The payphone outside worked. There were no crackles on the Budapest line when I called Anna. I sped through the Hungarian countryside partly because I could. No potholes jolted the car. No flying gravel cracked the windscreen. The roads ran straight. None ended in a ditch or unmarked construction site. Mostly, though, I sped because I wanted to see Anna, Gyula and their children as soon as possible.
We spent a leisurely three days together, walking through central Budapest, visiting old haunts and catching up on developments in one another’s lives. I looked up more friends. Everyone seemed well. When it was time to leave one friend travelled with me as far as Germany. We parted company there and I continued the rest of the way on my own, driving my Lada onto the ferry for the channel crossing to England. Once we arrived I had to adjust to driving on the left side of the road with a car designed for driving on the right. As I approached London, I thought of my new life there. Charlotte was doing well professionally. She reported for the Observer on the war in Bosnia, spending long periods in Sarajevo, a city under siege. I admired her courage.
I would sublet Charlotte’s room. We would share it on her brief trips back. I lived in the centre of the city, somewhere on the border between Bayswater and Westbourne Grove. Shops lined the streets everywhere that I walked. I felt so overwhelmed my first day out. I tried to buy groceries for dinner. In one store I stood by a shelf — goods stretched down a long row; there was too much choice. I had to leave. In the next store I tried the produce section — lettuce, tomatoes, snow peas, asparagus, star fruit, mangoes, beans, peppers and so much more. I could not make up my mind about what to buy. In the end, I chose one cucumber and left. I paid in cash. I ate fast food falafel on the way home.
10
CHECHNYA IN LONDON
I began work the next day at my new job in radio journalism at the BBC. This would be my first desk job in an office. I wondered how I would adjust. I felt nervous on the bus ride in.
I checked in at the front desk and received a pass. I crossed a courtyard, walked through a warren of corridors and took an elevator up to my floor. I noticed Ron as soon as I entered my new office. I had been hired to replace him. Ron would leave in a few days on a foreign correspondent posting.
Ron did not see me. He was on the phone and sat with his back to the door on a chair behind his desk in a glass cubicle. The cubicle’s glass walls stopped a few feet short of the ceiling, so all that Ron said flowed out overtop. His cubicle was situated on one side of an otherwise large, open room filled with desks, headsets and reel-to-reel tape decks mounted on wheels. Stubs of blue chalk and razor blades (tools for editing tape) lay scattered across the tape machines and desks. Newspapers were piled up in corners.
When Ron hung up the phone, he swivelled around.
“Welcome,” he said, surprised. “Is it nine o’clock already?” He leaped out of his chair, came out of his glass cubicle and shut the door behind him. It closed with a loud click.
“No!” he said and turned back around. He tried the door. It was locked. We could see his keys on the desk through the glass.
“Excuse me,” Ron said. Then he pulled a table toward the cubicle, climbed on it and over the top of the glass wall and landed with a thud on the other side. He unlocked the door and came back out. I would have to be careful with the door. At five foot four, I stood no chance of scaling that wall.
We sat and chatted. Ron briefed me about my new job. I told him about developments in Ukraine, Moldova and Central Asia. Others drifted into the office. One by one Ron introduced me — Gennady, Gregori, Lara, and then a name that I remembered for not being Russian, Alison. She was one of the only non-Russians in the office. I identified with her. If I understood what Ron said well, I had been hired as a link between this world of Russia in London and the main English-language newsroom. I would filter news, cull Russian information gathered here and package it into stories for a non-Russian audience and analyze events. I would be a bridge.
Ron and the others went back to work. I waited for my formal orientation, scheduled later in the morning. I sat at an empty desk with the daily papers. As I stared at the headlines, my mind wandered. I thought about this life that I began in a city that I knew so well. I had spent time here as a child with relatives and family friends. I had studied here, returned regularly from Hungary and Ukraine, but this time felt different. I had a job and since I also held a British passport, I could settle in London and make the transition from expat to immigrant.
Alison returned with a large set of headphones around her neck. She plugged them into a tape deck, swivelled tape, cut sections with a razor blade and taped the ends together. I heard her chat in what seemed to be flawless Russian with colleagues.
When she had finished editing her tape, I complimented Alison on her Russian and asked how she learned to speak it so well.
“I studied it at university and spent time in Moscow. I met my husband over there, so I have an advantage. I can speak Russian at home,” Alison said. She told me a little bit about her husband, Gagik.
“He’s Armenian,” she said.
“Armenia! That’s one republic I never visited,” I told her. “I’d love to go. I hear they have the most extraordinary old churches. I’ve been to a lot of places nearby in the Caucasus. I was in Chechnya almost exactly a year ago and Azerbaizhan last month.”
Alison cut me off with a laugh, “Don’t tell an Armenian you’ve been to Azerbaizhan. They hate each other!” Then Alison rushed off to the studio with her tape. She had a deadline to meet.
Not long afterwards I sat in my glass cubicle and read notes about an unusual development in Chechnya. Even though it had won that showdown with Russia when I visited — Russian troops pulled back — Chechnya was still part of Russia. No state recognized Chechen independence. Now I read that Chechnya had appointed a prime minister and sent him to England. This Chechen prime minister, Ruslan Outsiev, arrived in London with his brother, Nazarbek, to arrange for Chechen passports and a Chechen currency and postage stamps to be printed. He was also establishing an embassy in London for Chechnya.
“Won’t Russia go ballistic?” I asked a colleague. He nodded and rushed into a studio. Later I heard that Alison had interviewed Ruslan.
“You can’t throw that out,” my sister, Deborah, said as politely as she could but clearly shocked that I had put an empty tin in the garbage can instead of the recycling bin.
Ashamed, I asked her to explain recycling rules. None had existed when I last lived at home. I had to learn on this trip back for Christmas. It was a small matter but a reminder that places change and can’t be taken for granted.
Deborah and I finished tidying the kitchen. Our father came in.
“Anyone for a ski?” he asked. He already wore his toque and coat. Our golden retriever, Chester, stood by the door, tail wagging, ears cocked, happy and impatient to get going.
“Coming,” I said. We got our skis out of the garage. Chester lay on the ground outside. He gnawed on a chunk of ice. My father and I put skis over our shoulders, held both poles in one hand and walked down a small path to the lake at the bottom of my parents’ housing complex. A trail ran around the lake. We stopped at the trail, slid our boots into bindings, strapped our poles around our wrists and skied down a small embankment onto the snow-covered frozen lake, the sky overhead blue and cloudless.
Chester, already far in the distance, came racing back. He tried to catch the tips of my skis as I slid forward. He enjoyed his game. The crisp, cold air made me shudder until I built up a sweat, but it suited him well in his heavy coat of golden winter fur. I missed moments like this. I felt at home on this small lake with my father and his dog. I wondered if it was time to come back but could not find answers to the usual questions that rattled round in my head. Where would I live? What would I do? Would I be bored? I worried for a moment about being caught between the world of London and this world of home, and that I might not fit in properly in either. I pushed these thoughts away. I caught up with my father. We rested for a few minutes on the other side of the lake. Chester lay beside us. He was using his teeth to dislodge ice caught between the pads of his paws. My father pulled a small tape recorder from his jacket pocket.