Matthew G. Rees - Writer

It seldom pays to get in trouble with the police.

 

This is especially the case for anyone who happens to find themselves ‘abroad’ – by which I mean temporarily domiciled in a land which isn’t, and isn’t intended to be, their permanent home. Particularly if the country in question has a history of strained relations with the land from which the traveller hails.

 

Sometimes, though, situations can happen that aren’t of our making, and over which we have no control…

 

One ordinary day, some years ago, in Moscow, I stepped into a branch of a bank of the kind known in England as the ‘High Street’ variety, with the intention of carrying out a small transaction.

 

The building wasn’t a large one, and, having entered, I found myself – more or less immediately – amid a crowd of would-be customers who were standing, set back, from the counter area. The waiting clients, men and women of all ages, had apparently calculated that it was to their advantage to hang back, in a bunch, rather than form a queue to the window of any specific cashier.

 

Given that we all know how queues can work – join one and watch people in the one next to you get served five times as fast – this ‘herd instinct’ on the part of our crowd was not without logic.

 

A ‘no man’s land’ several metres wide separated us from the counter area.

 

As and when one of the ‘tellers’ became free behind their glass partitions, a figure from our throng – who had perhaps not necessarily been waiting the longest but was the fastest out of the blocks – made a break for it, dashing to the counter, across the empty floor.

 

While we were waiting, a young man, who was a member of the bank’s staff, roamed the fringes of our attentive assembly, enquiring as to the nature of our needs.

 

I duly explained the minor reason for my visit and the small sum of money involved – I was a teacher at the time with an income about as far removed from that of an oligarch as can possibly be imagined.

 

On realising that I was an English speaker, the young man promptly engaged me in a conversation conducted, on his part, in excellent English. At the end of this, to my concern, he manoeuvred me from my mid-rear position to the very front of our crowd. Having done so, he indicated a young woman cashier who he specified I should go to as soon as she became available. She was, he said, an English speaker, who was qualified to deal with my enquiry and who would know exactly what needed to be done.  

 

I now stood and waited – more than a little uneasily – at the front of our throng.

 

Technically speaking, there was no, and there had never been any, queue. Furthermore, it might be useful for me to mention here that, by that stage of my time in Russia, I had found that queuing – as a concept – was a rather flexible thing. Once, for example, while seeking to buy a train ticket at Leningradsky Station, I had stood in line – patiently – for well over an hour while all manner of people barged-in ahead of me (and everyone else in our line). Even when some innocent had been in the middle of business at the counter clerk’s window, a person (or persons) unwilling to wait would gate-crash proceedings. The procedure of these bargers-in would be to begin by asking questions from one side. They would then steadily usurp the position of whoever it was who had rightfully been at the head of the queue. This occurred time and again. The response of everyone else in the queue was phlegmatic, as if such behaviour was normal and only to be expected. (Over time, I came to see how – more or less – this was indeed the case. There isn’t the screen space here to give an account of my sojourns in suburban post offices.)

 

But to return to my digression: the scene at Leningradsky Station. When things got to the point of me being two places off being served, the counter clerk drew down her shade in a manner that brooked no compromise. End of ticket sales from her window for the day (!), never mind the time that I and others in our queue had been waiting. (On that occasion, though, a happy ending: a lovely young couple who, having seen my jaw hit the floor, helped me buy the (long distance) ticket I needed from a machine, which meant that I hadn’t waited entirely in vain.)

 

And now back to the bank. Standing in my new position – ‘on pole’ at the front of our crowd – I was uncomfortably aware of the poor optic that my advance had presented: how it all looked: that I had queue-jumped and that I was the receiver of preferential treatment (even though I was only doing as I had been told).

 

In particular, I was aware of the fierce glare of a policeman, who was (I presumed) hoping to do some business of his own as a customer, and who stood in the front rank of those that I had been bumped ahead of.

 

I asked the young official if there was some other way of my enquiry being handled and pointed out that others had been waiting before me. But he politely insisted that I stayed where I was and told me to step forward to the booth of his colleague as soon as she was free.

 

The young man then moved away to deal with something else.

 

The woman cashier duly nodded me forward, with a smile.

 

Having crossed the no man’s land of the tiled floor, I began to sit down at her window… only to find the seat being pulled from under me.

 

Standing up and turning, I saw that ‘my’ seat was now occupied by the cop.

 

As well as his large hat and uniform, he wore a very satisfied grin.

 

He began to inform the embarrassed cashier of the business he wanted done.

 

Deciding that this was a time for discretion rather than valour, I retreated – back across the no man’s land – to the waiting crowd, where I hung about, as before – sheepishly.

 

At this point, the young bank official reappeared. He asked me what I was doing and why hadn’t I been served. I had no need to say anything. For, as the young man turned to look at the counter, his eyes fell upon the seated form of the cop.

 

The young guy promptly walked up to the lawman and, without batting an eyelid, told him to get up and step away from the counter (so that I could be served).

 

The cop did indeed stand up. But there then followed the most ferocious public row that I have ever seen: a full-on, full-bore, full-throttle, full-cream shouting match – waged toe-to-toe – of the kind that in my travels on this earth I have only found Russians capable (though there may be others, I concede).

 

The cop – twice the age of the young bank official – turned puce with fury. He was that most dangerous cocktail: a physically small man, with a uniform, a large hat and a certain degree of power. And he was consumed with indignant rage.

 

The young bank official would have none of it though. The cop might have authority outside, on the street. But there, in the bank, the young man was in charge. His word was the law.

 

I watched, astonished.

 

The young man’s conduct was nothing short of heroic… or crazy. I wasn’t sure which. (In a country like Putin’s Russia, you don’t ‘take on’ the police lightly.)

 

Although he, too, was shouting at the top of his voice, he did so – it seemed to me (and perhaps strange to say) – without losing his cool.

 

Eventually, the cop realised his adversary wasn’t going to give way. Scowling, he walked from the disputed seat, and back across the no man’s land. Vanquished and humiliated, he re-joined the waiting crowd.

 

With a calmness that I found remarkable, the young official now called me forward and directed me to his female colleague, before whom, this time, I sat unchallenged.

 

(In passing, I noticed that to one side of her window was a kind of traffic light system that a customer could press according to the good, indifferent or bad service they felt they had received. I wondered what – after me – the cop might do with it, if the young woman should have the misfortune to serve him. This ‘customer feedback’ gizmo seemed to me rather cruel. I mulled the possible consequences for the individual worker. I noticed that the wording on the device contained English script – so much for the West and its influence, I thought, with dismay – never mind the delays I’d suffered at post offices and with clerks at railway stations.)

 

Although minor, my banking matter took some while to process (State bureaucracy most likely to blame). I felt the cop’s stare, boring into my back. I sneaked a glance over my shoulder and saw that he was still there, on the other side of no man’s land, face flushed with the embers of his fury.

 

Eventually, having been served excellently by the young woman, my business was done, and I was free to go.

 

I judged it best to do so as rapidly and discreetly as possible.

 

I lowered my head and did up my coat, determined to make eye contact with no one.

 

Stepping into the street, I felt sure that the cop would be waiting (or coming after me), wanting sight of my passport, my visa, ready to exact his revenge – on the pavement, where he was king.

 

To my surprise, he didn’t show.

 

I didn’t hang around.

 

Making away at a brisk step, I wondered if – never mind the theatre of it (to me, as a foreigner) – our 'scene' had to him been an ordinary affair.

 

A couple of weeks afterwards – in an unconnected incident – I heard a woman I knew ‘bawling out’ someone over the telephone. She was giving the person at the other end of the line the most terrific telling off: scarce pausing for breath, as she lashed with her tongue, at the top of her voice.

 

A passing witness looked at me and smiled. ‘She’s telling off a supplier,’ he said. ‘Someone who let her down.’

 

Like my incident with the cop, it was, I felt, a Russian lesson.  

 

My ‘run-in’ with the lawman didn’t end with my exit from the bank.   

 

In terms of population, Moscow is the largest city on the continent of Europe. The regular police number more than 50,000 officers, who are backed-up by various specialist units. Numerous other men and women are encountered across the city in military uniforms of one kind or another.

 

A month or so later - in one of those coincidences which can seem freakish but which life is, in fact, full of – I encountered ‘my’ cop again.

 

This time our coming together was in an entirely different part of Moscow.

 

As I entered a square on the way to a metro station, I found myself right under his nose.

 

It was unquestionably him.

 

He was preoccupied, talking, on some steps, to several other officers.

 

The square was busy with people and, although I was within no more than a few feet of him, he failed to notice me.

 

I walked on, melted into the crowd and caught a train home.

 

These days I remember the face of the brave young bank official only vaguely. But the cop’s I remember vividly.

 

I suspect I always shall.