Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes (12 page)

“In case you were wondering what all the noise is about, there you are,” he points to my unhappy mother sprawled on the divan. She snarls and tries to fling a book at him but it lands at the foot of the divan.

This is too much for me. I shoo the neighbours out with my stick. Then I turn on Dobrinin and push him against the wall. He sinks to the floor, winded. I go to bed.

“I’ll fetch the police. Why did you take that bastard in?” I hear Dobrinin in the next room.

“Shut up. Leave it to me. I’ll sort him out.”

In the morning my mother looks at me with hatred in her eyes: “What the hell did you attack him for?”

“How can you let him laugh at you like that?”

“It’s none of your business. Get out!”

I had moved back to my parents’ flat while trying to decide what to do next, Now my decision is made. I move into a hostel and start to drink in earnest with the men who share my room. Others turn up, for we offer warmth and companionship without wives or mothers-in-law threatening to call the police.

I begin work in the DDT factory. My wife’s brother is a technician there and he keeps her informed of my condition. Hearing that I’m drinking again she puts pressure on me for alimony, promising to pay it back if I stop. I resent her for trying to control me, even from a distance. In any case I have nothing to send her. My pay-packet comes with the cost of visits to the sobering-up station already deducted. Then I have to pay off my debts. It is impossible to break out of this vicious circle. I cannot afford to rent a room of my own, but to live in the hostel and not drink is beyond human endurance. I try to spend my free time in the local library reading-room, but when I go home I always have to tip someone off my bed.

In the end I decide to leave town. I have an invitation from a former boss, Gantimirov, to go out and work for him at a chemical plant in Chimkent in Kazakhstan. There’s nothing to
keep me in Chapaevsk. I am tired of that damned hostel, of shop No. 28 and the sobering-up station. I’m sick of my companions, too. They’ll forget me soon enough.

I pack a change of clothes and a supply of cigarettes. My younger brother Sashka gives me a tape-recorder and some Vysotsky tapes. Early one morning in the spring of 1968 I leave Chapaevsk on a southbound train.

I am awakened by a gentle tap on the shoulder. A policeman stands before me. “It is forbidden to sleep in railway stations, Comrade. Kindly sit up.” Giving me a smart salute, he walks off.

Checking my head to see if it has sprouted a crown overnight, I turn to the dosser beside me: “Did you see that? Am I dreaming?”

“Didn’t you hear what happened here last year?”

“No.”

“Chimkent exploded. It began when the police arrested a lorry driver on his way back from a party. The driver’s wife went to fetch his workmates. By the time they reached the station the police had beaten the man to death. They claimed he dropped dead from alcohol poisoning.

“By evening there was no Soviet authority left in Chimkent. The drivers hijacked bulldozers and flattened the police station. Rioters ran through the town killing any cops who got in their way. They sent in troops and in a few days the shops filled with scarce goods. The town calmed down. Then the MVD went round asking questions and people began to disappear. The cops who killed the driver were transferred to another area; their chief became head of a prison camp. You can guess the fate of the rioters who were sent there. Komsomol volunteers
and troops kept order in town. We had no police for several months.”

I laugh and settle down to sleep again. The next time a cop wakes me I tell him to book me a hotel room; he leaves me alone. A lot of people have moved into the station. At night we gather in the waiting room and listen to Vysotsky; by day we go about our separate business.

I have no luck finding work. Gantimirov is away on a business trip and the plant won’t take me on without his approval. I try other factories. There are a lot of jobs going, but none of them provides accommodation. I look for a flat but am offered grim cages so far out of town that I refuse them.

My money is melting like Tien Shan snow, although I’m not drinking and barely eating. In the end I take a train to Tashkent and then jump another to Fergana, where a cousin of my mother’s lives. As everyone knows, the tongue leads to Kiev and I find my relative by asking around. He helps me get a job in a chemical factory and the plant gives me a place in a suburban hostel.

The area of Fergana where I live is modelled on the Cheryomushki district of Moscow, with rows of five-storey brick blocks, barren shops and dusty roads. Irrigation ditches run along the streets but these are choked with dead dogs and condoms. Each year new saplings are planted, only to wither and die in the smog of the huge new chemical plants whose chimneys smoke day and night, covering the Fergana valley with filth. In short, the town is not very different to Chapaevsk.

My work is easy enough, but I sweat and chafe in my protective clothing, rubber boots and gas mask. In my free time I hang around the hostel growing bored as there is no TV or other entertainment. I notice the lads who share the hostel never go
in to the factory yet they come home in the evenings laden with food and drink.

“Here, Vanya, have some dinner with us,” they offer one night.

“No, it’s okay, I’m not hungry,” I lie.

“Try it, it’s dog meat.”

“Well, I’ll just take some salad.” I know people sometimes eat dog meat as a cure for tuberculosis but I don’t fancy it. After the lads and I have sealed our acquaintance with a bottle I ask how they managed to live so well.

“We only took a job at the plant to get these rooms and a residence permit. We wouldn’t work for the pittance they pay there. Come with us tomorrow and we’ll show you how to make some real money.”

In the morning we walk down to the railway line. Some men are unloading planks from a goods-wagon, throwing them down as carelessly as if they were shaking matches from a box. Without asking anyone’s permission we set about stacking the planks; at one o’clock some Uzbeks arrive to find us leaning against a neat pile. The Uzbeks, who are building a private house, ask us to load the planks onto their cars. When we finish they pay us and treat us to dinner. I earn more for that day’s work than I would in a week in the factory.

I come to a decision. From now on I’ll give up regular work and become a vagabond. It will be easy enough in Central Asia. If you try to live rough in European Russia you usually end up with a camp bunk as your bed. In Asia you can doss down under any bush and there is plenty of casual work to be found. I’m excited by the prospect of living without the blessings of regular work, the bathhouse on Saturday, and political meetings on Tuesdays.

My new friends and I travel on to Bukhara and Samarkand,
picking up work as we go. I make adobe bricks, dig foundations and paint roofs. We spend our nights at
chaikhanas
, sleeping on low-slung cots that double as tables. In the mornings we drink bowls of green tea as we wait for the wine shops to open. Despite being Muslims, the Uzbeks are fond of alcohol. They also like to sit in circles smoking hashish.

“Try this, genuine Kashgar marijuana!” someone offers me.

It gives me nothing more than a pain in my temples. It’s just as well that I don’t take to hashish. Being an alcoholic is enough.

In Bukhara I work as a stoker in the brick kilns. You have to be very agile to avoid getting burned. The strongest men make up to 80 roubles a day, an amount which would take me nearly a month to earn back in Chapaevsk. The trouble is that no matter how much anyone earns they never save a kopeck. They drink it all away and I am no exception. I make so much money that I never have to be sober.

After a while the Central Asian climate begins to wear me down. My bones ache and I find it hard to sleep. I decide to return to Chapaevsk. The problem is that however much I earn I can never manage to save enough for a ticket home. After finishing a job I have to toast its completion; by the time I sober up my pockets are empty and I need money for my hair-of-
the-dog
.

I decide to look for work in a more remote area away from temptation. I return to Fergana, go down to the labour exchange and come to a quick arrangement with a Korean who has a plantation in the mountains. The man takes me up on the back of his motorbike, dipping the machine to left and right around tortuous hairpin bends. On left-hand curves my stiff right leg sticks up higher than my head. My hands are shaking so much
from my hangover that I fear at any moment I’ll lose my grip and fly off, hurtling down to the valley floor hundreds of metres below. Rising up through clouds that soak our clothes and faces in moisture, we finally reach the plantation. Onions, garlic, watermelons and rice grow on high terraces through which glacier water flows. The Korean’s entire family, from tiny children to an ancient grandmother, work from dawn to dusk, yet they need extra labour to help weed the terraces. State investigators are bribed to keep away.

I am given a few roubles a day, food and packets of
Beggars of the Mountain
cigarettes. We work barefoot in freezing water while our bodies are exposed to the burning mountain sun. Our backs blister and our hands crack. At night we drop into pits lined with paper sacks and throw our exhausted bodies onto heaps of old rags.

A cobra slides into our pit. One of the Tadzhik labourers catches it by the neck and prepares to kill it.

“Stop!”

The Korean grandmother peers into the pit. She makes a sign for us to wait. Then she brings a large glass jar with a plastic lid and puts the snake inside. For the next three days she leaves the jar out in the sun. Liquid oozes from the dying snake. We feel sorry for it, but the old lady collects the liquid and uses it to make little cakes. The whole family eats them but we refuse. The Koreans explain that people who eat them will be immune to snakebites for the rest of their lives.

The one advantage of working in the mountains is the absence of alcohol. This enables me to return to Fergana after a month with enough money for a ticket home. Before I can leave town I have to go back to the hostel to pick up my passport. On the way
I notice an inviting bar, with tables laid out under shady trees. I deserve a drink to celebrate, and I’ll still have plenty of cash for my ticket.

‘ALCOHOLICS AND LAYABOUTS!’
proclaims our banner in bold white letters on black cloth. We are a filthy procession of swollen-faced men and women. Some have black eyes; some are on crutches. A trolley rolls along behind us, supporting a camera which is filming us for Fergana TV. A local who had a starring role on a previous march tells me that we’ll appear on the news tonight.

We parade down the middle of the road in full view of shoppers and passers-by. People laugh and shake their heads but no one shouts abuse. They probably think: ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’

The police picked me up after finding me passed out in a ditch. They hosed me down, put me in a cell for the night and in the morning forced me to stand in the yard with the other detainees while the superintendent lectured us on the evils of drink.

When we return from the penitential march they make us pay for our night’s lodging and fine us each 25 roubles, except the two men who carried the banner. They’re excused five roubles of their fines, which no one begrudges.

After my release I go back to the labour exchange. I am hired by another Korean with a plantation in the mountains, but again on my return I drink away my pay before I can reach the railway station. It’s the same story all summer. I take jobs in Kuvasai and Kizil Kiya in Kyrgyzia. Finally, when the weeding season ends, I manage to reach the railway station without being diverted and settle down in the station buffet to wait for the Tashkent
train. My disreputable appearance must have given me away: a cop comes over and hauls me off. Fortunately some foreigners are staying in Fergana so I don’t have to repeat the penitential march.

The police want to know why I haven’t paid my first fine. I’m still registered at the chemical plant so I say I’m waiting for my wages. The superintendent tells a policeman to escort me to my hostel to collect my passport, which they will hold until I pay off my fines. The policeman and I set off on foot. The man is so tired after his night shift that he lets me continue alone, making me promise to hand in my passport the next day. That’s the last the Fergana police see of me. I pick up my passport and head for Margilan.

At Margilan station an Uzbek buys me a ticket and in return I smuggle a caseload of tomatoes to Tashkent for him. I find that city in uproar after a spontaneous explosion of nationalism during a football match between the local Milk-Churners team and the visiting Ukrainian Miners. Rioting spreads into the streets after the game. The police and local militia are busy breaking up fights and beating up anyone they can find. Train passengers are warned not to walk into the town. I spend a few days in the station trying to find a way home. The conductors on Moscow-bound trains are unusually strict and won’t let me on without a ticket. At last a Kuibyshev train pulls in. I approach a young conductor standing on the platform.

“Hey mate, take me along with you.”

He looks me up and down: “Have you got any money?”

“Not a kopeck. If I had I would’ve bought a ticket.”

The lad laughs and asks sarcastically: “Would a ride as far as Kuibyshev suit you?”

“It would. Then I can catch a local train.”

“So three thousand kilometres isn’t far enough for you! Where is your final destination?”

“Chapaevsk,” I reply, looking around to see if I might try my luck elsewhere.

“You’re from Chapaevsk then?”

“Yes.”

“What part?”

“Bersol.”

“You’re kidding!”

“What’s the point of lying? The train’s about to leave and we’ll never see each other again.”

“Wait,” he says, “what street do you live on?”

“Clinic street.”

“Do you know anyone on Short Street?”

“Lyokha Pop”

“What about Lyuska Trepalina?”

“Everyone knows her.”

Lyuska is the local whore. She hangs around the hostel where I lived. I’ve only spoken to her a couple of times but that’s enough for the conductor to let me on board.

The train departs and I settle down in a window-seat. The endless steppe slides past, as smooth as bone, broken only by a dry shoreline that was once lapped by the Aral Sea. When we stop at desolate towns the conductor, whose name is Yura, does a roaring trade selling vodka and cigarettes to crowds on the platform.

“There’s no alcohol or tobacco in their shops,” he explains. “I have to give a cut to the station-master and chief conductor but I make enough. Have a drink.”

My friend Oleg from the Astrakhan camp asks me to come and stay with him. I sell some blood to help the Vietnamese victims of American aggression and buy a ticket on the steamer
Sergei
Uritskii
, an old man of the Volga built in 1912. It stinks of dried Caspian roach and the over-ripe melons that are piled high in baskets on the upper deck blocking everyone’s way. It is pleasant to sit on the passenger deck in old wicker chairs under a canvas canopy. Cream silk curtains flap like sails through open windows. For two days and nights I gaze at the shoreline, mesmerised by the gleam of distant cities and hydro-electric power projects.

In Astrakhan I find Oleg living in a district built in the popular Cheryomushki style. Although he has an official job checking shop burglar alarms he earns his money in billiard halls. We settle into a routine. I take over his rounds while he goes off to play. After lunch I join him.

Pretending not to know Oleg, I bet on the outcome of the game. With a prearranged signal he lets me know how it will end. That way we always win. If he loses I collect money for backing his opponent; if he wins our takings are doubled. No one knows me in the town and we do not broadcast our friendship. All the same we don’t win much, just enough to feed ourselves and the family.

Oleg is on the wagon which is fortunate as drinking and billiards do not go together. Fights in billiard halls are common and so is cheating. When an apparently stronger player loses there’s always a post mortem which rarely ends peacefully. The winner often has to beat the money out of the loser. It is forbidden to play for money so Oleg and I have to be careful. If caught making bets we’d go straight back to prison.