Black Earth City Page 10

  At dinner one night in a restaurant, we were placed next to the small dance floor. As we nibbled at caviar and smoked meats, a tall, serious girl danced before us in a long black dress, which she gravely removed. The little she was wearing underneath came off with no less dignity. I never imagined it was possible to give off such an air of refined suffering when dancing naked. My father and I looked gloomily at the plates in front of us. It seemed impolite to tuck in, in the circumstances.

  It was only when I had seen him off and boarded the train back to Voronezh that my temperature dropped and the world settled back into solidity. He’d left me with a suitcase full of good and useful things: a teapot, a huge bag of Smarties, and a Christmas cake wrapped in foil. It was 30 December, and even the conductress in my train carriage was feeling festive. She joked as she slotted our tickets into her leather ticket pouch.

  ‘Going to spend the New Year with your family, eh? Quite right, use the railways while you can, it’s only a matter of time before they’re sold off to the capitalists!’

  She laughed and the kindly, middle-aged couple occupying the bunks opposite joined in, demurring a little, ‘Oh, come now–’

  They were already in their royal-blue travelling tracksuits. Once the conductress had gone, the wife plumped down by the window, shifting her bottom until she had made a comfy hollow for herself. Then she nodded at her husband who pulled a bottle of champagne out of the sports bag under his feet.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Let’s go then, shall we?’

  The fourth member of our compartment, a pale, silent young man, managed a timid smile. ‘Let’s go!’

  I had no bottle of my own to produce, but the Christmas cake went down well. The nice couple, who were engineers in the metal industry, helped themselves to second wedges and exclaimed at its tastiness. When we had been talking for a while, the pale young man joined in, volunteering the information that he was a violinist from Uzbekistan. His name, he told us shyly, was Genghis. Well, there was no stopping us after that. Mr Engineer reminisced about the walking holiday he had taken in Central Asia, oh, it must have been twenty years ago, before he’d met Mrs Engineer. She, meanwhile, was reminded of the Uzbek orchestra that she had heard in the Palace of Youth in Moscow once, how it had sent shivers up her spine.

  ‘You’re a very passionate people, I would say,’ pronounced Mrs Engineer sagely. ‘Of all the peoples of the Soviet Union, I’d think – of course I don’t know for certain – but I’d think that the Uzbeks were the most passionate.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ nodded Mr Engineer. ‘Full of passion. I noticed it on my tour.’

  Genghis blushed.

  ‘Not that there is any more Soviet Union,’ sighed Mrs Engineer. ‘No more friendship of peoples.’

  ‘Yes there is, dear,’ said her husband. ‘Look at us all together. And the champagne’s not finished!’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Always the optimist,’ she said, and the moment of anxiety passed. I passed around the cake again and Mrs Engineer described to me her recipe for the apple pie called a charlotka, until our glasses were empty and it was time for bed.

  *

  Perhaps it was the fever, or perhaps it was the champagne; in any case, in the morning I overslept, and was woken by Mrs Engineer as we rumbled over the iron bridge across the Voronezh river. She had changed out of her tracksuit into a red-and-black check dress that made it difficult to focus. My eyes slid shut again with the effort … Suddenly we were in the station and the conductress was roaring at me. ‘Get up, get up, what kind of a way is this to behave on the railways!’

  I scrambled off the train, still half dozing, and it was only as I was almost at the hostel that a rush of adrenalin jolted me awake. My passport, money, contact lenses and all the presents I had bought for New Year – they were in a bag tucked safely under the bunk, and now, no doubt, on the way to the Ukraine.

  The platform was empty by the time I returned. There was only one guard leaning on his snow shovel and gossiping with a friend.

  ‘Where’s the train from Moscow?’

  ‘Gone, dyevushka. Finished.’

  ‘But where is it now? I left something on it –’

  ‘Oh, it’s being cleaned.’ The guard looked at my expression and heaved a sigh. ‘Walk down the tracks, that way, and you’ll find it, if you really have to.’

  ‘You say – walk down the tracks?’

  ‘That’s right – just keep going. Watch out for trains, that’s all.’

  It was a muffled, snowy morning and the crunch of my footsteps was loud. At the end of the platform I found a flight of steps down to the tracks, which stretched out ahead until they blurred and vanished, bordered by firs thick with snow. The spacing of the sleepers was just slightly longer than my normal pace. Everything was quiet.

  After some minutes I came upon a young man digging at the side of the tracks.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I hailed him. ‘I’m looking for Train Number 9, from Moscow –’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he nodded, as if he’d known what I was going to ask. ‘Keep walking until you reach the budka, and ask again. Ask at the budka,’ he repeated, and turned back to his task.

  I didn’t know what a budka was, but he was no longer listening. So I continued along the tracks. A long time passed, and then I saw an old man making his way slowly towards me.

  ‘Please, I’m looking for Train Number 9 –’

  He looked me up and down and shook his head. ‘No, daughter,’ he said. ‘Dalshe. You must go further.’

  Again I continued along the tracks. It was hard work striding from sleeper to sleeper, and my feet were frozen inside their boots. At last I made out a structure in the distance, a tall, narrow hut with stairs leading up to the first floor. There seemed to be a light in the window. At the top of the stairs, the door was standing slightly open. I looked inside and a pair of figures like large plums in railway uniform swivelled to look at me in astonishment.

  ‘Forgive me for disturbing you, but I’m looking for the budka – well, in fact, my bag – it’s being cleaned, the train – from Moscow –’

  ‘Moscow?’ said one, doubtfully.

  ‘Your bag?’ said the other. They began to quiver.

  ‘Yes, on the train from Moscow, it’s being cleaned in a siding –’

  They could hold back no longer. Guffaws burst from them. ‘How did you find us?’ they finally managed to ask. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Well, England.’

  ‘England!’ They jumped up and made me take one of their seats, having first wiped it with a sleeve. ‘Train Number 9, eh – don’t worry, we’ll find it for you. We’ll give Sergei a shout, over there –’ and they began to make calls on a huge oily telephone, still chuckling and muttering to each other, ‘An anglichanka! In our budka!’

  So this was a budka. I looked about me. It was built of riveted metal plates. On two walls, there were large, rectangular windows arranged in ‘portrait’ rather than ‘landscape’ fashion, running from roof to floor. I suddenly realised what it was: half a train carriage, standing on one end.

  Outside the budka, a huge red locomotive hissed to a halt. The plums hopped nimbly onto a running board beside the driver.

  ‘Hup!’ they called out, swinging me aboard, and we chugged away down the snowy line.

  ‘The bag’s got her passport in – English,’ they told Sergei.

  ‘Don’t want to lose that,’ said Sergei, putting his foot down. After a few minutes we came to the siding. ‘There she is,’ he called out over the noise of the engine. ‘What carriage were you in?’

  Train Number 9 showed no sign of activity. The windows were dark, there was no movement inside. My passport was surely fetching a nice price at the back of the railway station, with a slice of Christmas cake thrown in. At carriage 12, I climbed down into the snow. It was deeper here, and I had to force my way through to the door. Sergei and the plums were peering out of the engine window. I knocked, feeling ridiculous.

  Al
most instantly, the door swung open and a willowy man in overalls made an elaborate bow.

  ‘Charlotta Hobson, I suppose?’ he said, and handed me my bag.

  We dropped the plums back at their budka, leaving the cake with them, and Sergei took me on to the station. We rattled over those rails and blasted on the horn like devils. A glimmer of sun was showing on the edges of the fir trees, and Sergei took a couple of swigs from a filthy bottle of spirit. It was almost ten o’clock on the last day in the history of the Soviet Union.

  *

  Back in the hostel, I pushed open the door and found the room had turned silver. Ira had pinned hundreds of single strands of tinsel to the ceiling. You couldn’t see much, but it brushed your face pleasantly as you moved through it. I could just make out Joe smoking, Ira chopping onions into a frying pan, and Emily, head down, searching for something in the bags under her bed. The TV was on with the volume turned down and the Waterboys were booming out of the stereo.

  ‘Privyet,’ said Ira, grinning. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Hey!’ said Emily, pulling her head out from under her bed. ‘You’re back! What did you bring us?’

  The atmosphere in the hostel was strained and excitable. In previous years most of the students would have gone home for the New Year holidays, but with the inflation many couldn’t afford it, and the place was full. In the kitchen, people were struggling to cook for tonight’s feast. The cleaners had gone on strike ten days previously, the heap of rubbish in the corner reached five foot up the walls, and still people were adding more. Occasionally it settled and slid further out into the room, and everyone who was fighting and shouting over the few hobs that worked would curse and kick it out of the way.

  Now and again, someone would say, ‘Hey, everybody, let’s remember that it’s a holiday today. Let’s wish each other peace and good spirits.’

  And someone else would growl, ‘Yeah right, peace to you, you idiot. When are you going to cork your ears up, the air blowing through your head’s disturbing me.’

  The Armenians had already begun their celebrations, and Garo was lurching along the corridor, trying to hug the Komendant. A tiny girl in a pinafore saw them coming and hid in the stairwell, clasping the bowl of coleslaw she’d been making to her chest. But they were heading for the stairs and they soon spotted her.

  ‘It’s Thumbelina!’ they cried. ‘Come here, my beauty, come and celebrate with us. Look what a tasty little salad she’s made, the little mousekin!’ and on and on. She blushed furiously, dodged under their arms and hurried away to her room, muttering under her breath.

  Emily and I went downstairs to Room 99. An invitation had been awaiting my return, decorated with a picture of Santa Claus holding a samovar. ‘The Great Chamber of 99 requests the pleasure of your company in greeting 1992,’ it announced. ‘Celebrations will commence with a Grand Parade in formal dress.’ And beneath, in capitals: ‘THIS UNIQUE EVENT WILL NEVER BE REPEATED.’

  There were to be fifteen of us, and Liza Minelli was cooking a sort of goulash with paprika. She kept coming in and out, searching for more ingredients and telling us how delicious it was. ‘You won’t believe it!’ she repeated each time. ‘It’ll blow you to fragments!’ Emily and I sat down with Nina to peel a bucket of potatoes.

  At four o’clock, Viktor came in, announcing, ‘Happy New Year.’ He poured all of us a few grammes.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit early?’

  ‘In Vladivostok,’ he explained.

  As the sky darkened, the new year swept towards us across the endless steppe.

  *

  This unique event was indeed unlikely to be repeated. From midnight, we would be living in a new country, the Russian Federation, a country with a new flag, a new anthem and a new constitution. The command economy would be abolished, and free-market economics would transform the way Russians lived and worked. The legal code would have to be rewritten, along with the marriage service, the history books and the maps. New banknotes would have to be printed; Soviet slogans all over the country would be taken down; institutions, streets, whole cities would change their names. The army, much depleted, would have to be brought home within the country’s new borders with the independent states of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan. For the second time in the twentieth century, Russia was starting afresh.

  Which, as Mitya pointed out at dinner that evening, gave us more than enough toasts to last until it was all over. We were sitting on the beds in Room 99, crammed around a long table that the girls had somehow assembled. Plate after plate of zakuski, snacks to be eaten with the vodka, lay before us; when the plates ran out, they’d turned to saucepan lids and pieces of paper.

  ‘Bozhe moi, Mitya, you’re not going to torment us with politics all evening, are you?’ cried Liza Minelli. ‘Eat, everyone, drink. It’s a party.’

  We fell upon the food, and Viktor, who was there with a new girlfriend barely more than a schoolgirl, made a small speech about the fact that vodka was pure spirit, or near enough, and therefore should not be tainted by worldly things such as politics or money (‘meaning you should always drink other people’s,’ interjected Tanya). Vodka, he continued, should only come into contact with the finer things in life: poetry, and love – and so he proposed a first toast for the evening, which was, ‘To the hymen.’

  The goulash arrived and worked its magic: as the first taste hit the roof of the mouth, a fierce little fireball flew up both nostrils and exploded behind the eyes. A chorus of snorts stopped all talk and Liza Minelli looked pleased with herself. ‘I warned you,’ she said complacently. ‘I said it would blow you to fragments.’

  Yakov was describing previous New Years, spent with his parents. They, like millions of others, never missed the yearly showing of the film The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy your Steam Bath – a romantic comedy based on the premise that in every town in the Soviet Union there is an identical street called Builders’ Street, lined with blocks of flats each furnished with the same furniture, with the same pictures on the walls and books on the shelves. Just as comic was the New Year report from the bourgeois capitalist states: ‘In Spain,’ the commentator would pronounce in funereal tones, ‘they will not be greeting the New Year joyfully. Unemployment runs at so many per cent, so many thousands have no home … In Washington, it won’t be a happy New Year either. Sixty per cent of the country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of five per cent of exploitative capitalists … As for Paris –’ and so on. The same footage of homeless children would appear year after year, until they became fond of it. ‘There’s the one with a wart again,’ they’d say. ‘Still no older.’

  This year, however, we turned on the TV at midnight and watched the huge red hammer-and-sickle flag on the Kremlin being lowered against the dark sky. There was a moment’s pause, and then the Russian tricolour was slowly raised in its place.

  It should have been a great moment, the lowering of the tyrants’ sign – and yet the red flag with its hammer and sickle looked so brave and bold in comparison with these dreary red, white and blue stripes. We cheered, and then a pang of nostalgia silenced everyone. The imagery of their childhood was being laid aside and the socialist ideals that had been taught along with it were now obsolete. For children of the Brezhnev years, the real and the ideal were plainly delineated; no one felt any sadness at the end of Party hegemony. The ideals, though, were different. It was as though the government had suddenly announced that love did not conquer all.

  Yuri jumped up and started banging a saucepan lid. ‘Forward, comrades! Let’s sing our anthem for the last time!’

  We agreed noisily and set off down the corridor, banging saucepans and cups, and bellowing the Soviet hymn.

  ‘Indestructible Union of free republics,

  Joined together for all time by great Russia!

  All hail the one, powerful Soviet Union,

  Created by the will of the people!’

  ‘Farewell to our flag!’ shou
ted Oleg.

  ‘Hurrah!’ cried the crowd. People were coming out of their rooms and joining in. One of the English boys produced a hammer-and-sickle flag and ran in front, waving it and banging on doors. A swelling of voices continued with the chorus:

  ‘Glory to our free Fatherland

  The friendship of peoples is our safe stronghold!

  The Party of Lenin, the power of the people

  Will lead us to the triumph of Communism!’

  ‘Farewell to the Party of Lenin!’ yelled someone.

  ‘Hurrah!’

  ‘Farewell to our Young Pioneer uniforms with their little caps!’

  ‘Hurrah!’

  ‘Farewell to “Workers of the World Unite!”’

  ‘Hurrah!’

  ‘Farewell to the Communist Party!’

  ‘Hurrah!’

  ‘Farewell to Lenin! Let him point somewhere else!’

  ‘Hurrah!’

  ‘Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!’

  *

  Much later that morning, about six, when Mitya had gone home and Jim and I were just finishing up the champagne, Viktor appeared and said, ‘Let’s go out, see what’s on the streets.’

  ‘Oh, Viktor, I’m finished, I’m just going to bed,’ I tried.

  ‘Come on! It’s the first day of a new era, don’t you want to congratulate people?’

  So Jim, Viktor and I set off. It was cloudy and warm outside, and the streets were almost empty. Viktor marched about making gestures like a poet. An elderly couple were walking their elderly dog. ‘Happy New Year!’ Viktor announced in his stentorian voice and they smiled, a little taken aback. Jim found Pioneer badges for sale in a kiosk; they bore a flame surrounded by the motto ‘Always ready!’ We pinned them to our hats. Viktor was striding towards a tram. ‘Happy New Year,’ he greeted the driver, blowing her a kiss.