The girl from Petrovka

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When I have some free time in the early afternoon and its not unbearably cold, I often take a walk along Petrovka. Its not a ritual or anything symbolic, but simply a way to stretch my legs and absorb some sights and sounds of city life after a solitary mornings work and the winter sullenness that invades my office through the window. Petrovka starts just round the corner from the office and runs about half a mile almost due south, ending beside the Bolshoi Theatre at Sverdlov Square, near the very center of town.

The street has unpleasant connotations because of the dominant building at the near end - near to my office, that is. This is the notorious ‘Number 38’, headquarters of the Moscow Criminal Police. Number 38 is a large stone structure with the look of a mental hospital. It’s carefully maintained and surrounded by a ten-foot iron fence - one of the few buildings of its age in Moscow with straight angles and a facade unblemished by peeling plaster. Outside, a cordon of armed policemen patrol in overcoats cut to the uppers of their boots; they wave black limousines through the gates from time to time and never smile. Muscovites don’t say ‘police headquarters’ but simply ‘Petrovka thirty eight’ -‘he was whipped off to thirty-eight’ - and there are disturbing rumors about interrogations in the basement. The captain of the guard (presumably three or four rotate the twenty-four-hour watch, but they all have the same gross features, like the town bullies of Gorky’s youth) peers at each passer-by, and it’s assumed someone’s stationed behind

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