When the meeting finished one of the older journalists, with blue eyes and a weathered face, Slava, invited me for coffee. We strolled down the hill toward Khreshchatyk and then walked to October Revolution Square. Some of the chestnut trees still flowered. White blossoms lay scattered on the sidewalks and streets. The trees provided cover for birds. Kiev had little of the din of normal urban traffic. We heard birds singing in the branches and breathed in fresh, smog-free air.
People crowded the sidewalks along Khreshchatyk and October Revolution Square. They dressed perhaps not fashionably but very tidily, the men in neatly pressed trousers and shirts and the women in well-ironed skirts and blouses. In the square a group of women in headscarves and bulky dresses struck up a four-part harmony.
“Are they part of a choir?” I asked my colleague, Slava.
“Those babas?” he said. “They’re just passing time.” I had never heard such sonorous and moving songs from amateurs. We walked uphill along one of the roads that led out of the square and reached a building not far from mine.
“Just wait here,” Slava said.
“Aren’t we having coffee?”
“Of course. I’ll get it now.” I stayed put while he joined a line of people standing in front of what appeared to be a small opening in a wall. I saw no chairs or tables or glass-fronted façades that might indicate the presence of a coffee shop. Twenty minutes later Slava returned with two chipped teacups filled with brown liquid. We stood on the corner and sipped the brew. It looked like coffee but tasted oily and bitter.
“Are you hungry?” Slava asked.
“A little,” I said. I did not like to complain about a lack of food, even though I had so far found little in Kiev. Earlier, Yaroslav and I had gone into the Dnipro Hotel hard currency bar for a snack. We bought one small bottle of mineral water for $US5 and equally overpriced Snickers bars, past their due date and covered in a waxy white film. I decided not to eat mine but regretted this now.
“Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Slava went into a small building with a sign that said gastronom. He soon reappeared with a bag full of ginger cookies shaped like miniature hubcaps. We ate a few.
“Please, take the rest with you.”
“Thank you, they’re delicious.” I would not normally eat a bag full of cookies but wanted them in case I found nothing to eat later on. We said goodbye. Slava strolled down toward the square. I decided to go to the gastronom to try to buy food for dinner.
The window displayed no items, which is probably why I had not noticed the store before. A large woman in a white lab coat stood behind the counter. Enormous jars of pickled tomatoes filled a mesh wire bin in the centre of the store. The shelves were bare and the store, empty.
“Do you sell any food besides tomatoes?” I asked the woman.
“Nyet”
“Do you have milk?” The woman grew impatient. “Dievushka, I just told you we have nothing else,” she said. “If you want milk, go to a milk store.”
I held up the ginger cookies and asked if she had more of these. She became very angry and told me to leave. I was being thrown out of a grocery store for trying to buy food.
At least I now understood how to identify a grocery store. My eyes properly trained, I eventually spotted the word moloko [milk] and found a milk store. It was also empty. This store did not even have a cash register. A woman in a white lab coat and tall white chef’s hat stood beside an abacus with big black and brown wooden beads.
“Do you, by any chance, have milk?” I asked.
“Dievushka, of course not,” she shouted. She paused and looked at me for some time. Are you a foreigner?” she asked. I explained that I had only just arrived in Kiev.
“Come tomorrow by about 6 a.m. and you should be in the line early enough to get some milk,” the woman said. I left the shop.
I had never encountered food shortages in Budapest. The supermarket near my apartment was always stocked to capacity. But it unfortunately sold products with unilingual Hungarian labels and no pictures to provide visual clues as to the content. The first time I shopped at the supermarket I bought one of each item that appeared to be food. At home, if the dictionary provided no appropriate translation, I snipped open the packages to taste and identify the contents. I managed not to sample anything poisonous. Here, even though everyone on the streets looked well fed, I could not find any food to taste. I would have to ask Yaroslav for help.
I walked home convinced more than ever that Communist Kiev and Communist Budapest had nearly nothing in common. I wondered whether my move here had been rash and worried that I might not be able to manage in Kiev on my own. I decided to call the foreign editor to let him know that I had arrived safely and to give him my phone number. It would be comforting to hear a familiar voice. I dialed the international operator to place the call. She asked me the day and time for the booking.
“I’d like to make the call now, please,” I said.
“Impossible,” the operator said and hung up. I phoned the operator again and heard a different voice. This woman was patient and explained that all calls out of the country had to be booked twenty-four hours in advance. The outside world, including my family, was sealed off for the next full day.
I felt panicky. I paced the apartment, oppressed now by its dinginess and gloom. I called the international operator again and booked calls for the next day. I cursed the phone system and wondered how I could arrange to be free to cover unexpected news events and also be at home for scheduled international calls necessary to report the events.
After a dinner of Hungarian salami and sweaty cheese I went to bed. I slept well until about 2 a.m. when the doorbell rang. I registered the noise before becoming fully awake. I stumbled from bed, tripped over my suitcase and stubbed my toe on the leg of the desk. Alert now, I walked to the door but did not open it.
“Who’s there?”
No one answered.
“Hello, who is it?” I shouted more insistently.
The bell rang again.
“Yaroslav, is that you?”
The bell rang one more time. I opened the door a crack and saw a heavy-set middle-aged man. He had jowls and was unshaven. I suspected the man wanted Yaroslav’s cousin and asked him if he would like to leave a message. The man glared at me and said nothing. I wondered if he was drunk. He refused to speak and continued to glower. Eventually I shut the door and went back to bed. The man rang the doorbell until dawn. I woke from what little sleep I had, exhausted and agitated. Each night the man returned and rang the doorbell all night long.
“How do I call the police?” I asked Yaroslav.
“The police, they’re probably the ones behind it,” he said. “You don’t have a registration stamp to be here. Someone wants you out.” Tired and completely disoriented, I began to think that I was battling a dark, malevolent force with no face and no name that was bent on driving me from this apartment, possibly from Kiev too.
I began to consider other housing options. Hotels charged foreigners highly inflated rates, so I could not afford a room. I soon also learned that as a foreigner I could not legally rent an apartment. I had nowhere to go. I did not think that anyone would try to hurt me — crime against a foreigner would result in too much unwanted attention in such an insular place as Ukraine. I mustered my dignity and courage and decided to ignore the doorbell ringing. No reaction might end the nightly visits.
Yaroslav gave me a small black cylinder of mace. I slept with the mace on my night table and a pillow over my head to muffle the sound of the doorbell. I still did not sleep well. The doorbell man persisted. My nerves were fraying. I decided I had to find somewhere new to live. Then Yaroslav left for a long holiday. I lost my lifeline.