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

by Walton, Caroline

  For three days I dig holes, set posts into them and string up barbed wire. The wire scratches and tears my hands even through gloves. An old man lives in the house with three huge dogs. In the evening he puts out flagons of wine and chacha for me. I don’t touch the chacha for I know that once I start on it I’ll never finish the work.

  While I am stretching out the wire I see a Russian working in a neighbouring field. He comes over.

  “I’ve been here two months,” he says. They give me all the chacha I want but they never seem to have any money to pay me. Each morning I have to work for my hair-of-the-dog. Then I finish the bottle in the evening. I can’t seem to find a way out.”

  The old man sees us talking and calls me over: “Police coming,” he says, making signs that I’ll be arrested.

  “Okay, give me my money and I’ll leave.”

  “No monny, my son bring monny tomorrow.”

  I almost cry with rage. I’ve ripped up my hands for nothing. I know that if I leave without my pay I’ll resent it for the rest of my life. The old man stands watching me, surrounded by his dogs. His eyes laugh at me. There is nothing I can say. Unexpectedly even to myself I go into the barn, grab my things and cry out: “If I don’t see my money in five minutes I’ll burn the place down !”

  I show him the box of matches in my fist.

  The old man immediately finds the money. Fearing his dogs, I grab a pitchfork, only throwing it away after I have left the farm far behind me.

  At Sukhumi railway station I join up with another ‘Vassya,’ a tubercular lad named Artur. We discuss the difficulties of working in the Caucasus.

  “It’s worse in the mountain villages,” says Artur. “The Svan people lock you up at night. If you try to escape they’ll cut off one of your fingers. Even if you make them pay up the villagers take the money back off you as you leave. What can you do when you’re alone? They all know each other and the police are their cousins. Yes brother, it’s real slavery up there.

  “It’s true no one forces us to work in the mountains, but we can’t earn anything in town. When someone wants to hire me I say to them: ‘I’ll work for you, only no skullduggery! I have no house or car to lose; you won’t have either if I don’t get my pay!’

  “But I must say there are some really stupid tramps. Some of them only take jobs so they can nose around for something to steal. They grab whatever they can find, run off, sell it, and get picked up right away at the nearest beer-stall.”

  I don’t linger in Sukhumi as I fear the old man’s son might find me. I go back to Sochi and my old haunts.

  ***

  My legs are tired after drinking for the whole morning. The woman who sells pies on the sea front has shut her stall and gone off to lunch. I park myself on her stool. Holiday-makers stroll past on their way to the beach. A lad detaches himself from his group: “What you sellin’ here, uncle?”

  “Jokes!”

  “How much you charge?” he asks in an exaggerated peasant accent.

  “Roub’ each,” I answer in the same tone.

  “So much!”

  “Why, I’m almost giving them away. Roub’ if you don’t know the joke and I’ll give you a roub’ if it’s already grown a beard.”

  “Go on then!” The group gather around my stall. I am heavily under the influence of Bacchus and quickly earn 15 roubles, not because my jokes are so good but because the youths are in high spirits and pleased to be entertained.

  The next day, after drinking my hair-of-the-dog, I go to collect the baggage I left behind in spring. Much to my surprise, the man who was looking after it has not sold all my things, although he hasn’t left much. He gives me a small rucksack in exchange for my suitcase. Into this I put underwear, photographs, two novels and a cloth-bound exercise book in which I write the crosswords that I like to devise during my sober periods.

  I set off for Central Asia, where work is easier to find. Luckily most trains run at night so I’m able to sleep on them and spend the days wandering around Sukhumi, Samtredia, Tblisi and Kirovbad. I travel without tickets. Although I have money I think it’s as crazy to pay for a ticket as it would be to drive my own Mercedes.

  Baku reminds me of Central Asian cities, with its cafes serving black tea in tiny narrow-waisted glasses. But I’m not interested in tea. From first thing in the morning I’m drinking beer and the local Agdam fortified wine.

  After quenching my thirst I lean against a wall to watch the local people. A passer-by stops to pick up a crumb of bread from the ground. The man presses the crumb to his lips and places it on top of the wall. “So the birds can reach it more easily,” he says, seeing my astonishment, “in Azerbaijan we respect bread, my friend.”

  In the bazaar I make the acquaintance of some local tramps and together we earn 15 roubles loading a trailer with oranges. Learning that I have nowhere to spend the night they invite me to come with them. “We have a splendid place. Safe as a tank and warm as a bathhouse. The police don’t check – it’s in the basement of the officers’ flats.”

  We buy several bottles and take the tram across town to our lodging place. Going down to the basement, we open a thick steel door and scramble over the central heating pipes, so hot they turn spit into steam. The shelter is as dark as the Pharaoh’s tomb. My new friends light candles and drink themselves to sleep.

  I spend the whole night awake, sitting in total darkness after the candles gutter out. I haven’t had enough to drink; it takes a lot to give me a couple of hours’ oblivion. In this state I daren’t even close my eyes or the nightmares will begin. The air around me is heavy with foreboding. I feel like an animal who senses an earthquake approaching. My new acquaintances snore happily while I goggle into the darkness. Rats scurry past. They are not part of my nightmare, for one of my sleeping friends wakes with a yelp: “Bastards! We’ll have to bring some sausage tomorrow or they’ll grow too bold altogether!” He drops off again.

  It seems as though the night will never end. When a radio in the flat above us begins to broadcast morning exercises I feel as joyful as if I’d seen the second coming of Christ. We crawl out of the basement and I part company from my acquaintances forever. “Lads, if that basement were stacked with vodka and it was thirty degrees below outside you’d only get me back in there under armed escort.”

  “What did you expect? The Astoria?”

  “But it’s full of rats!”

  “So what? Did they eat you alive?”

  “Who knows what was on their minds. I’m not hanging around to find out.”

  I wander off to the port. Sailors stand by the gangplanks of Caspian ferries scrutinising tickets. They turn me back a couple of times as I try to sneak aboard. An Azerbaijani notices my unsuccessful attempts: “Do you want to earn the price of a bottle?”

  “What must I do for it?”

  “Carry these two suitcases on board this ferry. Your hands will be full so you can tell the controller that someone behind you has your ticket.”

  But the two suitcases seem too large for me to carry.

  “Pick them up, give them a try,” urges the Azerbaijani, seeing me hesitate.

  The cases are extraordinarily light. “What’s in them, cotton wool?”

  “Walnuts.”

  The Azerbaijani has been kicked out of Baku by the local police after they stung him for 50 roubles for illegal trading. I pick up the cases and board the ship without any trouble.

  When we dock at Krasnovodsk in Turkmenistan I help the man unload his cases. As we step ashore cops surround us. The Baku police must have radioed ahead to their Turkmen colleagues who have now come to collect their bribe. Ignoring me, they take the Azerbaijani to the station, leaving me with the cases. After waiting several hours for him I go to the market and sell the walnuts for 80 roubles. My lucky day.

  In the evening I catch a train to Tashkent, slipping the carriage conductor some money. Like all conductors in Asia he regards the railway as his personal fiefdom, except when it comes to cleaning;
then it belongs to the state.

  Beyond the windows there is nothing but desolation. The desert may be lovely in spring, but this is winter and there is nothing but an expanse of grey dunes stretching between horizons, unrelieved by grass or bushes. Occasionally the train halts by a few wretched clay hovels with mangy camels tethered behind them.

  Ashkhabad may mean beloved city, but it doesn’t deserve the name. In the autumn of 1948 it was destroyed by an earthquake so severe that only one building remained undamaged. The town was built afresh, with buildings no higher than three stories. They look as though they were hatched from the same incubator. The streets are only slightly less depressing than those of Krasnovodsk; some are lined with trees but, this being December, it makes little difference.

  At the station buffet I fall in with a local alkie called Kerya. Together we banish our hangovers with a bottle of wine then go down to the Tekinskii bazaar. The stock exchange, as the bazaar is called, is a lively place where local alkies congregate. It is easy enough to earn a couple of roubles hauling baskets of apples. As soon as we have a few coins in our hands we take care of our drinking requirements. Only after that do we think of food. We help ourselves to apples, capsicums, Chardzhou melons, and dip our dirty paws into great barrels of marinated garlic.

  Kerya shows me a bunch of keys in his possession. “These open all 64 flats in a new apartment block,” he says with pride. “It was built by Bulgarians in an international friendship project. I stole the keys from a drunken builder. It’s still empty. I’ve already slept a few nights there. Come home with me. You’ll sleep like a lord.”

  The ‘Bulgarian’ building protects us from the 20-degree frost outside, but I grow sick of Kerya’s company. Drink is his only topic of conversation.

  “Where do the other tramps sleep?” I ask. “Do the cops make up feather beds for them in the railway station?”

  “Not likely. If they catch you sleeping there they give you a good going over, and if the same cop catches you twice you get a month for sure.” Kerya narrows his eyes like a contented cat. “I had to sleep in a basement for nearly three months before I got hold of these keys!”

  He reminds me of the legendary Volga tramp who found himself a place under an upturned boat on the beach. Graciously inviting another tramp to come in and doss down beside him, he placed a pile of dog ends before the man: “Have a smoke, brother, don’t be shy. I was in your position myself not so long ago.”

  “Where did you sleep before you got the keys?” I ask, wanting to prolong this rare conversation.

  “Like me to show you?”

  “Why not? There’s nothing else to do.”

  Off we go, picking up a few bottles on the way with the remains of my walnut money. Kerya takes me to a shabby block of flats and leads me down to the basement. Although it is night, the scene below is as bright as day, lit by a bonfire of burning tyres. A group of people are sitting around the fire, women as well as men. Their faces are covered in hideous weeping sores produced by a tropical disease that is rife in Turkmenia. The filth in which the tramps live spreads the infection. When the sores heal they leave a deep scar. It is hard enough to behold children suffering from the disease but the tramps look truly repulsive.

  Nevertheless, I am pleased at the thought of company so I sit down and produce my bottles. The basement dwellers welcome me as though I was Santa Claus. I’m already three sheets to the wind and after a top-up I feel such a sense of brotherhood that I invite all the tramps over to our Bulgarian house. Kerya drops into a few more basements on the way back. Soon we are about fifty people. We stock up as we go, from every street-corner, bottle-peddling pensioner.

  Our Bulgarian house is soon blazing with light and rocking with noise like a Caribbean cruiser gone off course in the night. Some of our guests sing; others recall old offences. Glass windows shatter and curses echo through the rooms. The police arrive before anyone is killed. They drive us out of the building, whacking us enthusiastically with their truncheons as we go. However, they seem reluctant to arrest us, probably through fear of contagion. In the confusion I manage to slip off and make my way back to the station. I’ve had enough of Ashkhabad.

  ***

  As the train slows to a halt between Artik and Dushak I ask a soldier on the platform: “Can I get off for a smoke?”

  With a bored gesture, he points the barrel of his Kalashnikov towards the door. However, as soon as my feet touch the ground he shouts: “Stop! I’m arresting you for breaching frontier regulations.” He points a revolver at my head.

  A sergeant comes running up and helps escort me to a separate carriage. There is another man already inside it. The soldiers lock us in and leave. I pull two bottles of wine from my rucksack and give one to my companion. We drink quickly before the soldiers return.

  Border guards are recruited from the keenest Komsomol activists, the type of person who will happily inform on his colleagues. Someone must have told an officer that we got drunk after our arrest. At Dushak the interrogating officer is very persistent about this. The soldier who arrested me stands by his side looking so miserable that I take pity on him and say that I was already drunk when I stepped off the train.

  Then the officer points to my notebook of crosswords. “What are these?”

  “Crosswords, I make them up.”

  “Why?”

  “It passes the time. I sent one to Smena once,” I babble, “but they rejected it with apologies. They said one of my words was derived from Church Slavonic.”

  “Hmm… Why were you trying to cross the Soviet border?”

  “Who me? Do I look like a madman? I don’t know a word of Farsi and I can’t run.”

  The officer glances at my leg. I sense that he does not believe I’m guilty. But once the wheels of justice are in motion there is no going back.

  ‘Let’s hope no one trod on the judge’s foot in the bus,’ I think to myself on the morning of my trial. The length of my sentence will depend on the judge’s mood. It’s obvious I’m not an Iranian spy, but I am a vagrant and idleness is a crime against the very foundation of the Soviet state.

  My trial lasts a few minutes. I refuse my right to a final word and this probably pleases the judge, allowing him to get away to his lunch. He gives me a year of strict-regime prison with compulsory treatment for alcoholism. There is no hope of remission. I am not overjoyed with this sentence but neither am I tearing my hair out. By this time I know I can survive camp. I only have to remember not to think myself smarter than the others or get mixed up in other people’s business. If I share my tobacco down to the last roll-up and refuse to give way to self-pity then prison life will be tolerable. Still, I feel apprehensive as I await my transfer, wondering what my fellow inmates will be like.

  32 A Georgian spirit.

  33 Talking across a threshold is considered bad luck in Russia.

  34 Vassya is a generic name other nationalities give to Russians. It has the slightly derogatory connotation of ‘simple village lad.

  10

  Turkmenistan

  The prisoner we call Death Number Two glares at me: “Hey, slurper! Are you from Kolyma or what?”

  I shake my head. The way you drink your chefir reveals your camp history. ‘Kolyma’ drinkers swallow their chefir in three gulps; ‘Norilsk’ drinkers in two.

  “Never mind, let’s have another brew,” Death Number Two picks up his teapot and runs over to the Titan boiler in the corner of our workshop. He rinses the pot, pours in some hot water, sprinkles in a large heap of green tea and runs back to his bench to put the lid on before the tea cools. We huddle together in a circle, smoking rough tobacco rolled in newspaper while we wait for the chefir to brew. The anticipation is even better than the chefir itself. When it is ready Death carefully fills a bowl and pours it back into the teapot, so that the leaves settle and do not get into our mouths.

  “Have a punch in the liver, Vanya,” Death hands me a cup.

  I have to dope myself with chefir or I
won’t be able to do a day’s work. I feel like death myself when I awake in the morning. My head and muscles ache, my guts churn and my skin crawls. After a few mouthfuls of chefir I return to life. I team up with a group of fellow chefirists, for only the very strong or the completely despised can survive on their own.

  The huge workshop buzzes like a million beehives. Dust and tobacco smoke hang so thick you can see no further than ten metres. The midday heat rises to 45 degrees so everyone strips to the waist. Bodies gleam with sweat as they bend over their sewing machines.

  I work on my own machine, making gloves. This is almost freedom as it saves me from the production line. I can work at my own pace and it is not hard to meet the quota of 72 pairs a day. My pay goes straight to the camp for my keep. The few roubles I earn for exceeding the quota pay for tobacco and tea. Prisoners with wealth and influence buy their quota from other zeks. Freed from the obligation to work, they lounge about smoking opium and hashish.

  Most of Ashkhabad’s 1,500 inmates take opium. It is brought in by visitors, delivery-men or sometimes thrown over the fence at a pre-arranged spot. Even the guards will bring in drugs for a large enough bribe. Indian hemp grows in the camp yard. As soon as the buds appear they are picked, dried and smoked in joints.

  You can buy drugs in the camp bazaar along with anything else you need. Zek traders set up stalls outside the barracks and sell envelopes, stamps, tobacco, tea, socks and even tomatoes, potatoes and rice. Some of the Turkmen zeks never use the canteen, preferring to cook their own pilaus on bonfires outside the barracks. You can always supplement your diet with cans of condensed milk, traded for opium by tubercular addicts who have climbed over the fence from the hospital zone.

  The Turkmen and Uzbeks swallow their opium with green tea. Sometimes they spear a ball on some wire and heat it over a flame. Then they put their heads under a newspaper funnel to inhale the smoke. When a powerful Turkmen is due for release he cooks up a big pilau and stirs in opium and hashish. Friends take their turns with the spoon in strict pecking order.