Gadfly in Russia Read online

  On showing my passport at the counter a frowsty middle-aged woman in a black dress gave me a form to fill in, instructing me how to do so in an unmistakable New York accent. ‘You’re on your own?’ she asked with surprise and disapproval, seeing me write in the appropriate square that I was married. ‘So where’s your wife?’

  I wondered what bloody business it was of hers, but told her she was at home.

  Her voice rose plangently: ‘You mean to say you’re travelling without your wife?’ If I had known what was coming I would have lied on completing the form. ‘And how many weeks is it since you’ve seen her?’

  I was abashed, though determined to feel no shame. On the other hand I was amused. ‘About three weeks.’

  She shuffled away, shaking her head. ‘A man come all this way, without his wife!’

  When she returned I asked, as a diversion, where she had learned such excellent English. ‘Don’t ask!’ she said, glad I had. ‘I lived in America a long time, but came back here.’ More than that she wouldn’t say, went grumbling into the kitchen to tell one of Dracula’s minions called Boris to start work on my supper.

  I walked around the gloomily lit market place, where a few disgruntled men at a café table followed my progress. I would have sat for a drink but needed to exercise my legs that had stiffened from the constant changing of gears on mountain roads. In any case I didn’t want to run into anyone else in case they berated me in English for travelling without my wife.

  I sat in the hotel dining room for half an hour before tall gormless Boris slouched in to serve supper. Being the only guest, it was as if I had landed there to be eaten instead of to eat. The basic repast of rice, meat and vegetables was welcome, but best of all was a bottle of fiery red wine which, in not too long, sent me upstairs and knocked me into sleep with the subtlety of a rubber hammer, bringing dreams of endless alpine roads patrolled by lovely beckoning girls in braids and embroidered blouses.

  I was only 240 kilometres from Chernovtsy, but the day had been long, and all I knew was that I had found my way through the Carpathians, the longest mountain range in Europe.

  Sunday, 2 July

  Breakfast, I said to myself, is the most important meal for me. Then I wasn’t sure. All were vital while motoring, an occupation good for the appetite, I knew, as Boris came in with a smile (he too must have slept well) a dish of pale delicious butter, fresh breads, a pot of kitchen-made jam, and all the coffee I could drink, a spread which could not I was sure have been bettered at the higher grade establishment in Cimpulung, mud bath thrown in or not. She who had chastened me for not having brought the family to see the unique marvels of Transylvania noted my feeding with satisfaction. In her Rumanian fashion she was concerned for my well-being, and we were friendly on saying goodbye.

  Before nine I was making westerly back on Route 17. Signposts saying Beclean beckoned me, taken in as Be Clean, though I was nothing less after a coolish morning shower in the hotel. The road dipped south to avoid a 2,000-foot spur, then northerly and west again through the villages of Sieul Maghorus, Sieul Sfantu and Sintareay – I think I spell them correctly.

  At Beclean, turning right over the river (back on AA instructions after the road of yesterday), I bore left and threaded other settlements to Dej, with its Calvinist church and nearby salt mines.

  It was my second day of solo driving since Leningrad, and I was beginning to enjoy it, with all of vast Rumania before me. There was no majordomo to overlook my idiosyncratic style of motoring, or to blushingly forgive strings of obscene complaint. No one knew or cared where I was going, and I liked that. No one worried about my behaviour, as in Russia. The elegant woman at the frontier had already turned her benevolent attentions on other travellers, and forgotten my transit, and the Rumanian police who had registered my entry were sufficiently human and slapdash not to be interested in my whereabouts.

  The illusion of freedom to roam was almost overwhelming. Thanks to the Ancient Romans all signs were in Western script, and I had even figured the headlines of a newspaper in the hotel, with the help of French or Spanish. The country was surrounded by languages I didn’t understand, but Rumanian could be made sufficiently plain on requesting food, coffee or car fuel, though sometimes with the help of the aperçu linguistique in the Guide Bleu. I also read for the first time, while draining my morning coffee, the booklet from the Rumanian tourist office, which stated in English that the speed limit for towns was fifty kilometres an hour, and in the countryside a maximum of eighty. I would therefore need to watch out for the police, though a few local madcaps sometimes overtook me at a greater rate.

  I stopped now and again to make out the names of natural features around me, spreading the two sheets of the War Office one-million-scale maps and matching them together on the bonnet. They showed nearly all of Rumania, and gave a superb topographical picture of the great layer-tinted horseshoe of the Carpathians. My route was out of the two prongs, leading to lower areas of mostly light green between Bistrita and the Danube. Widespread landscape was a pleasure to behold, fulfilling the dreams of liberty I had come away to experience.

  There was still no safe way, however, of signalling on overtaking cars, lorries or horsedrawn carts, or when turning left and right, but I was accustomed to the problem, and such pains taking caution was an advantage when applied to other manoeuvres, which helped to keep me out of trouble.

  The road avoided all heights on going south by following the river and railway to Cluj. After that place the route went on to bare and more hilly terrain as far as Turda, an industrial city of 40,000 inhabitants. Various shades of smoke would, on weekdays, rise from the glass works, cement and chemical factories. Again there were salt mines in the vicinity, and I hoped to be forgiven on wondering who worked in them.

  Then it was up and across an empty plateau, before rejoining road and railway winding along the River Mures. It was an area producing good wine, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to stop and drink any.

  Beyond Alba Julia – more evidence of the far-reaching Romans – I turned west, again by rail and river, and came to Deva, with its medieval fortress. Three hundred kilometres on the trip meter suggested it was time for a meal. The two-star restaurant Perla, in the Filemon Sibu Park, looked suitable because food was served in the open air. Fish was on the menu but, being at least 300 miles from the sea, I chose spicy minced meat and rice rolled in cabbage leaves, and ice cream for dessert.

  Two jean-clad white-shirted young men in their twenties asked permission to sit with me. Dredging words up from several languages I told them where I had come from and the way I would be going. The sturdy Russian camera lay by my elbow less to take photographs than to have it before my eyes. One of the men picked it up, sighted it, felt the weight in his palm, and brushed his spotless handkerchief across the lens, meanwhile saying something I didn’t understand to his companion.

  He laid the camera down, and took an impressive pack of banknotes from his back pocket: ‘You want to sell it?’

  Perhaps they usually talked to obvious foreigners on the off chance of doing a little business, but it was the first time on the trip anyone had offered to buy one of my belongings. I had been led to expect it in Russia, but no one had asked to buy my clothes, probably because they weren’t the fashionable Western sort. Nor had my fountain pen or radio interested anyone.

  Had I intended staying longer in Rumania I might have taken up their offer, since the camera was unreliable, a roll of film now and again returning blank from the developers for no reason I could think of. But since I had no need of extra currency, and any that remained could not be taken from their country, there was no reason for a deal.

  On my polite refusal they stood, shook my hand, and went away. After coffee and a smoke I called the waitress and asked for the bill, but she laughed and said the men who had been talking to me had settled it already. It was embarrassing, since I wouldn’t be seeing them again, so I could only appreciate their generosity, and leave it at that.
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  Rather than follow Route 68 from Deva I turned more directly to Lugos on the 68B, through Faget, cutting out a wide bend to the south. The mostly unpaved road put the Peugeot on its mettle, me relishing the many lurches and bumps in sidetracking sections that were being improved, though no workmen were present because it was Sunday. I supposed Michelin would have given it a scenic green band, for mountains of over 4,000 feet lay to the right, and as ever on seeing alpine woodlands I thought how pleasant to wander in such an area for a few weeks with rucksack, map, and good boots – a typical fantasy from a speeding car.

  Lugos, a textile town, set me wondering whether one of my favourite childhood filmstars Bela Lugosi had been born there, or taken his name from it. Going south from Timisoara, I was soon within breaching distance of the frontier. In an hour or so it would be dusk, and sensible to pass a second night in Rumania, but the magnet of Serbia pulled me along. From the border another hundred kilometres – a short hop in the frame of things – would see me in Belgrade, though I must find a bed before getting trapped in a large strange city at night.

  Leaving Rumania was as easy as entering. A policeman strolled out of the office and looked at my passport, sneering in English: ‘And you only came into our beautiful country yesterday? You should spend more time with us.’

  I lied in telling him I had a schedule to keep, though in truth it didn’t much matter when I got to England. ‘I’ll be sure to come again soon.’

  ‘I hope so.’ He stamped my documents with a smile, and saluted. ‘Bon voyage!’

  I entered Yugoslavia without delay, and called at the money-changing post for a few thousand dinars. A manic foolishness invariably took me over at the end of long drives. Wanting to cover just that few extra miles, I was unable to stop, too cosily boxed into the Peugeot and unwilling to pitch myself among other human beings.

  I soon realised there would be little chance of a bed before Belgrade. At Vrsac – I tried saying it but couldn’t – there was no accommodation, so in the failing light I took the right fork to Pancevo. No lodgings there, either.

  It was clear that I would be lured into the sprawling agglomeration of Belgrade. I crossed the Danube in darkness, so did not see the river. The main throughway on my simplified town plan promised to be broad and clear, and signified a quick way out. It wasn’t a spectacularly lit city, but the continuous dazzle of traffic half blinded me. In trying to find a way leading to the Sarajevo exit I became utterly lost. Too late I recalled my firm rule of never negotiating a foreign city in the dark. Such a traverse was bad enough in daylight, but at night everything was uncertain, even perilous, and navigation soon went out of the window.

  I travelled up and down, and around main streets (and lesser ones) for miles without spotting any intelligible signpost, so badly worn were my eyes by the lights of cars coming the other way and others flashing from behind, till it seemed I would never reach open country.

  The AA routing had ended at the Danube, I couldn’t think why, though it would have been little help, and it was no use consulting the fold-out plan in the Guide Bleu because I’d never be able to find exactly where I was on it, even street names stuck where it was impossible to see them from a moving car.

  I was exhausted, and considered pulling into a quiet street to doze for an hour, but there were no such streets, and to do so seemed an unwarranted defeat. Persistence would finally bring success.

  I could have looked for a hotel, but by now had lost the desire to overnight in such a city. I would only wake up with almost the same problem, though in any case didn’t see one on my futile zipping here and there like a dying bluebottle at the end of summer. All I could do was stamp on despair and resume my reconnaissance of the town.

  Spherical bulbs on lamp posts appeared, white heat against black, crowds walking from a park gate towards waiting buses, talking of what had been heard at a concert. Men and girls, they seemed happy and serious in their shirtsleeves and summer dresses. They made an island of the car when I stood outside it to ask the nearest route out of town. I didn’t even care if it led back to Rumania.

  An intelligent youth who stopped to light a cigarette indicated at my question that I should reverse the car, go right at the street, join the next main road, and again turn right, which would take me on to a bridge over the Sava.

  Where the road went he didn’t say, and I didn’t ask, only wanting to get unstuck from a trap I had so stupidly fallen into. I made him repeat the explanation, determined to get it right, by which time the multitude around us had dispersed.

  I did a three-point turn, and in ten minutes had crossed the specified bridge without a glance at the river. The highway went northwest, and in the suburbs came a signpost for Zagreb, hardly the place to head for, but there would be a turn-off for Sabac in not too long – I knew – where a hotel would put me up for the night. The road was dark and narrow, though well paved. On my various maps it was shown as a motorway, except the more accurate one in the Guide Bleu.

  I overshot the turn for Sabac and the road to Sarajevo but, having at least noticed it, swung back and drove the last thirty kilometres. Beyond the bridge into town a single light glimmered on a few tables outside the hotel. Well after ten o’clock, I went in to register, hoping it wasn’t too late for supper and a bottle of wine. I needn’t have worried. There had been a longitudinal time change in my favour after crossing the frontier.

  The manager smiled, I supposed, at my raddled appearance, and said a meal would be served outside as soon as it could be made ready, at which good news he took off his jacket, put on a chef’s apron, and went to do something in the kitchen.

  Relieved, happy, and as light headed as if every hundred kilometres that day had been rewarded with a double vodka, I sat with legs sprawled and smoked a pipeful. The half hour’s wait was whiled away by the approach of a slim dark-haired young man who asked, having seen the plates on the car a few yards away by the pavement, if I was English. I told him that, as far as I knew, I was. Wine was set before me, and I invited him to sit down and have a drink, relaxed enough even to share all I owned with the Devil, while knowing I could always call up another bottle.

  He thanked me, and said no. ‘I would just like to chat with you for a while, if you don’t mind, so that I can practice my English.’

  He was so fluent I told him he hardly needed to. He said he taught the language at a local school, then wanted to know what I did for a living. On giving lifts in England I always claimed to be a land surveyor, knowing enough on the subject, because I didn’t want to fend off questions as to what kind of novels I produced, and how did inspiration come to me etc etc.

  Perhaps the day’s work had made me more friendly, and I told him I was a writer. His name was Novak, he said, and we talked about life in England, and what sort of books were being published there these days. He had read novels by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, among others, which gave more to talk about. With half the bottle gone I no longer felt I had driven far, so could chat amicably with him. He informed me that he led a lonely life in Sabac, being a teacher, for it was a rather dull town.

  When the meal of steak, fried potatoes and salad was laid on my table he stood, but before going asked if I would kindly post one of my novels to him. I agreed to do so, and doubled back a notebook for him to write:

  Mr Novak Pantic,

  Sabac-Majur,

  Yugoslavia

  As an address it seemed brief, but maybe he was well known in the town. I sent him a paperback, and hope he received it.

  At midnight by Bistrita time I went to bed, recalling on my way to sleep the concerned landlady at the hotel, which now seemed in another world. My wheels had sliced off northwest Rumania, and I was well over a hundred miles into Serbia, after a run of 700 kilometres, a fair score, but what was the hurry? Even so, it had been a long day, and though it wasn’t to be the most I had driven in one 24-hour period (the emerging French motorway system allowed more) it seemed quite enough. A younger man might have m
erely dined in Sabac, and reached Sarajevo in time for morning coffee, but I wasn’t in a race and, having nothing to prove, decided to take things easy from then on.

  Monday, 3 July

  Three mighty rivers were behind me: the Dneiper, the Dneister, and the Danube. Having crossed the Sava at Sabac, the Drina was next.

  Sleep had been deep and long enough, and little time was lost in getting back on the road – though with no sense of haste. After motoring through well-cultivated land, with sparse traffic, came the toil of many curves in the gorge of the Drina. A long stretch of unpaved road beyond the bridge at Dvornik was taken in good spirit by the car.

  On pulling into a wayside caravanserai at half past ten I sat outside the main door by a well-used chicken yard. The rustic table I’d been pointed to wobbled enough to be genuine, though I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to buy it even at the top end of the Portobello Road. The liquid was hot and fragrant, and the man who served it seemed as happy as if seeing his first customer of the day.

  After a bend in the road, feeling guilty perhaps at having so much space to myself, I drew in to offer three people a lift. There had been no trace of buses so far, but in any case it would save their fares should one miraculously come along.

  The tall smartly dressed old man was as aloof and dignified as if I had appeared in exactly the car he had ordered, and that it had arrived a little too late for his liking. By his side, though not too close, a soberly dressed woman held the hand of a pretty young girl garbed in a kind of bridesmaid’s outfit. She may have been on her way to be married, but how could I ask? Playing the chauffeur, I got out, cleared the back seat, and saw them ceremoniously installed.