With peasant cunning Cyclops notices that I have no one on my side, so she tries to ingratiate herself with my mother by getting me into trouble. But she goes too far when she accuses me of stealing her purse. My mother tells her to be careful.
“My son may be a hooligan but he’s not a thief.”
A few minutes later Cyclops is feigning surprise at finding her purse under a pile of clothes.
“As I went out in the summer morn to see my lover off to war…” she sings as she makes pies. I snigger at the thought of that old maid having a lover. The phone rings. Cyclops thunders out of the kitchen shouting “I’m coming!” as though the caller can hear her. It is Uncle Volodya for me.
“Come to the football match this afternoon. Bersol are playing Kuibyshev Metallurgists.”
I meet Volodya at the triumphal entrance arch to Chapaevsk’s stadium. It has no stands and no fence separating spectators from the pitch. The teams play with as much gusto as we boys do. Everyone throws himself into the attack and no one bothers about defence. Just before full time a penalty is awarded to the Kuibyshev side. The spectators rush onto the pitch and stand around the penalty area yelling abuse at the striker. It works. The shot is so weak our keeper saves it with ease. The referee tries to clear the pitch but the crowd threatens to turn him into soap and someone punches him.
Volodya and I stream happily away from the ground with the other men and boys. Some are taking nips from bottles stuffed into their pockets. The autumn air smells of damp birch leaves and bonfires. Smoke rises from bathhouses by the river where people are making samogon.
We run into Victor who produces a bottle of Spirol from his pocket. This is an alcohol-based medication that is rubbed on the head to cure dandruff. You can buy it cheaply at any chemists. Like many local men, Victor’s father drinks Spirol. He also knows prison recipes for preparing alcohol from paint-thinner, furniture polish and glue.
Volodya refuses the Spirol and goes home to look after his mother. It’s her drinking day. Victor and I tackle the bottle. The oily potion tastes disgusting, making me want to throw up. But at the same time a warm feeling spreads through my head and chest. I feel invulnerable. “Victor! I know why people drink!” I burst out laughing and think I’ll never stop.
Dobrinin watches me like an eagle, waiting for an excuse to explode. My mother and sister eat in heavy silence. Unable to bear the tension any longer, I balance my knife on the salt pot and spin the blade. Dobrinin leaps to his feet, banging the table with his fist.
“You see! You see that little bastard?” he turns to my mother, “I feed him, put shoes on his feet… Get out! Leech!”
I run out of the house to my friend Gelka Kazin’s. I hope he’ll have enough for a bottle of Spirol or Blue Danube, but that day he has other things on his mind.
“Vanya, I have to get away from this damned place. The neighbours say Ma’s a prostitute, just because men come here. I’m always getting into fights over it.”
Gelka has no father. To make ends meet his mother takes in sewing. She mends jackets and runs up shirts and trousers so it shouldn’t be surprising that men come to her room. People in the barracks can’t live without gossip.
Gelka’s mother is always kind to me. When she comes in I tell her about my trouble with Dobrinin.
“Of course he’s only my stepfather. My real father is working as a secret agent in a capitalist country. He’s not allowed to contact us.”
I still hope that he’ll turn up one day, when the judges in Moscow realise their mistake. Or perhaps Stalin himself will hear of the miscarriage of justice and grant him a pardon.
“Oh they must have shot him years ago,” says Gelka casually.
“No!” I make a headlong rush at Gelka, forgetting that he is our school boxing champion. He pushes me back into the corner. His mother leaps up and slaps his face.
“Get out!” she screams. “Take no notice, Vanya. I’m sure your father is doing valuable and patriotic work.” She speaks firmly, but she has tears in her eyes.
Gelka and I patch things up and decide to leave town together. We’ll become sailors. Grandfather Dobrinin writes to the Moscow naval ministry for a prospectus of all the academies in the USSR. We decide the Archangelsk academy will suit us best. It is on the open sea, unlike Baku or Astrakhan, and will be cheaper to reach than Vladivostock. Most important, we know that there’ll be less competition than for Odessa or Leningrad. A top student in Chapaevsk is not the same as a top student in Moscow.
My parents tell me not to be in a hurry to leave, but I’m sure they’ll sigh with relief when I finally walk out of the door.
2
Siberia
The 1950s
“How well he plays the balalaika!” we shout as the boy from Tula wakes up, howling and shaking his hands. Gelka slipped lighted strips of paper between his fingers while he slept.
Boys from all over the country have come to the Archangelsk Naval Academy to sit the entrance exams. Our dormitory is as noisy as a stack of nesting gulls. Gelka and I team up with three lads from Chelyabinsk to guard each other at night.
After our exams we wander the wooden streets of Archangelsk waiting for our results. Although I do well in the exams the Academy rejects me. My father is an Enemy of the People, and that is on my records. The navy does not want me in its ranks.
Term starts and we have to leave the Academy. My friends and I find an abandoned sea hunter moored near a timber yard. We move in, building bonfires on deck, drinking vodka, baking potatoes and singing pirate songs far into the night. In the daytime we earn cash loading wooden planks on the docks. When the police turn up we explain we’re waiting for money from home. They leave us alone. Gelka’s mother wires his return fare and he goes back to Chapaevsk. I’m determined to avoid that fate. I’ve tasted freedom for the first time since running away to the Front with Slavka.
Snow begins to fall. It is too cold to stay on our ship. I cross the Dvina to Solombala island, which is the real port of Archangelsk, and find a place in a seaman’s hostel.
“There are foreign sailors here,” the hostel’s Party instructor tells us. “You must be very careful. If anyone from a capitalist country approaches you, report it immediately. Do not pick up anything you see in the streets. Agents provocateurs put chocolates and attractive magazines in bins so that they can take photos of Russians rummaging through rubbish.”
I wonder if our newspaper photos of American scavengers are taken in the same way.
Despite the warnings we nod and grin at the foreign sailors. Mainly Norwegians, they’re simple lads like us, interested in drinking and girls.
I come across The Wave, a pre-revolution coal ship, in dry dock in Solombala and on an impulse ask the skipper to take me on as ship’s boy. I’m not yet sixteen but I plead my love for hard work and the sea. In the end he agrees. A few days later we set sail down the Dvina, bound for Spitzbergen.
“When will we see the sea?” I keep asking.