Further Under the Duvet (8 page)

First published in
Abroad,
September 2003
.

News arrived! I was being sent to Russia! To some place called Novosibirsk.

I was extremely pleased as I’d always wanted to visit somewhere ending in ‘sk’. I’d favoured Omsk, Tomsk and Murmansk, but Novosibirsk would do nicely.

But where in the vastness of Russia
was
Novosibirsk? ‘We’ll buy the city guide to it.’ Oh how we laughed. The laughing stopped, however, when I looked it up on the internet. Himself had left the room and I nearly shouted the house down for him to come and have a look. ‘Himself! HIMSELF! I’ve found out where it is. Novosibirsk is the capital of SiBEEEERia.’

He nearly broke his neck running and in grim silence we stood before the screen and scrolled down through the details. Average temperature in February (which was when we were going): sixteen degrees below zero. Dropping as low as minus thirty-five. ‘We’ll need gloves,’ we concluded.

Then trying to establish the time difference was tricky. Eight hours ahead of GMT. ‘Unless they have daylight-saving time?’ ‘D’you think they have any daylight to save?’ I countered bitterly.

In the following weeks we wrung much hollow laughter from the situation by telling people at every opportunity that we were being sent to Siberia.

How to keep warm became all we talked about. We shopped for thermal underwear – quartering the average age as soon as we walked into the super-warm-knickers emporium, and passionately we debated the rights and wrongs of fur coats, a debate abruptly abandoned once we discovered how much fur coats actually cost.

Then word came. A change of plans! We weren’t going to Siberia after all! Other parts of Russia instead, all quite cold too, just not as cold as Siberia. We were mortified as by then we were dining out nightly on our gulag story. Our credibility was in shreds.

Wearing an awful lot of clothes, we landed in Moscow. At immigration, I was quite annoyed at how quickly they processed us. Call itself Russia! I wanted to queue, I wanted the authentic experience.

Outside in the perishing cold with sleet in the air and dirty slush underfoot, we met Valya, who would be our guide/minder for the trip. She was fresh-faced and blue-eyed, with blonde hair swirled over her ears. As soon as we’d said hello, she told us that her husband had just left her. God, I love Russians.
Love
them. They’d tell you
anything
. They do unhappiness with such verve, such style, such passion. As we lugged our suitcase to the car, Valya told me that she had nothing left to live for, but that she would still take care of us on the tour.

We had a driver, Boris, to take us into the centre of Moscow and he looked so unhappy it was almost comical. He had a wide clown mouth that turned down at the corners. His girl had just left him, Valya told us. After a short conversation in Russian, she divulged it had been for a younger man. Another burst of chat. Who happened to be his brother.

I sensed a matchmaking moment coming on. ‘You wouldn’t consider your man, as a replacement for your husband?’ I asked her.

She considered Boris, then curled her lip. ‘He is not good at making the sex.’

‘But how do you know?’

‘It is why his girl left him. He drinks too much. He wets the bed.’

Ah, well…

We had only four hours in Moscow before getting the overnight train east, just enough time to see that there was a Chanel shop in Red Square (Lenin must be rotating in his grave like a great big oul kebab) and to be stopped twice by military police looking at our papers. Everyone always says how grey and grim Russia is, but in Red Square is St Basil’s Cathedral, the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen. It’s what someone might dream up on a good acid trip: turrets and spires and onion domes swirled like ice-cream cones, all decked out in magnificent carnival colours. Commissioned by Ivan the Terrible who was so pleased with it that he poked out the architect’s eyes. (So he couldn’t ever do a cathedral for anyone else – a real mark of respect, your man must’ve been thrilled.)

Over dinner, in a smoke-filled wannabe-brasserie, Valya tried to make herself heard over the ear-blistering techno, to tell us more about her husband doing a runner.

‘Maybe he’ll come back,’ I bellowed hopefully.

‘He will not,’ she said, matter-of-factly, doing that lovely Russian honest/pessimistic thing. Valya was fabulous. (And just a small bit mad, as befits a woman who has just been left by her husband.) I loved her. I am always at my happiest with slightly mad people.

Then it was time to get the train. Moscow station was like a vision of hell: desperate-looking, unshaven men standing about in the perishing cold, looking for an unofficial portering gig. Everywhere were little kiosks selling drink; they were doing a brisk trade.

But to my surprise, the train came on time
and
it was gorgeous. Our sleeper carriage was like a cottage on wheels – it had two little beds, with old-fashioned, patterned blankets and chintz curtains at the windows. Wood-panelling lined the walls and it was all cosy and lovely. Just as soon as they turned off the deafening techno.

We rattled through the snowy night between two small points on this enormous land mass.

And then it was morning and we had arrived in the beautiful city of Nizhni Novgorod. (I love saying that. ‘I was in Nizzzhhhhhni Novgorod, you know.’ Even now, I still look for chances, however tenuous, to drop it into conversations. ‘So you like chocolate, do you? Funnily enough, I had some lovely chocolate in Nizzzhhhni Novgorod.’)

God, it was cold, though, the kind of cold where it hurts to breathe. Although not by local standards – they were having a heatwave. Normally, at that time of year, it was thirty below, but this was a balmy, unseasonable minus ten.

We were met by a wonderful young man called Artim, checked into our hotel, the dinkiest, cosiest, most charming place. From our bedroom window we could see children ice-skating on a frozen football pitch. I felt very far from home. In a nice way.

My first gig was a creative-writing session with some university students. Artim, Valya, Himself and myself descended into the bowels of a violet-walled nightclub, where said students slumped around, reassuringly surly and disenchanted. I beamed with pleasure. I can’t be doing with those eager, puppy-eyed teenagers who are keen to learn. It’s not natural.

My next engagement was a television interview. Off we all went in Artim’s car, our numbers swelled further by a sweet if slightly smelly student called Pyotr, who’d developed a crush on me in the violet-walled nightclub. We were stopped twice by military police en route to the telly station.

The interviewer was a skinny, super-intense bloke who called himself Ed and wanted to talk about ‘art’.

‘Would you die for your art?’

Well, of course I wouldn’t. But I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I nodded yes, certainly, indeed’n I would.

But then he threw a curveball. ‘We have just heard the tragic news that your Princess Margaret has died. Would you like to say something?’

Caught on the hop, I said the first thing that came into my head: ‘They should have let her marry the man she loved. The bastards.’

This caused confusion. ‘You do not love your royal family?’

‘Irish, see? Not mine.’

More confusion. When the interview ended, we decided to go for a drink and Ed said he’d come too. And so would his researcher. By now, my entourage had swelled to Jennifer Lopez-size proportions.

Back in the hotel, before we went out for dinner, Himself and myself were hit by a sudden longing for coffee. Luckily we had sachets – they’d been in our little welcome packs on the train – and all we needed was boiling water, so I volunteered to try out my Russian on the hotel staff. Standing in front of the mirror, I practised a few times: a gracious smile, then ‘Zdrastvuti.’ (Hello.) ‘Voda, pazhalsta.’ (Water, please.)

Down I went, smiled at the lady and delivered the line.

‘Hmmm?’ she went. ‘Oh! You want hot water? Would you like it here or in your room? Whichever you like, it’s up to you.’

‘Er, right. Up in the room, so.’

(Helpful hint for you here, which I discovered entirely by accident because I wanted to cool my coffee so I could drink it: if you want a cappuccino but you don’t have access to a machine, you could try adding carbonated Russian water to your coffee. It fizzes and froths like something in a scientific experiment. Funnily enough, it doesn’t seem to work with non-Russian water.)

Then we went out for dinner and were stopped about sixteen times by the military police on the way to the restaurant. I was starting to recognize some of them.

We had a lovely evening, the people were so intelligent, warm and funny, tingeing even their saddest stories with a very attractive irony. I LOVE Russians. I want to be one.
The thing about them is, in an increasingly homogeneous world, they’re so
Russian
. And when the bill came, the Russians flung themselves at it, doing that thing that the Irish do, wrestling people to the ground, trying to pay for everything. See, I like that.

Met Valya on the way down for breakfast and made the mistake of asking, ‘How did you sleep?’ Most people would just say, ‘Fine.’ But Valya rendered a blow-by-blow account of her feelings. Clopping down the stairs to the breakfast room, she said, ‘I am thinking about him making the sex with his new one and I cannot sleep. I smoke all night and think of him making the sex with me instead.’

Still talking loudly about making the sex, we entered a neat little dining room with white, linen, embroidered tablecloths and napkins. Everything was charmingly twee, apart from the telly blasting out techno at a level that felt like a physical assault, and the fug of cigarette smoke obscuring the sideboard of food.

That afternoon we proceeded to the town hall. Nizhni Novgorod was having an arts festival and I was the star exhibit! The place was jammers, the atmosphere was buoyant and lovely people kept appearing to practise their English on me, except Pyotr kept trying to shoo them away so he could have me to his (smelly) self.

Then it was showtime and just as I mounted the stage to start my reading, the lights flickered once, twice, then disappeared entirely. What the…? It was the electricity! We were having a power cut. A lovely, authentic Russian
power cut! Was it the real thing or were they just laying it on for us tourists? Oh it seemed to be the real thing, alright. Everyone was rushing around and people kept promising me, ‘This never happens.
Never!
’

Enquiries were made: was it a localized thing? Just the town hall, perhaps? But no, the whole town was out. Even though it was only three in the afternoon, it was quite dark. A decision was made; I would do my reading by candlelight. But I couldn’t read and hold my candle at the same time, in case I set my book on fire, so the love-struck Pyotr was on his feet offering to hold my candle. As it were. So the show went on, with Pyotr taking every opportunity to stand far too close to me. But hey, I was facing forty and flattered.

Afterwards, I fell among poets. There was a load of them in the front row, several looking like James Joyce, right down to the flattened hair, roundy glasses and sober suits. They grabbed me as I stepped off the stage and all gave me signed copies of their slender volumes. Although I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, they were a right laugh.

Armed with home-printed books of Russian poetry, I returned to Valya and Himself and we watched a little drama in mime. (It ended tragically.) Then someone sang a song. (A sad one.) Then there was a stand-up comedian. (A special unfunny Russian one.)

But then there was some sort of disturbance. A kerfuffle. The poets seemed to be staging some kind of anarchic takeover. There were an awful lot of them crowding onto the small stage, looking like Kool and the Gang. Then a guitar appeared and they wouldn’t stop singing.

It was a great,
great
afternoon, everyone had been so nice.
But Artim, the wonderful man who had organized it all, wouldn’t take the praise. ‘It’s those damn poets,’ he said. ‘They stage a takeover every year and this year they
promised
.’

Up horribly, horribly early to catch the plane to Samara – too early even for the techno, smoke-filled breakfast.

The week before I’d been in the US and got mightily humbled for having tweezers in my hand luggage, so Himself made me promise that I had nothing dangerous on my person for this flight. Not that it mattered a damn. I could have carried a ground-to-air rocket-launcher onto the plane and no one would have minded. They’d probably have helped me lift it on.

It was a novel flying experience. Nothing was screened through any metal-detector yokes and the plane looked like a toy plane with steps that went up from under into its belly. There were no conveyor belts or chance to check in luggage: you had to carry on all your own stuff – suitcases, rocket-launchers, etc. Then, when I emerged into the body of the plane, I thought it was one of those military planes with no seats, where you sit on the metal floor waiting to parachute out over enemy territory. But, mercifully, behind a little curtain there were seats. Sort of. There were chintz curtains at the windows and no working seatbelts. Everyone was frozen, you could see the cold air when they breathed out, and they all kept their furry hats on. It was like being on a rattly old bus going between Knock and Claremorris on a wet January day. Think about that the next time you’re tempted to complain about Ryanair.

And the thing was, I knew that this was the safest airline in Russia.

Nothing to eat, mind you.
Nothing to eat
. And now it was getting to me.

Between the hunger and the tiredness and the strangeness of everything and being in the grip of mad, bad PMS, I behaved very badly in Samara. I was in a right fouler and I just couldn’t bury it. (I’m still so ashamed of myself. It’s one of those memories that whenever it surfaces, I wish I was dead. You know those ones? Even writing about it is killing me, but it must be done.)