Gadfly in Russia Read online

  Pekko at Virolahti told me to follow his car, and led me at great speed along a smooth and narrow track through the forest. Then came bumps and curves that almost threw me into the trees as I tried not to lose sight of him. He was an architect and bookseller, who had designed and built a wooden summerhouse on an inlet of the Gulf of Finland. The Russian shore, a thousand yards across the water, was marked by watchtowers above the tree tops. Scanning them with binoculars I had no doubt that, guarding their prison or paradise, they were likewise observing me. The local Finns were long used to the situation, Pekko said, and no one on their side anyway was at all nervous. I found it strange that if Russia was a prison people were prevented from leaving, and a paradise others were barred from entering, there were no queues on either side of the frontier.

  The sauna hut was set on rocks a few yards from the water. We changed after supper, Pekko bronzed and me chalkish white. The stove well lit, he threw cold water on to scorching stones, steam coiling till sweat ran from my scalp, out of cuticles and eyeballs, every nook and bend of flesh.

  Swishing birch twigs disturbed the air to bring some relief, and if the pleasant smell was to be the last on earth then so be it. He glanced at the thermometer, decided it read too low, and splashed another ladle of water on to the stones, clouds billowing till I couldn’t see anything, wondering where the door was in case of a blackout.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  Another dollop of water took away the last vodka drunk at supper. Steam was eating me up. Having shed as much moisture as could possibly be in me, or so I thought, I was ready to wave the white flag. Birch leaves no longer helped, since the water they rested in between bouts, too warm to encourage circulation, burned on impact with the skin. I managed to control my breathing when lungs seemed about to pop like paper bags. Mr Reenpaa’s mischievous smile on telling me I would be sure to get a good sauna in Virolahti came back.

  Pekko considered we had more liquid (and dirt) to lose. I climbed up on to the planks to lie down, but it was better to keep moving, so I went back to the floor as another billow of volcanic heat reminded me of cleaning the flues of a factory boiler system as a boy of fourteen, crawling along narrow tunnels to spade away heaps of still hot clinker and soot.

  When by common consent Pekko opened the door I ran for the lake as if death was behind me, swimming through pink-reflecting bars of the setting sun.

  He took me and his lovely daughter by motorboat around the darkening bay, careful to avoid going too far and risking a few bullets from the Russians. Pale smoke from other sauna chimneys drifted along the shore. Pekko greeted the local police chief who stood on a jetty fresh from his own bath, an immensely powerful man in his middle thirties, the space between hair and eyes narrow, but the smile wide. He looked cleaner than anyone I’d ever seen.

  I sat by the shore in the gloaming, not a breath of wind, but my lighter flame bent at such an angle I assumed the fuel was running out. At half past ten numerous birds throated their calls, sometimes in chorus. Hard to believe I was alive. Tiredness turned everything into a dream. Love was lacking, and cuckoos instead of nightingales sang for much of the night.

  Sunday, 18 June

  Waterloo Day, the sixth out of London. Pekko came to the frontier village of Vaalima, to have coffee and say goodbye. The road beyond the Finnish post was blocked by a control arm, as if the Flying Scotsman was expected to steam through any minute. A Soviet soldier stood by his sentry box, no other building in sight. Stirring music sounded from a loudspeaker at the top of a tall pole, a noise like the crashlanding of a stricken aircraft. After ten minutes the soldier picked up his field telephone and spoke into it. He listened, said yes a few times, and put it down.

  I lit a cigar and looked at my map of the road to Leningrad. The day was warm, so I opened all windows. He lifted the telephone again, and motioned me along the treelined potholed road. After about a kilometre I saw the neat modern customs house, a hammer-and-sickle at half flutter, and another megaphonic instrument blared martial music.

  Three cars were in front, Swedish, Finnish, and Australian. All doors were being opened and bonnets lifted. One was of the dormobile type and a customs man went inside to look in drawers and under beds, while another pulled seats forward to examine the upholstery.

  I was motioned into the building to show my passport, and when its visa was checked the woman handed me a form several sheets long on which I was to state exactly how much foreign currency was in my wallet, of whatever denomination, whether in traveller’s cheques or notes, then to declare the number of suitcases and pieces of smaller luggage, as well as camera, radio and field glasses. I followed a soldier out so that he could write the number of the engine and chassis, preliminaries which took about half an hour. It was eleven o’clock, by when I’d hoped to be beyond Viborg.

  Soldiers were still going through the dormobile. One opened a jar of cold cream and put it to his nose. I looked forward to a laugh should he stir a finger inside for hidden jewels – but he thought better of it. Another swaddie paged his way through magazines looking for seditious reading matter, found none, but lingered a few moments over advertisements for women’s underwear.

  I strolled up and down. The people in the Swedish car, with fractious and impatient children, seemed about to go berserk at the delay. I sympathised, and gave the kids some chocolate. Getting into Russia by air had been easy compared to this. The Swedes laughed at my gesture of resignation. No cars had yet gone through.

  My turn came. A clean-faced young soldier asked me to lift the tailgate. He opened my binocular case, looked at the radio, and saw the camera, all noted on the customs form, which he checked. Did I have a tape recorder? No, I told him. There was nothing I wanted to smuggle in, or much that I would care to take out, either, yet wondered what they hoped to find. I had a few presents for friends – a quantity of books (mostly my own) ballpoint pens, and some pop records.

  Magazines were flipped through in a polite but thorough way. He’d been told to do a job, and was doing it, so I stayed calm and patient, knowing that wanting to get into Russia there was no point being otherwise. I understood a few phrases of their language but pretended to know only my own.

  He asked why I had so many books, and who they were for. I said they were for giving away, which he didn’t understand. Asking me to wait he went into the main building and a few minutes later came out with a stout woman wearing some kind of uniform who asked if I was intending to sell the books. When I said they were for friends she smiled and translated it to the soldier, who nevertheless continued lifting others into the light. I had Nagel’s Guide to the USSR, 1965 and the Guide Bleu Illustré Moscou-Leningrad which were looked into as well.

  I thought of my specially drawn cartographic efforts which, Mr Reenpaa had said, if found might be confiscated or get me sent back to Finland, a prospect by this time in no way alarming. They were ensconced in the pocket of a holdall resting against the inside of the car, and he diligently searched it but without moving it into an isolated position, thus not noticing the concealed zip.

  Half an hour later I was free to go. Waving goodbye, I revved up in a cloud of smoke and took the road to Leningrad, having at last shaken my way free of so much bullshit. A few kilometres on, some boys of twelve or fourteen stood in the road and signalled me to stop. I was going too fast, but then three other boys flagged me down, and I decided to see what they wanted. As they closed in to look through the window I was careful to ensure no eager fingers made a grab for anything that took their fancy. Neat and cleanly dressed, they probably came from the nearby village of Torfyanovka. ‘Hello,’ I said in Russian, a greeting returned but without a smile. ‘What do you want?’ also in Russian.

  I was eager to get the wheels rolling, having missed the drug of engine noise for so long at the frontier. There was no reason for hurry, but I was losing patience at their keen curiosity. They looked at every instrument and control in silence, hoping I supposed to di
scuss what they had seen later. Two more boys, as if too timid to approach the car, stood with long fishing poles by the trees, looking anxiously up and down the road.

  I made a move to start the engine, when one of them asked for a cigarette. I told them in Russian that I didn’t understand, but they made unmistakable signs of smoking, so I smiled and gave one each, and a couple more for the two keeping watch in case the police came and booted them away. They must have found it profitable, cadging a fag tax from each car that went through.

  In Viborg, I changed my mind at having a big feed in the Intourist Hotel, because it would take at least an hour, and pulled up instead at a canteen sort of place near the bus station. The town seemed rundown, as was the building I ate in. Viborg had 80,000 Finnish inhabitants in 1945, and was called Viipuri, but rather than live under Soviet rule when the war ended every man woman and child left. The Russians took over a ghost town, and the main street even now had a certain frontier raffishness. Not much of it had been made in twenty years. Instead of Finnish neatness it was as if the Russians had built and colonised it from the beginning. The town’s historical charm needed love and money to keep up, but the present inhabitants, not having been born there, didn’t perhaps regard it as theirs, though I supposed that in a couple of generations they would no longer feel they had stolen it.

  The canteen was almost empty because it was late for lunch, till a group of jolly workwomen came in from the bus station, queued for glasses of lemon tea, and sat at the scattered tables, reminding me of a British restaurant during the war.

  The cash-desk woman flicked coloured beads left and right on her abacus frame, and charged fifty kopecks for my tray of ham, black bread, salad and a glass of prune juice – nothing hot, but I was well satisfied. About to light a cigar, I saw a no-smoking sign on the wall.

  Even with windows open the thermometer in the car was close to a hundred. I passed better-kept dwellings on the outskirts. After a mile or so, after overtaking a horse and cart, I came to a narrow humpbacked bridge guarded by a soldier with rifle and bayonet. He waved me down, and I wondered what for. Had somebody telephoned from town and told him to stop me for an unspecified misdemeanour at the customs post?

  Leaning his rifle against the wall he pulled a notebook from his tunic and, peering close, slowly copied the strange letters of the licence plate.

  I got out and asked why he had stopped me, but my Russian wasn’t good enough for him to understand. His gestures indicated that I must reverse the car and go back in the direction of Viborg.

  I thought of pushing on over the bridge, but the consequences of a couple of live rounds put paid to that. Galled at the possibility of not reaching Leningrad, on a day that was already half gone, I saw myself answering questions for a fault I knew nothing about – a not unfamiliar situation, but only tolerable if it came at a time of my choosing.

  Not paid to talk, he stabbed his rifle as a further sign that I should turn round. But why? And where to go? He posted himself again at the bridge, as I drove away wondering what would happen now.

  I saw, on looking at the map, that I had missed the signpost for Leningrad, had made a left instead of a right fork, and taken a route not on the Intourist itinerary. The forbidden road ran northeast towards Lake Ladoga and Kamenogorsk, and I would happily have followed it – venture adventure – had the Gorshek soldier not pointed a bayonet at my guts.

  A mere eighty kilometres since breakfast left a hundred and fifty to go, but the road was empty, the weather good, and I went fast, glad to be on the loose at last in Russia, on a straight though not too wide highway between lush pine woods. The responsive wheel took in space that seemed for me alone.

  I imagined a Tsar of All the Russias, keen on motoring and out for a spin in his latest car. He had forbidden every other vehicle from the road, and an army corps lined his route from end to end, though sooner or later a band of Nihilists would elude the cordons and lob bombs which would kill him. Or, realising the danger, the tsar would have a well-lit tunnel built from St Petersburg to Moscow, and enjoy his practice runs in that until, again, the inevitable explosion shattered his windscreen.

  A man stood by the roadside, cap on, haversack over one shoulder, and fishing rod at the trail. Offering him a lift, I saw he was about sixty and pale faced, with a broad forehead narrowing towards the chin, and wore black hornrimmed glasses. His teeth were obviously false, and he took off the cap to scratch his bald head, brow deeply lined, thin lips breaking into a smile of greeting. I asked where he was going.

  ‘Along the road!’ He pointed onwards, ever onwards, so I told him to stow his tackle in the back, and opened the door. He banged my shoulder, at such good luck on hearing my destination was Leningrad. When I added that I would be going on to Moscow, Kiev and Chernovtsy his eyes sparkled with admiration and envy, as if he had dreamed of such a journey and would have given both arms to go with me. But I was wrong. He had been to all three places and many others, had done more travelling that I had, proved when he stabbed his chest: ‘Berlin! Soldier!’ which made me glad to be giving him a lift.

  We didn’t speak for a while. Having another person in the car, I tended to look more back than forward in my life, which I didn’t much like, so I concentrated on the way ahead. There was a language difficulty of course, certain key words being absent from my vocabulary, while it was perilous to use hand signals at the wheel. I gathered that his name was Vanya, and he had been fishing on the Gulf of Finland, but hadn’t caught anything as far as I could see, though he may have sold his catch in Viborg. He talked as if I understood every word, and I drew on my intuition, using a few words and bits of rudimentary grammar, but mostly with little success. I regretted not studying more in London.

  Speeding along pleasantly enough, he remarked that the car was a very good ‘machine’, and wanted to know – I assumed – where it was made, the horsepower, how much the fuel tanks held, what its consumption was at top speed, its age, and the price paid for it. Liking his company and amiable curiosity I explained as much as possible. I’d have liked to know about him, and cursed Nimrod’s Tower of Babel for making things so difficult.

  More than halfway to Leningrad, we came to the Gulf of Finland, the island fortress of Kronstadt visible in the distance. Beyond the 1939 frontier at Belo Ostrov more cars and buses were on the road. Seeing people strolling along the sidewalks near the beach I realised it was Sunday. Villas, datchas, hotels, cafés and filling stations were frequent at Sestroretsk, the chief place of the resort coast and open-air lounge of Leningraders. Big houses from the old days that had belonged to the upper classes of St Petersburg had been turned into rest homes.

  I stopped at a modern cafeteria providing bowls of rich borscht with meat and sour cream, bread, cakes and bottles of cherryade. Women at the next table in plain frocks and kerchiefs were tackling an enormous meal. Most diners were young men and girls in shirtsleeves and summer dresses, and I thought how interesting it would be to speak to them, but I was content enough to observe. Should I try to make contact they would no doubt have looked puzzled and turned away. Never an easy or habitual part of a group, I preferred to be anonymous, to look and listen, like a fish in water, storing up images and memories for the future.

  Vanya tried to pay for our meals, but I had enough Russian to indicate that since he was a passenger in my car he had the status of a guest, and I was the one to fork out.

  Repino was named after Repin the landscape painter, who lived in the village till his death in 1930. We raced by the place near which Pushkin had fought his fatal duel. When the road broadened into a motorway – light standards, bridges, blocks of flats to either side – Vanya confirmed that he wanted to be let off in the middle of Leningrad. Traffic signals were too high to see at times, so I sharpened my sight and slowed down. I must have drifted into the wrong lane, and funnelled left instead of going straight on. Being lefthanded, it was another unintended fork taken that day. A treacherous instinct led me to assume I was still on the ri
ght track for the centre of town, expecting to be at the Astoria Hotel in fifteen minutes.

  Vanya tapped me on the shoulder: ‘Abratna!’

  I smiled, not knowing what the word meant.

  ‘Abratna!’ he repeated.

  A beautiful word, which I thought might signify handsome or pretty. He tapped his forehead, as if to show I’d gone crazy, and that he would soon be in that state if I didn’t take in what he was trying to say. He resigned himself at my ingrown dimness, till calling again: ‘Abratna! Abratna!’

  Assuming the word to mean other than it did exposed a vital fault in my restricted vocabulary. He used it so often in the next ten minutes that I was sure I’d remember it for the rest of my days. What was he trying to say? ‘Abratna!’ – bollocks to abratna. Never heard such a word. How should I know what it meant? But he was trying to tell me, in all kinds of ways and the waving of hands. I couldn’t see him face on, though didn’t suppose it would have made much difference. He shrugged, and pointed to the heavens, for which I didn’t blame him when I looked up the word later. He thought I was either off my head, or realised only too well what he meant and, in my barmy foreign way, didn’t care. He tried every method of semaphore to make me understand, while I endeavoured to read what was in his mind. I knew Russian for turning left or right, but the verb ‘to go back’ (abratna) I hadn’t yet come across, possibly because in my ever-feckless way I hadn’t foreseen the use of it.

  Blocks of city flats gave place to flimsy cottages in acres of uncultivated flatness. By turning left so soon I had lost the main road into the city, and was heading out of the conurbation. Vanya was in glum despair at my not understanding, assuming in his cloud of pessimism that I may even plough on as far as Murmansk, him unable to stop the car without killing us.

  He came back to life when the long moving penny finally dropped and I backed into a potholed side lane to turn around. ‘Abratna!’ he cheered.