Russian Stewardesses and Tennis Players

Desmond was a weird guy. He had retired to a life of genteel poverty in a building two blocks from the Chinese Theater in the heart of Hollywood. And except for periodic visits to the supermarket for supplies, he never left the house. Not even to take his trash to a dark room not even twenty paces from his apartment. He would keep the plastic bags of trash in a corner of the living room until the smell became unbearable, and then raise his skinny a*s from the worn moss green felt sofa near the only window of the apartment. And so, furiously, slowly he would count the twenty steps to the trash area to get rid of the remains of frozen food and the empty bottles of Wild Turkey he consumed daily. He knew that the unbranded milk he bought from his neighbor, a Chinese guy with ugly and ridiculous dentures, was full of streptococcus, bacteria that multiplied like rabbits, but this was the least of it. The stuff came in grimy cartons from a small Mexican farm in West Covina, but Des didn’t care.

He liked jazz, Charles Bukowski, and appreciated, though with a certain distain, various acerbic poems of Dorothy Parker, as well as a few pre-Revolutionary Russian writers. He loved the piano music of Thelonious Monk. He had, finally retired at the age of sixty-two after four decades of the Hollywood rat race, but unlike old Bukowski who had been a letter carrier, Des had provided routine bureaucratic services. He had a health plan but had never had a check-up in his life in spite of his constant diet of bourbon and Marlboros. His TV, faded from receiving so many black and white films and women’s tennis championships, sometimes left the air and only worked again after he would unplug it and reset the signal, which was accompanied by a rude noise. The TV would go out for a few seconds and recover trembling.

Because of the Wimbledon and Roland Garros tournaments, he had developed a mad desire for Russian women tennis players, and this ended up being the only thing that would take him out of the constant state of lethargy and alienation in which he lived. He watched every game as if it were a porno film. He would sleep afterwards wanting to be visited by one of these goddesses in impeccably white short skirts.

But in spite of all his eccentricities, he was valued in the neighborhood for his culture, good manners and ill humor. He had been almost handsome in his youth, except for the early acquisition of a beer belly and the lack of even a spark of vanity. His long, unkempt hair like a hippy, eyes with a rare bluish cast, clothes that seemed many sized too large, and a beard, all went to characterize him as an interesting and eccentric character. He had had a variety of loves in his life, but never could make a relationship last, liking too much the solitude of his apartment jammed with books, tennis magazines, and jazz cd’s all over the living room, kitchen and bathroom. All this confusion jibed well with his philosophy of life.

Two months before his sixty-third birthday, and possibly influenced by what he had seen on TV, he decided he had to get to know Russia. He wanted to walk the streets of Moscow, visit historical monuments, admire the beautiful soviet ladies, and get drunk on vodka. He had heard that the best brands were sold dirt cheap over there. Des imagined himself in a seat in an Aeroflot plane tossing back shots of Stoli served with charm and sensuality by look-alikes of Maria Sharapova, Vera Svonereva and Anna Kornikova. He began to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, with its complicated and difficult to pronounce letters, and in a short time he was reading some actual words with difficulty and enthusiasm. He analyzed some words calmly and shortly was able to remember simple sentences that a tourist might know"greetings, basic questions, and thanks.

He soon discovered that when one referred to the most famous ballet company in the world, one said “Balshoi” with an “a” and not “Bolshoi” with an “o.” The world Bolshoi meant big in other contexts but in this case, did not refer to a big theater. The pronunciation changes, because, grammatically, the accented vowels at the end, as in “Bolshoi,” change the sound pf the preceding vowel from “o” to “a.” It was an unbelievable experience and after a few weeks, Des had a vocabulary of more than 100 words. Nasdarovia (to your health), spasibo (thank you), and Za vas (used after the toast, meaning “to you!”) was the first Russian expressions he practiced in a loud voice when he was drunk, and with a certain charm twisting his mouth in front of the bathroom mirror.

After discovering he had fallen in love with this beautiful language rich in idiomatic expressions, he began to study like a madman during the daylight hours, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. When his neighbors, a Korean couple, banged on the wall in the middle of the night, begging him to stop, he would cry out izvinite (sorry!), further enraging the neighbors who couldn’t abide anymore his practicing his new language. Now the better part of each day was filled with research and reading about Russians and their customs and passions; but the night, that was for watching TV, hunting for a tennis tournament always in the company of his friend Stolichnaya, or the no less beloved Kentucky Wild Turkey. But for Desmond life in Los Angeles had lost its flavor. Not that before he had been in love with the city or with the American way of life, just that since retirement he had opted for a solitary existence, one without surprises in his cell in an old building four blocks from Hollywood. But now he was so excited about the prospect of this adventure, that he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this way. He decided to spend the eleventh of November, his birthday, and that of Dostoievsky, in Moscow, birth city of his favorite writer. He didn’t care that at that time of year, the temperature would be about minus twenty Celsius, or he was still in the crawling stage in his understanding of the Russian language; for him, it was all good.

Aeroflot flight 831 departing November 10 for Moscow, left at seven a.m. and Paul Desmond was aboard. Fifteen minutes after takeoff he ordered his first glass of Stoli and never looked back. Dazzled immediately by the beauty and charm of the Russian stewardesses, he began to use the new language budding in his head like orchids in a hothouse. In his bag were the basic Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, and some tourist guides.  After trying Russian food for the first time, even at an altitude of ten thousand meters, he immersed himself in his reading, burning the hours into the early morning without even noticing. He learned that the country he was soon to know was the biggest in the world, occupying more than seventeen million square kilometers, more than twice the size of Brazil or the USA. The distances from one end to the other were immense, more than nine thousand kilometers east to west and four thousand south to north. Russia was washed by a dozen seas and the huge land mass had eleven time zones, in which Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev were the most important.

He intended to know them all. After thirteen hours in the air, Des landed at Domodedovo International Airport, and still surprised by the speed of his processing by customs and immigration, left and traveled the twenty-two kilometers by taxi from the airport to the city in a fog of false calm and apathy. It had snowed a lot the night before, but around noon the sun shone brightly, provoking an entrancing luminosity in spite of it being thirty below zero.

It was his birthday, and strangely on this date, he was always in a good mood. His conversation with the taxi driver was short and sweet. Sergei gave him some good tips, among which, for an unforgettable night out, also included the address of Metelitsa, a local nightspot. He left his passenger in front of the hotel at the very moment when the city tour bus was pulling in. There was only time to leave the luggage in the lobby and join a group of tourists anxious to discover Moscow.

Des gaped in front of the oriental towers like turbans, mushrooms, and meringues of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square. Its construction had been ordered by Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the conquest of Canton, and Des felt terrible when the guide explained that after construction was complete, Ivan had ordered the architect’s eyes torn out so he wouldn’t be able to design another as good. Ivan hadn’t had that name for nothing.

He realized that during the winter, days like this were common, the sun blazing forth with a clear light, clean and golden, reflecting the monuments, bringing forth their colors and shapes like a huge studio under an open sky. At the end of the day, he returned to his hotel for a short rest, and to shower and change clothes. Before night had fallen he was pounding the pavement looking for fun and for the much-talked-about club, overwhelmed by a desire to explore the nightlife. Walking the streets of Moscow thousands of kilometers from his native land, Des was guided only by instinct, trying to find his way in the crowded streets completely covered with snow, their colors infinitely multiplied in tones of gray under an absolutely discreet sky, judging all the best of possible worlds. The signs with their Cyrillic lettering added to the fun and charm of that city which he had just begun to appreciate.

It was nine o’clock exactly when he entered the Metelitsa, the same time the band began to play “Round Midnight”, his favorite piece by Thelonious Monk. A funky bass player led the rhythm section in the style of Stanley Clarke, and the group played with drive and clarity. When the guitar player got on a table and played Elvis Costello’s “Almost Blue,” it brought down the house. With great difficulty he navigated the enthusiastic crowd, which was drinking, smoking and talking loudly. Finally, he got to the bar, ordered a drink and, as he lit a cigarette, thought that it would be impossible to beat this even in LA. This was really his thing. Sometimes the good got even better and it looked like this was really his lucky night, simply to be in the right place at the right time.

The bartender of the Metelitsa didn’t seem to be getting the message, and since he was dying of thirst, he grabbed the arm of one of the waitresses passing rapidly among the tables, dodging people, balancing huge trays of empty glasses and bottles. When she turned and their eyes met, it was a defining and magic moment. She looked at him with such tenderness that at that moment Des wanted to kiss her on the mouth, plumb her secrets, drag her to his bed behind Red Square, and spend the night together.

She found a way to get off early, and they went to sit at a quiet table near an interior garden a few meters from the stage. Another waitress kept their glasses filled with a professional flair, and the conversation rolled on into the small hours of the morning. Paulina Kozerski in her youth had been an educated woman with good manners, even somewhat charismatic, but all that was to change radically. After falling in love with a Czech musician she abandoned her career as an actress in independent films and went to live with him in Prague. She began to smoke and drink too much, spending nights which became months of abandon, which affected her looks, but in spite of everything, she remained a beautiful woman. Antonin was a sweet guy and a confirmed heroin addict. Paulina left him a while later and returned to Moscow in a fog of despair and sadness confused even regarding her own existence.

Des was the right guy to change all that. At the evening’s end, they said goodbye with a passionate kiss, exchanged telephone numbers and agree to meet again. The American left the bar so happy that he scooped up the last matrioskas the saleslady had. These were wooden dolls, each with a smaller doll hidden inside until the last was tiny. He went home to sleep.

In the morning he and Paulina had coffee together and were never again apart. She went with him to Kiev and St. Petersburg, and as time passed they seemed to be in the grip of an uncontrollable passion. One day when they checked they found forty days had passed and it was Christmas Eve. Normally acerbic and withdrawn, on his first Christmas in Moscow, Desmond sent cards to the few friends he had left in LA with upbeat messages all ending with the phrase “From Russia with Love.” Finally having converted his retirement funds from dollars to rubles, he saw that it was enough to live a life similar to the one he had in Los Angeles, and decided to stay with the waitress who knew one of the most beautiful capitals of Eastern Europe. Paulina had played tennis in her youth, and so for better or worse, Des ended up living with a Russian tennis player in Moscow.