by Terry Fallis
Our Lufthansa flight left on time, landed in Frankfurt ten minutes ahead of schedule, and then took off again on time. We didn’t leave the plane until we landed at Domodedovo Airport about four minutes late. I’d never been to Moscow. Then again, I’d never been to London or Frankfurt either.
We picked up our bags and passed through customs without incident, I mean other than dealing with my usual anxieties. When the passport control officer stared at me for quite some time, I was sure he recognized me. I kept waiting for him to pop the question, but it never came. He eventually stamped my passport and waved me through. I joined Matt in the main concourse and we then caught a cab for the trip to our hotel. Domodedovo Airport is about forty kilometres south of Moscow. It took quite a while for the cab to get us to the Courtyard Marriott Moscow Paveletskaya. Neither Matt nor I were in a position to know whether the taxi driver had chosen the most direct, efficient, and inexpensive route. The hotel was really quite nice, and very Western. Were it not for the signage featuring Cyrillic alongside English, we could have been in Montreal or Cleveland. Even with the favourable exchange rate, we still opted to share a room with two queen beds. By the time we’d settled into our room on the fifth floor, it was nearly 6:00 p.m., local time, three hours ahead of London.
“This isn’t so bad,” Matt said. “I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, but this is just so…so Western.”
“I know. I thought it might be a little less colourful, a little dingier, drab, grey, overcast, drizzling, with a lot of small, old dented cars, with people bundled up in utterly nondescript earth-tone clothes, lined up at grocery stores, looking forlorn, and two men in ill-fitting suits following us without really caring that we knew.”
“I was actually just talking about the hotel, not the social history of the Soviet Union,” Matt said. “Have you read lots of Cold War–era spy thrillers?”
Dozens and dozens.
“Well, maybe a few.”
“It’s been nearly fifteen years since the breakup of the Eastern Bloc,” Matt said. “Time to let go of your Evil Empire image. Russia is a different country now, in many ways.”
“I suppose,” I conceded. “But even though they swapped communism for capitalism, I think they’ve hung on to the corruption and are still about as democratic as your garden-variety banana republic.”
“I dare say you’re right about that. As you might imagine, we haven’t exactly targeted Russia in our next big new business development offensive,” Matt said. “But we’re here and we really should at least try to play the tourist in the hours we have until our meeting tomorrow. Who knows how much time we’ll have afterwards?”
You mean go out in a strange new city filled with strange new people? I don’t think so.
“I was thinking of maybe staying here, having dinner in the restaurant and getting to bed early for our big day tomorrow,” I said.
“Come on, Alex, it’s really only mid-afternoon for us. Indulge me.”
When we got down to the lobby, an empty cab was idling in front.
“That’s our man,” Matt said, heading straight out to the taxi.
The driver rolled down his window and then rolled his “r” when he said, “Paterson?”
“Yes, Paterson,” Matt replied, without rolling his “r,” and climbed in.
I followed. There didn’t seem to be any other option.
Matt wouldn’t tell me where we were going. He just kept telling me to be patient and that I’d enjoy myself. While our hotel was more on the outskirts of Moscow proper, our taxi was clearly headed downtown. It was warm and the sun was still quite high in the sky. Moscow looked not unlike many major metropolitan cities. A mix of high-rise and low-rise buildings, busy streets, highways around the periphery, and lots of people, some striding down the avenues with purpose, many others milling about seemingly without any place to go. About forty minutes later, the cab pulled up next to an old but beautiful building, fronted by a row of pillars.
The cab driver uttered his second word of our little road trip.
“Bolshoi.”
Matt had already arranged for us to see Giselle at the famed Bolshoi Theatre. Two tickets were waiting for us at the box office. I hadn’t been to too many ballets. Okay, I’d never been to a ballet, probably because it had never occurred to me to go to a ballet. It should have occurred to me. I loved it. It was truly beautiful and told a story just as effectively and powerfully as any movie or novel. And the theatre was stunning. It wasn’t massive, but was so beautifully designed it took my breath away. With about 350 seats on the floor, there were six, yes, six different balconies rising around the inside perimeter of the theatre. Wonderful architecture from 1776 – thank you, Wikipedia. The music, the dancing, the emotion of the story, the theatre itself, all made me feel, well, alive.
I looked up often to marvel at the gold, ornately appointed ceiling. I pushed Gabriel from my thoughts as I let my eyes flit over, but not dwell on, the lighting bays high above the audience. It was all quite magical.
At the intermission, I turned to Matt.
“You were right. This was a much better idea than staying in the hotel room for the night.”
“Alex, a prostate examination is a much better idea than spending your first night in Moscow in a hotel room.”
“Well, thanks for making it happen and for dragging me along.”
“No worries, mate.”
—
With Pavel Dubov’s help, we’d arranged to meet Dimitri Dumanovsky at ten the next morning, though we weren’t very specific about our interest. From our one telephone conversation, it was clear that despite a heavy accent, Dimitri’s English was quite good. I guess that made sense. It would be difficult to become a recognized hockey historian, even in Russia, without at least a passing understanding of English, or perhaps French. It would be like being a bull-fighting expert and not knowing Spanish, or a chess authority without knowing Russian. After all, Canada is hockey’s birthplace and founding world power.
The VTB Ice Palace is just a short walk from the Avtozavodskaya Metro station slightly southeast of downtown Moscow, and conveniently located only one Metro stop south of our hotel. Now you know why we’d chosen the Courtyard Marriott.
With directions from Vaclav, the hotel concierge, Matt and I easily found the Paveletskaya Metro station and boarded an only moderately crowded southbound train. We stood near the door, holding onto the grab bars conveniently provided.
“Same routine when we get there?” I asked.
“Absolutely, Alex. That works well for me,” he replied. “I’ll take the lead.”
“Thanks.”
The VTB Ice Palace – and I could never find out what VTB stands for – houses the Russian Hockey Museum and the Russian Hockey Hall of Glory. A young player with a hockey bag and stick waiting just inside the entrance directed us to Dimitri’s office on the upper mezzanine of the complex. A team was practising on the ice three floors below. His door was open, revealing an office you might expect belonged to a hockey historian. Posters, photographs, plaques, sticks, and pucks were mounted on almost every square inch of wall space. Old wooden filing cabinets and a few newer, industrial grey steel filing cabinets were arrayed around the perimeter of the room. Some drawers were open and overflowing with paper. I suspect they were open because they could not be closed. His desk was large and, beyond an older-looking desktop computer and monitor, completely covered with file folders, paper, and abandoned take-out food containers.
Dimitri, dressed casually, sat with his back to the door in an old wooden wheeled desk chair, focused on his outdated CRT computer display. The pale yellow linoleum floor beneath his feet no longer shone, if it ever had. I walked behind Matt as he approached the open door. I was sure he’d heard us approach. I’d even manufactured a cough as we closed in on his office in the hopes that he’d turn around. But no. We stopped outside his door. Matt knocked on the doorjamb.
“Da,” the man said, still with his back to us.
>
“Dimitri Dumanovsky?”
“Da,” he repeated.
“Matthew Paterson and Alex MacAskill,” Matt said. “We’re here from London to meet you. We talked on the phone.”
“Da. I remember,” he said, finally turning. His chair protested the swivel with a noise that sounded like the grinding gears of an ancient tractor.
“Come in, come in,” he said, clearing debris from two guest chairs we hadn’t even noticed.
“I am Dimitri,” he said, facing us and extending his hand.
“I’m Matt, and this is my brother, Alex.”
Dimitri clearly read too much into the word “handshake.” It felt like he might have been trying to dislocate my shoulder.
“Sit down. Sit down,” he said, pointing to the chairs now free of hockey detritus but not dust.
We sat down.
“Sorry about mess,” Dimitri said. “Not much people visit me here.”
“No problem. Thanks for meeting with us.”
“So why you come great distance from London, where hockey is not good, to talk to me about hockey? Pavel did not tell me much. You did not say much on the phone. So what can I do?”
Matt pulled his iPad from his backpack, displayed the enlarged photo of the partially obscured tattoo, and passed it to Dimitri.
“We’re trying to learn about this tattoo,” Matt said. “Pavel Dubov thought you could help us.”
“Pavel is a smart man. But why you want to know about this? Two young brothers, ‘tweens’ I think, from London, where hockey is not good. Why?”
“Alex is actually from Canada and is a very good hockey player,” Matt said, pointing to me.
I kind of smiled but didn’t know what else to do.
“Okay, but still why you want to know about tattoo?”
Matt looked at me with his eyebrows elevated. I just seemed to know what he was asking. I nodded once.
“Well, Dimitri, you’re right, Alex and I are twin brothers. Just a few days ago, we met each other for the first time since we were born. Alex didn’t know about me and I didn’t know about him.”
Matt then took the iPad from Dimitri and brought up the un-enlarged version of the photo showing two newborn babies in the arms of a man in jeans and a white T-shirt, and handed it back to him. Pavel looked from the photo to the two of us, and then back to the photo again.
“Dimitri, we’re here to see you because we think the man in the photograph is the father we’ve never known. We’re trying to find him.”
He looked back to us again.
“You don’t know who is your father? You never met your father?”
We shook our heads in unison.
“Not since that photograph was taken nearly twenty-five years ago,” Matt replied.
Dimitri looked at the floor and sighed.
“My father passes away just four months ago. He was ninety-four. I am seventy-one,” Dimitri said with a far-off look in his eye. “I knew my father for seventy-one years, for the whole of my life. Long time. Now he’s gone.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Dimitri. We didn’t know. We’re both sorry,” Matt said, reaching out his hand but not quite touching his shoulder. “We only knew our father for a few minutes when that photo was taken. That’s all. Will you help us?”
Dimitri lifted his moist eyes to ours again. “Da.”
Dimitri Dumanovsky stood, walked past the steel filing cabinets, and stopped in front of one of the wooden filing cabinets. He pulled out the balky middle drawer, waded through some files, then closed the drawer. He knelt on the floor to open the burgeoning bottom drawer. He thumbed through several files, searching. He was talking to himself, or perhaps to the filing gods.
“Da!” he exclaimed, withdrawing a file folder and hauling himself back to his feet. He cleared even more historical hockey flotsam from a small round table by simply tipping it over and dumping whatever had been on it onto the floor in one corner of the office. He dragged the table over and positioned it in front of where Matt and I were seated. Then he plopped down in his wheeled wooden chair and rolled himself over to join us. He dropped the thick file on the table. Written on the tab in black ink was “CCCP-Канада 1972.”
He flipped open the file and started riffling through it as if he knew exactly what he was looking for. Though they were somewhat obscured by his flying fingers, I saw game sheets and team line-ups fly by, and some photographs, and newspaper clippings, some in English but most in Russian.
“Eureka!” Dimitri shouted, holding up a single sheet of paper.
Apparently “eureka” is the same in Russian and English. He placed the paper on the table and turned it so we could see it.
“Eureka, indeed!” Matt said.
The paper showed a full-colour hand-drawn detailed sketch of the elusive and exclusive tattoo. It was exactly as Oksana, and my memories of a long-lost peewee hockey crest, had suggested.
Two hockey sticks crossed diagonally with a puck placed in the middle, just below where the sticks crossed. The straight blade of each stick was fully clothed in black tape. Above the puck it said: Канада-CCCP. The year 1972 was centred just under and between the two billowing national flags representing Canada and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This was, without a doubt, the design tattooed on the inner left forearm of the man in our mysterious bilateral baby photo.
“That’s it!” Matt said after examining the sketch and comparing it to our enlarged photo. “No doubt about it.”
Matt looked at me. I nodded in vigorous agreement.
“Yes, that is it, certainly,” Dimitri agreed. “There were two sizes. One small and one large. The man in the photo has the large tattoo. If he choosing smaller one, big baby would cover it all. We would never see it. We would never know.”
“This is brilliant, Dimitri. Thank you,” Matt said. “Now, Pavel said only players on the Soviet National Team could have this tattoo. Is that correct?”
“Almost correct,” Dimitri replied. “In point of fact…Is that how you say it? In point of fact?”
“Yes!” Matt and I replied, perfectly synchronized.
“Good. In point of fact, not just players was permitted to have tattoo installed, if I could say it that way. Also coaches, trainers, and equipment staff could wear it, too.”
I’d already done some research on the Soviet team. I mustered my resolve, took a deep breath, and looked across the table at Dimitri.
“So that means we’ve narrowed it down to the thirty-four candidates,” I said quietly. “That’s the twenty-nine starting and reserve players, along with the one coach, one assistant coach, one team doctor, one trainer, and one equipment manager, for a total of thirty-four possibilities. Are we missing anyone? Is that right?”
“Nyet. You are not right for two reasons,” Dimitri declared. “Number one, the Soviet coach, Vsevolod Bobrov, was scared of needles – everybody knew – and he never even thought he would be having tattoo. And number two, the team decided they would only have the tattoo on their…how do you say this…dominating hand? Domination hand?”
“Dominant hand,” Matt and I said together.
“Stupid me,” Dimitri said, shaking his head. “Da, dominant hand.” He then turned back to the full iPad photo.
“You see? Your father, and I hope he is your father, has tattoo on his left arm. He was what Americans call a ‘lefty.’ ”
He smiled and seemed pleased by his use of slang.
“I thought all Russians were ‘lefties,’ by definition,” Matt said, chuckling.
“I do not understand what you are meaning,” Dimitri replied.
“Sorry,” Matt said. “Never mind. I was kidding.”
“Okee-dokee,” Dimitri said, smiling. “I like this phrase, okee-dokee. Is fun to say.”
He returned to the thick file folder in front of him and again flipped through the pages until he stopped and withdrew a document.
“These are physical characteristics of each player. I th
ink it will tell us what dominant hand each player has.”
He flipped through the pages, jotting down names on a small notepad he withdrew from the pocket of his pants. When he turned the final page of the stack, there were only five players’ names on his list.
“What about the non-players?” I asked. “How do we find out if they were left-handed?”
“You,” Dimitri said pointing to me. “Alex, yes?”
I nodded.
“Come with me.”
Dimitri grabbed a stack of old VHS tapes from a shelf near the door and walked into the corridor. I followed. Down the hall, he turned into a much smaller office with a TV and VCR sitting on a trolley. A lone empty chair sat in front of the screen.
“These are tapes of series in ’72,” Dimitri started. “We already know Bobrov has no tattoo. So you must look at tapes and watch assistant coach, he’s young one, and trainer, one with moustache who opens one bench door, and equipment manager who opens other bench door. See if they do anything that says what hand is strong one.”
“Okay. I can do that. What about the team doctor?” I asked.
“Da. Try tape for Game Six,” Dimitri suggested. “That is when your Bobby Clarke, no sportsman, slashed the ankle of our best player, Valeri Kharlamov. His ankle was broked. Team doctor came to ice then. Watch him.”
We spent the rest of the morning working through our fatherly candidates. While Matt and Dimitri tracked down the five left-handed players on the list, I worked on the non-players. I thought it would be a difficult and tedious process, but it was neither.
I started with the Game Six tape. The play-by-play was in Russian. I found the audio distracting so I turned the volume down so it was just loud enough for me to hear names. I eliminated both coaches within the first ten minutes of the broadcast. Even though Dimitri had already taken Bobrov out of the play, the head coach compared notes with his assistant coach, Boris Kulagin, during a break in the action. Both coaches were holding notebooks in their left hands and pens in their right. Good enough for me to declare them both righties.
Partway through the first period, Aleksandr Gusev broke his stick and headed for the bench. I watched as the equipment manager quickly fetched him a new one. He used his right hand to grab the stick from the rack behind the bench, and then again to hand it to Gusev, who was skating by. Definitive? No, I don’t think so. But confirmation came a few minutes later in the game when the TV cameras again focused on the Soviet bench during a stoppage in play. The equipment manager picked up a water bottle and tossed it to one of the players about halfway down the bench. The bottle flew from his right hand. Now it was definitive. You don’t throw with your weaker hand. That was three of the five already accounted for. Just the trainer and team doctor left.