I flew into Moscow and
immediately the cold hit me. It had been a cold morning earlier when I had got
up and been driven to the airport by my husband Petr, but it had not been like
this. Moscow was at least fifteen degrees colder if not twenty. There was no
wind and it was dry, much healthier than on the Baltic, but breathing was
difficult and it hardly seemed possible to wear enough layers.
Sheremetevo’s domestic
terminal seemed as shabby as it had been all those years before when I had
first arrived there. But it was, of course shabby in a rather different way. Back
then in the late 1980s there were few, if any, adverts, there were few, if any,
shops and there was the odd bit of propaganda which was immediately contradicted
by the reality all around. But somehow it had been more honest.
I made my way through
the terminal. I had all I needed with me and so didn’t have to wait. I had,
perhaps rather too much time if anything so there was no need to hurry.
I passed some baffled
tourists about to be ripped off by extortionate taxi drivers and instead found
a likely group who might know a cheaper way to get into the centre of Moscow.
“Do you know how to get
to the metro from here” I asked someone pretty much at random.
“I think we’re all doing the same,” he said. “Just
follow the crowd.”
“Don’t worry,” said
another woman. “Everyone’s waiting for the same bus. Then you’ll need to make
just one more change and you’re there. You’re not from round here?”
“I’m from Kaliningrad.”
She looked a little unsure.
“It’s on the Baltic next to Poland, I added.”
“Ah yes, your accent sounds a little different.
Where are you from originally? Lithuania?”
“Everyone asks me that,” I laughed. “I’m Russian
like all of us, it’s just I lived abroad a bit when I was a child.”
People were friendly at
bus stops in way that is rare in a country like Scotland where I had spent my
childhood. In Aberdeenshire everyone avoided any acknowledgement of those they
did not know. Everyone sat on their own if at all possible, on the bus and
moved whenever there was a spare two person seat as if they might catch
something from sitting next to a stranger. Conversation happened, but rarely,
usually when something unusual happened like the bus breaking down or some such
disaster. Then everyone wanted to talk, but only then and the next day the
shutters would be closed once more. I liked that even in a huge city like
Moscow people wanted to help each other. Perhaps, it was because it was only in
this way that we had been able to get through the tough times.
After a rather
complicated journey involving a couple of changes and a few short walks I
arrived at the metro station. I thought once more of the poor tourists. There
is no way they could have done what I had just done. Russian really opened the
gate that took you into Russia. Without it you saw nothing but the tourist
attractions and understood less of where you actually were.
I had been to Moscow a
few times over the years, but I was far from familiar with the metro. But again
I knew where I had to get to and it was easy to find someone who would tell me
the best way to get there.
I sat back and found my
book. I’d chosen to take with me ‘A sSory of a Soul’ by Thérèse of Liseux. I
hoped it would keep me on the right path in case of any difficulty.
The names of the metro
stations flashed by, nearly all still the Soviet names. I wondered why they had
changed so much but not that. But then it would have been necessary to destroy
all the art too and that would clearly have been vandalism. So best to keep
Komsomolskaya, Ploshchad Revolyutsii and
such like along with the Soviet realism that had a strange beauty even if it
covered up a multitude of sins.
I was rather early when
I arrived at the metro station where I had arranged to meet Galina. So I found
a café nearby and sat there smoking and drinking a large black coffee. It was
amazing how coffee had improved since when I’d first arrived in Russia. I
remembered the row that I’d had with Petr the night before. He didn’t want me
to go. It was the long January holidays and I’d be spending them away from him.
He was right. There was no real reason why I should be here. I didn’t even
really know where I was going or rather where I was being taken. I hadn’t seen Galina
in well over a year and anyway I wasn’t much closer to her than any number of
my students. Sometimes it was possible to make a certain sort of friendship
with a student, but it rarely lasted and there was usually some sort of a
distance. I’d corresponded with Galina intermittently I don’t remember who
first started writing, I think it was her,
but I had always been pleased to write because she had a little something
extra that I’d recognised and valued.
Sometimes she hadn’t replied for months, but then out of the blue would come a
long e-mail. In the end, I’d come
because her mother had visited me in my office and had asked me to get in touch
with Galina and try to see her. After a few minutes I’d felt I had no choice
but to agree.
“But why you?” Petr had said.
“Because I’m the only one who can.”
“You still have to do the knight errant stuff, don’t
you, Effie?”
“If I wasn’t that sort how do you think I’d have end
up here?”
That had rather ended
the argument. We reflected back all those years ago. How we’d met, how I’d
ended up going to him and it seemed silly fighting after that. So we didn’t.
Sitting there in the Moscow
café I thought of the first time I’d flown into Kalingrad. It was a few years
before the Soviet Union broke up. Yes, I had been something of a romantic back
then, but I didn’t regret it. We’d married in Copenhagen in the Saint Alexander
Nevsky Church. We then had a wonderful few days together in one of the nicest
hotels. Soon, however, Petr had to go back to Kalingrad and I was left in an
apartment waiting for the paperwork that would enable me to join him.
I contacted my parents
who were upset, but remarkably understanding. I had a sort of fellowship in
Cambridge and they, too, were most accommodating. They were happy to describe
my time in the Soviet Union as research if I could just come back every now and
again and let them know how things were going. I promised to stay in touch and
they promised to stay in touch, too. My salary would be paid into my account
and they’d work out a way that I could have some of it if that should ever be
necessary.
I had a number of
interviews with people at the Soviet Embassy in Copenhagen. For the most part
they were perfectly pleasant. They were also very helpful and gave good advice.
I remember when they told me my new name.
“We have decided that
you will be called Evgenia Ivanovna. It’s the closest common name to Effie.”
“Effie wouldn’t work in Kaliningrad,” I agreed.
“No. As you know, it’s a closed city. Only Soviet
citizens can live there.”
“It’s still going to be
a bit tricky in the beginning with my Russian and my accent.”
“You are going to have
to spend a lot of time listening and not so much time speaking, at least in the
beginning.”
“But I’m going to have to speak sometimes.”
“Your story will be
this. You grew up in Scotland because your parents were involved in a Soviet
trade mission there, to do with oil. You went to local schools there and didn’t
like speaking Russian because your friends laughed. It is for this reason you
speak such good English and can teach it and this also explains your mistakes
and your accent.”
“Do you think people will believe this story?”
“I don’t want you to
tell it that often. I don’t want gossip about you. You must spend the next few
years being unnoticed, but if you get someone who won’t shut up asking questions
or if you meet an official who wants to be troublesome, you must show them
this.”
In the folder where my
passport fitted there was a document and a stamp. I looked at it, looked at the
embassy official, who confirmed what I was thinking with a nod. She closed the
passport and gave it to me.
“You are booked on
tomorrow’s flight to Moscow and from there to Kaliningrad. Good luck and
welcome to the Soviet Union.”
I’d been anxious on
that first flight into Moscow. I just didn’t know what to expect. I’d not once
set foot in the Soviet Union, but here I was a citizen about to be reunited
with my husband of less than a month.
My Russian was good
even then, I spoke more or less fluently, but I wasn’t used to the speed at
which people spoke and I didn’t get all of the colloquial expressions.
There was a hold up at
the passport control counter. The guard said something very quickly to me and I
only got about half of it.
“I’m sorry”, I said, “Could you repeat that?”
He looked at me as if I was stupid.
“Are you quite sure, you’re a Soviet citizen,
comrade?”
“Yes, you have my passport.”
“It’s a brand new passport with no stamps.”
“I lost mine in Denmark. The embassy there provided
me with a new one.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I don’t think we need to go into that”, I said. “Actually
I was getting married. I’m going to see him now.”
“That’s what you think. I’m going to call….”
“I wouldn’t do that. Rather look inside the back
cover of my passport.”
He did so.
“I am sorry to have held you up, comrade” he said
passing me my passport.
“Not at all, you were doing your job correctly.
Thank you.”
I looked back and saw
that he was obviously nervous, but then again so was I. That little piece of
paper proved useful on a number of occasions in those days.
I looked at my watch
and realised that my reflections on my first arrival in the Soviet Union had
nearly taken me up to the time of my meeting with Galina.
I got up, went to the
garderobe, gave the old lady the token and put on my coat, scarf and hat and made
my way out into the cold. It was only a hundred or so metres to the metro and I
thought it might be Galina I could see in the distance, only she wasn’t alone.
But then again our arrangements had been terribly vague. She hadn’t said she
would be with someone, but then again she hadn’t said she would not. As I got
closer I realised that it was Galina, but somehow she looked different.
“Hello, Galina!”
“Hello, Evgenia
Ivanovna! Allow me to introduce my friend David. He’s come all the way from
Scotland.”
I thought I vaguely
recognised him from a couple of years earlier. I thought perhaps Galina had
introduced us once before.
“I think we met once
before,” he said in pretty good Russian. “Galina took me to your office once.”
“I remember. Your
Russian has improved, I believe. And please let’s all be informal. None of this
Evgenia Ivanovna, Galina, if we’re on a trip together, let it be Zhenya.”
“That’s easier for me,
too,” said David. “I can never quite get used to the formal ‘you’ form.”
“I know what you mean,”
I said. “English is much less complex since we did away with all that.”
“We just have to wait for one more,” said Galina.
I saw a moment of
surprise in David’s eyes, perhaps a moment of disappointment. He was quite
animated as if the last few hours had been something he had been waiting for.
It looked as if everything was working out very well with Galina. She was
smiling at him and he was just delighted to be there with her.
“Who are we waiting for?” I said.
“Oh, just a friend, she’s called Vera.”
A few minutes later we
went through the introductions again and then set off to find the train that
would take us into the countryside surrounding Moscow.
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