But what on earth did we think was going to happen? That the past, the whole seventy years of it in all of its ostentation, brutality and sheer force, would just lie down and die? ‘When a system, such as the Soviet, manages to hold on in such a vast place for so long, it effectively mines the whole country,’ Chudakova suggests. These landmines continue to detonate for decades on end in places where we least expect to come across them. Make no mistake: they will continue exploding in our faces.
Back to Mikhail Jvanetsky. As the Soviet Union was collapsing, he composed a letter to his late father telling him of things Jvanetsky Senior could have never imagined in his wildest dreams:
We are all on a high now. First of all, we have broken up into republics once and for all… Everyone has their own customs controls now. Because in one republic there is no meat, in another there is no fish, the third one has no bread. And we want to know what is missing where, and we want this status quo to be reinforced… Whichever people you have found yourself with, this is where you stay put.
Here we are on the train trying to get from Russia to Ukraine, a procedure we would have performed countless times twenty years ago without giving it a second thought, but all of a sudden we are in dangerous waters, caught breaking and entering into Belarus, of all places. Not only has everyone put forward their own customs controls, as Jvanetsky says, everyone seems to defend their borders and customs with a singular zeal. At least Ivan Petrovich Sidorov does, our man in charge of Teryuha railway border crossing.
Dear Diary,
Ivan Petrovich Sidorov, the lovely man from border control, had the pleasurable task of degrading us into less than the eye of an ant, and may I comment did his job so well that I a strong twelve-year-old girl was nearly reduced to tears. I told my mum that, as I have never met a Nazi, when writing stories about them I’ll know where to get my ideas and description from.
As Sidorov marches away with our Australian passports in his hands, Billie and I play hangman. I still have that piece of paper with two words on it – monstrous and beautifully. All of a sudden the world is split into two clearly defined camps – the monstrous Belarus border-patrol zealot and the rest of the beautiful world. In a few minutes Sidorov is back. He takes possession of our remaining suitcase (the other smaller one called it a day in St Petersburg, after Misha Senior dragged it all the way from the train station) and marches in front of us. Off the train we go then, Billie determined not to shed a single tear in front of the enemy. As we step onto the platform, the kindly Ukrainian train attendant who tried so hard to help us looks devastated, as if we were two school kids abruptly removed from her class by a trigger-happy principal. ‘You are wonderful,’ I say to her, my one and only mindful gesture before panic and sheer amusement turn everything into a blur. The train leaves. People warm and safe inside the moving train look at us through the windows, or so I imagine, trying to figure out our story. I bet no one gets even close. Billie looks at me for reassurance. ‘It’s good for the book,’ I say.
In the station’s tiny waiting room, Sidorov approaches a woman inside the ticket office, the only other representative of authority besides him: ‘Taken off the train mid-journey. Here are their passports and tickets. Get them sorted.’ The only other person taken off our train is a dodgy young man unable to leave the territory of Belarus because of his criminal record. He calls a friend on his mobile to organise a pick-up. Soon their conversation takes a decisively antagonistic turn. ‘Listen, shut your mouth and pick me up in Gomel or I will come and shut your mouth for you,’ the young man shouts; it sounds like he means what he is saying. Gomel, the nearest town to the border, is where Sidorov is sending us too, on the next train. ‘In Gomel you will go to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Lenin Prospect 45A. At the train station you will put your luggage in the cloakroom. Then you get your transit visas. All clear?’
Nothing is clear. Department of what? What number on Lenin Prospect? Put our luggage where? Sidorov is clearly not in the habit of changing the way he speaks when dealing with civilians, or maybe it’s personal. Billie looks at me again, needing her mother to show at least a hint of defiance, not to be bulldozed by this guy. I make sure that I stand straight, speak back with confidence and even irony, and, in general, show some style while Sidorov orders us around. I am so busy demonstrating to Sidorov that he is not the boss of us that by the end of the conversation I have only the vaguest idea of what we need to do in Gomel to get out of Belarus. (This must be my own maternal version of machismo.)
We are put in a platzkartnuy vagon – the second-class carriage ungraced by doors apart from those (thankfully) in front of the toilet; exactly the type of carriage I have decided to avoid during our trip in order to minimise Billie’s culture shock. A young border-control officer is to accompany us on our way to Gomel. ‘You have to help me with the suitcase,’ I tell him, ‘I have hurt my back.’ (True, by the way, usually I am fine doing my own heavy lifting.) ‘What do you have in it?’ the young officer says after he picks it up. ‘Books,’ I answer. ‘I am a writer.’ I have not said this so proudly for a long time.
On the train to Gomel we eat the fried chicken drumsticks that Marina, ignoring our protests that we would be just fine, lovingly packed for us in foil. We no longer care to pretend that we are like everyone else – we are not, stuff it. People around us follow our movements and conversation with vague suspicion, trying to figure out our story: Who the hell are they? Why were they put on the train in the middle of nowhere? Why is the girl speaking gobbledygook to the mother? I have a photograph of Billie from that moment, a drumstick in one hand, sad but also beautifully composed as if in this most phantasmagoric moment of our trip she has decided to go with it.
In Gomel, miraculously, we manage to get our visas. (Well, what else were they going to do with us, really?) I don’t know how or why but everything falls into place. On my insistence (this is where age and experience come in handy) the young officer takes us halfway to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, marching like a soldier at a parade through the railway square so that Billie and I have to run to keep up with him. The department is about to close but somehow one woman finds another woman who unlocks the right office, and yet another woman takes our passports and gives us a special form to take to the special bank so we can make our visa payments – seventy US dollars for both of us, a serious sum in Belarus. The bank is closing soon but somehow we manage to get it all done, and when we run back with the receipts the department is still open and our passports are not lost. Eventually, we find the very woman who sent us to the bank, and she personally takes us to another office, where Belarusian visas are glued into our passports. The female personnel of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship are almost uniformly kind. I am pretty sure Billie will not use her memories of them to write about Nazis. Billie smiles, holds my hand and comes to the conclusion that in general women are nicer than men, at least when it comes to the border regions of Eastern Europe.