Читать книгу Try living in Russia - Саша Кругосветов - Страница 12

For Gorky it was the Volga and the strap of the barge hauler. I have no experience to match that, of course. I've never had to do hard, back-breaking labour. But I wasn't afraid of physical labour and didn't avoid it. When I was still a boy I learned to do everything with my own hands – I could work with wood and metal; I could solder and build electromechanical models. Our room on Liteiny Prospekt was heated by a stove in winter. Our firewood was kept in the second backyard, in a low basement. Right next to the neighbours' firewood. Nobody fenced in or guarded their firewood. Nobody ever stole another's firewood. Since I was ten years old it was my responsibility to fire up the stove after school. I would go down into the basement, chop wood, put it into a sack and carry it home, up the steep high staircase. There was no lift in our house. Once I had entered college there was the kolkhoz. We were sent to a village with the expressive name «Gnilki» – «Rotten». The kolkhoz allocated a hut to us students. We knocked together wooden bunks. And then we lived there. We cooked our food in huge pots over the fire. Some of the food we'd brought ourselves. Tinned stewed meat and cereals. The kolkhoz gave us potatoes, vegetables, milk and bread. We worked in the fields, weeding. Everyone tried to stand out and get a larger amount of work done. That's how it was. That's what young people were like. I also made an effort. And although I was constantly exhausted, I was Leningrad rowing champion by then already, well, I couldn't for the life of mine break out and become an exemplary worker. I didn't have the knack. Our exemplary workers were guys and gals who'd come from the provinces, most of them from Belarus. We went to work in the kolkhoz every year. On the first of September we'd show up at college. An assembly would be held during which it was announced who would go where with whom and when, which food items to buy, what things to take. And we'd be off for a month to help the country with the harvest. It was possible to avoid this labour in autumn by working on a building site during summer. In one such summer I was sent to dig pits for the foundations of future houses. The Malaya Okhta district was erected from scratch. Who could have known that a few years down the line, my parents and I would receive a flat there and would go on to live in precisely that district? I finished college. I was given an assignment and went to work straight to the kolkhoz. Those working there mostly worked to tick off a box, to have fun. Later it became customary to send employees to vegetable storehouses to pick through the vegetables. Not for long, just for one or two days. That went on until the year 1990. It even continued while I was working at the Academy of Sciences. Just to show off. Research associates, graduate students, doctors of science and professors with decent salary pretended to be doing something. They'd arrive at the vegetable storehouse at around 9am. At 10am the representative would appear and allocate the groups to different storage facilities. Around 10.30 they'd reach their workplace. Another person would come, give a briefing and distribute packing materials. At 11 they'd start work. At lpm they'd break for lunch. At 2 they'd gradually get down to work. At 3, well, perhaps it was time to stop? They would call the representative. Well, did you get at least something done – thank goodness. Can we take some vegetables, carrots, cabbages? Take a little, that is permitted. For some reason the plan was always fulfilled. The party coordinator in person watched over the plan fulfilment; he was a doctor of science, by the way. A self-evident mockery of common sense. Oh well. Not at all like the universities of Aleksei Maksimovich. Nothing would have happened had I been spared this stupid experience. But what has been has been. I won't renounce a single thing in my life. Everyone has his own universities, his own school of life. I had mine. Let me tell you of the real universities.

My first university was the communal flat. Our neighbours there were uncle Petya, his wife, aunt Zhenya, and their adult son, Tolya. They were good people. Of course they weren't my real aunt and uncle, but that's how you addressed adults back then. In everyday life you didn't call people by name and patronymic, it wasn't proletarian to play those tricks. The first to come into the kitchen would be uncle Petya, fat and good-hearted as he was. There was a wood-burning cooker in the kitchen and a separate gas cooker. Uncle Petya would be wearing his poison-green underwear, regardless of whether anyone else was in the kitchen. He'd light the gas cooker and stand close to it, warming his bottom. That was his obligatory ritual before leaving for work. Aunt Zhenya was a friendly, prematurely aged woman with black hair and a drawn, dark-skinned face. She didn't work and would sometimes keep an eye on what I was doing, at my mother's request. And that despite the fact that I coped well on my own after Nadezhda Danilovna had left: I would change after school, light the stove, have some food and do my homework. But my mother was calmer in the knowledge that there was a pair of eyes not indifferent to what I was up to. Tolya was a well-built blond young man, not very tall and resembling Utesov. He worked as a driver. Before leaving for work he'd always shine his shoes, but only the tips. The rest was invisible, as people used to wear wide bell-bottomed trousers. Tolya was very kind but good for nothing; he'd constantly end up in some scrape or other. He was arrested by the police many times. And he had no luck with women; his girlfriends were all bitches of the worst sort. But Tolya had one talent: he could whistle most beautifully. I think he could have performed in public. When Tolya was at home, you would constantly hear tunes coming from his room – popular songs, romances, arias from the opera. Aunt Zhenya would often ask Lyubov Lvovna, that is my mother, for advice as to what to do with this useless Tolya. And my mother, enthroned at the kitchen table, would then discuss the issues and explain something in a quiet voice. I don't know whether her advice helped them, but their relief when they returned to their room was palpable.

And then uncle Petya and aunt Zhenya were given a flat, and a single mother and her daughters, Ira and Nina, 16 and 18 years old, became our new neighbours. And communal hell began. These women were constantly fighting. For space in the kitchen, for a hob on the gas cooker, who could go to the toilet, whose turn it was in the bathroom. At some point ducks and hay turned up in the bathroom, unexpectedly. Yes, such a thing did happen. Our neighbours didn't understand that the bath was for washing oneself. How much did the electricity cost? In the end the flat had two different electric wires, two meters, two different lamps in the communal areas. These women fought for their place under the sun as if this was «their final and decisive battle». Screams and arguments. They would move our things without explanation and sometimes throw them out. Refrigerators didn't exist back then. Food items and cooked food was stored between the doors or behind the window. From time to time they would pour dirt into our lunch. A few years later the younger one, pretty and quarrelsome Irina, married a soldier. We rarely saw her husband, as he spent most of his time at his unit, but soon twins appeared, a boy and a girl. And with them a pile of nappies, hung out to dry literally everywhere. This fact provided the women with arguments in their constant fight for their legitimate rights. How could my mother endure all that? How did she preserve her calm? Wisdom, kindness and endurance worked miracles. Some time passed and the sisters were given their own place to live. Their mother kept the room for herself. She was rarely there now. She spent more time helping her daughters sort out their lives. Over time she moved out completely. But for many years she kept visiting Lyobov Lvovna, sometimes on her own and sometimes together with her daughters. To chat. To share news and worries. To seek advice. Naturally I didn't participate in the communal battles that were now over, but with half an ear I overheard my parents talk about the problems created by our tight-fisted neighbours. And then I witnessed the miracle not of human making worked by my mother's angelic patience. Not much good came out of the exoticism of the communal flat. Now it seems an exotic thing, then it was the truth of life. And the school of life. No matter how you look at it, this was also one of my universities.