Wednesday I spent writing my radio talk about the Morocco campaign. I was quite relaxed about recording it, but the producer leapt down my throat at each misplaced stress and my nerve began to go. In the evening I went to a gay party given by people from San Francisco, working here on an AIDS project. Some people with HIV who are facing imprisonment wanted to speak with me. A very Soviet solution, to imprison people who are HIV positive.
I just had to take Friday off. Irina had offered to help carry bags of papers from my flat over to the office, so we staggered through snowdrifts and slipped on black ice with three massive bags and a rucksack. As we wove our way round the queues for food on Herzen Street, being given the once-over by everyone in them, Irina said, “We’ve got our food – our bananas, avocados and salmon.” It was funny. I’m sure they all thought we had.
Father Nikon came round in his black “Ciao Roma!” T-shirt on his way to celebrate an all-night eucharist for the Feast of Christ’s Baptism. His registration papers had got lost too. I translated a good appeal he’d written to the Pope about Croatia, and we discussed Paul McCartney’s wife’s face.
After he left, the Desperate Donnegans invited me for homemade biscuits and a bottle of Greek wine at 11.00pm. We all eat so little that we got smashed and quite hilarious until 2.00am. They thought Greek wine would be sweet because of something they’d read about Socrates. I said they took a very academic approach and they said, “What alternative have we?” We talked about the Cold War and our countries’ attitudes towards each other. Anna was taught that if there was an atomic explosion, she was to lie down on the floor and not to look at it (!). It really was very nice being able to talk about this with my real Soviet neighbours, and laugh over a bottle. It was amazing really.
There’s been a great debate here about the last change of the hour, which made it dark at 3.00pm. People suspect the government robbed them of more than one hour. “If that’s all they’d robbed us of,” sighed Irina. Anyway, the upshot is that we changed back again at the weekend. Ukraine wasn’t informed and there was a terrible pile-up of trains and planes, working to different clocks.
It was the same story of inflation when I went to the local post office on Monday to make arrangements to have my newspapers forwarded and renew Amnesty’s PO box. What cost 40 roubles for twelve months last year now costs over 2,000. The post office woman sidled up to me and asked if I was leaving. Apparently her cousin lives in Tübingen and is involved with Amnesty there. “It’s a very good organisation,” she said.
On the Tuesday evening I went round to Nina Petrovna, who now wants to arrange medical help for ex-prisoners. I wonder how well, and how well off, she herself is. She’s only just over an infarkt, has cataracts, and for dinner was eating a plate of bread she’d soaked in milk and fried. I brought her some of my cheese, but she would hardly accept it.
I really enjoy spending time with her because she’s funny and interesting, and so modest that fascinating things slip out obliquely. It turns out she was sacked from her laboratory for writing a letter in defence of Zhores Medvedev, the biologist who was put in psychiatric hospital in the 1970s. She also gets her medicine cheap now because she got a medal in the war. She was one of the people who dug the defences outside Ulyanovsk in the middle of winter, when the Soviets feared the Germans would turn north after Stalingrad. She says she’s always enjoyed digging since then. After she mentioned a few of her brushes with authority I asked if she hadn’t been scared. She said she was almost permanently scared, but when it came to a confrontation she was always enraged. I can understand that, I think.
I had spent seven hours on Sunday working on a radio talk about the death penalty, and really trying to tailor it to a local audience and make the Russian alive. On Wednesday I went up to the radio station at Ostankino to give it. There was no pass waiting for me and no one would help me by phone or at the desk. As I was stuck in the middle of nowhere and had spent so long preparing my piece, I was suddenly infuriated and made a huge scene at the pass desk, until the woman wiped the dumb insolence off her face, made some phone calls and got me in. I heard her say warily to someone on the other end of the phone, “Her Russian’s good”, and it is good enough now to answer back. But I felt physically ill again afterwards. Something spiralled downwards inside and I felt as though my battery had gone flat. God knows what my face looked like, but everyone who passed me did a double-take and looked again. However, it was quite an achievement actually to get in and read the thing.
I’ve been flogging off my empty jam jars at the Danilov Market to the honey and dairy traders. Fifty roubles on the nail. Not bad. I also took my jeans to the dry cleaners. As I’m leaving the area she offered to do them urgently and stuck 10 roubles in the back pocket for the driver. A bit of free enterprise between the two of them.
During the week I had lunch with the Portuguese Ambassador who was wanting to have Amnesty’s material about the Caucasus. We ate our way through four years of Viktor’s salary, but I have to say it was very nice. A plate of mixed cheeses in thin slices. Lovely. I’ve rehired Tolya on a new contract, and he has made me a bookend. When I was in the office this week, unpacking more papers, he unexpectedly turned up to size up his next tasks. It’s very nice to be back with his reliability and support. Tonight Zaure phoned from Kazakhstan: she’s formed an Amnesty group in Alma-Ata. I felt immensely satisfied.
Friday 24 January
This was the morning that Sasha Lukin and I went to the Peruvian Embassy – a funny, dusty place, more like an obscure trade office than an embassy. They were a bit dismissive in their tone to begin with, but they weren’t by the end. Sasha’s been very good and conscientious about this and I enjoyed planning our tactics with him.
I stayed home the rest of the day waiting for the promised delivery of the six boxes from customs, which didn’t come. They’d changed plans, but hadn’t told me “because it’s a zoo here”. Very winning apology. I packed up the flat until about 11.00pm.
Saturday 25 January
End of a chapter, as I move from Bolshaya Serpukhovskaya Street. It was a beautiful day with a translucent sky. In the morning the massive milk queue suddenly took direct action and queued across the road, bringing the traffic to a halt. A row of women stood, ignoring the lorries revving at their left ear and, funnily enough, no one blew their horns. At the same time the church bells were tolling and I passed the young man up in the scaffolding, pulling the ropes. A nice scene to remember the place by.
Yelena’s husband, Stanislav, came round at 2.00pm and was terrific, pulling the last things – and me – together. I had really been flagging. We were able to sit for a couple of hours over tea we’d brewed in a jam jar. The movers came at 4.00pm. The driver climbed in through my door because his wouldn’t open, started the engine with two live wires, and we were off. As we bombed along Leninsky Prospekt with the Kaluga Gates looming up against the evening sky and the statue of Yury Gagarin in the distance, I suddenly felt excited about moving. When we arrived at the flat, however, there was rather an unfortunate series of understandings about the rent and my moving-in date: they had thought I would move in only on 1 February. I was sitting there wondering when they would leave and they must have been wondering the same about me. Eventually they left, although I would have been happier to go myself. It is a lovely flat but there is actually little space for office things. As I unpacked I decided this was a good thing, and that it is time to shift over to the office more.