Do You Believe in Tears?

He bounces. There’s no other way to describe it. He sits down next to me, but the chair doesn’t allow for bouncing and before long he’s jumped to his feet again. While we talk he holds on to the back of the recently vacated chair as if that is the only way to keep him from bouncing away.

It is impossible not to share Igor’s joy; although I do manage to retain my seat. He tells me about his two little daughters (is he really old enough to be a father?) and asks me which Russian films I’ve seen. We agree that Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears is a very good film. It is not enough, though: he reels off a list of films I really must see and isn’t content until I’ve written them down and promised to watch them.

Some of the films he recommends are about the 90s. I ask him what it was like to grow up during this period.

The smile drops from his face and he even forgets to bounce for a moment.

Igor was born in 1983 (I do the maths quickly and am surprised: he seems barely older than me). One of his first memories, he tells me (the bounce is back), was a holiday to the Black Sea as a three-year-old. His mother and father rode on a motorbike, and he travelled in the sidecar.

‘You remember that?’ I ask, surprised. ‘But you were only three!’

He nods, as if it is normal that he remembers. ‘It was a big occasion,’ he says. ‘The Black Sea is a long way away.’ A few years later, they wanted to go on holiday to the Caucasus, but then his sister fell ill and they never went.

Igor used to get 15 kopecks pocket money from his grandmother. ‘A box of matches cost 1 kopeck, ice cream cost 15 kopecks and you could buy dinner for 50 kopecks.’ He smiles at the memory. ‘Then everything changed,’ he says, and the smile has become a frown. ‘In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, everything we owned became worthless. That’s when people started closing their doors. Not just closing but – what’s the word?’ He twists his hand in mid-air, as if turning a key. ‘They started locking their doors. Steel doors. People were scared.’

This is confirmed one day at work over lunch, when conversation takes a similar route, and I even hear mention of the same films that Igor recommended to me. My colleagues come from various places across the country and can’t decide whether it was safer growing up in St Petersburg or away from it.

Eventually, Sasha shrugs. ‘It was the same everywhere,’ she says. ‘Every week, you heard that someone else had been, you know…’ She points two fingers across the table, pulls the trigger.

None of them are older than 30, but this, at least, they remember.

‘It’s scary thinking about it now,’ Masha says. ‘But back then it was normal.’

Now conversation moves on: Zhenya was recently on holiday in the Crimea and she tells us enthusiastically about the beautiful landscape there and a narrow bridge high, high up above a ravine; and there is an animated discussion as to whether Russia was within its rights to annexe the peninsula. And what about Baikal, the splendid Lake Baikal, in the very heart of Russia? They are smiling, laughing, and I think I even see someone bounce.