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

by Walton, Caroline

  ***

  An old man is fishing from the quay. He calls me over and points across the Volga. “You see some strange fish in these parts, my lad. Over there is a place called Gavrilova Field. That is where prisoners go to die, full of dysentery and pellagra. They send them from camps all over the country. They’re already goners by the time they reach Gavrilova Field.”

  I run away from the man. For a long time after that I try not to think about the place across the river.

  ***

  I hide behind the latrine with a rock in my hand. Auntie Praskovya waddles through the mud clutching her squares of newsprint. She’s a bad-tempered old lady who chases us boys out of her yard because she says we stop her chickens laying. Wood creaks. A sigh. Burying my nose in my collar I lift the trapdoor and hurl my brick into the cess-pit. It splashes. There’s a loud shriek. I run off, glancing back to see Auntie Praskovya pulling up her drawers. “Ivan Petrov, you’ll be an alcoholic when you grow up!”

  I laugh at her prediction. I don’t like alcohol, although I know it’s the joy of adult life. I’ve seen them get drunk often enough. Most people drink meths or some other vodka substitute because the real thing is expensive and hard to get hold of. Besides, you can never tell what has been added to it; everyone knows someone who’s died from adulterated vodka.

  We call methylated spirits Blue Danube. It’s sold for lighting primus stoves and is in great demand. It is even drunk at weddings, with fruit syrup added to the women’s glasses. My mother usually drinks surgical spirit which she steals from her factory, adding burned sugar to improve the flavour. She sneers at the ‘arse-washing’ water of the barracks’ families, which is home-brew made from hot water, sugar and yeast. Every room has a tub of this muddy liquid bubbling away under a blanket in the corner.

  On birthdays and holidays the adults give us children glasses of beer. Knowing what’s expected of us we stagger about, clutching at walls. They laugh, but I know the adults also exaggerate their drunkenness. Victor’s father once spent a night in the police cells for pissing against a statue of Lenin. “Lucky I was drunk,” he said afterwards. “If I’d been sober I’d have got ten years.”

  ***

  “Get washed, Vanya,” my mother orders. “We have company today.”

  “But I want to go to Victor’s.” I hate it when my parents drink.

  “Enough! You will stay here.”

  The visitors arrive.

  “Oh Anna Konstantinova, what a marvellous spread!” cries our lady guest.

  Ma smirks: “Quantum satis!” She has laid out a meal on her best crockery, which Dobrinin brought back from Germany after the war, along with three guns, a cutthroat razor and a radio. He was not an important man and carried away only two suitcases of war trophies, but that’s not the impression he gives. According to him, he rode into Berlin on a tank, and he hints that he had the ear of Marshal Konev himself.

  At table, Dobrinin dominates the conversation, beginning with his wartime feats before moving on to even more unlikely subjects: “Anton, Anton Pavlovich that is, always said he preferred vodka to philosophy as a hangover cure.”

  ‘Chekhov died the year before you were born,’ I think to myself, ‘not that our guests will say anything. It won’t even occur to them that you might not have known him personally. They’re too impressed by your aristocratic origins. They wouldn’t dream of questioning you.’

  Our guests present Dobrinin with a bottle of vodka for the toasts. My stepfather goes to the dresser and rummages around, finally laying his hands on the neck of a cut-glass decanter pillaged from some Prussian farmhouse. As he pulls out the vessel there is a gasp and a giggle. I bolt for of the door.

  An egg lies in the bottom of the decanter, the result of one of my experiments. I had heard that eggs lost their shape when soaked in strong vinegar. I tried it and it worked. I rolled the softened egg into a sausage and dropped it into the decanter. Then I poured in cold water and the egg returned to its normal shape, but of course I couldn’t retrieve it. I pushed the decanter to the back of the dresser and forgot about it.

  I stay out until very late. When I come in Dobrinin is snoring on the sofa and my mother is in bed. In the morning my stepfather begins to recall the outrage of the day before. I run out of the door before he can hit me.

  I go to my grandmother’s. Granny Nezhdanova lives with her son Volodya in a wooden house built on a pile of slag beside the sulphur plant. Long ago Granny and her husband fetched soil from the steppe to spread around the house but gradually the groundwater rose and poisoned all their plants. Only goosefoot grows as tall as my head. The water from their well is yellow and tastes of TNT. Granny and Volodya live on potatoes, salted cabbage, bread and milk baked in the oven. My mother is ashamed of her family and rarely visits or sends them money. Granny’s husband died when I was a baby. She survives by buying needles and thread from a local policeman and selling them in the market.

  Uncle Volodya is home and to cheer me up he suggests I come into the city with him. My uncle is only six years older than me. He started work when he was fifteen, but he studies at night school and won a Stalin scholarship to Kuibyshev polytechnic. Volodya is very cheerful and sharp-witted. I’m proud to go out with my tall uncle, even though he always wears felt boots, winter and summer, to work and to dances.

  We trot off to the station, swinging a pail of baked milk between us. The local train lurches in and we board without tickets. The carriage is packed with passengers squeezed onto wooden benches, all smoking rough tobacco or nibbling sunflower seeds. The floor crunches as we walk. At a stop further down the line we jump off and run to a carriage that the conductors have already checked.

  At each station beggars scramble aboard and shuffle through the carriages, telling stories or singing rhymes. Most are war invalids, missing arms or legs; some have been blinded or burnt in tanks. “I returned half-dead from the Front to find a lieutenant’s cap on my peg,” says a shabby beggar, holding out his hand. A legless man rolls through on a trolley, rattling a tin.

  I saw it all, I took Berlin,

  I wiped out thirty Hun,

  I filled buckets with blood,

  So give me something for a drink!

  The beggars have escaped from invalid homes where they rotted with hunger and boredom. They sleep in stations and cold entranceways, with nothing to do but drink to forget their grief. The most unfortunate are the ‘samovars,’ who lost both their arms and legs. You see them gathered outside markets and stations, begging from their little trolleys. They appeal to their ‘dear brothers and sisters,’ echoing the words of Stalin during the German advance.

  As the train pulls into a suburb of Kuibyshev hideous screams and curses come from the platform. A group of homeless women are fighting their way aboard. They stink of drink and sweat; their bloated faces are bruised. They thrust scrawny babies at passengers as they beg. One of them grabs my arm. “Little son, for the love of God give me something for the baby!”

  There’s a blackish crust of dried blood where her nose should be. I turn away, curling up on the seat and hugging my knees. I wish I had something to give her.

  I enjoy walking around the city with my uncle, meeting up with his friends and laughing at their jokes. At the end of the day we return to Chapaevsk with our empty pail. As we walk down the muddy lane that leads to her house Granny’s voice reaches us: “That puffed-up little tart! Her own mother not good enough for her! Well Nyurochka, what does your fancy man get up to when you’re on night shift? Don’t come crying to your old mother then!”

  Granny is in the throes of her weekly drinking spree. Her padded jacket is torn and her headscarf has fallen off into the mud.

  Two policemen are stumbling around in the mud trying to catch her. Nimbly, she dodges their grasp, spins around and launches herself at the nearest man: “Fuck you! Parasite!”

  She pushes the policeman so hard that he staggers backwards and sinks up to his knees in a rut. Granny laughs and lies down in t
he deepest puddle. “Come and get me you old goats!”

  Guessing that they won’t want to soil their uniforms, she relaxes, shuts her eyes and breaks into a dirty song. Volodya goes up to her. I hang back behind him.

  “Come on, Ma, let’s go home.”

  Granny allows him to pull her up and she meekly follows him to the house. Once indoors Volodya takes off her muddy clothes and makes up her bed. Soon she is snoring peacefully. Volodya sits down to scrape the mud off her boots. I take my leave.

  Although my mother forbids me to visit Granny I like to call on her. I sit on the wooden bench by her door and wait for her to come back from the market. She stops at the gate, looking at me tenderly with a jug of her famous milk clutched to her breast. “Ah, shit of my shit, when you’re a big boy you’ll give your old Granny three kopecks for her hair-of-the-dog.”

  My grandmother is very good-natured when sober. She never bothers me about my homework or my performance at school; she’s simply sure that I do better than all the rest. When I tell her about my quarrels with my stepfather she curses him and my mother but she doesn’t approve of my attempts to run away. She always sends me back home at night.

  Perhaps it is because of Granny that I like neither drinking nor drunks.

  ***

  My first drinking party is on New Year’s Eve at Victor’s house. We lay out a feast of bread and herring and prepare ten litres of home-brew from sugar I filch from home. Someone brings a bottle of vodka. Victor’s parents watch our preparations with amusement. The next day we feel so terrible we don’t want to repeat the experiment for a long time.

  By the time I reach fifteen I’ve been drunk no more than a dozen times. I don’t yet have the taste for alcohol, though I will join my friends if they’re drinking. Besides, it’s unwise to come home with spirits on my breath because I have an informer sleeping in my room. Marusya is our home-help. A country girl who can barely read or write, she was born during the famine of 1920 when babies ran the risk of being stolen and butchered by their starving neighbours. But Marusya survived both the famine and collectivisation. When war broke out she escaped her farm by going to work in a munitions plant. There was a shortage of labour so they didn’t ask for her passport.4 Marusya poured mustard gas into shells on a conveyor belt. A partition separated the workers, so that an exploding shell would kill only one person. You don’t have to be literate to understand the dangers of such a job and Marusya was happy to come to work for my parents. Smallpox has blinded her in one eye and left her face pitted and scarred. I call her Cyclops.

  With peasant cunning Cyclops notices that I have no one on my side, so she tries to ingratiate herself with my mother by getting me into trouble. But she goes too far when she accuses me of stealing her purse. My mother tells her to be careful.

  “My son may be a hooligan but he’s not a thief.”

  A few minutes later Cyclops is feigning surprise at finding her purse under a pile of clothes.

  “As I went out in the summer morn to see my lover off to war…” she sings as she makes pies. I snigger at the thought of that old maid having a lover. The phone rings. Cyclops thunders out of the kitchen shouting “I’m coming!” as though the caller can hear her. It is Uncle Volodya for me.

  “Come to the football match this afternoon. Bersol are playing Kuibyshev Metallurgists.”

  I meet Volodya at the triumphal entrance arch to Chapaevsk’s stadium. It has no stands and no fence separating spectators from the pitch. The teams play with as much gusto as we boys do. Everyone throws himself into the attack and no one bothers about defence. Just before full time a penalty is awarded to the Kuibyshev side. The spectators rush onto the pitch and stand around the penalty area yelling abuse at the striker. It works. The shot is so weak our keeper saves it with ease. The referee tries to clear the pitch but the crowd threatens to turn him into soap and someone punches him.

  Volodya and I stream happily away from the ground with the other men and boys. Some are taking nips from bottles stuffed into their pockets. The autumn air smells of damp birch leaves and bonfires. Smoke rises from bathhouses by the river where people are making samogon.

  We run into Victor who produces a bottle of Spirol from his pocket. This is an alcohol-based medication that is rubbed on the head to cure dandruff. You can buy it cheaply at any chemists. Like many local men, Victor’s father drinks Spirol. He also knows prison recipes for preparing alcohol from paint-thinner, furniture polish and glue.

  Volodya refuses the Spirol and goes home to look after his mother. It’s her drinking day. Victor and I tackle the bottle. The oily potion tastes disgusting, making me want to throw up. But at the same time a warm feeling spreads through my head and chest. I feel invulnerable. “Victor! I know why people drink!” I burst out laughing and think I’ll never stop.

  ***

  Dobrinin watches me like an eagle, waiting for an excuse to explode. My mother and sister eat in heavy silence. Unable to bear the tension any longer, I balance my knife on the salt pot and spin the blade. Dobrinin leaps to his feet, banging the table with his fist.

  “You see! You see that little bastard?” he turns to my mother, “I feed him, put shoes on his feet… Get out! Leech!”

  I run out of the house to my friend Gelka Kazin’s. I hope he’ll have enough for a bottle of Spirol or Blue Danube, but that day he has other things on his mind.

  “Vanya, I have to get away from this damned place. The neighbours say Ma’s a prostitute, just because men come here. I’m always getting into fights over it.”

  Gelka has no father. To make ends meet his mother takes in sewing. She mends jackets and runs up shirts and trousers so it shouldn’t be surprising that men come to her room. People in the barracks can’t live without gossip.

  Gelka’s mother is always kind to me. When she comes in I tell her about my trouble with Dobrinin.

  “Of course he’s only my stepfather. My real father is working as a secret agent in a capitalist country. He’s not allowed to contact us.”

  I still hope that he’ll turn up one day, when the judges in Moscow realise their mistake. Or perhaps Stalin himself will hear of the miscarriage of justice and grant him a pardon.

  “Oh they must have shot him years ago,” says Gelka casually.

  “No!” I make a headlong rush at Gelka, forgetting that he is our school boxing champion. He pushes me back into the corner. His mother leaps up and slaps his face.

  “Get out!” she screams. “Take no notice, Vanya. I’m sure your father is doing valuable and patriotic work.” She speaks firmly, but she has tears in her eyes.

  Gelka and I patch things up and decide to leave town together. We’ll become sailors. Grandfather Dobrinin writes to the Moscow naval ministry for a prospectus of all the academies in the USSR. We decide the Archangelsk academy will suit us best. It is on the open sea, unlike Baku or Astrakhan, and will be cheaper to reach than Vladivostock. Most important, we know that there’ll be less competition than for Odessa or Leningrad. A top student in Chapaevsk is not the same as a top student in Moscow.

  My parents tell me not to be in a hurry to leave, but I’m sure they’ll sigh with relief when I finally walk out of the door.

  2 The Cheka were the Soviet political police formed by Lenin shortly after the October revolution in 1917.

  3 From To the Young Poet, by Valerii Bryusov (1873-1924).

  4 Peasants had no passports, so that they were effectively tied to their collective farms.

  2

  Siberia

  The 1950s

  “How well he plays the balalaika!” we shout as the boy from Tula wakes up, howling and shaking his hands. Gelka slipped lighted strips of paper between his fingers while he slept.

  Boys from all over the country have come to the Archangelsk Naval Academy to sit the entrance exams. Our dormitory is as noisy as a stack of nesting gulls. Gelka and I team up with three lads from Chelyabinsk to guard each other at night.

  After our exams we wander th
e wooden streets of Archangelsk waiting for our results. Although I do well in the exams the Academy rejects me. My father is an Enemy of the People, and that is on my records. The navy does not want me in its ranks.

  Term starts and we have to leave the Academy. My friends and I find an abandoned sea hunter moored near a timber yard. We move in, building bonfires on deck, drinking vodka, baking potatoes and singing pirate songs far into the night. In the daytime we earn cash loading wooden planks on the docks. When the police turn up we explain we’re waiting for money from home. They leave us alone. Gelka’s mother wires his return fare and he goes back to Chapaevsk. I’m determined to avoid that fate. I’ve tasted freedom for the first time since running away to the Front with Slavka.

  Snow begins to fall. It is too cold to stay on our ship. I cross the Dvina to Solombala island, which is the real port of Archangelsk, and find a place in a seaman’s hostel.

  “There are foreign sailors here,” the hostel’s Party instructor tells us. “You must be very careful. If anyone from a capitalist country approaches you, report it immediately. Do not pick up anything you see in the streets. Agents provocateurs put chocolates and attractive magazines in bins so that they can take photos of Russians rummaging through rubbish.”

  I wonder if our newspaper photos of American scavengers are taken in the same way.

  Despite the warnings we nod and grin at the foreign sailors. Mainly Norwegians, they’re simple lads like us, interested in drinking and girls.