Read Back to Moscow for Free Online Page B

Turgenev’s femme fatale.
    So it was that, with a few warm clothes, a Russian–English dictionary and my copy of Chekhov, I left Amsterdam for good. Sitting on an Aeroflot plane bound for Sheremetyevo, ready to start
my post-Katya life, I found myself for the first time totally surrounded by real Russians. They looked like decent, honest people. I was glad to hear the unsmiling air hostess addressing me in
Russian, obviously mistaking me for one of her own. Fish or meat? I’d been studying the language for a few weeks with a book Katya had bought me, but the air hostess’s question –
which, granted, she’d posed while holding two trays of warm aeroplane food in her hands – was my first successful encounter with the Russian language in a non-textbook context.
    My confidence boosted, I began to look forward to my life in Moscow, my self-imposed exile, where I’d be enjoying, I thought, a rich academic and intellectual life. In the mental rendition
of this new chapter, I saw myself sitting for hours in the library, meeting other students, reading profound books. If I managed to make the right acquaintances, perhaps I’d also be invited
to a real dacha, where I’d drink endless cups of tea from an authentic samovar, and I’d discuss the meaning of life with bearded intellectuals who looked like Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy. A
peaceful life of study and contemplation, I thought, as I glanced through the window and observed our plane gliding above the clouds towards a vast darkening horizon.

9
    I WAS TOLD INTERNATIONAL students had been assigned language classes in the morning so that we could spend our afternoons researching in the library and
meeting our supervisors. I wasn’t quite keeping up with this arrangement.
    Most days, after my language class with Nadezhda Nikolaevna, I would grab lunch at the main stolovaya with Diego, then walk back to my room in Sektor E to catch a couple of hours’ sleep.
In the afternoons I would typically take the metro to the centre, where I would have arranged to meet a dyev on the platform of some monumental metro station.
    Walking around the streets of the centre, dyevs often insisted on holding hands and, as uncomfortable as this made me feel, I tried to oblige for as long as I could. They would take me to Red
Square and the Old Arbat and other touristy places that I had, by now, visited several times. But I appreciated their efforts, and I would follow them obediently, showing interest, asking
questions, saying how very interesno everything was. These walks were good for my Russian and, if the dyev I was meeting didn’t live with her family, after two or three encounters she would
invite me over to her place for a cup of tea.
    By mid-December, three months into my stay, I started to worry about my academic research. I could sense that Lyudmila Aleksandrovna, who I was meeting once a week to discuss my project, was
disappointed by my performance.
    ‘Martin, you are a very slow reader,’ she said once, while we were drinking tea and discussing Gogol in her office. She had a point, I thought, as I reclined cautiously on the wobbly
chair, careful not to spill any tea. I had read some of the articles she’d recommended. Three, perhaps two, from a list of twelve. I told her it was hard for me to read faster, as most of the
articles were in Russian. This was not entirely untrue.
    On another occasion, Lyudmila Aleksandrovna mentioned how this other research student she was supervising, a Pole or a Czech, was making so much progress. ‘He is so dedicated, such a hard
worker,’ she said.
    It was true that, as things turned out, I was dedicating less time to my research than I’d initially intended. Not that I didn’t appreciate the intellectual stimulation of academic
life, or Lyudmila Aleksandrovna’s mentorship. It was simply a question of scheduling. Free time was scarce in Moscow–my weeks came with a number of fixed appointments. Tuesday night was
of course