IDON’T WANT TO TALK about them. I want to tell you about myself. I don’t like to be defined by my nationality. I am a citizen of the world. A cosmopolitan, like this cocktail. Could I get another one? I am a hotel reviewer. You know, those homes away from home? That’s what I write about. And let me tell you, a hotel room is indeed my real home. It’s in my own apartment that I always feel like I’m in the most transitory of all guest houses.
You hate hotels? Do you think all hotels are the same? Wrong. You should come with me next time I am on assignment. By the way, I’m kind of brilliant at what I do. Seriously. It’s not just the alcohol talking. Listen. I check in. I look around as carefully as a crime scene investigator. What’s the view from the window? Red rooftops, or perhaps a mountain, or a poplar alley. And the noise? Sirens blaring, cars honking, birds singing in the poplar crown. Are the walls thick? Does the room smell? Are the bed sheets crisp? How many tea bags and packets of instant coffee? Will I be happy here, will I be miserable, will I have a good night’s sleep? What will I dream of in this room, a room of many dreams and many guests?
The immaculate cleanliness of a good hotel room: a clean slate, a new beginning. My life consists of discrete and temporary lives, each bearing its own name: La Mamounia, Le Chateau Frontenac, Claridge’s. You’re laughing? I do wax poetic in my reviews. What do you want? It’s my life’s calling.
More vodka, less juice. No worries, I’m still steady on my feet. That’s the only Russian thing about me. As I said before, of my country I have little to say: I’m not one of them. Never thought that I belonged. So please don’t accuse me of anything now. I have nothing to answer for. My family… maybe they do. My family goes nuts watching telly. Ma and Dad curse the decadent West and ask when I will finally marry. Whenever I went home, I couldn’t wait to be back on the road, back to my lovely hotel rooms.
Shall I tell you of all the men I took to these rooms? My transitory loves, my strangers. Antoine, who took off his glasses and unbuttoned his shirt in La Louisiane. Antoine loved to quote Dostoyevsky, but I always put my finger to his lips. I didn’t want to be reduced to the accident of my birth in a country that, as I said, was barely mine. What pride can you take in something you had nothing to do with? What responsibility can you assume for something that had nothing to do with you?
If it were up to me, I’d rather be Italian. The sun, the smell of cypress, the taste of gelato. Luigi, graceful as a panther. I met him in Piazza di Spagna, and we went to the Hotel Nazionale. Then I remember that other hotel, on the outskirts of Naples, where the prude receptionist didn’t want to let Federico, the young man I had met on the beach, visit me, suspecting we were up to no good (as we were). The stripy sunlight from the wooden blinds on the stone floor, and the vast blue Tyrrhenian Sea behind the shutters.
Ravi, dark eyes shadowed by long lashes, Ravi of strong arms and slender hips. The flight of steps down to the Ganges. After lovemaking, we watched cremations on the shore. The burning camphor and the pungent water smell. On a pyre, the white-shrouded corpse raised its arms like a boxer, its muscles contracted from flames. I, too, wanted to be consumed by something bigger than me: a burning love or an ardent faith. I didn’t let Ravi leave until late the next morning.
Make me another drink. No more Cointreau? This wouldn’t have happened in a Moscow bar. Don’t mind me saying this. I do like it here in Kazakhstan. Just make me a vodka lime then. We can continue drinking upstairs when you close the bar. I’d appreciate the company. The world is a lonely place right now.
It used to be enough to just walk past a man and throw him a furtive look. Now I must drag myself to a bar and down a few drinks before I can persuade a balding man to come with me. But, until February, life was still beautiful, life was still generous to me.
Let me tell you about my last assignment. Bucharest was the ultimate stop before everything went to the dogs. The bar at the Intercontinental was high up, and I could watch dusk descend on the city. Florin was younger than me, and, for the first time, I had to pick up the tab whenever we went out. It made me feel an affinity with that city, half-ruined yet still beautiful in the twilight. The gulls were screaming their mournful mew-mew. It rained and snowed, but I stayed for almost a week. It was still possible to be happy.
I wonder if my family back home were watching the state TV with the same thirst and desire as I watched my young lover.
One night, having trudged after Florin to a poky, smoke-filled bar, I spent an hour with an old man who kept showing me his pictures of Bucharest: overgrown courtyards, stucco walls covered with cracks, tall buildings with big clocks that had stopped in the last century, caryatids that had lost faces. He’d made pictures of Bucharest over dozens of years. He said he knew everything about this city, yet he kept discovering new details every day. It made me think that I could have loved just one man, or just one town, all these years. I would have known everything about him by now, and I would still not know him enough. Yes, I could have lived like that. But how much more painful it would have been to finally take leave.
When I flew home, my cousin called to say that we had attacked Ukraine. I looked out of my window and saw the cars, the zoo, and the brick wall of an administrative building. I thought, ‘we attacked,’ and corrected myself: ‘they attacked.’ The government attacked, not I. I didn’t want it. I am against it. I am leaving, in fact. I don’t even belong in Russia; I am a citizen of the world.
How can the war be my fault? I never read their newspapers, I never listened to the state radio, I never watched their ridiculous TV. I even joined the protests a few times. I just wasn’t there often. I escaped as much as I could. Home was a daft place full of daft people who wanted the Soviet Union back. If I hadn’t been away most of the time, I would have become one of them. No, I never harmed anybody. If you are looking for whom to blame, go after the actual killers, after the army or the government, but not after a bystander like me.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. It’s not about you. It was just a general observation. Forget it. Let’s talk about travels, let’s talk about love. Tell me I’m beautiful. Tonight, perched on this barstool with a drink in my hand, I watch my reflection in your pupils, and I ask myself: who am I? Yes, Russia is going down like a gigantic radioactive vessel whose suicidal pilot is off course, and whose syphilitic crew is cheering. Am I just a passenger, still drunk after an all-night orgy, still disbelieving, still hoping for salvation? When I see my reflection in the bar mirror, I have these thoughts, you know… Perhaps it was wrong of me to want to escape so much: my country, my family, a man I could have called my own. Because without me, they went wrong, so wrong: they went bad. l have to live with this thought. I always wanted freedom, and love, and the walks through strange towns, and the unknown smells of streets and seas, and the chance encounters in hotels, and the random confessions at a bar counters. I wanted so much life - not reflection nor responsibility, not thinking of right and wrong. I left all that to others, and they let it all turn to shit. But what is left for me now that I cannot turn back the time? I still have these olives in front of me. This uncomfortable bar stool. The howling wind behind the window. And, if I’m lucky tonight, the love of the green-eyed barman who’s poring me the last drink.
The immaculate cleanliness of a good hotel room: a clean slate, a new beginning. My life consists of discrete and temporary lives, each bearing its own name: La Mamounia, Le Chateau Frontenac, Claridge’s. You’re laughing? I do wax poetic in my reviews. What do you want? It’s my life’s calling.
More vodka, less juice. No worries, I’m still steady on my feet. That’s the only Russian thing about me. As I said before, of my country I have little to say: I’m not one of them. Never thought that I belonged. So please don’t accuse me of anything now. I have nothing to answer for. My family… maybe they do. My family goes nuts watching telly. Ma and Dad curse the decadent West and ask when I will finally marry. Whenever I went home, I couldn’t wait to be back on the road, back to my lovely hotel rooms.
Shall I tell you of all the men I took to these rooms? My transitory loves, my strangers. Antoine, who took off his glasses and unbuttoned his shirt in La Louisiane. Antoine loved to quote Dostoyevsky, but I always put my finger to his lips. I didn’t want to be reduced to the accident of my birth in a country that, as I said, was barely mine. What pride can you take in something you had nothing to do with? What responsibility can you assume for something that had nothing to do with you?
If it were up to me, I’d rather be Italian. The sun, the smell of cypress, the taste of gelato. Luigi, graceful as a panther. I met him in Piazza di Spagna, and we went to the Hotel Nazionale. Then I remember that other hotel, on the outskirts of Naples, where the prude receptionist didn’t want to let Federico, the young man I had met on the beach, visit me, suspecting we were up to no good (as we were). The stripy sunlight from the wooden blinds on the stone floor, and the vast blue Tyrrhenian Sea behind the shutters.
Ravi, dark eyes shadowed by long lashes, Ravi of strong arms and slender hips. The flight of steps down to the Ganges. After lovemaking, we watched cremations on the shore. The burning camphor and the pungent water smell. On a pyre, the white-shrouded corpse raised its arms like a boxer, its muscles contracted from flames. I, too, wanted to be consumed by something bigger than me: a burning love or an ardent faith. I didn’t let Ravi leave until late the next morning.
Make me another drink. No more Cointreau? This wouldn’t have happened in a Moscow bar. Don’t mind me saying this. I do like it here in Kazakhstan. Just make me a vodka lime then. We can continue drinking upstairs when you close the bar. I’d appreciate the company. The world is a lonely place right now.
It used to be enough to just walk past a man and throw him a furtive look. Now I must drag myself to a bar and down a few drinks before I can persuade a balding man to come with me. But, until February, life was still beautiful, life was still generous to me.
Let me tell you about my last assignment. Bucharest was the ultimate stop before everything went to the dogs. The bar at the Intercontinental was high up, and I could watch dusk descend on the city. Florin was younger than me, and, for the first time, I had to pick up the tab whenever we went out. It made me feel an affinity with that city, half-ruined yet still beautiful in the twilight. The gulls were screaming their mournful mew-mew. It rained and snowed, but I stayed for almost a week. It was still possible to be happy.
I wonder if my family back home were watching the state TV with the same thirst and desire as I watched my young lover.
One night, having trudged after Florin to a poky, smoke-filled bar, I spent an hour with an old man who kept showing me his pictures of Bucharest: overgrown courtyards, stucco walls covered with cracks, tall buildings with big clocks that had stopped in the last century, caryatids that had lost faces. He’d made pictures of Bucharest over dozens of years. He said he knew everything about this city, yet he kept discovering new details every day. It made me think that I could have loved just one man, or just one town, all these years. I would have known everything about him by now, and I would still not know him enough. Yes, I could have lived like that. But how much more painful it would have been to finally take leave.
When I flew home, my cousin called to say that we had attacked Ukraine. I looked out of my window and saw the cars, the zoo, and the brick wall of an administrative building. I thought, ‘we attacked,’ and corrected myself: ‘they attacked.’ The government attacked, not I. I didn’t want it. I am against it. I am leaving, in fact. I don’t even belong in Russia; I am a citizen of the world.
How can the war be my fault? I never read their newspapers, I never listened to the state radio, I never watched their ridiculous TV. I even joined the protests a few times. I just wasn’t there often. I escaped as much as I could. Home was a daft place full of daft people who wanted the Soviet Union back. If I hadn’t been away most of the time, I would have become one of them. No, I never harmed anybody. If you are looking for whom to blame, go after the actual killers, after the army or the government, but not after a bystander like me.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. It’s not about you. It was just a general observation. Forget it. Let’s talk about travels, let’s talk about love. Tell me I’m beautiful. Tonight, perched on this barstool with a drink in my hand, I watch my reflection in your pupils, and I ask myself: who am I? Yes, Russia is going down like a gigantic radioactive vessel whose suicidal pilot is off course, and whose syphilitic crew is cheering. Am I just a passenger, still drunk after an all-night orgy, still disbelieving, still hoping for salvation? When I see my reflection in the bar mirror, I have these thoughts, you know… Perhaps it was wrong of me to want to escape so much: my country, my family, a man I could have called my own. Because without me, they went wrong, so wrong: they went bad. l have to live with this thought. I always wanted freedom, and love, and the walks through strange towns, and the unknown smells of streets and seas, and the chance encounters in hotels, and the random confessions at a bar counters. I wanted so much life - not reflection nor responsibility, not thinking of right and wrong. I left all that to others, and they let it all turn to shit. But what is left for me now that I cannot turn back the time? I still have these olives in front of me. This uncomfortable bar stool. The howling wind behind the window. And, if I’m lucky tonight, the love of the green-eyed barman who’s poring me the last drink.
Maria Rybakova has lived in Russia, Germany, United States, China, Thailand, Romania, Albania, and is currently based in Kazakhstan, where she teaches literature at Nazarbayev University. She writes in Russian and English. Her books are translated into French, Spanish, German and Romanian. Her most recent collection, Quaternity: Four Novellas From the Carpathians, came out in 2021 with the Ibidem Press.
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