Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes

by Walton, Caroline

  One of our bacchanalia ends in a police raid. Nervous about entering our cavern, the cops send in dogs first. A tramp warns me that they’ll use CS gas to flush us out if we don’t leave of our own accord. As we emerge they throw us into waiting Black Marias. A cop grabs me but the confusion distracts him and I manage to slip away. I spend the rest of the night in the park and decide I will avoid the cavern in future.

  The morning after the raid finds me wandering aimlessly down Plekhanov Avenue, hungry as a wolf-pack in winter. My head is a barrel of pain and grief; my brains splash about somewhere in its depths. I break into a cold sweat at the sudden hoot of a car. I feel that people on the other side of the street are watching me and whispering words of vicious condemnation. Penniless, I scour the beer-stalls but meet not a single acquaintance. I’m about to breathe my last yet I’m too scared to ask a stranger for a few kopecks. I slink along, keeping close to the wall and my eyes on the ground.

  “Have you lost something?” says a voice above my head. A tall beggar stands with his back to the wall, propped up on two crutches.

  “A purse - except I haven’t lost mine; I’m hoping to find someone else’s.”

  “No one’s lost anything here today. That’s for sure. I’ve been here since morning.”

  “Too bad,” I say, moving off.

  “Stop!” he cries, “Can you help me?”

  “How?”

  “I need to buy a bottle but I can’t get to the shop.”

  “My pockets are empty.”

  “I’ve got the cash. I’ll wait for you in that little square over there.”

  “Okay.”

  “My hangover’s killing me,” he sighs.

  “Mine too.”

  He pours a pile of change into my hand.

  “There’s more than enough for a bottle here,” I say.

  “Buy two so you won’t waste time running back to the shop later.”

  When I come out of the shop I see my saviour approaching the square, thrusting his crutches forward and dragging his paralysed body in their wake. I join him and we introduce ourselves. His name is Borya and he comes from Leningrad.

  I discover that Borya is no drinker and only sent me for the wine because he guessed the state I was in. He drinks a glass to be sociable but refuses a refill.

  “I’ve been paralysed since I was a student. I jumped from a train to avoid the ticket collector. If he’d reported me for travelling without a ticket the college would have cut off my grant. I had no family to support me. Since then I’ve been all over Russia. Once in a while the police pick me up and send me to an invalid home but I always run away. I arrive in some town or other and don’t leave it until I’ve collected 1000 roubles.”

  “And then?” I ask.

  “I bury them and go on to another town.”

  “Are you trying to save a lot of money – for retirement perhaps?”

  “No. It isn’t the money itself I need. I give away most of what I collect.”

  “But why d’you live like this? You stand the whole day long at your pitch, collecting money. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke and you give it all away?”

  “The money is not the most important thing. I make people happy.”

  “How?”

  “Imagine, I am standing on my pitch, virtually a corpse. A man goes by. I don’t know anything about him. Perhaps he’s a cruel person who beat his wife that morning. I’ve never seen him before and I’ll probably never see him again. He notices me, fumbles in his pocket, finds a three-kopeck piece that’s no use to him and chucks it into my cap. To me those three kopecks are nothing, but I’ve done something for that man.”

  “What have you done?”

  “I’ve caused him to do good. When he passes on down the road he is a different person, although he may not know it himself. Even if he gave me the money automatically, without thinking, he’s become a slightly better person.”

  I stare at Borya, as stunned as a bull in a slaughterhouse. He laughs. “I can see that you’re not yourself yet. Here’s some more money. I’m going to work. Meet me in Gorky Park this evening?”

  “Agreed.”

  Borya pours some change into my hand, then he stands up. His body swaying like a pendulum, he returns to his pitch.

  Anxious to continue our conversation, I do as Borya suggests and make for the park. As I near his pitch I cross to the other side of the street to pass unnoticed in the throng of pedestrians. The sight of me might remind Borya of his kindness; he’s not in need of my gratitude.

  Picking up a bottle of Imereti wine along the way, I choose a far bench in the park where I can sit hidden behind some bushes. From time to time I take a slug of wine, trying to maintain myself on that blissful cusp between sobriety and drunkenness.

  Long-suppressed thoughts churn in my mind: ‘Who am I?’ An alcoholic and a tramp. But I’m no white raven; half the country are alcoholics. Our alcoholics outnumber the populations of France and Spain combined. And that’s only the men. If you count women too you have to add on all Scandinavia and throw in Monaco for good measure.

  Unlike me, however, most people work, or at least give the impression that they’re working. And for what? Just to drink away their pay at the end of the month. Many men claim they work for the sake of their family. But what’s the good of an alcoholic in a family? How do they pay for their babies’ milk? By collecting empty bottles? And I’ve seen children tremble at the sound of their fathers’ footsteps. At least I had the honesty to ditch the pretence and take to the road, although it cost me my wife and daughter.

  The worst thing you can do to someone else is humiliate them, but self-degradation is no less evil. The person who humiliates himself drags others down with him. I’ve seen this happen often enough and I don’t want to be guilty of it too. Yes, I made the right decision back in that forest in the Kuban. I’m responsible only to myself now. Yet the one question remains: how am I going to live? I won’t steal and it’s hard to find work, so how will I buy my drink? In practice I’m almost a beggar, and I’m trying not to admit it. I shut my eyes to the truth. But when all is said and done I have to acknowledge what I am.

  Why am I not ashamed to accept Borya’s money while I refuse to hold out my own hand in the street? I don’t consider myself better than him. It’s not the first time a beggar has bought me a drink. I can’t bring myself to beg, yet I drink at someone else’s expense which is worse.

  Another part of me interrupts: but beggars also live at others’ expense.

  No, I correct myself, beggars support themselves. They earn their kopecks through self-abasement.

  All the same, I am mistrustful of beggars. I have known hundreds: on the streets, in camps, police cells and psychiatric institutions. Most of them are scoundrels and hypocrites. Many times I’ve heard them ask a passer-by: “Give me a few kopecks for the love of God.”

  When the person passes on they curse: “May you rot in hell you greedy bastard!”

  I sometimes ask them: “How can you talk like that? It’s up to them whether they give to you or not. Besides, people might overhear and what would they think of you then?”

  “Fuck them. They are many and I’m only one. If one passes by another will drop something in my cap. Only God sees everything!”

  But it’s not for me to sit in judgment. Everyone lives as they can.

  In former times whole villages worked as beggars, training their children to follow the family profession. These beggars roamed the countryside, pretending to have lost all their worldly goods in a fire. Others hung around stations asking for the price of a ticket, claiming all their money and documents had been stolen. In Astrakhan camp I met a man who spent years selling a saw outside Moscow stations. He worked with great artistry, dividing his time between Moscow’s eleven termini. His victims were officers: none below the rank of major. He would go up to the officer, salute, stand to attention and bark: “Comrade Colonel! May I introduce myself? Sergeant-Major Sidorov, of the 187th Stan
dard Bearers, guards division, Order of Suvorov!”

  “What can I do for you, Sergeant-Major?”

  “Excuse me, Comrade Colonel! Could you buy my saw?” Sidorov would bring out a wrapped-up saw from behind his back.

  “But why should I buy your saw, Sergeant-Major?”

  “I want to rejoin my family but I need 23 roubles for the ticket. I’ll sell you the saw for five.”

  “Haven’t you been to the Commandant’s office?”

  “Of course, Comrade Colonel, but as everyone knows, they’re just a bunch of pen-pushers. They’ve never smelled gunpowder. I remember, now, near Breslau…”

  At this point the colonel usually pulled out his wallet and gave Sidorov a 25-rouble bill. If the officer was at all suspicious he might ask: “Who was the commander at your Front?”

  “Marshall Zhukov, Comrade Colonel!” replied Sidorov with shining eyes. “Now there was a true officer! He loved his men.” Sidorov had learned the history of the 187th Standard Bearers off by heart. If the officer asked any tricky questions Sidorov would reply: “I don’t remember. I was in hospital at the time, wounded in action.”

  Sidorov continued to offer his saw for six years. In the end people got to know him and he grew careless, accosting officers when he was already drunk. Finally he was arrested and sent to camp. But he was a born actor and the way I saw it he earned his drinks.

  Like Sidorov and Kalinin, plenty of beggars earn their money through guile, but most play on pity. It is simpler and yields good results. I know that almost every human being is capable of feeling pity – perhaps even Cannibal – but I can’t bring myself to exploit this feeling.

  For my part, I admit I often earn my drinks through wit. I try to entertain, even when I don’t feel like it. I survive by making people laugh. In a way my crippled leg helps because no one feels threatened by me.

  Yet there is a difference between singing for your supper and holding out your hand for it. I fear begging as a way of life. It might be too easy. If I drop anchor outside some church or bazaar I might never return to a normal existence. And I still entertain hopes in that direction. Hope is the last to die and I clutch at it, sustained by memories of the past.

  The evening is dark and rainy. When Borya arrives we take shelter in a half-constructed building near the park. I gather some rubbish and make a small bonfire. We spread newspapers on the cement floor and sit talking. I get completely pissed but Borya drinks nothing. He has a hot-water bottle tied to his thigh and urine trickles into it almost constantly. This embarrasses him so he tries not to drink, even refusing water.

  Borya tells me more about his life. “Once I went to a public library in Leningrad to try to read something on begging, but I was disappointed. No one writes the truth. They slide over the surface of the question. Perhaps because they never write from the point of view of the beggar. Not even Dostoevsky. As for Tolstoy, he was a great sham. He went out punctually every day to give alms but before he would part with a kopeck he took away the beggar’s very soul with his nosy questioning.

  “The truth is, when I beg I inspire pity, and pity is always a blessing, no matter how dirty the soul in which it springs,” Borya concludes.

  “I can’t agree with you,” I say. “Pity is a good and natural emotion, but do you remember Yesenin’s lines: arousing tears in my heart is like throwing stones at the glass of my watch? Only a wretch would deliberately try to awaken a person’s compassion. It’s a cheap thing to do.”

  Yet I can’t criticise Borya for I realise that my way of life is essentially no different to his. The only distinction between us is that I don’t see myself as a person who does good to others. Anyone who does good becomes a slightly better person himself, but if you plan in advance to do good then the deed loses all its grace. If I do good, then let it be by accident. Most likely I do no good at all in this world, and I certainly won’t do so by begging.

  Our divergent views spring from a more fundamental difference. “Borya,” I observe, “you believe in God, but I don’t. If there was a God there would be justice, and as there’s none in this world, so there can be no God.”

  Borya objects: “But you can’t judge God by your own standards of right and wrong. It is impossible to comprehend God. You simply have to believe.”

  “I can’t ‘simply believe’ when life is so unfair. Why was I born here, now, in a country where it makes no difference which side of the barbed wire you are on? Why did you fall under a train?”

  “Humanity doesn’t yet have the wisdom to test whether there is justice or not,’ Marcus Aurelius said that almost twenty centuries ago.”

  “Well that was 2,000 years ago.”

  “That only proves his point – the time has not yet come.”

  Borya and I arrange to meet the following evening but we miss each other and I never see him again.

  ***

  I board the No. 5 tram on Klara Zetkin street. A man offers me his seat but I shake my head. When the tram moves I take off my beret and turn to the passengers.

  Good health and good luck!

  Live as well as your pay permits,

  and if you can’t survive on it,

  Well, then, don’t. No one is forcing you!

  As I finish my verse the passengers burst out laughing. The words strike home, because no one can afford to live on their pay, not even the police. A woman holds out a 20 kopeck piece and asks: “You’ll be getting yourself a beer with that, I suppose?”

  “Not only beer but vodka too!”

  She puts the coin back in her purse, finds a rouble and gives it to me. When I’ve worked the whole tram I get off, board the next one and repeat the performance. By the time I reach Collective Farm Square I have nearly 20 roubles. Some people grumble that I am just collecting money for my hair-of-the-dog, but I’m not offended. It’s up to them whether they give or not. I’m not greedy. Having collected a little money I throw in the towel, buy a bottle and continue to drink throughout the day, inviting anyone who wishes to join me. I have no shortage of companions.

  At night I open a bottle to see me through till morning. As I swallow my wine I am struck by guilt over the way I’ve earned it. The cycle of self-recrimination spins round my head as I try to fall asleep. ‘What are you living for?’ I wonder.

  Next day I go to work on the tram again, and the next. Begging becomes a way of life that I no longer stop to consider. The police catch me a couple of times, but they either laugh at my verses or throw me off the tram.

  Begging is not always as easy as it was that first day. Sometimes the trams are so packed I can’t move among the passengers; sometimes they’re too empty to be worth boarding. Then it rains for nearly three weeks. I freeze and fall ill. For a while I sleep at the top of a lift shaft in an eight-storey block of flats. I crawl up after midnight but I am eventually discovered by a resident who threatens to call the police.

  My clothes are filthy and ragged, my shoes split, and I never have enough money for a new pair. I am desperately tired of spending the whole day on my feet. I long for a good night’s sleep but the cops drive me out of the railway station and it’s impossible to take a nap on the short Tblisi underground. Thank God for the bathhouse. It allows me to reheat my bones, but I can’t linger for too long or they might throw me out and bar me from future visits.

  Although I’m drinking a lot, alcohol is having less effect on me. Soon I need two or three bottles of fortified wine just to see me through the night, otherwise I can’t even drop off for half an hour. When sleep comes it is crowded with nightmares.

  There is a slope between the road and the river where townspeople tip their rubbish. In this place of unimaginable filth I can sometimes find unbroken bottles. The wine shop exchanges these for a bottle of Rkatseli.

  At the top of the slope there is a small overhang. It gives me shelter and I’m unseen from the road. Here I huddle at night. The rubbish below me reeks of rotten meat and excrement, but the smell hardly bothers me. I lean back agai
nst the earth, with an open bottle between my legs, smoking and taking a swig of wine as soon as I start to feel bad. For months I have derived no pleasure at all from alcohol, but I need it to ward off the dt’s.

  When I’ve emptied my bottle I drag myself out of my lair and shuffle down to Klara Zetkin street. There, in a courtyard behind a little gate, is the ‘fountain of life,’ open 24 hours a day for the suffering and the greedy. When I open the gate the house-dogs barely stir; they must be used to night-time callers. I stumble through the courtyard and up a couple of steps to a veranda. Inside the veranda is a table with a three-litre jar of chacha on it. Beside it is a tumbler and a plate of bread and spring onion. An old woman sleeps on a huge bed beside the table – or at least she gives the impression of sleeping.

  I lay my coins on the table. They are sweaty and crusted with tobacco. A withered hand shoots out from the bed, grabs the coins and stuffs them somewhere among a heap of rags. Having drunk my glass I slink out of the courtyard, shaking and trying not to throw up.

  The devil only knows what those Georgians mix with their chacha. I break out in large boils like soft corns which itch and sting. I try not to squeeze them as I know that will make them worse, but when a boil the size of a walnut grows on my heel I have to burst it before I can get my shoe on. By the end of the day I can hardly walk for the pain. There are no bandages in the chemist. I go to Mikhailovski hospital but they throw me out because of my disgusting state. Finally the blood donor clinic where I occasionally earn a few roubles gives me a bandage. I rinse the wound under a tap in the street and bind up my foot.

  After that I feel better and I’m able to do a little work on the No 5 tram. I’m not collecting much money these days, probably because I smell so bad that people turn their heads at my approach.

  In the morning I grit my teeth and rip the bandage off my raw skin. I rinse it under a courtyard tap but can’t wait for it to dry as I have to get to work. The damp bandage picks up dust and filth from the street. By dusk the wound is itching unbearably but I take that as a sign that it is healing. A few nights later I unwind the bandage to find a mass of worms writhing in the open flesh. I guess it will only be a matter of time before gangrene sets in. I fall into a stupor, staring at my foot as though it belongs to someone else.