The bartender looks up from his work as a grinding squeak from the front door’s aging hinges alerts him to my presence. The aging grey unicorn’s eyes flick rapidly over my face, my hat, my coat, my face again— before even crossing the few steps between doorway and counter, I am appraised in detail.
“Fine evening to you, comrade,” he says with a frown and a raised eyebrow. "It is rare that we entertain government stallions here. Are you here to drink with us, or to investigate us?"
His words draw alarmed glances from the few ponies seated at the bar. Most, however, are gathered around the lamplit room's mismatched collection of tables and chairs, too occupied by food, drink, and company to notice my entrance.
I quickly remove my ushanka, and am sure to open my coat before reaching into my inner pocket and retrieving a golden coin, which I lay on the counter. "A round of your finest," I say, loudly enough to be heard by the nearest tables.
The bartender snatches the coin with a sweep of his foreleg. He smiles, albeit dryly, then places a hoof to his lips and fires off a piercing whistle.
The sound summons a lime green pegasus mare who reports to the counter with a nasal "Eh?" and a stretch of her wings. The bartender barks orders at her in husky Pegastan pidgin— I hear the words do 'em big and 'round the house, but little else.
"'Kay!" the server says, nodding once. Then she leaps over the bar with a flap of her wings and disappears into a back room, leaving me to survey the room.
At first glance, the pub appears to be like any other; only a cultured eye would detect anything out of the ordinary. The ponies crowded around the tables are Stalliongrad born and bred, but the specialty food of the night seems to be kabocha from Neighpon, the music playing on the room’s lone gramophone is a lilting crystalflute ballad, and the bottles that the server mare is distributing are unmistakably filled with red wine from southern Prance.
"My friends refer to this place as ‘the trade show,’ and only in hushed tones,” I say to the bartender. “Was it you who invented this name?”
He chuckles. “A fitting euphemism, don’t you think? See how proudly our comrades raise mugs of imported spirits, toasting the health of the very leader who would outlaw such disloyalty. They are good and honest ponies, most of them, and they enjoy the thrill of the forbidden as much as they do the taste of imported food.”
The serving mare places a goblet before me and fills it with wine. I nod to her in thanks as I lift the glass, then swirl it. The smell is dry, very dry, with surprisingly complex undertones— the kind of wine usually reserved for connoisseurs and collectors. I take the first sip, and am not disappointed.
The aftertaste unfolds on my tongue as I nod my approval to the bartender. “Fortunate for us, then, that not all foreign pleasures are outlawed just yet.”
A soft laugh, almost a giggle, comes from my left.
“Please. I’m ‘exotic,’ not ‘foreign.’”
I turn, and find myself looking into a pair of smiling eyes, deep blue and reflective like the glass resting against her lips. Her mane is full and wavy, almost black in the uneven lamplight, and her coat is a hot tulip-pink. As she lowers the glass, her mouth curls into a smirk.
“So you’re the big spender, huh? Fancy tastes you’ve got.”
“My tastes are, in your words, exotic,” I reply, rotating to properly face her where she sits with her elbow resting on the counter. “A result of a long career in foreign diplomacy. But such is the reason for coming here tonight, is it not?”
She tilts her head to the side and spreads her hooves for a long, exaggerated shrug. Her words come out in a rolling singsong. “I’m nothin’ but a passer-by who knows a party when she sees one.”
“Ah, but not just any passer-by,” I say, mirroring her smirk. “I recognize well the sound of an Equestrian accent such as yours. You are very far from home indeed.”
She shakes her head, but still holds onto a small smile. “Long as there’s good weather, good drink, and good company, I’m not far from home at all.”
“Respectable words to live by.” I raise my glass.
Our goblets make a delicate ding, like the chime of a bell, as the rims touch. Her eyes close as she takes a long, slow drink.
"Tell me, then,” I say as the sharp taste fades to its finish, “is Stalliongrad a home for you?"
She places a hoof beneath her chin and purses her lips in a pose of mock contemplation. "Well, let’s see. The weather was nicer in the Fillypines, the drink was better in Germaneigh... and it took me until tonight to find any Stalliongrad ponies who can appreciate something exotic." At the end of her statement, her eyes are half-lidded and her smirk has returned. “I think I’m gonna need some convincing.”
An involuntary grin comes to my face. The intent of her words is unmistakable, and I puff out my chest to meet her advances with confidence. “Such admirable honesty!” I say, laughing between words. “I think it must be love for our Motherland that prevents my comrades from speaking their minds about Stalliongrad weather and Stalliongrad vodka. Perhaps Stalliongrad ‘convincing’ will be more enjoyable?”
Initially, she grins along with me, but her expression falls gradually until her brow is furrowed in an expression of vague concern. Instead of replying, she leans several inches to the left, as if I were blocking her view of some unfolding sequence of events.
It is then that I notice the pony-shaped shadow looming over me, along with the distinctive smell of cheap vodka.
“Enjoying yourself, comrade?” booms an all too familiar voice, inches behind my head.
The confidence that I had been enjoying melts like a snowbank beneath a flamethrower. My heart pounds as I snatch my ushanka from where it sits on the counter, place it on my head, pivot in place, and straighten my neck to stand at attention. With my gaze locked straight ahead in proper posture, I am treated to a good view of my superior’s broad chest and muscular neck.
“Greetings, Comrade Iron Curt--”
“Sorry for interrupt, comrade.” His voice booms from his chest, dangerously calm and decidedly unapologetic. “You had words about Stalliongrad vodka?”
"Yes! Ah, no! This young mare and I were simply discussing--" I turn to gesture toward my companion, but her place at the bar is empty, showing no trace that anypony had ever been there. Even her glass of wine has disappeared.
I turn back around, and see Iron Curtain holding my own glass up to the light, squinting at it with his good eye.
“Legally imported wine, comrade," I say hastily. "I have no reason to suspect this establishment of--”
Iron Curtain ignores me as he lowers the glass to his nose, sniffs loudly, then lets out a harrumph.
"What is this weak, Equestrian drink?"
"If I may correct you, comrade, the wine is from--"
"In Stalliongrad we have real Hooviet drink!” Iron Curtain roars. He raises one hoof, then brings it down on the counter like a sledgehammer, so hard that my drink jumps in place. “Bartender!”
The bartender, who has likely been watching from a distance from the moment Iron Curtain opened the front door, appears all but instantaneously.
“Yes, comrade?”
Iron Curtain flicks his hoof toward my hardly touched glass of wine, as if it were all he could do to keep from hurling it instead. “Remove this watery swill and bring vodka as powerful as Communism!”
The bartender glances at my glass, then frowns. “I will fetch the vodka, but allow our friend to finish his glass, perhaps? I hate to see it go to waste.”
Iron Curtain slowly, slowly turns toward me with a bone-piercing chill in his eyes. When he speaks, he forms each word with deliberate, icy precision.
“My comrade is finished with his wine.”
The bartender shows no reaction save for a terse nod as he takes the more than half-full glass of fine wine and carries it with him into the back room. I watch it go with some regret, only to be shocked out of my wistful mood by another explosive, spittle-flying roar.
“Have you no shame? No pride in our great Motherland? Were you not taught to fight for beloved Stalliongrad? Peace has made us weak and lazy like tiny baby foal!”
My ears are left ringing, and nearly every patron in the bar is watching. Some of them are gathering their things, preparing to flee.
“I lost right eye fighting capitalist pigs, and now with left eye I see comrade who drinks foreign, capitalist poison and lusts after foreign, capitalist zhopa!”
“Oh please. My zhopa speaks a universal language. Sounds like you need a drink or five, comrade.”
Her Equestrian accent momentarily vanishes as the word comrade rolls off her tongue with near-perfect pronunciation. Every eye in the bar falls upon the lone mare leaning against the edge of an unoccupied table, smirking as she tilts back the last of her wine.
Every eye, of course, except for one. Iron Curtain continues to glare at me, letting the mystery Equestrian mare speak to his back. It is an ingenious way to berate me while also replying to her taunts.
“I see no drink here, only thin juice harvested by slaves of exploitative regime and left to rot!”
“Easy fix. You want vodka, right? I’ll get the first round, if you drink with me.” Despite Iron Curtain’s menacing bulk blocking most of my view, I can see her turn toward the bar with a wave and a nod.
“I do not drink with capitalists!”
Again I am uncertain of whom Iron Curtain means to berate more— me, or the mare challenging him.
“Oh c’mon,” she replies, all too sweetly. “How about a game, then? Friendly round of table-jumping?”
The gramophone plays a few more bars of Crystal Waltz, then cuts off with a warbling scratch as somepony pulls the needle from the record. Moments later, the silence is broken by the clomping of Iron Curtain’s hooves as he finally turns his back on me and faces her.
“You dare challenge a Stalliongrad stallion to great Stalliongrad tradition of table-jumping?”
Even from where I stand, the deviousness in the challenger's crooked smile is obvious. She answers the question by trotting a tight circle, stepping onto a chair and then onto the table as easily as if climbing a set of stairs.
“Finally, somepony who knows how to have fun!”
She rears up and shakes out her mane with a long whoop. The audience starts to murmur.
“Typical Equestrian arrogance!” Iron Curtain shouts.
“Just don’t go easy on me!” the mystery mare replies.
“You! By the magnitofon!” Iron Curtain snaps, and the pony nearest to the gramophone stands at attention as if he had been physically yanked into position.
“Play song worthy of glorious Hooviet victory!”
There is an awkward silence as the target of Iron Curtain’s order shuffles through a cabinet set against the back wall. When a song finally starts playing, it is a driving piano march with a brass and accordion accompaniment, the sort that must have accompanied Hooviet propaganda films in the days of Iron Curtain’s youth. Underscoring the music is a faint dry crackle, betraying the age and condition of the vinyl..
Iron Curtain charges down the center of the room at a full gallop, causing ponies to shove and jostle each other to get out of his path. He mounts the farthest table in a single powerful leap, and stares across the battlefield of cleared-out tables.
On one side stands Iron Curtain in coat and ushanka, his brow creased into a steely one-eyed glare forged in hardship, hardened by battle, and refined by age to project a presence like the living avatar of Winter itself.
Across from him stands a nameless young mare from a faraway land, wearing nothing but a smirk. Her stance has a lazy sway to it, neither kowtowing before Iron Curtain nor standing in opposition; it is as if the glint in her eye creates a pocket of warmth immune to his icy fury.
“In Stalliongrad rules, if falling off table or spilling drink, then is losing immediately! There will be no second chances, no helpers, no outside interference--nopony to save capitalist scum from her folly!”
Iron Curtain starts pacing back and forth while shouting with the full force of his basso voice, like a general giving a speech to his troops. As he does, the server trots from table to table, laying out shots of vodka on each one.
“After jumping to new table and drinking, we are stomping with music sixteen counts! In this time, opposing side must make own jump and swallow entire drink! We continue until capitalist scum falls behind, falls from table, or falls victim to own foolish attempt to drink against proud defender of Stalliongrad! Now..." begin!”
Iron Curtain backs up by a half-step, then surges forward and leaps, easily launching himself over the heads of the crowd. The gramophone blares out chords like the battle cry of the Revolution as Iron Curtain's bulk comes down with a crushing wham! such that the heavy wooden table shudders beneath him.
Whooping cheers rise from the audience as everypony in the room starts stomping to the tempo of the music. Without realizing it, I find that my own forehoof has started to tap as well, carried along by the rising thrill of traditional alcoholic warfare.
Iron Curtain bends down, picks up the shot in his teeth, throws the contents to the back of his throat with a jerking motion, then drops the empty glass. He looks expectantly to his adversary with chin raised in challenge as he begins stomping along with the rest of the crowd.
The mare hardly spares Iron Curtain a glance. She sways happily to the music for fully half of her allotted sixteen counts, then crosses the gap to the nearest table with a kind of bounding leap. Unlike Iron Curtain, she snatches the shot with her hoof before rearing up and knocking the contents back.
“Nice jump!” she shouts. “Don’t tire yourself out, comrade!”
The music drives on, and instead of stomping out the sixteen-beat countdown, the unnamed competitor sways and bounces to the music as naturally as if dancing were her normal mode of movement.
Iron Curtain makes his next jump and drink with plenty of time. He strikes his commanding stance once more. “No simpering Equestrian capitalist is a comrade of mine! I am unstoppable, like Stalliongrad winter!"
The pink mare, still paying more attention to the bystanders than her opponent, prances a lap around the rim of her table, winking and blowing kisses. She makes the next hop barely in time to twirl like a dervish and sweep up her shot before being disqualified by the sixteenth beat.
Iron Curtain barely waits for her to swallow before he takes off on his next launch. “I am mighty, like Stalliongrad bear! I am General Winter, and you are lone spring flower before fearsome blizzard!” He jumps, and his hooves dig indents in the next table as he pounds into it.
The ‘flower’ on the table across from Iron Curtain spends precious hoofbeats rearing up and extending her forehooves into the air in a come-get-it stance. She calls out in a pitch-perfect mockery of Iron Curtain's accent:
“General Winter? Ha! I am seeing only 'floppy like Stalliongrad pierogi' and 'depressing like Stalliongrad hangover!'"
An uproar of laughter mixes with a surge of cheering and whistling as Summer takes off at a full gallop, launches herself onto the next table--then bounds off to another table on the next beat. On the third table, she doesn't just run; she plants her forehooves, flips head over heels like a tumbling acrobat, and flies across a gap easily twice the size of any crossed by either her or Iron Curtain thus far. By the time she lands, the cheers have become deafening and the rhythm on the floor has been nearly lost in the excitement.
She nicks the shot from the table between the fourteenth and fifteenth beats, then swallows and drops the glass on the sixteenth.
"Ever met a capitalist who can do that?"
Iron Curtain's nostrils flare and his eye burns in its socket like a lone coal in a snowed-over firepit.
"You think to impress me with such foalish circus feats? You are nothing! All will witness true show of Communist superiority over capitalist swine!"
He rears up, then roars at the top of his lungs as he charges full-force toward the edge of his table.
"For the Motherland! URAAAAAAA!"
It takes some time before I am able to nudge and squeeze my way through the still buzzing crowd, but as soon as I am able, I hurry to the disaster zone on the far end of the room. Finding Iron Curtain is easy enough; neither he nor the collateral damage from his spectacular last stand have moved at all.
I kneel down next to him.
“ty poryadke, comrade?”
“Ish sad day for Communisht party,” Iron Curtain slurs. The words are barely audible thanks to how his cheek rests on the floor.
“You fought valiantly, comrade,” I say, patting him on the shoulder. He reaches up and brushes my hoof away.
Somepony trots up behind me. "Friend of yours?"
"Co-worker," I reply, rising to all fours.
"He okay?"
"He has hurt nothing except his pride, I think. Now, as for us--another drink, perhaps?"
She snorts in amusement. "Only if you let me get this one. I wanna see how you do with Equestrian bourbon."
Iron Curtain groans something into the floor as the two of us leave him, but the only intelligible word is "pierogi."