St. Petersburg Noir

by Julia Goumen

  In the mid-’80s a whole group of artists worked there.

  And they all dragged along their friends. Other artists would go there, and musicians too ... Actors from the nearby theaters— the Operetta, Komisarshevskaya, and Comedy theaters...

  And the corsairs would go there ... the blackmarket guys, hard-currency girls ... prostitutes from the Hotel Europe.

  And the artsy bimbos—the girlfriends of the poets—always to be found in this sort of gathering . . .

  The artists had funny names: Nemkov, Nemtsov, and Nemchinov. And another two were named Tabachnik and Pasechnik.

  The arrival to the studio of a guy named Bakaleishchikov made everybody’s day, for sure.

  Tabachnik, Pasechnik, and Bakaleishchikov were close friends. Nemkov, Nemtsov, and Nemchinov, fought constantly. And Kit would pull them apart...

  Kit bound the whole gang together, he made models for all of them.

  And they often fought to get closer to Kit. In the very first room stood an enormous bathtub, and Kit kept his axolotls there. One day he had an argument with the fire inspectors, who came back later and poisoned his axolotls.

  Kit also collected old irons.

  I once got mad at Tabachnik and threw an iron at his head. Thank God I missed, because it could have killed him.

  I was always throwing and hitting people over the head with bottles—for nothing at all.

  Since childhood. Why did I do it? Life is a battlefield.

  Sometimes fights would break out there in the studio— drunken artists having it out, no worse than the corsairs.

  But not because of Kit. And not because of some dough. The fights, more often than not, were on account of girls. You know: don’t bogart that joint, you son of a bitch—pass it to your friend!

  ~ * ~

  “Anya, do you remember that time when you went to Odessa with Afrikan and his whole gang, and you were doing some bullshit music for some nursery or something, and you pretended to be a singing teacher who taught kids jazz and rock, and Kit was in love with you and called you every day from the studio on the office phone, and you explained to him that somebody had swindled you, that you didn’t have anything to eat, so you were going to sell yourself because you were starving ... ?”

  “No, that’s not how it was! I said very nicely that I was going to live according to the laws of the front line, and to put out for anybody who would feed me supper. And in general there in Odessa, and that year in particular, it was a fucking disaster. That was the year when the sailors were forbidden from selling things to the secondhand stores. And they closed the flea market ... There wasn’t any food at all in the stores in Odessa!”

  “Ah yes, the decline of the empire ... And you, you singing bitch, were having a gay old time in your hotel with film directors and Moscow artists ... You even bragged later on that you fucked that old guy who filmed Bumbarash. “

  “Yeah, that was Felya, our cameraman, he was wonderful.. . Fed me and then dropped me, said he didn’t have long to live so he couldn’t hang around with one girl, he still needed to fit in a lot more ... And then there was that old actor from Kyrgyzstan, he was great, you know, the one who played the Tatar prince in Audrey Rublyov; he also played the teacher in that movie First Teacher... But he was really old and a complete drunk, and I up and left him ... ”

  “And then, you sordid gerontophile, you told poor Kityarushka that you had to betray him with seven different Chuvaks ... and he would tell us everything. We reminisced that since you were fifteen you were nicknamed Nyusha Zeppelin because you were so out of control... And then Kit stared at us with his drunken rabbit eyes and muttered something like: So what is it that you want to tell me? That Anyas a whore? And that you all slept with her? But you all slept with her before I even knew her. While I, on the other hand, slept with all of your wives, when they were already your wives ... So then the troops got a bit jumpy ... Kolya Punin took offense and left right away, and never had anything to do with any of us ever again, and the rest of them turned out to be some serious businessmen and started to fuck with Kit ... But for some reason I was on his side ... I already had Yukka then, and would have been only too happy for her if one of my friends had given her a good fuck, because I was having a hard time of it ... Anya, I don’t remember, did Kit get high with us? Or was it strictly booze with him ... and a bit of snatch?”

  “Listen, he was such a hard drinker that he barely had the time to smoke pot with us.”

  “But he didn’t really drink that much; it just seemed that way to you. He gambled left and right, so booze was the easiest thing to get.” Misha burst out laughing. “He was two-timing you all the way. Said that he’d fallen asleep drunk somewhere, and you, fool that you are, believed him.”

  “No, I didn’t, but I could always find him when I wanted to. Sometimes he’d be held up because of the bridges, but I could still show up at his place at five in the morning, as soon as the bridges were down. Once I really did lose him, but it later turned out that he’d fallen asleep in that very same studio and they simply rolled him under the sofa so he wouldn’t get in the way of the dancing and so that nobody would stumble over him. No, Kit didn’t spend his nights sleeping with other girls in a comfortable bed. No fucking way ... His cheating on me was heroic, accomplished under difficult circumstances: in cars, bathrooms, upstairs—above the studio, in an empty apartment ... on the ‘fucking’ chair. Remember the ‘fucking’ chair? Tabachnik brought it for one of his girls. And then we all used it ... In general, Kit was a fine, one-of-a-kind drunk. And his golden fingers would shake in the mornings ... ”

  “In your diamond cunt, and you liked that a lot.”

  “Everybody goes on about something, for the soldier it’s a cunt... ” Misha wanted to talk about love. But I’d started thinking about Kit: “And they killed him in a drunken fight!”

  “Anya, what are you saying? What, do you still believe that it was a drunken fight? Come on now, you’re not a complete fool!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Anya, it was all for show. I thought you knew …”

  “For show? What had he done that was so terrible? Was it because of some bimbo? I remember there was one of Fyoka’s lady friends, some Marinka Zhalo or other ... Was it because of her? The whore ... The opera Carmen ... with fucking tramps... ”

  “I don’t know for sure. Maybe it was girls ... No, it couldn’t have been because of girls … Must have been on account of the knock-offs. They all sat there in that studio turning out fakes. That whole group—all those lefties forging fleas. The guys were making money hand over fist. There were a lot of orders for restoration jobs, and right after the restorations there were the orders for knock-offs . . .”

  ~ * ~

  Of course, I remember this “Restoration” period. It was like being in a DIY club. There were ornaments, paintings, sometimes furniture. I once even helped cut out a rose from a sheet of veneer for a marquetry side table. Petals and leaves. The veneer was multicolored, I used a stencil. They even trusted me. And Linas came separately to pour the bronze angels ... There were also some antique models from the museum, drawings ... I remember the girl Tabachnik bought the chair for there too, and she was painting old drawings with delicate watercolors ... And there were even arguments, it was either Nemkov or Nemchinov who said that they should be done with pastels, but she insisted that no, only watercolors, and she painted them according to the album that she had of these drawings—scenes of St. Petersburg ... “Misha, but why Kit in particular? Nothing happened to the others ... ”

  “Because he was, like, independent. The others all worked for particular people. And everything went far away to somewhere in Georgia ... I don’t know exactly. And suddenly he had his own client. As a matter of fact, they met here in the Hotel Europe. You can’t reconstruct now what happened then. But it seems like it was somebody else’s dough. And, consequently, different rules. He crossed somebody, something went over there, and it turned out that good people e
nded up in a tough spot. I’m talking some serious bucks. I don’t know the details, but it was something like that ... But when they killed him, you weren’t living with him anymore, were you? You were already with the next one ... Who was it? The King of Jazz?”

  “The Phantom of the Opera ... It was the Phantom of the Opera! Once and forever.”

  ~ * ~

  Later we were sitting downstairs again in the cafeteria that they now call a “lounge.”

  We were chatting again and remembering the Past. Some different Past now, either afterward or before ... Turns out that there was a lot of this fucking Past.

  Misha grew sad. “You don’t change, Anya—why don’t you change?”

  “I changed in the middle. At thirty, thirty-five. And then after forty I somehow lost weight again ... It’s old age. The end of my blossoming.”

  “Your old age looks like youth. Your legs are spaghetti-thin again, and your face is just like it was then. Come on, let’s go ... It’s lonely for me there . . .”

  “Hey, don’t bogart that joint, friend, take a puff and pass it on to your friend ... But I did come up with my wish: I want to go up on the Maly’s roof. Like we did then. Remember how we liked to go out there on summer nights? You could easily climb up from the roof of the studio.”

  “Well, that’s a fucking stupid wish. Not even interesting, roofers probably working there now. And it’s slippery. And easy as pie.”

  “No, it’s not as easy as pie. It’s hard to get in the Maly now. There’s a serious security system.”

  “I can’t get in? Are you kidding?”

  Misha’s last job before going abroad was assistant administrator of the Maly State Opera Theater. It’s called the Mikhailovsky now.

  “They’ve got an ID card system to get in now. Electronic cards. Different kinds. With one card you can go certain places, and with another card to different ones; most of the cards don’t let you go everywhere. So if you’re all-powerful, take me to our roof, that’s my dream. If you take me to the roof, I’ll go with you to London.”

  “Easy, Anya, that’s easy! ... If you want to go to the roof, we’ll go to the roof—I’ll be your Phantom of the Opera!”

  ~ * ~

  I didn’t believe that it would be possible.

  But there we were—standing on the very same roof.

  We entered the building like theatergoers. And there at the coat check we ducked behind a hidden door; he opened it with a card, we ended up on a hidden staircase and walked up it for a long time, and then we hid in a little closet. We had to wait until the performance ended and everybody left.

  It was all quite complicated. There in the theater, besides the ever-watchful old biddies and ushers, you had the security guards with their Tasers.

  The degree of security in the theater under the new director reminded me of a military factory in the USSR. Bakaleishchikov proved to be a real hero. He had managed somehow to get a card that gave him unlimited access.

  And he remembered all the hidden doors and rooms.

  “How can you remember after so many years?”

  “I’m usually quite scattered.”

  “That’s the weed.”

  “Well, yes, Sveta said the same thing. But it’s the opposite with unnecessary things, you see—those I remember.”

  “Why the fuck are you smoking grass from morning till night... ?”

  ~ * ~

  While we were sitting in the closet, we once again reminisced about our Maly Opera life.

  I was a Petersburger and so was Misha Bakaleishchikov.

  And the whole gang was made up of artists who had come from elsewhere a hundred years ago to study scenic design at the theater school.

  They’d all become friends in the dorm.

  Nemkov, Nemtsov, and Nemchinov were from the Urals and Siberia, and Tabachnik and Pasechnik were from western Ukraine.

  Nemchinov, however, was a Tatar from Kazan. Misha was the one who remembered that. How does he remember everything after smoking grass first thing in the morning?

  We walked up the concealed flight of stairs and came out onto the roof. Like we used to. Only then it was usually summer and White Nights.

  For some reason it doesn’t occur to anyone to clamber onto the roof in winter. This was the first time on the roof in winter.

  There wasn’t any wind.

  It wasn’t cold.

  “It’s a few degrees above freezing today.”

  There wasn’t any of Petersburg’s bewitching beauty.

  There wasn’t any hyperborean ice.

  All around there was streaming, squelching, crunching . . .

  On the square lay lumps of black snow.

  “Careful, Anya, don’t slip.”

  “It’s okay, there isn’t any ice. It’s all melted. Come here, I want to show you something. Come on, step over that railing, otherwise you won’t see anything ...

  There was an empire-style minifence lower than your knee, and beyond it a little piece of open roof about a meter and a half wide—it was from there that you could see farther.

  Bakaleishchikov was absolutely fucking blown away by the view from here of the dreadful square, made a shambles by black snowdrifts and mud ... Although to me it was still beautiful. But on the whole, a terrifying sight. You expect more from Petersburg. Even in winter . . .

  He presented a monologue. Classical in all respects. About how all of us who live here are assholes.

  He stood on the edge of the roof wearing his black overcoat, flapping in the wind, and was shouting almost hysterically, and his scarf fluttered like a red banner . . .

  ~ * ~

  “All our life here—it’s a fucking Dostoevsky nightmare! One big czar asshole named Nastaysa Filippovna! Humiliation stronger than pride. Allegedly there’s beauty here. Anya, what kind of fucking beauty is there here? Anya, there is rot here, this fucking Piter is rotting, do you understand, it’s rotting just like Venice ... only Venice is rotting in a civilized manner, but this, this spawn of bullshit is decaying at will—in the broad expanses of the north. And nothing can stop it from fucking rotting, not UNESCO, not DICKESCO ... Snow, Anya, ought to be white! White, do you understand? Bears are white and brown—and that’s normal. But snow should be white! And only white! Here we have the kingdom of fucking black grime and slime. Nothing but fucking, fucking, fucking, damned fucking noir!”

  My heart was pounding. And my head was pounding. From fear. He’s not coordinated. He smokes grass from morning till night. He won’t manage. He’ll lose his footing. He won’t grab hold of me.

  I pushed him hard in the back with two hands—forward.

  He didn’t manage to keep his footing. He didn’t grab hold of me. Nothing was “like it is in the movies.”

  He flew down, like a deer, with a shout.

  Smashed to smithereens.

  No fucking good smoking weed from morning till night.

  ~ * ~

  I didn’t care what happened to me afterward.

  They didn’t keep me for very long.

  The investigator was young and handsome.

  The medical expert was young and lazy.

  They could have done some special tests and come to the conclusion that he wasn’t responsible, that somebody had pushed him from behind. But they could also choose not to do any tests.

  And not come to any conclusion. And that was clearly more expedient.

  Seems I’m a born actress.

  I wept naturally and said that he was my friend and what a terrible thing it was! And they found absolutely no motive whatsoever for my doing it.

  The prematurely deceased guy was a Russian citizen, he didn’t even have a European passport, just three different “places of residence.”

  So why go to a lot of trouble?

  Misha left behind seven children from five wives. The youngest son was already fifteen.

  Of course, I’d like to be able to tell all this to Lyokha Saksofon. My comrade-in-arms in the group Anyuta and
the Angels. He’s the main angel. And even more of an archangel with a heavy golden trumpet.

  Lyokha Saksofon probably couldn’t have pictured me as a murderer. I was a heroine to him. Just putting together my group Anyuta and the Angels, and somehow managing to feed myself and four musicians—that meant a lot in our closed and stagnant city. Everybody was pushing and shoving here on our little square—there wasn’t much money, or much fame. And you needed to somehow elbow your way in and squeeze out the others.

  Lyokha could never do that. The only thing in life he knew how to do was to blow into his pipe, into the archangel’s gilded trumpet.