Gadfly in Russia

by Alan Sillitoe

  Three and a half hours later the plane descended to Domodedovo airport, and after the routine of police and customs – quicker than in Soviet times – we were met by Margarita from the British Council, who had a car waiting.

  The thiry-kilometre drive through rain to the city seemed endless and depressing. Among blocks of flats well off the road was much new development, something of a change from years ago.

  The newish Novotel compared well with places stayed at before. Though not so close to the city centre it was comfortable, and modern in the Western style, with bathrobes, bed slippers and other such items in the room. I supposed it cost quite an amount, which was fair because we were receiving no fees for our appearances. It was, on the other hand, a privilege to be in Moscow, and would turn out doubly so if we could meet George again.

  Sunday, 8 May

  I didn’t sleep more than a couple of hours due to glasses of black tea foolishly drunk very late, though the difference in longitude may have had something to do with it. I was up by eight local time, and we met our guardian angel Margarita who came with a car.

  Having a free day (the same old sabbath) we went to the new Tetryakov Gallery and spent some hours at a special exhibition called The Jack of Diamonds, a recreation of one held just before the First World War, with paintings and exhibits of the period, avant garde then, and still of much interest now.

  We had planned an excursion to the Sparrow Hills (asterisked in Baedeker) which would have given a historic view of the city, but we’d already had enough driving in Moscow traffic, so voted with our wheels and asked Margarita to take us back to the hotel. This was just as well, since it was niagaring with rain and we wouldn’t have seen anything of the famous panorama. Back in our room I had a ninety-minute sleep.

  We went to have supper with Marina Boroditskaya at her flat in one of those vast plain blocks of which there must be hundreds in this megalopolis. We took to this lively, dark-haired and good-looking woman immediately. Although it was our first meeting, Marina and Ruth had been in contact by e-mail for the past few years in connection with the anthology of contemporary Russian women poets, edited by Valentina Polukhina, and published by Daniel Weissbort in Modern Poetry in Translation, the periodical he and Ted Hughes started in the 1960s. Although Ruth does not read or speak Russian, the editors persuaded her to work from literals they would supply.

  One of her three allocated poets was Marina. A distinguished translator of English poetry, including Chaucer, Donne and Kipling, she was able to send Ruth versions of her own poems which needed little alteration. The two of them became good friends by correspondence. Later, Ruth translated other poems by Marina, some of which were published in English magazines, and Marina’s translations of Ruth’s two long poem sequences Sugar-Paper Blue and Sheba and Solomon appeared in the important literary journal Foreign Literature Magazine and in Novaya Yunost. During our visit the two of them read the poems in both languages.

  Having been told I liked vodka with my food Marina generously provided it. We talked about Russian culture, civilisation and history, and social conditions of the present. Many advantages, such as education and health care, affordable housing and transport available to ordinary people in Soviet times had been lost, she said, yet there had been some gains. Maybe the shark-like winners of the battles in the new era of capitalism would eventually settle down, and bring even a fraction of their blatant prosperity to those who needed it far more.

  Marina was divorced from her husband, the poet and translator Grigory Kruzhov, and shared the flat with Sergei, their twenty-year-old son, whose older brother drove us back to the hotel at midnight.

  Monday, 9 May

  I woke at eight-thirty after a good sleep, showered and made tea. While waiting for Marina in the lobby after breakfast I watched the march past in Red Square on television, comemmorating the Soviet victory in Berlin at the end of the Second World War.

  Soldiers in Red Army uniforms of the time marched by the plinth with Thomson machine guns sloped across the chest, some carrying banners and insignia of various military units. There were T-34 tank men wearing black uniforms and padded headsets. Utility-style lorries laden with standing veterans waved red carnations at President Bush, Chirac, and other heads of state – Blair not among them.

  After a wet morning the weather turned fine because, it was said, aeroplanes of the air force had been sent up to seed the clouds around Moscow, and now it was beginning to work.

  We walked along the traffic-free Arbat Street where fit old gentlemen with medals and decorations promenaded in sober festival best after their appearance in the Red Square parade, one-time soldiers of the campaigns that had put an end to German Nazism. The Soviet people had suffered more than those of any other Allied nation.

  Now and again someone would ask permission to photograph one of the resplendent men, requests agreed to with modesty and dignity, yet without a smile, as if fully aware of the importance of what they had once done, and knowing that such reminders might never come again. Some of the veterans had boys and girls with them – though rarely hand in hand – who looked on grandfather with admiration and wonder, perhaps not having realised before what heroes they had been in the war. The children carried the flowers which passers-by gave to show their appreciation.

  An elderly woman who had also seen active service (there were many of them as well) had a large bosom plastered with decorations. When asked to pose for a photograph she did so with a musical laugh, while making sure that her hair was in place, as a platoon of smart young soldiers in modern uniform marched past behind a band, people following and bystanders applauding.

  We lunched at a nearby cafeteria, one of a chain called Moo-Moo, convenient and good to eat at. They were also, Marina said, very democratic, in that people of all sorts went to them. Back on the Arbat we bought souvenirs for our grandchildren, including a hammer-and-sickle hat for one of the boys.

  That evening we went to an anniversary concert at the Tchaikovsky Auditorium. Shostakovich’s ‘Leningrad’ Symphony, No. 7 was the star item in a programme of celebration, such a sublime and moving performance that I knew I would never hear it played so heart-rendingly again. After the first movement everyone in the crowded theatre stood for a minute’s silence, in remembrance of the so many million dead – and so much misery. Others as well as myself had tears on their cheeks before the music resumed. At the finale the applause went on and on, as if the following silence would be too much to bear.

  After such a moving experience it was hard to take any more, so we left the concert hall and stood in the square outside for what could be seen of fireworks from the Kremlin. Hundreds of people cheered at each technicolor shellburst of blues, greens, and spectacular floral reds.

  Tuesday, 10 May

  ‘Again in the Metro with Marina’ seemed like the refrain of a song, though from what era I couldn’t say. This time she took us on a tour of the most interesting stations, many built during the worst years of the 1930s. Construction went on even in the Second World War, when the Germans were within thirty miles of Moscow. Stops were further apart than in London, but each underground hall was decorated by examples of Soviet art and sculpture. One like a vast ballroom was lit from chandeliers, no spot of dust visible in their soothing light.

  At the Tetryakov station we were met by the poet Glyeb Shulypriakov, a friend of Marina’s, whom Ruth had talked to in London a year ago at the launch of the anthology of Russian women poets. He led us on a walk through the old Merchants’ Quarter, now a residential and business area but with many of the original buildings and churches preserved. He had a flat in one of the houses, where we had tea and discussed poetry – what else?

  Later, on our way back to the hotel, a man on the packed Metro offered me his seat. He was so generously persistent that I sat down, although I felt no need to. When people flowed out at the next station he took the place by me, saying he had been to Liverpool as a sailor. There was much he wanted to add but couldn’t, and I
knew how he felt. His face was a portrait of frustrated intention to speak. Neither was my Russian good enough, except to say how beautiful Moscow was. He searched one pocket after another to find something he could give me as a memento of our meeting. Perhaps he imagined I was one of the veterans from England (I hoped not) but he found a small wrapped sweet and, his face shining with happiness, presented it to me. We shook hands several times and I got a bear hug – as if we’d had a vodka or two – before he went out.

  We took a whole week more or less out of Marina’s busy life, but she was indefatigable on our behalf. At five that afternoon she came to the hotel so that she and Ruth could go over the poems they would present at the Bookberry, a large bookshop well known for poetry readings. I sat in the lobby for a smoke, waiting for the British Council car to take us to the event. Until it began I walked the well stocked and laid out shelves, with many foreign titles in Russian, and some in the original languages. But pop music wailing throughout made contemplation and browsing difficult.

  Ruth and Marina had such a large audience that a search had to be made for extra chairs. Sugar-Paper Blue, with its theme of Akhmatova in Leningrad, went down well.

  We were then driven to the place for my performance. I couldn’t fix exactly where it was in relation to anywhere else in the city, in spite of having a modern and accurate street plan. I had never, as a passenger, been able to look at a map without feeling car-sick.

  When a man on guard at the door asked if I would like some vodka I said yes, certainly. Taking an unlabelled bottle from under his table he bubbled two good measures into paper cups.

  I opened the talk by saying that the writer is essentially a communicator, between himself and whatever readers he might be lucky enough to have. Then I gave an example of communications in one of my jobs before I had thought of becoming a writer, as a wireless telegraphist, sending and receiving messages between myself and aircraft flying from Darwin to London. To break the ice – it nearly always does – I brought out my Morse key and oscillator, and tapped a short telegram of goodwill to the audience, saying beforehand that if an amateur radio operator or ex-Marconi man among them could transcribe what was sent, I would give him (or her) a signed copy of my latest novel. No one won the prize. The only time anyone had was in Rostock some years ago, when an ex-ship’s officer deciphered the words correctly

  I read a condensed part of my novel The German Numbers Woman, with a resumé from Marina; then, after a few poems, talked more about life as a writer. The session ended with questions at ten o’clock. We went on to a Ukrainian restaurant with Anna Genina, the charming director of the Moscow British Council office.

  Wednesday, 11 May

  We were expected at the studio of Radio Kultura for interviews at ten, and got there well on time, but the dragon of a woman guarding the door of the building said we didn’t have proper identification. She was only persuaded to let us in after a stern call from upstairs.

  The round table discussion of our life and work was skilfully guided by the young presenter, and went on for almost two hours, before our ‘business lunch’ at a place called Pal Joey’s.

  With barely time to change at the hotel we were motored to a conference at Foreign Literature Magazine. Their offices weren’t as opulent as in Soviet times, when every issue sold millions of copies. Even so it had a circulation of several hundred thousand.

  The editor in chief, Alexei Slovesny, and a dozen members of the editorial staff, asked us about the state of fiction and poetry in England, and whether we could recommend anything that might be suitable for their readers. Ruth mentioned the names of several poets which were new to them. They seemed well enough informed about contemporary English fiction, knowing the titles and authors of many recent novels. They hadn’t however heard of John King’s books such as England Away and The Football Factory, so I explained briefly what they were about.

  The discussion, with tea and biscuits, lasted until half past four, when we were ferried to the British Council offices. We had tea again, and walked from there to the Library of Foreign Literature, where a good-sized audience awaited us for another reading.

  Then I spotted George, sitting slightly apart by the wall. I had asked about him several times already, and Marina dialled his old telephone number, but no one had answered to the name of Andjaparidze. This didn’t surprise me, for his mother and aunt with whom he had lived must have been long dead. My only hope was that news of our visit would get around, and he would turn up at one of the venues.

  Now he had. He could hardly stand, tried, but I asked him not to persist. He held up his two sticks saying he could only walk properly with them. He was in pain, and looked older than his sixty-three years. His daughter, who accompanied him, told us he mustn’t stay out late, because he was quite ill. George said she was religious in the Orthodox way, and always made sure he was all right when he went out – being a dutiful (and beautiful) daughter. Because of the crush, and the uncertainty of what would happen afterwards, we arranged to meet the following night. He said we would have much to discuss.

  Ruth and I read, with Marina translating, more or less a replay of the previous evening. From there we went to a party at the flat of James and Kim, of the British Council, where we were so entertained I gave them a signed copy of the book that hadn’t been claimed at the Morse competition the night before.

  Thursday, 12 May

  While waiting for Marina to come at eleven I sat in the lobby and wrote to the English-language Moscow Times saying how much I had enjoyed being in the city for the recent celebrations. My only surprise – and disappointment – was that Tony Blair had missed the most important date in European history of the last sixty years. Bush, Chirac, and fifty-seven other heads of state had been present. Putin said in a speech that Russia, the United States and France were the Allies of the century, a significant slur on the British prime minister for his absence. Blair had sent Prescott instead, but he had been pushed a little behind the others on the podium in Red Square, as a hint of general displeasure. We left for home before knowing whether or not the Moscow Times had published my letter.

  It rained most of the time we were in Moscow, so it was good that the Metro was only a hundred yards beyond the hotel entrance. From Polyarkov station we splashed through puddles with Marina for half a mile or so to the factory outlet of a shop which sold the equivalent of Ordnance Survey maps of most parts of the former Soviet Union.

  I had always thought that one of the first signs of democracy was when ordinary people, and foreigners as well, could buy detailed topographical maps of their country. Now, for the first time since tsarist days, it was possible in Russia. Such maps had been top secret documents in Soviet colleges and I was told by a former geology student that when issued for instruction and research he had been threatened with Siberia if he lost them.

  A middle-aged woman eyed me from behind a long desk as I looked at displays on the walls and went through racks of interesting items. High-quality maps showed spot heights and contours, towns and villages in their real shapes and locations, and gave details even of cabins in forests reached only by footpath. Large-scale maps of Kamchatka and the Volga delta were available, as well as road atlases of various provinces in European Russia and Siberia. All names were in Cyrillic, but such lettering had been familiar since first learning that alphabet in my teens.

  The saleswoman was livelier while totting up a thousand roubles on her calculator. I would have bought a sample of everything in the shop but space in our cases was not unlimited. I fitted the bundles into two plastic bags so that they wouldn’t saturate on our walk back to the Metro.

  There was a long queue at the Moo-Moo cafeteria, but some kindly person invited us into line more than halfway to the serving counters, and nobody seemed to mind.

  At five – it was still raining – we were chauffered with Marina to a gallery near the British Council where there was an excellent exhibition of photographs, Britain in World War Two, pictures of smoul
dering bomb damage after air raids, women working in armaments factories or cheerily walking towards them on the street, line-of-battleships, and a Land Army girl between two enormous dray horses. A mythologised era, perhaps, but evidence all the same that Britain too had done everything of which it was capable in the common struggle.

  Being asked to open the exhibition with a short speech was an honour not to be refused. After we had finished our stint at a press conference I talked for about twenty minute on life in England at that time, taking the opportunity to apologise for Blair’s absence at the recent celebrations, and saying with tongue in cheek that he should be opening the show not me, though I was very glad to be taking his place – which went down well with the mainly Russian audience.

  I mentioned my work as a capstain lathe operator making parts of Merlin engines for Lancaster bombers in a factory run by women and youths like me, with a couple of tool setters held back from the army to supervise. The war was still on, but ended soon afterwards, though I had already enlisted into the Fleet Air Arm. Little could I have realised, on 8 May 1945, that I would be in Moscow sixty years later for the anniversary of the great event.

  I remembered that we were given the day off in the factory to celebrate. In the crowded White Horse pub that evening, with my parents and a girlfriend, we saw a hefty woman munitions worker in heavy dark spectacles doing a can-can on one of the tables, flashing her Union Jack bloomers with every high step.

  In conclusion I duplicated a press report taken in Morse from our short wave receiver of the time telling the world that Hitler was dead. In those days I could read it fast enough because we had been tutored in the Air Training Corps by an ex-police wireless operator.