April 24, 1996
Wednesday
Visiting Hyde Park was not on the list of dreams, but cultural baggage dictated – it had to be done. I walked along the ponds with the swans and past the monument to Peter Pan, and reached the street along which double-deckers bustled. Opposite rose the pub «The Swan».
Just the thing!
I went up onto the pub terrace, ordered an Irish stout with a Leicestershire pie on the advice of the waiter Andrew, and sank into my thoughts. Not at once – Jeff distracted me with a call to the mobile. He was worried: the telephone in the room wasn’t answering. He wanted to know where to find me.
I gave him the name of the pub, and the moment the Murphy’s arrived, my thoughts spread out like a river – wide, full, chocolate-brown.
Three years ago I’d dreamed of being part of the successful crowd marching past the McDonald’s on Tverskaya. The dream came true, with two amendments. First: the crowd was marching through London! Second: my pocket held a wad of pink banknotes, enough to buy up both the crowd and an apartment in Moscow. Jeff had told me yesterday, apologetically, that Barclays would issue the card in a week, here’s some small change for pocket expenses in the meantime.
And then what? What had actually changed?
Nothing.
Passersby drifted by, going about their business. Three years ago, when I didn’t have a kopeck to my name, I’d have counted every one of them a demigod.
Now from the pub terrace I watched the pedestrian entities: tourists, clerks, students, homeless people, none of them having anything in common with success. Within a kilometer’s radius the successful ones were me and the drivers of the «Porsches» streaming along Bayswater Road by the hundreds. There were as many of them as Zhiguli eights in Moscow. Plenty of successful people in London!
Jeff arrived and sat down opposite. He ordered a sherry, took out his papers and glanced at me.
Oh, forget it! I’ll sign without even looking! Hadn’t had a chance to discuss the pressing matter all morning. Hmm… how to bring it up delicately?
Yesterday I was king of the universe, and by morning I had turned into a cashier handing out pounds to girls who had sworn allegiance to my majesty for one night. What is this? The thought set out above flew past like a bullet and transformed itself into drawling English:
– Bai ze wei, yu nou, yesterdei gerlz, yu nou… zis morning…
Jeff, who could evidently read minds, cut in with flawless Russian and the faintest accent:
– And in Moscow, after a one-night stand, nobody hints at anything and asks for nothing?
Largely, Jeff had a point. I took a swig of beer. Jeff summed it up:
– People are all the same. No one wants to work. Everyone wants to have fun.
I agreed. People were all the same, in Moscow and London alike. Nobody wanted to work, everybody wanted to have fun! And Jeff, too, was a lazy so-and-so who knew Russian perfectly well but preferred not to bother and speak his native tongue instead.
After collecting fifty signatures next to as many checkmarks, Jeff took off. I stayed behind to reflect: right now I wasn’t just lounging around, I was drinking stout in the middle of London, across from Hyde Park, with a genuine English pie for a chaser. And still I didn’t feel like a lucky man.
Why?
In my old life, if a trip to London had ever loomed on the horizon, I’d have drawn up in advance a list of museums I absolutely had to see and a list of views I absolutely had to take in; I’d have crammed as much as possible into the time available. Six months before the trip I’d have been swooning and straining, planning to squeeze out the maximum possible experience. Now I had no desire whatsoever to drag myself anywhere. I’d get to it next time. There’d be plenty of next times – not for nothing had I taken possession today of a project firm in the City and an apartment in some docklands or other…
After the second Murphy’s, I headed back to the hotel.
The tour of banks, offices and official establishments continued the next morning. The legendary fogs and smogs over the Thames turned out to be a fib. The sun shone over London for three days without a break. The capital of England turned out to be no gloomy Tallinn or cramped Riga, as in the films about Sherlock Holmes, but a perfectly broad, brisk Kyiv. As a schoolboy I had gone on an excursion to the capital of Ukraine, a three-day trip that took in five museums, three department stores, Andriyivsky Descent, Khreshchatyk, the Motherland Monument and whatever else... I’ve forgotten...
I sent the boxes of business clothes to Moscow by courier service. I crammed the beach gear into a wheeled suitcase and went to Paris, which turned out to be a drunken fog: why drink so much champagne, and why can’t you throw up in the Seine? And what is this absurd rattletrap Jeff drives me about in? Some invalid two-seater of a «Mazda», more shameful than a lop-eared «Zaporozhets».
We arrived in Nice on Monday morning. The day went on signing papers at the notary’s, the lawyer’s and the bank. In the evening we set off for the Promenade des Anglais. In the bars along the way I consumed Kir Royal, Jeff mineral water.
The final round of the evening ended in a misunderstanding: they wouldn’t let me into a club despite the reserved table. No great tragedy! We sat in a bistro instead, then on the beach… then my body got delivered to a launch.
The launch puttered out to a boat anchored offshore – looked like a river tram at first glance, but it definitely wasn’t one.
I fell asleep in a cabin done up in mahogany and beige leather, all mirrors and crystal, like something out of a movie about the aristocracy.
