Dabbler editor Gaw recalls his time in Russia…
Walking back to my hotel in Nizhny Novgorod in the early hours. It’s too cold to smoke and the snow’s so thick on the ground the only way to get around is to walk down the middle of the road, jumping into a drift when a car or lorry swishes by. I turn into the street my hotel is on and in the dull, white glow of the street lights see a gang of workers clearing debris left in the wake of a snow-plough. They’re using extra-wide brushes that look like robust, supersize windscreen wipers. I get closer and see they’re little old ladies, leaning into the brushes, putting all of their modest poundage into shifting lumps of ice and snow. They’re so wrapped up they look like badly-rolled carpets, stumpy and bulging. As I walk past I look into one of their brown, walnut faces, not unlike my grandmother’s. The eyes are impassive.
I’m sitting in the boardroom of a Russian bank, in the second day of negotiations concerning the split of fees on a bond deal. We’re down to who gets the last few basis points. It’s Friday afternoon and we’re booked on a plane back to London that evening. But we’re not moving; we’re arguing in circles. Suddenly, the double doors swing open and in struts the boss: short, pale, curly-haired, snub-nosed. He starts shouting in Russian, gesticulating angrily. I don’t understand it all but I can tell he’s swearing and delivering some sort of ultimatum. He struts back out. My colleague and I go into conference: he’s said that if we don’t fold, our employer will never do business in Russia again; he also advises us that it would not be in our best interests to spend the weekend in Moscow. We call London, fold and are on the plane that evening.
I’m staying with a family, as a lodger, whilst I do a language course. My landlady, a young, single mother, who shares the two-bedroom flat with her son, brother, father and, temporarily, me is generous and caring. She asks me if she can host a dinner for me and a couple of friends, one of whom has come over to pick me up a couple of times and has got on well with her. I gratefully accept. The night of the dinner arrives. My two friends are female academics, both fluent Russian speakers, and the dinner passes convivially. After a few vodkas everyone starts talking more freely. We move – inevitably – on to The State of Present-Day Russia, and my landlady and her brother inform us they hate the Jews. They were behind the Revolution and also the collapse of the Soviet Union. They run international finance and through that the big Russian enterprises: if only Russia could be free of them, all would be well. My two guests are Jewish. Both look Jewish and one has an unmistakably Jewish name. We move swiftly on, still friendly. The next day, feeling I should say something, I tell my landlady my guests were Jewish – she shrugs her shoulders. I tell her I’m an eighth Jewish – she pats me on the shoulder, breaks into a consoling, indulgent smile and says “But Gareth, you are one of the good ones”.
I’m in a provincial Russian hotel. It’s only moderately dirty. Every night there’s a raucous cabaret that goes on until about midnight. Sometime after the music dies down there’s a knock on the door. Insanely (as I later reflect), I open it. A short, slab-faced man faces me. He’s wearing a skiing jacket and swaying. He demands dollars. I say I haven’t got any. Rather desperately I inform him I’m staying here as a guest of the Governor. He appraises me, seems to make a decision and walks away down the corridor. I close the door and lock it. When I check out the next morning, he’s next to me in the queue. He doesn’t meet my eye.
I’m in Ufa, capital of the Bashkortostan Autonomous Region in the Urals. For reasons that escape me, it’s shortly before dawn and a colleague who’s been here before asks our driver to take us to a certain square. We pull into it just as it’s getting light; it’s open at one end. Looking east it’s apparent that we’re on the highest point of a river bluff, high up on the edge of the fault line that divides Europe from Asia. We look out over the drop, past an enormous, thrusting man-on-horse statue – an ancient Bashkir proletarian hero. Ahead of us, into the smoky lemon light of the dawn, stretch Asian steppes flat-lining into the horizon. I’ve only ever experienced such visual depth when looking into the Grand Canyon. It’s like peering at the moon.
Gaw, Just spent a wet thundery late afternoon sawing bits off and welding new bits on to Ubuntu 10.04, so enabling it to speak to the Kindle reader, I am sure however that, once downloaded this the first of many, will have been worth the effort. So, we shall raise a glass, and say a prayer for the start of a new venture. If however, said modifications have knackered the OS, may an elephant caress you with it’s toes.
The title is a titillaters taster…Regions of Sin…Kings Cross maybe, the knicker department perhaps, the NOW has had a resurrection its front page titles are reborn…Headmaster and gym mistress visit regions of sin”
Good luck on all counts, Malty. The ‘Region of Sin’ reference is about as far from titillating as you can get, coming as it does from Hardy’s Midnight on the Great Western! Mind you, the novel does feature a bit of “next thing I knew we were in bed together” as the NOTW agony aunt’s correspondents used to put it.
Always wanted to make it to Ufa, since I was in Kazan next door-ish several times, but never made it. Liked the name, and in the early 1900s Ufa was the HQ of all the Muslims-in-Russia action. I also seem to recall that they had an ultra corrupt & rubbish governor-president, as opposed to Tatarstan’s, who was undoubtedly corrupt but relatively efficient.
I’ve just got up to find that Hardy poem Gaw – and the poet was wrong: no boy worth his salt can have taken that attitude on the Great Western. It must have been the LBSCR out of Victoria, or the Piccadilly Line.
These are marvellous, all too evocative extracts. Cornwall for me this year I think.
The intro implies that these are autobiographical. I hope not, for your sake. Russia sounds like Theodore Dalrymple’s Birmingham.
“We call London, fold and are on the plane that evening.” Say it, brother!
Daniel, I note former BP boss Tony Hayward’s new investment vehicle is negotiating to buy Bashneft. Can’t see the Tatars allowing a similar deal. But then they’re the bigger brothers of the Golden Horde, I guess.
Resemblances between the fictional Autonomous Region in my book (i.e. the ‘Region of Sin’) and Bashkortostan are entirely coincidental. Just want to point that out.
James: Surely this is all too likely a journey from the blessed West to the Great Wen!
Just to be clear, these are autobiographical sketches that I adapted to form the opening of my novel (I’ll change the post to reflect this). Need I point out that I no longer do any business in Russia?