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Mister Wong
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By hook or by crookTrust me, it may sound like a dream come true but in real life, having a statuesque Russian hooker put her arms around you and whisper sweet nothings in Cyrillic is just plain terrifying…
It all began when I checked into the Mesdurodnaya Hotel in Moscow after having had to use my passport for the umpteenth time to get through barbed wire barricades put up to stop locals from pestering foreign tourists in their special hotels.
It seems that not only a foreign passport can be used to get through, but also a couple of good old US dollars because when I wandered into the cocktail bar half an hour later, it was jam-packed with locals who had bribed their way in.
Dozens of them, all women, all drop dead gorgeous and all of them staring at me just the way Labradors do when you’re tucking into a juicy filet mignon – the only man in the place, with the exception of the bartender, although even his gender could have been interpreted either way.
I thought it had to be merely the annual international gathering of Playboy’s class of ‘95 or at least drinkie-poos before the Miss Russia finals.
The barman filled me in. They’re hookers, he said. All local women – housewives, secretaries, doctors, lawyers, all respectable and all desperately trying to earn some foreign currency to get them and their families out of Russia.
The mob advanced. They got a whiff of my foreign accent as I spoke to the barman and even greater whiff of the 50 or so US greenbacks I had in my wallet.
Over their heads, I spotted one of them walking off to the lifts, arm in arm with a hairy Neanderthal who must certainly have been turfed out of Mongolia because of his sheer ugliness and the fact that his entire demeanour screamed ownership of every sexually transmitted disease east of the Urals.
And the question that raced through my mind was: how many of his ilk had been there before me?
My 25% Irish heritage rushed to my aid as first one then two or three others in the front rank of the advancing scrum put their arms around me, whispering things that literally translated from Russian generally involved the exchange of half an hour or so of nooky for the US$50 nestling in my back pocket.
“Ladies, ladies, please,” I said, spreading my arms and turning my palms up in what I hoped was ecumenical supplication. “I regret that I cannot accommodate your whims, fantasies or sales pitches because I am an emissary from the Vatican...”
The barman translated and suddenly I knew what it was like to have a sign around one’s neck saying, “Leper”!
Scary stuff.
And about the only time in my entire life that I have managed to think of just the right thing to say at exactly the right time and not a week later.
Moscow was a fascinating place in the early 1990s, on the very weekend they took down all the Hammer & Sickle signs and decided to let in foreigners.
Particularly in winter, when the sun comes up at about 10.30 a.m., casts a watery eye over a city that was made up entirely of four-storey buildings interspersed with half a dozen fearsome Gothic structures that Stalin stuck up in a fit of town planning pique.
Then that sad old sun didn’t really like what it saw and set at about quarter to three in the afternoon.
It was quite the most ideal place to commit suicide.
Exiting the arrivals hall at Sheremetyevo Airport, I chose a taxi driver who looked least like Nikita Khrushchev and followed him to a car that looked as if it were manufactured in a millennium far gone and held together with everything from wire coat hangers to orthodox Russian prayers.
There was a fair bit of traffic on the road into Moscow, with equally ancient and decrepit cars mercifully not belching fumes because petrol octanes were so low, but emitting from rusty exhaust pipes a semi-solid sludge that spatters the pristine paintwork of a growing number of BMWs and Mercs.
The Germans were the first into the Moscow car market when the trade curtain went up.
And talking of Germans, halfway to the city is a monument showing how close the German army came to the centre of Moscow during World War 2.
I suggested to the local German Chamber of Commerce that given the inroads which BMW, Merc and numerous other German companies had made in terms of exporting to Russia, they should jointly put up another monument – but this time right in the middle of Red Square with a big sign reading: “And now we’re right here... guess who won the peace, tovarich!” ?
Chris Moerdyk
