The night had started normally enough, two teachers on a weekend jaunt to the city, an hour's train ride away. Our plans were mild: we were going to meet up with some other teachers, hang out, go to an English bookstore and a German pool hall, drink a bit, all that lite jazz. But here it was, 2 in the morning, and we were following two Russian girls with a bullwhip through the deserted streets of Moscow.
There were several of us involved in this pursuit: Lindsey, who had come with me from Zelenograd; Rick, Ayden, and Adam, the Moscow teachers; an English journalist, his friend visiting from London; and a young Russian man who knew Rick.
"Why?" I said to Lindsey.
"Who cares?" Lindsey said. "She has a bullwhip!"
Impeccable logic. The area of Moscow we were passing through was swank, and looked old. High walls blocked the apartments from the street, and cobbled alleys ran off at intervals. Across the street, lights glinted on the surface of long lakes flanked by statues.
"Look over there!" I said. "Are those the Patriarch's Ponds?"
Nobody paid any attention.
The girl wasn't even using her bullwhip. It lay coiled harmlessly over her arm. Neither she nor her friend appeared to be prostitutes, or dominatrixes, or anything kinky whatsoever; they were simply two Russian girls, in jeans and parkas, that we had happened to meet in a park. At 2 AM, toting a whip. Could happen to anyone. It was the same park where Rick and Ayden had been jumped the previous weekend, their loud, drunken English having inspired some nationalistic Russians to beat them up. Lindsey had been there too. Carried away by the whole thing, she had offered to fistfight one of the toughs' girlfriends. But the girl replied disdainfully that Russian women don't brawl, so she and Lindsey sat side by side on a park bench until their respective menfolk finished, whereupon they dragged them off in opposite directions to lick their wounds.
Why had Rick led us back to the park? His motives were inscrutable, but I half suspected that he was looking for more trouble, perhaps hoping that the nationalists would have knives next time, the better to leave him with another interesting scar, like the one he had slipped out and gotten a few weeks ago, the big spiral that he had paid some back-alley tattooist to carve into his side. Well, there were cheaper ways…
The girls were just walking in the park, minding their own business (whatever the hell that was) when we met them. They refused to flog Rick, despite his coaxing, but offered to lead us – somewhere? Perhaps a club? There was a rapid-fire exchange in Russian, and then we all rushed off through the night. I walked with Lindsey, Adam, and the Englishmen, who were equally bemused. But you know, these things happen in Moscow. So we relaxed and rode the weird.
After a few wrong turns, we went down another dark, cobbled alleyway and cast up in front of a set of steps leading down into a stone basement. This, I gathered, was the club. Our new friends said something to the bouncers, who let the demand "Passports, passports!" die on their lips, and we went down into a brick-lined corridor that wound away under the street. Lindsey and I joined the queue for the toilets while the boys slid off around the corner. The girls with the bullwhip sat down on the stairs and looked around.
The toilet line was long, and packed into a tight side corridor, but everyone seemed to be taking it in stride. They grinned and made easy conversation and stood aside so that other people could squeeze past to get out, unusual behavior for your average Muscovite. A man with a guitar took it out and began to play.
"Guantanamera, Guantanameeeeeraaaa…"
"Oh my God," Lindsey said. "He's playing Joan Baez!"
And indeed he was, slightly off-key, with a heavy accent, but charmingly. He never used the john, he just stood in the corridor playing. By the time it was my turn he was onto the Beatles, and then 'Kumbaya.'
Finished, we set out to explore further. Adam and Ayden we found in what turned out to be a tiny bookstop, set off the main hall. Ayden in particular was enchanted by the bookshop.
"If there were any hipsters in Russia, this is where they would hang out," he said. "But it's awesome!"
Wandering on, we came to the main room, where there was a bar, some tables crowded together, and a dance floor. And this became our home. The guys had already settled in and bought drinks, so we joined them. The crowd was young, mostly Russian with a few expats thrown in, and casually dressed. The music was excellent, mostly old rock songs in several languages. It was the kind of chill dive that I had dreamed about, and consistently failed to find, back in Chicago.
After sitting awhile, I moved out onto the floor, and within five minutes, I had myself a partner, a serious-faced young Russian named Sasha. We linked hands very naturally and started tangoing to the Zombies. He was an excellent, intelligent dancer, with some witty moves. But we were such good partners that after a while it seemed natural to talk a little, and here we ran into trouble, because my Russian is not stellar at the best of times, never mind when I'm slightly tipsy and standing under a subwoofer. And he spoke no English at all, so basically, it was a conversational dead-end. I apologized.
"I don't understand, I can only dance,' I said.
In response, Sasha shook his head and held me tighter.
"You are very very beautiful," he said into my ear, slowly. "I'm sorry I don't speak English."
So I laid my head on his cardiganed shoulder, and we danced some more.
After a while I broke it off to catch up with my friends at our table. The dynamics had altered slightly: the second Englishman, a wide-eyed, redheaded boy, was talking enthusiastically to an unknown Russian girl who had joined us somewhere, a few friends of Rick's had shown up, for lack of chairs Lindsey was sitting in Ayden's lap, and Adam was in the corner, still looking bemused under his flop of blond hair. It was 4 or 5 in the morning and the party was still going strong.
Back on the floor I ran into Sasha again, and we picked up where we had left off, or perhaps a little further. The lack of conversation was more and more frustrating. Finally he took my hand and led me off the dance floor, towards the corridor, where it was quieter, gesticulating, trying to explain things all the while. Then he found the coat-track and put on his coat, gesturing that I should do the same.
"One minute, one minute," I said in my flawed Russian. "I can't leave. My things, my friends…"
He made an impatient gesture. Just then I spotted Rick coming down the corridor, looking not much the worse for wear.
"Rick!" I said. "Come translate for me!"
As Sasha spoke rapidly to Rick, they took each other in, the American in a white t-shirt with the stripes and star of the Israeli flag tattooed all the way around his forearm, the Russian dark-haired and drawn-faced, buttoned into a black coat.
I looked back and forth, feeling ridiculous.
Rick said something decisive. Without answering, Sasha pulled his coat tighter and left the club.
Rick and I went back to our table.
"What did he want?" I demanded. "What did you say?"
'He wanted to go back to his apartment for some food, some breakfast," Rick said. 'I told him, basically there are eight of us here, we're together, nobody's leaving without anybody else, the end. If you want to leave next time, just leave, but otherwise don't… Just sit down! Sit!"
I sat.
At 6, half the party suddenly packed up and disappeared, leaving me, Lindsey, Ayden, and one of the Russian girls, the one who had become more and more involved with the redheaded Englishman, until they were at the table entwined in each other's arms, sucking face, to the disgust and astonishment of the rest of us. Alone again now, she sat at the table dragging on a cigarette, looking a bit lost.
But Ayden, Lindsay, and I were going back to crash at the flat Ayden shared with Rick, so we left her there and went off to catch the Metro.
Yes, you haven't been drunk till you've been drunk at 6:30 AM on the Metro. Here were respectable people, freshly scrubbed, off to work or church or whatnot, and here were people in their party clothes, still lost in last night. We weren't the only ones.
Leaving the Metro, we bought cheese pastries and walked back to the flat, where I crashed in Rick's mercifully Rick-less bed. There followed a long lazy Sunday, the kind of Sunday I always seem to have after wild evenings, with meandering conversations conducted in the kitchen over tea and pelmeni.
Late in the day, Lindsey and I took the bus back to Z.
"For our next trip, let's find a boxcar and camp in it," Lindsey said. "You know, with a bottle of vodka and a trashcan fire..."
And then she fell asleep. I leaned against the bus window and looked at the setting sun turning the birch forests to gold. There were lessons to plan, the week's campaign to organize, but for the moment I was happy just to sit back and think. Yes, it had been an excellent weekend.
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