April 10, 1996
Wednesday
At Charles de Gaulle Airport I was met by Grzegorz in a Mercedes Pullman, a chrome barge straight out of the swinging sixties. Stirlitz would’ve cruised around in something just like it, had he stuck around Berlin another twenty years. Why the antique on wheels? Who was he trying to impress?
In response to my grumbling, the impressive Monsieur Grégoire – that’s how Grzegorz introduced himself – came out with:
– A sixties limousine is a sign I’ve been rich for thirty years. At minimum. Old money! And a sign I’m not some fool chasing fashion. I’m a serious businessman who respects stability and predictability. Zhora scored the wheels in Vilnius a month ago, don’t worry your head over it.
Logical enough, delivered in flawless Russian with a soft Lithuanian accent.
We never made it to the hotel – couldn’t fit into the alley. Grégoire swore in a foreign assortment of perfectly comprehensible words – kurwa, pshek, and a few others – turned the car around, tried another route, and ran into another dead end. He huffed, then gave his instructions:
– Too dangerous to leave the car here. You go the rest of the way without me. Walk to the streetlamp, then left, and five meters on you’ll see the sign «Hôtel du Paradis» on your right. That means you’ve made it. Tomorrow at ten we meet at the bistro, that one right there.
Grégoire nodded at a café. I got out of the car, adjusted the gym bag on my shoulder.
Good thing I’d flown in without a suitcase. Bad thing there were more homeless people in the alley than streetwalkers on Tverskaya. About five times as many. They sat, lay, sprawled on the sidewalk. It smelled of urine and something burnt. The nearest one stretched out a hand and mumbled something that sounded like: «Zhe ne manzh pa sis zhur, spare some change for a former Central Committee member.» I walked past, thinking: «City of dreams, my ass. Same shithole as Los Angeles. Why does nothing ever go my way?»
The hotel turned out to be a five-story beige box with a gray sign over a green door. The lobby smelled of tobacco and mustiness. A Roma kid dozed behind the front desk. I cleared my throat and enunciated, schoolbook-style: «Hi! My name is Roman Peskov.»
After waiting for the top of his head to stir and a sleepy face to appear, I repeated it. Got a key tagged «19» and a finger pointed toward the stairwell at the end of the corridor.
The room on the fifth floor turned out to be one with a balcony and a window. Beyond the window – endless gray rooftops with chimneys and antennas. The Eiffel Tower loomed in the distance. About like eyeing Ostankino Tower from Sretenka Street in Moscow.
«Eiffel Tower view guaranteed.» The travel agency hadn’t lied, and it hadn’t come cheap either. Wait, it had – exactly as I’d asked for.
Shouting came through from the room next door – something between cursing, hysterics, and the back-and-forth of a beating in progress. A door slammed, footsteps pounded down the hallway. I went to the window, threw it open, listened to a siren wailing, shouts…
Moscow suddenly felt like a cozy little village compared to this bum-infested Paris.
I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Somewhere out there, in another universe, existed the Paris of dreams, with the Louvre, the Champs-Élysées, Montmartre, and courtly Parisians. I’d landed in a different universe – Place Pigalle, flophouses, and Alain Delon out of Le Samouraï.