Free Back to Moscow by Guillermo Erades Page B

excitement
– feeling that you belong in Moscow and Moscow is the centre of the world.
    When we were turned away, which was increasingly often, we would hail another car and move to one of the clubs whose prime had passed and which had been forced to adopt a more lenient door
policy.
    Colin said, you find the best dyevs in these clubs, hot enough to make it through a second-rate face control but not as demanding as in trendier places. But some nights, for reasons we never
understood, even these démodé establishments would not let us in, so we would end up in safe old Real McCoy, or Karma Bar, which for years maintained an all-expats-welcome policy and
were always packed with young students.
    These nights didn’t come cheap. I had to buy rounds of drinks for the brothers when it was my turn, but also for pretty dyevs and their entourage of not-so-pretty friends. I also bought
new clothes at the shopping mall in Okhotny Ryad, black shirts and shiny shoes, to fit in among the increasingly exclusive and well-uniformed tusovka.
    I was blowing my stipend money fast, and it was meant to last the entire academic year, so, when Stepanov offered me a part-time job, I accepted it at once.
    ‘It’ll only take you a few hours a week,’ Stepanov said. Then, with a smirk, he added, ‘I’m sure it won’t distract you from your research.’
    That was how I started working for Stepanov.
    My job description: show up at business meetings wearing a suit, mutter a few words in English, hand out business cards with a smile and a strong handshake. Nothing else, really. Director of
Marketing, Insight Investments International, my business card said, good old Latin letters on one side, flashy Cyrillic on the other.
    Other than Stepanov and me, Insight Investments International had two staff members, Pavel and Vova, Stepanov’s schoolmates. I was the third ‘I’ of the firm, the International,
a Western face investors could trust. But Stepanov was always the one to talk the talk.
    I never fully grasped the intricacies of the business but, as far as I gathered from the meetings I was asked to attend, Insight Investments International sold Russian companies, or parts of
them, to foreign investors.
    In business mode, Stepanov would try to hide his boyish face behind three-day stubble and sunglasses. He always wore a dark suit and a black shirt, a popular look among Russian men at the time,
inspired by TV series and movies where the protagonists were always Russian criminals.
    ‘I think the sunglasses might put some investors off,’ I told him once. We had just met a group of French businessmen who wanted to buy a dairy factory and produce brie and camembert
for the Russian market. The conversation had somehow drifted – the French businessmen seemed more interested in nightclubs than in Stepanov’s exposé of Russian cheeses.
    ‘Bullshit,’ Stepanov said. ‘They love the sunglasses. That’s how they know that I’m well connected, that I really understand business in Russia.’
    Every time a deal went through, Stepanov handed me an envelope stuffed with dollars. I was never told how my salary was calculated but, with time, Stepanov’s envelopes got thicker, and I
ended up with plenty of cash to spend.

15
    ‘H ERE ’ S A QUESTION ,’ C OLIN SAYS . ‘If you had to choose only one club to go to
for the rest of your time in Moscow, the one place you’re allowed to visit, which one would you choose?’
    ‘Only one?’ I ask.
    ‘Only one. You could not get into any other club. The only place for you to get drunk and meet dyevs.’
    ‘Propaganda.’
    Colin takes a long sip and finishes his Long Island iced tea. His eyes are shiny, his half-smile wider than usual. ‘Come on, you must be kidding.’
    ‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘You know I like Propaganda.’
    It’s Friday night and the Real McCoy is packed. The air is hot, shirts are sweaty. The windows by the entrance are coated in a layer of condensation. We are on our