Whatever Remains

by Penny F. Graham

  Looking around me that first day, I realised that I was seeing many people who shared the features of my two aunts and some of my cousins who lived in Perth. I had no proof as yet, but I felt instinctively that this was indeed the place where my Russian ancestors came from. Both aunts and some of my cousins have olive skin, broad faces with high cheek bones and slanting dark eyes — a faintly Asiatic look. I was to see these characteristics over and over again in about a third of the general population — a throwback to their Mongol ancestry.

  After finding an obliging ATM that spat out some much-needed roubles, we bought fruit, buttermilk (a favourite drink in parts of Russia and fast becoming my drink of choice) and bottled water and headed for the local market to get some lunch. We wandered through the town and then back through the Kremlin which, unlike Moscow’s Kremlin, is quite open to the public and some of its churches are now in use. The main tower, known as the Red Gate, is used as a mini-museum. It was filled with many artefacts and photos of old Astrakhan and its people.

  Time was running out, and we had to hurry to the port to put Elena aboard the ship and to say our goodbyes. We stood on the wharf waving as the large grey vessel navigated a three point turn to head up river. The sun was low in the sky, its yellow rays turning the river into a smooth ribbon of gold. Elena stood on the top deck waving the bunch of flowers we had given her as the boat pulled away.

  Tears trickled down my face as we threw kisses and waved to our dear friend who grew smaller and smaller as the ship picked up steam. Even though we had exchanged addresses and vowed to keep in touch, I thought we would never meet again. But we would keep our promise to each other and maintain sporadic but continuing contact and eight years later, in the summer of 2006, we would find Elena again in the distant city of Kazan, many miles upriver.

  In a rather sad frame of mind, we decided not to bother exploring the town for a restaurant tonight, but instead try the small café we had noticed right next door to our hotel.

  Probably a mistake! The café was directly over the road from the river, here bolstered with concrete to hold back the sand from sliding into the river. The resulting concrete bank had been fashioned into a narrow boulevard running along the top of the river bank. We saw, from the ever-increasing number of people, both young and old, who paraded up and down the concourse, that it was a favoured place to spend a summer evening showing off the family, catching up with friends or just watching the sunset. As we sat at our table in the café’s little courtyard we could watch the casually dressed crowds wandering by. From within the café proper we could not help but notice that the noise from one particularly large group was becoming louder and louder.

  As we were finishing our meal, one of the group detached himself from his friends and presented himself at our table holding a bottle of wine. It was, we established through sign language and with the help of our dictionary, a gift from the party table where the parents and their friends were celebrating the first birthday of their first child. We were asked if we would like to join the table and help them with their celebration. From that point on, my memory of the night dims. We had had a glass or two of vodka which now switched to wine, then later back to vodka again. They do say don’t mix your drinks — since that evening I know that’s good advice.

  By now everyone at the café had become one big party. Later in the evening, after being pressed to sing an Australian song (the Russians will burst into song at the drop of a hat), we gave them an off-key rendition of Waltzing Matilda. We Australians had to keep our side up after all. There was a lot of swapping of T-shirts, singing, laughing and many, many toasts to the happy parents and their very small son.

  The happy parents were celebrating their son’s first birthday, a significant birthday for Russian parents. My diary also tells me that I needed Lindsay’s assistance to get me back to our room at the hotel. I do remember thinking, as I collapsed into bed, My, these Russians are a jolly friendly lot.

  During the evening, we had met a group of non-Russians who had also been drawn into the party by the genial host. They, like us, had just popped into the café for a quick dinner and to discuss some work issues. There were four of them, engineers working on a colossal oil rig being built on the outskirts of Astrakhan that was destined to be floated out past the delta into the Caspian Sea. They also ended up enjoying the company and all too plentiful liquor supply of the happy young couple.

  Later, much later, the next day, after washing last evening’s fug down the drain with a sobering up shower, we met the engineers again and found that they were also staying in our hotel. Now we realised why the hotel had seemed comparatively expensive. Hotel Lotus had had the good fortune to have received a steady stream of foreign oil rig workers staying there, which resulted in elevated prices.

  Our new friends told us that their colleagues from all the major oil companies such as Shell, Esso, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil and Devon Energy were all staying in the hotel for their break during their work on the oil rig. A work crew of up to 30 men is taken to the site where the rig will ultimately sit in the Caspian Sea and, after a few weeks, they fly back to Astrakhan for rest and recuperation.

  The men we met in the café that night appeared to be senior managers rather than the general workers. They were friendly, but very cautious about what exactly a multinational oil conglomerate was doing here in Astrakhan. At breakfast a few days later, we met a few more of the oil riggers, the ordinary Joes who were putting the thing together. They were more inclined to talk openly about what they were doing. They were Americans; metal workers and electricians. Apparently, and remember this was 1998, what they were working on was a very hush-hush operation. It was not common knowledge, they told us; they were working on an oil rig as the negotiations (here their voices dropped to a conspiratorial whisper) to get the oil out to Europe had not been finalised.

  They told us, with pride, this was to be the largest oil rig in the world and of unique design. It would sit on a specially constructed sandbank rather than on legs attached to the seabed. The main platform of the rig had been built in Louisiana and brought, in two sections, across the Atlantic on container ships to the Black Sea. From there they were floated down the river system to Astrakhan. A group of workers had followed and were putting together the superstructure before floating the completed rig out to the pre-prepared sandbank in the Caspian Sea. It all sounded very cloak and dagger stuff. They were not supposed to talk about their work, or in fact, why they were in this out of the way part of Russia, but I guess they figured a couple of middle-aged Aussies did not constitute a threat to the USA’s national security.

  One young man was so laid back about the whole thing that he offered to take my camera to the building site to take a few photos for me. It was, he said, strictly forbidden to photograph the rig or even bring a camera on site but hey, wink-wink, he would be very circumspect. I duly handed over the camera, half expecting to get a tap on the shoulder any minute from a man in a trench coat and slouch hat. The tap never came, but the camera did, with a couple of amazing photos of an enormous metal structure that reached to the very sky and dwarfed the ant-sized men working on it.

  September in Astrakhan is hot and dusty with a constant wind that rustles the trees, shrivels drying leaves and blows discarded rubbish through the streets. It brought no relief from the day’s heat, nor a promise of rain — a dry sterile wind, doing nobody any good. The roses in the once ornate gardens that we passed every day on our route into town dropped their heads in the hot dry air. Even the leaves on the tree-lined streets carried a layer of summer grit the wind could not shift.

  Every day we would walk to the city centre and explore a little further. We found a small InTourist office that boasted a computer program that translated our questions from English to Russian. Although, by the bemused look on the InTourist woman’s face, the translations were not always easy to interpret. We had hoped to take a boat to the delta region, now far down the river, to see the exotic fish, birds and v
egetation it was famous for. But at $US60 a day plus overnight accommodation it was too much for our budget.

  We had, by now, got to know our way around town and found a large dilapidated building that housed the local History Museum.

  Communist Russia had devised 101 ways of keeping the population in gainful employment. We found, where a job could be done by one person, at least three people were employed. This stretches the labour market, and gives more people the opportunity to work. Boring work maybe, but a job with a wage. In particular, women seemed to work in what I would consider pretty mindless jobs. If it meant helping put food on the table and maybe providing even a few luxuries in your life, then I can understand even very ordinary or repetitive jobs were sought after. The ‘minding ladies’ at the museum were a case in point. Each room in the museum had its own ‘minder’ who stood at the entrance to each room. As you entered, she turned on the light, then turned it off as you left, all the while keeping a stern eye on you as you inspected the exhibits. We were the only visitors that day, so we felt quite uncomfortable if we were in a room too long — we didn’t want to use up too much electricity or keep the minders from their comfortable gossiping huddles.

  Despite the rather bedraggled appearance of the town, we decided that Astrakhan was our kind of place. Not too big that you couldn’t get around easily, but big enough to be able to buy most things you needed.

  On our explorations of the Kremlin, we would often climb to the top of the tower at the Red Gate that stood at one corner of the Kremlin walls. We could see that although the city centre was not big, Astrakhan itself spread for many kilometres up and down the river banks and as far as we could see inland. We wished we had a car to do a bit more exploring in the outer suburbs and along the banks of the Volga.

  A few nights into our stay, we met a family in the rather swish Modern Café where we had come for dinner. It was a pleasant place, cheap (at least by our standards) and close enough to our hotel to make it an easy walk home after dinner. We noticed a family glancing at us as we sat down. As we laboriously translated the menu, a man in his late thirties came over to our table. He had heard us speaking English, and wondered if he could be of any help. It was that kind of town, and the Astrakhan people were that kind of folk. He introduced himself as Alex Bondarenko, an accountant who worked in the pay office of a large oil company in neighbouring Kazakhstan. He explained that he was on leave from his job and had taken his wife and pretty little daughter out to dinner. Alex, like many of the better-educated Russians we met in Russia, spoke three or four languages. He translated the menu for us and then recommended a few dishes that were, in his opinion, well worth trying.

  After we all finished our meal, Alex came over to talk to us and asked why we were in Astrakhan. We gave him a much abbreviated version of Julia’s story and told him of our belief that my mother and grandmother had been born here in Astrakhan. I explained how important it was to me to try and establish the truth about my heritage.

  Alex’s round pleasant face broke into a friendly grin. He had a few days leave, he said, so would we like him to accompany us to the Archives Office and help with translating. We couldn’t believe our luck. In an out-of-the-way city of non-English speaking Russians, what were the odds of finding someone as kind and helpful as Alex?! We could not thank him enough and agreed to meet near our hotel the next day.

  I should have known, of course, that it would not be that easy. Alex did indeed meet us as arranged the following day — a pleasant man offering his time to perfect strangers with nothing in it for him but the knowledge that he was helping strangers to his town. The Archives Office was way out on the other side of the city where we had not as yet ventured. Alex hailed a car going in our direction (in Astrakhan, all cars will operate as taxis, for a price) and we piled in. This was the business end of town. Large ugly office blocks dominated the streets with smaller, older, run-down buildings that looked like small factories wedged in between them. The streets, now that we were out of the main part of town, were in a shocking state of repair. Our taxi car swerved this way and that to miss the many potholes and sections of damaged road. Streets running this way and that, overhead power lines, train tracks, office blocks and the occasional shop or group of temporary market stands had my head spinning. By now, we had simply no idea where we were.

  Minutes later, we were deposited outside the main door of a long low cream-rendered building. This was the Public Archives Office of the Astrakhan Province, and it was closed for building repairs. My heart sank.

  But not all was lost. Although the records office was closed, there were other staff working in the building and Alex spoke to one of the historians working there about our case. After giving him, with Alex translating, what little information we had about my mother’s family the historian took our address in Australia and assured us that he would see what he could find out. We were not at all confident that anything would come of it but kept our fingers crossed.

  Alex left us there as he had other business to attend to. How deflated I felt as we rattled and shook our way back across town on one of Astrakhan’s archaic buses. We had travelled from the other side of the world only to find ‘Закрыто’ (Closed) on the very door that I so desperately needed to be open.

  My premonition was right — we never did hear from the man in the Archives Office. Some years later and much better prepared, we would once again visit this ancient building with its interminably lengthy corridors and small rooms filled with cheerless looking public servants bent over endless piles of paperwork — but that was well in the future.

  We had been in Astrakhan for nearly two weeks by now. The time we had intended to stay in Russia was fast running out. Our plan was to travel back to Saratov by train, stay a day or two there and continue on by train to Moscow. It was too late to get a ship back up river. The holiday season in Russia was over. We had come to take delight in this extraordinary city on the fringe of the Caspian Sea. I felt a growing connection with the place, a growing attraction to this multicultural sprawling city that spreads itself higgledy-piggledy over several sandy islands on the westernmost channel of the Volga. A juxtaposition of rebirth and neglect seems to characterise the modern Astrakhan. Beautifully restored sections of the town, freshly revealed from under a scruffy skin of scaffolding, rise next to blocks of wooden houses sagging, quite literally, into the soft fine sands they stood on. The restoration work being painstakingly carried out on the crumbling walls of the Kremlin contrasted with the dreadful neglect of the roads and infrastructure of its outer suburbs.

  Scaffolding was everywhere. In the main city area, building after building was slowly being restored to, if not exactly grandeur, then at least a kind of elegant dignity. The city’s side streets showed architectural styles ranging from the plebeian to the exotic. Buildings of unmistakable Russian design sit cheek by jowl with buildings reminiscent of the Middle East. And all of this architectural wealth and style results from Astrakhan’s status as the Russian gate to the Orient back in the 17th century. In those days, the streets would have been full of merchants from Persia, Armenia, Khiva and Bokhara. Now, a few hundred years later, Astrakhan’s citizens reflect that heritage, being a mix of Russians and Tatars, Kazakhs and Kalmyks, Chechens and Armenians.

  Our train to Saratov was to leave late the next evening. We spent the last day saying our goodbyes to our new-found home. We wandered the city streets, the parks and then, wilting with the last of the summer heat, walked back to our hotel through the weed-ravaged gardens of the Kremlin.

  We spent another week or so in Russia, then flew to Frankfurt, Germany to meet our youngest son, Jeremy, who had been travelling in Europe. After a few weeks in Germany we went our separate ways; Jeremy on to Britain and Lindsay and I to India to spend a month or so travelling from Delhi to the high valleys of Himachal Pradesh. This was to be my first visit to India and one that would enhance Lindsay’s passion for all things Indian and encourage him to return soon to do more travellin
g there, and create a resolve by me that once was maybe enough.

  By mid-November we were heading back to Australia to be reunited with our family in Perth. We were to spend Christmas there, taking delight in our little granddaughter’s happiness as she opened the various packages and parcels spread under the Christmas tree. Then, in early January, we collected our car and made that 4000 kilometre drive back to Canberra. This time we did not stop too often on the road to explore, but ate up as many kilometres as we could before the daylight failed.

  Bunty Melville, Denis’s fiancee in 1936

  St Mary-at-Lambeth Church, where my Emerson grandparents were married - now the Garden Museum

  St Andrew’s Cathedral, Singapore, where my parents married in 1940

  My father, personal secretary to Commander Long, Melbourne, ca 1944

  My mother not long before she died

  My grandparents Fanny and Thomas Emerson at 81 Brixton Road, London

  Fanny Emerson with pearls and purse sent to her from Singapore by my father

  My half-sister Pat Emerson (age 16) and Albert Rich, at a friend’s wedding in London, 1942

  Ken and Pat England on their wedding day, London, 1950

  Mother and daughter, Doris (Wackie) Emerson and Pat

  Ernest Roberts’ grave in Penang, where the ashes of his wife Julia are scattered

  My first meeting with my sister at ‘Brambles’, West Sussex, 1993 – L to R Lindsay, Pat, Penny, Albert

  Visiting my cousin Gwen Dove and husband Bill, East Leake, England, 1993

  Nen Emerson (foreground) with heliograph, Egypt during WW1