Moscow Diary

by Marjorie Farquharson

  Today I saw a carton of milk half-spilled in the street and seriously thought about picking it up and taking it home. Odd the effect living here has.

  I’ve got to think about going home to the UK. Various people are making nice noises about me staying on here, but underneath it all I am always very aware that I am foreign and looked on like that – from Natalya Vysotskaya’s outburst after the coup, to Irina’s in Uglich about my “life in reserve”. But what kind of a life? It is a very curious thing, but in ten months I haven’t actually been homesick for the UK once. In June I suddenly wanted to sail down the Thames to Kew; I got a pang at the Henry Moore Exhibition when I saw that one of the exhibits came from Wakefield Art Gallery (although why, I don’t know, as I’ve never actually been to Wakefield); then the other day I thought I would quite like to eat an avocado pear and a banana, which I could do in the UK.

  But other than that, Britain seems from this distance a strangely closed society that has no sense of direction. When you hear about the last outburst of riots in Newcastle, you feel the different people involved and commenting on it actually have no experience in common at all. Here, although opinions are massively divided, people are facing the same things: how to cope with the break-up of the country; how to avert hunger; how to understand their history.

  I learned yesterday that Lambeth cashed my cheque for the so-called arrears in my poll tax, then sent me another court summons for the same amount, plus two more months that I’ve been living here.

  Friday 18 October

  In the evening Tolya gave his party for the workmen. It was like Boys from the Blackstuff, Soviet-style. They presented me with a bunch of red carnations, then all got excruciatingly embarrassed in the presence of this foreign woman, fell silent, and one by one left the room for a smoke. Tolya had made wonderful food and had just the right manner to hold the group together. During the coup the builders had worked solidly on the office, not knowing if their firm would get the chop (as they’re a cooperative), or if Amnesty would too. At night they’d gone to the barricades.

  At my wits’ end about what to take to Leningrad this weekend as presents, I went into the new Irish supermarket on the Novy Arbat, and nice it was too. There are a number of nice clothes shops opening on that street and although the prices are probably ridiculous, it is a real pleasure on the eye to see a shop window that is full and attractively laid out. Andrey came round, bringing me a blanket for my freezing flat. At 11.40pm I managed to trap down Vyacheslav Bakhmin at a party and ask him about Amnesty’s registration. He still hasn’t sent his letter about us to Yeltsin. And so we climb onto another ladder of delays.

  The Economic Union was signed today.

  Saturday 19 October

  Before I caught the Leningrad train at lunch I visited Viktor, partly to ask if he will be a consultant to the Council of Europe’s human rights project here.

  Today they changed the tape on the metro to match the new station names. People were chuckling as they heard “Alexandrovsky Gardens” instead of “Kalinin”, and “Clean Ponds” instead of “Kirov”. Then an old woman turned to me in panic and asked, “Is there a Prospekt Marx station?” I said we’d passed it and it was now “Hunters’ Row”. Another woman started raging that everything is changing for the worse.

  Tatyana and I were going to Leningrad to meet a man who wants to join the Quakers. He came to meet us off the train, then I went to stay at Ludmilla’s. The shop signs on her street were all illuminated and once again St Petersburg looked more prosperous than Moscow.

  Sunday 20 October

  A marvellous conversation with Boris Sudaryshkin, who seemed to be thirsting for religious talk. Then Tatyana and I parted company and I went for a sauna with Lyuda. We took the metro to the north, crossed the main road, and were suddenly out in the country amongst dachas. The sauna was in a hut by a lake, and as it was moonlight we all raced out and leapt into the freezing lake. The secret is to cover your head with water so that your body is all one temperature, and that way you don’t feel cold. Walking back to the sauna you feel high and terrific.

  Monday 21 October

  Anne-Marie was in St Petersburg today, finishing her tour of pollution hotspots. She’d been in Kiev when the Chernobyl reactor caught fire, so had just closed the window and pulled the blanket over her head. Sounds like British civil defence. I had lunch with her Soviet mother-in-law, then we all took Anne-Marie to the airport.

  In the afternoon I was to speak to Lyuda’s Faculty of English teachers, about forty of them. I must have overdone the bit about “fighting for your rights”, because when I left they voted to go on strike if their hours are not cut – Lyuda too. There was a surprising amount of interest in Amnesty, especially from the teachers in the Law Department, and they asked me to come and speak to their students.

  The overnight train to Moscow was lovely – much warmer than my flat. Two women next to me were talking quietly in Georgian and I could hear Whitney Houston’s ‘Saving All My Love for You’ floating in and out over the sound of the wheels. The woman on the top bunk seemed to be some kind of an athlete, and bounded up to her bunk in one graceful movement. Lovely sleep.

  Tuesday 22 October

  I spent the day working at home. It is now very cold and the heating still has not come on in the flat. I had to queue for twenty minutes out in the street for bread. The temperature was +8 degrees and by night-time I was feeling ill. I heard later there was a demonstration for bread in the Manezh Square at night.

  I spent the evening translating Tatyana’s article about the “Three Dimensions of Russia”, rather a philosophical piece, then went to Aleksey at No. 36, to help him with some English. His mother-in-law was going to bed early because she knew she would have to get up to queue for sugar next day. He was translating The Desperate Donnegans and it was full of things like, “He’s the best yellow-leg ever to have forked a McCall.” We were both sitting poring over an American dictionary, but it didn’t really help much.

  Today Andrey called, worried that I might not be able to renew my visa, and so inviting me to talk about it with Sergey Grigoryants, the head of Glasnost journal, who would be prepared to kick up a fuss if necessary. He very nicely said, “We are not indifferent to who represents Amnesty.” Praise indeed.

  Wednesday 23 October

  I had a lunch appointment with the TV programme, The Law and Us, and was scared stiff all morning. However, it turned out to be a chat over coffee with Sasha Senatorov, the long-haired interviewer. I interested them in doing a programme for Human Rights Day on 10 December. In the afternoon I started my rounds of visiting the various republican embassies in Moscow, beginning with the embassy of Kyrgyzstan. At first the guy couldn’t seem to understand why I was there, and it did seem to be a bit of a liberty, but I showed him our correspondence with the President and we got talking about the death penalty for fifty minutes, and I think a quite good first contact was made. I wonder if one day Amnesty will simply be a natural part of the horizon there.

  In the evening Irina and I went to a concert of choral music at the Stanislavsky Museum. It was very esoteric – fourteenth-century Greek Orthodox songs – but well done and very beautiful. Everyone there was in glasses, so I suppose it was the Moscow intelligentsia at play, “smelling of onions”, as Irina pointed out. However, the audience all started bickering about whether to have the window open or not and this argument smouldered right through the fourteenth-century songs. Snow today.

  Thursday 24 October

  A cold wet day, which I spent working at home. I had a visit from Igor of the Krasnodar abolitionist group, who asked if I would speak to them about the death penalty. They sound a very mystical and rather interesting group.

  I gave my second English class to Anna Bochko, getting her to choose five items out of twenty and explain why she would take them to a desert island. We then had an official phone conversation about trying to bu
y a flat, and I was very amused that after five minutes she tried to bribe me. She was most put out to find that wasn’t “normal” practice. I asked her about registering Amnesty, and she immediately called a professor at Moscow University, who specialises in registration law, to help me. What struck me most was her tone of voice on the phone. It was the same cheerful, wheedling and slightly flirtatious tone that I’ve heard Ludmilla and Natalya Vysotskaya use. Obviously what you need “to get on” as a woman here.

  Friday 25 October

  The heating is on. I’m still fighting some bug and feel peculiar. The TV crew came round and filmed me in my kitchen. It’s very difficult to convey the complexities of Amnesty’s position and conquer all the complexities of the Russian language at the same time, and to outsiders it must seem that I’m wrestling with some invisible angel.

  Saturday 26 October

  I’ve been holding the boxes of material for the Moscow Amnesty group in my flat for one month and ten days. Nikolay was supposed to organise a taxi to collect them today, but was “unable to get a taxi”, so was proposing to collect just two boxes with a friend. I went out and got a taxi, and loaded the whole lot to await his arrival. He took the whole lot to another group member, who then rang to complain that the material was not suitable for their exhibition. If they’d collected the whole lot a month ago when they first said they would, they would have known in good time.

  In the evening I went to Vitaly and Gaby’s spectacular wedding feast. I think I’m a bit of a “wedding general” here as Amnesty’s representative; everyone’s pleased to have me on their guest list. From there I went to a jazz concert with Irina, at the Children’s Cinema at Paveletsky Station. It was packed with devotees and after some indifferent Soviet jazz guitar we were suddenly addressed by the brother of Irina’s stepfather, wearing a snazzy jacket, and showing rare clips of US jazz. Marvellous rare film of Thelonius Monk and Billie Holliday.

  In the morning I trudged off in the snow to Anna Bochko’s legal consultancy to meet Professor Gamlet Avetisyan and to hear the horrible truth about the registration steps we must go through. It looks like it will take forever.

  Sunday 27 October

  I had a visit from a stringer from the San Francisco Chronicle, here to investigate the gay scene. In the afternoon I began to feel as though I’ve been here too long. I finished translating an article and got increasingly irritated by the profusion of adjectives and accumulation of clauses, like Russian’s growing all over you. There seems to be graphomania and wordomania here and it would be lovely to have some peace and quiet.

  In the evening the feeling was accentuated at the Quakers, when someone started laying down the law after the meeting about, of all things, life after death. I went and cleaned my boots, as I’d stood in eighteen inches of muck on the way there. I’m writing this by candlelight as my kitchen bulb’s gone.

  Monday 28 October

  There were inches of ice on a wire fence today, as though it was embedded in a milk bottle. Then it snowed and it was quite cosy inside, writing up my report on the last four months here. Taxi drivers had a strike today and blocked the main ring road, which caused chaos. Another driver has been murdered and they want more protection.

  At midday I was to meet an Armenian, whose relative is an entrepreneur imprisoned on a corruption charge. The Armenian arrived in a Mercedes Benz and gave me a lift to the British Airways office to pick up my plane ticket. There I also bought a film – and got my change in chewing gum.

  A funny thing: I renewed my newspaper subscriptions today and only after I’d done it, realised I’d ordered them until March 1992. I’m supposed to be going home in January. Maybe it’s my deep subconscious speaking.

  Three superficial and disconnected impressions. Gorbachev looks one hell of a lot better since the coup: he seemed to be a hostage a long time before it. Another thing that struck me was an odd festival of clowns on TV the other week, all arranged on the initiative of one young woman. They asked her why she’d done it and she didn’t really know. She said, “I suppose the clowns need it.” The purposelessness was quite refreshing, and a new thing in public life here. Lastly, the local bread shop was closed for a day in mourning for Igor Talkov, the Leningrad singer who was murdered at a concert. The sign said, “In Russian hearts his memory will never die.” This “Russian” stuff is creeping in everywhere and has lots of overtones I don’t like. I feel some of the Quakers are doing it too. When we were having our photo taken the other night, someone said, “All the Russian Quakers and Marjorie.” This commitment to Mother Russia in her time of need is very close to the Soviet idea of the nation state. Both sides think anyone who leaves is betraying the country.

  At night I had a lovely relaxing time at Yelena’s place, eating tons of food and celebrating their first wedding anniversary. The conversation was very interesting and we stayed till past midnight. I couldn’t believe it was only a year ago that I’d been at their wedding party. They said it was because I’d had such a difficult year, and they said it so nicely and with such implicit understanding, that it was a great help. I realised I know almost everyone they were talking about. It is a very close-knit world, and presumably everything I do must also get round like wildfire.

  I met a woman in the lift when I came back from the post office with letters in my hand. She asked if I was delivering the mail, then looked at me more closely and said, “No, you must be the neighbour. I’ve seen your picture in the papers.”

  Tuesday 29 October

  What a day. The landlord came round first thing and we ended up having a terrific scene. He was wanting to raise my rent to £200 a month (from £80), and I think was meaning to “negotiate” with me, but immediately went over the top and threatened to throw me out in December if I didn’t pay. I started listing the things that didn’t work in the flat (oven, fridge, iron etc.) and particularly the door lock. Although it would only cost him 50 roubles and is in his own interest, he refuses point blank to do anything about it. By this time we were shouting at each other. I then played as dirty as he, and asked if he really wanted to have my rent waiting for him in London when he’s over there in November. It was ridiculous; he was threatening to throw me out and I was threatening to give him no money, and all over what? Tolya walked in in the middle of this and began to offer some suggestions where you could buy good cheap locks. “Don’t stick your nose in other people’s business,” Sasha said.

  In the last few months I’ve had my phone tapped, my mail read, received a threatening letter, lived through a coup, been robbed, summoned to court twice in London and threatened with eviction. Things aren’t looking too bright.

  Later in the day I had to see Alexander Khlopyanov at the USSR Foreign Ministry. He arrived in a black leather coat and fedora hat, looking very debonair, and sent me for coffee while he got me a re-entry visa for November. This is the first time I’ve been allowed to “re-enter”, which I suppose is a positive sign. Andrey Grachev was behind me in the coffee queue – formerly in the Communist Party Central Committee and now in Gorbachev’s Press Council, I believe. Khlopyanov shook hands with him on his way to me.

  I had to take this authorisation to the Visa and Registration Department, where they asked me to hand over my passport and visa and collect them tomorrow. As I actually fly at midday tomorrow and their office is shut all day, I did this with a helpless sinking feeling.

  Yesterday’s Parliament session was apparently a landmark. Yeltsin is to take direct charge because of the crisis situation (plus ça change), and consumer prices and wages are to be “liberalised”. It sounds like whacking inflation ahead.

  I had the usual procession of people bringing mail to post as I tried to write up my accounts until 11.00pm. I’m so weary I could hardly concentrate, or physically keep myself seated. Tolya rang, suggesting two flats I could move to, and telling me not to worry. In an odd way I’m not worrying at all. Irina rang and said she had
a gift for me. She finds the current economic lingo odd. She feels we are living in a huge bog with nothing to buy, so what is there to “liberalise”?

  Earlier in the day I had to meet someone for the first time. I went up to a guy who fitted the description and asked if he was from the Crimea. He thought I asked him if he was from the KGB. Both of us found it very funny. It wasn’t him.

  Wednesday 30 October

  Minus three degrees and very slippery on the street outside. But tomorrow really is another day, and today I had one stroke of luck after another. I managed to get my way into the Visa and Registration Department, although it was shut, and a nice smiling woman prepared my new visa. I got taxis there and back with no problem, and managed to book a taxi to the airport with no difficulty at all. At the airport I found a luggage trolley just standing there, unattended, and also a vacant seat. Fell asleep.

  Before I left too, the landlord rang and asked if I would forgive him. I said yes, we hadn’t understood each other. I think it takes something to ring up like that and I appreciated it. Irina came round and saw me off. Her gift was a lemon, one of the first lemons she had been able to afford for over a year. It was an immensely nice thing to give me, but I realise I’m making my cultural shift in preparation for going back home, and part of me was amused. How very difficult this is for all of us. My present to her was a disposable syringe for her dental operation, which, when you come to think of it, is just as peculiar.

  I seemed to be on the ventriloquists’ flight home. The boarding sign at the airport said GA 873. Yesterday Khasbulatov was made Chair of the Russian Supreme Soviet. That seems to be the point where I came in. Time to go home.