I thought it ironic that the ice cream kiosks were full of electrically operated freezers, even though it was below freezing outside. The person inside each had an electric heater too. It’s a great shame that they don’t stand outside in winter and store their ice creams in the snow, they would probably save a fortune on electricity, but I guess it would be a really uncomfortable way to make a living. Still people do it. Along the roadsides between our home and Nastya’s office there were many people sat on stools. They had little trays in front of them, some of which had a few potatoes, some a few berries. These people, who were no doubt officially retired, would spend their whole days sitting there in the cold, trying to sell a few items they had grown at their dachas, in order to top up their small pensions. Near our apartment stood a row of shops, and outside these shops it was normal to see rusty cars parked up with the boot open. Inside the boot lay a range of red meats I could only assume was deer, laid down on pieces of torn carpet. Sometimes they even presented their stock on the bonnet. The people stood next to these cars never approached anyone or called out their prices. They just hung around, cold, wrapped up in several tattered coats, waiting for someone to ignore the shops perhaps and inquire after cheaper meats.
Apart from the street sellers and kiosks there are several larger shops that range in size and quality. Firstly, there are small convenient stores that are attached to residential blocks, taking up the space where a ground floor flat would be. These shops are unique in that you can’t simply walk in and pick up the things you want, when you enter the store you walk into what can only be described as a large cage. In these shops you have to know what you want, ask for it, pay for it through a small square opening in the bars and take your goods from the same place. Awkward if you have a long list of things you want or if you can’t speak Russian.
The supermarkets are a different affair altogether. They are very similar to their UK cousins; however, when you enter, if you have any bags with you, you must lock them away in one of the many lockers provided near the till points. They have most of the same products you can find in the West; however they do range greatly in quality and cost. Some sell much better meat products than others, but what they all have in common is that many products are out of date. This makes shopping even more tiresome because it becomes a quest to find the products you want that are the least past their use by date. My theory is that while many people in Russia grow food on their own plots of land, having become dependent on these plots after the fall of the Soviet Union, supermarkets have no choice but to keep selling out-of-date stock because people just don’t buy it fast enough.
When it was just the two of us, we had to do some kind of supermarket shopping to avoid using the out-of-date products in the fridge. One evening, while in the middle of cooking, we decided to go to a supermarket near Nastya’s office. It was a Friday evening and the streets were full of drunken Russian men. We weren’t accosted or spoken to on our way there as all the drunken people were either too busy enjoying themselves to notice us or they had fallen asleep on the street.
Once we had our goods, Nastya led me to another main road that could also take us home. Not only would it have made our journey shorter but there would likely be fewer drunken people. When we approached the road it was pitch dark. Because of the lack of shops of any kind it hadn’t been fitted with street lamps. Halfway down we could see a police car with two militia sat there quietly. Nastya began to walk back, appearing as if she had taken a wrong turning. She explained that though they could be decent people, and I had my passport in my pocket, complete with immigration card and registration, they could stop us if they wanted to, ignore the fact I had my papers in order and attempt to get a bribe. It was safer to go back the way we came.
v. Khrushchev’s Permanent Thaw
Russian apartments are noticeably different from those I have known in the UK in that they are usually confined to one floor and are made with the same love and care that the buildings are made with. Instead of skirting boards, many floors have lino, which is cut in such a way that it rides up the wall three inches on all sides and bunches up in the corners. Paint is used sparingly – many ceilings in Russia are covered in those horrible polystyrene tiles with coving made of the same material, and the wallpaper is badly fitted. Nearly every joint of paper overlaps the other. In places where a wall meets a cupboard and there is a gap that would normally be disguised with a wooden panel in the UK, they simply apply a badly cut strip of wallpaper over it. These often peel slightly and so small holes are usually visible around cupboards, and there are many cupboards. Any void above a doorway is usually turned into a cupboard. In this way Russian apartments are similar to submarines – every inch of space counts.
To counter the poor standard of decoration, Nataliya Petrovna had hung pictures wherever she could, only none of the frames matched or seemed in keeping with the colour of the walls. Some pictures were even without frames and were simply pinned to the wall. There was also little evidence of personal possessions. Nobody seemed to own much of anything. Looking at other peoples apartments, it became clear that this was typical of most Russians. With the exception of a few fridge magnets and pictures on walls there is very little of anything in any apartment to give an indication as to who lives there. I got the impression that people primarily concerned themselves with objects that were of use. My mother would have cried. As the world’s most finicky and house-proud woman, she would have had a fit had she seen it. None of the furniture matched or the walls and curtains. It may sound silly, but as a twenty-eight-year-old man, who has lived in countless rented rooms, and has never really given much thought to furniture or wallpaper, it even jarred with me. Because my dad’s a builder we had had to suffer stacks of tools and various ‘might come in handy later’ bits-n-bobs, but still, my mother hoovered every day and would never let a guest enter if the house wasn’t perfect. I think I have inherited her genes. Either that or I have inherited my father’s; my father who is known for being a perfectionist in his building work, and therefore a real pain to work for. When laying new wooden floors my dad always insisted on using scrim cloths before varnishing. I remember speaking to a working eighty-four-year-old builder mate of my dad in one of the buildings they were fixing. When I had asked him about working for my dad, he said ‘Your dad uses scrim cloths. Scrim cloths to dust surfaces after they’ve been brushed with a duster. Nobody uses them anymore; even I never even used ’em when I was twenty.’ So as the son of Wales’s fussiest builder, and a hoover-crazy mother, Nastya’s parents’ apartment was a slight shock to the system.
However, like the house I grew up in, all the cupboards above the doors, and the balcony leading off from the living room were filled with Boris’s things: spare car parts, old shoes with worn soles, and jars of ‘might come in handy one day’. In the living room, against the left wall, stood a large, brown laminated unit typical of the 1960s, that spanned the whole length. Through the glass panels I could see at least fifty books. Other sections without a glass front were filled with more of Boris’s gear and spare parts, and one glass-fronted section had its glass covered with silver foil to prevent anyone seeing the piles of spare machinery parts inside. I later learned this is something Nataliya Petrovna had forced Boris to do as she felt ashamed at guests seeing so many of Boris’s dirty tools. The only item that truly reflected Nataliya Petrovna’s personality was a large black Enisei piano that stood against the wall opposite from the one with the large brown unit. She’d had musical training and had come from relatively good beginnings.