Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [178]
DS: Yeah, they’ve appropriated the term, but they’re distinctly Russian, and they’re actually many ethnic Russians—
MCS: Yes.
DS:—making up various factions of the mafia, as you point out in the book.
MCS: I spent, uh, I spent a day with a Russian Mafioso. He took me for a picnic. And, uh, I’d already spent a day with him before, questioning him, interviewing him about how he did what he did. And he was enormously successful, so we went out in a fleet of Mercedes, out to the picnic. And he starts—one of his underlings starts cooking up the shashlyk. Shashlyk is a shish kabob. And it was really, it was like a scene out of one of the Godfather movies, where they’re stirring the spaghetti. And every few moments he goes over there and he kicks his underling, to ask how the shashlyk is coming along, as if he’s a great expert—we’re now dealing with a great chef of shashlyk. And I questioned him for a couple hours, and we eat, and we have some vodka and wine, and then at the end he has a question for me. And he says he’s meeting some guys from New York. And he wants to know, he says he’s very concerned—he wants to know how to act around these contacts from New York—and his question is whether the book The Godfather is accurate. Whether he can use that as the style that he should assume. So there was this very strange, they see themselves as patterning themselves to some degree on our own mafia.
DS: Where I think Red Square is an interesting and valuable book, not just because it’s a good mystery, but it, uh, one of the few books that really has told us what is happening in the Soviet Union right now. These little slices of life—for instance, Polina standing in line for two hours to get beets—
MCS: Mmm. Yes.
DS:—and looking down and seeing the red juices from the beets on her feet and on the ground and so forth. Another interesting story, apparently—and maybe you can amplify this—apparently to buy vodka, you have to return the empty.
MCS: That’s right. That’s absolutely right.
DS: You can’t buy two bottles?
MCS: Well, you know, nope. You gotta bring one back for every one you buy. When Gorbachev tried to control the flow of vodka, cut down the production of vodka, he was to some degree successful. The only thing that restrains, that cuts down the production of vodka now is they don’t have enough bottles. Because those bottlers can’t get their sand—you know, it’s a collapse of supply. God knows there’s the demand.
DS: Well, the point in this book, of the Russian tripping as he approaches the beginning of the line, and dropping his bottle—
MCS: Oh yeah.
DS: What do you do?
MCS: (Laughs.) There it goes.
DS: Where do you start? You want to get your first bottle of vodka, how do you start? How do you get it?
MCS: Well, actually, you can buy one on the street, from a street vendor, you just have to pay four times more. See? I mean, anything, if you have the hard currency, you can get anything.
(To enjoy the rest of the interview, visit the Wired for Books website at wiredforbooks.org).
FOR EM
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I must acknowledge the guidance I received in Moscow from Vladimir Kalinichenko, Alexander Stashkov and Yegor and Chandrika Tolstyakov; in Munich from Rachel Fedoseyev, Jörg Sandl and Nougzar Sharia; and in Berlin from Andrew Nurenberg and Natan Federowskij. Generous assistance was also given by George Albov, Nan Black and Ellen Irish Smith, courage by Knox Burger and Katherine Sprague.
Once again, the compass of this book was Alex Levin.
The errors are all mine.
ALSO BY MARTIN CRUZ SMITH
Gypsy in Amber
Nightwing
Stallion Gate
Rose
In the Arkady Renko series
Gorky Park
Polar Star
Havana Bay
Wolves Eat Dogs
Stalin’s Ghost
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARTIN CRUZ SMITH is the author of Gorky Park, Polar Star, Havana Bay, Stallion Gate, and Rose, among other novels. He lives in California.