“When I got older I found a job on the railways. It didn’t last long, but I kept my cap and hammer, the tools of my trade. Since then trains have been my home. I know every station in the USSR. Even the smallest country halt. When I get off at a station the first thing I do is study the timetable. I learn them by heart, both summer and winter versions. They’re my daily bread.”
I laugh. “You remind me of George Peters, a man I read about in a book. He avoided the police thanks to his excellent knowledge of train times.”
Uncle Misha opens his toothless mouth in disbelief: “Did you really read that?”
“Yes, it’s in a book by an American writer, O. Henry.”
Uncle Misha whistles: “Whew! I never thought you could learn a thing from books. Everything in them I already shat out the day before yesterday!”
He takes a surreptitious puff on a roll-up cupped in this hand. “Sometimes I notice a lonely-looking suitcase. Then I wait for everyone to fall asleep. But it drives me mad when some bloody intellectual takes out a book and reads. You can’t tear him away. It’s like trying to snatch a baby from its bottle. But it also works the other way. A man might bury himself in the book so deep you could stuff him up the arse and he’d never notice. So there’s a use for books all the same.
“When everyone’s asleep I get down to business. I grab the case, jump off the train, hide alongside it and wait for the next express. Two or three minutes before it leaves I push the suitcase into an axle-box with my long hammer and then climb inside a carriage. I sit in an empty place, wearing my railway cap so the conductor won’t ask to see my ticket.
“When he’s passed by I start to tell the other passengers stories that I’ve picked up on my travels. They’re always willing to share their food in return for the entertainment. When I’ve eaten my fill and slept a bit I get out at a suitable stop.
“In any new town the first thing I do is memorise the timetable. Then I go to the nearest beer shop for a few drinks. After that I collect empty vodka bottles - only the cleanest ones, mind. I take them out somewhere quiet on the edge of town and fill them with water. I use my bootlaces to close the caps. Then I wait till evening and go back to the station. I wander along the platform with a bottle in my hand and almost always get lucky. My bottle reminds passengers they’re thirsty so they call out: ‘Oi, mate! Where can I get one?’
“‘Not far from here, not far at all. About half a kilometre,’ I tell them.
“The shop might as well be on the moon. The greedy wretches beg me to sell the bottle. I hum and haw until the train is about to depart and then I give in. They even want to tip me. ‘No, no, you’re all right,’ I say to them. As soon as their train starts I hop on one going in the opposite direction.”
I lie awake listening to Uncle Misha snoring beside me. He revolts me. I wonder how he can take advantage of people’s trust and their simple desire to drink. I think about it for a long time before concluding that his crimes are nothing new. People deceived others like that even before the revolution.
***
The June dawn breaks at 4am. I awake to find I’ve run out of matches so I go to get a light from the joggers who are already pounding the sand. To my annoyance everyone turns out to be a non-smoker. Damn sportsmen.
I notice an ugly, squint-eyed fellow studying me.
“Got a light, mate?” I ask, “I’ve been looking for one for an hour.”
“I don’t smoke,” but he adds, “I drink, though.”
He picks his jacket off the ground to reveal a bottle of cognac.
“A man after my own heart!” I cry. “Wait five minutes while I get a light. I want a smoke so badly my arse is dizzy!”
“Go ahead. I’ll be here!” he says, pulling his jacket back over the bottle. When I return we silently pass the bottle back and forth between us, each trying to take smaller and smaller mouthfuls. It’s early morning and the shops won’t open for a long time. We introduce ourselves.
“I’m from Kuibyshev.”
“And I’m from Tambov,” he says, although his plastic cap proclaims: I am from Sochi!
“Could you be the Tambov Wolf?”
“I could be. And what’s your name?”
“Hodja Nasreddin.”31
Tambov Wolf laughs. “Oh, Hodja Nasreddin, why do you wear such a high collar on your jacket?”
“To protect my neck from the sun.”
“And if the sun is shining in your face?”
“I turn around and walk in the other direction. Where did you get the cognac?”
“Ask me something easier,” replies Tambov Wolf. He pulls a three-kopeck piece out of his pocket and says, as though pronouncing Newton’s fourth law of physics: “One coin does not clink.”
“And two do not make the right sound.” I produce another coin from my pocket.
“Another eight and we’ll be OK,” he says. I pull all the small change out of my pocket, but he takes only two kopecks from me.
“But you said eight,” I point out.
“Quite right. Two kopecks and six o’clock in the morning make eight.”
The shops open at six. The sun has risen above the horizon so we only have to wait a while longer. However, alcohol is not sold before 11 o’clock. The battle against alcoholism is in full swing and the masses have to be prevented from getting tanked up before work.
At six Tambov Wolf joins the crowd of grandmothers by the shop doors. After a few minutes he emerges and disappears behind the monument to drowned fishermen, signalling for me to follow. We sit down on the nearest bench. From his pocket Tambov Wolf pulls out the sister of the bottle we split earlier and a quarter of a loaf of bread.
“For breakfast,” he says. “Don’t argue, the bread was come by honestly. The bottle I picked up in passing, to give us something to wash it down with.”
“I couldn’t do that,” I say.
“You don’t need to. We have enough.”
When I took to the road I made a pledge that I would never steal or get into a fight. That would keep me out of jail, leaving me free to wander until I grew tired of the life. I soon realised that was naive. Christ himself couldn’t have wandered the USSR unmolested. His attitude, ‘take therefore no thought for the morrow’ would have earned him a year at least, so there was not much hope for the rest of us poor sinners. And sinners we certainly are. We all smoke and curse and most of us drink.
Later Tambov Wolf goes off to steal another bottle, this time from a different shop. We drink it, fall asleep on the beach, and the next day he’s gone.
***
“Vanya! Got a ciggie, darling?” The prostitute Vera is sitting on a bench sporting a black eye.
As it happens I have. Vera is in an unusually calm mood. As we sit smoking side by side she begins to talk: “I was a trainee draughtsman before the Komsomol got hold of me. Some activists picked me up by the beach, saying that because my dress buttoned down the front I was obviously a prostitute. They hauled me in. Sentenced me as a Decembrist. I had to clean the toilets in the station. When my fifteen days were up I decided I might as well practise what they thought I did anyway. I certainly make a lot more money this way.”
She finishes her cigarette. “I’ll be off to work now. Thanks for the smoke, love. You tramps are okay.”
“Well you won’t find any moralists among us.”
***
It is time I found a place on a farm. I go down to the town’s labour exchange where they direct me to a collective farm about 20 kilometres out of town. I set off in the hot sun and hitch a ride part of the way in a truck. However, it turns out that the farm administration don’t want to take anyone on. I am annoyed at the waste of time. I haven’t had a hair-of-the-dog and my hands are beginning to shake. Not knowing what to do next, I leave the office and look around. There is a lad standing a little way off. Judging by his appearance he’s some sort of tramp like me. He ambles over to where I stand.
“Brother, do you know what time it is?” I ask.
“Five to whatever the fuck you like. You late for work?”
“Work’s not a wolf. It won’t run off into the forest.”
“But I would, given half a chance.”
“What’re you waiting for? Let’s go.”
We set off for the distant forest. On the way we swipe salt and paper napkins from the farm’s dining room. We pull up some young potatoes and pick a few cucumbers from a field on the outskirts of the farm. I don’t regard this as theft. We never take more than what we can eat at one sitting. In private fields we dig into the soil on one side of the potato plants and pull off a few tubers. Then we pack the earth back, knowing that by autumn the plant will yield as many potatoes as its neighbours. Given the tons of fruit and vegetables that rot away in the fields it would be a sin not to take some.
Once we reach the forest we light a fire in a clearing and bake our potatoes. There’s no shortage of kindling in the dense and tangled undergrowth. It is good to sit by the fire. I wonder why I’ve hung around towns for so long. I must have forgotten that you don’t need much in this life.
My companion, whose name is Yura, is not talkative. That suits me. I’m happy just to look into the flames. The potatoes bake quickly. We pull them out and toss them from hand to hand until they cool down. They burn in the mouth but the cucumbers soothe our tongues. I decide not to return to the town.
“Yura, where are you headed?”
“Armavir. Let’s go together.”
“But I can’t walk as fast as you.”
“I’m in no hurry. Summer’s only just begun. Time enough to get there by winter.”
“Let’s go then.”
First we go back to the farm. An old Cossack woman gives us three roubles and a bottle of samogon in return for chopping wood. We ask her for an aluminium mug and a handleless saucepan, and then we take more salt and a glass from the farm’s dining room. In the shop we buy tea, tobacco and matches. Beyond the farm we head east, following the sun. All around us are plantations of apricot and cherry trees. When the day draws to a close we lie down by a stream in a grove of willows and black poplars. We fetch some hay from a field and spread it out for a bed.
Yura comes from Dnepropetrovsk and has been on the road for two years. He has already been in the spets twice and wants to avoid a prison sentence. He intends to stay in the Kuban till autumn and then head off into Central Asia. That idea appeals to me and we decide to stick together. We will stay where we are for the summer, keeping our heads down and avoiding any trouble with the law. That means not showing our faces in towns and not stealing.
I am unable to steal in any real sense; I couldn’t imagine breaking into someone’s house or pickpocketing. As for other sorts of theft – well, everyone in the Soviet Union steals. Our system turns us into thieves. In other countries the most hardened thief knows in his heart of hearts that he’s doing wrong. Even as he’s hauled off to jail he knows that he deserves his punishment. He may not like it but he knows it is just. You have to answer for your deeds. In the USSR, however, everything is turned on its head. We think someone a fool if he does not steal from the state. The authorities think so too. They pay us so little that we have to steal. That way they encourage us to get our hands as dirty as theirs. Then we’re in no position to complain about them, the much greater thieves.
Everyone knows the difference between genuine theft and taking back what has been stolen from us in the first place. We’re only expropriating the expropriators.
“Yura,” I say aloud, “stealing might be wrong, but when the state steals freedom and takes away human dignity, then people begin to construct their own values.”
Yura interrupts me: “Right. And what if everyone invented their own values? What would we have then?”
“Chaos!” I have to admit it.
Yura sleeps. I draw away from the glow of the fire in order to see the stars. I pile up some hay and lie down. I am not drunk. There’s even a drop of samogon left for my morning hair-of-the-dog. With everything taken care of, I relax and start to think about how to live my life in a way that will have some sort of meaning. My attitude to the world around me is changing. My youthful dreams of setting the world on fire have died. I know I will never walk to the North Pole or discover a new chemical element. On the other hand I am less disturbed by my crippled leg. I’ve learned that strength, whether mental or physical, is a cruel and destructive force. Even if you do not intend to use your strength for evil purposes it makes no difference in the end.
After gazing for a long time at the constellations, I come to a decision. I will never again say, ‘If only everyone did as I did,’ or, ‘If only everyone were like that… .’ I have to accept that people will never be the way I want them to be.
I am disillusioned with humanity but I cannot not say I hate it. You can hate flies and cockroaches, you can love bees and cabbage pasties, but I don’t see how you can love or hate ‘people’ when they are all so different. The man who says ‘I love people’ is either a politician or a scoundrel, which are one and the same, or simply an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In the course of my life I’ve come into contact with tens of thousands of human beings. Some were fine and others I wouldn’t have cared to meet in hell. Most were harmless enough. It’s unlikely that I myself have caused joy to leap in many hearts.
I decide that from now on I will behave as though other people do not exist. Even when I’m in a crowded bazaar I will act as though I’m on a desert island. To live in and for oneself sounds very simple but in practice it is almost impossible. I am human like anyone else and affected by those around me. Added to which, as a Soviet citizen, I’ve drunk in the word ‘we’ with my mother’s milk. But whether I succeed or not, the most important thing is that I have made my decision. No one can alter it or prevent me from trying to carry it out.
Perhaps I only want to justify my existence, but I don’t think of it like that. Let the clever chaps discover complexes according to Freud or Jung. I feel satisfied and fall sleep at last.
You can only sleep through dawn in the forest if you’re really tired. As soon as the sun peeps above the horizon, the birds begin twittering so loudly that it’s impossible to sleep. Although I don’t drop off until the early hours of the morning I awake in a strangely cheerful and optimistic mood. I’ve become a slightly different person and I feel something good will happen today.
Yura, on the other hand, is sullen. I wonder if he regrets his decision to take me with him. He pulls off his socks and sniffs them, then he lies down again like a dead man until I have brewed chefir, which revives him somewhat. I ask him not to touch the samogon for a while, explaining that I’m frightened of the dt’s.
Coming out onto the main road we start hitching. We decide to go to the bathhouse in Armavir. We stink of bonfires and hay and booze. You can’t get yourself clean in a river, even with soap. Besides which, a steam bath is always a treat. If the mediaeval world rested on three whales, the tramp’s rests on four: railway station; bazaar; police station; bathhouse.
A truck takes us as far as the town of Kropotkin. “We’ve got to keep out of the town,” Yura says. “The Kropotkin police chief doesn’t care for tramps. You’ve heard about him?”
I shake my head.
“He used to be head of a collective farm. Chased out three tramps one day. They snuck back and stole his geese. Then they wrote a request to Moscow radio ‘on behalf of the farm labourers of Armavir’ for the well-known and popular song: Goodbye geese, goodbye! A couple of weeks later the 500 voices of the Piatnitsky choir reminded the farmer that his geese had been nicked.”
“What did he do?”
“Left his farm and joined the Kropotkin police force. Now he takes his revenge on passing tramps.” Yura gives a rare smile. “Vagrants all over the country still send their requests to Moscow. Even those in prison.”
Yura and I are on the road for more than a month, wandering in a circle around the Kuban. The southern earth nurtures
us like a kind mother. You can’t take a step without squashing a ripe apricot or a bunch of grapes. All around is a sea of corn and fields overflowing with melons that no one bothers to pick. After they’ve met government sowing targets farm managers relax and let the harvest take care of itself.
I do not listen to a radio or read a paper. I don’t care whether we have cosmonauts in space or receptions for Fidel Castro. My body feels rested and my soul is at peace. No one is nagging at me to work harder or stop drinking.
Then a chill, incessant rain begins to pour down. For three days we barely stick our noses out of a haystack. Once or twice we go up to the nearest farm, where peasants give us as much milk as we want. Yura drinks until his stomach barrels out so tightly you could snap fleas on it with your fingernails.
The rain gets me down. I suggest we take shelter by registering ourselves on a farm. We trudge six muddy kilometres to the nearest farm administration centre and are immediately hired. Yura is sent to tend the cattle while I, as an invalid with no documents except a certificate of graduation from the Novorossisk spets, am hired as a watchman. I patrol at night, shooting in the air to scare off the stray dogs that try to dig up carcasses of diseased cattle from their burial pit. I also have to drive the carthorses out from the stables when the farmers need to take goods to market.
The cattle live in terrible conditions. They don’t have enough to eat because feed is expensive. If they get fed at all it’s only because the farmers feel pity for the animals. It smites your heart to hear three hundred cows mooing from hunger while the cowhands lie paralytically drunk. In the morning farmers tip sugar beets onto the still-frozen earth of the cattle-pen. The starving cows push and shove to get at the food, trampling their own calves into the filth. When the sun rises and softens the ground the animals wallow up to their bellies in mud and excrement. Still, they’re not my responsibility and my job is easy enough.
Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes Page 14