Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes (21 page)

I have been away from Chapaevsk for many years and hardly keep in touch with my family, apart from the occasional phone call to my sister. After my second cure I receive news from her that our mother has died. I go back to Chapaevsk for the last time, staying with my sister and her family. I don’t understand them nor they me, but we are civil to each other.

My sister is the only family member I have left in Chapaevsk. Dobrinin died some years ago; Uncle Volodya moved to Ukraine. I hear he took to drink after he was widowed. My wife and daughter have been living in Estonia since they left me back in 1967. My sister occasionally gives me news of them.

I wonder whether to try to find out what happened to my real father. Since the time of Khrushchev I have accepted that he was shot. In the new climate of political openness it might
be possible to learn details of his arrest and trial. But I decide it’s better not to know the truth. If he was a Chekist he was probably responsible for sending people to their deaths.

My sister tells me there is some furniture left from our parents’ house that she wants to sell.

“Keep the money,” I tell her, “all I want is enough for a ticket out of this hell-hole.”

“Where are you going?”

“Who knows? Fiji maybe.”

And I really am thinking how good it will be to leave the country. Preferably forever.

Just before I leave Chapaevsk I run into a couple of old drinking acquaintances who are wending an unsteady way back from the cemetery. “Poor old thing,” they say, after exchanging greetings with me: “They let us join the wake so it’d look as though she had someone to mourn her. We only knew her by sight; she died in the old people’s home.”

“Who was it?”

“Marusya Timofeyevna. Perhaps you knew her. She used to live in Bersol.”

The dead woman was our old home-help, Cyclops. I pity her now, for her life turned out to be even more wretched than mine. After she left my parents she looked after children in other Party families until she became too old and infirm. She never married. The war left millions of surplus women and Marusya was last in the queue. Having no one to care for her, she entered the old people’s home. It is the oldest building in town and worse than any strict-regime prison. The staff steal all the food and leave the inmates to decay in their own filth. As you pass the home you can see the old people standing
outside on metal balconies, gazing forlornly at a world they have already left.

And that is where I’ll end up if I stay in Chapaevsk, providing I don’t drink myself to death first.

I have no reason to stay in Chapaevsk so I return to Georgia. The theatre takes me back as a watchman and I manage to stay sober for a while.

Change is in the air. Georgia no longer wants to be part of the Soviet Union. Civil war looms. My friends at the theatre fix me up with Georgian papers and take me with them on tour to the UK. I claim political asylum. I’ll start life afresh.

At first I’m excited by my new surroundings. Like every naive Russian visitor I marvel at the shops. ‘You could cover our walls with their toilet paper,’ I write to my sister. It doesn’t take me long to discover that vodka is cheaper than eau de Cologne. There’s no need to drink substitutes when you can afford the real thing.

I discover too, that our propagandists didn’t lie about the decadence of the West. People go around in clothes that would shame a Zestafoni tramp – and not only the poor: one day I see a young man walk out of an expensive restaurant in a
bushlat
– a padded grey Soviet prison jacket.

It shocks me to see a teenage girl put a bottle of beer to her lips. Back home even tramps rarely stoop that low; we keep personal
drinking vessels. In any Russian park, if you look carefully, you’ll see a glass under a hedge or bush, covered over with twigs to protect it from dirt. But perhaps we’re more concerned with practicalities than appearances, for when your hands are shaking like death it is impossible to lift a bottle to your mouth. Besides, to spill a glass is a misfortune; to spill a bottle a tragedy.

But I soon get tired of the emptiness of the West. Here, people turn their lives into a ceaseless scramble for money. Most are rich beyond the dreams of a Chapaevsk citizen yet they are never content with what they have. Their system is a treadmill, not freedom.

All the same, I settle into life here, with my own room and a small pension. My furniture comes from the streets: chairs, mattress, sofa, vacuum cleaner, TV and a video that I repaired myself. At night I like to wander around my neighbourhood, seeing what I can pick up. Looking through people’s rubbish, I learn a lot about them – what they read and what they eat, whether they’re drinkers and whether they’re ashamed of what they drink.

From time to time new arrivals from Russia come to stay with me while they get settled. They remind me of myself when I left home all those years ago. These young people expect the streets to be paved with gold, but they can only find illegal work as washers-up or cab-drivers. Some give up and go home again, tired of being treated as less than human.

I have begun a new career as an actor; some film students invited me to work with them. And I went to a studio and had my voice recorded for the new James Bond film
The World Is Not Enough
. They wanted a Russian speaker to curse like a sailor. I let rip, but in the end they only allowed me to use the mildest words.

Outside of work I hardly mix with local people. At my age it’s hard to learn a new language. Even if I could communicate we wouldn’t understand each other. I’m not lonely; on the contrary, I sometimes long to go away from this city to a quiet village by the seashore, where I know no one at all.

Mostly I occupy myself by thinking about my past, trying to make sense of it. Like the disgraced teachers and engineers of Toliatti’s market-place I always held the Soviet system responsible for my downfall. Throughout my life I felt plagued and persecuted by Komsomolists, bosses, judges and camp Godfathers. This isn’t to say that when I poured myself a glass of wine in the morning I did it as an act of protest against the system. Of course not. But it consoled me to think that if I drank too much it was because I had no choice.

Now this old line of defence has fallen away. I am free from Komsomolists and Godfathers but I still drink. At least I know that whatever I have done, however deeply I have degraded myself, I shall pay for it. The thought cheers me slightly.

Despite everything I sometimes thank God that I became an alcoholic and took to the road instead of spinning out my days in Chapaevsk, talking of nothing but work and how many potatoes my allotment has yielded. I’ve broken through walls that confine the normal human being. I’ve discovered that things I once feared hold no terrors at all. Prison doesn’t worry me; I can live by begging. I can live without a home, possessions or human companionship.

I’ve learned too, that there is no limit to how far a man can fall. Every so often you reach a barrier. No, you say, you have some pride left, you won’t quaff furniture polish or drink in the street; you’ll never hold out your hand and ask for money. But you do. People are like electric currents: they follow the path
of least resistance, and it’s easier to move downwards. The most terrible thing of all is that you get used to your degradation. Human beings can adapt to anything. And if ever a shadow of guilt or self-disgust darkens your door – alcohol soon chases off such unwelcome guests.

So I’ve discovered that my early fears were not so terrifying after all. Yes, I’m dependent on vodka, but that renders me independent of my surroundings, albeit temporarily.

Do I miss Russia? Perhaps not, yet still images haunt me of my past, particularly those days in the forest looking after the beekeepers’ hives. I even feel nostalgic for the patter of raindrops on my tent roof and the sharp scent of herbs hanging up to dry.

But I haven’t severed all my ties with the past; I even receive occasional letters from Olga. She never remarried. When my sister told her I had emigrated she started to entertain hopes, perhaps thinking I’d come off the bottle at last. Well I soon dashed those expectations; I told her that the West has given me no reason to stop drinking. Then she wrote back:
Come home Vanya, let us show you how to live
.

Her arrogance makes me angry. After all these years she still can’t understand what led me to drink in the first place. I was not interested in becoming the ideal Soviet family man. The truth is, I just wasn’t ready for a family at all. Yet at the same time her letter arouses feelings of guilt, especially towards my daughter, who is now ill.

Damn them all. I push the letter aside. What did they expect? At least I can be proud that I resisted their pressure to change into someone I am not.

I have to get out of the house. I pick up my stick and set off down the Romford Road. It is a typical English June day,
blustery, the sky weighted with grey clouds. It starts to rain. Women huddle under bus shelters, adjusting their hijabs.

My sore kidneys twinge and the filthy air makes me wheeze more than usual. In the far distance seagulls wheel over the Barking dump, reminding me of my far-off days on
The Wave
.

As I pass a kebab shop I catch the eye of an acquaintance through the window. He rushes to the door:

“Vanya! Where are you going?”

“Hello Grisha. For a walk.”

He falls in beside me. Grisha arrived a couple of years ago with his family. He usually takes great care of his appearance but this morning he is unshaven and his clothes are crumpled.

“I’ve left home. To teach them a lesson. My wife and her mother ganged up on me again. All I wanted was a Mercedes, for God’s sake. I’m a man, aren’t I? I can get credit but they said we couldn’t afford it. I know my mother-in-law wants to humiliate me. She doesn’t respect me.”

Neither do I. But I like Grisha’s mother-in-law and by giving Grisha a place to stay for a while I’ll be lifting a burden from his family’s shoulders. Besides, for once I feel like some company.

“Grisha, let things calm down. You can sleep on my sofa.”

“Vanya, you’ve saved my life,” he claps me on the shoulder.

We pass a supermarket. To cheer him up I suggest: “How about a bottle?”

The next few days are a blur. I wake up at the foot of my stairs with my pockets empty and my walking stick broken. My bones ache as though I’ve been beaten by a whole station of policemen. Grabbing the banisters, I haul myself up to my room. After swallowing the pain-killers my doctor gave me, I lie down.

The horror approaches. I stare into it like a rabbit transfixed before a cobra. I have to act while I can still think.

I call a friend, a young girl from Rostov. “Irina, I’m going to die tonight for sure. Call a taxi and take me to hospital.”

“Ivan Andreyevich, you know the hospital won’t admit you again.”

“Excuse me for troubling you.”

I put the phone down just in time. The mouthpiece has started to crackle with sounds I identify as Voice of America.

Irina is right. Since being in this country I’ve dried out in
hospital
four times. The detox clinic won’t take me again either. Not that they’re much use. They insisted on talking about my past, how I related to my father and other nonsense. They expected me to bare my soul to some young whelp with no knowledge of life. I begged them to give me injections, to knock me out while I got over the worst of the dt’s. Surely the West must have discovered a cure for alcoholism; it is impossible they don’t have that drug in their arsenal. But they refused me. They probably thought I was a drug addict to boot. So I drank all the mouthwash I’d brought with me and that wasn’t enough. I managed to get to a phone and call Grisha, who brought in a hot-water bottle full of vodka. Somehow the doctors found out I’d had a drink and ordered me to leave. I lost my temper and raged at them but they would not relent.

Hours pass and with every minute I feel more scared. If only I can ride this one out I’ll stop drinking for a while and then keep things under control like I managed to in Georgia. The TV flickers. Silent cues shoot coloured balls across the screen. They are not enough to distract me. Rain patters on my window. The
street lamp outside my room casts a yellow pool onto the wet pavement. Tiny devils frolic in the gutter. If I drop my guard they’ll climb up the drainpipe and slip in under the window frame.

I close my eyes and wait for night. Alarms wail in the distance. Cement mixers roar up and down the road. A sharp pain jabs through my leg; I sit up in time to see a devil running across the floor, squealing and brandishing his fork. I yell and Grisha hurries out of the kitchen with a bottle in his hand. Cradling my head in his arm, he wedges a pen between my teeth, unscrews the bottle cap and puts the neck to my lips.

Ivan’s funeral is held at a North London crematorium. His friends want a Russian Orthodox priest to officiate, but none can be found. In the end a Greek priest comes from Kentish Town. Sunlight streams through the windows, illuminating the blue and gold of the priest’s robes. Incense burns. We hold candles while St John of Damascus is read. In turn we step up to speak. One woman, Elena, can hardly force words out through her tears: “Why did such a lovely, generous man have to suffer so cruelly?”

When Father Constantine hears Ivan’s story he returns his fee.

Forty days after Ivan’s death Elena invites me to his
pominki
– his wake – in a flat on the North Peckham Estate.

I take the bus from Elephant and Castle to Camberwell Green, and then walk through back streets, past posters of the missing and the wanted.

Elena lives in a low-rise seventies building. She buzzes me in through metal security gates at ground level and again on her walkway. My path is blocked by a track-suited woman leaning over the railing: “They throw their chicken bones over the balcony,” she yells at someone on the ground: “I’ve told the council but they do
fuck all. They want evidence. I’ll show them fucking evidence…” I squeeze past her backside to reach Elena’s door.

She leads me into a room full of books and plants. A table is piled with salads in cut glass bowls. Solemn guests are seated around it. I recognise them from the funeral –Tatiana, Irina, Slava, Andrei, Vadim – young Russians whom Ivan did his best to help.

A teenage boy lumbers in. Elena introduces him as her son. He sports a black eye. He says he got beaten up at school for being Russian. “And they murdered a black kid, Damilola Taylor.”

“Yes, I heard.”

“Everyone knows who did it; the police know, but they haven’t got evidence. The killers walk around like kings.”

I wonder if this place is really worth leaving Russia for.

Ivan’s photo sits on the mantelpiece. I recognise it as one I took on the day we visited his beloved
Cutty Sark
together. The finest ship ever built, he said.

“He was extraordinarily handsome as a young man,” sighs Elena, “he showed me a photo once.”

“I keep thinking I see Ivan in the street, out of the corner of my eye,” says Irina.

“It happens to me too,” I say. I catch myself peering hopefully at short, grey-haired men with walking sticks.

“He was so kind,” Elena wipes away a tear, “like a grandfather to my boy.”

“To Ivan,” Slava proposes. We raise our glasses.

Mine contains water. Alcohol no longer has the desired effect and I know it never will again.

Slava sits opposite me. I marvel as he drinks his wine then refills his glass with orange juice.

A debate starts over Ivan’s ashes. The women say they should go to his sister in Chapaevsk so that they can be placed beside those of his parents and brother; the men say he would have wanted them scattered over the sea. The women win.

“Are you going back to North London?” asks Vadim, a serious young man in glasses and a grey suit who works in software design. “I’ll walk with you to the bus.”

It is dark now and I am glad to have a companion. We set off through the estate to Camberwell Road. On the way Vadim explains that he comes from Moscow. He is in the UK on a work visa. He lives in the London suburbs – zone six. A world away from Ivan.

“Do you know that during one of his drinking bouts Ivan decided he was betraying his Motherland by claiming asylum here? He asked the Home Office to return his documents.”

“Oh God, he didn’t? I never heard about that.”

“It was probably before you met him. When he sobered up he went down to Croydon. Andrei accompanied him – he was doing his legal training then. They explained that Ivan was drunk and didn’t know what he was saying. They accepted his reapplication.”

We step off the pavement as a group of hooded youths surge past.

“I doubt he’d have got away with it these days,” I say.

“He got away with a lot in his life.”

“How do you think he would have fared if he’d stayed in Russia?”

“I don’t think he would have lasted so long – it’s much tougher these days.”

“I must say I’m amazed how understanding the Soviet system was of its drunks – holding their jobs open and trying to offer treatment. And Georgia was virtually a tramp’s paradise…”

“Yes, but today’s Russia is not a kind place for people like Ivan. If you don’t shape up you’re fired. There’s no room for the vulnerable. I hate to think what could have happened to him if he’d stayed, he might have been murdered on the streets…”

We reach the bus stop.

“Are you going to the Elephant?” asks Vadim

“Yes.”

“I’ll come up with you, take the tube from there.”

He flashes a sudden, shy smile. “Ivan told me about you. At first I was surprised that he was telling his story to an English person, but he said you’d lived out there.”

“I did. I knew where he came from…”

The number 68 lurches towards us. We board and head off northwards.