I Was a Potato Oligarch: Travels and Travails in the New Russia

by John Mole

  The Czar of Cheese

  I had my Mozzarella Big One in a cowshed to the accompaniment of syrupy strings playing ABBA’s Greatest Hits and the sweet smell of manure. They went well together.

  By the spring your average Russian cow is a pathetic creature. She staggers out of the cowshed where she has been incarcerated since the first big snow of the previous November. When the temperature drops the windows are boarded up and felted over. The farmer breaks the ice on her water every morning. He gives her frozen hay to eat and whatever roots he doesn’t need for himself. She stands on a slatted platform so her dung can go through to the earth floor to freeze - straw is too precious to waste. Her milk goes by Christmas. She may be alone, she may have companions, it depends how much fodder the farmer has managed to hoard for the winter.

  When the snow starts to melt and the sun noons over the tree line and the air is filled with the elfish music of tinkling ice, the farmer opens the door and leaves the cow to come out into the light in her own good time. Shuffling and staggering, she emerges from the dark and the stench. Exhausted by the effort, she leans against a fence or a wall and waits for food, slack bellied, hollow sided, head hanging, ribs and haunch-bones too big for her body.

  In winter the cows stopped producing milk because there wasn’t enough food, in summer it went off quickly and many farms didn’t have cooling facilities. It was unsurprising that fresh milk was hard to find. At the Irish House supermarket I bought Finnish milk in clear plastic bags. Most Russian milk went for cheese and ice cream and sour cream and other processed products. The creams and wheys and curds were nice enough, but you didn’t linger over the cheese counter. The choice was yellow cheese or smoked yellow cheese.

  I attended the annual congress of the Farmers’ Union in the old Communist Party congress hall. Two thousand peasants from all over Russia under a massive Union flag, Eisenstein faces with hollow cheeks and bushy spade beards. I hadn’t seen suits like it since Sunday mass in Mayo. During the speeches I sat next to a Swede called Klang who had come to the aid of the Russian dairy industry with a model dairy farm in Solnechnogorsk, northwest of Moscow, funded by the Swedish farmers’ union. He had been a potato farmer in his youth and his Russian neighbour grew potatoes, so we had lots to talk about. I invited myself to his farm to discuss supplies for Jackets. I also wanted to visit Shakhmatovo, the country estate of Alexander Blok, a famous Symbolist poet caught up in the October Revolution.

  Natasha drove me in her Niva. She was keen to go because news was seeping out that four years ago three dead aliens from a crashed UFO had been taken to a secret research facility near Solnechnogorsk. She was meeting fellow Astralists in town to investigate. She was secretive about how they planned to locate the research facility, but I think it involved vibrations and telepathy and crystals. I can’t remember what I said, if anything, I probably just laughed, but it was enough to put her in a huff. She didn’t speak the whole trip.

  There was slush on the road and the washer didn’t work, so every ten miles Natasha had to pull over by a patch of cleanish snow and scatter it over the windscreen before she could use the wipers. For nine and a half miles it was like driving through brown fog. She dropped me at the rendezvous with Klang at the turnoff from the motorway to the city and drove off in search of alien death.

  The farm was on a gentle hill with views of rolling hills and forests and the distant lakeside city and a nearby state-owned dairy plant. Klang was a southern Swede, small and dark and with no trace of the singsong intonation that car-icatures his nation. He had left his family in Sweden, as his children were of school age, and lived alone in a bare little bungalow decorated with bits of yellow and blue Swedery and marquetry portraits of cows from kits, which was his hobby.

  He introduced me to his neighbour, who was keen to show me his potatoes. As I had come to expect, they were the size of large pebbles. But he had a handsome ventilated barn to keep them in, which I thought might come in useful.

  Klang took me on a tour of his cowsheds. He had about fifty animals. Plump and contented, they lived in a bovine palace. No amenity had been spared, including piped music, warmed water, infrared heaters, daylight-simulation bulbs, en suite milking facilities and discreet excretory arrangements. As well as the sweetest hay they had all kinds of grain and silage, seasoned with vitamins, minerals, probiotics, antibiotics and all the other desirable condiments for the modern cow. The end product was the finest milk in Russia.

  I ummed and ahhed and dug deep for what I hoped were farmerly questions like whether he knew the cows by name and what their favourite music was. Inspired, I then asked about the breed. All he needed to tell me was that they were a cross between Swedish Red-and-White and Russian Red-and-White, combining Scandinavian productivity and Russian resistance to local conditions. But no. By profession he was an artificial inseminator. He delivered the full programme: selection techniques, efficiency management, factors affecting stillbirths. To townies like me talk about artificial insemination is slightly risqué. I can assure you that there are no sniggers to be had. I would never have believed semen was so boring. I yearned for the frisson of the reproductive mechanism of the potato.

  Klang introduced me to Inge and Lolla, calves he had fathered, so to speak. They had other little brothers and sisters on the way. I have never been a sucker for sweet faces and big brown eyes with curly lashes after I was licked by a calf in my pushchair. Since then I have to look away from a cow’s tongue on a butcher’s counter and I still have nightmares about slobbery slugsmares about slobbery slugsmares about slobbery slugsmares about slobbery slugs crawling over my face. But I was intrigued. Were the marquetry cows family portraits? Did he have a favourite? Did he eat beef? But we had only just met. Instead, I asked what turned out to be the killer question. He could not evade the answer: the dark secret that haunted his daylight hours and kept him awake at night.

  “What do you do with the milk?”

  Had he been English or Russian he would have spun a tale, put on a gloss, evaded the question, prevaricated or lied. But he was a straight-talking Nordic. “We throw it away.”

  That was not entirely accurate. He fed some back to his own cows and to any local livestock farmer who had the transport to come and get it. But for most of the milk he had no pasteurizing mechanism, no packing facility, no transport, no means of getting the milk to a retail market. The dairy plant we could see from his yard could not use it, they said, because it was too rich and not approved for Russian consumption, since the cows were fed antibiotics not sanctioned for use in Russia. Klang said this was not true, that the milk was approved, but the managers stuck with their Russian suppliers because they got payoffs. When the ground thawed he could spray the milk on the fields, but in winter he kept it in polythene storage tanks, like big plastic bags, enormous udders of frozen milk. He was paid by European taxpayers to create a little European milk lake, a milk pond.

  Far from showing Russians the future, this recalled the absurdities of Soviet Central Planning, when businesses had to meet production targets regardless of whether their stuff was wanted. I felt sorry for him, plonked down in the countryside like one of Natasha’s aliens with only his pretty cows for company. I didn’t know what to say. It was more to fill the awkward silence than with any serious intent that I blurted out: “Let’s make it into mozzarella and sell it to Pizza Hut.”

  He wasn’t meant to take it seriously. But straight talkers are straight listeners. They have no ear for the ironic, the playful, the insincere, the very stuff of an Englishman’s discourse. Klang looked at me and nodded. “Hmm, ja-juste. It is a good idea.”

  A good idea. I was suckered. I have become inured to being told that my ideas are rubbish. On the rare occasion that somebody says “It’s a good idea”, especially a straight-talking Nordic, I feel the wonderful buzz that you get on the computer when Solitaire plays out and all the cards come waterfalling down and Congratulations flashes.

  “I know someone at Pizza Hut. They’
ve opened their second restaurant in Moscow. They have plans for three more. They are going into St Petersburg. What is their main ingredient apart from flour? Mozzarella cheese. Where do they get the cheese? Germany. Can you make mozzarella with your milk?”

  “Ja, a good cheese maker can make any cheese you want.

  He can make it in your bath.”

  “Will your Union send us a cheese maker?”

  “It is possible.”

  “We’ll get Pizza Hut to pay for the equipment. We’ll buy a van and deliver the cheese. We’ll do the invoicing. We’ll take care of everything. It’s got to be cheaper than German cheese. And it’s great publicity for Pizza Hut, encouraging local industry, blah blah blah.”

  “Who is we?

  “TAMKO. Our company.”

  Over milk and Swedish meatballs, we sat at his kitchen table to draft proposals and wish away our lives in cheese-mongering. We were so caught up there was no time to see the Blok estate at Shakhmatovo. Klang drove me to the motorway junction where Natasha was waiting. I asked if she had been abducted by aliens and if they had given her lunch.

  “Dzhorn! You believe in nothing. Only your stupid potatoes.”

  “That’s not true. Right now I believe in cheese. I’ll be the Czar of Cheese.”

  “I think you have no guardian angels.”

  “I’m sure I have one, like everybody else”

  “Only one? I am sorry for you. I have thirty-three.”

  “Gosh.”

  “Some people have many more.”

  “Lucky them. How do they know?”

  “By their star map when they were born.”

  “I thought one would be enough to keep you out of trouble.”

  “You cannot have too many. Especially in Moscow. You must be very careful.”

  My friend Gloria at Pizza Hut thought it was a good idea. She helped me draft a proposal to her regional head office in Poland. We asked for a one-year contract to supply mozzarella and whatever other cheese they required at local cheese prices plus the cost of transport. We also asked them to supply basic cheese-making equipment in return for massive endorsement from the Farmers’ Union, the municipality of Solnechnogorsk, the mayor of Moscow and so on. Meanwhile, Klang confirmed that the Swedes would send over experts and set up a training programme for aspiring cheese makers. It wasn’t going to make TAMKO rich, but it would give a boost to our Jackets project and surely line us up for consultancies with fat per diems.

  The initial reaction from Warsaw was positive. Gloria told me to await a summons for a presentation and a meeting. There’s nothing like a bit of success for putting a whistle in the lips and a spring in the stride. The Cheese Czar of Muscovy was not the culmination of a life’s ambition, but it was a start. At such times the imagination lets rip. Jackets would have an Italian Mozzarella Special. We would design a label around Inge and Lolla. TAMKO would be Suppliers of Cheese to the Kremlin. I would be able to hold my head high in the Metropole Hotel. I went round car showrooms looking at refrigerated vans.

  Gloria called me with the bad news. European central office had canned the idea. They would continue importing German mozzarella. The economics were ruthless. To reduce its cheese mountain the European Union dumped as much as it could in foreign markets. Not only did the Common Agricultural Policy keep German cheese farmers in business with subsidies, it subsidized the export of their overproduction. They paid Pizza Hut to take cheese into Russia. We could give our Russian cheese away for free and it would still not undercut the Germans. For cheese you can read butter and meat and all the other lakes and mountains the EU dumps on the rest of the word, destroying local markets, driving local farmers out of business, making it impossible for local producers and manufacturers to get going. And then they had the nerve to make measly development grants that pay consultants to live in the Metropole and lecture locals on entrepreneurship.

  I delivered the bad news in person. I went on the train one Saturday and Klang picked me up from the station. I was introduced to his new offspring, Benbo, a sweet child but a male and destined for the abattoir as soon as he put on weight. Klang was resigned to our failure and refused to blame the European Union. Farmers don’t bite the hand that subsidizes them. After milk and meatballs he drove me to Shakhmatovo. The estate was closed for renovation. I peered in the gates and through a gap in a fence at trees and frosted grass.

  By the time I got back to Leningradsky station I had put things in perspective. Guardian angels work in mysterious ways. There is an awful moment when the Big One collapses into pieces, when feasibility turns into risibility. Only slightly less awful is when it takes off and you realize how much hard graft is involved in making it happen. Mozzarella didn’t seem like such a Big Idea after all.

  Do the fish go to Florida?

  The first serious snowfall of winter came on the last Saturday night of October. On Sunday morning the apartment was brimming with light. I scuffed to the window in bare feet. The snow was falling, great floury flakes beating against the window, lured by the cotton-wool decoy on the sill between the double glazing.

  A man wearing a white apron and chef’s hat over an anorak and ski hat was selling something in the square below from a handcart. He had been there long enough for the snow to have covered the wheel tracks. There was no one else in sight. He waited stock still, turning into a snowman.

  I put on my hat and coat over my pyjamas and went down-stairs. It was bitterly cold. I plodded over to him wishing I had dressed properly. He stared at me with coal-black eyes. A dew-drop made the beginning of an icicle from the tip of his carrot-red nose.

  “You look like a snowman,” I said.

  “A man has to live.” He seemed to have no interest in selling me anything from under the white cloth that covered his wares. I had to lift it myself. Eggs.

  “Are they fresh?”

  “In this weather? They will last until spring.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Are they fresh? Or are they second-grade fresh?”

  “Laid this morning.”

  “Where?”

  “Out of a chicken’s arse.”

  “So they are fresh.”

  “Their little arses? I wipe them with cologne every morning.”

  I hadn’t brought a bag with me so I picked out only four, two in each hand. We juggled them between us since neither of us had the common sense to put them down while I took out money and handed it over and he gave me change. When we finished he put the cloth back and stood stock-still again, letting the snow settle on his head and shoulders.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “What do you think?”

  Russian fortitude. Obstinacy. Determination. He would stand there until the eggs were gone or he disappeared in a drift until spring. Catherine the Great stationed a hundred Imperial Guards round the Winter Palace in the depths of winter. At night a score would die of cold at their posts. The next night they would be replaced and another score would freeze to death.

  People took out winter clothes and aired out the camphor; greased boots and skates and skis; overhauled the snow shovel; laid in cans and jars from street markets; patched quilts; put fresh cotton wool on the ledge inside the double glazing to mop up condensation; took cars indoors and jacked them up to keep the tyres round. The metro was crowded with fair-weather drivers and weather-beaten dachniks hefting bags of home-grown produce, bedding, kitchen stuff.

  My Russian friends did not share my loathing of snow. As I became sullen they became cheerful. While the cold brought on my rheumatism and depression, they believed it killed germs and made them strong. I wished I had learned to skate, I might not have fallen over so often. I never left home without Vibram soles, but they didn’t do me much good. I staggered along from handhold to hand-hold while natives skipped past me on smooth plastic soles. Even the drunks were steadier than me. An old lady crossed me over the road, thinking I was blind. The worst places were outside stations, rinks of polished black slipperiness that you fo
rgot about when you came up the escalator.

  I tried to be positive. I learned to eat ice cream outside, sauntering along licking a cornet at 20 below. It was part of going native, like eating kasha without gagging.

  At the office I commiserated with Afanasy about his hobby. “What do you do for fishing in the winter?”

  “I fish.”

  “Where? Isn’t everything frozen?”

  “Jarn, do the fish go to Florida? Where do you think they are?”

  “Under the ice?”

  “By no means. Nice and cosy. That’s where we get ‘em.

  You never been ice fishin’? You wanna go?”

  For sensible people the “try anything once” adage only goes so far. I knew before I tried it that ice fishing should be on my personal list of exclusions up there with nude paint-balling, bestiality with chickens and giving up wine. Why did I accept? I have no idea.

  It was arranged for the following Saturday. Afanasy told me to wrap up warm and I took no chances: string vest, long-sleeved wool vest, T-shirt, wool shirt, sleeveless pullover, thick sweater, underpants, long johns, pyjamas, wool trousers, padded waterproofs, double ski gloves, long woolly scarf over my head under the astrakhan hat with earflaps down. And over the top of all of it my overcoat. Mallory went up Everest in less. I moved like a cosmonaut on a space walk.

  I took the elektrichka from Savyolovsky station at eight o’clock and got off after a few stops in a suburb to the north of Moscow. As I wish never to go there again, I have expunged all record of the name. Afanasy met me at the station. It was not easy to manoeuvre my padded frame into his steamed-up Lada. I am not sure where he drove us, what with the state of the windows and the sweat pouring into my eyes. After twenty minutes or so he parked in a ploughed lay-by beside a wall of snow.

  We got out. It was grey and misty. Afanasy said it wasn’t cold, only about 15 below. Balmy to him, but to me it botoxed the face and knifed deep into the bronchioles and iced the perspiration under my swaddling.