Black Earth City

by Charlotte Hobson

  In the heat Emily and I began the task of packing up our lives. We staggered back and forth to the central post office, where an assistant wrapped our books in brown paper and sealed them with wax before sacrificing them to the Russian postal system. We took our bottles to the bottle bank and put the money into the fund for the farewell party, and then we sat for a long time smoking cigarettes and contemplating our room.

  ‘You won’t be able to take it all with you,’ Sveta commented, before we’d even started. ‘Anything you don’t want –’

  ‘Yes, Sveta, we know who to give it to.’

  ‘All right, calm down.’

  Sveta tactfully withdrew; or so we thought, until she reappeared ten minutes later with a couple of boxes.

  ‘These are for whatever is left over,’ she stated. ‘Just put them all in there for me.’ And she left again, quickly, having seen our expressions.

  *

  On the hottest day of all we took the elektrichka one last time and headed out into the woods for our leaving party. There was a crowd of us: almost all the English people, and the girls from Room 99, Yuri, Peanut, Yakov and Katya, Joe and Ira and all the rest. The train was full of city dwellers with the same idea, and the air was heavy with sweat. We barely squeezed into the doorway at the end of one carriage. The conversation turned to the matter of going abroad; we’d talked about nothing else for weeks.

  ‘It’s a two-year course,’ said Yuri, who was going to England, ‘and then maybe I’ll stay there, who knows. If I can get a good job.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’d miss Russia?’

  ‘Well, yes, but if I have the choice between sitting in Voronezh with no money and dreaming about going abroad, or sitting in England with five hundred dollars in my pocket and dreaming about Voronezh, I know which I’d take.’

  ‘I can see exactly what you are going to become,’ said Tanya. ‘You’ll come back to visit us and you’ll be complaining, Oh, this country is so filthy, oh, why do they have this ridiculous system of queuing in shops!’

  Yuri laughed. ‘I’ll come back and we’ll have a huge party with as much of everything as we like.’

  This was the first wave of purely economic emigration that Russia had seen; previously, exiles had always left with a certain glow of heroism, whether they were fleeing Tsarist censorship in the nineteenth century or persecution by the KGB in the twentieth. In Paris or New York they had dreamed and plotted revolution, so that at last they could go home. On the face of it, however, nothing would stop these young Russians from visiting their home whenever they wanted. But in practice Tanya was right. The invisible frontier that separates the West from the rest of the world would keep them apart. It would make it almost impossible for them to return, just as it was impossible for me to stay, for me to be any more Russian than I was.

  When we reached the station, Mitya and I rode on ahead with most of the provisions. The path seemed perfectly clear: down to the river and along until we came upon the tents which Viktor had been setting up since morning. But somehow we found ourselves pushing our bicycles through a patch of thorny hillocks, lost. After a while the strap on my sandal snapped and I had to go barefoot; then Mitya had a puncture. When we finally arrived, the mood among the others was frosty. They’d been waiting for the food and drink for more than an hour.

  ‘It’s just typical of you two,’ we were told. ‘So selfish.’

  As the sun fell over the river, the mosquitoes formed great dusty clouds above our camp. We lit a fire and tried to raise our spirits with alcohol. It was a perfect summer evening; golden light lay on the water until almost ten o’clock, and the clouds glowed pink above us. But the atmosphere did not improve. We sat huddled in the smoke, irritably slapping the insects away and failing to get the fire hot enough to cook the meat. By the time it was ready, the smell of roasting fat was enough to make my stomach turn. I crawled into a tent and lay there, shivering.

  The next day, having wheeled our bicycles back to the station, Mitya and I sat on the grass and smoked. It was the middle of the day and I could barely open my eyes against the flat, white light. Mitya was also looking down, his face set in an expression that I recognised: very still, eyes narrowed. When he spoke, it was distantly, as though I had already left.

  ‘What will you do when you get back to England?’

  ‘I don’t know, see my family, get ready to go back to university. Miss you.’ There was a pause. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll … the same as ever. Work nights in the shop, go out to the woods, go to the cinema. Get drunk.’

  ‘Who will you go to the cinema with?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m going to see how much a ticket will be for you to come over in August.’

  Mitya sighed. ‘Oh Charlotte, it’s really not possible. I can’t earn enough money before then, and I don’t want to be paid for.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. You can pay me back later, whenever.’

  ‘And how am I going to do that, I wonder? Shall I put it on my credit card, or shall I just rob a bank?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be the end,’ I said. We’d been saying this to each other for weeks, trying to sound convincing.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ muttered Mitya. ‘I’m sorry.’

  When the elektrichka finally arrived most of the windowpanes in the carriage were missing, as usual, and the wind and engine noise made it impossible to talk. I watched Mitya as he lit another cigarette and smoked it out of the window. He was very pale and the scar that I had noticed the first time I met him stood out darkly on his cheek. We rattled across the iron bridge over the Voronezh river. For the last time I saw the whole city beneath me: the factory chimneys white against the sky, the fishermen in boats on the reservoir, the dome of the cathedral among the dilapidated wooden houses, and the mustard-coloured Stalinist blocks in the centre. It looked half-abandoned. Even the railway station was quiet.

  That evening Emily and I stuffed the last few things into our cases and piled them onto the porters’ cart in the yard. In the fading light the hostel, framed by shivering poplars, was almost attractive. We trailed past the rubbish dump, down Peace Prospect and through the line of babushkas still waiting by their buckets of boiled potatoes. Everyone was laughing and joking, as though this was just another train journey.

  ‘When you come back, let’s all go down to the Black Sea together,’ Viktor suggested. ‘Autumn’s the time to go, September or October. It’s beautiful –’

  ‘Definitely,’ we agreed. ‘Otdykh!’

  ‘We’ll meet you here on the platform and go straight on to the sea.’

  ‘Yes! We’ll celebrate right here.’

  ‘Let’s drink to that.’

  ‘We’d given away most of our belongings – the saucepans, the sandwich toaster and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (invaluable for wedging the refrigerator door shut) are still, perhaps, doing service somewhere in Voronezh – but all the same we struggled to cram our bags into the luggage compartment. Then, as is the Russian custom, we sat for a minute in silence and invoked the gods of the road. I stared at the floor and concentrated on holding the tears where they were, just behind my eyes.

  ‘People, hurry up!’ the conductor yelled. ‘We’re leaving.’

  There was a scramble to get off the train. Mitya grabbed me and kissed me, hard, somewhere near my ear. Then the conductor pushed him onto the platform.

  The shouts of Viktor and the girls were silenced as the train pulled away. We watched their mouths moving as they ran alongside us, waving and grinning. Only Mitya stood still, hands thrust deep into his pockets. Then he turned and walked away, hunching his shoulders.

  Glossary

  anglichanka (pl. anglichanki) – English girl

  apparatchik – Soviet bureaucrat

  babushka, babulya – grandmother, old woman

  banya – steam bath

  bomzh – acronym meaning homeless person

>   Bozhe moi! – My God!

  budka – shed

  dachnik (pl. dachniki) – owner of a dacha, a country house

  dalshe – further

  demi-sek – demi-sec, medium dry

  dochka – daughter

  dyevushka – girl

  dyevka – girl (slightly derogatory)

  dvushka – two-kopeck piece

  elektrichka (pl. elektrichki) – small electric train for short journeys

  entrakt – interval, from the French entracte

  fortochka – the small casement that can be opened when the rest of the window is sealed up for winter

  garderob – cloakroom, from the French garderobe

  Gastronom – food store

  golubka (pl. golubki) – female dove; a term of endearment

  gorko! – bitter! A word shouted at weddings to make the bride and groom kiss, on the assumption that they should exorcise anything that is bitter or difficult on the first day of their marriage, and then everything will be sweet thereafter.

  inostranets, inostranka – foreign man, woman

  intelligent (pl. intelligenty) – intellectual, educated person. Pronounced with a hard ‘g’.

  Komendant – head of the hostel

  kulich – traditional Easter cake

  ladno – all right, OK

  magizdat – underground copying and distribution of music that sprung up under Brezhnev, the equivalent of samizdat for books

  mily, milaya, milenky – dear, darling

  mutny – cloudy, opaque

  nichevo – nothing, it’s nothing

  na brudershaft – from the German Bruderschaft. To drink a toast as brothers, with linked arms.

  nu-ka, posmotrim – now, let’s see

  otdykh – rest, relaxation, holiday

  papirosa (pl. papirosy) – Russian cigarettes of black tobacco with a long tube of cardboard for a filter

  Pobeda – Victory (a Soviet make of car)

  privyet – hello

  propiska – residence permit

  pukh – fluffy seed from a certain type of poplar

  salo – salted pig fat

  sek – sec, dry

  shashlyk – kebabs

  Slava Bogu! – Thank God!

  smetana – sour cream

  sovok – someone who lives according to the old Soviet ways (derogatory)

  s prazdnikom! – Congratulations on whichever holiday it might be – Border Guard Day, International Labour Day, or First Day back at school.

  ublyudki – bastards

  Univermag – short for Universalny Magazin – department store

  vakhtersha – concierge, janitor

  vodochka – the affectionate diminutive for vodka

  vytrezvitel – lock-up for drunks

  yolki palki! – a jokey expression meaning whoops!

  zakuski – snacks to eat with vodka

  zefir – nutty meringues

  Answers to exercises on pp. 78–9:

  b) i) the knitwear department

  ii) the shoe department

  iii) the ladies’ underwear department

  c) baraban – drum

  kolokol – bell

  skreepka – violin

  Acknowledgements

  Many people were kind to me while I was writing this book. I am grateful to all those whose spare rooms and kitchen tables provided me with an office: to my father, to Jonathan and Heather, to Emma and Giles, and to Alexander Hoare, whose view ensured that my progress was slow but enjoyable. Selina encouraged me to begin. Will, Emily, Roly, Claire and Vitali took the trouble to comb through the manuscript in the final stages. Georgia Garrett’s good judgement and good company, along with Neil Belton’s enthusiasm and meticulous editing, made writing the book a pleasure. And above all, Philip’s staunch support, his tact, wit and literary intuition have helped me more than I can say.

  As for my friends from Voronezh, both Russian and English, it is because of them that this book exists at all. Discretion has led me to change most of the names and some of the details; otherwise I have done my best to capture our life together accurately. If there are mistakes, I hope they will forgive me. Thanks to all of you, and in particular to M.P., to whom this book is dedicated with affection.

  About the Author

  Black Earth City was Charlotte Hobson’s first book. It won a Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. She has since published her novel The Vanishing Futurist to critical acclaim. She lives in Cornwall with her husband, the writer Philip Marsden, and their two children.

  By the Same Author

  The Vanishing Futurist

  Copyright

  First published in the UK in 2001 by Granta Books

  This ebook edition first published in 2017

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © Charlotte Hobson, 2001, 2017

  Foreword, all rights reserved

  © Peter Pomerantsev, 2017

  Cover design by Faber

  Cover image by Bulanov, Dimitri Anatolyevich (1898-1942) / Private collection / Bridgeman Images

  The right of Charlotte Hobson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  The author and publisher would like to thank the following:

  Nadezhda Mandelstam: Extract from Hope Against Hope, first published in Great Britain by the Harvill Press in 1971 © Nadezhda Mandelstam. English translation © Atheneum, New York and the Harvill Press, London 1970. Reproduced by kind permission of The Harvill Press. Osip Mandelstam, The Voronezh Notebooks Poems 1935–1937, translated by Richard and Elizabeth McKane, Bloodaxe Books, 1996. Penguin UK for permission to extract two lines from The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky (Penguin Classics, 1997) copyright © by Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky, 1997. Alan Sillitoe, ‘Love in the Environs of Voronezh’, Collected Poems, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1993. Aleksandr Blok, ‘The Scythians’, The Twelve and Other Poems, edited by John Stallworthy and Peter France, Random House New York, 1970. D.M. Thomas, for two lines from his translation of ‘Requiem’ by Anna Akhmatova; Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward, for ‘Voronezh’ by Anna Akhmatova from Poems of Akhmatova, Collins and Harvill Press, London, 1974. Madame Jarintsov, for the extract from The Russians and their Language, 1919. G.M. Hyde, for lines from his translation of ‘A Cloud in Trousers’ by Vladimir Mayakovsky in How are Verses Made, The Bristol Press, 1990.

  ISBN 978-0-571-34079-8