himself that could be comfortable here. He looked around again. Searching the faces. ‘Can you see Petrov? Is he here yet?’
‘No, but it’s still early.’
A waiter brought a bottle of champagne and two glasses. Lom watched him uncork and pour.
‘Relax,’ said Vishnik. ‘Enjoy the evening.’
Lom’s eyes were adjusting to the rich, dim redness of the Marmot’s. The walls were crimson plush and hung with vast gilded mirrors that made the room seem larger than it was. Tables crowded one another in a horseshoe around a central space where dancers moved between people standing in noisy, excitable groups. At the back of the room was a small stage, its heavy curtains closed, and in one corner, musicians played instruments of the new music. Lom recognised some of them: a heckelphone, a lupophone, a bandonion, a glasschord. Others he couldn’t identify. He sipped at the champagne and winced. It was thick, with a metallic perfume.
He’d expected something different of the Crimson Marmot: an art gallery, perhaps, with intense talk and samovars. There was art here, though. Wild, angular sketches on the walls. A larger-than-life humanesque manikin hanging from the ceiling, dressed as a soldier with the head of a bear. A figure, crouched high in the corner, with eight limbs and six pairs of woman’s breasts. Lom realised it was meant to be an angel. It was made out of animal bones, old shoes, leather straps and rubbish. Candles burned in its eyes and a scrawled placard hung from its neck. Motherland. Beneath it, someone had pinned a notice to the wall.
ART IS DEBT! LONG LIFE TO THE MEAT MACHINE ART OF THE FORBAT!
With a crash of drums, the musicians fell silent and the curtain was drawn aside to reveal the small stage. A red banner unfurled. The Neo-emotional Cabaret. An ironic cheer went around the room, and a smattering of applause. Vishnik leaned across to Lom.
‘You’ll like this. This is different. This is new. This is fucking good.’
On the stage a man was crouching inside a large wooden crate, shouting nonsense words into a tube connected to a megaphone on top of the crate. ‘Zaum! Zaum! Baba-zaum!’ he chanted. The musicians hacked away with atonal enthusiasm. Lom caught some longer phrases of almost-coherent verse.
Wake up, you scoundrel self-abusers!
Materialists! Bread eaters! Mirgorod is a cliff –
bare snow in banked-up drifts – daybreak.
Winter’s late dawn – worn out – shivering –
descends the river like smallpox.
Lom was relieved when it finished. The curtain closed and the band struck up again. Pink spotlights lit the dance floor. Lom hadn’t noticed the dancer enter, but she was there. Her breasts were bare and she wore a long flickering skirt, divided to give her legs room for movement. The dancer’s body was thin and muscular, her breasts small and narrow, her black hair cut short, and she danced fast and thoughtlessly, shouting and jerking to the music, advancing towards the audience and then retreating with a shrug. Pleasing herself. Not trying. Just doing.
And then, to cheers and applause, she was gone. Most of the band stood up and went to the bar, leaving the glasschord player alone to unwind some kind of drifting, song-like melody.
Vishnik took him by the arm and whispered in his ear, ‘Petrov’s come. At the table by the bar. The green shirt.’
Lom looked across to where a group of men were listening to a large bearded fellow talking loudly, his wet red mouth working, banging the table with his fist to punctuate his periods. Petrov was a silent bundle of energy in a corner seat, staring with obvious resentment at the talker. Lom studied him carefully. He was all wild, dark curly hair, a long sharp nose and dark eyes, wide and round, full of passionate need and intelligence and a crazed, intent sort of anger. His lips, pressed tight together, were full and almost bruised-looking. He looked as if someone had punched him and he was trying not to cry. When he leaned back in his chair, as if he was trying to get further away from the bearded shouter, his loose green shirt gaped open halfway to his waist, revealing the white, almost skeletal bone structure of his upper chest.
‘Take me over, can you?’ said Lom. ‘I want to talk to him.’
Vishnik picked up the half-empty champagne bottle and the glasses and went across. Lom followed. Some of the men at the table nodded. The beard ignored them. So did Petrov.
‘The city as a whole,’ Beard was saying in a deep,