Chapter One
Central Section B, Main Lobby: Zoya and Lida, Attendants
Push hard on the heavy, glazed glass outer door. It swings open dramatically, narrowly missing a buttress. You're in a small unadorned vestibule that traps the frigid outside air and provides a brush mat to scrape muddy ice off your boots. Turn to the right (access to the left is temporarily blocked) and pass through two more high doors, which also resist. Here, finally, is the cavernous main lobby-the domain of the building attendants.
Zoya and Lida sit authoritatively behind a wobbly table, lists of the residents and their telephone numbers close at hand, as well as an orange plastic Soviet-era radio. Various envelopes are arranged neatly before the women. Against the adjacent wall is a large worn-out divan, also orange, an incongruous presence in this immense and solemn hall.
"Lida Nikolayevna knows the names of all the children in the building. Me, I'm satisfied with the names of the dogs," jokes Zoya.
"That's because there are a lot fewer children than dogs," Lida clarifies, amused. She is petite and pretty, even at sixty-five years old. Her hair is pulled up in a perfectly coiffed chignon, but her knit pullover is a bit out of style.
"It dates back to the Soviet Union," she says apologetically. She's the sort of person who takes great care with all her tasks. With her spectacles, Zoya has the air of a strict grandmother. These two women team up to work a twenty-four-hour shift. There are eight building attendants in all in the Taganka vysotka, one man and seven women, of whom three live in the building.
The main lobby is the command center of the building. Through the partly open door of the dispatching department a lot of technical equipment can be seen. Someone monitors it continuously.
"That's the computer," explains a housekeeper in the process of dusting the hall.
The tall silhouette of a soldier wearing a camouflage uniform and leather boots appears in the hall. He shoots a quick glance and makes a barely perceptible nod at Zoya and Lida, sitting at s20the attendants' table. They know him. Though doing his military service, he also performs odd jobs for one of the residents. He is allowed to proceed toward the elevator without stopping, as is normally required.
The staff meeting in the dispatching center ends at around eleven o'clock. Today Nina Andreevna, seventy, is one of the housekeepers who clean the elevators. During the heyday of the new skyscraper, she served as a uniformed elevator operator. She used to sit on a jump seat and press the floor number buttons, a function that has not existed since the elevators were automated. Today's meeting has made her nervous.
"I'm seeing a computer for the first time in my life," she tells her two colleagues and friends. "No, no, not a computer with games, a computer that does everything on the keyboard that we used to do manually on the control panel. Well, it seemed to be very simple. They showed us what to push on, and how to make the mouse work! We're giving it a try anyway. I am as tired as an Olympic champion after the race."
She sets herself down behind the attendants' table.
"Are you familiar with these new gadgets? If I forget to press on a button, the computer tells me ... or rather, it writes to me-on the screen! Now that's progress."
She crumples and squeezes hard on the dust rag lying in her lap.
Seventy-five-year-old Zinaida Leontievna, the second elevator attendant, also hangs around to chat after the same computer training session. Her face has a defeated expression.
"I don't understand how that thing works. I'm going to have to quit this job. I just can't do it."
Lida gasps. Zinaida is one of the pillars of this vysotka, having worked in the skyscraper since it first opened fifty years ago. She greets everyone by their first name and patronym, their father's given name, the customary and respectful mode of address in Russian. This house is these women's universe. Zinaida even lodged in dormitories reserved for technical service personnel for forty-eight years, until she was finally granted her own two-room apartment in a low-rent suburban apartment building two years ago. A woman of small stature and round face, with large, coarse hands that handle the broom skillfully, Zinaida sweeps the floor day and night. She has carelessly pulled on a long smock, which is a bit bunched up over woolen hose. Her gray hair is cut straight and held back by a headband. The only vanity that she allows herself is a pair of earrings. Freckles are scattered across her drab face, brightened up by sparkling large blue-gray eyes. This morning, however, they have lost their twinkle. On the verge of tears, she casts a tender look at the old-fashioned instrument panel, with orderly levers and switches of white and red, which she will no longer be using.
The nostalgic reverie is broken when a young woman strides past them and toward the elevators at a determined pace. Lida and Zoya shout together: "Hey there, young lady! Which apartment are you going to?"
The young woman stops in her tracks, turns, and tells them. Lida pounces on the orange telephone to announce the visitor, who waits for permission to proceed.
By noontime, nothing is left on the hall table except copies of the Times of Eurasia, a publication of the Eurasian Party of Russia, a somewhat mysterious sociopolitical organization of emigrants from Central Asia. The bulletins are spread out like cookies and offered free of charge. Two young Caucasian-looking men arrive to present an invitation marked: "Hand Deliver in Person." It is addressed to the actress Klara Luchko. People from the Caucusus Mountains in the Muslim regions south of Russia are often discriminated against in Moscow and all the Christian, European areas of Russia, in part because of their darker skin and Muslim religion and terrorist activities related to their fight for independence from Russia. Lida decides not to let them wander around the residential floors and calls the actress to inform her that some messengers have arrived. The line is busy. Lida suggests that the two men wait on the orange divan. They will be allowed to go upstairs a little later.
Lida takes her tea break in a kitchenette off the entranceway.
"I wish I could close my eyes and open them to find we have returned to the Soviet Union. All countries have bad features. In the USSR we had to line up for everything, that's true, but the food wasn't so expensive!"
She sighs. After working for forty years, she has had to become a concierge here in order to survive. When can she hope to retire? The sad fact is that she has no one to count on but herself.
"Here contact with people is pleasant enough," she says.
Still, making the commute once every four days between Ironmongers Quay and her suburban apartment is very difficult. She would have much preferred to continue working at her previous employer, Gosstandard, a government bureaucracy in charge of certifying technical standards, where she spent thirty years. From the sixteen floors of the office tower this agency used to occupy, they're down to only one. The rest were rented by commercial firms at fair market prices.
"If only we had taken the best parts of the West, instead of choosing the worst!"
While Lida savors her cup of tea with toast and jam, Zoya brings some cookies just given to her by a resident.
There are fewer comings and goings now. The telephone is silent. An elderly resident joins the attendants, settling herself on one of the four chairs around their table. She removes two ten-ruble notes (worth about thirty-five cents each) from her pocket and gives them to Lida "for the month of February." Although the residents pay thirty rubles (about one dollar) per month for monitoring of the building, they also give an additional tip.
"Only twenty rubles, and she didn't give anything in January," Lida complains after the old lady leaves. "Even though her daughter is in Germany, she could still pay more!"
Twenty-three-year-old Natasha passes by. She pauses for a moment to chat with Zoya and Lida. A first cousin of Julia, wife of the singer-songwriter Willy Tokarev, whom we will meet later, Natasha recently arrived from Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, to look for work in the capital. She is a bookkeeper by training and has been working as the building's chief dispatcher since yesterday, keeping track of the maintenance staff as they handle repairs and scheduling tasks. The new computer doesn't intimidate her.
"So far, I don't know my way around the city at all, so I need to get used to it. I am here to make enough money to pay for the education of my younger brother, who wants to practice judo at a professional level. He seems to have the talent," she explains timidly. "In Krasnoyarsk, it is very difficult to find work, and even so, I would earn much less than here."
An unknown woman approaches them, lugging a bulky sack on wheels. One by one, she begins to remove women's tailored suits made of wool and cotton from her voluminous bag and spreads them out for display on the attendants' table. She's a Russian who chose to live in Riga (Latvia) when her husband, an ex-Soviet soldier formerly based in Estonia, found himself without work after the independence of that republic in 1991.
"Find me customers, please," she implores.
Her prices are fairly high: 2,500 rubles (about eighty-five dollars) for a suit, at least a thousand rubles more than Zoya's and Lida's monthly salary. Nevertheless, Lida cannot restrain herself from holding one of the skirts up against her waist. It's much too short, though the real problem is that Lida cannot afford it. Zoya, however, seems genuinely tempted.
Late in the afternoon, Sofia Perovskaya, president of the Owners' Association, informs the ladies that around 8:00 P.M. there will be a meeting of about fifty garage owners in the Veterans' Conference Room. Tenants or not, the attendees will have to pass before the professional scrutiny of Zoya and Lida.
Just as that gathering is getting started, the actor Anatoly Borisovich returns from a concert.
"May I use your telephone for a moment?" he asks them timidly.
Zoya and Lida know he cannot make some calls from his apartment because his wife watches him so closely. Lida is used to his asking, which happens frequently.
"I pity Anatoly Borisovich. His wife is really nasty." Lida lets him make his call.
Florian Fenner, a German man who lives on the ninth floor, arrives with a box of Swiss chocolates in his hand and offers it to the delighted guardians.
"Are they really better than Russian chocolates?" Lida asks, opening the box to find out for herself.
An American resident stops by to warn the ladies that he will be hosting a party in his apartment this evening. He hopes that his guests will be allowed to pass through. He massacres the Russian language and has difficulty understanding Lida and Zoya's reply that there will not be any problem. Lida is amused by his grammatical stumbles.
A messenger girl delivers an envelope and sits down to gossip for a moment. Lida asks what her monthly salary is for this kind of work.
"One hundred dollars," she responds. Lida's face assumes a dreamy look.
Zoya has already gone to lie down in the small sleeping quarters near their workstation. Following their arrangement, she rests from 10:00 P.M. to 3:00 A.M.; then she takes over from Lida. The woman from Riga comes back, carrying suits under her arms.
Zoya wakes up. She pulls out a pair of dressy shoes and the key to the Concorde Room, formerly an elegant ballroom, now used for meetings and special functions. Equipped with a mirror, it will serve as a dressing room. Lida stays at her post, though she is dying to watch Zoya try on her first suit.
A few minutes later, Zoya steps out a new woman. The dark blue skirt fits as if custom-made for her, and although her white collar is frayed, she still looks rather elegant. She faces Lida and waits for her opinion.
Lida is speechless, which Zoya takes as a compliment. She really wants this outfit, which becomes her more than it would the others. Would the lady from Riga let her borrow the blue suit so she could show it to her husband?
"Yes, yes, I'll come back tomorrow." She's sure of a sale.
Just then, a tenant and her twenty-two-year-old daughter pass by. A second opinion! They huddle together in front of the mirror. In spite of the late hour and public setting, the central concourse has been transformed into a boutique atmosphere.
Lida goes back to her lonely night watch.
Chapter Two
Wing VK, Entryway 9: Sofia Perovskaya, President Of The Owners' Association
She is one of the vysotka's veterans, queen of the old comrades. In a bulky green pullover sweater and matching rabbit fur hat, which she is never without, Sofia Perovskaya, former engineer, is the great-grandniece and namesake of a member of the revolutionary committee that made the decision to assassinate Czar Alexander III and was executed for it. She recalls the words of her father, who, until the advent of perestroika, had occupied the post of vice president of Gosplan of the "Soviet Socialist Federal Republic of Russia," as she still makes a point of calling it. Under Communist Party guidance, the state planning committee, Gosplan (acronym for Gosudarstvennyy Planovy Komitet), was primarily responsible for creating and monitoring the Soviet Union's economic plans.
"He always repeated: First the social need, then the private interests. Today's leaders of Russia have long since tossed this slogan into the trash heap."
Sofia Perovskaya, still a dedicated Communist, remains faithful to those principles.
Copyright © 2002 by Librairie Arthème Fayard
