After two hours in Novgorod George and I had to get on, so walked Maria to the bus stop and said goodbye, promising to send each other books. She wanted a copy of The Rats and Other Poems, as well as A Tree on Fire when it came out in a few months — both sent with pleasure.
Just after midday we crossed the Volkhov, and I asked George if we couldn’t stop in a village and buy a wagon of kvass, tow it behind the car and slake our thirsts from it now and again in the warm and sunny weather.
‘The roubles may be burning your pocket,’ he said, ‘but it’s an impractical idea,’ so instead we savoured large Havana cigars bought on the Nevsky Prospekt, and he likened us to a couple of swollen plutocrats out for a spin.
Cruising at sixty, a car overtook us at more than seventy. Others went by at the same rate, showing D-letters for Germany on their rear ends. ‘Did you notice them?’ I said. ‘Blazoned along the sides was “Berlin — Moscow Rally — 1967”.’
Though I had seen no such thing he half believed me. ‘I’m feeling too lazy to overtake,’ I said.
‘You’d be crazy to try.’
‘I suppose so,’ I went on. ‘There’s no hurry as far as I’m concerned. If I’ve learned anything at all in my life it’s never to compete. We still have 500 kilometres to do before getting to the greatest kremlin of them all, so we can take it easy.’
More cars of the same breed jet-engined by, serious drivers in shirtsleeves and eye shades, and navigating companions with binocular straps around their necks intent on outspread maps. For some reason George became agitated: ‘Do we overtake, or not?’
‘I will if you want me to. Your wishes are sacrosanct as the Russian guest in this French car with an English driver.’
Putting the speed up to seventy, perhaps a little more, brought us to the tail of the German column. ‘My father was in the Red Army,’ he said, ‘and was killed in action on the way to Berlin with his brothers-in-arms.’
I ignored the reference to Evelyn Waugh. ‘I’m sorry to hear it, but it took place more than twenty years ago.’
‘I never knew him. He came from Tiflis. My mother and aunt brought me up.’ Unable to look on him directly, I nevertheless sensed his peculiar froglike twist of the lips. ‘They spoiled me, of course — rotten, as you say — though I never complain, because they still do.’
‘So the Germans are advancing on Moscow again,’ I said, ‘instead of retreating back to Berlin with swastikas between their legs. Maybe they’ll stop at Kalinin or Klin for schnapps.’ I pressed the acceleration a little more firmly, till eighty showed on the dial. Flipping on the blinkers and giving two honks I swung out and hurried along on the other side of the road at ninety, my plain Estate sliding by their chequerboard doors. George’s tongue went out, two fingers up.
He was still laughing when we halted to finish off Maria Abramovna’s sandwiches, but stopped when the German cars overtook us. Further down the road some drivers had pulled in to do physical exercises, bobbing up and down or throwing beach balls to one another. I flashed by, sounding the horn, which they took as a greeting and waved companionably back.
We gave a lift to a village postmistress because of her heavy bag, and when she got to where she was going we took a woman and her child on board. Setting them down a few miles on, the German column swung by, their blips in the wing mirror, the last one narrowly missing a lorry coming the other way.
Long shallow dips in the road made sufficient dead ground, in which cars from the opposite direction would be completely hidden, a perilous landscape to drive through. Signs warned not to overtake at such places, though not always, and I had to watch out for them. George, on the normal side for a Russian driver, and careful with his signals to get by, must have saved our lives a few times.
By two o’clock we were in the Valdai Hills, though they were so low you wouldn’t know it, and in two more hours we turned from the bypass into Torzhok, where Pushkin stayed to enjoy the famous Pozharskiye Ketlety or chicken cutlets, named after the owner of the hotel.
In 1147 the town was devastated by the Prince of Suzdal, and between 1178 and 1215 it suffered fire and rapine four times at the hands of rival princes. Then the Tartars slaughtered all the inhabitants on their way to deliver a similar blow to Novgorod. In 1245 and 1248 the Lithuanians did their butchery, and during the wars between the sons of Alexander Nevski more catastrophe was meted out. It was again destroyed by the Tartars in 1327, then the Grand Duke of Moscow occupied and ravaged it. In 1372 the Prince of Tver levelled the place. It grew again, in hope and vigour, but nothing availed, and the town was forcibly annexed to Moscow in 1477, which gave it no protection, for in 1609 it endured its greatest blow when the pillaging Poles burned monks and others alive in their churches and monasteries. It then settled down for 300 years, until the Germans laid it waste in 1941.
While tanking up with petrol beyond that ill-fated place the Germans passed us again. I was no longer interested, and neither was George. In ten minutes we got by them nevertheless. It was difficult not to. I changed gear, charged along with the needle rising, till most of the column was behind. With full steam up, and careful to avoid lorries lumbering from the other way, I got by the final car. I had just finished telling George I couldn’t remember what, when, once again, they weren’t far off.
The cat-and-mouse game broke up the ennui at being on the road. They fell behind, no sign of them. Bypassing Kalinin, and crossing the long bridge over the Volga at five in the afternoon, my eyes ached from hunger. Maria’s goodies had long since gone, so I asked George if he knew of a restaurant along the road. He didn’t: ‘Don’t worry about eating. Just hang on for another hour or so and you’ll be at your hotel, where you’ll be able to have a very splendid meal indeed.’
‘It’s all right for you. It’s hard work being the driver. When I get hungry I must eat, otherwise I’m liable to make mistakes. I wouldn’t like you to be delivered to your mother and aunt’s place grimacing from the misted up inside of a plastic bag. Nor would I like to be sent back to London in the same style. The Writers’ Union wouldn’t like that, for either of us.’
Before my screed convinced him he tried one more throw. ‘Places along the road aren’t good enough for someone like you, who comes from the capitalist West.’
While he was figuring out the meaning of an expletive which had something to do with the size of the cigar he was smoking, I stopped in the next village on seeing the word stolovaya over the door of a red-bricked building. A gate in the neat blue fence led through a flower garden to the door of the canteen. We stalked in and sat at a table, George looking like a younger version of the man on a Michelin map cover stranded in a place that wasn’t worth a star.
A stout woman in a white overall at the serving hatch called out that no meals were available, which seemed good news to George, but on seeing my disappointment, and my raddled features after so long at the car, she laughed and, in a few minutes, produced bowls of scalding soup, then ham, a few slices of black bread, butter, cakes, and again the same old bottles of prune juice, all of it delicious to a starving man. Even fastidious George sampled some, till we both felt fit enough for the last hundred miles to Moscow.
Our German friends were by now far in front, and there seemed little hope of coming first in the unacknowledged race. We couldn’t care less, of course, while puffing on our superb cigars. Not talking for a while, a few historical dates knocking about in my otherwise empty head, I recalled having left London on the 12th, and reckoned that today must be the 21st. History, one of my many interests, told me that on 22 June 1941, in the early hours of the morning …