Jubilee Costume Party
The lobby of the capital’s War and Peace Restaurant is decorated with amateur photos showing amateur strip scenes performed by some of the local bohemia with vital statistics anything but Hollywood. This time the restaurant marked its anniversary without any entertainment in the nude. Instead, the thick motley crowd was interspersed with colorful figures sporting costumes from Leo Tolstoy’s voluminous creation. Kutuzov was the easiest to spot, owing to the eye patch, but Napoleon looked more like a character on cheap popular prints, a far cry from David’s and even less so Ingres’s portrayals. But cheap popular prints were also part of War’s visual concept, just as the tavern was its self-identification.
The waiters were dressed as hussars, but by no means their cocky historical self. On the contrary, they were courteous and obliging to a somewhat overstated degree, like the Court Guard of the merrymaking Russian Empress Elizabeth.
The guests arrived non-stop for three hours, among them fashionable womanizing artist Illia Chychkan with a bevy of young female devotees, boys from the most popular Ukrainian rock group Elsa’s Ocean, all dressed with a disco touch. The rock groups Green Gray, Brothers Karamazov, and Four Kings also sent representatives.
Champagne was served in aluminum tankards, a tribute to the 1812 winter campaign, which the French found too cold for their taste. The amount thus served was appreciated by the guests; for some it was the final argument in favor of participating in a Karaoke contest. The songs were old Soviet standards and sheets with lyrics were handed around by former television hostess and current emcee Slava Frolova, somewhat on the beefy side. Those present were most impressed not by the chorus girls (shrieking a little too loud), but by their accompaniment, a real fire company brass band with the musicians sporting shining helmets. In addition, the guests were offered to fill in War and Peace club membership questionnaires. Then there was a beer-drinking and painting contests. A large canvas was erected and everyone would come and add a dab of paint. The end result was titled War and Peace. Year One.
The main course, roast mutton, was served in the patio after the guests watched the entire cooking process with gusto no one bothered to hide. Toasts to the house mingled with talk about the terrorist attack on America and historical allusions. Some wags recalled that Napoleon promised Russia emancipation, but the “patriots of Orthodoxy and autocracy” preferred habitual serfdom to freedoms they did not understand. They also mused what would have happened if Kutuzov had not ordered Moscow be torched. Maybe New York would have been spared its current, perhaps... The small talk flowed like the libations in the beer drinking tourney.
