Neat Vodka [antikvár]

PrologueMoscow 1989There was a do at Dom Literatov, the literary house. I remember that much. Some author, Limonov maybe, was launching his book and all the foreigners with pretensions to speaking Russian or knowing anything about anything were going. I wore a short, tight, black velvet dress with puffed sleeves that dropped off my shoulders. My landlady, Zinaida Petrovna, sewed me into it, pins sticking out of her puckered mouth, a greasy apron wrapped around her enormous middle.'Real velvet,' she muttered into the pins. 'Real velvet.' She stroked my back and looked as though she might actually cry. It was snowing from the heavy grey sky and the old men queuing up at the beer cellar in our courtyard wore the flaps of their shapkas down, raw red hands clutching their huge empty jars. There was one man with a swollen purple face, weeping red eyes and a running nose that dripped into his beard who always shuffled his way towards the front of the queue with a particular desolation -not chatting to the others, not even looking up.'His mother loved him,' Dimitri used to say. I wasn't so sure.1