him something.

I threw myself at the policeman, who reacted in astonishment. I was honestly less than half his size and I barely even knocked him off balance. He didn’t let go of Dima… if anything he tightened his grip, bellowing at the chauffeur to come and join in. Dima lashed out with a fist but the policeman didn’t feel it. With his spare hand, he grabbed hold of my shirt so that we were both held captive and, seeing us unarmed and helpless, the chauffeur lumbered forward to help.

We would certainly have been taken prisoner and that would have been the end of my Moscow adventure. Indeed, if I were recognized, it might be the end of my life. But as I struggled, I saw that one of the shopping bags had fallen over, spilling out its contents. There was a plastic bag of red powder on the top. I snatched it up, split it open and hurled it into the policeman’s face, all in a single movement.

It was chilli powder. The policeman was instantly blinded and howled in pain, both hands rushing to cover his eyes. Dima was forgotten. In fact everything was forgotten. The policeman’s head was covered in red powder. He was spinning round on his feet. I grabbed Dima and the two of us began to run. At the same moment, a police car appeared at the far end of the street, speeding towards us, its lights blazing. We ran across the pavement and down a narrow alleyway between two shops. It was a cul-de-sac, blocked at the far end by a wall. We didn’t let it stop us, not for a second. We simply sprinted up the brickwork and over the top, crashing down onto an assortment of dustbins and cardboard boxes on the other side. Dima rolled over then got back on his feet. We could hear the siren behind us and knew that the police were only seconds away. We kept running – down another alleyway and across a main road with six lanes of traffic and cars, trucks, motorbikes and buses bearing down on us from every direction. It’s a miracle we weren’t killed. As it was, one car swerved out of our way and there was a screech and a crumpling of metal as a second car crashed into it. We didn’t slow down. We didn’t look back. We must have run half a mile across Moscow, ducking into side roads, chasing behind buildings, doing everything we could to keep out of sight. Eventually we came to a Metro entrance and darted into it, disappearing underground. There was a train waiting at the platform. We didn’t care where it was going. We dived in and sank, exhausted, into two seats.

Neither of us spoke again until we got back to our own station and climbed back up to our familiar streets. We didn’t go to the flat straight away. Dima took me to a coffee house and we bought a couple of glasses of kvass, a sweet, watery drink made from bread.

We sat next to the window. We were both still out of breath. I could hear Dima’s lungs rattling. Climbing the stairs was enough exercise for him and he had just run a marathon.

“Thank you, soldier,” he said eventually.

“We were unlucky,” I said.

“I was lucky you were there. You could have just left me.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I hate this stupid city,” Dima said. “I never wanted to come here.”

“Why did you?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, then pointed to his broken nose. “My dad did this to me when I was six years old. He threw me out when I was seven. I ended up in an orphanage in Yaroslav and that was a horrible place… horrible. You don’t want to know.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “They used to tie the kids down to the beds, the troublemakers. They left them there until they were covered in their own dirt. And the noise! The screaming, the crying… It never stopped. I think half of them were mad.”

“Were you adopted?” I asked.

“Nobody wanted me. Not the way I looked. I ran away. Got out of Yaroslav and ended up on a train to Moscow… just like you.”

He fell silent.

“There’s something I want you to know,” he said. “That first day we met, at Kazansky Station.” He took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled blue smoke. “We took your money. It was Roman, Grig and me. We set you up.”

“I know,” I said.

He looked at me. “I thought you must have. But now I’m admitting it… OK?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I went on. “I’d have done the same.”

“I don’t think so, soldier. You’re not the same as us.”

“I like being with you,” I said. “But there’s something I want to ask.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you mind not calling me ‘soldier’?”

He nodded. “Whatever you say, Yasha.”

He patted me on the shoulder. We finished our drinks, stood up and went home. And it seemed to me that I’d actually done what I’d set out to do. The two of us were friends.