White Fever

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White Fever Page 1

by Jacek Hugo-Bader




  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Bonnet into the wind

  NIGHT

  DREAM

  SPONSOR

  KRUZAK

  SKATES

  SNOW

  BED

  MIENTY

  HORSE

  SPANNER

  STATION

  The loony’s exam, or a small and impractical Russian – English dictionary of ...

  IS FOR . . .

  (B) IS FOR . . .

  (V) IS FOR . . .

  Γ (G) IS FOR . . .

  (D) IS FOR . . .

  (ZH) IS FOR . . .

  (Z) IS FOR . . .

  (I) IS FOR . . .

  IS FOR . . .

  (L) IS FOR . . .

  IS FOR . . .

  (N) IS FOR . . .

  IS FOR . . .

  (P) IS FOR . . .

  (R) IS FOR . . .

  (S) IS FOR . . .

  IS FOR . . .

  (U) IS FOR . . .

  Φ (F) IS FOR . . .

  (H) IS FOR . . .

  (CH) IS FOR . . .

  (SH) IS FOR . . .

  Rabid dogs

  DIRTY RAP – THE PERFUME FACTORY

  BLONDIE – THE RABID DOGS

  PUNK ROCK – COLD-WAR STYLE

  CHANSON – BANDIT MUSIC

  ANARCHO-PUNK – BATTLEFIELD SYNDROME

  HEAVY METAL – WHORES, MUSIC AND BOOZING

  PATRIOTIC ROCK – A PRESIDENTIAL REIGN

  OLD CHURCH ROCK – SELF-CENSORSHIP

  ANDREI – A MIGHTY BLOW

  GANGSTA RAP – FOR A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS

  MAZHORY RAP – PASSION AVENUE

  Minefields

  LIFE THE FIRST TIME AROUND

  DEATH THE FIRST TIME AROUND

  SERGEI – THE DRAMATIC TENOR

  RINAT – ONLY WITH STEADY PARTNERS

  MASHA – SCOT-FREE, SAFE AND RICH

  DEATH THE SECOND TIME AROUND

  SERGEI – MINDLESS WOMEN

  RINAT – A NASTY BITCH

  MASHA – DREAM NO. 2

  LIFE THE SECOND TIME AROUND

  SERGEI – COME INSIDE!

  RINAT – SEX WORKERS

  MASHA – THE BIGGEST TURF

  Miss HIV

  A CONVERSATION WITH 27-YEAR-OLD SVETLANA IZAMBAYEVA FROM KAZAN, RUSSIA’S MISS HIV-POSITIVE

  Comrade Kalashnikov

  THE DESIGNER’S SUIT

  THE DESIGNER’S LOOK

  HUNTING FOR THE DESIGNER

  THE DESIGNER’S INCOME

  THE DESIGNER’S TEARS

  THE DESIGNER’S LONELINESS

  THE DESIGNER’S LUSTRATION

  THE DESIGNER’S SOUVENIRS

  THE DESIGNER’S PRIDE

  THE DESIGNER’S LIFE STORY

  GOODNIGHT, DESIGNER

  The study aids store

  THE VESTIBULE OF HELL – THE CANCER HOSPITAL

  THE FIRST CIRCLE – THE STUDY AIDS STORE

  THE SECOND CIRCLE – KEEPERS OF THE PEACE

  THE THIRD CIRCLE – GOLD FEVER

  THE FOURTH CIRCLE – THE SUICIDES

  THE FIFTH CIRCLE – ELEVENTH ON THE LIST

  THE SIXTH CIRCLE – THE CONQUISTADORES

  THE SEVENTH CIRCLE – THE STUDY AIDS STORE

  THE EIGHTH CIRCLE – CHILDREN OF THE POLYGON

  THE NINTH CIRCLE – THE ROOM UPSTAIRS

  A small corner of heaven

  I THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME

  II THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN

  III REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY, TO KEEP IT HOLY

  IV HONOUR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER

  V THOU SHALT NOT KILL

  VI THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY

  VII THOU SHALT NOT STEAL

  VIII THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOUR

  IX THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOUR’S WIFE

  X NOR WHATEVER BELONGS TO THY NEIGHBOUR

  Black Square

  A CONVERSATION WITH DEACON ANDREI KURAYEV, ORTHODOX PHILOSOPHER AND RELIGIOUS COMMENTATOR

  My guardian angel’s plait

  PRICE LIST

  HOSPITAL

  A LONG TIME AGO

  MONGUSH

  CLINIC

  TRIP

  LONG AGO

  NOT LONG AGO

  HEAVENS

  LATELY

  TRANCE

  CURSE

  ANGEL

  White fever

  A LETTER TO GOD

  THE BRIGADE

  ONE – THE LUNGS

  TWO – THE THROAT

  THREE – THE HEAD

  FOUR – THE CHEST

  FIVE – THE HEAD

  THE REGISTER OF DEATHS

  SIX – THE CHEST

  SEVEN – THE CHEST

  EIGHT – THE THROAT

  NINE – THE SKIN

  TEN – THE THROAT

  AUNTIE VALYA

  ELEVEN – THE CHEST

  TWELVE – THE THROAT

  THIRTEEN – THE NECK

  FOURTEEN – THE HEAD

  HOLE IN THE HEAD

  FIFTEEN – THE HEAD

  SIXTEEN AND SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN – THE CHEST

  SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY

  NINETEEN – THE CHEST

  TWENTY – THE THROAT

  TWENTY-ONE – THE SKIN

  DRESS REHEARSAL

  The drunks’ shamaness

  A CONVERSATION WITH DOCTOR LYUBOV PASSAR, UDEGE DOCTOR, NARCOLOGIST AND ...

  296 hours

  SUNDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2007

  KOLA

  TUESDAY, 18 DECEMBER 2007

  FROST

  THURSDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 2008

  IGOR

  MONDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2008

  LYUBOV

  TUESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 2008

  PARCEL

  MONDAY, 25 FEBRUARY 2008

  SASHA

  LAZHIK

  About the translator

  Copyright Page

  Chin Li, the wandering Chinese man somewhere near Novosibirsk.

  Bonnet into the wind

  My only prayers were not to break down in the taiga at night, and not to run into any bandits. I was ready for the first of these misfortunes, but not for the second. I must have been the only madman to travel across that terrible ocean of land without a weapon, and on my own into the bargain.

  The locals’ favourite sport is shooting. They drive normally, on the right-hand side of the road, but they’ve got the steering wheel on the right too, because the cars are imported from Japan. They hold it in their left hand, so they can easily stick the right one out of the window and blast away, while on the move, with whatever weapon they have, at road signs, adverts and notice boards.

  In eastern Siberia I didn’t see a single road sign that wasn’t as full of holes as a colander. Large and small bores, single shots and whole bursts, and even some huge holes made by a heavy shotgun.

  And every few dozen metres there’s the wreck of a burned-out car.They must have broken down in the winter, at night too, and their desperate owners set them alight to keep warm.

  There’s little chance this would have helped them to survive.

  NIGHT

  What idiots. Before leaving they should have found out how to survive a winter’s night in the taiga.

  I always stop the car with the bonnet facing into the wind, just in case. If it’s blowing from another direction, it can pump poisonous exhaust fumes inside.

  I keep the engine idling to warm the car up. It won’t run out of fuel, because it only uses about a litre an hour, and the tank is always at least half full.

  This is the most sacred principle of travelling by car across Siberia in winter – keep filling up,
so you’ve always got at least half a tank of petrol. However, before lying down to sleep I always switch off the engine – there’s too big a risk of the wind changing direction during the night, in which case I’ll never wake up again. But I set the alarm in my phone to wake me every two hours, then I get up and start the car, leaving it running for ten to fifteen minutes. It’s not even to warm up the cab, but to keep the engine and the oil sump from freezing, and to charge up the battery. At minus thirty degrees you’ve no chance of the car starting in the morning without these manoeuvres, because the engine oil goes as dense as plasticine. I once tried adding it to the engine at that sort of temperature, and while I was about it, I tried to top up the brake fluid and the power steering fluid too. They were all so thick they refused to come out of the bottles.

  But suppose the phone battery ran down and I didn’t wake up until morning? Then I’d have to light a bonfire. Of course no-one in their right mind travels across Siberia without an axe. You chop some firewood and pile it up, but you can’t even light it with petrol because it’s terribly cold and windy, and everything’s covered in snow. I took a jar with me containing a special mixture of petrol and engine oil in proportions of one to one. Even wet wood will catch light if you pour that on it.

  However, suppose I got stuck in the steppes beyond Baikal, not in the taiga? There’s no kindling there. But I’ve brought some with me. I’m actually carrying a box of wood from Europe all the way across Siberia, not for warming my hands, of course. You have to put the bonfire on a shovel (which is just as vital as the axe) and stick it under the car to heat up the engine, and above all the oil sump. I can just as well do it with a petrol burner – it’s a very simple device, a bit like a small flame-thrower, which I bought at a scrap-metal shop for 600 roubles (£12).

  But suppose the frost is so awful and you’ve slept so long that the battery has gone dead? Easy – I’ve got a second one, in the cab, where it’s much warmer. I don’t even have to shift it, because it’s joined to the first one by cables. I only have to flick a switch.

  But suppose the engine that’s keeping you warm has broken down? You’ve got to survive at least until morning. In fact the Siberians have a saying that in their country you don’t even leave an enemy alone in the taiga, but that doesn’t apply to the road situation or nighttime. The traffic volume is much lower, though it doesn’t stop entirely, but there is no force strong enough to make the Russian driver stop after sunset. They’re afraid of bandits.

  The best solution is a vebasto, an independent heater driven by a small combustion engine, which heats separately from the workings of the car. It costs 1000 Euros, so I didn’t indulge myself by getting one, but instead I have a small portable camping stove that I light in the cabin, and before going to sleep I turn it off, to save gas. At night I’m warmed by one or two candles that I stand on the floor. On the coldest night I spent in the car, the temperature at dawn fell to minus thirty-six degrees, but in the cab it was only minus fifteen.

  Of course I’ve got a wonderful down sleeping bag and a down jacket, and I always keep enough food and drink for several days.

  DREAM

  In March 1957, possibly on the 9th at one in the afternoon, because Saturdays were when the science department of Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper held its weekly meetings, two reporters were given an unusual assignment by the editor-in-chief. (On that day and at that time, on the polished wooden floorboards between the kitchen and the bedroom in my grandmother’s flat at 62 Warszawska Street in Sochaczewo, rather unexpectedly, I made my entrance into the world.)

  ‘We must tell our readers about the future’, said the editor-in-chief. ‘Describe what life in the Soviet Union will be like fifty years from now, let’s say at the time of the ninetieth anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution.’

  That meant in 2007.

  The book written by Mikhail Hvastunov and Sergei Gushchev, the journalists working for Komsomolskaya Pravda, is called Report from the Twenty-First Century. The authors wrote that we would use electronic brains on a daily basis (nowadays we call them computers), miniature transmitting and receiving stations (mobile phones) and ‘biblio-transmission’ (i.e. the Internet), open cars from a distance (with remote control), take photographs with an electric camera (digital) and watch satellite television on flat screens.

  They wrote about it at a time when in the house where I was born there was not even a black-and-white television set, a toilet or a phone to call the doctor.

  Hvastunov and Gushchev spent most of their time in the Moscow laboratories of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and from there they made a mental journey into the future, setting off for Siberia in the year 2007 in a wonderful jet plane.

  I decided to give myself a fiftieth birthday present, which was to travel with this book right across Russia, from Moscow to Vladivostok. But I wouldn’t take the plane like Hvastunov and Gushchev. I’d already been there several times by train.

  Good God!, I thought – here was my one chance to repeat the exploits of Kowalski, American warrior on wheels, demigod and lone traveller, the last heroic soul on this planet, for whom speed meant freedom. That’s how he seemed in Vanishing Point, the famous American road movie that in the 1970s was the rebel manifesto of my generation. Finally here was a chance to make a dream of my youth come true, and, just like him, drive alone across an entire continent, except that my one was two-and-a-half times bigger than America, there was no road beyond Chita, and I was insisting on going in winter. I absolutely had to get a taste of the winter in Siberia.

  ‘In winter? If you’re not home for Christmas, don’t bother coming home at all’, said my wife, and I know she wasn’t joking.

  Damn! That meant I’d have to hurry up. Just like Kowalski! Except I was hurrying for Christmas, while he had made a bet for a fix of speed. And he had a Dodge Challenger 1970 with a 4.4-litre engine that did 250 kilometres an hour.

  SPONSOR

  All travellers have had problems with them, not excluding Columbus, Amundsen, Livingstone and Nansen.

  The head of the features department said there was no way he’d send me abroad for several months, because I’d eat up the travel budget for the entire department.

  So I personally called and sent written proposals for a joint project to the marketing directors of all the Polish firms representing car corporations that I could find in the phone book. I told them I needed money and a car, arguing that it would be the best advertisement they could possibly have if it survived the journey to the other end of Europe and Asia with me, across the whole of Russia, from Warsaw to Vladivostok.

  Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Suzuki, Subaru, Mitsubishi, KIA, all the Asian makes, and also Volvo never replied to my invitation at all. I didn’t call the French firms, Fiat or Ford, because my brother, who knows about cars, said he wouldn’t let me go in a car starting with an ‘F’. BMW, Mercedes and Land Rover had no ‘free vehicle capacity’. Jeep was prepared to give me a car, but without any money. The only company to agree to all my conditions was Kulczyk Tradex, importer of Audis, VWs and Porsches.

  They were offering a powerful, luxury SUV, the Audi Q7. Four-wheel drive, a 4.2-litre petrol engine, 350 horsepower, from nought to a hundred in seven seconds, maximum speed 240 kilometres per hour – two-and-a-half tons of bourgeois excess for 350,000 zlotys (£70,000). In my mind’s eye I imagined driving up to the shop at the run-down ‘Ilyich’s Dream’ collective farm for some beer and chatting about life with the locals.

  Winter was approaching, but I kept putting off signing a contract with the sponsor. I can sum up the entire philosophy of my work as a journalist in two words: blend in. Merge into the background, don’t stand out, don’t attract attention, slip through unnoticed, but with my Audi at the ‘Ilyich’s Dream’ collective farm I’d be about as inconspicuous as a Martian. Besides, my way of working is very safe, because it doesn’t attract the attention of baddies.

  I called the sponsor and told him I’d take the money,
but I wouldn’t need the car.

  And so we parted ways.

  In desperation I went to see my editors-in-chief. I tossed a map on the desk, told them about my dreams, and that I had just got divorced from Dr Kulczyk (who owns Kulczyk Tradex), and said that if they wouldn’t give me the money, I’d have to get it off my wife (because she holds the purse strings), but wasn’t it a shame for a poor woman to have to sponsor a successful newspaper like Gazeta Wyborcza? And they gave me some cash. However, it wasn’t enough for a car, so my wife did have to fork out 25,000 zlotys (£5000).

  I decided to buy a Russian car with local number plates in Moscow, because then I could quietly make my way to the Pacific Ocean without sticking out like a sore thumb. The only Russian vehicles with four-wheel drive are the Lada Niva – which the local experts say can’t be fixed properly beyond the Urals – and the ‘Lazhik’ jeep, which even the tractor driver at any collective farm would be able to repair for me with a hammer, because apparently it’s the least complicated car on earth.

  KRUZAK

  The UAZ-469 (UAZ is the Ulyanovsk Automobile Factory) that I was looking for is known as the Soviet jeep or the Russki kruzak, because that’s what they call all off-road cars, after the Japanese Land Cruiser. But the most common names for it are Ulaz or Lazhik, meaning a tramp, because it goes everywhere. This model has been produced the same way without change since 1972, but they also keep churning out an off-road microbus, known because of its shape as the bukhanka – the loaf of bread. Beyond the Urals they call it the tabletka – the tablet, or pill. It hasn’t changed an iota since 1958. Both models weigh two-and-a-half tons each, they have petrol engines of 2.4-litre capacity, four-speed transmission and almost 72 horsepower.

  Lazhiks were sold to eighty countries, mainly in the Third World. To this day there are 70,000 of them registered in Poland that remember the Council for Mutual Economic Aid and the Warsaw Pact. In the 1970s the Russians conquered the Sahara in these vehicles and climbed a glacier up Mount Elbrus to a height of 4200 metres. There are two million Lazhiks on Russia’s roads.

 

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