Happiness is Possible Read Online Free PDF Page B

Central Administrative District of Moscow on a fine Sunday in summer? Probably not, because, like all normal people, you spend days like that at the
dacha
. I would be out at Vaskovo too, and wouldn’t have a clue about what’s going on here in the CAD, if not for a certain important circumstance. Which is that today I have been invited to do a radio interview. Generally speaking, I’m not very fond of interviews of any sort. They say some writers have a yen for publicity that is even more powerful than their sex drive, but that’s not me. However, if I have to give an interview, I prefer it to be on radio. On TV they always start powdering your nose just before you go on, and the trouble with a newspaper is that print immortalises all the stupid things you’ve said, augmented by the interviewer’s own inanities. So radio is best: it doesn’t matter what you look like and anything you happen to blurt out will simply evaporate into the ether and be forgotten, even before the next programme starts.
    I have been invited by a radio station that is small but reputable. Its studio is tucked away somewhere round here, not far from the centre of Moscow, in a flat in one the buildings. If I can find it, and you can hook this particular station out of the FM ocean, in half an hour you’ll be able to hear my muttering going out live. I still don’t know what we’re going to talk about, but that doesn’t matter anyway. The important thing about a radio interview is not to lisp, blow your nose or leave any long pauses. If everything goes well, the interviewer will give me a thumbs-up, but you, the listeners, won’t be able to see it.
    Such is the serious reason I have for being here now, right smack in the middle of Moscow on this hot summer noon. As I walk along, I have to stick to the shady side of the street, and let me tell all of you out there at your
dachas
that you wouldn’t recognise your city at this moment. Imagine a whale, cast up on the seashore and drying out in the sun. All those who sailed on it, who inhabited the folds of its vast skin, have scattered, creeping off to save their own little lives. Where are the usual crowds of people? Where are the legendary Moscow traffic jams? The streets are as empty as a writer’s head before an interview. Only a small number of the megalopolis’ most devoted parasites remain in its skin, those who are fated to live and – if it comes to the crunch – to die with it. Who are they, these most urban of urbanites? For the most part, they are Individuals of No Fixed Abode and various kinds of beggars. The Abodeless Individuals sleep or wander wherever the mood takes them – today they are as free as the cockroaches in the kitchen when we go out. But the beggars have a simple way of amusing themselves – to keep their skills well-honed, they cadge handouts from each other. There aren’t many other people about: apart from writers who have come to be interviewed, most are probably burglars, plying their trade in the flats that you, dear
dacha
-lovers, have abandoned.
    I don’t know this area very well, but I can sense that I’m going in the right direction. I have never once lost my way in Moscow while in a sober state, and if I’m feeling slightly squiffy at the moment, it’s only because of the sultry heat. As I wander through the unfamiliar side streets, an angel flies ahead of me, showing me the way. And right now he prompts me to turn left, then right, then jump over a section of subsidence or, perhaps, excavation, and I find myself . . . yes indeed, I find myself in the courtyard that I need. Everything’s right: the street name, the number of the building and, most important of all, the sign with the name of my radio station by the entrance. Only the time is wrong: I was told to arrive twenty minutes later. As you already realise, this is very un-Muscovite, arriving somewhere