Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes (11 page)

I shake with fear and outrage. But I’m not going to give up without a fight, so I burst out onto the landing and press the
doorbell of my next-door neighbour. I need a witness to prove my innocence. My neighbour, a Tatar called Piotr Tukhvatullin, opens the door, looks into my eyes and silently ushers me into the kitchen where he pours me a glass of after-shave.

“Drink!” he says, bringing out a chess board and playing with me for the rest of the night. Sunday morning dawns and Piotr takes me to the market with him. He spends the whole day buying animal skins from peasants, keeping me beside him and giving me a top-up whenever I start to get the jitters. I feel better, but back in the flat that evening the terror returns. In order not to hear the Voronins’ conversation I go into the kitchen. Apathy overwhelms me. Let them do to me what they will. Voices start to come through the wall adjoining the Tukhvatullins flat. Piotr’s wife is cursing him for getting mixed up with me. He defends himself rather half-heartedly.

I begin to suspect that something is not right at all. I go into the toilet and pull the chain over and over again. Despite the noise of the water I can still hear the conversation on the other side of the wall.

‘Delirium tremens! The dt’s!’ Running into the kitchen I pull out my emergency supply but it doesn’t help. The Voronins have started to sing. An opera is coming from the other side of the wall. Voronin is singing solo in a bass voice:

“
He hears nothing!
” a chorus of his relations responds.

It is music from
Carmen
. I laugh as tears run down my cheeks. Why the hell does it have to be opera? I’m an ignoramus where
music is concerned. My only visit to the opera was a reward for washing our bedroom floor in Riga. I block my ears but the voices do not stop. But - if I know I’m hallucinating I haven’t completely lost control over myself. I have to do something, so I dress and go outside. It’s three in the morning. At the approach of a car I break into a sweat. A dog’s bark makes my scalp tingle and tighten in terror, but I press on and manage to reach the first aid post on the main road.

They put me in an ambulance and drive me to the psychiatric hospital at Komsomolsk. Two nurses escort me through the foyer, weaving around male and female patients who are waltzing like somnambulists to the strains of
The Blue Danube
. I laugh till my stomach aches.

I am treated by a Doctor Djmil who convinces me that my visions of the last few days have been nothing more than products of my imagination. Except for the dancers, who were real and part of the Doctor’s attempts to give his patients a sense of normality.

I calm down, although I crave a drink. After three days I discharge myself, thinking the best thing to do will be to start work as soon as possible. But my empty flat haunts me with reminders of my family. I run away, seeking out friends who drink.

Two weeks later I return and spend the whole night sweeping up little black devils who have taken over the flat in my absence. There are several hundred of them, about the size of mice, running about the floor thumbing their noses at me and sticking out their tongues. They tease me for imagining my neighbour with a gun. I’m not afraid of them for they seem more mischievous than evil. I take a mop and briskly herd them into the corner so I can
crush them all at once. I work as diligently as a woman mopping up spilled water. The task takes all night, for as soon as I have swept the devils into one corner they jump over the mop and run squealing across the floor again.

When my strength gives out I sit down on the bed for a cigarette. The devils run up my trouser legs to my knees, tickling me with their tails. Pulling up my trousers I flick them off onto the floor like cockroaches. But I can bear it no longer and run from the house. I wander all night until my legs bring me back to the hospital. Djmil looks into my eyes and orders me to get undressed. He gives me a massive dose of aminazine and I finally fall asleep.

Half the people in my ward are alcoholic and the rest insane. The alcoholics are treated with Antabuse. However we know that all medicines are poisonous and it is rumoured that Antabuse diminishes potency, so everyone tries to avoid swallowing their tablets. We hide them in our cheeks and then spit them into the toilet.

The first person I meet on the ward is Ivan Shirmanov. A habitual patient in the hospital, he shows me around, telling me not to be scared of the lunatics. Like every supposedly normal person, I am wary of them, but I discover they are not frightening, simply unfortunate. In the course of my life I have met enough people who could pass for psychiatric patients, while some of the hospital’s inmates wouldn’t be out of place in the corridors of power.

One of the patients has the apt name of Vodkin. He was a chauffeur until drink addled his brain so much he forgot the number of the car he drove. In order not to confuse it with another he would leave the starting handle in when he parked it. Vodkin’s colleagues used to take the starting handle and put it in another vehicle. Vodkin would then spend hours trying to start the wrong car. Eventually he was sacked and sent to hospital.

The nurses take away Vodkin’s pyjama bottoms to prevent him getting out of bed, but he manages to pinch someone’s
dressing-gown
and wanders into the smoking-room where the alkies are gathered. His passion is draughts. Despite his imbecility he always wins so no one wants to play with him. To distract him from the board someone asks him to sing, kicking up his heels in a peasant dance Vodkin roars:

To encourage him we all join in with the chorus:
The storm raged, the lightning flashed
… until an orderly comes to take Vodkin away and tie him to his bed.

I would do anything to escape the horror of the dt’s so in the end I agree to take Antabuse. However, my previous experience has made me sceptical of the treatment. Dr Djmil lends me some books by famous psychiatrists but these only feed my doubts. “Doctor,” I tell him, “I have concluded that Antabuse is an unnecessary element in the cure for alcoholism. It works on the basis of fear rather than physiological fact. People who think they’re going to die if they drink on top of Antabuse probably will die. It all depends on your state of mind. Antabuse won’t work on me any more as I’ve stopped believing in its effect.”

Djmil listens to my argument attentively, frowns and says:
“Vanya, please don’t discuss this with the others. Come with me.”

He takes me through the wards, pointing at drooling imbeciles.

“That is your future if you continue to drink.”

But scare tactics do not work with me.

During my stay at the hospital Djmil tells me about his passion for mountain-climbing. Like many members of the provincial intelligentsia, he understands very well the putrid nature of the society in which we live. He has found a hobby that takes him temporarily beyond the confines of our human world into a battle with the elemental forces of nature. I remember our geography teacher at school and his passion for hiking.

My leg prevents me from hiking or climbing, so I can’t follow the path of Djmil and others like him. Other members of the intelligentsia go the way of Sedoy and it looks as though I’m heading in that direction too, not that I consider myself a member of the intelligentsia.

I decide there is nothing more the hospital can do for me, and discharge myself. My first priority is to find Olga and Natasha. Ludmila steadfastly refuses to reveal their whereabouts although I pester her every day. Finally I spot a letter in her box on the ground floor. Pulling it out, I recognise my wife’s handwriting. There is no return address on the back but I manage to decipher the postmark: Estonia. I go home and check the atlas – three Estonian towns have ‘mining’ symbols beside them.

The next morning I haul our washing-machine down to the yard by the rubbish bins and sell it to a passing driver. I buy a ticket to Estonia and set off on the 2,000-kilometre journey, fortifying myself on the way with beer.

After three days I alight from the train at the town of Kivyili,
the nearest of the three mining towns. It is five in the morning. I take the first bus to the far side of town to begin my search. I could go to the public health centre but I don’t want to embarrass Olga if she turns out to be working there. After my drunken journey I look repulsive.

The weather is warm and I go into the park to take off my sweater. Just inside the gate is a photo display of buildings that have recently been constructed in the town. One of them is of a kindergarten built in an unusual style. It might be the one Natasha attends. After an hour of walking around the town I find it. It’s playtime and I catch sight of Natasha amongst the children. Making sure she can’t see me I wait until the end of the working day when my wife will come to pick her up.

Olga cannot hide her shock and disgust at the sight of me. “I suppose I knew you’d find us sooner or later.”

I assure Olga that her sister didn’t betray her. “All I want is to have a talk.” We buy bread and yoghurt and go into the woods. Our discussion is fruitless. It’s obvious to Olga that I haven’t given up drinking.

“Look, Vanya, let’s give it a year. If you can stay on the wagon for that time we’ll come back to you. If not, I’m going to divorce you.”

“Agreed. I’ll go back to my parents for a while, get myself straightened out.”

We both know we are kidding each other and ourselves. Seeing that my journey has been pointless, I find out the time of the trains and tell Olga not to see me off. I have one rouble left in my pocket. I buy an ice cream for Natasha and cigarettes for myself, so that I won’t have to be in anyone’s debt by cadging them. It won’t be easy to leave Estonia without a ticket so I plan
to hop onto a freight-train. I wait at the station till dusk, when I might be able to slip unnoticed into a goods wagon. However at around ten in the evening my wife appears. She’s guessed that I have no money and proposes that I come home to rest in her flat for two or three days until she gets her pay. Taking Natasha she goes to sleep at a friend’s house. Before she leaves I ask her to lock the door from the outside.

The dt’s begin again that night. While I still have a degree of control over myself I look about for something to distract me. Like any woman, Olga has no tools in the house, but I find a manicure set and use that to take her iron apart and put it together again, over and over again. All night long the neighbours on the other side of the walls sing abominations about me. This time the tune is from
The Marriage of Figaro
:

Then the chorus joins in:
Bravo, bravo, bravissimo…

I find some cotton wool and stuff up my ears but it doesn’t help. I run from one room to the other and back again. I take shower after shower, I heat up a large pan of borscht, anything to distract myself from the horrors. Above all I’m afraid of touching the gas cylinder. I imagine that after the explosion everyone will say: “His wife had only just got settled when that drunken bastard turned up and blew the whole block to kingdom come.”

In the morning Olga arrives to find me bending over the iron with cotton wool sticking out of my ears. She gives me some
medicine that enables me to sleep a little. The following day she sees me off onto the train – no doubt wanting to make sure that I leave.

As we part I reassure her that everything will be all right, but in my heart I know we’ll never be able to live together again. Olga can’t live with her guilt for sending me to prison and I have no right to inflict my drunkenness on her and Natasha. I can’t even bear to see them around me; they are a constant reminder and reproach. Even if I stop drinking I will always feel guilty before them. The only thing to do from now on is get used to living apart.

I am depressed by the thought of losing my daughter. Although I’m of little use to her, she jumped for joy to see her drunken father at the gates of her nursery. And that is no bad thing.

Fifteen minutes into the journey and I’m drinking in the company of three girls who are looking for a fourth to make up a hand at cards. They are already drunk. It would be the grossest indecency to pretend that I don’t drink, especially as their invitation coincides with my wishes.

Dobrinin pours another glass for my mother. It doesn’t take much to make her drunk.

“You can give me all the vodka you want,” she shrieks, “but I won’t keep quiet. I know you’ve been with that whore again.”

Dobrinin smirks and walks out of the flat, leaving the front door open. He returns with the neighbours from across the landing. They stand in the doorway laughing.