Housekeepers Who Arrive In Limousines

For a Russian pensioner, Nina has a very unusual problem. It's not that she cannot afford to feed her cat like most people of her generation. It's that her son, a rich businessman, keeps insisting on sending her off on exotic foreign holidays and she has no time to feed her cat.


Nina is my cleaning lady. I must confess to feeling embarrassed about making her the subject of this column, for I have always had a slight contempt for Western journalists who had so few Russian contacts that they were reduced to quoting their maids and drivers. But Nina really is a gem.


I did not want another cleaning lady. Like most foreigners who lived here during the Cold War, I had one foisted on me. Diplomats and journalists used to sit round at dinner parties discussing the "servant problem" like petty officials of the British Raj. But the servants had the last laugh because, we have to assume, while they were washing our floors and ironing our knickers, they were also reading our letters on behalf of the KGB.


When I moved to a privately rented flat, I decided to iron my own knickers and keep my secrets to myself. But it was not to be. The landlord had some beautiful antique furniture. He insisted on it being polished every week. "Don't worry, Nina will come round and do it," he said. And since I had no time for polishing furniture, I agreed.


Nina turned out to be a great beauty. She is in her 60s but very fit because of regular swimming. She has waist-length, still-golden hair but she keeps it in a bun because she thinks that is appropriate for someone of her age. She looks like the plump, glowing women that the turn-of-the-century artist Boris Kustodiyev liked to paint, drinking tea from samovars or reclining on cushions.


Nina is a former opera singer. An orphan from the provincial town of Serpukhov, she trained as a cook and was sent to Germany at the end of World War II to feed the Soviet army. But someone in the kitchens heard her voice and soon she was singing for the officers. Later she sang for Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev himself.


When I met her in 1991, she had retired and was living poorly on a small pension. I think she cleaned for me then because she needed the cash.


Her visits were always lively. Nina has an opinion on every subject, including politics. Back then she was a big supporter of Boris Yeltsin. She told me she had seen him in her dreams, wearing a dazzling white shirt like an angel. But she has gone off him now because of the war in Chechnya.


Other things about Nina have changed too. She has started to come to work in a chauffeur-driven limousine. She potters around in my kitchen for a couple of hours, then calls for the car to pick her up again. The other day, she asked me if I would mind taking my own rubbish out because she did not want the driver to see her doing it. He thinks she visits me as a guest.


Nina's lifestyle has come to resemble the Mexican soap operas she adores, because her son is flourishing in his business. But wealth has not spoiled Nina at all. She brings photographs of her latest holiday in Sri Lanka, Egypt or the Canary Islands and recounts her adventures with childlike enthusiasm.


Why she continues to work is a mystery. Perhaps she likes a little independence from her son. Perhaps she enjoys gossiping. She really is a family friend now. But I sometimes feel it should be me cleaning for her.