Monstrum [antikvár]

WE HAVE ALREADY begun our descent on Moscow Airport. If I look out of the window of Police Flight 120,1 see, through a gap in the clouds, the Moskva River snaking south towards the city. Even from this height I can see the destruction. Where the Anarchist forces fought to the last, shelling has destroyed whole districts. Elsewhere, everything seems normal.We are losing height rapidly now. I see a big road and parallel rail lines and, as we bank, I see the long lake and the suburb which surely must be Chimki-Chovrino. I have my map open on my knees. My eyes move restlessly from it to the patchwork below and back again, trying and failing to identify landmarks.If I behave like a provincial, my excuse is that I am a provincial. From where? From the town of Murmansk. You will have heard of it surely? On the far north Gulf of Kola. This will be my first time in Moscow.When the cloud thickens, I am no longer staring down at the city. In the glass I see the image of my face thrown back at me and I examine it with the surprised head-cocking intensity of a bird before a mirror. I turn this way and that. When the stewardess passes I pretend to fiddle with my seat belt.Believe me, brothers, I didn't always look like this. You see me here today, with my new straight nose, my upper lip fuller by a fraction and laugh lines prematurely wrinkling the corner of my eyes . . . And you ask, perhaps, like Julia Petrovna who knows my vanity as only an ex-wife can, you ask why I should possibly want to add a few years to my thirtysomething God given? My answer, feeble for a man who aspires to be the hero of this account, is that I was never really in a position to choose.My compensation, in the meantime, is that in Julia's view the new leaner jawline makes me look distinctly more sympathetic.