scanned the horizon and shrugged. A crowd of disconnected individuals lurked around the benches in dark, heavy clothing. We had no idea what we were looking for—we were the conspicuous ones, be-rucksacked and bewildered. Like exposed rabbits on an empty hill, we could only wait and be hunted.
Suddenly our view was filled with Olga. A slim girl wrapped in a fitted, navy, three-quarter-length corduroy coat, her pale, colourless face luminesced in the darkness, and was framed by a sandy coloured Jim Davidson hairdo, token blond highlights and all.
‘Olga! Hello!’
Olga’s smile was shy and short-lived. The Slavic hug I’d rehearsed hid behind British prudishness—instead, my left arm shot out to touch hers in odd, lumbering affection. Ollie held out his hand like a man. She took it, and then came to my hand, but it was full of rucksack. The critical moment, fudged. She pointed to the far corner of the square: ‘Let’s go this way.’
We probably talked about the journey or something, but the sensory overload made me forget everything. Now she was visible in three dimensions, I stared unblinkingly at Olga. Couchsurfing’s internet profiles had not prepared me for the storm force of human life: suddenly, couchsurfing seemed to be about choosing a house on the merits of its front door.
Sensitive and birdlike, Olga’s chin trembled and her head bobbed when she spoke. She seemed surprisingly nervous; yet, with twenty previous guests, wasn’t she the experienced one? When it was my turn to speak, a voice usually reserved for other people’s parents came out—I was being so ‘good’, answering pleasantly about our Russian visas and asking about her work. Was I about to be ’good’ for ten weeks?
We turned into a dark cohort of daunting Soviet blocks, whose seemingly lowly status was belied by an assortment of prestigious cars; already I felt the thrill of access. Hotels weren’t built in Soviet blocks, after all. We entered a simply tiled, beige stairwell, went into the functional, matchbox lift and out towards a dusty, pleather-padded door, which Olga unlocked before neatly removing her shoes in the hall. We neatly copied her. She handed Ollie a pair of brown leather, open-toed sandals of dubious sexuality, and me some pink towelling slippers. Hit by the smell of a second-hand bookshop, we looked up from our feet. Bearing down on us was an object lesson in cold Soviet life: peeling ochre wallpaper covered with old theatre posters, dusty cabinets and shelves piled with books, old photos and dead flowers. We were in a 1950s time warp.
‘Wowwww,’ Ollie and I emitted in unison.
‘Well,’ explained Olga, without uttering the vowel. ‘It was my grandparents’ place. My mother was born here, my parents used to live here—it hasn’t really changed since then.’ Her eyes darted around. An only child, she now lived alone. I wondered, was couchsurfing supposed to bring the company she craved?
It was hard to ignore the blood-boiling heat.
‘Russia has a centralised heating system,’ Olga said, fidgeting with her hands like they didn’t belong to her. ‘The heating is turned on at the same time every year by the government. Residents have no control. If we go on holiday for two weeks, it is still on.’
Her windows were wide open.
‘What about the environment?’ I spluttered.
‘Mother Russia doesn’t worry about natural resources,’ she said, her eyes scouring the floor.
I’d read that Russia had the world’s largest natural gas reserves and second-largest coal reserves, and was the world’s third-largest energy consumer. I opened my mouth, then let it go—best not to insult the host country.
A sinewy silence slipped out. My arms were crossed and clinging on to each other tight, while Ollie was pretend-laughing at thin air. Olga was biting her cheeks tensely. Frozen in this psychological drama, we were all hyperaware of ourselves. I, for one, couldn’t quite get those bossy Muscovites’ constitutions that I’d read in London out of my head. What would real couchsurfers be doing now, I wondered?
‘Shall we make our beds?’ I offered helpfully. Knowing where I’d be sleeping would be one comfort. Olga directed us straight ahead with an outstretched arm: ‘I have bedding if you need.’ Ollie and I entered the living room (though any evidence of life here had long since departed) and Olga discreetly left us to it. Yet we continued to behave as if she were still in the room; no conspiratorial whispering—we were still being ‘good’.
There, in the darkest corner of a long, low-lit room (most bulbs had blown) was my couch—an actual couch. Apparently from the 1980s (though it looked 1970s—maybe that was the Russian delay), it was a coffin-sized rectangle of foam upholstered in a brown and beige, zigzag-patterned, coach-seat fabric. Ollie said he’d prefer the retro, canvas camp bed, which didn’t look comfortable but, he insisted gallantly, its wonky elevation would be good for his leg. The fact that Ollie and I would be sharing a room—a first in our long history—was vaguely unsettling, but it was the least of our new experiences. What was more overwhelming was suddenly finding myself in the slipstream of someone else’s life. I was wearing Olga’s slippers, breathing her air and shadowing her life. It all felt extraordinarily random.
We regrouped with Olga in the hallway, and handed over our gift. In response to our invitation, she’d politely suggested a book of our choice, and we’d picked a photographic compilation, London Through a Lens. She unwrapped it, peered at it, flicked through it, but it was impossible to decipher her half-nod, halfsmile and restless hands. Maybe we’d embarrassed her.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Olga offered.
We repaired to her modest kitchen, which looked unchanged since the 1950s—rose-print kitchen units, an electric oven and a quaint, rounded, ceramic sink—and sat at a humble breakfast table.
‘I’d love a drink of water,’ I supplicated.
‘Oh. That could be a bit difficult.’ She looked mildly ashamed. ‘You can’t drink the tap water here.’
She poured the tepid remains of water from the kettle into a teacup for me. Ollie and I were starving.
‘Do you do much cooking?’ Ollie asked.
‘I don’t cook for couchsurfers,’ she said with surprising frankness. ‘I just cook for myself. It’s not so tasty; it’s very basic things. But you can help yourself.’
She opened a monastic-looking fridge to reveal eggs, bread and cheese. A sticker on the door read WHERE ON EARTH IS PERTH?
‘From a couchsurfer,’ she said.
Now that our first living-and-breathing couchsurfer was firmly in our clutches, we cross-examined her with our entry-level questions. Forget Putin and polonium—what we really wanted to know was: how was it with other couchsurfers? Was it strange the first time she hosted?
‘It was something unusual,’ she said, smiling quietly, ‘so I didn’t know what to do.’
That was at least reassuring. Telling us how she’d hosted a male English teacher for six days, I wondered how this shy sparrow had coped, and then I thought, maybe it was our gaucheness polluting the atmosphere. I was looking forward to when this all felt more normal.
‘Did you ever give any bad references?’ I asked, trying to feel for the edges of this experiment.
‘Most people don’t
