Gadfly in Russia Page 8

  The noise of trains in the Tuskar valley seemed to come from a sky unable to hold it in, as if an ache too melancholy to be borne. Rain fell with the sound, which became hard to imagine it had been set off by a train. One thought of those endless strings of wagons down the hill, laden with coal and anthracite from the Donetz mines, and people in their straggling villages, with train wheels rumbling through deep and troubled sleep – but I pondered mostly on journeys to the furthest regions of that enormous country.

  Still talking around the same subject, we walked along badly paved streets of wooden houses, all in darkness except one with a television set flickering opposite the half-screened window. ‘Tell me, George,’ I said, ‘how come I’m in Kursk, a place I first heard of in my teens?’

  His face was hidden by the umbrella. ‘Kismet, my dear chap. Fate is a human affliction – or so I must have read somewhere.’

  ‘I suppose that when you get back to Moscow you’ll report all I said about Stalin, especially the etceteras.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘You’re a member of the Komsomol, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course. You have to be, if you want to get on in our society. But you know, people will be curious as to how we got on together.’ I didn’t mind when he changed the subject: ‘North and south of the Kursk salient,’ he said, though who didn’t know? – ‘the Germans attacked with three thousand tanks and two thousand planes, an offensive they couldn’t afford to lose, but did. It was the greatest tank battle in history, and if they had been victorious, Kismet would have been the same for both of us. We wouldn’t be talking here in Kursk. But the predators were seen off, so we are.’

  The shunting of trains was less audible. People in the centre of town came from the huge House of the Soviets after a concert or meeting. Back at the hotel by midnight, my feet seemed weightless. Tired, I supposed. Things would be livelier in Kiev tomorrow evening, George reminded me.

  Tuesday, 27 June

  We crossed the empty acres of Red Square – not Red for Revolution but because the word in Russian meant beautiful. Many towns therefore had their Red Square. Out by Dzerzhinsky Street, a wide straight and steep highway headed for the undulating steppe country.

  The road turned sharply left at Oboyan so that everyone could, I thought, slow down and see a monument to the Soviet soldiers who died in the battles of 1943.

  ‘Do you want to see the actual ground they fought on?’ George knew my interests by now. ‘There’ll be a museum there as well.’

  Morning was the time I wanted to put the greatest possible distance under the wheels, a hundred miles before midday usually guaranteeing a reasonable stretch by nightfall. At my desk writing, if I managed a page or two before twelve o’clock, it was an indication that many more would get done before dusk. Likewise on the road, morning was not to be wasted. Released from sleep and never-remembered dreams, I liked to get as far on as feasible. But cafés were so infrequent that when I saw one close to the monument we went in, for a glass of very weak coffee. ‘When Trollope was postmaster general,’ I said to George, ‘he worked at his novels from five to eight o’clock in the morning, and what a vast amount he wrote.’

  Outside, a huge framed map showed the main battlefield, which covered hundreds of square kilometres around Oboyan, a place half hidden in mist and drizzle as we went through. I said to George that it was another of those interesting localities I’d come back to and explore properly.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll do so. Life is far too short. I can see that when travelling by car you only want to get on.’

  You certainly do. You can stay in one town all your life with one house, one job, and one wife, and life goes in a flash. If you change job town or wife every year it might seem to go more slowly, but it’s all the same in the end. Life is short. Everyone was born yesterday. Did one emerge from childhood to reach death so quickly? The beginning and the end are real enough, but as soon as you start thinking of the dream in between it’s gone already. We talked a lot on that long journey.

  Beyond Bielgorod the sky was clearer. We were in the Ukraine, where the black and fertile top soil was said to be seven feet deep. Entering Kharkov, a city of a million people, I needed to find a service station, because the indicators hadn’t functioned since leaving Moscow, and even with George’s expert assistance it was hazardous overtaking. ‘The chances of getting them repaired are slight,’ he said on hearing that even the Peugeot agent in Helsinki had failed to do so.

  No service station was marked on our rudimentary town plan, but George enquired from several people till we found one. I teased him about the dearth of good maps and clear signposts, which made it so difficult in cities. ‘The authorities must be afraid of giving away military secrets. Or isn’t the signpost factory fulfilling its five-year plan?’

  ‘Travelling to remote places, you don’t say at the end that you found your way there,’ he said, ‘but that you talked your way there. If you don’t use your mouth on the road in Russia you don’t get anywhere. In any case, don’t you know there’s a Ukrainian proverb which says “Your tongue will lead you to Kiev”?’

  The garage, in a cul-de-sac near the city centre, had its gate locked. George called through the wooden bars to an old woman sitting on a bench outside the office. When she put down her knitting and came over he explained that we were in an important foreign car that needed looking at by an expert mechanic. ‘We’re in a great hurry to get to Kiev, so please open the gate.’

  ‘The manager won’t like it if I do. The workshop is full of cars already, and there’s no space in the yard.’

  George pointed out that the yard was almost empty.

  ‘I know, but we’re expecting twenty cars any minute, and they’ve been booked for repairs for the last three months.’

  ‘They may well have been,’ he went on, ‘but the fact is, Comrade Gatekeeper, that this man’ – pointing to me – ‘is a foreigner whose machine is in a dangerous condition.’

  I stood by the car feeling scruffy and dead beat, and no doubt looking it, as is the case as soon as one stops, even though after only four hours at the wheel. Her attractive pale blue eyes were very much alive for her age: ‘I can’t help that,’ she said.

  George talked on with quiet intensity, as if conducting a flirtation, suggesting that if he continued in that way he would end by asking her in no uncertain terms to become his fiancée. She blushed, hoping her reputation in the district wouldn’t suffer if she gave in. George employed the same tone, and I felt like cheering him on, while not understanding a word. He certainly knew how to deal with motherly Russian (or Ukrainian) ladies, but what did it matter to him?

  I already wanted to say that since nothing was fundamentally wrong with the car we should press on and try our luck in Kiev, but he wouldn’t hear of it, and pursued his courtship ritual, unwilling, even perhaps unable, to break off.

  ‘I can’t let you in under any circumstances,’ she said, though with lessening resistance. ‘It’s more than my job is worth.’ And yet, as if hypnotised by his rigmarole, even while talking, she took a key from her apron and slotted it in the lock. ‘It’s not that there’s no room. There’s just so much work at the moment, so I can’t let you in.’ She turned the key. ‘You should have informed us in advance. You could have telephoned from Kursk or Voronezh, or wherever you’ve come from.’ With admiring eyes still on him she pulled the gate open so that I could drive in.

  The manager came from his office, looked at the car, and suggested that since it was covered in mud I should put it through the washing machine. He might then be able to see more clearly what must be done. ‘In any case, you’ll lose a rouble or two if the traffic police see it like this.’ I appreciated his advice, especially when he called a man from a nearby shed and told him to take Peter Peugeot for another wash-and-brush-up.

  The old woman went back to playing with a little boy, and a pretty girl of about eight. Having some chocolates bought on the Danish ship two w
eeks ago – it seemed months – I went over and shared out the remains, one less carton to litter the back of the car.

  The foreman looked at the Peugeot and came out with the usual queries, most too technical for me to answer. Motioning me to lift the bonnet, he noticed my grimy hands and said to George: ‘Who is this man?’

  He was told: ‘An English writer.’

  I screwed off the radiator cap to check the water, and pulled out the dipstick to examine the oil level.

  ‘He doesn’t look like a writer,’ the manager said. ‘He’s got workman’s hands. Writers don’t have hands like that.’

  ‘Some do,’ George said, ‘like this one.’

  ‘Then he’s the first I’ve ever seen.’

  A mechanic stripped down the fuses, and looked at the bulbs, and said they were impossible to replace because the Russian ones in stock wouldn’t fit. I showed him my kit of spares, but he found nothing suitable there either. ‘We’ll have to leave it then.’ The manager said he was sorry. I thanked him for his trouble, paid for the car wash, and backed out on to the road.

  We had strayed from the Intourist route, so it was necessary to get back onto it, and find our way out of the conurbation to the Kiev road. It was soon plain that we were lost, and George made several attempts to talk us on to the right track, but they only confused us more. I trailed a bus for a while, but lost it when we stopped again to ask directions. We bumped along a narrow unmade-up road between blocks of flats and buildings still under construction, the car already looking as if it hadn’t felt clean water for a week.

  I cursed at time lost, while George pointed to a road ahead, hoping it would lead us out towards Kiev, but it didn’t. We trundled behind a slow lorry splashing mud over us from sandy ruts, climbed an embankment, passed a petrol station, and drove through another roadless area of oil drums, until tarmac was under the wheels once more. ‘At least Peter Peugeot’s enjoying it,’ George said. ‘Luckily it’s strong enough for this sort of terrain.’

  After going around in circles (and at least a couple of isosceles triangles) we were in the middle of the city again, but no signs pointed anywhere sensible. Yet I felt more confident, knew we must keep moving, and put on speed, though George was still uneasy, as he needed to be when the next signpost indicated Rostov-on-Don.

  ‘If we take it,’ I said, ‘we’ll be over the Caucasus before we know where we are, smoking a hubble-bubble in Turkey, or having a meal in Persia. Don’t worry, though, I can row back to England across the Bosporus.’ By instinct I suddenly revved the car’s nose on to a loop road that led to the Kiev highway, shown in big letters, but so easy to see we might have looked for it all day. ‘You are now leaving Kharkov,’ I said in a posh airline voice. ‘We shall arrive in Kiev at appromimately twenty-hundred hours, so would you kindly fasten your safety belts?’

  ‘There aren’t any,’ George said.

  Which was true. ‘Never mind, we’ll have a “forty” each, to cheer us along.’ From experience we knew that a Monte Cristo lasted forty kilometres, so treated ourselves to a smoke for that distance whenever the mood took us.

  The speedometer needle crept up to sixty, seventy, eighty and ninety, and there I held it steady on the wide straight road almost free of traffic, grit flying into the open windows. In 1925 there was an airline service between Kiev and Kharkov, I told George, ‘Twice weekly in six-seater Junkers, and the trip took four hours, so what do you say that we try to make it in the same time with our trusty Peugeot?’

  ‘We won’t,’ he said, ‘because we’ll stop at the Intourist Hotel in Poltava and have a solid lunch. We’ll need it by then.’

  The sun came out as if to stay, and I drove between parks and gardens to the centre, a quiet town, and the first with a gay atmosphere not felt so far on our halts.

  I’d read of the famous battle near Poltava in 1709, when Peter the Great defeated the Swedish army of Charles XII, and had fun afterwards torturing his prisoners in the Kremlin. Having recovered from the usual calamities of the past the place was now a centre of engineering, with textile factories and food processing plants. It used to be known – before penicillin, I suppose – for the leeches found in ponds and pools of the environs.

  The manageress and waitresses at the hotel looked after us well, for on being told we were in a hurry they served an excellent meal within the ten minutes it took us to have a good wash, getting rid of dust and sweat after 363 kilometres since breakfast.

  Eight avenues radiated from the circular space in the centre of town but we had taken good note of the one we had come in by, so had no trouble getting out. At the roundabout on the main road people were waiting for a bus, so I stopped to find out if anyone wanted a lift.

  A young woman of about thirty got in, dark haired and good looking, with attractively flashing eyes. She said little, except where she wanted to get off, and that she was a schoolteacher. As I stopped for her to alight we were accosted again by a policeman. He wasn’t smiling, either, or interested in the make of the car, but was merely doing his job, whatever that was, though we were soon to find out.

  I handed out the usual paperwork from the window: passport, insurance certificate, and last night’s hotel bill, regretting I hadn’t any Danish shipping vouchers to pad out the bundle and increase his confusion. George and the woman showed their identity cards, at which the copper gave a long look to make sure they weren’t forged – I supposed – shuffling everything around and peering at each item. ‘It’ll take days to get to Kiev at this rate,’ I said, ‘though at least we’re giving him the opportunity to earn his wages.’

  Our names, and God knew what else, were inscribed into his notebook, which seemed more sinister than on the last occasions. His Cossack face was expressionless and immovable, till he told the girl to stand by the car, with no sign of letting us go. He began to give her some threatening advice, and I wanted to kill him.

  He reread his notebook, to make sure all details were correct and George, usually so calm, was as irritated as I was, when he went back to questioning our passenger. ‘If the bastard doesn’t let us go,’ I said to George, as I also got out of the car, ‘and send us on our way in the next few minutes, I’ll punch his face in. I don’t care who he is. He shouldn’t torment a woman like that for nothing. What’s she saying to him?’

  ‘That she has a husband and two children waiting for her at home, and she must go soon or they won’t get fed.’ I closed in, to give him a blast of plain English. Ten years in Siberia wasn’t a pretty picture in front of my eyes, but what the fuck, it would be something to write a bestseller about. No, I neither thought nor saw, it was just that my wires had burned away.

  George, not wanting an international incident, pulled me back. He’d been seconded after all to prevent such a brawl, though he was equally angry for the same gentlemanly reasons. Taking a strong breath to reorientate his usual air of soft diplomacy, he said to the policeman: ‘This man’ – pointing at me – ‘is a writer from England. He’s a well-known journalist as well, so if you don’t turn the woman free, and then us as well, he’ll be sure to write a big article about the incident in the foreign press which will go all over the capitalist world, and as for you, you’ll end your days earning your pension in the Gulag.’

  I didn’t know what he was saying in his stern, measured, yet heroically inspired way until he told me later, but the whole thing was over in seconds, well, say half a minute. The policeman immediately shut his notebook, and gave all our documents back. The woman was creased with laughter, but turned away so as not to be seen, while the scared copper tapped her on the shoulder and said she was free to go. He then indicated, with a stiff lip and an exaggerated salute, that we could get back on to the Kiev highway.

  Making sure the woman had set off for her nearby village, and hoping the militiaman would crawl into his box and shed bitter tears, I drove at the regulation speed away from the crossroads. ‘What was all that for?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when my heart stops poun
ding.’ After we had lit our forties he said: ‘He was checking up. Maybe he thought the car was stolen.’

  I added another expletive to his already extensive collection. ‘She won’t get into any more trouble because we gave her a lift?’

  ‘Not now.’ He told what had been said at the final round, and after a good laugh went on: ‘He knows in any case that people are often given lifts by foreign cars. Russians as well, even lorries, anything that happens to come along. There’s nothing against it, though I’m mystified as to why we’re being stopped so often. Perhaps it’s because the car’s more foreign than most, but I’ve been all over Russia with my uncle and we’ve only ever been pulled in for a good reason. There are foreigners though who deliberately earn roubles by giving lifts, and spending them in the towns.’

  I had noticed how people offered a note or two afterwards, though I never took them. Black earth and wooded steppe to either side – all fell back as we sped towards Kiev. For a while the terrain was swampy, then came rich fields of wheat, maize, sunflowers, and sugar beet, a land of plenty where cattle munched their eternal supply of grass, as well as – you could tell by your nose – the famous Mirgorod breed of pigs snouting between wooden houses and the road. At the sound of the car they sometimes ran for the wheels instead of making for safety, and I had also to watch out for children who showed little sense of self-preservation.

  I dropped to a crawl in villages because there was no overtaking, sometimes stuck behind a tractor, or a lorry whose trailer was dangerously swaying, making it impossible to get by even on a straight stretch.

  Lorries were often stuck in the soft earth, with no local resources, it seemed, to get them upright. Some upended and minus wheels had gone derelict. I supposed that so many were produced it was cheaper to leave them rather than pay the cost of repairs. In any case, they all belonged to the state, so what did it matter?