I am released in December, after exactly a year. Oleg has to stay inside for another three months. We arrange to keep in touch. His mother and sister meet me at the camp gate and see me off on a flight to Kuibyshev. I don’t intend to go back to my wife. I can’t forgive her for 365 days and nights behind barbed wire.
17 Bitches were renegades from the criminal element traditionally known as ‘thieves-by-code’ .
‘Thieves by code’ were a criminal caste who refused to work, marry, own property or accumulate money. All stolen goods were pooled. When arrested they would not cooperate with the authorities in any way. From the 1920s onward the Soviet regime set out to destroy this old criminal underworld. Some thieves-by-code gave in under torture and agreed to cooperate with the authorities. They were then known as ‘bitches.’ In the 1950s special planeloads of these bitches, MVD agents among them, were flown from one camp to another where they fought for control.
If the authorities placed a thief-by-code in a bitches zone he would kill the first person he came across in order to get a transfer. When the death penalty was reintroduced the camp wars quietened down. By the late 1960s thieves-by-code no longer existed except in Georgia. Their successors were known as thieves of the western type, who ran organised crime and illicit business. These criminals formed the Russian mafia and the old type of thief disappeared.
18 Goats were either informers or witnesses for the prosecution.
19 SVPs were an internal camp police force recruited from the prisoners.
20 This meant she was prohibited from living in the 20 largest cities in the USSR.
5
Opera
“Ahh, Christ just walked barefoot through my heart!” Ivan Shirmanov sighs as he knocks back his first drink of the morning. We are toasting my freedom with a renewed sense of brotherhood.
“Thousands of books have been written about prisons,” says Ivan, “but everyone’s experience is unique, especially their first. It’s been likened to first love, but in the case of love there are doubts: will there be a second? In the case of prison there are no doubts. There will be another and another…”
We finish the bottle and wander down to the market-place, picking up more vodka on the way. There are a few alkashi21 gathered there. Beaming all over his moonlike face, Ivan offers them a bottle. He watches them drink with an expression as tender as that of a mother spooning porridge into her child’s mouth.
Ivan introduces me to one of the group: “This is our Levanevsky who is nothing like his famous namesake.22 You can always trust him with cash to go and buy a bottle.”
Levanevsky only takes one glass from us.
“Have another?” I offer.
“I don’t want any more,” he replies. “God is no lovesick swain blinded by his passion. He sees everything. So long as he knows I’m trying he’ll give me another chance to sort myself out.”
I know that in an hour he’ll be shaking like death.
In the market we come across Sedoy the Poet of All Russia. He is standing on an old lady’s sunflower seed stall and declaiming to passing shoppers:
Through Stavropol, unrecognised,
I wander as a shadow.
And I practise onanism
On International Women’s Day!
“Sedoy was once a teacher,” explains Ivan, “a head of department. He was so strict his students nicknamed him Crocodile. Then he took to drink. Now his mother looks after him. Every day you see him in the market in a clean shirt and freshly-pressed trousers.
“There are a lot of alkashi like Sedoy. As former members of the intelligentsia they blame society for their condition. They think it owes them something.” Ivan puffs up his chest. “A worker like me would be ashamed to beg or steal; I’ll take any portering job I can find.”
Amongst the alkashi I meet former teachers, doctors, and engineers. No one respects them for their education; respect is earned by not stealing drinks and not always having your hair-of-the-dog at another’s expense. When a person trembles from a hangover it is no great sin to cadge a drink, but the man who does this every morning soon annoys his companions. When alkashi notice that someone is trying to take advantage of them they spit in his face and drive him away. Outcasts can be seen hanging around the fringes of the group, usually sporting black eyes.
Nonetheless, the majority of alkashi try to live at the expense of those around them. ‘There are enough fools in this world to be taken advantage of,’ is their attitude, and the more people they con the better pleased with themselves they are. Even more degraded are those who see no meaning in life at all. They live from one drink to the next. If you send them for vodka they’ll disappear; if you drink with them they’ll go through your pockets when you pass out and probably treat you to a bottle over the head as well. One man does this to me and then has the front to come up the next day, look into my eyes and ask: “How come we lost each other yesterday?”
Perhaps he really remembers nothing. Besides, I couldn’t swear it was he who hit me. I was too drunk myself to catch him by the hand to look into his face.
***
The pay I collected from camp soon runs out and I have to look for a job. That means sobering up. I know that if I carry on sleeping at Ivan’s I’ll be led into temptation, so I go to an old friend’s flat. Igor Gorbunov comes from the northern Urals where the people speak so fast it’s hard to understand them. Like me, he loves reading, but unlike me he is no drunkard, and in the past he has helped Olga extricate me from drinking parties.
Igor has visitors and they are preparing to go camping in the forest. I decline an invitation to join them as I know they’ll be taking bottles with them. They set off, leaving me alone in the flat. I sit on the balcony with a book. Across the street is a vodka shop. Troikas are forming at the entrance, pooling their money and sending in one of their number to buy a bottle. It’s nearly closing time and sales are speeding up. I need cigarettes so I go down to the shop and join the surging crowd of men around the counter. Elbowing through, I hold out my money amongst the forest of hands.
“Cigarettes!”
“How many?” the assistant asks.
“Two packets.”
She frowns at the note I hand her and moves towards the till for change. To save her the journey I involuntarily add: “And three bottles.”
I could leave the bottles on the counter but that would look foolish in front of all those people. ‘Well, I can always give them to an acquaintance outside,’ I reason to myself, but I don’t know any of the men who are milling around the shop. So I return to Igor’s flat armed to the teeth, put the bottles in his fridge and sit down on the balcony with my book. I try to read but the image of those bottles keeps floating into my mind, breaking my concentration. Almost without thinking, I put the book aside, stand up, go through the living room into the kitchen, and open the fridge door.
The first glassful is hard to swallow. I retch. Holding my breath, I manage to force it down. After a while my throat relaxes and the mouthfuls flutter down like tiny birds. Having seen off the first bottle I feel the need of an audience. I could call on Igor’s neighbours but that might be unwelcome, even with two bottles. They hardly know me. Instead I wander down to the yard. I recognise the metal spaceship in the children’s play-area. It has been remodelled from the Decembrist bottle that used to stand at the factory gates. A drunken tune emanates from the spaceship, calling to me like a siren song. Next morning I wake up in the dust without money, documents or shoes.
***
Olga opens the door: “I’ve been expecting you.”
I enter without a word and clean myself up. For a few days we barely speak and I keep out of her way. Finally she can’t bear it any longer.
“Vanya, it’s my fault you went to prison, but you can’t feel sorry for yourself all your life. Make up your mind. Either we divorce, or you put it all behind you.”
My resentment boils over. “Thanks to you I was stuck in that hole for a year. Can you imagine th
e endless searches and body counts, or what it’s like to sit down to dinner with a man who’s murdered his mother and another who has raped a three-year-old girl? To have the biggest idiot in the province shout at you for no reason when you can’t answer back? And you know what the worst thing about camp is? That you’re never alone for one minute. Sometimes I felt like committing murder myself.
“You put me through all that and now you want me to behave as though nothing happened. And don’t threaten me with divorce. I know you have nowhere to go. You won’t humiliate yourself again by going back to your parents.”
“All right, I made a mistake, but you can’t use that to justify your behaviour forever. You blame me because it gives you an excuse to drink, but in truth you drink because you’re a coward. You can’t face work, or me, or even poor Natasha. If you can stop blaming me I’m willing to support you until you get paid.”
But prison has put an unbridgeable gulf between us. I feel as though I’ve crossed a boundary beyond which there can be no return to normal life. Olga will never understand what I’ve been through, and she’s mistaken if she thinks I can rebuild a life with her as though nothing has happened.
The factory tells me I can start in the new year. I fill in the time by hanging around with my alkashi friends, who listen to my camp stories with sympathy and even admiration. Their attention fuels my self-pity and I begin to enjoy my role as sufferer. The realisation of this fact does not make me proud of myself, so I submerge myself in drink.
One morning I crawl home to find the flat empty. Olga has taken almost everything that belongs to her and Natasha. I figure she’s trying to teach me a lesson and so I refuse to chase her. A week passes. I phone her work. They tell me she’s resigned. I’m shocked. They must be lying to me. She has nowhere to go.
Olga left no money so I sell the furniture, including my precious East German bookcase. I haul it downstairs at five in the morning, tie it to Natasha’s sledge and drag it to the market. Alas, while I’m taking a smoke-break the wind turns my bookcase over and its beautiful glass doors smash. With great difficulty I convert it into a bottle, which my customer helps me drink.
In the end I sell the only living thing left in the flat, Natasha’s hedgehog Yashka. The poor thing is hungry as there is no food in the house. I take it to the shop Nature, not really hoping for money. I think that at least someone might take it home for their children, but the shop assistant gives me one rouble and seventeen kopecks for Yashka. She knows the price of a bottle.
Finally I go to my wife’s sister Ludmila, who tells me that Olga and Natasha are fine. They’re living in a small mining town, they’ve found a flat and Natasha is going to a modern kindergarten. Ludmila has promised not to disclose their whereabouts. That is the only information I can glean, but I feel calmer. Any decision I take will have to be made with a sober head and so I go home to sleep.
For two days I do not leave the house. Although there is a bottle of vodka in the kitchen I leave it untouched. As each hour passes I feel worse. I can’t sleep for a minute. The radio bothers me so I switch it off. I lie down and try to read. A snow-storm howls outside; the wind rattles the window. On the third night I hear breaking glass. ‘Bad luck,’ I think. Someone must have forgotten to shut their ventilation window and it’s blown open and shattered.
The doorbell rings. I go to answer it. On the threshold stands my neighbour Voronin in his underpants. He is holding a gun, a 16 calibre rifle.
“Was it you who broke my window?” he growls.
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Show me your balcony,” he demands, and pushes past me into the living-room.
Our balcony is next to his bedroom window. He tries the glass door but it won’t open because of the snow piled against it.
“I thought you’d gone out onto your balcony and broken my window with a mop.”
“What would I want to do that for?”
“Who the hell knows what goes on in your mind, you’ve been pissed for two months,” he snaps, and goes home.
If I had stepped onto the balcony there would have been footprints in the snow, and there are none. Something isn’t right. Why would I break his window? I scarcely know Voronin. He is the head doctor in the clinic where Olga works. We exchange greetings on the stairs and his wife sometimes borrows matches. There’s no quarrel between us. After thinking hard about the incident I go to fetch some six-inch nails and a hammer. I nail the balcony door shut. Let them say what they like now! But the business still worries me. And a gun!
The more I think about it the more convinced I am that some sort of dirty trick is being played on me. Voronin knows that I have just come out of camp. He probably knows that Olga has left. He knows that I drink. Perhaps he wants to provoke me into some sort of criminal action. But why? What have I ever done to him? I can find no answer. The simplest solution would be to have a drink and forget it all but I decide not to succumb.
The next day I feel just as bad. It’s my third day without drinking. Nor have I eaten anything. I go into the kitchen and listen to the noises in the building around me. Voices come from the landing. I stand by the front door with my ear to the crack but all I can hear is babble, punctuated by whistles and shrieks.
I lie down to read again, but I can’t concentrate on my book. The lines dance before my eyes without making sense. I put the book down and lie waiting for nightfall, hoping for sleep to bring relief.
The acrid stench of burning cotton wool annoys me. Earlier in the day I threw my quilt into the stove to warm the room, and now I want to open a window but do not dare after the business with Voronin. I listen to noises outside. The wind has abated and the street roars with cement-mixers driving to the building site down the road.
I hear my name from the other side of the wall. Taking my metal mug, I place it against the door to listen, as I learned in prison. Bloody hell, they are discussing how to get me sent to jail!
“It didn’t work last night,” says Voronin.
“You must do something to get rid of that parasite.” I recognise the voice of a woman who lives on the floor above me. “How can I bring up my children decently with him around?”
“His poor wife,” says another, “no wonder she left him. Did you see the low-life he brought in last week?”
‘Hypocrites!’ I think, ‘You bitches aren’t averse to the bottle yourselves and when you’re drinking the whole block has to know about it.’
I consider jumping out on them but decide this might also be some sort of provocation. If they can accuse me of starting a fight I’ll go back to camp for sure.
Judging by the noise everyone in our block is assembled on the landing. Then I hear Voronin address his eldest son: “Dimka, go down into the street and throw stones at the windows. Then there’ll be material evidence to have Petrov arrested.”
I rejoice. They do not know that I’ve nailed up the balcony door. But they are many and I am one. I know the disposition of the police well enough. They don’t need proof. Once they have their denunciations everything will proceed as smoothly as a knife through butter.
I turn off the light in order to see what’s happening in the street. Dimka walks about below, his eyes on the ground.
Hah, he won’t find any stones. The snow’s too deep.
Dimka begins to gather compressed lumps of snow thrown up by the cement mixers. He throws them at the windows of the block. Fortunately the lumps disintegrate before they reach the third floor.
I shake with fear and outrage. But I’m not going to give up without a fight, so I burst out onto the landing and press the doorbell of my next-door neighbour. I need a witness to prove my innocence. My neighbour, a Tatar called Piotr Tukhvatullin, opens the door, looks into my eyes and silently ushers me into the kitchen where he pours me a glass of after-shave.
“Drink!” he says, bringing out a chess board and playing with me for the rest of the night. Sunday morning dawns and Piotr takes me to the market with him. He spends th
e whole day buying animal skins from peasants, keeping me beside him and giving me a top-up whenever I start to get the jitters. I feel better, but back in the flat that evening the terror returns. In order not to hear the Voronins’ conversation I go into the kitchen. Apathy overwhelms me. Let them do to me what they will. Voices start to come through the wall adjoining the Tukhvatullins flat. Piotr’s wife is cursing him for getting mixed up with me. He defends himself rather half-heartedly.
I begin to suspect that something is not right at all. I go into the toilet and pull the chain over and over again. Despite the noise of the water I can still hear the conversation on the other side of the wall.
‘Delirium tremens! The dt’s!’ Running into the kitchen I pull out my emergency supply but it doesn’t help. The Voronins have started to sing. An opera is coming from the other side of the wall. Voronin is singing solo in a bass voice:
From wall to wall with his mug
he runs and listens…
“He hears nothing!” a chorus of his relations responds.
It is music from Carmen. I laugh as tears run down my cheeks. Why the hell does it have to be opera? I’m an ignoramus where music is concerned. My only visit to the opera was a reward for washing our bedroom floor in Riga. I block my ears but the voices do not stop. But - if I know I’m hallucinating I haven’t completely lost control over myself. I have to do something, so I dress and go outside. It’s three in the morning. At the approach of a car I break into a sweat. A dog’s bark makes my scalp tingle and tighten in terror, but I press on and manage to reach the first aid post on the main road.
They put me in an ambulance and drive me to the psychiatric hospital at Komsomolsk. Two nurses escort me through the foyer, weaving around male and female patients who are waltzing like somnambulists to the strains of The Blue Danube. I laugh till my stomach aches.
Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes Page 9