Right, now I was someone. Even in this insane city, which was just about the most expensive on the planet. But no … that wasn’t actually right. It had to be almost a year since Moscow had relinquished that dubious title.
Outside, winter greeted me again with its ice-laden breath. The wind was full of fine hard crumbs, like grains of semolina, a kind of miniature hail.
I strolled back along the front of the station and then down to where I wanted to be – the metro circle line.
It felt like I was beginning to remember where I needed to get to. Well, I could enjoy making some progress, even if I didn’t enjoy the uncertainty. And I could hope that whatever business had brought me to Moscow was good. Because somehow I didn’t feel I had the power to serve Evil.
Only native Muscovites take taxis home from the railway stations. If their finances permit, of course. Any provincial, even if he has the kind of money I had, takes the metro. There’s something hypnotic about this system of tunnels, with its labyrinth of connections, about the rumbling of the trains as they go hurtling past and the rush of air that subsides and then starts up again, about the constant movement. Down here unspent energy seethes and swirls around under the vaults of the station halls: energy free for the taking, more than I could possibly use.
And there is protection. I think it’s connected somehow with the depth of the earth above your head … and all the past years that are buried in that earth. Not even years – centuries.
The doors of the train parted and I stepped in. An unpleasant, insistent buzzing from the loudspeakers, and then a finely modulated male voice announced: ‘Please mind the closing doors. The next station is Komsomolskaya.’
I was on the circle line, anti-clockwise. And I was definitely not getting off at Komsomolskaya. But after that … After Komsomolskaya apparently I would get out. That would be Peace Prospect. And, of course, it would be worth walking up the platform at Komsomolskaya to get closer to the front of the train. Then I’d be nearer the exit for my connection.
That meant I was changing onto the brown line. And probably going north, because otherwise I’d have gone round the circle line in the opposite direction and changed at Oktyabrskaya.
The carriage shook as it moved, and since I had nothing better to do, I studied the dozens of ads. There was a long-haired man squatting down but on tiptoe, advertising women’s tights; someone using a felt-tip pen had taken the opportunity to give the hairy poser a huge dick. The next poster suggested that I should chase a brightly painted jeep round the city, but I failed to get the point of that. A prize, probably. Miracle tablets for almost every ailment – all in a single bottle – estate agents, the most yoghurty yoghurt of all yoghurts, genuine Borzhomi mineral water with a picture of a ram on the bottle … And here was Komsomolskaya.
I was fed up with the adverts, so I dropped my bag by the door and went to look at the plan of the metro system. I don’t know why, but my attention was immediately drawn by the little red circle with the letters ‘AEEA’ above it – the ‘All-Union Exhibition of Economic Achievements’.
That was where I was going. No doubt about it. To a massive horseshoe-shaped building. The Cosmos hotel.
No one can deny that life feels easier when you know where you’re going. I heaved a sigh of relief, returned to my bag and even smiled at my dull reflection in the glass of the door. The door also bore traces of the mindless hyperactivity of the city’s pithecanthropoids – the inscription ‘Do not lean against the doors’ had been reduced to ‘Do lean again do’.
The unknown author of this pointless statement wasn’t even a pithecanthropus; he was more likely a monkey a dirty smug little monkey. Dirty and stupid, precisely because he was too much like a human being.
I was glad that I was an Other, and not a human being.
Here was Peace Prospect; stairs, turn right, an escalator, and there’s the train just arriving. Rizhskaya, Alexeevskaya, AEEA. Leave the carriage and turn right – I’d always known that.
A long, long escalator, on which for some reason I have no thoughts about anything at all. Those annoying ads again. A pedestrian underpass. And there’s the hotel. A horseshoe-shaped monstrosity of French architecture. The hotel has changed, though, and quite noticeably. They’ve added illuminated hoardings and bright lights; and then there’s the casino, with the prize foreign car displayed on a pedestal. Street girls standing around smoking, despite the hard frost. And the doorman inside, whose hands instantly swallow up a hundred-rouble bill.
It wasn’t really late yet, so the lobby was still busy. Someone was talking on a mobile, rapping out phrases in Arabic loud enough for everyone to hear, and music was coming from several directions at once.
‘A de luxe suite for one,’ I said casually. ‘And please, no phone calls offering me girls. I’ve come to work.’
Money is a great thing. A suite was found instantly – did I want dinner in my room? – and I was promised that no one would call me, although I didn’t really believe that. They suggested I should register straight away, because I had a Ukrainian passport. I registered. But then, instead of quietly making for the lift to which I was solicitously directed, I set out towards an unremarkable little door in the darkest and emptiest corner of the lobby.
There were no plaques at all on this door.
The receptionist watched me go with genuine respect. I think everyone else had stopped noticing me at all.
Behind the door I discovered a grubby little office – probably the only space in the hotel that hadn’t been Europeanised. It was straight out of the barbarous Soviet seventies.
A standard issue desk – not really shabby, but it had seen plenty of service – a standard issue chair and an ancient Polish Aster telephone in the middle of the desk. Perched on the chair was a puny little guy wearing a militia sergeant’s uniform. He looked at me inquiringly.
The sergeant was an Other. And he was a Light One – I realised that right away.
A Light One … Hmm. Then what was I? I didn’t think I was a Light One. No, definitely not a Light One.
Well then, that decided that.
‘Hello,’ I said to him. ‘I’d like to register in Moscow.’
The militiaman addressed me through clenched teeth, with both surprise and irritation in his voice:
‘The receptionist handles registration. When you check in. You have to check in to register.’
He rustled the newspaper that he had been studying, pencil in hand, before I arrived – I suppose he was marking interesting small ads from the endless pages of them.
‘I’ve done the ordinary registration already,’ I explained. I need the other registration. But I haven’t introduced myself: Vitaly Rogoza, Other.’
The militiaman immediately straightened up and looked at me differently. He looked perplexed now. He didn’t seem able to recognise me as an Other. So I helped him out.
‘A Dark One,’ he muttered after a while, with a feeling of relief, or so it seemed to me. He introduced himself too: ‘Zakhar Zelinsky Other. Night Watch. Let’s go through.’
I could clearly hear in his tone the old complaint about ‘all these foreigners flooding into our Moscow’. Others could never help dragging human clichés and stereotypes into their own attitudes. This Light One was definitely annoyed by the arrival of yet another provincial and the need to get up off his arse, tear his eyes away from the newspaper, drag himself to his computer and go through all the hassle of a registration.