Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes (8 page)

I think Lyokha is unfortunate to have ended up behind barbed
wire, but I feel no pity for the rest of the prisoners. They must have done something to earn their sentences, although I don’t blame them when they skive off work. No one likes working under the lash. There’s nothing to distinguish the prisoners from the rest of us except their shaven heads. We are warned to be vigilant but that is unnecessary for they keep to themselves.

About half the inhabitants of Toliatti are former zeks
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who were freed when Khrushchev revised the Criminal Code in 1961. Ex-cons differ little from the rest of us. We all hate Party activists. Anyone who hob-nobs with the bosses is a traitor. Perhaps in Moscow shop-floor workers drink with engineers and administrators but in the provinces, the bosses are our enemies. Arse-lickers are shunned by their workmates, leaving them with nothing else to do but build their careers.

Lyokha is released after serving a year for hooliganism. Strangely enough, his wife leaves her policeman and returns to him. I ask Lyokha why.

“Simple, Vanya. My exceptional virility is instantly apparent to women, and not only to my wife, but doctors, singers, any woman at all. I only have to talk to a tractor for five minutes and it starts to run after me.”

“Vanya,” Lyokha calls one evening, “I’m on night-shift. Bring a bottle over to the office and get out of your wife’s hair.”

I’m only too happy to comply with his request. The local shop is already closed so I stop off at a flat where Gypsies trade around the clock.

Lyokha has taken a job as a phone engineer. I arrive at his office and we down the bottle between us. The vodka sets me free. I forget about my work, my wife and my leg. Just then it
seems that no one understands me better than Lyokha.

“You know, Lyokha, I can’t talk to Olga like I can to you. She is close to me, but after all, she is my wife. We know each other too well. I can guess what she’s going to say even as she opens her mouth.”

“I know. I stopped reading poems to Masha after I married her. But never mind, Vanya, listen to this,” replies Lyokha, and hands me a set of headphones. He dials a number.

“It’s the director of Plant No. 2,” he explains.

When a man’s voice answers Lyokha says politely: “This is the telephone maintenance collective. How long is your telephone cord?”

We hear the idiot waking his wife and sending her to fetch a tape measure.

“Two and a half metres.”

“Very good. Now pull out the cord and stick it up your arse.”

Lyokha and I double over with laughter and hang up. At three in the morning. Lyokha calls the director again and shouts down the line: “It’s me! You can take it out now!”

Lyokha is soon dismissed from the phone collective. After that he returns to Chapaevsk, where he can only find work as a ‘golden man,’ as we call those who scoop shit out of the barrack latrines.

I meet Ivan Shirmanov at a works party. He surprises me by drinking nothing at all. I’ve met teetotallers before but there’s nothing priggish about Ivan. He plays the accordion well and his anecdotes are unusually witty. I talk to him about my life in the Far East. He nods: “I know the taiga; I was in Kolyma.”
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Ivan stops coming to work and our trade union sends me to find out what has happened to him. He lodges in a pre-revolution wooden house. His sister Elizaveta is reluctant to let me in but I persuade her I’m here to help. She ushers me into a gloomy, evil-smelling room. Empty bottles roll around the floor. Ivan lies on an iron bedstead; its mattress soaked through where he has wet himself.

“He needs a doctor, he can’t stop drinking by himself,” says his sister.

Ivan lies on his back, giggling like a mischievous schoolboy.

“Elizaveta, you poor woman. You don’t know how amusing it is to see everything floating before your eyes. My thoughts are butterflies. So pretty, so fascinating… I’ll catch that one. No wait, it’s gone! Oh, the devils!”

Ivan has a fit of laughter.

“Ivan, what should I do? D’you want to keep your job?” I ask, “If you leave it any longer they’ll dismiss you for ‘dishonourable reasons’ and then you’ll be portering for the rest of your life.”

In silence he hands me a notice of resignation that he has already written out.

“You don’t have to resign. We can come up with an excuse.”

Ivan remains unmoved: “I want to leave without a fuss. This is my problem. I must sort it out myself.”

Next day I tell my workmates what has happened. They are a good bunch, none of them careerists or back-stabbers, and we decide to pack the next trade union meeting to plead Ivan’s case. It is forbidden to dismiss someone without the approval of their union and unions have to have the agreement of their members. Ivan’s dismissal is presented for approval. I speak up: “Comrades! Is it not our duty to help Comrade Shirmanov? As the advanced
class the proletariat triumphed over the bourgeoisie, can we not also triumph over alcoholism, not that there is really any such thing in the USSR? Let us return Comrade Shirmanov to the right path!”

Strangely enough, the meeting is swayed by my argument and the union even proposes to pay my fare to escort Ivan to the mental hospital. A Party man, Sashka Akulshin, accompanies us. Sashka has left his family behind in Chapaevsk while he arranges accommodation in Stavropol. His absence from his wife and his no-less-beloved Party organisation leads him into strong temptation. When Ivan suggests going by bus instead of taxi Sashka readily agrees. After all, we’re economising the money that the work collective has contributed to the return of the prodigal son. By the time we reach the clinic the doctors can’t tell who is bringing in whom for treatment. I only recognise the hospital by the slogan on its outside wall:
Let us Wage War on Drunkenness!

Despite our efforts Ivan never returns to work in our plant. He takes portering jobs and his sister continues to look after him. He is the only one of my friends my wife will lend money to, although she knows quite well what he wants it for.

“If I don’t lend it to him poor Elizaveta will,” she says.

One day Ivan and I go out in search of good beer. The only bar that sells it is on the steamer that plies between Moscow and Astrakhan. We board the boat, go to the restaurant and buy up all the beer they have. Then we sit back and enjoy the swaying of the craft on the wide expanses of the Volga. Our plan is to sail as far as Sengilei and take the bus home. The journey should take us three hours. We wake up in Kazan, with our pockets empty and Ivan’s shoes gone. Three days later we return home, sailing
downriver on rafts, like Huckleberry Finn. The raft people, who ferry logs down from the northern forests to Volga cities, laugh when they hear our story and let us ride for nothing. Ivan entertains them on the way with his jokes and I learn that it is possible to live without a house and to travel without money.

My mouth tastes as though a reindeer herd spent the night in it, my head spins and my thoughts crawl away from my grasp. With shaking hands I gather my clothes and tiptoe into the kitchen to dress. I try to smoke the first cigarette of the day without vomiting. I can’t go to work without a hair-of-the-dog. A little pile of coins is stacked on the windowsill. I take it and creep out of the house while the others sleep. That night I come home in a happy mood to find Olga waiting for me in a rage.

“That was the last of our money. I put it aside to buy milk for Natasha.”

I won’t let her see how bad I feel.

“What the hell do you want, Olga? Okay, I drink, but no more than anyone else. You can’t say I am a bad husband – I even help you with the washing for Christ’s sake – and I don’t chase women.”

“Just as well. Who’d want a drunk like you?”

“And you don’t see me out in the courtyard all day with the domino players. I don’t go on fishing trips.”

“If it weren’t for your leg you’d be off like a shot with your rod and bottles.”

I can’t bear to be reminded of my leg. I leave for the hostel that night.

There I unburden myself to my friends. “The trouble with Olga is that she thinks she knows better than me because she
has a degree. It’s a mistake to marry a woman better-educated than yourself.”

I get the sympathy I crave from men who are in a similar position to me. I move into the hostel and life becomes a long drinks party, with a little work thrown in for good measure.

Olga finds me outside the vodka shop waiting for my
hair-of
-the-dog. “Vanya, come with me. I’ve got an invitation to Professor Burenkov’s clinic in Chelyabinsk. He’s developed a new treatment. It’s banned by Moscow so it probably works.”

I don’t protest as I’m beginning to tire of life in the hostel. Olga takes me home, gives me something to help me sleep, and in the morning we take a train to the Urals.

At the clinic we join 25 other men, each accompanied by his wife or mother. We introduce ourselves. I’m surprised to see the alcoholics aren’t all ordinary working men like me. There’s a surgeon who confesses he was once so drunk that he fell on top of a patient on the operating table. Next to me sits a Hero of the Soviet Union, with medals on his jacket but no shirt under it. He sold his clothes for a drink. Professor Burenkov says to him: “Well, you defeated the fascists but you allowed vodka to defeat you.”

The Hero hangs his head.

Burenkov gives us each a bitter herb drink, then a massive dose of Antabuse. Next we have to down a glass of vodka. The Antabuse reacts badly with the vodka and soon we are vomiting and writhing in pain. It’s hard to see two dozen men retch and groan all around you without feeling dreadful yourself. I think I’m going to die. Professor Burenkov strides around the group roaring: “Anyone want another drink?”

The relatives outside are watching the drama through a window. They beat on the glass and cheer: “Give them more vodka!”

Burenkov injects us with camphor and makes us lie on mattresses with our left arms above our heads in order not to strain our hearts. Then he takes us all outside. We sit under trees, feeling life return. The doctor shows us slides of swollen livers and the abnormal brains of the children of alcoholics. That night we take our trains home, clutching our supplies of Antabuse.

As Burenkov’s popularity grows throughout the country he stops practising. An unknown number of people die after anxious wives and mothers slip unregulated quantities of Antabuse into food. It has no smell or taste so alcoholics consume it unknowingly and then choke to death after they’ve had a few drinks. Women usually administer the Antabuse in good faith. They are simply desperate to keep their men folk out of prison.

Before I went to Burenkov it looked as though my days at the factory were numbered. After my cure the administration are so impressed that they put me in charge of the factory’s credit fund. This fund is designed to help us buy expensive items such as fridges. It’s usually controlled by a group of women supervisors who borrow all they want while telling shop-floor workers that the funds have run out. They say we only want the money to buy vodka. The director dismisses the women and places me in charge. After that every alcoholic in the plant comes to me for three roubles for his troika session.

Now I am sober my thoughts torment me and prevent me from sleeping. To calm me my wife prescribes the popular Hungarian barbiturate Noxiron. At first two or three of these tablets are enough to knock me out but my need soon grows. I drop in
on Olga at work and discreetly tear off some blank prescription forms from her pad. I fill them out without trouble as I know the Latin alphabet. As indecipherable as any other doctor’s, her signature is easy to forge. Having written several prescriptions I visit different chemists in our area, acquiring enough Noxiron to last a month.

Olga notices that I’m taking a lot of barbiturate and tries to explain that my new addiction is as harmful as the old one. To appease her I stop taking the tablets during the day but at night I swallow them until I pass out.

I share my discovery with my former drinking partners who, like me, have had to choose between alcohol and their wives and jobs. One day when Olga is on night shift my friends come over for a Noxiron session. My wife returns to find me sprawled on the floor, black and blue. When I try to stand up I topple over like a felled tree. I can’t even extend my hands to break my fall. The rubbish bin is full of Noxiron packaging. Olga puts me to bed.

That evening a colleague of my wife’s and her husband come to supper. I drag myself out of bed to join them. With relief I remember I have some pills left. Excusing myself, I go into the hall and rummage in the pockets of my coat.

“You won’t find what you’re looking for,” Olga stands in the doorway, pointing to the toilet. My hopes of avoiding a horrific withdrawal are dashed.

“Bitch! You had no right to go through my pockets!”

Olga walks away. I follow her into the room, still raging. With one blow I sweep a dish off the table. Jam splatters over our lady guest’s new cardigan and the dish smashes the glass of our
book-cabinet
.

The lady’s husband leads me into the kitchen. We smoke and I calm down a little. When we go back into the living-room I find my wife putting Natasha’s things into an overnight bag. Everyone leaves.

At the back of a cupboard I discover a bottle of vodka that has been put aside for some family celebration. Although I’ve been taking Antabuse for several months I open the bottle and begin to drink. I soon pass out.

The doorbell wakes me up. Expecting my wife, I open the door and a policeman enters. “You’re under arrest,” he saunters through into the living-room, sits down at the table and begins to fill in a form. I go into the kitchen and swallow the remaining vodka in one gulp. After that it is all the same to me whether the policeman takes me off to a health spa or to a leper colony.