Sandy Balfour's Bering Blog en-gb Sandy Balfour 2010 Quite what one is to make of Eimi (see below), I am not sure. It reads much like e.e.cummings’ poems. You can’t quite make head or tail of it, and yet somewhere in the back of your head is a suspicion that it all makes sense. Take, for example, this brief tale of an American in Moscow, which cummings springs on us whilst he (and we) are having breakfast. But first he sets the scene: “(Distantly breakfast tinge upstairs-and-down consolations(again the sobbing Russian nonman and her crying wouldbe exporter: Chinesey consoles former;Turk latter)...)” Right, got that. (The punctuation and spellings are all his, by the way.) So then (and I transcribe in full and with all punctuation verbatim): “now,this little engineer came to the earthly paradise on a low salary;came earning $150 a month – which sum remained in American for the uses of his family – plus maybe it was 80 roubles or maybe not,which here he spent on himself(and all because this little engineer was ‘interested in building socialism’)...now,the socialist republic kept this engineer idle....and this little engineer objected(“I came here to build socialism”)...whereupon,the socialist republic framed this little engineer And How by immediately assigning him to a job about which he knew less than nothing...now this little engineer(who came to Russia to build socialism) knew nothing for 2 long days and then resigned...aha,then, quoth the socialist republic;we thought so:you are not an expert,you are therefore a spy.” And he is sent off to prison. It is a terrible but familiar tale. One book which crops up frequently in the second hand bookshops of north London is Tim Tzouliadis’ The Forsaken (Abacus, 2009) which tells the story of the ‘least-heralded migration in American history’, which is to say the story of the thousands of Americans who left the failings of Depression-capitalism for the promise of Soviet Russia, only to have their dreams betrayed by the realities of Stalinism. And, for that matter, by the American government. “...and all because,” writes cummings, “I was serious, I came to Russia seriously,I came here to build socialism.” http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 12 Jul 2010 06:14:24 GMT On learning (to be) Russian Posted by sandyb at 5:42 am, July 16th 2010. Russians do not use the verb to be in the present tense. We do not say “I am a writer,” but instead use the shorter and less gentle, “I writer.” I recall when I first started Russian lessons my tutor made a joke of it. “In Russia it is easier to have a past or a future,” she said. Sometimes, of course, it felt that it would be easier just not to bother with Russian at all. Still, I made some progress even though I’ve not had as much opportunity to practice as I would like. From the distance of London by far my favourite reading is Michele A Berdy’s language column in the Moscow Times. She has been living in Moscow for many years now and each week she offers Moscow’s large expat community (and me) insights into how Russian works that money just can’t buy. She also has a gentle humanity and humour, sometimes wholly at odds with how we think of Russia, at least in the past tense. This week’s column is a case in point: “I’m sure glad the “шпионский скандал” (“spy scandal”) is over and the Russians are home. I was tired of worrying about their kids. I was tired of hearing myself mutter at the news. I mean, how many times can you say, “They weren’t charged with spying” in your kitchen before someone pays attention to you?” In Russian, as in English, spying is a disreputable profession, but Michele Berdy manages to give it a domestic edge: “For example, you might hear: У вас — шпионы; у нас — разведчики. (You have spies; we have intelligence officers.) In Russian, like in English, spying is not a good thing. Шпион (spy), шпионаж (espionage) and шпионить (to spy) all have strongly negative connotations. Espionage is unpleasantly clandestine, and the spy’s intentions toward the spied upon are not benign. Take this example: Она шпионила за старшей сестрой, целующейся с мальчиком (She spied on her sister kissing a boy). You just know the little sister is a tattletale and Mom’s about to get a full report.” The pleasure of reading her work is not only in what it tells us about the challenges facing a professional translator. Again, it’s the personal touch. A few weeks ago I learned about new guidance issued to foreigned by the Moscow city authorities: “Just when I thought I had mastered the complexities of being a longtime foreign resident of the Russian capital, the Moscow City Duma has decided to produce кодекс москвича (Muscovite’s Code) to help us foreigners assimilate. Although it’s still being discussed, a few suggestions for proper behavior were given as examples. Some are easy to follow: Не резать барана во дворе (Don’t slit the throat of a sheep in the courtyard). No argument from me on that one, and besides, I think it’s against the law. Не жарить шашлык на балконе (Don’t grill shashlik on the balcony). I don’t have a balcony and besides, I think that’s also against the law. Разговаривать по-русски (Speak Russian). Potential problem. Does that mean I can’t speak English with a friend in public? And finally: Не ходить по городу в национальной одежде (Don’t walk around the city in national dress). Big problem. Do I have to throw out my jeans, sneakers and down parka?” Tempting though it is to create some monstrous national costume, I think I’ll go finish packing my clothes-that-won’t-raise-an-eyebrow-n-Russia. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 16 Jul 2010 04:46:03 GMT Teodor has reconciled himself to the journey. You can tell because he has stopped trying to fix me up with people stay with and things to see. He has seen that the light of reason has left my eyes. I am on a private journey and his role is to watch. - But you will write, he asks. - There is my blog, I reply. I’ve tried this with a lot of people. With those to whom I am close it cuts no ice. Blogs are for strangers. They want their letters. I’ve just spent an hour or so explaining how I think the book might take shape, and so his repetition of the question jars. - But you will write? - I will, I say. Any requests? - Oh yes., Tell me the funny srories, the ones that won’t make it to the book. - Oh, OK. Honour satisfied, we move on to questions of what to take. When Teodor visited the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era he was well served by his ability to say (with a straight face ) that he has taken an oath not to drink. We run through my list of what I’m taking. Sleeping bag –check. Tent – no. Books – check and so on. - Have I missed anything, I ask. Teodor takes a moment. - A priest outfit, he says. - Really? But I couldn’t tell from his long description of the role of priests in Russian life whether he’s joking or not. Although I could see there were some advantages. But on balance - I don't think so. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 16 Jul 2010 23:27:12 GMT Partings, so they say, are such sweet sorrow. The Pharts, with whom I play tennis on Saturday mornings, had kindly put together a card for me. Let happiness be your guide, said Ralph. Don’t lose your Berings, said Howard. Anthony, ever the practical one, asked the important question: how do you say piss off in Russian? I must look it up. We are a group of men slightly past (I can hear the howls of outrage now) our primes and with my departure looming it was time to get to grips with the journey. Howard takes the role of mother and fires off questions: When, where, how, what? But of course my plans peter out (sorry about the pun) shortly after St Petersburg. I could satisfy him that far: Yes, I have a flight. Yes, I have a hotel. Yes, I will visit the Naval Academy and the Bering Museum. And then? Well, and then I will head for the Urals, for Tobolsk and Tyumen... for the rivers. It is at the rivers that our imaginations begin to falter. We can picture the rest, but the rivers are too big, too foreign and too far away. - We shall see, I say. - Let us know. - Flllow my blog. - Oh, that. I shall miss them, but perhaps it wasn’t obvious from my parting remark. A line from a poem that Teodor likes to quote: Я думал, что смерть прибыла, но это была старость. “I thought death had come, but it was only old age.” http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 17 Jul 2010 11:37:08 GMT For a parting gift a friend gave me a copy of Colin Thubron’s In Siberia. I have read it many times and it bears many rereadings, but this was a special copy. A first edition, and signed by the author. He likes to pop into a bookshop she knows and after a few weeks all the planets were aligned; the copy was there, her friend the bookseller was in place and Colin Thubron came by. ”To Sandy...” it reads. For the travel writer, or better still, for the traveller who writes, the proper balance between narrative and image is sometimes hard to find. Thubron does it so easily and with such grace that one suspects foul play. Such beautiful writing should at least seem like hard work, if only pour encourager les autres. Early on he finds himself in conversation with a man living semi-rough in Yekateringburg. A rambling conversation, a disconcerting time. The man had been some kind of vagrant for many years, even through Brezhnev’s time. One of the millions of Russians who lived outside of the official system, who founds ways to survive in the vast hinterland of Siberia. I met such people in Kamchatka, too. The so-called бомжи (homeless people) who lived outside of the cities, outside of the law, out of reach. I remember writing at the time that ‘for all that everything is controlled, Siberia is still a place where a man may lose himself, if he puts his mind to it.’ In Kamchatka once we spent a few excited hours chasing some presumed бомжи who were thought to have stolen a radio from a friend. We had seen the men earlier and I remember the prison tattoos on their arms and the heavy scarring above their eyes, the kind of damage suffered by boxers and the perpetually drunk. Thubron’s conversation with the drunken man winds its way through Russia’s past, a filigree of half-remembered thoughts, fluttering in the low light. And it reaches its conclusion, one we have all known or seen, but which Thubron captures with a precision and delicacy I envy. “The vodka closed his eyes, and he grew grateful for everything.” A manifesto for the traveller, especially for the traveller who writes? Be grateful for everything, but with your eyes wide open. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 18 Jul 2010 07:24:28 GMT By popular request: click here for a map of the Bering journey. This shows the route he took in 1725 – 1728 and this is the route I shall be trying to repeat. It’s not clear that this will be possible. The sections beyond Yakutsk may prove impossible within the time limits I have. Bering’s version of the journey is best shown by a map currently held by the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota. You can see it here. It’s rather beautifully drawn and, like the London tube map, is both accurate and wholly misleading. The Second Kamchatka expedition was on a much greater scale and involved multiple parties and multiple journeys and it was concerned not only to ‘settle’ the American question but to map (and subjugate) other parts of Siberia too. 19 Jul 2010 08:03:37 GMT If I can’t carry it, it isn’t coming. So that ruled out most of the books on Bering. Surveying my bookshelves in London last night I settled eventually on only one book about the Bering expedition. It’s The American Expedition by Sven Waxell. Waxell is probably third on my list of ‘interesting people’ on the expedition (after, in this order, Anna Bering and then Bering himself) and probably merits a book himself. But for the time being he will be our guide. Walking around St Petersburg this evening, the hot sun burning in the sky, the streets crowded with promenading couples, I tried to imagine the cold frost morning in February 1725 when Bering first set oput. He was 44 years old then. This is what Waxell – based on hearsay, one assumes, because he wasn’t around until later, says: “This first expedition did not actually set out until 8th February, 1725. Compared with the second it was a very minor affair. Bering had under his command a mere thirty-three men. With seventy-five wagon loads of materials he travelled by way of Vologda, Viliki Ustyug, Kai and Tobolsk, where he requisitioned further supplies...” The buildings are the same. The Winter Palace and the Admiralty gleam in the bright light. Even the Neva, presumably, isn’t that much changed. But try as I might I couldn’t imagine the train of 75 wagons setting off down Nevsky Prospect. After a while it bothered me why not and I decided it was the noise. Now there is traffic, everywhere traffic. Back then it would have been quiet. The shuffle of hoof on snow. The scrape of runners on ice. A horse neighs, commands are barked. There is noise, therefore, but silence is the default position. And as they start to move a quietness settles on the men. They know too well that they have, in Frost’s memorable phrase, miles to go before they sleep. Tomorrow I will spend in the Naval Museum and at the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic (in Bering Street, naturally) but on Thursday I head off for Vologda. A low-key affair, you would say. Just me and... well, just me. • Sven Waxell, the American Expedition, William Hodge, 1952 http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 20 Jul 2010 20:08:52 GMT Breakfast in Russian 12 hours in and we have found a routine. Sergei gets the teas in while I produce food from my bag. There are cucumbers and apples, dried apricots and salami, black bread, bitter as the night, and even some chocolate. I remember from Kamchatka that Russians do not have the same fixed ideas as we do about the appropriate times for different foods. What isn’t eaten tonight appears for breakfast tomorrow. What isn’t eaten for breakfast makes lunch and so on. And so we pass the time in companionable silence. He reads his paper. I read The Fatal Shore. Then suddenly Sergei cannot contain his laughter. The St Petersburg City Council has decided to outlaw vuvuzelas. - Is very good, he says. You know what is vuvuzela? I think if my mother hears this she will die. - It is only St Petersburg? In Moscow I can blow my vuvuzela? - In Moscow you can do anything. No one listens to you anyway. I try to engage Sergei in conversation about the World Cup, but in common with most Russians he is suffering from Slovenia syndrome: he lost all interest in the football shortly after Slovenia knocked Russia out in the final qualifying stages. We are passing through low wooded hills, east of Galich. - Old town, says Sergei. Very old town. At a town we stop for 15 minutes. Old women walk up and down the side the train. I buy some pirogi filled with onion and potatoes. They are still warm from the oven. - Ochen xorosho, I say to the woman. Very good. She walks away with a smile as wide as the sky. Sergei meanwhile is in whispered conversation with Natalia, the waitress-conductor and (so we learned this morning when she came and mopped the floor of our compartment with foul smelling bleach) cleaner. - She wants to know your story, he says. She thinks perhaps you are spy. You work for Meesix. Meesix? It takes me a while to realise he means MI6. - What did you tell her? - I say you are writer and you are nice man. - Spasebo! - Nichevo. Another article in the paper catches his eye. The good people of Kyrgyzstan want to join Russia. The headline says ‘The New USSR’. 99% (a very Soviet figure) of the people of Kyrgyzstan favour union with Russia. He reads out a quote from an unnamed man: “In the old days this was paradise. Now everything terrible.” But he has to use the dictionary to find the word for ‘paradise’ (“rasi”). - You know what is paradise? he asks. Another deeply philosophical note on which to end the conversation. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 24 Jul 2010 05:23:53 GMT The Ipatiev House was the old Merchant’s mansion in the centre of Yekaterinburg where the Romanovs were killed by their Soviet captors in1917. Boris Yeltsin, when in power, declared that this stain on Russian history should be removed and instead ordered a cathedral built. This happened in the early years of this century and the Church on the Blood (or, more properly, Храм-на-Крови́ во и́мя Всех святы́х, в земле́ Росси́йской просия́вших, Church on Blood in Honour of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land now commemorates the Romanov sainthood. And provides a backdrop for weddings and rich pickings for panhandlers. I realise that weddings keep cropping up in my photographs because newly-weds like to use as backdrops for their wedding photographs the same sites that first-day tourists like me like to visit. Today’s couple balanced uncertainly on the wall (see photo album) and (having survived that) then had to endure the attention of a beggar who insisted he had served his country well as a soldier only for it all to come ‘to this’. It was on this same spot – but before the Church was built – that Colin Thubron had his encounter with the grateful drunk (see ‘Grateful for Everything’ below). The Church on the Blood is, at least, a living, breathing place of worship. With perhaps 200 others I sit through the long service, trying to follow a liturgy very different from ‘our’ own and about which I realise I know very little. Down below their are plaques to the murdered family and a host of icons, the 'meanings' of which I don't begin to understand. Outside Michael was still ‘working’. He has the bruised and weather beaten face of a man who lives outdoors. I give him a few rubles and ask his name. A sure sign of weakness! He is on to me like a flash. I say I am Alexander Tomasevich (the Russians love a patronymic) and he seamlessly moves to the intimate form of the personal pronoun. - I was soldier, he says. Afghanistan, Chechnya. I was soldier. Now you look at me, Sasha. A soldier, like this. Asking for rubles! He looks in his cup. - For so few rubles! I am feeling at peace with the world and so I ask him to repeat it all slowly so I can understand. Which he does, especially the bit about the 'few rubles'. I give him ten more (20p) and ask if I can take his picture. He nods and stands to attention only what with the sun and the homebrew on his breath his ‘attention’ is more like the leaning tower of Pisa. It takes another ten minutes and ten rubles to get him to sit down and chill so I can get a decent portrait. For what? I have no idea. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 25 Jul 2010 07:09:17 GMT There is a passage in Gorky Park, the novel by Martin Cruz Smith (and still the best book, for my money, about the Soviet Union by a ‘Western’ writer) in which Arkady Renko and his American interlocutor discuss maps. I apologise – I don’t have it to hand to hunt out the exact quote. The American says, in America you use a map to tell you where a road goes. In Russia, Renko responds, if you don’t know where the road goes, you shouldn’t be on it. When I set out, I knew where it went. Repin Street heads southwest out of the city and I had a map. But my map was last seen taking flight on the backdraft of a speeding bus. To continue or not? It was getting late, but the summer sun hangs long in the sky and I had foolishly fallen asleep in the afternoon heat. I needed a walk to clear my head. And, perhaps for fear of wandering into more wedding parties, I thought it would be interesting to head for the Shirokorechenskoe Cemetery, which is home to the graves of many men who died in the 1990s. The date, like, say, 1937, is significant. During the Yeltsin years Yekaterinburg was said to have been the ‘crime capital’ of the new Russia and Shirokorechenskoe Cemetery is where those families involved in these enterprises are said to have honoured their dead. A graveyard of gangster bong – or so I had heard. But I was as interested in leaving tourist town and heading for ‘the real’ city, whatever that might mean. At first it meant business town. New buildings, half-built and the dust of construction heavy in the air. Today was not as hot as yesterday, but only because a dry wind from the south took the edge off the 30-degrees plus. Even in the ‘cool’ of eve. And then it meant a hospital and a police barracks. And then it meant tenement blocks, the kind that even to look at makes one begin to despair. Dark stairwells giving way to crumbling walkways. Alleys littered with condoms and broken glass. Dusty courtyards where men and women drank away the last of their weekends. I passed through a stretch of broken down houses beside a stretch of motorway (to Perm). Here darker skinned people lived. Children rode bicycles too big for them. Women with scarves on their heads talked on a grassy patch. Some distance away, huddled around a table ‘their’ men drank and played a game that looked halfway between drafts and chess. One of the buildings was recently burned out. Before the graveyard there is a small wood with a lake and a place to relax. Groups of sailors from the Baltic Fleet – who had filled the centre of town with their flags earlier, staggered out, women on their arms. And then the graveyard. Granite bling surrounded by woods. Beyond them, though, the graves of ‘ordinary’ people told a story of the century. Whole family’s lives could be read into the dates engraved on the stones. So and so, died 1937. So and so killed in action, 1943. So and so – mostly women – who lived out a long life, who saw both the revolutions of 1917 and 1991. There was a series of graves to those who died in the as yet not wholly explained crash of a cargo flight in 1996. The graveyard was empty in the gathering darkness. I sat and watched the sun set through the pine trees. But then it was time to get back. To walk? Or take a bus? Or behave like a Russian. I waved down a car. It’s common practice here. Drivers stop and, if you’re going the same way, you can agree a price. I last did it in Moscow with Meg and Irina in 2006. - To the centre? I asked. - Nyet. He was slurring his words and I waved him away. I lost courage then and I wasn’t sure which bus to take. So I ended up walking back the 7 or 8 kilometres to my hotel. No map needed. The hotel is next to the tallest building in Yekaterinburg. You can see it for miles around, by day or night. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 25 Jul 2010 17:29:35 GMT No, sadly not that sort of weight. But it is clear that I am carrying too much. I need, as much as possible, to trim the load. I lay everything on the bed and contemplate what I can get rid of. Clothes are already pretty much at a minimum. Three trousers, three shirts, socks, underwear. Perhaps I could lose a pair of underpants. I decide it makes no difference. So let’s consider the warm clothes. Down vest. Seems ridiculous in 30 plus degree weather. But I have been in Kamchatka in August. I have seen snowflakes drifting... So that and the parka and the fleece lining stay. Also the waterproof trousers and the heavy boots. I could lose the scarf? (Sorry, Kit. It’s the one you like.) I decide it makes no difference. Okay, well, camping stuff. Am I ever really going to camp? You never know. So the sleeping bag stays. And the lining. And the groundsheet. And the emergency blanket. Torch. Batteries. I could lose – well, nothing. So then there’s medicines. I have several cans of mosquito stuff. I have various over the counter medications, happily unused in one of Cal’s old school lunch boxes. I have a toothbrush. It all stays. Okay, well, electronics. There’s my baby laptop. It stays. Also two mobiles and their chargers. They stay. Also the camera and its charger. Nothing to be got rid of there, even if having four chargers does seem ridiculous. I’m conscious I’m not doing very well. I’m conscious also of the looming inevitability of what is to come: books, maps, fishing rods, lures, and my beloved short wave radio. I should get rid of the radio. And the many spare batteries (they weigh a ton!) No one broadcasts in shortwave any more. It’s all internet this and internet that. And indeed I have taken to downloading BBC podcasts against a rainy day. But then again, that radio and I have been places together. It came to the Congo with me and I remember vividly listening to the World Service while I lay on the roof of a small boat carrying weapons and munitions down the Ubangi River to the rebel army at an imaginary front. I listened to it up Kilimanjaro. I lay in the blueberry fields of Kamchatka and listened to the reports on the first anniversary of the 11th September attacks. The radio stays. If only for sentimental reasons. Right, well, fishing then. Do I really need two rods? No. Do rods really weight that much? No. End of argument. And finally: a journey without maps? Please. A journey without books? Puh-leeeze! So that’s everything then. Maybe I could work on my midriff? I’m certainly carrying more there than is strictly necessary. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 26 Jul 2010 02:01:37 GMT Tyumen is having a party, although I haven’t quite worked out what it’s for yet. All the municipal buildings are decked in flags and there are flowers along the wide boulevards. It’s a pretty town, old and new working well together. The river front is getting a facelift too and on the sections that are finished people promenade slowly in the evening sun. Bering’s various parties passed through this town many times on their way to Tobolsk, then the most important town in Siberia. Tyumen itself dates from 1586, one of the oldest town s in Siberia. The Tura eventually runs into the Ob, but Bering preferred to press on to Tobolsk where they could build the lodkas that would take them down the Irtysh and then on the long haul up the Ob. And it was here, not far from the spot where I am sitting, that Georg Steller died. Steller signed on to the second expedition as a naturalist and in the space of a few short months left a scientific legacy that many scientist could not dream of matching in a lifetime. He is best known for Steller’s sea cow which was hunted to extinction within a few years of his naming it, but he also found, described and classified a bewildering variety of plants, birds, animals and fish. But too many years in Siberia and his own flawed character meant that Steller returned from Alaska (he was one of the few to survive that winter on Bering Island in 1741-2) with enemies. Pursued by the law and an alcoholic he died in Tyumen when on his way back to St Petersburg. He was buried in a shallow grave above the Tura (they say the sight of his grave has since been washed away) but thieves exhumed his body in search of gold and wolves took parts of him for food. It was an ignominious end for a brave and determined man. As Tom Lehrer said of Mozart, it is a sobering thought that when Steller was my age he’d been dead for 11 years... http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 26 Jul 2010 18:00:50 GMT Russia’s ‘East’ preceded the American West by several centuries. 250 years before Clark or Lewis were twinkles in their fathers’ eyes, Tobolsk was the capital of Russia’s ever-expanding Siberian empire. It stayed that way for centuries. Colin Thubron puts it like this: “The Russians’ advance eastward grew remorseless. They set out across the continent as other nations embarked over the ocean, and just as spices or silver tempted European empires into being, so Russian Siberia was the creation of the sable... Tobolsk was the springboard for this conquest.” It was where Bering gathered his expedition and where he built the first of his many boats. From Tobolsk they floated down the Irtush to the Ob and from there they turned down south, travelling upstream. But you don’t have to watch too many westerns to know that to make a town you send the railroad through it. Or you don’t. Tyumen is on the path of the Trans-Siberian railroad. Tobolsk is not. Tyumen is thriving. Tobolsk is not. It is not the river that matters. It is the railroad. - It is better you do not stop in Tobolsk, said Elena. She pretended it was because of the pressures of being in Nizhnevartovsk to catch a boat. But really it was because Tobolsk is not a place for anyone to stop. No boats will fetch me there. On the station platform a weathered woman sells smoked fish and cigarettes. - May I take a photograph? I ask. - Nyet, she replies. I am selling fish, not pictures. I let it go. A light rain was falling; the platform was dark with dust turning to grime. Across the railway lines I could see the sagging roofs of abandoned houses. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 28 Jul 2010 06:29:40 GMT A Handshake is as Good as a Mugging They pick me up at a bus stop in town. I had asked where I could sort out my ongoing problems with mobile phones. - You speak English? - Oh yes. Hmmm. Turns out the taller one speaks English in the same way as I can hang glide. He takes my phone and fiddles for a while. The shorter one says nothing at all. My service provider is called Megafon. - Come, we go to Megafon he says (in Russian) Hmmm. It's getting late. Rule number one of the survival handbook says, do not get into cars with strange men after dusk. - Oh, okay, thank you, I say, climbing into said car. A black Volga with pimped chrome wheels. We roar off to the outskirts of town where there is a gleaming mall. Think Lewisham without the class. We try a few non-conversations with people who don't have a word of English (I am, if I'm honest, astonished at how few Russians speak any English at all) and eventually the taller one gives up the pretence of knowing what he is doing. The question is, what now? Because the fact of the matter is I am dependent on his car to get back to my hotel. He starts telling me a long story about how dangerous Moscow is. How easily a man can get mugged in Moscow. He and the short guy are exchanging glances. So I have to do something. I hold out my hand. - I forgot to introduce myself, I say. My name is Alexander. The principle being you can't mug a man who has offered friendship. Nikolai takes my hand. Then Marcel. More glances. More muttering in Russian. They agree that Marcel will stay at the shopping centre, while Nikolai takes me back to the station. Station seems the right place. I'm not in the mood to tell them my hotel. On the way back Nikolai relaxes again. I ask where he is from. - I was born here in Nizhnevartovsk. But my parents are from the south [score one for Elena!]. - From the south? - My father is Armenian, from Yerevan. But my mother belongs to Lenin. She comes from Ulyanovsk. He is pleased that I get the joke. Lenin's name was Vladimir Ulyanov... The town (his birthplace) is named for him. At the station we shake hands again. I decide to buy a little more of Nikolai's friendship. - Thank you for your help. Perhaps I can give you some money? For petrol. To his credit, he says no. He is just getting back in the car when he has a thought. - In principle I would say no. But perhaps for Marcel...? I gave him 150 rubles. For the petrol. And for Marcel. And for not mugging me. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 29 Jul 2010 03:35:07 GMT Vladimir and Estragon (well, at any rate, Vladimir and his unnamed mate) waylaid me on my stroll from the harbour (I’m using the term very loosely; the boat ran aground on the beach only this time it was deliberate) to the bus station in Kargasok. Volodya was taller by about a foot, but just as thin as his friend. He had four gold teeth and yellow eyes and was wearing the de rigueur dress of these parts: military fatigues and boots and a baseball cap of dubious provenance. His mate, in identical kit, peered at me uncertainly watery eyes and swayed a little in the breeze. He had the drooping moustache of a natural clown and the old leather skin of a worn saddle. - Hello, said Volodya. Dobroe dehn! - Hello. Perhaps you can help. I need to know the way to the bus station. - He wants the bus station, said Volodya. - Station, said his mate (henceforth HM) - Do you know the way? - I do. What is your name? - Alexander. And yours? - Alexander! His name is Alexander. It is a Russian name! - Russian name, said HM morosely. - But you are not Russian? - Not Russian. - No, I said. - But you have a Russian name! You are Russian! My congratulations. Molodyets! - Congr... gr... gr...said HM. - My name is Vladimir Sergeivich indecipherable. A pleasure to meet you. - Meet you, said HM. Volodya (we moved swiftly to the diminutives, or at least he did) held out his hand. As we shook the stench of day-old, possibly week-old, booze washed across me. Possibly it was a lifetime’s worth oozing to the surface. The smelled not that different from the peat bogs to the north. They both looked like they had been on the bender to beat all benders. - Sasha, you are from the river? asked Volodya. - I have come from Strezhevoi. - He has come from Strezhevoi, said Volodya. - Strezhevoi, said HM. Clearly his role was to repeat the end of anything Vladimir said. To his credit he did it rather well and never gave up. - Um, the bus station? I ventured. - We have been fishing, said Volodya. (Behind us the sun rose over the misty Ob.) In the river. - River, said HM. - We caught a big fish. A very big fish. A very, very big fish. The biggest fish I ever caught. This was a fish. Nelma. (white salmon) - ‘elma, said HM. HM, by this time, had latched on to my hand and was holding it with both hands the way a baby clings to a mother’s finger. Also, perhaps seeking focus like my camera earlier on, he has focused on my buckle as the sole pillar of strength in his otherwise troubled world. He bends over and gazes at it with undisguised affection and longing. - Congratulations, I said. Now, about the bus station... - It was a salmon, said Volodya. A nelma. Very good fish, Very good to eat. It was this big. He stretched his arms in the manner of fishermen everywhere to indicate what would have been a mighty fine fish. - This big, said HM Only his arms weren’t quite the mirror of Volodya and so his catch was a smaller fish. And anyway, the act of letting go my hand caused him to fall over. - But we sold it, said Volodya. To a man. Our fish! (said the way an ultra-nationalist might say 'Our Russia') For money. - Money, said HM, nodding enthusiastically in the dust. - Money, said Volodya. - Money, said HM. - I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I said (which has been my usual approach to beggars. In this case it only made them more energetic. ) - Money! - Money! - Much money! - ‘uch mon...! said HM. - But now we have no money, said Volodya. - No money, said HM. (A weaker man than me would have cried, such was the pathos on HM’s face.) - Why not? I asked. - We drank it, said Volodya. Honest to God, we drank it. We drank it all. We drank everything. Vsyo! - Hmmmmmm drink, said HM, going on a little riff of his own. He smiled the memories of the bender of all benders. - And now we have no money. Which, I guess, was, at least in their eyes, the crux of proceedings. He took my hand in his, he fixed me with his liquid eye, he almost made me pass out with his breath and he said, - No money. Please, Sasha, Alexander, my Russian friend, will you not give Vladimir Sergeivich a little something? - It will be my pleasure.., I said. - His pleasure! - Plea...plea.., said HM, who had not yet quite made it back to upright. - ..if you will tell me where is the bus station? - What bus station? said Volodya. Please, Alexander, my Sasha, do not go to bus. Stay with us. We will eat and drink. - D-r-r-rin’, said HM. I gave them twenty roubles (40p) anyway. They went off, arm in arm, in search of 20 roubles worth of heaven only know what poison they had been putting inside themselves. The way they smelled, a cup of water would have been enough to reactivate the alcohol in their veins. And I went to find someone to ask the way to the bus station. It was not far and to my delight had the kind of toilet where you have to pay – which meant the toilet would be clean. These toilets are invariably ‘manned’ by women of an uncertain age sitting behind a glass booth to which one has to stoop. - Ten roubles, said the lady. I patted my pockets in vain for change. - You don’t have change for a thousand (£20) do you? Doh! I had to buy my ticket first and then go back. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 02 Aug 2010 04:32:15 GMT The river here freezes for 6 or 7 months. When the thaw comes, it is sudden and dramatic. The ice seems to roar and then the flow of the river clears it away within hours. A white world becomes brown overnight. So what’s a boy to do on a Friday evening? In Ust-Kut I went to the movies. A British film (‘supported by the UK Film Council’!) called Centurion, about which I knew nothing, was showing to me and a couple of others. The sound too loud, the cinematography too overblown. Children let loose in the special effects sweetshop. In Lensk I find two women from the hotel smoking on the promenade. - Is there a cinema in town? I ask. - No, sorry. - Really? - There was, but no one went, so they closed it. - Oh. They blow smoke out over the river. - A theatre? - No. - Football? - No. We’re playing a game now, so I up the ante a little. - Circus? Church? Cathedral? Planetarium? [There was one in Tomsk.] - There is a cafe? one says. - I’ve already eaten. - Or there’s me, says the other. She bobs (!) and blows a smoke ring. Her smile reveals two gold teeth. Unfortunately she’s right. For entertainment there’s people and booze, often in reverse order. Further down the promenade I can see the industrial gypsies returning with some bottles of beer. - Thank you, no. Read more at www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 14 Aug 2010 09:22:02 GMT Alexander’s optimism may have been misplaced. At the hotel desk Svetlana has been doing the research. - They say there are no boats going north from Yakutsk. To get to Ust Maya you have first to go south. - South? - To Tommot. From there you take a boat to Ust Maya. But this boat goes only on Tuesday and Saturdays. - And then? - And then you have to take another boat and a taxi. But that takes you only as far as Yugoryonok and this is a closed city. There is no electricity. No hotels. No nothing. Only miners and that’s all. There is nothing there. - Hmmm. And once I’m there? How do I get back? - I shall find out. - Thank you. Svetlana is a Yakut and straightens me out on the terms. Yakut and Saxha are the same. - Yakut is the Russian word, Saxha is the indigenous word. We have our own language and our own ways, but we are proud also to be part of Russia. - Really? - Oh, yes. Sometimes if a Yakut marries a Russian, other Yakuts will look down on them. Because there are not many of us. If we marry, our blood becomes less. - Thank you. It is embarrassing to ask. - Now I will find out about getting you back. Which would be nice. http://www.sandybalfour.com/beringblog.html 15 Aug 2010 11:21:57 GMT