paint what I see. Social justice for the common man, that's what I
like." And he proceeded to mumble some hodgepodge of Western art theory
and comfy Russian chauvinism. "Of course, it is the Jews who have
brought Russia to her knees," he whispered, interrupting his work to
light a nearby candle in honor of a dead Romanov.
"And do you have a lady friend?" I asked.
He betrayed his twenty-four years by blushing crimson and throwing his
gaze in the four major directions, finally settling his eyes on the
sketch of two whores, both provincially pretty, yet one unmistakably
older than the other; one, in fact, quite old, a telltale trail of
life's third set of wrinkles forming a Tigris and Euphrates on her
forehead.
"A mother-daughter act," Chartkov explained. "They're from Kursk
Province. A sad story." Sad, but rather typical. I will omit the
particulars, except to add that both mother and daughter were graduates
of some local polytechnic institute. "Very cultured people," Chartkov
said. "Elizaveta Ivanovna plays the accordion and her daughter, Lyudmila
Petrovna, can quote the major philosophers."
His use of their patronymics was strangely touching—I knew immediately
what he wanted to do; after all, it is the only path our young
Raskolnikovs can follow. "I will save them!" he said.
"Presumably it is the daughter you fancy," I said.
"Both are like family to me," said Chartkov. "When you meet them you see
how they cannot live without each other. They are like Naomi and Ruth."
I chose to let this comparison stand. "My dear Chartkov," I said. "I
would certainly like to make their acquaintance. You see, perhaps there
is something I can do to better their position."
Chartkov examined me through his dopey thirty-ruble glasses. "I hope you
do not mean to hire them," he said.
"Good heavens, no," I assured him. And then I proposed we cut short our
session and have dinner with his whorish friends.
On the way to the National Hunt club, Alyosha, my well-greased source at
the Interior Ministry, called to warn me of a deadly Godzilla roll set
to poison me at the Kimono Japanese restaurant on Bolshaya Morskaya. I
changed our dinner plans in favor of the infamous Noble's Nest, by the
Mariinsky Theatre, while helping Chartkov empty a small bottle of cognac
in the back seat of the Mercedes, a car to which he warmed immediately.
"I compare it to the troika of yore," the monarchist said without any
irony, wiping his little mouth with my favorite handkerchief.
The National Hunt was all but empty at this time of day, with only four
drunk officers from the Dutch Consulate passed out at a back table by
the empty roulette table. Despite the lack of an audience, Elizaveta
Ivanovna and her daughter, Lyudmila Petrovna, were up on the makeshift
stage grinding against two poles to the sound of Pearl Jam. They looked
remarkably like the sketches Chartkov had drawn. Immediately, I was
reassured about the whole enterprise, about the innate talent I believed
Chartkov possessed, and about my own hopes for immortality.
Mother and daughter resembled two sisters, one perhaps ten years older
than the other with naked breasts pointing downward, a single crease
separating them from the little tummy below. The mother was imparting to
Lyudmila her theory that the pole was like a wild animal which one had
to grasp with one's thighs lest it escape. The daughter, like all
daughters, was shrugging her off, saying, "Mamochka, I know what I'm
doing. I watch special movies when you're asleep."
"You're a dunderhead," the mother said, thrusting to the sound of the
ravenous American band. "Why did I ever give birth to you?"
"Ladies!" Chartkov cried out to them. "My dear ones! Good evening to
you!"
"Hi, there, little guy," mother and daughter sang in unison.
"Ladies," said Chartkov. "I would like to introduce you to Valentin
Pavlovich. A very good man who only today has given three hundred
dollars to my landlord."
The ladies appraised my expensive shoes and stopped writhing. They
hopped down from their poles and pressed themselves against me. Quickly,
the air was filled with the smell of nail polish and light exertion.
"Good evening," I said, brushing my dark mane, for I tend to get a
little shy around prostitutes.
"Please come home with us!" cried the daughter, massaging the posterior
crease of my pants with a curious finger. "Fifty dollars per hour for
both. You can do what you like, front and back, but, please, no
bruises."
"Better yet, we'll go home with you!" the mother said. "I imagine you
have a beautiful home on the embankment of the River Moika. Or one of
those gorgeous Stalin buildings on Moskovsky Prospekt."
"Valentin Pavlovich runs a bank," Chartkov said, shyly but with a
certain amount of pride. "He has offered to take us to a restaurant
called the Noble's Nest."
"It's in the tea house of the Yusupov mansion," I said, with a pedantic
air, knowing that the mansion where the loony charlatan Rasputin was
poisoned would not make much of an impression on the ladies. Chartkov
managed a slight, historic smile and tried to nuzzle the daughter, who
favored him with a chaste kiss on the forehead.
[pic]
It is no secret that St. Petersburg is a backwater, lost in the shadow
of our craven capital Moscow, which itself is but a Third World
megalopolis teetering on the edge of extinction. And yet the Noble's
Nest is one of the most divine restaurants I have ever seen—dripping
with more gold plating than the dome of St. Isaac's, yes; covered with
floor-to-ceiling paintings of dead nobles, to be sure. And yet, somehow,
against the odds, the place carries off the excesses of the past with
the dignified lustre of the Winter Palace.
I knew that a fellow like Chartkov would rejoice. For people like him,
educated members of a peasant nation catapulted into the most awkward
sort of modernity, this restaurant is one of the two Russias they can
understand—it's either the marble and malachite of the Hermitage or a
crumbling communal flat on the far edge of Kolomna.
Chartkov began weeping as soon as he saw the menu, and the whores
started sniffling, too. They couldn't even name the dishes, such was
their excitement and money lust, and had to refer to them by their
prices—"Let's split the sixteen-dollar appetizer, and then I'll have the
twenty-eight dollars and you can split the thirty-two. Is that all
right, Valentin Pavlovich?"
"For God's sake, have what you wish!" I said. "Four dishes, ten dishes,
what is money when you're among friends?" And to set the mood for the
evening I ordered a bottle of Rothschild for U.S. $1,150.
"So, let's talk some more about your art," I said to Chartkov.
"You see," said Chartkov to his women friends. "We're talking about art
now. Isn't it nice, ladies, to sit in a pretty space and talk like
gentlemen about the greater subjects?" A whole range of emotions, from
an innate distrust of kindness to some latent homosexuality, was playing
itself out on Chartkov's red face. He pressed his palm down on my hand.
"Chartkov is doing those nice paintings for us," the mama said to me,
"and we're going to use them for our Web page. We're going to have a Web
page for our services, don't you know?"
"Oh, look, mama, I believe the two 'sixteen dollars' are here!"
Elizaveta Ivanovna cried, as two appetizers of pelmeni dumplings stuffed
with deer and crab arrived, both dishes covered by immense silver domes.
"We're talking about art like gentlemen," Chartkov said once more,
shaking his head in disbelief.
[pic]
The evening progressed as expected. We drove to my apartment, taking in
the sight of the city on a warm summer night—the sky lit up a false
cerulean blue, the thick walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress bathed in
gold floodlights, the Winter Palace moored on its embankment like a ship
undulating in the twilight, the darkened hulk of St. Isaac's dome
officiating over the proceedings. Here was our Petersburg—a magical set
piece of ruined mansions and lunar roads traversed by Swedish tourists
in low-slung, futuristic buses—and we all had to sigh in appreciation
for what was lost and what remained.
Along the way, we took turns hitting the driver with birch twigs,
ostensibly to improve his circulation, but in reality because it is
impossible to end an evening in Russia without assaulting someone. "Now
I feel as if we're in an old-fashioned hansom cab," said Chartkov, "and
we're hitting the driver for going too slow. Faster, driver! Faster!"
"Please, sir," pleaded my driver, a nice Chechen fellow named Mamudov,
"it is already difficult to drive on these roads, even without being
whipped."
"No one has ever called me 'sir' before." Chartkov spoke in wonderment.
"Opa, you scoundrel!" he screamed, flailing the driver once more.
I got the call from Alyosha, my well-placed source at the Interior
Ministry, and instructed Mamudov to avoid the Troitsky Bridge, where a
prospective assassin awaited my motorcade by the third of the cast-iron
lamps. Why do so many people want to kill me? I'm a good man and, it
should be clear by now, a patriot.
Back home it was the usual seraglio—my Murka in a half-open housecoat
was dancing with herself in front of the wall-length dining-room mirror;
the Canadians had fed crack cocaine to my cook, Evgeniya, and the poor
woman was now running around the house screaming about some dead peasant
Anton, crying black tears over her wasted fifty years. The North
American culprits themselves were sprawled around the parlor listening
to my collection of progressive-house records, recently airlifted out of
Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district.
As soon as they caught sight of the mother and daughter, the two
Canadian boys and the one Canadian girl understood the unique sexual
situation before them. Chartkov began to protest and cry against this
