The evening traffic had dissipated, and the road was relatively clear. Maximus drove in the middle lane, his favorite, without undue haste. Vicious jeeps and arrogant sedans whizzed by on both sides. Go ahead, thought Semipyatnitsky, torture yourselves, pedal to the metal, what you don’t know is that the traffic police are lurking around every corner, brandishing their bristly clubs. Semipyatnitsky liked that bit about the bristly clubs, and he smiled to himself.
When Maximus drove up, Peter was waiting on the street outside the hotel. He was holding only a small overnight bag; apparently he had left the box of pills in his room. On his way over, Maximus had thought about trying to sneak into Peter’s brain, as he had done with Ni Guan. But he resolved to utilize the traditional, tried and true Russian method to get information: Ply his guest with vodka. Once drunk, Peter would readily reveal whatever secrets he was keeping locked up in his Dutch brain. There wasn’t much time before Peter’s train, not a minute to lose.
Semipyatnitsky offered to show Peter St. Petersburg’s most famous feature, the monument to Peter the Great, who had opened the window to Europe. Maximus himself had always felt that it would have been better for the tsar to install actual doors, so that people wouldn’t have to keep climbing to Europe through a window, but he withheld this insight from his guest.
They arrived at the Bronze Horseman. Peter naturally asked Maximus to take a few photos of him with the statue in the background, and then Maximus, as though the idea had just occurred to him, suggested casually that they stop into the bar across the street. And his guest, with an equally spontaneous air, agreed.
If you know Petersburg, then you know that this bar can be none other than the Tribunal. Yes, that’s the one, where girls—some plump and unattractive, others gangly and awkward—sit on tall revolving stools at the bar, casting welcoming glances at the foreign tourists who come in. Somewhere nearby sits their so-called mamka, a bulky woman of forty-five or thereabouts, who hasn’t changed her makeup since the age of twenty, when she herself was sitting on a stool just like those she now oversees, back at the Intourist Hotel bar.
Ultimately, everyone has a right to a career. You may be just a simple low-level manager today, but before you know it twenty-five years will go by, and you’ll become a respected supervisor yourself, applying all those sensitive leadership skills you’ve picked up, mentoring the youngsters in sales. In honor of your lost youth and of the thorny path you followed to the top, you’ll wear the very same bright-yellow necktie as when you began; jabbing at it with your gnarled finger, you’ll harangue your subordinates: “Listen, guys, I wasn’t born a supervisor, I started out just like you, and you too—at least some of you, the very best—will also get promoted someday, if you work with diligence and enthusiasm.”
But yes—the Tribunal, where couples who drop in off the street and drunken Finns alike listen to live music in the smaller room on the left, or gyrate to disco music on the dance floor to the right, or else stare in silence at the strippers hired from the White Breeze Agency: shockingly beautiful, exquisite, and inaccessible, as though their heavenly bodies had descended to earth from some heavenly body.
Of course, everything is relative, including the inaccessibility of celestial strippers.
Maximus and Peter claimed a table near a small podium with a pole rising from the center, where with twitching fingers a blonde girl toyed with a thin string around her hips, which was evidently supposed to be standing in for an undergarment, but fell far short.
Maximus watched the show, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d just been to Omsk, Russia’s sex capital, where in one joint he’d recruited all seven dancers for a private session, with two more summoned in for an encore, and your basic run-of-the-mill stripper had no more appeal for him. After the sincere and remarkably accessible Omsk girls, none of the beauties from Moscow, Petersburg, Minsk, or any other city could measure up.
The Omsk strippers had finished Maximus off right in his pants; he hadn’t made it past the third one, who straddled his lap, grinding and gyrating rhythmically on his priapal bulge; he came and immediately panicked that she would call in the bouncer to throw him out, pervert that he was, but all she did was smile as though she’d just aced an exam. “Why did I hold back?” wondered Maximus at the time. And proceeded to climax five more times in that one night.
The icy beauties of St. Petersburg had no such power over Maximus.
But Peter stared at the stripper’s legs and licked his arid chops.
Maximus ordered a carafe of Absolut. They refrained from excess conversation. Semipyatnitsky kept pouring the vodka. Peter downed his shots before the ice could melt, frowning and staring at the podium as girl after girl stepped up with each new song.
“Do you like Russian girls?” Maximus asked politely in English.
But rather than responding with equal politeness, making observations about the exceptional beauty of Russian girls, etc., Peter got right to the point:
“Yeah. Could you arrange for her to visit my hotel? If you know what I mean…”
“Nothing is impossible, dear Peter. Nothing is impossible in this fucking world. But some things are costly. Very costly. That’s the truth.”
“How much?” he asked impatiently.
Maximus had noticed a grim-looking guy near the podium, who was obviously with the girls; he shrugged, got up, and went over to him. Now, the White Breeze girls aren’t prostitutes. They get paid two or three hundred dollars a dance, and have no particular need to put out for just anybody. They earn more than enough for their tuition and sports car payments. But if the money is good…
In a couple of minutes Maximus came back and reported:
“Six hundred.”
“What?”
“Euros. Per hour.”
“This is… ridiculous!”
“Whatever.”
Baffled, Peter looked away from the podium and surveyed his surroundings. Maximus understood his surprise: It’s a basic principle of business that goods ought to be cheaper in their country of origin. Russian girls are exported to bordellos all over Europe, where they cost a hundred or a hundred fifty euros at most. Once you take away customs fees and transportation and operational expenses, the price in Russia ought to be half that at most. But no, it turns out that Russian girls are more expensive in Russia than in Europe. At least the ones with a good shelf life.
Maximus hastened to comfort his foreign colleague:
“See, they’re not professionals. Just dancers. It’s like a side business for them. They don’t do it too often, only when they get a really good offer.”
“Really…”
“Sure. But you could get another girl for fifty Euros or something. Look over there.”
“You mean…”
“Yeah, those.”
“No, they’re ugly.”
“You think so?”
“I do! In Thailand I could get a super model for fifty euros! Not an animal like that… Maybe we can negotiate? I’m ready to pay fifty euros, but I want one of the dancers.”
Maximus caught himself looking at Peter as though he were a complete idiot. He said nothing and just shook his head.
Their carafe was already half-empty, and Maximus decided that it was time to redirect the conversation to the matter at hand, which would also serve as a handy distraction from the question of the girls’ fee.
“Peter, I hope we’re good friends now.”
“Sure we are!”
“In Russia we ask each other after each bottle of vodka, Do you respect me?”
“Yes, I do! But why are you asking this strange question?”
“It’s a kind of ritual. Say it in Russian: ‘Ty menia uvazhaesh?’”