Black Earth City Read online

  ‘Well –’ Mitya started again. ‘Perhaps tomorrow we’ll go somewhere where there’s less of a crowd?’

  I laughed, relieved. At the hostel the vakhtersha – the concierge – refused to let Mitya further than the hall. We shared a cigarette on the doorstep and then said goodbye awkwardly. He thrust his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the cold. I watched him until he rounded the corner, a dark figure against the bluish, snowy light.

  *

  It was impossible to be alone in the hostel. In our room, at any time of the day, Ira and Joe would be dozing, friends popping in and out, and there’d be a stream of queries at the door – Could we borrow a frying pan? A teaspoon? Five hundred roubles? Out in the corridor people were changing money, drinking, having crises of one sort or another.

  Where else, then? Not Mitya’s flat: his mother, father, brother, dog and parrot would be bursting with friendly curiosity. There were no bars, and the neon-lit ice-cream parlours were not inviting. The only place to be private was out in the open. At night, the ill-lit, potholed back streets were empty; only the occasional figure hurried along, buttoned into his overcoat, thinking of home. There was little traffic, and the sound of televisions turned up loud in the apartments that we passed only added to the sense of intimacy.

  Most evenings, Mitya and I met by the Cinema of the Young Spectator. When I stepped off the trolley bus he’d be waiting, always smoking, beneath the huge hand-painted billboard. His eyes seemed to close entirely when he smiled. ‘Nu-ka, posmotrim, let’s have a look,’ he’d say, fussing over my scarf. Winter had begun in earnest since we’d met. The snow that gleamed in the long stretches between street lights would now lie until spring, and the thermometer hovered around five degrees below – nothing severe, like the plummets into double figures still to come in December and January, but enough to convince Mitya that I was dangerously incompetent at dressing for the cold. I confess it was a moment I enjoyed: Mitya, smoking with no hands and narrowing his eyes like a private detective as he tightened the toggles on my coat.

  Then we’d set off, walking fast to keep warm. This was how I discovered the city – in the half-dark, taking short cuts through patches of waste ground and around the unfinished Party building, whose construction had come to a halt suddenly when perestroika began. The shops looked glamorous at night, lit by sparkling chandeliers, gilded, and full of recherché goods that I never saw at other times. One day I bought a furry green bowler hat, another a pair of leather ice skates. The evening we emerged from a shop, giggling, with a white periwig in a box, Mitya pulled me into a doorway and kissed me in the darkness.

  Certain places we returned to and made our own. We drank beer on the hot-water pipes outside one of the few nineteenth- century merchant’s houses in Voronezh. Up by the church was a statue in the Soviet monumental style; we huddled in the shelter of its billowing greatcoat and gazed over the reservoir to the industrial sector on the left bank, which glittered like Manhattan. According to urban myth, the statue had begun life as Stalin, but just as they put the finishing touches to it, Khrushchev made his speech condemning the ‘cult of personality’. So the municipal council whipped Stalin’s head off and substituted the head of Koltsov, a local poet noted for his love of nature.

  Mitya liked that sort of thing. When we approached his favourite places – the statues in the Children’s Park, for instance, masterpieces of Soviet kitsch, or the place by the railway station where a heap of two-foot-tall steel letters spelling ‘All hail to the Communist Party of the USSR!’ lay rusting in a heap – he’d take larger and larger steps and start waving his arms. ‘Look!’ he’d shout. ‘Isn’t that wonderful!’

  As we walked, we built up a collection of stories that became so closely associated with real places that they were as good as true. I can’t remember what provoked the idea that one of the trolley buses – you couldn’t tell which one – was the random bus, which took you to a random destination. Occasionally we’d see people on the street who, we swore, had just got off the random bus. They had that lost look. We grew to be so superstitious about this that quite often we let buses go by that we considered had something sinister about them. Babushkas knew which were the evil ones, we thought. If there were two or three old ladies waiting with their elbows out, ready to scurry on board, it was probably safe. It was really nothing more than an excuse to stay out later.

  Late each evening Mitya’s silhouette disappeared around the corner and I turned back to the hostel, which wore an air of post-coital smugness that almost drove me mad. Ira and Joe would be dozing peaceably together in our room. Emily and Yuri were down in Room 99, partying. Yakov and Nina were still going out together: it seemed as though every time you opened a cupboard, they would appear out of it, looking rumpled and dusty and pleased. Why were Mitya and I incapable of doing the same? We were bashful, that was all, and awkward. Out in the street it all came naturally, but indoors I was always flinging my arms up and almost breaking Mitya’s nose, and then he’d tread on my toes, and we’d both get embarrassed. It was not lack of willingness; I’d have gone into a cupboard with Mitya any day, though it’s lucky, with hindsight, that we didn’t. We’d probably have done each other permanent damage. As it was we walked until our feet were frozen and our noses turned from red to purplish-grey. We walked and walked and still slept badly at nights.

  *

  At a certain point it became too cold to stay outside all evening. There was a crazed feeling about the hostel: the siege was beginning. It was October, and we’d be in this together until April at the earliest. There was a lot of drinking and Sasha, who had been in Afghanistan, went on a three-day bender and smashed his room up.

  Ira and Joe didn’t care – they lay motionless and gazed into each other’s eyes. Twenty people could be dancing in their boots so the floor bounced and plaster dust streamed on top of them, and Joe’s beatific smile would not waver. It has to be said that large quantities of drugs played a part in this admirable repose. Mitya and I couldn’t emulate it: we just wanted to be on our own.

  Soviet culture came unexpectedly to our aid. In Voronezh there were at least three cinemas, as well as the Opera theatre, the Philharmonia, the puppet theatre, the Theatre of the Young Spectator and the Drama theatre. Mitya and I saw every show in town. We went to double bills at the cinema on Revolution Prospect, and to hear Gershwin played in the afternoons at the Philharmonia. We began to recognise the musicians: the patrician oboist with his hair slicked back, and the first violinist who seemed always on the verge of tears. The audience, too, repeated itself – four or five old ladies who never missed a concert, a large self-satisfied man who announced his opinion: ‘Of course they do not understand Gershwin, not at all.’

  We sat at the back and dreamt, and Mitya leant over and whispered in my ear. ‘One day we’ll live on a yacht. Thousands of kilometres of empty sea on every side.’

  Our venue of choice, however, was the Opera. The theatre itself, like a bulky old dowager with her jewels on, had a particular charm. A row of fat, stumpy columns adorned the façade, while inside the hall was marble, lit by grimy chandeliers. The theatrical terms in Russified French sounded to me genteel in the extreme.

  ‘You’re sitting in the parterre,’ we were told. ‘There will be one entrakt of twenty minutes.’

  Tickets for the front row of the stalls cost six roubles (about fifteen pence), and there was a specially shaped brass plate at the box office to receive your coins, and an old women in the garderob, the cloakroom, who told me off every time we came for not having sewed a hook into my coat.

  It was a repertory theatre and the productions had been doing solid service for years. Part of the enjoyment came from the fact that age had not so much added its patina as scraped off the polish. These were no seamless, flawless creations: the performers wrestled visibly with their roles. They sweated, they heaved, they suffered in too-tight corsets. And the audience rewarded them for it. They applauded the physical feats, the arias
belted out against all the constraints of costume, the rickety staircases managed at a run, the sword fights that ended in panting corpses. Mitya and I saw every detail from our front-row seats.

  It was at the Opera that we first saw the triangle player. During an uneventful performance of Evgeny Onegin, we found our attention distracted by the orchestra. There were some of our friends from the Philharmonia again. But about half an hour into the first act, the pit door opened and in strolled a young man with an instrument case. He sat down, took a novel out of his pocket, and began to read. After a few minutes he searched about in his pocket and found a boiled sweet. We were so close that a waft of sickly orange reached us. The conductor, we thought, looked agitated. After some time, the young man stirred. Still reading, he reached out with one hand to open the instrument case and take out his triangle. He stood up and asked the drummer next door to show him where they’d got to. For half a minute or so he waited, then struck a little ping-a-ling-a-ling. Then, to our great delight, he packed up his triangle and his book, nodded goodbye to his neighbour, and left.

  After the interval Mitya and I couldn’t bring ourselves to watch the rest of Tatyana’s fate. Instead we sat in the Opera buffet, well known for its Turkish coffee and zefir, nutty meringues, and revelled in the idea of the triangle player.

  ‘He’s probably been working up to that position for years,’ said Mitya. ‘First in the youth orchestra, then as understudy …’

  I giggled. ‘Years. He must dream of triangles …’

  ‘Yes – street signs, and geometrical bosoms, and the secrets of the Great Pyramid …’

  ‘And what about his home life? He practises so much, his triangle comes between him and his wife, and one day he finds her in bed with the conductor.’

  When we had eaten as many meringues as we could we walked back to the hostel, planning a crime novel around our hero. Three lovers, three deaths, and the most unbearable suspense until the last page, when, with a single ping!, it would be revealed that …

  At the hostel the vakhtersha as usual made trouble and would only let Mitya in for half an hour. We stood on the steps for a bit and then Mitya went home, as always, digging his hands deep into his pockets. I wanted to cry. The entire Soviet system seemed to be at the third point in our triangle.

  *

  It was the Uvarovs who unwittingly supplied the answer to our dilemma. At the end of October, Masha visited Emily and me in the hostel. She stood in our room trying not to notice the squalor, as though she had a favour to ask. In fact, the opposite was true: Masha took me aside and whispered that the whole family was going up to Moscow for the week, and perhaps we would like to borrow their flat? As I accepted, hurriedly, the fancy occurred to me that it was the wish that I had tossed into their stew, digested and become thought.

  Emily and I moved into the flat on Saturday and marvelled at the luxury. It was not a lavish flat by most standards, but we had hot showers whenever we wanted and a clean cooker. Hell, we sat in separate rooms and couldn’t hear each other – that felt good. I slept on a bed in the sitting room, in an alcove hung with red velvet curtains.

  Mitya was out of town for most of the week at a wedding, and there was no way of letting him know the news. But on Friday he returned and rang to say that he was coming round, instantly, he was on his way.

  Emily and Yuri had gone to Moscow the day before. Edik, Ira and Joe had been with me all afternoon drinking tea, but they grinned when they heard Mitya’s voice and immediately stood up to go. Suddenly I was alone. I put on lipstick, wiped it off again and stared at myself in the mirror. I cleaned my teeth and instantly felt embarrassed at the idea that Mitya would notice the smell, so I drowned it with a glass of the Uvarovs’ Armenian brandy, which tasted disgusting after toothpaste. In the mirror I caught sight of my grimace and laughed at myself. My pulse was racing, and I laughed at that too. I flung myself on the sofa to read, nonchalantly, but a second later sprang up again to make my bed.

  Just as I’d pulled all the sheets back, Mitya arrived. He showed no signs of noticing the bed or the blush that burnt all the way down to my collarbones. He was covered in powdery snow, out of breath, saying ‘Look!’ He pulled back the curtains. ‘Blizzard.’

  Out of the darkness, snow was coming at the window, swirling past it on a vicious wind. Beyond it, we could see only the glimmer of a few streetlights wreathed by flakes. Nothing was still; it was like a storm at sea. As we watched, the lights all down the street went out. A power cut.

  By candlelight, Mitya prepared Russian Bloody Marys. ‘You pour the tomato juice in first,’ he said. His hair, still a little damp, fell in two curls on his forehead. ‘Then you take a knife and slide the vodka down it, slowly, so that it sits on top.’ Around our table with its few candles the world seemed to have fallen quiet. The only movement was the snow, flying silently past us.

  ‘It feels as though we are the two survivors of a disaster,’ Mitya murmured.

  ‘We’ll have to stay in our bunker for twenty thousand years.’

  ‘Exactly … how will we pass the time?’

  I laughed. ‘Oh, well – haven’t we learnt to be patient by now?’

  ‘Patient!’ Mitya burst out. ‘Only when we have to be. Come here –’

  Much later, in the little bed with its red velvet curtains, Mitya looked at me slyly. ‘We have a responsibility, after all,’ he remarked, ‘being the only survivors.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘To refound the human race –’

  ‘Oh God, I hadn’t thought of that.’

  The snow was pattering against the window. Mitya pulled the blankets up over us, over our heads. I could feel him smiling in the darkness. ‘Although on the other hand,’ he remarked, ‘it’s all right being on our own.’

  *

  At half past seven on Saturday morning I woke up. Mitya had left to go to classes, my head had been exchanged for a large blunt object, and I couldn’t work out what that remote ringing sound meant. At last I realised: it was Mr and Mrs Uvarov pressing their own doorbell. They must have caught an earlier train. I grabbed my dressing gown and ran into the kitchen, kicking a brimming ashtray across the room. At midnight, seeing as the sink was already full, it had seemed a good idea to stack the dirty dishes on the floor. The tablecloth was covered in candle wax and tomato juice. I was just trying to stuff it into a bucket when the Uvarovs, giving up on me, opened the door with their key.

  With one glance they took in my dressing gown, the state of the flat, the empty vodka bottle, and my frozen, guilty expression. They did not utter a single reproach, but Mrs Uvarov let out a tiny sigh. She was disappointed. Silently we tidied the flat and I left as soon as I could to go to classes. Our friendship never wholly recovered from this blow. Yet once I was out on the street, I couldn’t stop myself from grinning and breaking into a run.

  · 6 ·

  Russian Lessons

  Lesson I: Practice

  On the first night we arrived in Moscow, back in September, a frenzy to speak to the nearest Russian took hold of me. We were crossing Paveletsky station, lit by neon strips that threw an inadequate, harsh glare. A great crowd was hurrying and jostling, breathing steam into the darkness and heaving too-heavy bundles. Packages, bedrolls, boxes were piled in corners, with little old women no bigger than dolls perched on top of them, looking fearfully from side to side. Young men smoked and kept guard. Women produced hard-boiled eggs from their handbags and fed their blank-eyed children. What was this great exodus? I had no way of finding out: all the Russian I’d ever known had vanished. Except for one word.

  ‘Son,’ I blurted out to the porter who was pulling a cart with our luggage on it. ‘Do you have a son?’

  He stopped and raised his eyebrows. ‘Do I have a son?’ he repeated indignantly. ‘What difference is it to you?’

  I blushed. ‘None, nothing …’

  He unloaded the bags, still annoyed. ‘Son! What’s that all about? Here I am struggling to make a living and they mock m
e with their questions.’

  For some time my Russian produced unpredictable results. I learnt by ear, slipping words that I liked into sentences without quite knowing what they meant. The expression naoborot – ‘on the contrary’ – sounded to me the height of linguistic sophistication.

  ‘How’s things?’ people would ask.

  ‘On the contrary, very good,’ I’d reply.

  The few poems that I’d learnt in Russian were wheeled out again and again. Lermontov’s meditation on a lonely white sail at sea supplied several useful phrases. For instance, when the windows in the bus were broken I could remark in beautiful Russian, ‘The wind whistles, and the mast creaks and groans!’ When a cockroach scuttled out of our room, I exclaimed wittily, ‘Alas, he is not seeking happiness, nor is he fleeing from it.’ When I was tired, there was Pushkin: ‘It’s time, my friend, it’s time; my heart begs for peace.’ Sometimes people were taken aback: their eyes popped as though a small pig had just quoted their national poet. They corrected me: ‘No, no, that is by our Russian genius, A. S. Pushkin!’ As though I’d uttered the sacred formulation by accident.

  Slowly my vocabulary began to grow. I had already found that all theatrical terms in Russian are simply borrowed from French; soon I discovered that, just like the English, Russians like to give anything that’s a bit fancy a French name. If you’re talking about food, clothes, literature or lovemaking and you can conjure up a little Frussian then not only will you probably be understood, but you’ll come across as having – how shall I put it? – a certain savoir-faire. German is useful if you want to discuss military matters, maps, cigarette holders or shipbuilding. English comes in handy for conversations about computers, business, finance and so on; also for hippie slang: hair means long flat greasy hair, shoesy means a fashionable pair of shoes, and, best of all, beatly, from the Beatles, describes something very, very cool.