Happiness is Possible (18 page)

‘Oodles of it.'

‘That's my boy!' says Toma, wrapping her legs round me. ‘You're no namby-pamby man, a real breadwinner, that's you . . . Would you believe, I dreamed you were a writer and you were sponging off me!'

As a citizen I'm a pretty peaceful individual, not a persistent troublemaker or inveterate picketer, but I can no longer remain silent. If I knew how to write complaints and which official offices to send them to, I swear I'd sit down and write one now. Unfortunately, from the vast range of municipal institutions, the only one with which I am familiar is our own local housing office (which is just inside the next entrance of this building); and I don't know how to write anything except books. The only adjudicating authority to which I am in the habit of appealing is eternity, and the wheels of that administration, unfortunately, grind extremely slow. So far it has only filed my applications but not got around to examining their substance.

I hope, however, that
you
will accept my representations: I hereby denounce the local authorities or, to be more precise, our district council, for the wanton destruction of the dogs' area in the courtyard of our flats. Yes, I realise against whom I am raising my voice; yes, the very sound of that phrase, ‘district council', sets me trembling with fear. But after all, I am not alone. I am sure that apart from Phil and me there are hundreds and hundreds of other victims. Even if we take our unit of account as dog plus master (in bureaucratic terms – the ‘dog-man'), there will still be very many of us. But apparently that is the very nub of the catastrophe. For a long time the district council, assuming that there was no canine problem in our neighbourhood, didn't bother to count us in any way at all and occupied itself with more important business. But then one morning, some council member or other, glancing out of his kitchen window, found the sight that met his eyes quite intolerable. The designated canine defecation area was crowded with such large numbers of dogs that there was no space remaining even for said designated activity. In addition, canines and their masters were milling about outside the designated area, engaging in verbal conflict with those who were inside and had locked the gate against them.

Overwhelmed by what he saw, the district council member convened a meeting at which he raised point-blank the issue of overcrowding at the dogs' area. Naturally, neither he nor his fellow council members felt that they were in any way responsible for the situation that had arisen, because it was not the present district council that established the area, it had been established by the preceding authority, which had a different name. The council members then had a brainstorming session that produced what I can only describe as a paradoxical result. For the purposes of achieving an equal distribution of social opportunity and obviating further conflicts in relation to the dogs' area, the district council ruled that the barrier around the dogs' area should be removed forthwith and that henceforth citizens with companions of non-human origin should meet the needs of nature as and when they felt inclined.

A source close to the district council commented on this revolutionary decision as follows.

‘Let them shit where they want, but no hard feelings.'

No sooner said than done. Naturally, to facilitate universal social equality, together with the fence they also pulled up the benches, the garbage cans into which the more socially aware dog-owners placed the excrement of their own and other peoples' pets and the wooden beam along which the more socially aware of those pets used to trot.

It is hard to describe the depths of despondency into which our dog-man community has been plunged. We have only one consolation – that the council didn't liquidate us along with the designated area: it would, after all, be quite capable of doing that. For me as a writer there is another, more personal reason for mortification in all this. The point is that I have been nursing the concept for a short work in which our dogs' area would have been the central scene of action. Unfortunately, all this has happened before my concept came together, and I can report to all who are interested that this work will not now materialise.

I should also mention that since the dogs' area ceased to figure in the listing of municipal facilities, it has not actually disappeared and continues to serve in its former capacity. We have not yet learned how to relieve ourselves as and when we feel inclined and still visit the old spot, loitering within the limits of a non-existent fence. Dogs running at full pelt brake to a sudden halt at an invisible line and turned puzzled little faces towards their masters. Ah, if only the masters themselves knew the answer . . .

The sad fate of the dogs' area gives pause for thought. It begs the question: Is a similar fate in store for our entire overpopulated city? If it is, then writers should make haste with their works about Moscow.

The first warning signs are already here. For instance, there are discussions in the capital's mass media of certain plans to do away with the administrative boundaries of the city of Moscow and amalgamate it with the Moscow region. Well, if that should happen, just wait for a while and the levelling-down will begin. In their dreams, some people see the city throwing off the shackles of the MOH (Moscow Orbital Highway), squaring its shoulders and striding ineluctably into the surrounding area, trampling the squalid hovels of the sons of the soil under its elegant high-rise feet . . . But somehow I don't think so! On the contrary, it is the Moscow region that will invade the confines of the city, crushing under its calloused peasant heel all that we urbanites hold dear. Farewell civilisation, farewell Armani and Gucci, boulevards and city squares. Cleanliness and culture will become things of the past, the dogs' areas will disappear from all the city's yards and carrots and potatoes will grow in their place.

The peasant gene is aggressive and possesses great creeping power. Just look at what is happening even now, before any merger of territory. My housing district is still pretty much okay, but further out on the perimeter, where there are no Individuals of No Fixed Abode or yuppies, and people walk to the shop in their slippers, the lifestyle is downright rural – I've seen it with my own eyes. Women plant parsley in the forecourts, chickens live in the citizens' loggias, and sometimes you can even find a horse in the garages.

The vegetative gene is very powerful! Even now in my courtyard the indefatigable Tajik yard keepers can't trim the grass fast enough, and that's in a place where it has been trampled by thousands of shoes and poisoned by smog. What will happen when invaders from the region bring in fresh, wild seeds and spores on their boots? We'll simply be lost in the tall grass, creepers will wind themselves round our legs and our lungs will choke on the oxygen.

We, pale urbanites, raised in hydroponic style on the shelves of the high-rises, will lose out in the battle for survival to creatures who draw their strength from the earth. We will be eliminated, and art and fundamental science will follow us into oblivion.

Such is the prospect that we face. But it's interesting to wonder what will come after us, how Moscow's new masters will behave. We know from the history of centuries past that when barbarians captured a city, they faced a dilemma: whether to burn it and carry away the loot or stay and live in it. Over time, they did both. But the trouble is that you can't carry away any booty from a modern city like Moscow – there's simply no point. Everything valuable in the city, all those fancy trappings of civilisation, only have value and power within its boundaries, within its own energy field, so to speak. Out in the region, where the barbarians are encamped, you can't even pick up FM radio. So the invaders will have no choice: they'll have to settle down on the asphalt. Of course, they'll defile the asphalt of Moscow and spit their sunflower seed husks all over it. But as for digging it up to plant vegetable patches – no way, they'll never manage that. And in addition, they'll have to get used to living in large agglomerations, and that's a really hard thing for regional savages to do. For all their genetic energy, they still lack what we have: an exoskeleton, a shell that provides protection against collisions with others of your own kind. They'll have to learn a lot of new things in Moscow, for instance, feigning indifference at the sight of a corpse they come across in the metro, exclaiming ‘wow!' when the occasion requires it and not gasping out loud at the sight of two men kissing passionately.

And that's not all. I must warn in particular all present and future female conquerors of the capital who may be hoping first to become a fully-fledged Muscovite, and then afterwards achieve a state of familial bliss that they must banish this idea from their head. Muscovites don't marry each other. You are supposed to catch your bridegroom immediately on arrival in the city, when you are still fresh tribal material from the provinces. Otherwise you can bid a fond farewell to your dreams of marriage, or simply of finding a good man. Those career ladies who claim to have made themselves must also accept responsibility for satisfying their own needs. I don't know why this happens, but it's a law you would do well to remember.

To give my argument some substance, let me take the example of my niece Lariska. Here you have an absolutely typical example of a successful self-made woman with an unsuccessful personal life. About ten years ago she turned up here in Moscow, young and fresh with ripe apple-cheeks. The moment Tamara laid eyes on her, she said:

‘You're just right for marrying, my girl.'

But Lariska merely snorted.

‘Nonsense, I could have got myself a husband back home in Vaskovo. That's not what I came to Moscow for.'

‘And just what did you come to Moscow for, my dear?' I asked her.

‘To do business,' Lariska replied imperturbably. ‘First I'll earn a bit of money and buy a flat here, and then I'll choose a husband.'

Tamara and I smiled, exchanged glances and offered our visitor tea. Lariska drank the tea, slurping loudly. Tamara watched her until she couldn't hold back any more and asked:

‘So what business are you planning to get into, Lariska?'

The slurping broke off.

‘That makes no difference. People in the know say money's just lying around in the street here, but you Muscovites are simply too lazy to pick it up.'

Immediately after tea, before she had even finished chewing her last sweet, Lariska got up from the table.

‘Well, I'll be off,' she said. ‘You know what they say, time is money.'

‘Off you run,' I said with a nod. ‘Pick some up in the street.'

This visit from my niece was merely a matter of family courtesy. Tamara and I obviously did not impress Lariska as people in the know – useful people – so she didn't show up at our place again for the next few years. However, by various roundabout routes the amazing information reached us that Lariska really had become a businesswoman. How she had managed to do this and what kind of business she had was something that my sources (mostly in Vaskovo) were at a loss to explain. ‘Damned if we know,' said the sources, with a shrug. ‘She imports something, maybe mobile phones from China, maybe amber from the Baltic. It's buying and selling anyway.'

As the years passed Lariska's business flourished and grew strong, expanding many times over. Lariska acquired her own registered firm, a rented office in some business centre or other and several full-time employees – every last one of them from back home in Vaskovo – although it still remained a mystery what the firm actually did. But those matters are basically beyond my comprehension; there are plenty of firms like that in Moscow, and it's not what my story's about. Let us assume that the firm simply picked up money in the street. Naturally, Lariska had also acquired a flat in Moscow. I wasn't invited to the housewarming, but I heard about it from my sources.

I was, however, able to confirm with my own eyes that she drove a very stylish automobile, because I saw the car when Lariska came to visit me. I was very surprised, not by the car, but by the fact of Lariska's visit, only the second in several years. But then, perhaps the visit came as a surprise to Lariska too – the point being that at that particular moment in time she was in a state of stress, and women in that kind of state, even Moscow businesswoman, are inclined to act impulsively. And it's when they start feeling the stress that they remember they have an uncle.

I won't attempt to conceal the fact that the passing years and the city had taken their toll on Lariska's appearance. The apple-cheeks were a thing of the past: she was now definitely a hundred-per-cent, forceful, rouged businesswoman who would never fall off her heels, no matter how high they were. Yet despite that it was obvious to me that she was emotionally tattered.

‘I just dropped in to see you,' she declared. ‘You're the only person in the whole of Moscow who's in any way close to me.'

How do you like that! Lariska and I had never been close, but her words melted my heart.

‘Of course, of course . . .' I responded, flustered. ‘Come in, let's sit and talk . . . unfortunately, Tamara's not here.'

‘Why, where is she?' Lariska laughed.

‘She left. We got divorced, you see.'

My visitor seemed strangely cheered by this news.

‘Well, well,' she said. ‘I come to see you and I feel better immediately. So even you're human, then!'

I tactfully didn't ask straight off what was weighing so heavily on her heart; I had guessed in any case that she wouldn't just blab the whole story straight out, and that proved to be right. Lariska happened to have a bottle of Hennessy and two large pomelos with her. Before we had even polished off half the bottle and decimated one of the fruits, I had already been briefed on Lariska's sad circumstances and, in particular, what had brought her to me.

It turned out that my niece's woes were all of an intimate nature. As a potential advisor that suited me just fine, because I would have been pretty useless as far as business matters were concerned. Lariska's problem was basically that, despite her business success, she had had no luck at all when it came to her ‘boyfriends' (as she called them in English) who behaved like macho slobs. Every man who was offered refuge at her brand-new, far-from-cheap flat soon started wandering round the place in his underpants and even breaking wind without the slightest embarrassment. It was quite impossible to bring these boyfriends down a peg, because at the first expression of dissatisfaction from Lariska, they simply gathered up their bits and pieces and disappeared. The latest of then, to whom I was indebted for the Hennessy, had even called Lariska a stupid fool as he left, which could not really be taken as anything but an insult.