Free Hotel Moscow by Talia Carner

soft, dry cheek against her own, Svetlana sang Natasha’s favorite German lullaby.
    Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht,
    Mit Röslein bedacht,
    Mit Näglein besteckt,
    Schlupf unter die Deck.
    The song over, Svetlana said to the sleeping girl. “I’m going to the bathroom. Be right back.”
    She locked her door behind her and knocked on Lyalya’s mother’s door. A few minutes later, she yelped in pain as her neighbor-doctor reset her jaw. “It’s not broken. You’re lucky,” the woman said, and placed an ice cube inside Svetlana’s mouth. “Salt rinse will help, too.”
    Back in her room, Svetlana locked her door for the night, turned off the lights, and crawled under the covers. The old man who lived with his wife and her sister in the room to Svetlana’s left prepared for bed with his triple ritual of a cough, a fart, and the trumpet-like blowing of his nose. She stared at the old-fashioned ceiling, four meters high. Shadows from the single tall, arched window cast odd shapes across it. Blue light from a passing car stuttered on the broken moldings on the opposite wall, momentarily projecting illumination on the sleeping Natasha.
    Her tongue massaging the inside of her jaw, Svetlana placed her arms under her head and listened to the music produced by the violinist on her other side. Soon, neighbors’ angry shouts would cut it short, but this music was the one bit of noise Svetlana never minded. She sighed and closed her eyes, allowing her body to sink into the softness of the featherbed, her only luxurious possession, her wedding gift from her mother. How differenther life would have been had she, after graduation fourteen years ago, been allowed to become a translator. But because she had been gang raped, the tribunal of the Communist school judged her to be of loose morals, and she was disqualified from working for the foreign ministry. Instead, she was sent to the factory to be reeducated in proletariat values. It had been only last year, when the cooperative was privatized, that her education finally gave her an advantage. But language school had never taught her the secrets of commerce—and certainly not of capitalism.
    Perhaps some sewing machines could be repaired and more fabric bought. Whatever she could learn this week from Dr. Rozanova, and especially from the Americans, might give Natasha a brighter future. Surely there must be better dreams for a young Russian than becoming a call girl like Lyalya.
     

Chapter Nine
    D R. ROZANOVA HADN’T been to Hotel Moscow since back in the 1970s when she had come to speak at a Young Socialist Women’s conference. She had been delighted that morning at the airport when Amanda invited her to visit at the hotel, but timed herself to arrive after dinner in order not to seem greedy for an expensive hotel meal. It was now nine o’clock, and she felt her way up the stairs of Hotel Moscow and banged on the glass door.
    A guard unlocked it. “Your internal passport,” he said gruffly. His colleague stood a few feet away, staring at a wall with vacant eyes.
    Whatever changes the country trudged through, rudeness was the one thing Olga could count on as a constant. “Soviet days are over; I don’t need to identify myself to get into a hotel lobby.” She shifted her weight. At the end of the long day, her legs ached. “I’m here to see the Americans.”
    “ Nichevo. Whatever.” The guard didn’t move.
    He expected a bribe, she knew. Like all employed Russians, guards kept their low-paying jobs for the off-the-books perks. “This is thievery of the first degree,” Olga said, her tone belligerent. When he didn’t respond, she unclasped the safety pin that attached her wallet to the lining of her purse. “No apple is free of worms,” she mumbled. Cringing, she peeled off some rubles.
    “Dollars,” he demanded.
    “How will I get dollars?” Her suit jacket felt too tight, even though she had bought it only twenty months earlier in celebration of the fall of the