I sat by the shore in the gloaming, not a breath of wind, but my lighter flame bent at such an angle I assumed the fuel was running out. At half past ten numerous birds throated their calls, sometimes in chorus. Hard to believe I was alive. Tiredness turned everything into a dream. Love was lacking, and cuckoos instead of nightingales sang for much of the night.
Sunday, 18 June
Waterloo Day, the sixth out of London. Pekko came to the frontier village of Vaalima, to have coffee and say goodbye. The road beyond the Finnish post was blocked by a control arm, as if the Flying Scotsman was expected to steam through any minute. A Soviet soldier stood by his sentry box, no other building in sight. Stirring music sounded from a loudspeaker at the top of a tall pole, a noise like the crashlanding of a stricken aircraft. After ten minutes the soldier picked up his field telephone and spoke into it. He listened, said yes a few times, and put it down.
I lit a cigar and looked at my map of the road to Leningrad. The day was warm, so I opened all windows. He lifted the telephone again, and motioned me along the treelined potholed road. After about a kilometre I saw the neat modern customs house, a hammer-and-sickle at half flutter, and another megaphonic instrument blared martial music.
Three cars were in front, Swedish, Finnish, and Australian. All doors were being opened and bonnets lifted. One was of the dormobile type and a customs man went inside to look in drawers and under beds, while another pulled seats forward to examine the upholstery.
I was motioned into the building to show my passport, and when its visa was checked the woman handed me a form several sheets long on which I was to state exactly how much foreign currency was in my wallet, of whatever denomination, whether in traveller’s cheques or notes, then to declare the number of suitcases and pieces of smaller luggage, as well as camera, radio and field glasses. I followed a soldier out so that he could write the number of the engine and chassis, preliminaries which took about half an hour. It was eleven o’clock, by when I’d hoped to be beyond Viborg.
Soldiers were still going through the dormobile. One opened a jar of cold cream and put it to his nose. I looked forward to a laugh should he stir a finger inside for hidden jewels — but he thought better of it. Another swaddie paged his way through magazines looking for seditious reading matter, found none, but lingered a few moments over advertisements for women’s underwear.
I strolled up and down. The people in the Swedish car, with fractious and impatient children, seemed about to go berserk at the delay. I sympathised, and gave the kids some chocolate. Getting into Russia by air had been easy compared to this. The Swedes laughed at my gesture of resignation. No cars had yet gone through.
My turn came. A clean-faced young soldier asked me to lift the tailgate. He opened my binocular case, looked at the radio, and saw the camera, all noted on the customs form, which he checked. Did I have a tape recorder? No, I told him. There was nothing I wanted to smuggle in, or much that I would care to take out, either, yet wondered what they hoped to find. I had a few presents for friends — a quantity of books (mostly my own) ballpoint pens, and some pop records.
Magazines were flipped through in a polite but thorough way. He’d been told to do a job, and was doing it, so I stayed calm and patient, knowing that wanting to get into Russia there was no point being otherwise. I understood a few phrases of their language but pretended to know only my own.
He asked why I had so many books, and who they were for. I said they were for giving away, which he didn’t understand. Asking me to wait he went into the main building and a few minutes later came out with a stout woman wearing some kind of uniform who asked if I was intending to sell the books. When I said they were for friends she smiled and translated it to the soldier, who nevertheless continued lifting others into the light. I had Nagel’s Guide to the USSR, 1965 and the Guide Bleu Illustré Moscou-Leningrad which were looked into as well.
I thought of my specially drawn cartographic efforts which, Mr Reenpaa had said, if found might be confiscated or get me sent back to Finland, a prospect by this time in no way alarming. They were ensconced in the pocket of a holdall resting against the inside of the car, and he diligently searched it but without moving it into an isolated position, thus not noticing the concealed zip.
Half an hour later I was free to go. Waving goodbye, I revved up in a cloud of smoke and took the road to Leningrad, having at last shaken my way free of so much bullshit. A few kilometres on, some boys of twelve or fourteen stood in the road and signalled me to stop. I was going too fast, but then three other boys flagged me down, and I decided to see what they wanted. As they closed in to look through the window I was careful to ensure no eager fingers made a grab for anything that took their fancy. Neat and cleanly dressed, they probably came from the nearby village of Torfyanovka. ‘Hello,’ I said in Russian, a greeting returned but without a smile. ‘What do you want?’ also in Russian.
I was eager to get the wheels rolling, having missed the drug of engine noise for so long at the frontier. There was no reason for hurry, but I was losing patience at their keen curiosity. They looked at every instrument and control in silence, hoping I supposed to discuss what they had seen later. Two more boys, as if too timid to approach the car, stood with long fishing poles by the trees, looking anxiously up and down the road.
I made a move to start the engine, when one of them asked for a cigarette. I told them in Russian that I didn’t understand, but they made unmistakable signs of smoking, so I smiled and gave one each, and a couple more for the two keeping watch in case the police came and booted them away. They must have found it profitable, cadging a fag tax from each car that went through.
In Viborg, I changed my mind at having a big feed in the Intourist Hotel, because it would take at least an hour, and pulled up instead at a canteen sort of place near the bus station. The town seemed rundown, as was the building I ate in. Viborg had 80,000 Finnish inhabitants in 1945, and was called Viipuri, but rather than live under Soviet rule when the war ended every man woman and child left. The Russians took over a ghost town, and the main street even now had a certain frontier raffishness. Not much of it had been made in twenty years. Instead of Finnish neatness it was as if the Russians had built and colonised it from the beginning. The town’s historical charm needed love and money to keep up, but the present inhabitants, not having been born there, didn’t perhaps regard it as theirs, though I supposed that in a couple of generations they would no longer feel they had stolen it.
The canteen was almost empty because it was late for lunch, till a group of jolly workwomen came in from the bus station, queued for glasses of lemon tea, and sat at the scattered tables, reminding me of a British restaurant during the war.
The cash-desk woman flicked coloured beads left and right on her abacus frame, and charged fifty kopecks for my tray of ham, black bread, salad and a glass of prune juice — nothing hot, but I was well satisfied. About to light a cigar, I saw a no-smoking sign on the wall.
Even with windows open the thermometer in the car was close to a hundred. I passed better-kept dwellings on the outskirts. After a mile or so, after overtaking a horse and cart, I came to a narrow humpbacked bridge guarded by a soldier with rifle and bayonet. He waved me down, and I wondered what for. Had somebody telephoned from town and told him to stop me for an unspecified misdemeanour at the customs post?