RuKsaK

The chinking of glasses is a perfect background noise in a bar. In all other places it’s a nervous sound, but in a bar it’s as reassuring and pleasuring to a drinker as a ringing cash register is to a miserly shopkeeper, or a baby’s first giggle is to young parents. Catch even the most meagre light slicing a little, sharp eclipse across the top of a beer or vodka glass, and for many Russians you’ve just transplanted joy.
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Even in this place, with it false strips of wood on the walls and generally appalling décor, the chattering song of glasses rubbing together settles you right in. The plastic tables, with garish napkin holders and horribly abused ash trays, are bought new every eighteen months or so, but the place hasn’t changed for years. Nobody ever notices if the waitress changes – surliness is pretty much eternal and homogeneous in these places. And, like the bricks in the walls, and the clunks of the tram rails, they play the cheap bars play their part in the shit called survival.
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Mikhail sits waiting for Pyotr in his well-ironed jumper and trousers. Creases down the front of his legs give him a sense of efficiency and order. It’s good because it prevents him from the full bliss of the bar, from relapsing, like he knows he could with Pyotr. Anyway, he’s drinking a beer like a soft drink – pouring it into the glass, waiting for it to settle, and when it has a narrow slice of a head he’ll sip some – not before. He nudges the glass a couple of times, out of boredom, and the need to position it in the centre of one of the plastic squares on the table. He knows he’ll be drunk tonight, so he may as well hang on for now. Until Pyotr arrives anyway.
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The beer is not even halfway down when Pyotr walks in twenty minutes later. Mikhail is happier than he thought he’d be to see him. Pyotr’s got that look of his like he’s just won the room in a fight or something. Whatever it is, it’s a confidence Mikhail never wears – not even at work where he should, and although he enjoys seeing it in Pyotr, in his quiet moments he’s envious of it.

Pyotr strides directly over, picks up Mikhail’s glass, turns it in the light, takes a sip which drains half of what’s left:
‘Mikhail.’ kneading his shoulder and turning the glass. ‘Let’s not waste time and money on this.’

There’s a grin across his face which takes too much effort to refuse and Mikhail is not sure he wants to anyway.
‘Okay, Pyotr – you fucker! Table vodka it is and I’ll get it.’
‘Good man – and some salted fish too, eh?’
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When Mikhail gets back with the bottle and the stopki the beer is done. Nothing is said until a vodka each is filled and the two fish are shared.
‘Well – to you Mikhail.’
‘No – to you Pyotr.’

They shoot the vodka into their guts.
‘Let’s do a vobla and then we’ll talk.’
‘Christ! Pyotr – one of those nights is it?’
‘Could be Mikhail – could well be.’
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A dry, salted fish is packed with stench. It seems the more you peel away at it, the bigger the smell gets. The stink gets into your fingerprints and you feel like you’ll smell of it for weeks. For the pair at the table it doesn’t matter at all though. Into the guts of the fish they work gentle like child archaeologists and tenderly strip out the thumbnail-size fish stomachs. They dip the stomachs carefully into the vodka glasses and fill them up.
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‘Come on!’

Pyotr and Mikhail gulp the stomachs down together and let out loud, macho gasps which are about a million years old.

‘Let’s talk now then.’
‘Yeah. Let’s talk Mikhail.’
‘How are you Pyotr?’
‘I’m good. Well, I’m ill, sort of and, you know.’
‘You need money?’
‘I need money Mikhail and I know, well…’
‘I’ll see what I can do as you know I will. Now, let’s talk about your fucking love life you bastard.’

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You can find Living and dying in Pete's - part 6 here.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Living and dying in Pete's - part 5