Biting her lip, she confessed that she did not want to die a virgin. Dovik gallantly offered to put that right for her.
‘Ha ha! Virgin!’ She clapped her hands.
I don’t know whether Dovik ever realised or whether she eventually confessed.
Shortly afterwards they moved to Tbilisi and got married. Dovik continued his bacteriophage research, which according to Inna was a Soviet version of antibiotics made from viruses that thrive in effluent and infect and destroy bacteria. Inna, as a nurse at the same hospital, had administered this yukky remedy to local unfortunates.
‘Mm. Shakespeare said something along the lines that one pain is cured by another.’ It was from Romeo and Juliet. ‘Take thou some new infection to thy eye and the rank poison of the old will die.’
‘Aha! Very clever man! He was Soviet citizen?’
‘It seems unlikely, Inna, but it’s an intriguing thought.’ Could anyone really be as stupid as that, or was she having me on?
Inna and Dovik lived in a two-roomed flat on the ground floor of a low-rise ‘Khrushchyovka’.
‘Council house like this, but made from good Soviet concrete.’
Despite her outspoken distaste for public housing, the young couple were happy in their new flat which, although small, was a home of their own at a time when many families were still living crammed into a couple of rooms with parents and in-laws. They made it nice with flowers, pictures and traditional embroidery, and here they had their two children. ‘Two boys grown up now. Both doctor. One live Peterburg, one live Hamburg. Everybody normal.’
According to Inna, the Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev was a popular leader, spirited and jovial, who denounced Stalin and enjoyed a glass of Ukrainian shampanskoye best-in-world. It seemed as though the Soviet Union was at last crawling out of its grim past of famine, war and repression into a progressive and dynamic world power stretching all the way from Czechoslovakia to Kamchatka. Khrushchev’s diplomacy even saved the world from nuclear destruction while letting Mister President Jeff Kennedy take the credit.
‘No, Inna, it was the other way around. John F. Kennedy saved the world from nuclear annihilation and Khrushchev had to back down. Everybody knows that.’
‘Aha! Same like Dovik know I virgin!’ she chuckled.
I began to feel a bit sorry for this Dovik, who seemed like a decent sort of guy who had obviously drawn a few short straws in life, Inna being one of them.
In 1964, when Inna was pregnant with her first son, Khrushchev was ousted and replaced by Brezhnev.
‘Oy! Such primitive man!’ She threw up her hands. ‘Primitive eyebrow! Primitive politic! Like black bear cover wit medals. Also Ukrainian! What we can do?’
They resolved to emigrate, but had to wait until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 before their dream could become a reality. As the country went into meltdown, Western advisers poured in and shady people grabbed publicly owned assets in a wild spree of shoot-from-the-hip privatisation. Dovik was approached by the gangster-cum-businessman Kukuruza, who was sniffing around for ways of making money out of creaking Soviet research institutions with business potential. Bacteriophage medicine, with its low-cost effluent ingredients and unlimited upside, seemed an ideal prospect. Dovik demurred. He was not ready to hand over his baby to the mobsters, and he had other escape plans. He was already in touch with scientists at the Wellcome Institute in London who were also studying bacteriophages. He wrote a friendly letter from Tbilisi and was offered a research fellowship.
‘So we come in London. Very nice place. Everybody happy. Then one day this gangster Kukuruza come back for Dovik, but now he big olihark.’
Dovik’s refusal to sell his secrets cost him his life. A plate of poisoned slatki in a Soho restaurant did for him — or so Inna said.
‘Oy-oy-oy! Olihark got him dead. Now I all alonely. Time for going home!’
As Inna spoke, she crammed an obscure pink garment brutally into an already full bag. ‘Ah! Ukraina! You cannot imagine, Bertie, how beautiful this country. Yellow-blue, same like our flag. Yellow fields filled wit corn. Sky blue, no cloud. River like glass. Willow tree on bank. Little white house wit cherry trees in garden. Mmm-m-m.’ She was wailing again, hopelessly struggling with the zip of her bag. ‘England is good country but too wet. Too dark. Too much brissel sprout.’
Personally I am fond of Brussels sprouts, but I can see that they are an acquired taste. ‘Brussels sprouts are part of your five-a-day, Inna. Here, let me do that for you.’
I took the bag from her and found the only way I could close the zip was to remove the pink garment, which turned out to be a rubberised roll-on corset. She grabbed the bag from me, undid the zip, and shoved it in again. Then the zip broke. Tears welled up in her eyes. I put my arm around her. I was suddenly feeling quite emotional too.
‘I can see why you want to go to Ukraine, Inna. But I think you’re taking a bit of a gamble with this Lookerchunky guy. I mean how much do you know about him?’
‘I know love. That is enough.’ Tears fluttered on her eyelashes.
‘But love is a bit … you know … unreliable. Wouldn’t it be better if you went to live near your sons?’
‘Oy, I been visit in Hamburg. Nice place but everybody speaking German. Wrong type kobasa.’
‘What about St Petersburg? That’s closer to home for you.’
‘Also nice place, but too much gangster, winter worse than London, son too busy. No, better I go in Crimea wit Lev. Nice climate, nice people, plenty seaside, plenty nice food nice wine.’
‘But Inna, Crimea is in Russia now, not in Ukraine.’
‘No, no, Bertie. Before was Russia, now Ukraina. Mister Khrushchev give it over. I been there.’
‘Now Russia has taken it back. Haven’t you been following the news? The people voted overwhelmingly. Though of course we must assume the vote was rigged.’
‘Oy! Why nobody tell me?’ She clasped her hands in dismay. ‘Where I will go?’
‘But you don’t need to leave, Inna. In fact it would be nice if you stayed. Aren’t you happy here?’ Maybe I had been too harsh with her over the coffee and Flossie’s care. From now on I would treat her like a queen.
‘Everything changing round here, Mister Bertie. Blackie gone away. Mrs Crazy gone away. Romania gone away. Today they cut down cherry tree, same like in play of Chekhov.’
The Cherry Orchard, that’s what I’d been trying to remember! I’d even played Gaev in 1981, in Camberwell. Something about looking from the window and seeing Mother walking through the cherry orchard wearing a white dress. I felt a lump in my throat. She would never walk there again.
‘And yesterday I hear man in wheelchair got dead.’
‘What?’ This was unexpected and shocking. ‘You mean Len?’ Maybe she was confused.
‘Yes, no-leg man wit poison-mushroom hat. Deeyabet must eat to make sugar in blood, and he need electric for keeping insulin in refigorator.’
A finger of guilt poked my ribs. I’d promised to try and help, but I’d forgotten. I’d been selfishly preoccupied with my own survival, and at the back of my mind I’d assumed ‘They’ would look after him — someone like Mrs Penny from the Council, or the Job Centre, or the NHS would be keeping an eye on him. But nobody was. While I’d been waiting for Godot, time had run out for Len.