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

by Walton, Caroline

  By the time we reach Kazan we are on first name terms and sharing our food. Like every carriage on every long distance train in the country, ours has its joker, its card-trickster, its storyteller, and its drinkers. We’re even blessed with a pair of newlyweds. The husband Mitya is an unpleasant young Komsomol activist, so possessive of his wife that he forbids her to alight at stops to stretch her legs. His bride Lena doesn’t seem suited to him at all and we wonder what could have brought about their union.

  It turns out that Mitya and Lena were at medical school together in Voroshilovgrad. When they graduated they were posted to Sakhalin, an island so distant it almost touches Japan. Lena has never been away from home before and she was afraid to travel such a long way by herself, so she took Mitya as her husband and protector.

  A young sailor in our carriage takes a fancy to Lena. He confides in me as we stand smoking in the little space between carriages: “Ivan, do me a favour and set up a game of chess with Mitya. I want to have a word with his wife.”

  The sailor lures Lena into the smoking compartment where he drips words of honey and poison into her ear. They seem to work, for the clandestine affair continues through western Siberia and along the Amur. Lena probably doesn’t even notice Lake Baikal or the bust of Stalin carved into a mountain near Amazar. The rest of us do our best to keep the unsuspecting Mitya occupied.

  Finally Lena makes up her mind. At Khabarovsk she hides in the next carriage with her sailor while Mitya alights alone. He weeps as he sorts out his belongings. I almost feel sorry for him. Still, no doubt he’ll forget Lena as he forges his Party career.

  When we reach Vladivostock I say goodbye to Lena and her sailor. As I watch them walk away through the station I wonder if her suitor will live up to his promises. Then I put on my rucksack and catch a tram to the Central Meteorological Office.

  They send me to work as second radio operator aboard the Franz Mehring. We sail to weather stations around the Sea of Okhotsk, bringing food, kerosene and alcohol. This spirit is 95 degrees proof, for normal vodka freezes in the Siberian cold. Drunk neat or mixed with a handful of snow, it’s the hardest currency in the region. A bottle gets you anything you want. At each station the meteorologists greet us like long-lost relatives and together we toast our arrival.

  ***

  The station at Khaningda has been silent for a year. Not expecting to find anyone there, we’re astonished to see a woman waving to us from the shore as we approach. The woman is hysterical. We give her vodka to calm her but every time she opens her mouth she weeps. She has a young daughter with her. We take them aboard and tell them they’ll get medical care at Okhotsk.

  As we sail the woman, whose name is Marina, recovers enough to tell her story: “At the beginning of autumn three men arrived. They said they were fishermen who’d lost their net. We let them into the station but they had knives… they spared me and my daughter Anna. They had escaped from a Kolyma camp. They smashed the radio equipment, ate our food and made spirits from our sugar. They forced me to cook for them; they threatened to kill Anna if I didn’t.

  “Vladivostock sent a rescue party, but the convicts saw it in the distance. They took us with them into the taiga and waited. The rescuers found our station abandoned and went away again.

  “When the spring thaw came the convicts set off across the taiga to a railhead. They took most of the food stores with them, leaving us only potatoes and dried fish. Thank God neither Anna nor I fell ill.”

  As Marina tells her story Anna sits in deep shock. She stares at us with frightened eyes, not moving a muscle.

  At Okhotsk we learn that the convicts who held Marina and Anna prisoner at Khaningda finally gave themselves up. Defeated by the taiga, they begged to be allowed back to camp.

  After reloading we sail south to Shikatan in the Lesser Kurile islands. The port is inhabited by a colony of women who process catches of fish from the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean. Some are labour recruits; others are former prisoners from the Kolyma camps. Conditions there are almost as bad as in the camps: the women live in bleak barracks and their clothes are always wet and filthy. Their lives consist of working, drinking and fighting.

  I want to go ashore to find a bar at Shikatan, but we’re advised to stay on board ship. They tell us sailors have been sexually assaulted by gangs of women who roam the town at night.

  On its return voyage the Franz Mehring puts me ashore at Adimi point. I am to go inland to work as a radio operator at the village of Akza. An Udege7 called Viktor Kaza joins me, with a couple of meteorologists who are travelling even further into the taiga. We put our belongings on a horse and cart and set off on foot. I never dreamed it would be so hard to walk on crutches. Towards the end of the day I’m exhausted and throw away my heavy coat. Without a word Viktor goes back to fetch it for me.

  Our first stopping-place, Samarga, is a miserable collection of moss-covered wooden huts strung out across an isthmus within a bend of the river. There’s a fishing collective, an elementary school and a hospital. The buildings are raised on stone piles to protect them from flooding. Long tables for gutting fish stand outside. The debris is eaten by gulls or washed away by storms. The air stinks of rotten fish. I used to think the cries of seabirds romantic, but in Samarga they remind me of the drunken beggar-women on Chapaevsk trains.

  The fast-flowing Samarga river takes great skill to navigate. Victor Kaza arranges for a fellow Udege, Shurka the Grouse-Catcher, to guide us upstream. However Shurka is busy drinking up his pay from a previous voyage and a week passes before he’s sober enough to steer a boat again. Eventually we set out in an ulmaga, a long boat made from a hollowed tree-trunk. Its prow is flattened into a shovel-shape so that it glides over submerged rocks. At waterfalls we climb out and walk upriver while Shurka and his son carry the boat on their shoulders.

  Shurka the Grouse-Catcher punts the boat from the prow while his wife paddles from the stern. Their son lies on the floor of the boat sucking lump sugar. I fear that at any instant the ulmaga will overturn or be split by a rock. Shurka deploys great skill in keeping it head-on into the current; if he misjudges an angle the boat will swing around and be swept off downstream.

  Back in Samarga I watched Shurka sign his contract with us. The sweat stood out on his forehead as he struggled to steer a pencil across the paper. Yet with a boat-pole in his hand he’s a virtuoso, reading the river like a book. Unbothered by midges, he takes advantage of every break to catch fish or shoot grouse.

  When we reach our destination Shurka comes to me in a temper because he had some money deducted from his pay ‘as a tax on childlessness.’

  “I’ve got eleven children.”

  “You have to fill in a form,” I explain.

  He stares at me in astonishment.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll fill in your forms for you. Here, let’s toast Dalstroi.”8

  I open a bottle of vodka and Shurka calms down.

  Akza is a cluster of 20 huts, an elementary school, a shop and a medical post. The clubhouse burned down the year before. A few dozen Udege and nine Russians live in the village. A man from Leningrad named Kryuchkov has been here since 1924. After graduating from university he contracted TB. The doctors advised him to leave Leningrad’s damp and foggy atmosphere. Every Udege family in Akza has a child who resembles Kryuchkov.

  Dr Yablonsky is also from Leningrad. Once he was head of a university department and spoke four languages but he was exiled during the purge of the Leningrad intelligentsia.9 Now Yablonsky has the shaking hands and watery eyes of an alcoholic. He forgot his European languages long ago and learned Udege in their place.

  A third Russian is Pasha Dyachkovsky, a skilled hunter with luxuriant curving moustaches. He’s married to a local Udege woman, Duzga. Kryuchkov warns me that when drunk Pasha wets his bed and then he beats his wife mercilessly.

  A few days after my arrival we gather for a drink to celebrate Pasha’s birthday. After a while he feels the urge to urinate. He rises from th
e table, grabs Duzga and starts pulling out her hair in clumps like carrots. We leap up to restrain him but this offends his soul to the core. He goes home, barricades himself in, climbs up to the attic with his gun and takes aim at anyone who comes within his field of vision. This is serious, as he lives above the shop which Duzga runs. We need to buy food. Fortunately for us, the next day Pasha decides to go hunting in the taiga.

  “He usually conquers his hangover this way,” Dr Yablonsky explains.

  There is very little to do in Akza apart from hunt and drink. I can’t hunt because of my leg, so I make myself popular by filling in for the observers when they’re out hunting or too drunk to work. Of course I drink too, but I have a good stomach for vodka. Even after two bottles I can tap out: ‘The weather report from Akza is…’

  ***

  It is evening and we’ve gathered for a drink. I grow excited. Leaping onto a chair I start to declaim some of Yesenin’s poems. “Do any of you understand these lines?” I shout. “Buried out here in the taiga you’ve never known the world he describes – or you’ve already forgotten it.”

  The next day it occurs to me that Kryuchkov has seen Yesenin in the flesh. I realise I should apologise to him, but somehow I can never bring myself to do so. After that I keep out of Kryuchkov’s way, hanging back if I see him enter the shop ahead of me.

  On my day off I pack a bottle, a book and some food in my rucksack and walk into the taiga. I stop beneath a tree, open my bottle and settle down to read. But my attention wanders, caught by the loveliness of my surroundings. I never imagined that this earth could be so beautiful. I am surrounded by hills clothed in larch and cedar. Where there has been a fire and the trees have not yet grown back the slopes are covered in brilliant red flowers. Now I have no regrets that I’ve left ‘civilisation.’

  The other Russians do not share my enthusiasm. When I praise the beauty of the taiga to Pasha he snaps: “Go and play in the dirt you young wipe-snot,” and strides off.

  For the first time in my life I have my own room. It contains a stove and a camp bed. A door from the burned-down club serves as a table with blocks of wood for stools. The pile of deerskins I sleep on is as soft as a feather-bed. I mention to Victor Kaza that I need cooking utensils. “Come with me,” he says, and leads me out into the taiga. In a small clearing we come upon a larch which has been festooned like a Christmas tree with aluminium spoons, pans and pieces of cloth.

  “In my grandfather’s time we laid the dead person in an ulmaga and hung it from the tree,” says Victor. “We put berries and salted mushrooms in the boat. The dead had everything they needed for their journey into the next world.”

  Victor unties a frying pan and gives it to me. I feel a little sorry for him as he is a misfit among the other Udege. His hunchback prevents him from hunting and he tries to compensate for this by flaunting his seven years’ schooling. This is useless as the Udege value hunting far more highly than literacy. Victor has a mentally-retarded Russian wife. I don’t know how she ended up at Akza but it’s obvious she’s been in a labour camp.

  “Lyuba you haven’t put your knickers on,” Pasha cries as she passes by.

  Lyuba grins and lifts the hem of her skirt over her head to reveal bright crimson bloomers. We all laugh at her until Victor emerges from their hut.

  “Lyuba, pull your chemise down,” he pulls her indoors. The watching Udege roar with laughter again, this time at Victor’s pretensions.

  February comes round and the entire settlement gives itself up to an orgy of drunkenness. The occasion is the pelt-collector’s annual visit. This man is Tsar, God and high court judge rolled into one. He rides up the frozen Samarga to buy furs, accompanied by horse-sleighs laden with goods for Duzga’s shop.

  The pelt-collector brings enough cash to pay three or four hunters. This is the only time of the year that the Udege see money, although they sometimes earn a little by guiding geologists or doing some building work. They go to the pelt-collector one by one, beginning with his relatives and drinking partners. No one dares cross him or he’ll refuse to buy their ‘soft gold,’ which is a state monopoly. After a day or two the collector takes back the money that the hunters have spent in Duzga’s shop. With this cash he pays the next group. This process lasts till all the hunters’ pay is in Duzga’s pocket and from there, of course, it goes back to the state.

  The Udege drink for days on end, quietening their babies with rags soaked in vodka. A few women have the foresight to take cash from their husbands’ pockets to buy flour, sugar, salt and dress material. The rest have to spend the year humbling themselves before Duzga, who gives credit because she enjoys having people in her debt. She’s the most powerful person in Akza and you have to take care not to make an enemy of her. When they’ve drunk all their pay the Udege go to sleep. A few days later the men emerge with their guns and head out into the taiga again.

  An old Udege known as Grandad Chilli drops in on me unannounced. I bustle about trying to make him comfortable, brushing cigarette butts and paper off a stool. He sits smoking roll-ups in silence. After half an hour he rises and walks out without a word. I’m worried, thinking that I might have done something to offend him. I don’t want to cross Grandad Chilli for I know he once killed a Russian teacher out of jealousy. When the police came for him he disappeared into the taiga for a long time. No one in the village denounced him.

  I tell Dr Yablonsky about the old man’s behaviour. “Don’t worry,” he reassures me, “the Udege only speak when they want to sell you something or buy vodka. That was simply what they call ‘paying a visit.’ He must like you. If you ask him he’ll show you his piece of quartz that has a seam of gold in it as thick as a finger. Last year he showed it to some geologists who were passing through here. He said he knew a place where there were many more like it. They hired him as a guide in return for as many cans of condensed milk as could drink. He led them by the nose for a few weeks until finally he confessed he had forgotten the place. They went back to the coast and now he’s waiting for more prospectors this summer. The Udege know what’ll happen if geologists find gold in the region.”

  After that I feel more comfortable with the taciturn Udege. We Russians are supposed to be civilized, and yet we waste so much effort on words which are at best empty and at worst cruel and deceptive.

  In summer the clubhouse is finally repaired, and to mark the occasion Samarga sends up the film The Age of Love with Lolita Torres. For once the Udege show excitement, even bringing babes-in-arms and their beloved dogs to watch. The projectionist is drunk and mixes up the reels, but no one notices.

  I’m hoping to save some money during my posting in the East but it proves impossible. As soon as I receive my pay I go over to Duzga to stock up on vodka. I decide to move to Yuge, the most remote station in the Primorye region. There is nowhere to spend money in Yuge so my wages will be saved for me in Samarga.

  I set off with a convoy of sledges bringing the annual delivery of post and supplies. As there is a severe frost we all have a good drink before we leave and top up along the way. I can’t walk over the rugged terrain so I’m strapped onto a sledge. As it mounts an incline my horse stumbles and falls, dragging my sledge after it. The horse breaks its leg and has to be shot. The sledge rolls on top of me, leaving me grazed but otherwise unhurt, or so I think. They give me vodka and tie me to another sledge. By the time we reach that night’s resting place I’ve sobered up enough to realise that I have broken my leg. In the morning they send me down to hospital in Samarga.

  The hospital has neither electricity nor plaster of Paris. It’s staffed by a doctor, a nurse and a medical assistant called Ivan Ivanich, who drinks continually out of homesickness. In the morning Ivan Ivanich’s hands shake so badly I have to light his cigarettes for him. The doctor refuses to let him help reset my leg. While the nurse shoves a phial of ether under my nose the doctor presses on my leg with all her strength. I pass out.

  When I come round I see the two women lying unconscious
on the floor. The inexperienced nurse must have inhaled the ether herself and somehow given the doctor a whiff of it too. My leg has to be put in splints again. It grows back curved like a sabre from hip to ankle.

  My deformity makes me horribly self-conscious. I had been thinking it was time I got married but now my hopes are dashed. I can’t imagine any normal woman wanting to marry a man with a leg like mine and I don’t want to end up with a wife like Victor’s Lyuba.

  HQ offers to send me to the coast but after all I’ve suffered I want to be as far from civilisation as possible. I insist on going to Yuge, so they send me up again on a sledge and I begin work there.

  In Yuge I learn that insects truly are the scourge of the taiga. Our observation station is full of bugs and the grass outside crawls with encephalitis ticks. Each time I cross the threshold of my hut I have to strip off and examine myself from head to foot. Down by the river where there’s little wind the midges surround me in clouds, biting straight through gauze into my skin. They make mosquitoes seem as harmless as butterflies. The only way to live in the taiga is to be like Shurka the Grouse-Catcher and take no notice of midge bites.

  Winter comes as a relief, but by now my tobacco has run out. I nearly go insane. Thoughts of cigarettes fill my days and my dreams at night. I pull out all the butts that have fallen between floorboards. I remember a place near the river where I tossed a half-smoked cigarette three weeks ago. When daylight comes I go out and fill a bucket with snow from that spot. I melt the snow on the stove and strike lucky, fishing out the soggy butt, drying and smoking it. I’ve never enjoyed a smoke so much in my life, but within ten minutes I’m prising up floor-boards again

  I grow bored with life in the deep taiga. Work takes up no more than two or three hours a day and there is nothing to do for the rest of the time. There are no books. I even miss the society of Akza.

  I start to think more and more about my pen friend Olga Vorobyova in Chapaevsk. We’ve been corresponding since my college days. Olga is a pretty, down-to-earth girl. Most importantly, when I write to her about my leg she doesn’t seem to be bothered. Her letters are full of questions about my plans for the future. I begin to think about returning to a normal life. Perhaps I’ll ask Olga to marry me. With the money I’ve saved here I’ll be able to rent a room so we won’t have to live with our parents.