Nikolai, a "new Russian" doing well for himself in business, invited me to a family lunch. It was Saturday and he sent his car around to collect me. The car outside the hotel was a navy Daimler with dark glass, its sides splashed with filthy slush, like every other car in Moscow. Sergei, a man in his 30s, made sure I was comfortable. "Take me, take me, take what you want tonight," a breathless female singer sang on the radio. Nikolai was standing in the lobby of the Olympic Prenta Hotel when we arrived, beyond the revolving doors. Sergei smiled and nodded and I got out of the car.
Nikolai and I went downstairs to the dining-room where I was introduced to his wife, Elana, and the twins, Victor and Barbara. Elana was dressed in a tight, shortish black dress, black tights and boots, and the kids were wearing warm pullovers, jeans, and boots.
Old Favourites
A four-piece band banged old favourites and most of the tables were empty. It was a buffet lunch. We stacked our plates with salads and seafood and cold meats and drank champagne. After that there was a choice of main courses, most involving seafood, then a huge selection of desserts.
Sergei drove me and Nikolai and Victor back to the house. Elena drove on ahead with Barbara, in her red Western car, an Opel or something. Their apartment, in a 10-storey, pre-revolution building in central Moscow, had not been painted for a good few years and looked shabby.
A small battered lift brought us to the fifth floor. Elena said the hall and stairway had been black with filth when they first moved in. Since the revolution the building, owned by the state, had been housing families which shared apartments. Depending on the size of the apartment, three, four, five or six families were installed.
Now the new Russians were buying these families out. The tenants had the right to the part of the apartment they lived in, and so a new Russian had to bargain with them if they wanted them to leave. The normal price was to buy each family its own apartment further out in the city, furnish it, and perhaps throw in a few million roubles. An expensive business.
There had been three families living in Nikolai and Elena's apartment since the revolution.
The long hall had a new wooden floor, painted walls, new furniture and antiques. The sitting room had a leather settee and armchairs, and an impressive-looking sound system.
The twins' bedroom was crammed with toys, and they had their own entrance to the spacious bathroom with a bath, a shower and a sizeable sauna. The well equipped kitchen was large enough for the family to sit and eat breakfast there.
Beyond Nikolai and Elena's bedroom was a lovely small study Nikolai used for working at home, complete with personal computer, phones, fax and photocopier.
A Bit Small
"We used to think it was huge when we moved in," said Nikolai. "Now we think it's a bit small." He laughed. They hope one day to buy the apartment downstairs, and then have a duplex. Three families live in the apartment downstairs. Nikolai thought of an excuse to let me view the apartment. Down we went.
There were three bells. The first two brought no response but the third led to shuffling sounds inside. Each bell had a different sound.
A small, thin man with a stooped back opened the door and Nikolai said something about wanting to see the back stairs. The man welcomed us in.
It was pitch dark inside and the passageway was narrowed by items stacked along both walls. We followed the man down to the end of the hall. You could tell he didn't wash much.
He brought us into the kitchen, bright with natural light. There were bags and sacks and old tins and boxes everywhere, covering about half the floor space. I noticed a sack of potatoes, and another of what looked like old slices of white bread.
The man shifted some sacks and pulled open the door to the back stairs. Nikolai brought me back up to see how the door to his kitchen was blocked off. Then we went back down again. One of the families had what corresponded to Nikolai and Elena's sitting room. One had what was the kids' bedroom plus some of the space used for their bathroom, and the last had what was Nikolai and Elena's bedroom and study. The communal loo must have been small.
Shared Apartment
Back upstairs Elena served coffee and Russian chocolates. Nikolai told me that his family had grown up in a shared apartment like the one downstairs. It was difficult, family living on top of family. The loos could get filthy. Families queued up to use the stove for each meal. Two families might fall out and not speak for years. Families from different cultures - Russian, Armenian, Chechnyan - might be living in the small shared apartment.
"And during the Stalin years, of course, it was perfect. Everyone could spy and report on everyone else!"
Under a new law every family being housed must get an apartment all to themselves. Nikolai reckoned that about 5 per cent of Moscow's population still lived in shared apartments.
Then we all piled into the Daimler and Sergei drove us around a bit. We parked near the Kremlin and Nikolai hired a guide and we walked around inside the old walls. It was dusk, windy but not too cold. The Kremlin is full of barracks and cannons and palaces and churches.
The guide mentioned icons and miracles and saints and reminded me of the woman with the rosary beads who sings and prays on O'Connell Street.