Picnic at the Iron Curtain: A Memoir: From the fall of the Berlin Wall to Ukraine's Orange Revolution

by Susan Viets

  I dialed the number for Vezuvia. The woman who answered told me to pick up the pizza myself.

  “But you’re meant to deliver.”

  “The driver’s away and we don’t know when he’ll come back.”

  “Could you take my number and call me when he does?” The woman agreed. It wasn’t an entirely hopeless situation because she also took our order, which meant that the chef must be there.

  Charlotte and I stacked our plane tickets on the kitchen table and then went through them to figure out which flight would leave next.

  “I’d better call the Aeroflot office for an update on the fuel situation,” I said to Charlotte. My finger became sore from dialing a line that was constantly busy. After half an hour, someone finally answered. The woman on the other end said that the flight for Bishkek had been rescheduled and would fly but that the tickets we held would no longer be valid.

  Before I could reserve new tickets, the woman put the phone handset on the counter. At least she did not hang up. I heard her complaining to a co-worker about the high cost of bus tickets. I shouted and whistled down the phone to catch her attention, but I think that she disliked work and therefore ignored me. After ten minutes, I decided that she would never return, so I hung up.

  The phone then rang. It was the Vezuvia lady. She said that the driver had arrived and would deliver our order. Within twenty minutes a large cheese, tomato and pepperoni pizza sat on the table. Charlotte tried to figure out how to fit it into the oven but was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. She opened the door. My landlord stood there, surprised to find us home. I understood that we interfered with his plans.

  When I first rented the apartment a year and a half earlier, I returned home from a trip late one night. I heard laughter from the kitchen as I unlocked my apartment door and pushed it open. I glanced down at my watch – it was past midnight. I dragged my bag over the threshold and left it in the hallway by a large bookcase. Then I stood and listened. I recognized my landlord’s voice. Why was he here? Who were those other people with him? I was tired and wanted to go to bed. But it seemed that night that I had one more issue to settle before I crawled into bed.

  I walked through the small vestibule, around a corner and down the long hallway that led past a galley kitchen to the dining area. My landlord and three of his friends were sitting at the table. The vodka long gone, they were now sobering up with coffee. A few empty cups stood scattered across the table.

  “Susan! You’re home! We didn’t expect you,” my landlord said.

  Didn’t expect me? I was so tired that I could not even search for the correct words in Russian to ask him what he was doing here. Why had he moved in and thrown a party while I was away? Renting an apartment had only become possible once I received accreditation. Locals rarely rented and with so few foreigners in Kiev, few people here had experience as landlords. My landlord and I were still negotiating the terms of the landlord-tenant relationship. I thought we’d made progress but realized now that we still had some way to go.

  As I stood there, one of my landlord’s friends asked for a drink. My landlord said, “Susan, you’re the hostess, make some more coffee.” I glared at him. Realizing they had overstayed their welcome, they packed up and left.

  Tonight, I saw that my landlord held a bag with a large watermelon. He came into the kitchen and cut pieces for us. He chatted for a few minutes, said that if a man or a woman phoned for him that I should tell them to meet him at the cinema next door. Then he left. At 9 p.m. my landlord arrived back at the apartment with his boss and a woman. We passed in the hallway of our building. Charlotte and I were returning to the airport, hoping to get on the Bishkek flight. (Work on the landlord-tenant relationship would have to wait.)

  Now the woman at the Aeroflot desk (did she never go home?) insisted that we register for a flight to the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, instead of Bishkek. I knew that Ashgabat was 1,300 kilometres from Tashkent, the city that we eventually hoped to reach, but at this point I thought that anywhere in Central Asia would do. Charlotte understood the conversation. She stood erect, eyes opened wide. She shouted, “I can’t believe it.” She walked quickly through the waiting area and shouted, “I can’t believe it” over and over again. The Aeroflot woman sympathized. “Nervnyi stress [nervous stress],” she said and handed us two boarding passes for the flight to Ashgabat.

  We landed at 7 a.m. I had no visa for Ashgabat; I never even wanted to be here. Independent now, Turkmenistan should have customs and passport control, but no one asked us any questions. We walked out of the airport without a document check and took a taxi to a hotel.

  “One double room please,” I said to the receptionist.

  “Do you have a reservation?”

  “No, may I make one now?”

  “Reservations must be made in advance.”

  “But you have empty rooms.” Silence. I begged. She refused.

  I longed for capitalism where reservations depended only on vacancy rates and the ability to pay. We tried other hotels. The receptionist at the Jubilee, which housed the American embassy, said no, as did the receptionist at the Tourist. We did not mind being rejected there quite as much because we noticed that parts of the lobby ceiling had collapsed. The stairs also seemed unstable. The Tourist receptionist sent us to the Ashgabat Hotel but warned us that that it would be impossible for us to check in there; she was right.

  Under the circumstances a small lie seemed acceptable. Back at the Tourist desk, I told the receptionist that the Ukrainian diplomatic service had forwarded a reservation booking for us and that the hotel must have misplaced it. The receptionist lied right back.

  “We have no rooms,” she said. (The hotel was so empty that our footsteps echoed in the lobby.) “Besides the Tourist doesn’t take foreign guests, so the telegram shouldn’t have been sent here in the first place.” The receptionist seemed mildly interested in our case. We decided that we would camp out in the lobby and not leave until she gave us a room.

  A few hours later, someone in the hotel chain of authority agreed to check us in. The hotel receptionist, now a friend and an ally, led us through deserted hallways to our room. When we entered and flicked on the light, I saw a cockroach scuttle under the bathroom door.

  “Girls, we have other guests, sheiks from Kuwait,” the receptionist said. We learned that a large group of about thirty sheiks had come to Turkmenistan on a hunting trip. The sheiks were travelling with their own falcons.

  “Could we meet them?” Charlotte asked. The receptionist gestured that we should follow. She led us down the hallway to a door that she opened without even knocking.

  A Kuwaiti bird tender in white cotton pyjamas lay on a bed in the room, asleep. Three falcons, hooded but seemingly alert, stood on a makeshift cylindrical perch, a rolled-up blanket wrapped tightly with packing tape. The receptionist, who was not shy, bent down and squeezed the bird tender’s feet. He woke up and seemed surprised but good-natured. He smiled and offered to show us the birds, clearly proud of the three falcons in his care.

  He put on a thick leather glove, which was long enough to cover part of his forearm, and then removed the hood from one of the falcons. It screeched, stretched its wings and hopped onto his gloved hand. The falcon settled down quickly and peered around with an intense look in its eyes. It was tethered, like the others, so that it could not fly around.

  “Where are the sheiks?” Charlotte asked. “Could we meet them?” The receptionist took us down to the second-floor lobby. The sheiks sat cross-legged in a circle on the floor. They wore long white desert robes with red checked scarves tied around their heads. One sheik spoke English. He told us that he and his friends would soon leave for the Turkmen mountains, where they would camp for twenty days. He offered to take us with them. We thanked them but said we would not be staying for long. The sheik who spoke English said that he and his friends usually hunted in Iraq but could no longer go there (we assumed, because of conflict), so they had come to Turkm
enistan instead.

  The hunting trip seemed extravagant. The sheiks had rented two jets – one for the men and their birds, and the second for Jeeps. I thought the sheiks were probably also extravagant shoppers. We could not confirm this; the hotel receptionist told us that we just missed the weekly Ashgabat market. I felt disappointed but resigned to missing out on a trip to the market. I did not want to stay six more days in Ashgabat. Shopping would have to wait.

  We returned to the American embassy, which was located at the Jubilee Hotel, for interviews. I already imagined myself hard at work in London, with a hotline to the ambassador in Turkmenistan, if news ever broke out there. The makeshift embassy occupied half a dozen rooms. A wardrobe marked the entrance. Placed sideways, it jutted across half the corridor. A large circular plaque with an American eagle on it hung from a nail driven into the wardrobe. When someone bumped it, the plaque swayed and wobbled. So far it had not fallen off. Once “inside” the embassy, the territory was secure as most of the doors were fitted with elaborate locks.

  Only four countries – the U.S., Iran, China and Pakistan – had embassies in Ashgabat. The Americans shared their hotel floor with the Iranians. Strained relations between the two countries meant the Americans were not allowed to talk to their Iranian neighbours. It must have been a lonely life at this U.S. outpost in Turkmenistan. I looked forward to leaving.

  Roland, a political secretary, briefed us. He knew the region well and talked for a long time. He seemed depressed. I sympathized, having experienced near complete isolation during my early days in Kiev. Charlotte invited Roland to join us for dinner that night.

  An impressive collection of Turkmen carpets lay heaped in a colourful pile by Roland’s colleague’s desk. I eyed the carpets enviously and wanted to ask if I could buy one.

  After wrapping up our interviews, we inquired about getting tickets to Tashkent at the Aeroflot office but faced the usual grim news. No planes had fuel. None would fly. When would someone rebel? A vast hydrocarbon reservoir, this whole region still shipped all of its fuel to Moscow.

  Stuck in Ashgabat, not even able to shop, we read the Lonely Planet guide for suggestions about what places to visit. It recommended an underwater thermal lake at mountains near the Iranian border, about an hour’s drive away. Our hotel receptionist, now quite helpful, also told us about the lake. She said that Intourist ran guided swims there. We decided we wanted to visit the lake, so she booked a car to take us there.

  We drove through flat, scrubby terrain. We saw a herd of camels on one side and a ridge of mountains on the other. Eventually we reached an inconspicuous left turning. A small, wooden complex stood at the end of the drive. A burly Intourist guide emerged from inside. We paid him and he led us toward the mouth of a cave in an outcropping of rock.

  Spotlights angled toward the craggy roof cast rough, angular shadows. We followed the guide down a steep staircase that turned. We could not see the lake below but felt the temperature rise as we descended.

  After a long climb down we reached a flat area with two metal sheds that smelled. These changing rooms must have doubled as lavatories. As we put on our bathing suits, we were careful not to step off the wooden planks onto the suspiciously moist earthen floor.

  “You won’t need that,” the Turkmen guide said. He pointed at a raincoat that Charlotte wore. “Or that,” he added and tugged the towel I had wrapped around myself. I followed Charlotte as we descended the final flight of stairs to the lake. She turned for a moment and stared up at me with large, doleful eyes. Our guide stood in front of Charlotte. He wore a tight swimsuit that left the top part of his buttocks exposed in an unattractive way.

  We slid into the dark lake.

  “It’s lovely and warm, a lot like a hot bath,” Charlotte said. The guide paddled nearby. He held a life preserver ring and wore flippers on his feet. Charlotte and I both swam out, doing the breaststroke.

  “I don’t think he knows how to swim,” Charlotte said. She gestured at the guide, who clutched the life preserver.

  “Take hold girls, take hold,” he said. Charlotte grabbed the opposite side of the life preserver. I swam alone, a little behind. The guide led us out of the light, toward the back of the cave, where he promised to stop at a crag for a rest.

  “But we’re not tired,” I said. Soon we stood on a rock ledge, perched against the cave wall.

  “Oi!” Charlotte screamed. “Stop that! He groped me!” I shouted too as the guide squeezed my waist and then the side of my breast. No matter how loudly we screamed, down here, no one would hear us. If he wanted to, this guide could drown us and dismiss it all as an unfortunate accident.

  Charlotte insisted that he take us back. I translated. The guide agreed. We had no choice but to follow as we were disoriented in the dark. I heard Charlotte beside me but could not see her. We clutched the life preserver and allowed the guide to drag us through the water.

  Charlotte put the relationship back on civil footing with polite chit-chat. I welcomed the opportunity to translate and occupy my mind with something other than thoughts of revenge.

  “Have you ever seen a fish in this lake?” Charlotte asked the guide. I saw a dim light, so I knew that the guide had not tricked us; shore lay ahead.

  When we arrived, we ran and pulled on the locked changing room door. The guide had the key. We waited for him.

  “You can change here, with me,” he said. “I want to see you naked.”

  “No bloody way!” Charlotte shouted. She was so adamant that he backed off and opened the door. It was quiet at first inside the changing room. But we soon heard loud bangs as the guide’s feet struck the metal walls.

  “He’s breaking in,” I said.

  “There’s not much of a roof. I think he’s climbing up so that he can see us change from the top,” Charlotte replied. All this from a state employee at a state-run tourist site; so much for local charm.

  It suddenly became quiet. We suspected this was because the guide had found a chink in the metal sheets and was watching us. We dressed underneath our towels. Then we opened the door and ran up the stairs. They were steep and the guide, quick. He shot ahead of me and ran behind Charlotte. I could see him pinch her bottom. He fell back behind me and pinched my bottom. Then, with a burst of energy, he repositioned himself between us again.

  We all stopped to catch our breath. The guide insisted that he carry my bag, an act considered both polite and manly in this part of the world. When I refused, he grabbed it from me. Charlotte and I ran. He followed and pinched our bottoms all the way to the top.

  Charlotte arrived there first. She turned around and shouted that she wanted to kick the guard in the balls but that she worried he might fall down backwards and break his neck or land on me.

  Charlotte screamed at him in English. Out of breath, in a quiet fury, I translated. “I want to give him a piece of my mind,” she shouted. “Tell him you can’t treat women like that. How would he feel if someone did this to his sisters?” The guide looked bemused. From his expression, we knew that no sister of his would ever dream of swimming with a strange man in an underground lake.

  Fortunately our driver was still waiting for us. We told him what had happened. He laughed, and then saw a good opportunity. He insisted on twice the fare we had initially agreed upon before he would take us to Ashgabat. We reluctantly paid him the fare he demanded because we wanted to get away.

  We arrived back in time for dinner with Roland. He suggested going out for “pizza, of a sort.” We could choose a puffy dough ball with unidentifiable meat or a puffy dough ball with a splash of ketchup. Roland suggested the meatless version would be safer.

  “This is the 135th time I’ve had dinner at this restaurant,” he said. “Six months down and a year and a half to go.”

  I left the table to use the bathroom. When I arrived back, Roland briefly excused himself.

  “He’s very sad,” Charlotte told me. “He used to live in Africa where he saw giraffes all the time. He said he�
��d made the terrible mistake of studying Russian and when the Soviet Union collapsed, the State Department urgently rounded up all its Russian speakers and posted him here.”

  When we arrived back at the hotel, the receptionist had good news: the woman from Aeroflot had called to offer us tickets on a Bishkek flight that would depart at 4 a.m. We tried to sleep for a few hours, but Montezuma’s revenge kept us up, fighting for the bathroom.

  On the way to the airport, Charlotte said that earlier in the week she’d dreamed we would cross Central Asia in a propeller plane. I told her that the distances were too vast for this. When we arrived at the terminal, the ticket agent shook her head – no need for explanation. We already understood the Bishkek flight was cancelled. The agent suggested that we wait, just in case.

  We stretched out on the sofas. The Aeroflot woman later shook us from deep sleep – the captain had found fuel, so the flight would leave. We walked onto the tarmac in hazy early morning light. One propeller plane stood parked on the runway. Our flight would take seven and a half hours.

  We boarded and sat in our seats. Suspicious of Aeroflot flights and worried about fuel shortages, Charlotte made the sign of the cross and asked, “What if we run out of fuel and crash in mid-air?” Tired, I fastened my seat belt and fell asleep. I woke when Charlotte poked me. When I opened my eyes, I noticed an orangey reflection in the window.

  “Did you see that?” she asked. “A flame just shot out of the engine. I think you should tell someone.” I shuffled to the back of the plane and reported the incident to the flight attendant. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “It happens all the time.”

  We landed in Bishkek hours before a scheduled meeting of leaders from all over the region to discuss trade and other economic matters. This was the first time since we had left Kiev that we managed to reach an intended destination on time. As the only foreign reporters present, we had unlimited access for interviews and even though I was technically on holiday, not at work, I considered this a journalistic triumph. The information would be useful for feature stories that I could write later.