Dialogue: A serious chat about truth in new Russia

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

Still suited and tied following a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry, and feeling pretty resplendent after days of unsmart casual gear at working sessions of the International Pen Congress, I strolled down a walking street in Moscow for perfunctory family shopping.

A T-shirt with the onion domes of a Russian Orthodox Church caught my eye. Was it the right size? The stallholder took it from its plastic packing and held it up.

"That's not a symbol of Russia," bridled a voice from beside me.

"I'm looking for a souvenir, not a symbol," I said.

"But when you wear it, people will think that's the spirit of Russia."

In a measured, teacherly way, she told me churches were dangerous places because religion was bad. When she said I would have seen the real spirit of Russia had I been there 20 years before, I thought I had a genuine, unreconstructed communist on my hands.

"Can I buy you a cup of coffee?"

She didn't answer, but talked on about how Russia was slipping into bad times. People had no respect for one another. "They're too selfish, too (fluttering her hands airily) ... too ..."

"Flippant? Frivolous?" I was trying to help her out but working outside her vocabulary. "Not serious enough?"

"Da, not serious enough. Da." I'd hit that nail on the head.

"What about coffee?" She still didn't answer. It was hot and, after a week, the atmospheric dryness had parched the inside of my nose, was making my lips crack and my eyes prickle so, wanting to get out of the sun, I gently took her elbow and steered her towards one of the cafes that lined the street. It was four o'clock. "I have 40 minutes. No more," she said, as though I'd asked.

She was in her late 30s, I guessed, slightly built, her clothes dowdy compared with most of the women strutting their minimalist spring stuff around her. Young men lolled shirtless against walls, their faces up, eyes shut, drinking in the warmth after a winter that had ended with snow only a week before.

A small cold sore blemished the middle of her upper lip. She was wan, kept running her fingers through her rusty hair, but the intensity of her eyes was attractive. At first she wanted to pay for the coffee, and then was coy when I insisted. I asked her if she was a communist and she said no, but "democracy is no good either because it is just business" and business made people narrow and selfish.

Well, what then, I asked. "The Truth is in the sky and in natural things." Too vague for me, I said. I thought Russia's problem might be that too many people for too long had thought they knew the truth. I said The Truth ponderously, the way she had.

Well, take her 15-year-old daughter and friends. In the new Russia, they were irresponsible, had no interest in anyone but themselves, were "not serious." I laughingly said that if she thought handling the selfishness of 15-year-old daughters was a difficulty peculiar to Russia she was gravely mistaken. For the first time she dropped her hectoring tone and we began to talk.

She told me her father was an engineer and the family had lived in Mongolia, North Korea and Hungary. She learned English at university and now taught Russian as a second language. She and her husband were separated; she had hoped for a sabbatical from the university but had been turned down. She was lonely and confused about the future.

Suddenly she said, "Do you have many friends?"

"Maybe five or six good ones. But thousands of acquaintances."

"Me too," she said incredulously. "Maybe only three friends. I thought you would have many more in the West."

She asked what I did and I told her that, among other things, I wrote a newspaper column.

Did I write The Truth? I said that was too big a thing to lasso with 800 words, that it was probably too big a thing for me in any number of words, but I tried to be honest and fair.

And so we chatted on. She seemed in no hurry now but then I looked at my watch and saw it was closing on six o'clock. She said: "I've missed two trains, I mustn't miss more." We got up and I walked her towards the Metro station. She turned to me square on, shook my hand and, nodding her head as she spoke, said: "Thank you for the coffee and for being nice to me. Sorry you're no good at The Truth." She smiled for the first time and with genuine warmth and humour.

"Oh dear, I've made you less serious," I said. She smiled even wider and we parted.

As I walked away, I said, "Dammit" to myself. I hadn't asked her name and so couldn't stash it away to tag such an interesting memory.