Read Online Meatloaf in Manhattan by Robert Power - Free Book Online Page A

my own. One, the vain hope of some hot water to shave with; and, two, my luggage, lost and probably ravaged at Domodedovo airport in Moscow.
    There’s an urgent knock on my door. It’s Ivan, my interpreter.
    â€˜Dr Browne, it’s time to meet the General. The car’s waiting.’
    â€˜Fine, spasebar , Ivan. I’ll be down in one minute.’
    Outside it is bitterly cold. The snow is stacked up on the roadside and the car has snow chains on the tyres. I sit upfront with Misha the driver.
    â€˜Dobra vercha , Misha.’
    The heating is on full blast, as is the pop music of the radio. On the dashboard is Misha’s mascot, the plastic spider, curiously complementing the web of cracks in the windscreen. We skid and meander along the icy streets of Barnaul, the first town to be built by Peter the Great in Western Siberia. We pass the old foundry, where the gold and silver that so excited the Tsar was smelted. Nowadays, Barnaul is the capital of Altai Krai and its centre has moved away from Pushkin Square and the fine old houses built by the businessmen sent by Peter to exploit its mineral wealth.
    As we leave the city the road becomes even more treacherous. On either side the ubiquitous birch trees are firmly planted in a thick crystal-clean white blanket.
    The music blares, the heat becomes stifling and the windscreen wipers battle to keep the swirling blizzard at bay. When we arrive at the sanatorium it is already dark. The driving snow in the floodlights of the car park looks like a plague of locusts as we are hurried from the car to the building.
    Inside, the bright lights and colourful décor contrast starkly with the cold and dark winter’s night. In the corridor, as I struggle out of my hefty boots, I look into the reception room. The walls are thick with tomato-red flock wallpaper. Heavy velvet curtains cover the windows from ceiling to floor and in the middle of the room a dining table groans with food and drink. There are bottles of vodka, beer and wine, and platefuls of red and black caviar, potato and herring salads and meats and cheeses of all variety. We are greeted by our fellow guests. There is Oleg, a handsome young man in his early thirties, a narcologist of the new breed who is eager to learn from the West and break free of the old Soviet style of medicalising all health problems. Next to him stands Dr Roshikiev, well into his middle age, and as chief narcologist for the oblast, frightened of these new ideas that threaten his hegemony over the treatment of drug users. The third guest is the grey-haired Enid Schneider, a World Health Bank consultant of the type who wears a cashmere scarf and is more interested in the shopping, sites and inflated consultancy rates than improving public health. She gives me a jaded nod of acknowledgement. I do my best to return a polite ‘hello, good to see you again’. Soon she’ll be complaining about the bathroom in the hotel, the long haul back to Moscow and her preference for the temples and weather of Myanmar.
    â€˜We are waiting for the General,’ says Oleg in his fast-improving English, ‘but we can sit at the table and have a drink.’
    We follow him and Dr Roshikiev into the dining room and take our places at the table. I make sure I have a fresh glass and bottle of mineral water close at hand for the inevitable toasts, then listen as the younger and older man conclude some urgent business in Russian. I nibble on a piece of rye bread, aware the main spread should not be disturbed until the General arrives. This is to be a crucial meeting. To make AIDS prevention viable it is critical to win over the law enforcement agencies. In dealing with injecting drug users the balance needs to be shifted from the criminal to the public health agenda.
    Dr Roshikiev turns to speak to Ivan. Amongst the few words of Russian I recognise, I notice the word ‘methadone’.
    Ivan nods at the older man as he deciphers his