On becoming Russian.

At first I was a foreigner and everyone could see it, as I can see it with one glance at the Europeans and Americans walking around the city today. There’s a kind of openness to then, a sort of naïve and wide eyed fascination with this new world they find themselves in.  It can’t last: it is a terrible strategy for anyone who wants to exist in Moscow without going crazy, but for the duration of a holiday or business trip that hardly matters. Longer term you have to build the shell that the Russians have built, but it’s hard to do consciously, for apart from not smiling you struggle to work out how exactly it is constructed.

They don’t seem drastically different: they are European looking, well proportioned people, well dressed and generally good looking and, yet, there is a wall of strengthened glass all around each one.

  The first time I was mistaken for a Russian was in St Petersburg. Watching a group of communist pensioners rail against Yeltsin outside the Hermitage I noticed suddenly that one old Bab had spotted me and was apparently angered by my existence. She wheeled away from the flock and hobbled over to where I was standing with my wife and shouted in a withering tone: “Russia is starving because YOU have eaten all the food!” Then she hobbled off. I can only assume she had mistaken me for a new Russian, the nouveau riche of the late 90s. The alternative: that she was convinced the food shortages were the result of greedy Europeans raiding Mother Russia’s cabbage fields by night, seemed, and seems, unlikely. Either way, it was a one off occurrence and had little significance beyond comedy anecdote value.

And then I grew a beard and everything changed. Only a short beard but it had made me Russian and what was worse it had made me into a kind and helpful Russian: the very worst kind. I would look into a mirror and see, as I still do, an overweight, slightly thuggish looking man with close cropped hair and fairly cold eyes. What the population of Moscow was seeing, however, was a kind hearted, benevolent, almost Christ like figure who had come out into the streets with the sole purpose of helping them solve their problems. This guy knew where the metro was, had every street address in the city at his fingertips and carried extra supplies of cigarettes and money to hand out to those in need. They would walk through a crowd of 1000 real Russians to get to me: it was unnerving.

 What made it worse was that when they had asked their questions and I began to answer, they would hear the accent and then back off saying: “Aga, sorry, sorry” in their broken English. And for a while I would say, in serviceable Russian: “No, it’s ok; I know where the metro is.” But they would smile in gentle sorrow and walk away. It was a hellish time and after a spell I began to just answer in English, shrugging and saying: “sorry” before they could start.

And then, for no reason I could fathom, it trailed off and they were just seeing another Russian, until I opened my mouth to speak I was one of them. On the surface at least, I have become a Russian.

(Note: while in the centre last week I saw a young woman walking along with a wide smile on her face and I thought it a shame that mental illness had stricken one so young: I may have been here too long)