‘I saw a girl like you on top of a tank,’ I told Lena.
‘I was up on one yesterday,’ she said proudly. ‘Have you seen Mama?’
I told her that Tamrico was with Katya and that she was fine, but that they were worried about her and Yasya.
Lena told me about the ice-skating school she was attending.
‘One day I want to compete in the Olympics,’ she said.
‘That’s wonderful,’ I told her. ‘If I’d known, I would have brought you a pair of ice-skates from Canada.’
But she was preoccupied. ‘Do you really think they’ll attack us?’ she asked nervously. Everyone was turned towards the square where some movement in the tank columns was clearly taking place.
‘Hard to know,’ I said.
‘Can we stop them?’
‘Of course we can. Haven’t we already done that?’
I told her that the best thing was that people in the crowd were friendly and carried no weapons. The soldiers could see they weren’t threatening them.
‘Fear and panic lead to disaster,’ I said. ‘It’s good that no one is trying to whip up fear now.’
‘But what about the soldiers and militiamen who have come over to our side? If they attack, the army is bound to retaliate,’ Yasya said.
‘Our soldiers won’t attack,’ said Shurik. ‘They’ve been ordered to stay calm. What’s more, they know they can’t match the army.’
Out of the uneasy movement in front of the White House, slowly a chain of command was beginning to emerge. The people inside had realised it would be dangerous to let the protestors react spontaneously to events, according to Shurik. The protestors were tense, tired and visibly scared. They needed guidance. Every so often one of the members of Yeltsin’s government would come out of the White House, mount a tank or stand up on a table, and make a short speech. The loudspeakers from inside also kept us up to date about what was going on.
On portable radios the news came from everywhere: the BBC, Radio Free Europe and Moscow Radio. Someone had even managed to plug in a television set. To add to the cacophony there were guitars, accordions, violins and balalaikas. Earlier in the day the great cellist Rostropovich had entered the White House and waved to the crowd from a window. And other performers had also joined the protestors. The folksongs and ballads of the bards Vysotsky and Okudzhava were continually being sung. Then someone else would play the humorous skits of satirist Arkadii Raikin. Lena told me that an hour before she had seen the stand-up comedian Genady Khazanov in the crowd, cracking jokes. ‘He’s so funny, isn’t he?’
Rumours spread like grass fires. One said that soon a curfew would be declared, probably between 11pm and 5am. Another said that the trains in the Metro would be stopped. As soon as the crowd had been ordered to disperse, an attack would begin, said a third. Shurik said that he had seen soldiers preparing to take their positions in and around the White House. They had removed their uniforms and, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, were ready to defend the President.
At 9.30pm Vremya announced the curfew. News came through the crowd from Manezh Square near the Kremlin that tanks were beginning to move in the direction of the White House. By this time Lena was tired and ready to sleep. Shurik and Yasya left her with me in the shelter and went off to find out what was happening. The news they brought back was sobering.
Those guarding the White House were ordered to be ready at midnight, we heard. Some bulldozers and tractors were brought in from nearby construction sites and positioned in Tchaikovsky Street, where the attack by the commando group was expected to start. Half an hour later there was shooting from the direction of Smolensk Square. The news was that soldiers in armoured cars were trying to break through the barricades. We saw people running and calling for help, then running back towards the square. We heard gunfire coming from the White House. It was a short exchange lasting just a few minutes.
Shurik had disappeared again. As soon as the firing started, Lena woke with a start. I had no idea what to do with her. ‘Should I take her inside?’ I wondered. It had begun to rain lightly and a woman sitting nearby took off her jacket and wrapped it around the little girl, asking her to be calm and brave.
‘It’s no use going inside,’ said the woman to me. ‘We’re much safer here. They want to attack the White House and kill Yeltsin.’
Fortunately there was no further shooting, just a tense calm. The rain stopped and the sky cleared. Soon a half-moon appeared, followed by a sky full of stars. We could see the bright lights on the Kalinin Bridge. The mood of the crowd lifted.
We saw people standing at the windows of the Hotel Ukraine, waving and signalling with torches. ‘What’s happening there?’ Lena asked, pointing.
In the morning we would discover that a twenty-two-year-old veteran of the Afghan War had tried to stop one of the armed vehicles attempting to break through the barricades. He had climbed over the tank and attempted to cover the front with a tarpaulin sheet, but slipped and been dragged alongside it and crushed. Two friends who had rushed to help him were shot dead by the soldiers.
At two o’clock in the morning, out of a drowsy silence we heard loud cheers. We saw Eduard Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, walk into the White House. On the way he stopped, shook hands with some of the protestors and thanked them for their support. As he was entering the building twenty or so motorcyclists arrived from Kutuzovsky Prospect. The cheers erupted again. One of the riders took a loudspeaker, stood on a table and made a short speech, ending with the good news that the soldiers had started leaving Kutuzovsky Prospect.
‘They’re pulling out!’ he shouted. ‘We’ve done it.’
Then we heard the blare of horns from ferries on the river. They had assembled near the bank and blew and blew, their way of announcing that they would stay there to support the protestors.
The next cheer came when someone turned on the radio and the voice of the newsreader at Moscow Echo was heard. ‘Tovarishi, we’re back,’ he announced, ‘and the news is good. No attack!’
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Shurik was thrilled. He had reappeared. ‘But do you know why?’ He lowered his voice. ‘My friends tell me that the Alpha Group chickened out. The plan was to bomb the first and the second floors of the White House, storm the office of the President and, if he resisted, kill him there and then. But an hour before they were due to attack they were told that there were five hundred heavily-armed soldiers inside the White House and that there could be a bloodbath. Do you know what they did next? Something most unusual for a KGB unit. They summoned the entire force and asked each of the commandos to vote. The decision was unanimous: they would disobey any order to attack. Amazing! Even the KGB has gone soft.’ He looked pleased. ‘So now we can go home and relax.’
‘Let’s go now,’ said Lena.
‘Yes,’ Yasya agreed. ‘I want to sleep for a week.’
I took both of them home. Shurik wanted to stay on at the White House for a while. As we passed the wreckage of the trolleybus Yasya picked up a piece of metal sheeting with the route number 49A painted on it.
‘A souvenir for Papa,’ he said, smiling.
Yasya didn’t get to show the souvenir to Vladimir. He passed away at three o’clock in the morning, unaware of the loud horns of the ferries that had gathered at Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment. Ivan Vasillivich, the doctor, arrived, did a final examination and signed the necessary papers. The undertaker was informed and soon the body was ready: washed, dressed and laid in the coffin. The wreaths were placed and friends and relatives would soon start coming.
I didn’t stay in the room for much longer but found a chair in the kitchen and waited for the first rays of sunlight. I was tired, but sleep would have to wait. Katya appeared busy, although there wasn’t much to do; everything had been organised. Soon the funeral would be over too.
At around five o’clock an old man with a long grey beard came and told Katya that he was ready. He looked like a priest, but Katya said that Aleksei Nikolaevich was a
sculptor who had come to prepare a death mask of Vladimir’s face.
‘Do you want to help?’ she asked.
Aleksei Nikolaevich was an expert and needed very little help. He washed Vladimir’s face to remove any grease and dust, and then coated it with plaster of Paris. I fetched hot water from the kitchen to mix the powder. It took fifteen to twenty minutes for the mask to set. Once it had hardened, Aleksei Nikolaevich asked me to help him remove it. We peeled it off and placed it near the window to dry. A cast of Vladimir’s right hand was also prepared. The face and the hand were carefully washed and dried.
The funeral took place on the following day, 23 August 1991. It was a Friday and quite sunny for an autumn afternoon. The ceremony was simple. Yasya made a short speech. He didn’t cry, not once. An actor friend from the theatre read a poem and Vladimir’s body was cremated. I was told that Katya and Yasya would take the ashes to Sverdlovsk and release them into the waters of a river. I was given a handful in a bottle and asked to take them to Berlin to empty into the River Spree. Katya wanted them near Vladimir’s father and mother who had died in Berlin during the War and been buried somewhere in the nearby battlefields.
Shurik would later tell me something else about Berlin. During one of his visits to the city, Vladimir had shared a needle with a stranger, in a park outside the Rosa-Luxemburg-Plaz Station as he waited for Katya. She had been held up answering an urgent call at the hotel.
The day after Vladimir’s funeral I visited Aunty Olga.
I had spent most of the day in the Lenin Library, looking for material for my essay. In spite of the turbulent events in the streets, the reading room was full. I ordered my material and while I was waiting for it to be brought down, went to the café. It looked different, smaller and overcrowded. The old relaxed atmosphere had disappeared and the women serving the food were deliberately slow and unfriendly. In the reading room there was dust on the floor and the lights on several of the tables were broken.
I tried not to head for my old table but as soon as I entered I couldn’t stop myself. I found it easily, but it was occupied. An old woman in a nurse’s uniform adorned with a row of medals was taking notes. I walked on and saw that the glass in the window near Anna’s favourite table was cracked. The seat was empty. I pulled out her chair but couldn’t bring myself to sit down. I went into an adjoining room and worked there.
On the way to the library I had called in to the Moscow Art Theatre to buy a ticket for a new production of Uncle Vanya. A young woman holding a baby in her arms had approached me. She said she was an actress who had lost her job a few months before and now needed help. I didn’t let her finish her story. I gave her a ten-dollar note and walked on.
Beggars were now everywhere in Moscow. They were on the streets, in the Metro and outside shops and hotels. In the Soviet days I had occasionally met beggars, but then they were usually alcoholics wanting money for their next drink. Even more surprising were the number of people buying and selling little things: tomatoes, shoes, batteries. I saw young men and women carting boxes on trolleys, setting them up wherever there was space and selling music cassettes, records, chocolate bars, Tshirts, soap and washing powder, condoms, chewing gum, calculators, books, magazines and pornography.
There were babushkas outside the Metro standing behind little tables. One of them was selling a few carrots, two cabbage leaves and some misshapen sweet potatoes. The woman next to her offered two tubes of German toothpaste, an ancient hairdryer and two plastic aprons. An old man in an army uniform sat on his stool, his medals set out on the ground, waiting for a buyer. A retired nurse, his wife perhaps, held out an album of wartime photos. A blind man played his accordion and sang out-of-tune songs. A young man with a Lenin-beard stood on a wobbly table and declaimed poetry. A woman nearby was dressed as a clown, juggling with five knives while holding a wooden spoon with an egg on it in her mouth.
Shurik was right: perestroika had turned the whole city into a marketplace.
The stately Metro, jewel of the capital, was shabby. The escalators were dirty and the air heavy with moisture and dust. Shurik had warned me about what it was like. ‘The ventilation doesn’t work properly and no one replaces the lights. It isn’t safe down there any more.’
I got into a carriage, found a seat and opened a book. But I couldn’t concentrate. I was having second thoughts about visiting Aunty Olga and Leonid Mikhailovich. It didn’t seem right. I got out of the train at the next station, walked up the steps and found an empty bench on the street.
A teenager with dark hair and bright red lips came and sat beside me. ‘I am Lolita,’ she said, ‘and you are a foreigner with dollars. Do you have dollars?’ I didn’t answer but thought of the three boxes of Belgian chocolates I had bought in Berlin for Aunty Olga. I opened my bag, gave one box to the girl and walked away.
The bag also contained two Dizzy Gillespie cassettes for Leonid Mikhailovich. ‘It would be silly not to deliver them,’ I thought. ‘And they would be offended if they found out that I had been in Moscow and didn’t visit them. They can ask me whatever they want. Who cares? It doesn’t matter now. I should meet them, Anna or no Anna. Now it’s just between them and me.’
I was certain they had always liked me. At least Leonid Mikhailovich had. Aunty Olga? I wasn’t so sure. According to her, I had never been the right man for Anna. I was too reserved, too serious and too full of myself. But once Anna had made up her mind, the matter had been settled. Aunty Olga had had no choice but to accept her decision.
‘Perhaps I’m wrong,’ I thought. ‘But so what?’ I knew that if I wanted to leave Moscow feeling I had done everything I needed to do, I would have to get rid of my terrible angst about the past.
I didn’t want to go inside the Metro station. I soon found the right bus and reached the block of apartments without much trouble. I pressed the button for the lift and only then read the handwritten note: Out of order followed by most of the time and forever in different hands. I started to walk up the stairs. I finally reached the third floor, located the door and rang the bell. I heard it echo inside and waited. When nobody came I pressed it again, but still the door didn’t open.
I had turned and started to walk downstairs when I heard a door open. A middle-aged woman from the neighbouring apartment called me back.
‘I’m looking for Leonid Mikhailovich and Olga Mikhailovna,’ I said. ‘They used to live here.’
‘Yes, they used to. When did you last see them? You’re a foreigner, aren’t you? You must be one of his students.’
‘Ten years ago I was a student – but not one of his. I knew Anna quite well.’ I was embarrassed. Maybe she knew the truth.
‘Please wait. I’ll get my husband,’ said the woman. She called to him to come out and talk to the foreigner from India. ‘A good friend of Anna’s,’ she shouted.
The husband came out, shook my hand, glanced at his wife and turned to face me.
‘I’m afraid Leonid Mikhailovich is dead. He passed away two years ago.’
I was stunned. ‘And Aunty Olga?’
‘She’s well. A few health problems – nothing major, just old age,’ the woman replied. ‘She must have gone to the shops. She should be back soon. You’re welcome to come in and wait.’
I thanked them for their information but didn’t go in. I knew where the shops were but decided to wait for Aunty Olga in the park.
It was cold and windy. I recalled the family’s frequent complaints about the location of the apartment block. I also remembered how Anna used to enjoy walking in the forest, especially in winter.
‘The smell,’ she used to whisper, ‘the beautiful smell. I’d love to turn into a squirrel and scurry up the trees to talk to all the handsome owls sitting there looking at me with their glassy eyes, and hooting. And you know what? Each owl would have your face.’
As it got later and later I had almost decided to leave. Then I saw an old woman walking bent over on a stick, moving slowly and holding a shopping bag in her left
hand. It was Aunty Olga. I stood up as she approached the bench. She seemed to recognise me at once, which was good, since I didn’t want to frighten her.
‘Zdravstvuite, Olga Mikhailovna,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Vasu.’
‘O bozhe (Oh God)!’ She nearly lost her stick. She tried to retrieve it but then dropped her bag and the milk bottle inside shattered. There was a sharp crack and milk started leaking out. I picked up her stick and escorted her to the bench. Then I went to rescue the bag. I removed the broken bottle, shook off the spilt milk and shoved the loaf of bread and packet of cheese back in.
I must have cut my finger on the broken glass, because there were drops of blood on the ground.
‘Blood,’ she said. ‘Have you cut yourself?’
‘Yes, but don’t worry.’ I took out my handkerchief and wrapped it around my finger.
‘Where’s your hat?’ she went on. ‘You’ll catch cold.’
‘I’ll be fine. It isn’t too cold. Let me go to the shops and get you milk.’
‘I don’t need it. I still have half a bottle in the fridge and a few cans of condensed. I don’t need much.’
We sat silently together on the bench, wondering what topics we should avoid. The neighbour came out of the building with her dog. Aunty Olga was by then ready to move. ‘Let’s go up. I feel cold. I’m not young any more and the autumn this year hasn’t been kind.’
We walked together, Aunty Olga doing her best to avoid talking with the neighbour.
‘She’s very nosy,’ she grumbled, ‘and gossips shamelessly.’
The climb up the stairs to the third floor was hard for her. We had to stop every few minutes. ‘My knees hurt,’ she said, ‘and there’s something wrong with my hip. I’m falling apart. Just like everything in this country. Luckily, the kids from the primary school sometimes come and help me.’
Very little had changed inside the apartment although it seemed run-down. The wallpaper was peeling, the taps dripped and the enamel on the bathtub was coming off. Aunty Olga still lived in the same room but the other two were shut up. The piano still stood in the library but the mahogany table had been cleared of its books and papers. The bookshelves were neatly ordered, each volume in the company of other books of the same size and shape.
After Love Page 19