By: Slavko Pregl Translated by: Nikola Berishaj

I have traveled to Moscow many times. It took me a long time to come to terms with the procedures that regulated everyday and business life there. Even so, I was occasionally surprised, usually when I thought I understood how things were going.

At the Belgrade airport I met our then ambassador to Vienna, Jože Smolen. We happened to sit next to each other on the plane. JAT, as usual, was late. Instead of arriving early in the evening, we arrived in Moscow at one in the morning. On the way with Smolen we chatted a little, and then each of us immersed himself in his own reading. Smolen was reading Pushkin in the original. During the landing he asked me if I needed transportation to the city, if I had arranged the hotel, if I needed anything... I was quick to deny that I had everything arranged and that I did not need the ambassador's help.

No one was waiting for me at the Moscow airport, as we were very late. There was no bus to the city. Not even a taxi. In Ljubljana, at the end of March, it is real spring. Some days it was somewhere around twenty degrees Celsius. I came to Moscow in clothes that corresponded to that time. Here it was minus ten and snowing. With a heavy suitcase and loaded with test press bottles, models and books in the snow in front of the airport, I watched the sky like a new year's tree forgotten by everyone and gnashing my teeth. I noticed that the driver was lighting a cigarette in the truck in the parking lot. With shallow shoes I trod bravely through the snow. With the truck driver I hunted for the prize all the way to the city. Near the Belgrade hotel he asked me: "'Belgrade' one, or 'Belgrade' two?"

I had no idea. The telex said I had a room reserved at the Belgrade Hotel. I shrugged, and the driver dropped me off in front of Belgrade One. The porter opened the door and I hurried to the reception. I told him my name, surname, where I was from and who had reserved the room. The receptionist leafed through the book and said: “One!”. He told me to go across the street to the “Belgrade” Two Hotel, maybe I have the reservation there. I was dumped all over the snow along the wide road. The porter opened the door and I was pushed to the receptionist: name, surname, where I was from, who had reserved it... He looked at the book and said: “One!”

Like "One", - I told him, I have the reservation. Maybe, but not with us, - he told me. Okay, - I insisted, give me a room, I'll fix it tomorrow. This is not possible, - he said, firstly we don't have any free rooms, secondly, you are a private, without any papers and, thirdly, if you had come earlier I would have put you in someone who is in a double room, and so I can't. I can go back to Belgrade one, they usually have rooms there. How can I go back, when I came from there? Then the solution occurred to me: "What can I do, so that I am no longer a private?"

I get the reservation, for example, from my embassy. He kindly gave me the number of my embassy and in the middle of the night I woke up the porter. He wasn't upset at all when I explained what it was all about. He told me to come there. He seemed to be used to such occasions.

I packed my bags and tried to hail a taxi in front of the hotel. It was crowded, but the boys were playing cards. Then they asked if I had cigarettes or a bag. I had nothing. One who played the game finally relented after I promised to pay him double the taxi fare. When they arrived at the embassy, ​​I paid him and promised him double the price if he drove me away. The porter registered me in the book and marked my reservation.

"Which hotel did I get a room at now?" I asked.

"Of course at the Kievksif Hotel," said the concierge.

I thanked him and got into the taxi.

Kijevskij, I said.

We arrived. I paid the taxi driver double the price and crawled to the door of the hotel. I pressed the bell. After a while the porter opened it. Relieved, I put my suitcases on the ground and pushed the letter from the embassy to the receptionist.

"One," he said, "it's not okay."

"How is that not okay?" I asked. "They told me I'll get the room in Kievsky."

"Maybe!", she said. "With this letter you must go to the Central Directorate of Hotels in Moscow and there they will determine your place. Maybe to us!"

It was two in the morning. I loaded up again and crawled out. At the nearby subway station, which stopped running after midnight, the boys played cards. Acari drilled until asht.

“Guys!” I called out boldly, “who will drive me to the Central Directorate of Moscow Hotels?”

They looked at me and continued the game.

"Guys!" - I softened my voice, "to the Hotel Directorate. Who's going to drive? I have money."

One of the trainee drivers was brave, leaning on someone's shoulder and following the game.

"I will drive," he said.

We left. We drove around for half an hour, and in the end I discovered that the boy did not know where to drive. Sometimes in a loud voice and sometimes in a small voice I told him the street and the number and, after a long time, we found an inconspicuous house on a waste road. I rang the bell. After a while I heard a knock on the door. A narrow hole opened. Without a word, I handed him the letter.

"Okay," the woman said, took it and closed the hole. After about ten minutes, the hole opened again.

"Everything is fine. Come in the morning around eight o'clock."

"How about in the morning?!" I shouted. "Where am I going until then?"

"I don't know," the woman said and closed the hole.

It was three in the morning. It seemed to me that I started to have waves. That was a good thing, or I'd be pissed off.

"In the 'Belgrade' hotel," I told him.

We arrived. I paid the taxi driver, took my suitcases, pushed the doorman and wildly headed for the reception.

"Yugoslav, yes?", the receptionist called from a distance.

"Yes!" I wanted to shout, but he interrupted me.

"Everything's fine," he tweeted, "you have the room with us."

In the booking book it was written: Prill Slavko, Mladinska knjiga, Yugoslavia, and I told him Pregl Slavko, Mladinska knjiga, Yugoslavia at the first meeting. So I was not registered.

I gave him the passport. The woman started to write something, but stopped.

“Stop!” he said. “It says here that you will come at twenty, and today we are at twenty-one. What is this now?”

I told her that I would arrive in twenty if the plane hadn't been delayed and if she hadn't accompanied me to walk around Moscow for a couple of hours. He gave me the letter and told me that I will leave the key with the caretaker of my floor. The caretaker, like all honest people, slept behind her desk. I woke him up.

"Oh, God!", he breathed out, "is he going to the hotel now?!"

Now it was my turn to send into oblivion all the beautiful thoughts that my parents, teachers and all good people have taught me. I started scratching, because I know very well when I should come to the hotel. The caretaker investigated that she had in front of her the man who had struggled a lot, for that she began to soothe me, telling me to go to the room to rest. Tomorrow everything will be different.

He gave me the key.

The next day I woke up happy. In the morning I said to myself, how mean I am. Because of my carelessness, not knowing which hotel to go to, last night I gave so much trouble to a good number of honest workers. I wrote the story as a warning to those careless and confused people, in case they ever want to enter any organized state. /Magazine "Academia"/

The word+Cult