by Dave Barry
Then he walked away, leaving me grinding my beans.
That’s the way Ridley thinks.
(And for the record, he’s a tea drinker.)
But getting back to the diary:
Sergei drives us from the airport to downtown Moscow. If he’s secretly eavesdropping, he hears Ridley and me noting that Moscow is a large city. I’m guessing the Russians already know this.
It’s also a very clean city—we see no litter anywhere—and it’s more attractive than I expected. I had this Cold War movie image of endless massive gray Soviet buildings with gray, sour-faced people trudging past them while being pelted with sleet. But the architecture is varied and sometimes colorful, the day is sunny and warm and the people look like people in any European city. Today they look festive, as Moscow is celebrating City Day, which commemorates the founding of the city 867 years ago. Streets are closed, and happy crowds are milling around, buying food from sidewalk vendors and listening to musicians.
We check into our hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, which is very nice. (Thanks, American taxpayers!) As I unpack my suitcase I watch a Russian TV channel showing Russians doing stand-up comedy. The good news is, apparently Russians enjoy comedy. The bad news is, I can’t tell what they think is funny. Some of the jokes involve English punch lines, but they make no sense to me. For example, one comic, after a long buildup in Russian, ends the joke by saying, in English: “Please watch my coat.” This gets a BIG laugh. I’m trying to figure out what joke that sentence could possibly be the punch line for. Maybe it has a different connotation for Russians. (“Watch my coat. Please.”)
I’m worried.
A bit later, Ridley and I meet in the lobby with Irina Chernushkina, who works for the U.S. State Department. She takes us via the busy Moscow subway to the first event on our Russia tour, an interview on Moscow FM Radio, which is Moscow’s only English-language station. It’s funded by the Moscow government and caters to expatriates, tourists and students of English. Its format is mostly classic rock music with some talk; its jingle sounds just like an American station’s.
We are interviewed by a young woman named Yulia “Juls” Monakhova, who went to Long Island University and speaks excellent English. She’s extremely perky. She sounds much more excited about our trip to Russia than we do. After every few questions she plays a song; then it’s back to a few more questions, then another song and so on. There are no commercials. It feels a bit surreal in a Potemkin village kind of way—a very upbeat, American-style show on a radio station owned by the government of Moscow. But Juls seems sincere and nice. She asks if we have any requests, and I ask for the Beatles’ “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” which she plays.
After the interview Irina leads us back to the subway. En route we remark on how lovely the weather is. Irina tells us the government made the weather nice. At first we think she’s kidding, but she says she’s not. She says that on special occasions, like Moscow City Day, when good weather is needed, government planes prevent rain by dropping “cement”—that’s the word she uses—into the clouds.
Later on I go on the Internet to check this out and I find that Irina is absolutely correct: Moscow has been dissolving potential rain clouds for years. Here’s an excerpt from a 2012 Pravda story, announcing that Moscow City Day that year will have good weather:
The clear sky on the City Day will cost the Moscow authorities 64 million rubles [$20 million]. This is the amount allocated in the budget to dissolve the clouds above the city in case of bad weather. The technology to dissipate clouds above Moscow was developed decades ago. The clouds will be attacked with dry ice, liquid nitrogen and powdered reagent “cement M-500.” The meteorological defense of Moscow for City Day festivities will be conducted from 06:00 a.m. to 24:00 p.m. About 10 aircraft with special equipment will be used, Moscow 24 reports.
This blows me away. In addition to operating an American-style FM radio station, the Moscow government controls the weather. I think: Wouldn’t it be great if my city, Miami, could control the weather? Maybe it could prevent hurricanes from hitting the city!
Then it occurs to me: If the Miami city government could control hurricanes, it would use them to attack Cuba.
So never mind.
We emerge from the subway near the Bolshoi Theatre, a large neoclassical building with a large statue of Apollo on the roof. Irina tells us this statue has become the subject of controversy. For many years, throughout the Soviet era, Apollo was naked, and his penis was clearly visible, kind of a Moscow landmark. But a few years ago, the theater was renovated, and—in what was seen as a sign of the increasing cultural conservatism of the Putin government—a fig leaf was applied to the Apollo package. This addition was widely mocked, but the fig leaf remains.
As it turns out, the Russian hundred-ruble note features an image of the same Apollo statue, pre-restoration. If you look at this image very closely, you can make out a tiny tallywhacker. A member of the Russian parliament, Roman Khudyakov, recently discovered this and demanded that the note be changed. According to a Reuters story, Khudyakov “said he had been stirred into action when he saw two children looking at the banknote: ‘The girl screamed at the boy: “Can you see that? I told you, there is a penis here!” I was shocked, you know.’”
I bring this up in case you think the U.S. Congress has a monopoly on idiots.
Shortly after we pass the Bolshoi, Ridley and I part with Irina, and then a weird thing happens. We’re walking along in a crowd and we come across three men standing next to the sidewalk. Two of them are wearing police uniforms and the third is wearing a dark suit. As we approach, all three men turn toward Ridley and me and very deliberately stare at us. Hard. They’re not looking at anybody else in the crowd. They’re clearly focused on us and they look angry. They’re glaring.
After we pass them I ask Ridley, “Did you see those guys?”
“Yes,” he says.
“What the hell was that?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says.
It’s an unnerving encounter. We agree that the men clearly intended to intimidate us. But why? Are we being followed? Are we going to be hassled? Maybe even detained?
We’re unsure what we should do. But we did not assign ourselves the Secret Code Names Cloak and Dagger for nothing. We assess our situation coolly and calmly, and our course of action becomes clear: We should eat dinner.
We go to a restaurant that has a hand-lettered sign that says “Russian Food—English Menu.” I have sausages and beer. Ridley orders something the menu calls “Pigs Knees.” I didn’t know that pigs had knees, but Ridley says they’re pretty good.
He also tells me that as we approached the restaurant, he saw another guy in a suit staring at us.
I order another beer.
After dinner we return to the Ritz-Carlton and go to the rooftop bar, which has a spectacular view of the Red Square area. We order drinks that, if I understand the exchange rate correctly, cost $16,000 apiece. We sip these and watch the moon rise over the Kremlin. It has been an interesting first day.
Monday
At breakfast, Ridley tells me that the second he connected his laptop computer to the hotel network, his security software warned him that his computer was being attacked. He suggests I make sure my security software is working. Unfortunately, I don’t have security software. What I have, on my computer, is a sticky film composed of potato chip grease and Cheez-It dust. I’d like to see the Russians penetrate that.
After breakfast Ridley and I are met in the lobby by Maria Lvova, who works for the U.S. embassy and is way more educated than we are and also speaks better English. She takes us to our first event, which is at the embassy, a massive stone-and-glass cube in a compound surrounded by high walls, cameras and God knows what else. There are Russian police outside and U.S. Marines inside.
This is actually the second version of this building: The first one, built in the e
arly eighties, used pre-cast concrete pieces helpfully provided by the Soviets. You will be shocked to learn that these pieces turned out to be infested with bugs, and I am not talking about cockroaches. After everybody enjoyed a hearty international laugh, that building was taken apart at massive expense and replaced by this one. They’re very picky about letting you take electronics inside.
Ridley and I meet with several dozen embassy people, mostly Americans. We give a talk—this is basically what we’ll be doing at most of our Russia events—about how we ended up writing a series of children’s books together, the first being a prequel to Peter Pan called Peter and the Starcatchers. We illustrate our talk with slides, including:
A picture of me picking my mortified son Rob up at middle school in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
A picture of Ridley and me playing in our all-author rock band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, with a woman in the audience reacting (as many members of our audience do) by plugging her ears.
A picture of Ridley and me at a Disney World event in which we are wearing Mickey Mouse ears and grinning like a pair of world-class idiots.
A picture of Ridley and me at a South Florida bookstore event in which we are wearing pirate hats and trying not to wet our pants in fear while an eleven-foot-long Burmese python—which the bookstore owner, Mitchell Kaplan, thought it would be fun to surprise us with, so he had the snake handler sneak up on us while we were reading to children and place it on our shoulders—coils around our bodies as we gamely continue reading and pretend to be having fun, which believe me we are not.
In other words, we do not present ourselves as serious literary artists. We present ourselves as a couple of guys who pound out words to pay the mortgage and have some fun along the way. I mention this because in Russia writing is viewed as a Serious Pursuit, and literature, especially classical literature, is revered. Writers like Ridley and me, who crank out books for the capitalist mass market, tend to be regarded as intellectual lightweights. Which we are, of course; I’m not denying that. We are definitely not in the same literary category as, for example, Tolstoy. You will never see a photograph of Tolstoy driving the Wienermobile.
Anyway, the U.S. embassy audience seems to enjoy our talk. Afterward Ridley and I go to lunch with Wendy “Lynx” Kolls, who gives us a detailed briefing on the current state of American–Russian relations, which are—here I am summarizing—crappy. I tell her about the glaring men we saw on the street and ask her if we could be under surveillance. She says it is safe to assume this.
From lunch we go to our next event, a presentation at the Russian State Children’s Library, where according to the schedule our audience will be “young readers” and “secondary school students.” The library is very nice—big and modern, with lots of fun-looking exhibits and activities for children. We are greeted by museum staff and taken to the bright, airy room where we’ll be making our presentation to the children, which will be recorded by two video cameras. Several dozen chairs have been set up for the children, and there’s a projector so we can show our slides to the children. We have everything we need!
Except children.
OK, there are some children. Three, to be exact. But they are outnumbered by the adults, which include their parents, Ridley and me, an interpreter, library officials, an audiovisual guy, the camera operators and others. We’re hoping for more children, but none arrive. As our starting time approaches and the stench of looming embarrassment begins to fill the room, more adults trickle in and take seats. I suspect they’re staff members who were ordered to help fill the room. I picture library officials grabbing random people off the street.
When we finally begin, our Children’s Library audience consists of the three children, plus twenty-six adults. Before long one of the children wanders off. So we wind up talking mainly to the adults. They are—as all our Russian audiences will turn out to be—reserved and a bit formal, but also polite, patient and genuinely interested. We’re doing consecutive interpretation, in which you make a statement, then wait while the interpreter says it in Russian. (The other kind is simultaneous interpretation, in which you don’t stop and the interpreter speaks while you do.)
Consecutive interpretation takes some getting used to, and all the pausing can feel awkward, especially when you’re trying to tell a joke.
YOU: Take my wife.
INTERPRETER:
YOU: Please.
INTERPRETER: .
But as I say, the Russian audiences are very patient—more so than typical American audiences—and many Russians speak at least a little English. So our talk goes pretty well; we even get some laughs. Also I learn, from one of the children, that the Russian name for Tinker Bell is Din’-Din’. This brings my Russian vocabulary to four words: da (yes), nyet (no), spasibo (thank you) and Din’-Din’. It turns out that these four words are all you need to get by in Russia, provided that you are accompanied by a professional interpreter.
The Children’s Library audience members ask a lot of questions, including some about our careers as writers, which they seem to find interesting. I notice one grandmotherly English-speaking woman who listens intently when Ridley describes how as a struggling writer he had to support himself by working at a variety of jobs, including bartending, fixing cars and cleaning houses. Hearing this, the woman shakes her head disapprovingly and mutters, “America.” She is clearly not a fan of capitalism. At the end of our talk, she approaches Ridley and says, “I admire you American writers who work so hard. But I absolutely hate your American president.”
This is the only nakedly anti–American-government statement we will hear on our entire trip; as a rule, the Russians—who are fed a steady diet of America bashing on Putin-controlled TV—avoid talking politics with us. Ridley and I both think it’s kind of sweet that the grandmotherly woman thinks we American writers work hard, forced by our capitalist masters to tap on our keyboards as sweat pours down our sinewy yet muscular writer bodies.
We have one more event today, which according to our schedule is: “Talk and Q & A at the Oval Hall of the State Library of Foreign Literature (major public event).” The schedule says our audience will be “library patrons, publishers, authors, readers, students.”
The Oval Hall is a grand room whose walls are lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases crammed with works of literature, none of which, it is safe to say, I have read. Our talk goes well; the audience members are attentive, and they get the jokes. We use simultaneous interpretation, with the non-English-speaking audience members wearing headsets to follow along.
During the Q & A we’re asked what works of Russian literature we have read. This question will come up during most of our talks, and it’s always a scary moment for me, as it threatens to reveal to the Russians—all of whom seem familiar with our classical literature—how pathetically little I know about theirs. Ridley, thank God, has read Crime and Punishment, so whenever this question comes up, he talks about that, and then usually we’re home free. But sometimes I get pinned down, in which case I say, “I read Dostoevsky in college.”
This is technically true. In one of my college classes, we were supposed to read The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s brilliant masterpiece that is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. Or so Wikipedia says. The thing is, when I was in college, I played in a rock band and had an active social life, plus the sixties were going on, so I did not always have room in my schedule for the actual college part of college. I definitely read a portion of The Brothers Karamazov, but it’s a long book containing a great many words, and I did not get through it. I wondered at the time if Dostoevsky got through it.*
Fortunately, the audiences at our Russia talks are not pushy on this subject, and I am able to skate by with glib superficiality. (This basically describes my entire career.)
After our talk Ridley and I return to our Red Square neighborhood
for dinner. Seeking to experience Russian culture at its most authentic, we go to a restaurant near our hotel called “La Cantina,” which specializes in Mexican cuisine, which I admit is not technically Russian, but in our defense this restaurant is located in Russia.
La Cantina has a very busy décor, with posters, flags, banners, jerseys and various other random items covering the walls and hanging everywhere from the ceiling. It is a décor that says: “We are having some fun in this crazy place!” There is a band playing Latin standards. The musicians are positioned on the entrance stairs, so people entering and leaving the restaurant pass through them; one stagger and you could knock out the trumpet player’s teeth.
I order a chimichanga. It comes with French fries. I am not expecting much, but I have to say, in all honesty, that this is the worst chimichanga I have ever eaten. It makes me think of microwaved footwear. The margaritas are decent, however. So if you’re in Moscow and looking to enjoy a margarita in a banner-intensive environment while watching musicians on stairs perform “Bésame Mucho” as they dodge patrons entering and leaving, I cannot recommend La Cantina highly enough.
After dinner, to cap off our evening of exploring traditional Russian culture, we go around the corner to an Irish pub, which has beer, which I also cannot recommend highly enough.
It has been a good day; to the best of our knowledge, we have not been glared at once. Ridley and I agree that we are liking Russia.
