Dancing at the Lubyanka

Perhaps the only serious disappointment Moscow has afforded me so far is its apparent lack of a really good English-language bookstore, or even a good English-language section in a Russian bookstore. Whereas Taipei had Page One, a spawling store in Tapei 101 that could have passed for the 82nd Street Barnes & Noble but for a few signs in Chinese, Moscow seems to lack anything as good. I have been to just about every bookstore mentioned in my Rough Guide, and so far always come out disappointed.

English-language bookstores, and English-language sections of Russian bookstores, fall into one depressing, invariable pattern. Half the titles on display are dictionaries, usage guides, and EFL coursebooks; the other half are either Penguin editions of British and American classics or frothy bestsellers like Bridget Jones's Diary. Books in English about Russian history and culture--what I currently require--are as rare as rickshaws in Rostov na Donu.

Saturday, I had intended to go back to Chabad--it's located a mere two blocks from my apartment, it turns out--but woke up far too late. I decided instead to check out one of the bookstores listed in my guidebook that I had not so far made it to. When it disappointed me as much as the others--the only history book on display was Robert Service's history of post-Soviet Russia, which I finished before leaving home--I set out on a stroll through the section of Moscow I was in, the area around the Lubyanka, former headquarters of the KGB.

After about twenty minutes, I found myself at Chistie Prudie, one Metro stop away from the Lubyanka, an area I had been to the previous week when I joined some other teachers for a beer at a place near the Chistie Prudie Metro station. I also found myself hungry and so stopped in at a little cafe there for some kotleti (beef or chicken meatballs in sauce) and a chai s'lemonom (tea with lemon).

Seated in the cafe, I noticed a man exuberantly dancing in the square outside. I took him for a lunatic and went back to my meal. But on exiting the cafe, I heard the unistakable strain of rock 'n' roll music emanating from a nearby park and realized this dancer was far from crazy. And, more specifically, I heard the strains of Chuck Berry's "Rock 'n' Roll Music" ("Give me that rock 'n' roll music / If you want to dance with me"). I decided to go into the park and have a listen.

The source of the music was a live Russian band playing a mix of Russian and English rock classics. After a couple of sluggish Russian ballads, the band broke into "Johnny B. Goode".

I can't say the crowd went wild. No underwear was thrown, no candles lit. But several people in the audience sang along, seeming to know every word as well as I do. And, to top it off, one elderly Russian couple--they must have been seventy if they were a day--started to boogie down, in front of everyone.

There was something touching, yet also something vaguely unreal, in the whole scene. Here I was, literally within walking distance of the erstwhile KGB headquarters, seeing people clap and dance to "Johnny B. Goode" like a bunch of 1950s American teenagers. By all right such a scene should have been impossible. And yet there it was, in broad daylight.

I have written before about how much Russia has apparently changed since the Soviet days. But this was on another level. I could never have believed, before I came to this country, that American pop culture could penetrate so far into what was once the capital of world Communism.

And I danced to, in you and in awe.