“Go on, drink your damned vodka! Drink the filthy stuff!” the doctor stands in the middle of our circle, conducting us like a circus ringmaster. We each have a bucket between our knees. The doctor has injected us with apomorphine before making us swallow a warm solution of bicarbonate of soda. Then we drink vodka from the three bottles we have each been told to bring with us to the hospital.
The doctor examines everyone’s bucket. I can’t manage to throw up, so he makes me drink a mixture of vitriol, castor oil and grease. The next morning I stick two fingers down my throat while the doctor’s back is turned. Anything is better than drinking that dreaded cocktail again. After a dozen sessions I start to vomit blood and they take me off the treatment — a blood vessel has burst in my stomach.
Next we’re treated with Antabuse, with a cruelty and intensity I have never yet experienced. After my dose the doctor makes me drink 20 grams of vodka. I suffocate. My chest feels as though it’s being crushed by rocks. As I struggle for breath the doctor holds up a hand mirror. My face turns purple and then deathly white. My hands and feet are freezing. The doctor gives me oxygen, wraps me in blankets and monitors my blood pressure.
With each treatment they increase the dosage of vodka. When I return to consciousness, only half alive, the doctor leans over me and says: “There, you see, in hospital, in the presence of a doctor, you almost died. What will happen to you if you have a drink outside? You will die! You’ll die gasping like a dog!”
Despite this torture I still do not believe in the efficacy of Antabuse; however I stay off the bottle for a few weeks after my release. I hope to keep sober for long enough to find a more interesting circle of friends. I am sick of hanging around the vodka shop with completely degraded people. After my two unsuccessful attempts to escape Chapaevsk I begin to suspect that I will only find the company I desire in Moscow. In the capital there must be people who live life in the fullest sense of the word, who write novels and read poems to each other. But how could I live among those parasites? They think they are above us provincials, all the while bleeding us dry, living off our backs. They think themselves so superior, yet to boast that you are a Muscovite born and bred is as absurd as boasting that you were born on Saturday.
Even if I decide to go to the capital I’ll have to live rough as I know no one there. And all those plate glass windows reflecting the ugly curve of my leg will be a constant reminder of my disability.
Instead of Moscow I go out to the steppe. My sister’s husband Yura keeps bees and he needs someone to watch the hives during the summer.
The last remnants of the ancient forest that once covered most of Kuibyshev province were cut down during the Great Patriotic War.[23] Now the steppe-land crops are protected from dry winds by strips of plantation. These trees have grown from the saplings which my classmates and I helped to plant twenty five years ago.
Along the edge of the plantation are some 80 beehives belonging to different owners. They take it in turns to bring me food, water, tea and cigarettes. Yura lends me a tent, a camp-bed and a pair of Wellington boots. He offers me a dog but I don’t want one. She’ll bark at every wild animal that passes.
I quickly become attuned to the life of the forest. After a few days I put my watch away; I’ve learned to tell the time by the sun and the stars. I notice that the magpie chatters in quick alarm at the approach of a human, while his chatter has a different timbre when an animal approaches. When the ants begin to scurry, trying to cover the entrance to their nests, I know it’s time to take some dry wood into my tent. Sure enough, leaves rustle, the mosquitoes bite more viciously, and I hear the first patter of raindrops on my tent roof.
The birds will not let me sleep through the forest dawn, but that is a blessing. I rise to the nightingale’s song, edging out of my tent and sitting absolutely still, not even smoking. The bird takes no notice of me and sings on, beautifully and forcefully. It is not just singing for love, for the female is already sitting on her eggs. I wonder where that power comes from.
When the nightingale falls silent I set off to look for mushrooms. In my childhood Grandfather Dobrinin taught me how to search for them; he even knew by the smell of the wood what type of mushrooms grew there. The best time to look for them is after rain. I gather two basketsful of saffron milk-caps, orange-cap boletus, russula and agarics. By some oaks I strike it lucky and find the prized honey agaric. I give most of my mushrooms away to the beekeepers when they arrive with my provisions.
The next day I go to the steppe to pick bunches of St John’s wort, greater celandine and milfoil for my sister who uses them for folk remedies.
Rainy days get me down. It’s boring and uncomfortable to sit in the tent for hours on end. I ask Yura and the others not to bring vodka but all the same I feel restless. To distract myself from my thoughts I carve pieces of wood into statuettes and decorate bottles with plastic telephone wires. I learned the technique in prison. With a hook made from a bicycle spoke I twist the plastic into pictures and designs. When I’ve finished I give the bottles to the beekeepers who are happy to take them home to their wives.
The mosquitoes annoy me, but I know from my experience in the taiga that the only way to defeat them is to take no notice. I have no net; I don’t want to shut myself off from the world around me. Just before rain, when the midges and mosquitoes become a real torment, I drive them away with the help of a beekeeper’s smoker. It is a simple can with holes punched in it and attached to a string. Inside I put some rotten wood and a piece of amadou fungus pulled from an old tree stump. When struck with a flint the amadou smoulders and lights the wood. Smoke billows from the can as I swing it like a church censer.
Just as I used never to tire of looking at the sea, so I sit for hours gazing across the blue undulations of the steppe. Sometimes a rare bustard hovers overhead, or a distant herd of boars runs through one of the gullies that scar the landscape. Seven centuries ago Mongol horsemen, not knowing how to live in the forest, camped on these grasslands. A lorry raises dust on a far-off road. I half close my eyes and imagine I see horsemen of the Golden Horde galloping along the crest of a ridge.
Summer ends. I pack up my tent with sadness. Yura drives me back into town. Each beekeeper gives me a kilo of honey and a small sum of money. I have nowhere to go except the hostel. My former plant will not take me back because of my poor work record. I curse them all to hell and exchange my honey for samogon.
7
Labour camp
There is nothing but Benedictine on the shelf of shop No. 28.
“Let’s buy a bottle,” I suggest.
My mate Tarzan explodes: “Are you crazy? That’s a women’s drink. Let’s get some cucumber face lotion from Auntie Dusya.”
“But Benedictine’s stronger than vodka. I used to drink it in Riga.”
“Okay, you win.”
Tarzan and I wander off to the park with our Benedictine. We are on our third bottle when Pashka Plaksin joins us. Pashka is famous in Chapaevsk as an alcoholic and a master-sewer of felt boots. As there is no chance of buying good boots in the shops, many people make them on the quiet. Pashka’s boots are the best in town. To own a pair is like having a Pierre Cardin suit in your wardrobe. Those who want to jump the queue will slip him a bottle of something. This is how Pashka became a drunkard. In the mornings he shakes so much he can’t even pull up a glass with his scarf. Someone has to slip a stick between his lips and pour the wine straight down his throat.