Gadfly in Russia

by Alan Sillitoe

  Long shallow dips in the road made sufficient dead ground, in which cars from the opposite direction would be completely hidden, a perilous landscape to drive through. Signs warned not to overtake at such places, though not always, and I had to watch out for them. George, on the normal side for a Russian driver, and careful with his signals to get by, must have saved our lives a few times.

  By two o’clock we were in the Valdai Hills, though they were so low you wouldn’t know it, and in two more hours we turned from the bypass into Torzhok, where Pushkin stayed to enjoy the famous Pozharskiye Ketlety or chicken cutlets, named after the owner of the hotel.

  In 1147 the town was devastated by the Prince of Suzdal, and between 1178 and 1215 it suffered fire and rapine four times at the hands of rival princes. Then the Tartars slaughtered all the inhabitants on their way to deliver a similar blow to Novgorod. In 1245 and 1248 the Lithuanians did their butchery, and during the wars between the sons of Alexander Nevski more catastrophe was meted out. It was again destroyed by the Tartars in 1327, then the Grand Duke of Moscow occupied and ravaged it. In 1372 the Prince of Tver levelled the place. It grew again, in hope and vigour, but nothing availed, and the town was forcibly annexed to Moscow in 1477, which gave it no protection, for in 1609 it endured its greatest blow when the pillaging Poles burned monks and others alive in their churches and monasteries. It then settled down for 300 years, until the Germans laid it waste in 1941.

  While tanking up with petrol beyond that ill-fated place the Germans passed us again. I was no longer interested, and neither was George. In ten minutes we got by them nevertheless. It was difficult not to. I changed gear, charged along with the needle rising, till most of the column was behind. With full steam up, and careful to avoid lorries lumbering from the other way, I got by the final car. I had just finished telling George I couldn’t remember what, when, once again, they weren’t far off.

  The cat-and-mouse game broke up the ennui at being on the road. They fell behind, no sign of them. Bypassing Kalinin, and crossing the long bridge over the Volga at five in the afternoon, my eyes ached from hunger. Maria’s goodies had long since gone, so I asked George if he knew of a restaurant along the road. He didn’t: ‘Don’t worry about eating. Just hang on for another hour or so and you’ll be at your hotel, where you’ll be able to have a very splendid meal indeed.’

  ‘It’s all right for you. It’s hard work being the driver. When I get hungry I must eat, otherwise I’m liable to make mistakes. I wouldn’t like you to be delivered to your mother and aunt’s place grimacing from the misted up inside of a plastic bag. Nor would I like to be sent back to London in the same style. The Writers’ Union wouldn’t like that, for either of us.’

  Before my screed convinced him he tried one more throw. ‘Places along the road aren’t good enough for someone like you, who comes from the capitalist West.’

  While he was figuring out the meaning of an expletive which had something to do with the size of the cigar he was smoking, I stopped in the next village on seeing the word stolovaya over the door of a red-bricked building. A gate in the neat blue fence led through a flower garden to the door of the canteen. We stalked in and sat at a table, George looking like a younger version of the man on a Michelin map cover stranded in a place that wasn’t worth a star.

  A stout woman in a white overall at the serving hatch called out that no meals were available, which seemed good news to George, but on seeing my disappointment, and my raddled features after so long at the car, she laughed and, in a few minutes, produced bowls of scalding soup, then ham, a few slices of black bread, butter, cakes, and again the same old bottles of prune juice, all of it delicious to a starving man. Even fastidious George sampled some, till we both felt fit enough for the last hundred miles to Moscow.

  Our German friends were by now far in front, and there seemed little hope of coming first in the unacknowledged race. We couldn’t care less, of course, while puffing on our superb cigars. Not talking for a while, a few historical dates knocking about in my otherwise empty head, I recalled having left London on the 12th, and reckoned that today must be the 21st. History, one of my many interests, told me that on 22 June 1941, in the early hours of the morning …

  ‘George, do you know what date it is?’

  ‘I never ask myself such a thing.’

  ‘Well, do it now. What’s the bloody date?’

  ‘How should I know? I was told on what date to meet you in Leningrad, and I did. Now I’m in your hands. Why should I show any interest in the calender?’

  ‘It’s the 21st of June, and tomorrow will be the 22nd. Don’t you know what happened in 1941?’

  He looked sideways at me. ‘Of course I do. The Great Patriotic War began.’

  ‘In which your father died.’

  ‘Correct. And so?’

  ‘Tonight is “on the eve”, if you catch my meaning. Twenty-six years ago the March on Moscow began. Perhaps that column of smart little cars is going there, to celebrate in the morning. They’re full of middle-aged men, and the timing can’t be accidental. After Moscow they’ll push on to Kharkov and Kiev, swapping yarns, standing on hills with their old staff maps, and with binoculars around their necks wondering when there’ll be a next time and talking about how was the first time.’

  Usually quick and intelligent, and smart on the uptake, he said nothing for half a minute, though much must have been fluttering through his mind. It was six o’clock, and the day was far from dark, patches of forest to either side of the road, a glittering lake like a large stamped-out coin fresh from the mint, isolated dwelling blocks and a workshop here and there.

  ‘Catch them up,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Beat them to Moscow? They’ve got too much of a start in their fast little cars.’

  ‘Yours is faster. You’re a good driver. When I was told to meet you in Leningrad and stay with you as far as Rumania I added up the distance in my uncle’s atlas. It came to 2,500 kilometres, so I naturally feared for my safety at being in the car with an English writer who would keep stopping to drink whisky from a bottle under the dashboard. Luckily you aren’t like that. You have so many maps to carry there’s no space for bottles.’

  ‘Whoever taught you English certainly did a good job, but I don’t need flattery. Did you learn it from the BBC?’

  He thought I’d given up the chase, saying glumly: ‘We have good professors of languages in the Soviet Union.’

  I stepped up the speed. ‘It won’t be easy, unless they’ve stopped for another session of physical jerks. But we’ll mount a surprise counterstroke and see what can be done.’

  I went like a sword of light along a sheet of chromed metal, though careful to stay alive, my heart calm enough as we caught up with them about thirty miles from Moscow. Overtaking a couple, I didn’t suppose they were even aware of our game, though the densest should have had some inkling by now.

  One, two more – watch that lorry – then another. George slapped my shoulder. ‘Nine more to go.’

  ‘Just do me a favour,’ I said, ‘and light another couple of those choice Havanas. Then we shall see.’ With a not unpleasant smell of ordure from such smokes, we devised a formula for getting quickly and safely by as much traffic as possible. To avoid a too-cautious coming out into the empty-enough lane George would lean from his open window.

  ‘Clear?’ I’d ask.

  ‘Go! Davai!’ and out I would shoot, which made for rapid overtaking now that the die was cast.

  Or I would call: ‘Clear?’

  ‘For God’s sake – NO!’ and I would hold my place. More of their cars were left behind. We thought the main body of the group might already be in Moscow, but I was enjoying the chase. Speed was exhilarating, but to give myself heart and soul to such a challenge would have blighted my pride

  There the rest of them were stalled behind a slow heavily laded Russian lorry, before a long section of roadworks. It was hard to say at first why they weren’t overtaking, until I saw a sign de
manding single file traffic. Like good socially responsible people they were obeying the law, though the empty road ahead was wide enough for two files. Nor was anything coming the other way.

  Here was a time for lateral thinking, which I thought Edward de Bono would approve, or Liddell Hart for a manoeuvre of the ‘indirect approach’. ‘All clear?’

  ‘Davai!’ George cried again.

  With blinkers doing their job, and sounding V in Morse, I ran along the side of the column till every car was left under the arse of that splendid Soviet lorry. The no overtaking rule persisted for another mile, hard to think why, and they couldn’t soon follow because heavy traffic now streamed from the other direction. I smothered my anxiety till getting unscathed – and unseen – back on to the legal side of the road.

  ‘A good thing no highway policeman is on our trail,’ George said as we went on like respectable citizens who would never even think of doing anything so wrong – or foolish – as to disobey the regulations.

  We passed the motorway ringroad around Moscow at eight o’clock, dusk coming on. I was hungry again. ‘A motor car eats up the chauffeur as well as petrol,’ I said to George, but now we were within easy range of the hotel. Having left Leningrad that morning, we ran freely along a dual carriageway towards the centre of a twentieth-century metropolis, between white and pink blocks of flats, cranes around some still under construction poking into the empty sky. A television transmitting tower seemed like a needle of Nimrod hoping to draw blood from God with his arrow. We had brought the good news from Aix to Ghent, whatever the news was, though there must have been some. George was happy at being nearer home, and I was glad to have done the trip without an accident, and had a bit of fun on the way. I set him down at his mother’s flat, then went on down Gorki Street, turning left to the Hotel Metropole in Sverdlov Square.

  Thursday, 22 June

  I stood at my hotel window wondering how to spend the day, though I needn’t have worried, since my diary showed plenty to do.

  The room was on the back and away from street noise, overlooking a courtyard that was small in proportion to surrounding buildings. Clouds above roof slopes were as if trying to decide on the time to let down rain. A slim and pretty girl wearing blue overalls and headscarf straddled the apex of a nearby roof replacing a tile. I stared till she turned and fluttered her fingers at my friendly wave.

  I was waiting for the telephone to ring, and hear that George was downstairs. Hundred-rouble notes smouldered in my pocket, and he could help me to spend one or two. The girl clambered to another join of roofs, which I thought a slightly safer position, to chip at excess mortar. I liked watching her skill with hammer and chisel, and how she debonairly (as well as mischievously) sent flakes of plaster skimming downwards. She was happy, I supposed, at having no overseer close enough to watch over her.

  I was sorting things for the laundry but looked at her now and again, saw that she had stopped working to gaze across the rooftops as if dreaming of better days. She smiled, and waved, and I beckoned her closer, even into my room, if she liked. Broken clouds framed her, and she seemed to crave a more compatible life on gazing between them. Next time I looked she was adjusting her headscarf before putting in a few more minutes of work. Then as a joke she indicated that I go over the roof to join her. I made to climb out of the window, but the telephone rang and drew me back.

  George said he wouldn’t be able to show me around the city because of an upset stomach. His mother, a doctor, found him in bed, unusual so late in the morning: ‘What’s the matter? Why aren’t you getting up? You’ll be late meeting your English writer.’

  ‘I’m as sick as a dog,’ he moaned. ‘My stomach’s full of razorblades.’

  ‘My poor darling’ – she reached for a thermometer – ‘it must be something you picked up on your travels yesterday. What restaurants did you eat at?’

  ‘We called at a stolovaya for a snack. The Englishman was hungry. He insisted.’

  She lifted her hands. ‘Oh George, why are you always so careless? How many times have I told you never to eat in those filthy proletarian places?’

  I chaffed him. It couldn’t have been the food, since I was perfectly well. ‘Perhaps you’re ill from puffing at too many cigars. Or you’re not sick at all, more like, but lolling in bed with your girlfriend. If that’s the case I hope you’ll feel better soon.’

  I walked back to the window, saw rain splashing on to the rooftops. The fair tiler had gone, and taken the packet of American cigarettes I’d left for her on the sill.

  Sweeping items off the shelves with my unexpected windfalls of cash, everything seemed so cheap, like being on a looting expedition, George said. He was still pale after yesterday’s meal, as I parked the car outside the GUM department store.

  He recommended records as bargains, so I bought a box of ten by Chaliapin, and as many as could be found of Shostakovich, which included the complete Katerina Izmailovna of Mtsensk, and Stenka Razin with a text by Yevtushenko. My hand went out for the ‘Leningrad’ Symphony No. 7, and then I picked up a set of Prokofiev’s ballet score Romeo and Juliet, also a couple of dozen works by Scriabin, Moussorgsky and Tchaikovsky – music from the finest voices and orchestras of the USSR.

  We came out of other departments laden with fur hats, balalaikas, Palekh boxes, matrioshka dolls, packets of Chinese brick tea, and more Monte Cristo cigars.

  In the evening I was taken around the newly opened ‘Library of Foreign Literature’, millions of volumes from all countries in their original languages. Walking the stacks of so many treasures proudly pointed out, I recalled my first visit to a Nottingham branch library as a child, and a few years later to the main one in the city centre.

  The lady in charge led me into a large hall, to give a poetry reading before several hundred people. Out of respect I decided to perform standing, as I nearly always did in any case. But my legs shook so violently that I thought of sitting, though didn’t, because the lower part of me was hidden by a curtained table. The affliction must have been due to long walks that afternoon or, more likely, from so many days sitting in the car.

  One poem read called ‘Love in the Environs of Voronezh’ was also the title of a forthcoming book. I wrote the line for its assonance, and because the poet Osip Mandelstam had been exiled to Voronezh during the purges of the 1930s – before being sent off to die in Siberia.

  I stood on the pavement afterwards, the Moscow air freshened by a storm of rain. A girl from the audience who introduced herself as Svetlana Filushkina told me she had been born in Voronezh, so I explained why I had used the name, and gave her a copy of the poem so that she would remember why I had done so.

  Oksana Krugerskaya and I went by taxi to the Writers’ Club, to spend the evening with Frans Taurin. We had met him in Irkutsk four years before, when she had guided me around the Soviet Union.

  Relaxed and elated, as one often is from a reading, I was shown to our reserved table in the great dining room. Frans reminded me, after handshakes and the first glass of vodka, of our boozing session by Lake Baikal, when I had walked out on the ice wearing only a thin English mackintosh.

  He was a year or so over fifty, but I knew nothing of his life except that he had written novels, and had been on hunting expeditions in the taiga. Just above middle height, though not heavily built, he looked physically tough, short fair hair and sharp grey-blue eyes flashing a touch of humour now and again. I could see that he was well able to put on a stance of authority in his new post as a high official in the writers’ union, but hoped he did so with sufficient tolerance and generosity.

  We toasted absent friends with the first bottle. I spoke little Russian, so Oksana interpreted. What we ate I don’t recall, though it must have been good, since the restaurant had a reputation to keep up among those privileged writers who belonged to the Union.

  Platitudes and aphorisms flourished as vodka took effect, and for three hours we hardly stopped talking. He seemed to be watching me for signs of collaps
e, but I foolishly matched him glass for glass, aware of heading for a blackout if such a rate kept up. Hoping to stay conscious till reaching the hotel, a third bottle arrived, and Oksana, who drank only water, became uneasy. Not normally a heavy drinker, I nevertheless assumed that such convivial indulgence was not beyond me, but would I imbibe so much as to make me feel as flat as a board?

  The highway to oblivion was in the offing, though the prospect by now seemed not unpleasurable. In London I was used to a few glasses of an evening on needing to relax, so thought I could take my share without losing clarity of speech. My perceptions fought to avoid splitting in two, and did not succeed. One half from its vantage point told me, with hard words and a wagging finger, not to go on too long, while the weaker part scorned its puritanical hypocrisy. I tried to join the two entities, and thereby gain superiority over both, though it was hardly possible, knowing that the fight would only cease in the refuge of sleep. Meanwhile the dam of tight control allowed me at least to continue talking and, in a way, performing.

  In the midst of full tables with their shouting parties Frans and I talked about life, art, the duties and freedoms of a writer in a socialist or any other society, issues I was still able to define. All I wanted to do, I said at some point, was get into my car and drive to Siberia – back to Irkutsk – but couldn’t because no road went the whole way.

  He laughed at my supposing so. ‘You’re wrong, my English friend. Nowadays there’s a wide macadamised highway from Paris to Lake Baikal, and even beyond, take my word for it.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t get permission from the authorities to do it, would I?’

  ‘That will come, I’m sure. But you’d have to drive six thousand kilometres before we could do some fishing on the shore at Baikal. Even you would take about a month to do such a journey.’

  A good reason for going to Irkutsk again would be to call on Mark Sergeyev, an especial friend from my former visit, a young writer who, with his parents, had been deported from the Ukraine in the 1930s. He told me how, one day after weeks on the railway, his father lifted him up to a slot in the carriage and said: ‘Look at all that water. See it? It’s Lake Baikal!’ I still have the little book he wrote about the region that he came to love.