Playing the Moldovans At Tennis (7 page)

'Le téléphone ne marche pas'
he said, shrugging resignedly.
'Nous n'avons pas payé done ils ont coupe la ligne,'

The phone had been cut off. The bill hadn't been paid, and so it was that the telephone of the country's National Tennis Centre had been disconnected. I don't recall this ever having happened to The All England Club in Wimbledon.

My visit to Bar Victor represented another example of my now-growing confidence. I'd seen the little red neon sign a couple of times before on the way back to my lodgings but never before had I descended the steps into the basement bar in order to partake of a local beer. Today was different. Today I was making things happen. Today I had the measure of Moldova. Nevertheless, as I drew closer to the hostelry's thick wooden door I became concerned that it had been placed there to shield the innocent from the depraved world of Moldovan low-life. I hesitated before pushing open the door, fearing that behind it may well lurk Mafia figures, drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes, all with their own motives for preying on the naive Englishman who had voluntarily walked into their clutches.

I was greeted by a sharp-suited man holding a violin who could have been a gangster out of a Thirties movie if it hadn't been for a face which was too warm, too open and too generous to be that of a baddy. The goody in question was a proudly moustached man called Marin who was to become the leading protagonist in an evening which would be completely at odds with my experience of Moldovan social life thus far.

Marin was excited to discover that I was from London because this meant he could speak what he believed to be English. I smiled politely as he addressed me, and tried hard not to display the blank look which his unfathomability warranted. The one thing I did understand was an introduction to Gallina, the lady behind the bar whose beautiful features were only tarnished by her smile. She appeared to have wooden teeth, and unvarnished ones at that. She would be no friend to plaudits of Moldovan dentists, if indeed either group existed. I had seen little evidence to suggest that the upkeep of a good set of teeth was a priority in this society. Indeed, why should it be? There had been no precedent for it to be so. The Soviet masters of this country had done nothing to encourage any interest in dental hygiene. No Five Year Plan had included any mention of orthodontistry. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin had managed without braces and so could everyone else. Besides there was no reason to believe that slapping a piece of metal across a worker's molars did anything to increase his productivity.

Marin communicated more to me in the one hour in which he played the violin than he would have done in a lifetime of speaking to me in his hybrid English. He was part of a duo in which he was incontrovertibly the talented half. His partner sat looking bored behind a rack of keyboards which produced an irritating electronic accompaniment to the beautiful tone of Marin's skilful bowing. I felt the accompanist should
go
solo and make an album called 'Bored Bloke – Unplugged', and I wanted to begin the journey down this road by unplugging him right now.

When I took out my video camera to film Marin, my status in the bar changed completely. Henceforth I was perceived to be the Western talent scout who would make their 'discovery' and set them up with fame and fortune in the West. Marin produced a smile which was so cheesy you could almost smell it, and the keyboard player even managed an expression which suggested that he might not be as bored as all that. Gallina underwent an immediate transformation from barmaid to nightclub singer and grabbed the microphone to produce second-rate renditions of third-rate pop songs, regularly peppered with flashing smiles of gleaming mahogany. I felt unsure whether there was a career in the West awaiting her. That smile would only really secure one gig a year – at the Society of Carpenters and Joiners Christmas party – and I'd be looking for a more steady income from my 'discovery'. Marin certainly had the talent but he probably wasn't going to measure up against Vanessa Mae as a box-office draw. Never mind, I'd let them down as gently as I could and until then I'd sit back, sip my beer and soak up the rare moment of 'feeling special'.

At one point I was invited to join a table of robust-looking male drinkers whom I might normally have been nervous of joining had my status not been that of 'King of the Bar'. They too performed for my camera, providing it with beaming smiles, raised glasses and even their own rendition of a traditional Russian folk song which left me feeling relieved that I was not a traditional Russian. One of them, the least tuneful singer, flashed his ID card in front of the lens of my now constantly filming camera and to my astonishment I saw that he was Chisinau's Chief of Police. It was incredible, but it was true. I was drinking with the Chief of Police. I really was managing rather well on my own.

The songs, merriment and general bonhomie continued until around midnight when there were general goodbyes and a plethora of drink-induced embraces, and I stumbled back to my lodgings oblivious to the dangers of the night and supremely confident that any would-be assailant would surely know better than to tangle with a good friend of Maior Viorel Vieru.

I went to bed greatly encouraged by what I had achieved since I had left Iulian's protective wing. After a couple of crash landings I had managed a few yards of unassisted solo flight. Soon I would be soaring above the clouds. At last I had proved that it
was
possible to make things happen here. Finally I had some fledgling evidence to support my theory that in life you are rewarded if you make the effort I knew now that my task here was eminently possible. I had taken the bull by the horns, and what's more, if necessary, the Chief of Police was on hand to kick it up the arse.

'He's not the Chief of Police,' scoffed lulian, spinning round from his desk at the Journalism Centre, after I had shown him the footage I had shot the night before.

'All right – Mayor of Police then. What's the difference?'

'He's not Mayor. Maior means Major and that is quite lowly rank in our police force – possibly like your sergeant'

'Oh. Well, he still could be of help if needed.'

'Not really. If you want help in this country you need to be in with the Mafia – not the police. The Mafia controls everything.'

'Oh. Right.'

lulian was a master of deflation. It was almost like he felt it was his duty to haul the romantic idealist back to reality. lulian dealt in facts. I dealt in notions. We were quite a team, and we had a track record to prove it. So far we had achieved nothing.

That was, until 11.15am when lulian received a phone call, and I some stunningly uplifting news.

That was Grigorii Corzun,' said lulian, with the beginnings of a smile forming on his lips.

Who's he?'

'He is the President of Tiligul Tiraspol, the club for whom Sergei Stroenco plays.'

'Of course,' I replied, pretending to be on top of who my footballing opposition were. What did he say?'

'He says that you can go there – to Transnistria – any time you like. You will be his guest and you can stay in a hotel which has a tennis court, and he will arrange for you to play Stroenco.'

'You're joking!' I said, not knowing which was the more unlikely – this piece of news – or lulian making a joke.

'No, this is what he says.'

The confirmation was music to my ears.

'Yes!'
I shouted, jumping to my feet and punching the air.

This particularly un-Moldovan open display of emotions caused a few heads to turn from nearby computer screens, some in surprise, some in disapproval. But no questions were asked. I was beginning to understand the thought process at work here:

'The Englishman Tony has received some exciting news, but that is his business and not ours. We will not allow his loud exclamation and physical gesticulation to distract us unduly from our morning's tasks. Perhaps there will be a time when we will enquire into the nature of his news but for the moment this brief turning of the head has been an adequate reaction.'

'Corina!' I said, bursting into her office unannounced. 'Something amazing has just happened!'

I needed to share this news with someone and I felt that Corina would somehow understand. Her husband Aurel worked for Rank Xerox and they had both enjoyed the privilege of foreign travel in the West She had seen people get excited before.

This is wonderful news,' she said, after listening patiently to my flurried babbling. 'I hope that he means what he says.'

'Of course he means what he says,' I blurted, Why else would he say it?'

'I do not know, but if he means it, then this is good news.'

Corina may have travelled extensively in the West but in outlook she remained unequivocally Moldovan. Cautious, circumspect, and in control. All the things I was not. How I longed for a brief respite from this ordered, disciplined environment. I wanted a glimpse of some passion, I wanted occasionally to have to tiptoe around a fiery temperament, or witness some genuine
joie de vivre.
Even the Americans in the office, Karen and Tom, on learning of my good news, only managed a meek smile and a half hearted That's good, isn't it?' Before their induction into Moldovan life surely they would have been the first to stand up, give me a 'High Five' and scream 'Way to go!' at unreasonable volume. They had been in Moldova too long. Theirs had been a slow but steady inculcation into a pattern of behaviour which had left them as conspicuously dispassionate as everyone else.

Lunch with Leonid provided what felt like yet another positive wave in a tide that was inexorably turning my way. Leonid was the sports journalist whom five days previously lulian had promised to arrange for me to meet 'right away'. Leonid seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Moldovan football and I fired questions at him for a full hour and a half. He showed me a list of Saturday's games and one fixture immediately caught my eye.

PC
Agro
v Dynamo Bender

The mind boggled. What an extraordinary spectacle this might be. In a moment of disgraceful political incorrectness I imagined Dynamo Bender being represented by eleven men who minced about the pitch shouting 'chase me' to a load of bewildered thugs from FC Agro who all got sent off for fighting.

On a less frivolous note I discovered that local team Zimbru Chisinau were playing at home to Olimpia Belti the following day, and it was generally agreed that I should turn up to this match and try and meet some of the players after the game. They should be pleasantly disposed towards me, I thought, since by now they would all have been grateful recipients of the Wimbledon Tennis T-shirts which I had sent them.

They just had to be dying to meet me.

'Are you not going to have dinner with us tonight?' asked a disappointed Elena in the hallway, 'You have not eaten with us since Tuesday.'

She had grown rather fond of me in the course of this first week, and I of her. Her cheeky, bright little face lit up my mornings, and during the course of my days I found myself looking forward to seeing her in the evenings when she would run towards me with some question or other, more often than not connected with her English homework. In exchange for the help I gave her, she valiantly taught me a Romanian sentence which I believed may come in useful on my trip.

'Ma numesc Tony. Sint din Anglia. Am fàcut un pariu, cà-i voi bate la tenis pe toţi din echipa naţionala defotbal. Vreţi sà jucati cu mine?'

('My name is Tony. I am from England. I have made a bet that I can beat the entire national football team at tennis. Will you play with me?')

That, I felt, ought to do the trick.

My reason for having chosen not to eat with the family was that it was Friday night, and I wanted to dine out, and thus experience the Chisinau weekend night-life. Just as I was on the way out of the house, Adrian emerged from his bedroom and intercepted me on the stairs.

'I am meeting some friends. I will travel with you to Chisinau centre if you wish,' he said.

That would be nice.'

I also thought it would save me another embarrassing solo journey on a Maxi-taxi, although as it turned out, Adrian had a simpler method of transport in mind.

'I prefer to walk,' he said, as we reached the bus stop.

'But isn't it too far?'

'It's only forty minutes. I enjoy to walk'

'But there are no street lights – won't it be too dark?'

'Only if you don't know where you are going.'

'And you know where you're going?'

Adrian stopped and eyed me cannily.

That is a difficult question to answer. Do any of us know where we are going?'

There was more to this lad than met the eye.

That's a fair point Adrian, but I was talking physically rather than philosophically. There are manholes out there with no covers on them. That's not how I want to die.'

I don't actually know how I
do
want to die but in the top ten of my least favourite ways, falling down a manhole in the pitch dark in a strange Eastern European capital would probably come in at about number seven.

'I know where the manholes are. No-one is going to die.'

No-one is going to die. Always comforting words to hear before any Friday night out.

The long walk provided me with an opportunity to get to know Adrian better, whose agenda up until this point had apparently been one of keeping himself to himself and not showing a great deal of interest in what I was doing in Moldova. (Lord alone knows how he could have acquired these characteristics in this country of all countries.) However during the course of the next three-quarters of an hour I was to discover that he had allowed time for contemplation of why this Englishman had come into his family's house.

'I am interested by what you are doing in our country,' he said at one point, grabbing my arm and leading me in a wide arc, presumably to lessen the chances of my falling down a manhole, 'but I do not see how you will succeed.'

'Why not?'

'I do not think that the players will agree to play you.'

'Oh I think that they will.'

'How can you be sure?'

'I can't be sure. We can't be sure of anything,' I averred, immediately adding, 'And I'm not even sure of that.'

'So, why are you doing this? It is a big risk.'

'Because I want to win my bet and I want to prove my point. The risk doesn't bother me. I'm a risk taker.'

This is bad – to take risks.'

'Oh I don't agree Adrian. Not to risk anything is to risk everything.'

'And what does that mean?'

I'd hoped he wouldn't ask that. Profound remarks carry so much more weight when left unchallenged.

Twenty minutes into our walk we reached Boulevard Stefan cel Mare which has the privilege of being the only street in Moldova to be lit at night. Once again I was able to enjoy the luxury of illumination which previously I had taken for granted, and I could now see the buildings which surrounded us. One such edifice was the country's main Parliament building in front of which independence from the USSR was declared in 1991. How I would have loved to have been there to witness that historical moment, if for no other reason than to have been able to stand back and utter the words:

"They think it's Moldova . . .
it is now!
"

I gleaned from Adrian that the present ruling party was made up largely of ex-communists who now had flourishing businesses and used their positions in government to assure that they flourished still further.

They are corrupt,' he said with an unswerving certainty.

What about the opposition party? Are they any better?' I asked.

The one is the other. There is no difference.'

'Does anyone fight the corruption?'

'Some journalists publish stories in the newspapers exposing embezzlement but no-one does anything about it. We Moldovans are very good at shrugging our shoulders. There is an old Moldovan folk song about three shepherds . . .'

Adrian was really warming to his subject. I hadn't seen him like this before.

'. . . one was Hungarian, one was Wallachian and one was Moldovan. The Hungarian and the Wallachian were jealous of the number of sheep which the Moldovan shepherd had in his flock and so they made a plot to murder him and share his sheep, but a magical fairy lamb told him of this plan and warned him that he must defend himself. But instead of trying to avoid death, the Moldovan shepherd instructed the lamb to tell his family that he was married to a beautiful girl, who symbolised death, and that they should organise the funeral and careful distribution of his remaining riches.'

That's a very negative story,' I remarked to a jaded-looking Adrian, weary from the concentration of relating the tale in English.

'Not really,' he countered. 'His Orthodox faith has taught him to accept his fate.'

'Maybe you're right,' I replied, taking care not to say what I was really thinking.

What I was really thinking is that it's a fine line between accepting your fate, and losing your spirit

Adrian left me just by the concourse of the bland manifestation of Sixties Soviet architecture which was the country's Opera House and trudged off into the darkness to meet his friends. My plan was to head for a restaurant called Barricuda which had been recommended to me by Corina. Although I'm normally not keen on dining alone, on this occasion I was looking forward to watching and studying the people who ate in one of the capital's few upmarket restaurants. As directed by Adrian, I turned off Boulevard Stefan cel Mare at Pushkin Street and found myself once again plunged into pitch darkness. This time it was different. This time I was alone. And this time I didn't know where the manholes were.

In the dark, one is so much more conscious of sound. The footsteps, the rustling of nearby coats and the sudden sharpness of voices seem somehow amplified. In this suddenly spooky and threatening atmosphere, it felt like everyone was closing in on me. I became aware that I was enormously vulnerable. I was easy picking for anyone with even the slightest criminal bent. The only thing I had going for me was that no-one could see how shit-scared I was, and there was a good chance that I might be just as terrifying a prospect to the others in the street with my suspiciously slow gait and fear-induced heavy breathing.

I heard a loud voice from a doorway to my right, the intonation of which suggested that a question was being asked of me. All I could understand was that I should keep on walking and pray that a rogue arm was not extended, yanking me into the doorway for some swift and violent wealth redistribution. Fortunately, I was left untouched and as the yards began to develop between me and my potential assailant, I began to wonder whether it had been entirely my imagination that had invited in this sense of the sinister. The question I had been asked may well have been completely innocuous – 'Have you got any spare change?' or 'Do you have the time?' or 'I'm having some trouble with 4 down, I don't suppose you happen to know what's the capital of Poland?'

I was turned away rather unceremoniously by the man on the door at the Barricuda because I had not made a reservation. I could see by looking through the windows into the basement restaurant below that the establishment was completely empty, but this fact seemed to have no bearing on the executive decision taken by the arse-hole at street level. I did not bother to argue, my life experience up to this point having taught me that arguing with doormen is as likely to be as successful as a Mancunian Olympic bid.

Undeterred, I stumbled back through the darkness to Stefan cel Mare where I continued my night on the town, only to find that the few bars and restaurants I passed were completely empty. It was Friday night for God's sake – what was going on? I recalled the pop song written in celebration of this particular day of the week – 'Friday on My Mind', and that there was an entire restaurant chain called Thank God It's Friday!' It was clear that in the West, Friday night has come to represent the end of the week's toil and drudgery and is in itself a mini festival heralding in the freedom of the weekend. From the evidence I was assimilating on the ground, Friday night appeared to have acquired no such status in Moldova. So, having shunned at least four establishments which barely passed as restaurants, on the grounds of being empty, horrid-looking, or both; I took a beer in a quiet bar and resolved to dine in the next restaurant I happened upon. Regardless.