Wednesday 18 March
Today I decided to get our certificate from the Health and Safety people, whatever it took. Yesterday I’d gone for a preliminary recce to the Health Department where, after bawling me out, a woman said quite reasonably, “You know, we’re under no obligation to give you one, we’ve a thousand other things to do.” “Well, why are we under an obligation to get one then?” I asked. “Because it’s a stupid system and totally stuck in a rut,” she said. She reckoned it would take us a month to get it.
Today I went to the Chief Doctor’s office at Kuznetsky Most, where I had first registered our application. There were two receptionists – a man and a woman – sitting in white coats, and one other client sitting in silence. I asked the woman if she could check the register to see what stage our certification has reached. She went barmy and shrieked that it was a waste of her time. I said quietly that it was a waste of my time if she didn’t, and an electric charge went through the room. I said I was prepared to wait, got out my Izvestiya and read it for forty minutes, aware out of the corner of my eye that her nerve was beginning to crack. She rang someone about me and said, “She’s sitting here, as bold as brass…”, and then finally she looked up her blasted register and told me the certificate was across town at their Taganka office, waiting to be typed.
I went over there and found the very nice solitary secretary sitting in the basement, who immediately whipped out her paper and typed up our certificate there and then. Back to Kuznetsky Most, where by this time the woman receptionist had gone and I was treated to the old man, who breathed heavily through his mouth and whispered as he wrote. Still the silence reigned, although I heard him tell a new client that it was pandemonium: they were “never off the phone” and there was “a constant stream” of people coming to see them. True, the phone did ring once while I was there and the old man answered, “Rats? They’re not us! Ring so and so.”
He told me the Chief Doctor was out and would be back very, very late, maybe about 7.00pm. I took out Izvestiya and said I would wait. In fact she was back in about twenty minutes, spent half an hour giggling with her pal, then signed and stamped my certificate. She was young and the office was heavy with the smell of flowers – obviously a bribeworthy person.
All this took over four hours and it’s hard to keep in mind that it has anything to do with human rights. It is also hard to be human and reasonable with people who are only doing their jobs, while at the same time you feel utter contempt for the system, the work and the aggressive, cowardly and lazy attitude it breeds.
Helena and I went to see The Cherry Orchard at the Moscow Arts Theatre. Shcherbakov, the main actor, had died and there were flowers laid on the windowsills, and a short, moving tribute to him at the start. The British actress Caroline Blakiston was playing the governess, and although she had a tiny part, it became her show, as though she was the compère in Cabaret. Extraordinary and not really a success.
Thursday 19 March
Today was a very beautiful spring morning and I took Helena down to the Kolomenskoye monastery and then to the lovely icon exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery. We came back, lazed and bathed, then I took her up to the station in time for her night train to St Petersburg.
Tolya has managed against the odds to get the ground plans of our neighbours’ offices for the electricity cabling, but the Electricity Board has said it will not give us our certificate for a month. So we can’t get our furniture from London, we can’t get our rent agreement and the order on our premises, and I learned today that the professor who was supposed to be my sparring partner has backed out of the death penalty round table with Sovetskaya Justitsiya. Apparently he doesn’t want to go public and in particular does not want to argue with a foreigner. Since we would have been arguing in Russian, I should have thought he would be at an advantage. This last six-week stint is turning out disappointingly anti-climactic.
Friday 20 March
With Helena safely in St Petersburg, Irina reappeared and even took me up to the station to see me off on the night train to Leningrad. The delegation of US scientists has now finished its visit to her institute. They were young, had streaming colds, and looked in a bad way. Irina said people at the institute had decided they were spies and had even held a meeting about it, and resolved not to give away any secrets. Irina said all this was to cover the fact that no one had turned a hand to prepare for their visit. Welcome to 1992 and the world fight against AIDS. The Institute Director had asked Irina what she thought about the delegation. Irina said it was no secret that Russian medicine was decades behind the West, so what on earth could they have been spying on? This is what I like about her. She’s a minority of one, and honest in a dishonest world.
I had got all my boxes of belongings ready for shipping and spent the day tied to the house, waiting for a driver who didn’t come. He finally rolled up at 8.30pm, just as we were leaving for the train.
Saturday 21 March
St Petersburg is also packed with traders. I bought Lyuda and Viktor a bottle of coffee liqueur at 6.30am, then joined them for our last cognac breakfast.
I had gone there to say goodbye to them, but in the end we set off so late for my return train that I suddenly had to bolt for it without saying a word to them. I only caught it because it was two minutes late, and I found Helena on board, about to sail off to Moscow on her own with no key and not a word of Russian. Felt ill for about an hour after the run.
Sunday 22 March
Helena went back home to the UK today, but before then we had a raucous and boozy lunch at the Teplitskys’. Natasha had given her English-language pupils some advertising slogans to match up with pictures. When she produced, “It’s the very best way to start the day…”, all her pupils had pointed to the picture of a bottle of cognac.
In the evening I went to John Crowfoot’s, to get his verdict on a translation of some memoirs I have done for him. I think he must have slated it in private, because his wife fussed round me with food, as though she was trying to soften the blow, and for the first time addressed me as “ty”. To me, however, he restricted himself to saying that my style is very dry. “You do read books, don’t you?” he asked concernedly. It felt a bit hollow insisting, “Yes, honest,” when there was obviously no evidence of it. Years of Amnesty style leaving their mark, I think.
There were around twenty people at the Quakers, among them two visitors from the US, who immediately dominated the conversation afterwards with loud reminiscences of Colorado. Seventeen interesting Russians sat in silence. It is hard to imagine two Russians coming to a Colorado Quaker meeting and instantly taking over. I got quite angry, and depressed too.
Monday 23 March: My last week in Moscow
A death penalty case from Krasnodar is due to come before the Russian Supreme Court this week. Today the lawyer asked to meet me. She is a middle-aged lady and former Secretary of her District Party Committee, who was staying in Moscow with an acquaintance. She had read about Amnesty in Komsomolskaya Pravda and the acquaintance had seen the Human Rights Day slot on TV. So it seems our publicity has been reaching middle Russia. The lawyer was intensely nervous about her case.