In the morning Olga arrives to find me bending over the iron with cotton wool sticking out of my ears. She gives me some medicine that enables me to sleep a little. The following day she sees me off onto the train — no doubt wanting to make sure that I leave.
As we part I reassure her that everything will be all right, but in my heart I know we’ll never be able to live together again. Olga can’t live with her guilt for sending me to prison and I have no right to inflict my drunkenness on her and Natasha. I can’t even bear to see them around me; they are a constant reminder and reproach. Even if I stop drinking I will always feel guilty before them. The only thing to do from now on is get used to living apart.
I am depressed by the thought of losing my daughter. Although I’m of little use to her, she jumped for joy to see her drunken father at the gates of her nursery. And that is no bad thing.
Fifteen minutes into the journey and I’m drinking in the company of three girls who are looking for a fourth to make up a hand at cards. They are already drunk. It would be the grossest indecency to pretend that I don’t drink, especially as their invitation coincides with my wishes.
Dobrinin pours another glass for my mother. It doesn’t take much to make her drunk.
“You can give me all the vodka you want,” she shrieks, “but I won’t keep quiet. I know you’ve been with that whore again.”
Dobrinin smirks and walks out of the flat, leaving the front door open. He returns with the neighbours from across the landing. They stand in the doorway laughing.
“In case you were wondering what all the noise is about, there you are,” he points to my unhappy mother sprawled on the divan. She snarls and tries to fling a book at him but it lands at the foot of the divan.
This is too much for me. I shoo the neighbours out with my stick. Then I turn on Dobrinin and push him against the wall. He sinks to the floor, winded. I go to bed.
“I’ll fetch the police. Why did you take that bastard in?” I hear Dobrinin in the next room.
“Shut up. Leave it to me. I’ll sort him out.”
In the morning my mother looks at me with hatred in her eyes: “What the hell did you attack him for?”
“How can you let him laugh at you like that?”
“It’s none of your business. Get out!”
I had moved back to my parents’ flat while trying to decide what to do next, Now my decision is made. I move into a hostel and start to drink in earnest with the men who share my room. Others turn up, for we offer warmth and companionship without wives or mothers-in-law threatening to call the police.
I begin work in the DDT factory. My wife’s brother is a technician there and he keeps her informed of my condition. Hearing that I’m drinking again she puts pressure on me for alimony, promising to pay it back if I stop. I resent her for trying to control me, even from a distance. In any case I have nothing to send her. My pay-packet comes with the cost of visits to the sobering-up station already deducted. Then I have to pay off my debts. It is impossible to break out of this vicious circle. I cannot afford to rent a room of my own, but to live in the hostel and not drink is beyond human endurance. I try to spend my free time in the local library reading-room, but when I go home I always have to tip someone off my bed.
In the end I decide to leave town. I have an invitation from a former boss, Gantimirov, to go out and work for him at a chemical plant in Chimkent in Kazakhstan. There’s nothing to keep me in Chapaevsk. I am tired of that damned hostel, of shop No. 28 and the sobering-up station. I’m sick of my companions, too. They’ll forget me soon enough.
I pack a change of clothes and a supply of cigarettes. My younger brother Sashka gives me a tape-recorder and some Vysotsky tapes. Early one morning in the spring of 1968 I leave Chapaevsk on a southbound train.
6
Central Asia
I am awakened by a gentle tap on the shoulder. A policeman stands before me. “It is forbidden to sleep in railway stations, Comrade. Kindly sit up.” Giving me a smart salute, he walks off.
Checking my head to see if it has sprouted a crown overnight, I turn to the dosser beside me: “Did you see that? Am I dreaming?”
“Didn’t you hear what happened here last year?”
“No.”
“Chimkent exploded. It began when the police arrested a lorry driver on his way back from a party. The driver’s wife went to fetch his workmates. By the time they reached the station the police had beaten the man to death. They claimed he dropped dead from alcohol poisoning.
“By evening there was no Soviet authority left in Chimkent. The drivers hijacked bulldozers and flattened the police station. Rioters ran through the town killing any cops who got in their way. They sent in troops and in a few days the shops filled with scarce goods. The town calmed down. Then the MVD went round asking questions and people began to disappear. The cops who killed the driver were transferred to another area; their chief became head of a prison camp. You can guess the fate of the rioters who were sent there. Komsomol volunteers and troops kept order in town. We had no police for several months.”
I laugh and settle down to sleep again. The next time a cop wakes me I tell him to book me a hotel room; he leaves me alone. A lot of people have moved into the station. At night we gather in the waiting room and listen to Vysotsky; by day we go about our separate business.
I have no luck finding work. Gantimirov is away on a business trip and the plant won’t take me on without his approval. I try other factories. There are a lot of jobs going, but none of them provides accommodation. I look for a flat but am offered grim cages so far out of town that I refuse them.
My money is melting like Tien Shan snow, although I’m not drinking and barely eating. In the end I take a train to Tashkent and then jump another to Fergana, where a cousin of my mother’s lives. As everyone knows, the tongue leads to Kiev and I find my relative by asking around. He helps me get a job in a chemical factory and the plant gives me a place in a suburban hostel.
The area of Fergana where I live is modelled on the Cheryomushki district of Moscow, with rows of five-storey brick blocks, barren shops and dusty roads. Irrigation ditches run along the streets but these are choked with dead dogs and condoms. Each year new saplings are planted, only to wither and die in the smog of the huge new chemical plants whose chimneys smoke day and night, covering the Fergana valley with filth. In short, the town is not very different to Chapaevsk.
My work is easy enough, but I sweat and chafe in my protective clothing, rubber boots and gas mask. In my free time I hang around the hostel growing bored as there is no TV or other entertainment. I notice the lads who share the hostel never go in to the factory yet they come home in the evenings laden with food and drink.
“Here, Vanya, have some dinner with us,” they offer one night.
“No, it’s okay, I’m not hungry,” I lie.
“Try it, it’s dog meat.”
“Well, I’ll just take some salad.” I know people sometimes eat dog meat as a cure for tuberculosis but I don’t fancy it. After the lads and I have sealed our acquaintance with a bottle I ask how they managed to live so well.
“We only took a job at the plant to get these rooms and a residence permit. We wouldn’t work for the pittance they pay there. Come with us tomorrow and we’ll show you how to make some real money.”
In the morning we walk down to the railway line. Some men are unloading planks from a goods-wagon, throwing them down as carelessly as if they were shaking matches from a box. Without asking anyone’s permission we set about stacking the planks; at one o’clock some Uzbeks arrive to find us leaning against a neat pile. The Uzbeks, who are building a private house, ask us to load the planks onto their cars. When we finish they pay us and treat us to dinner. I earn more for that day’s work than I would in a week in the factory.