Read Online Smashed in the USSR: Fear, Loathing and Vodka on the Steppes by Caroline Walton, Ivan Petrov - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Caroline Walton, Ivan Petrov
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in each group runs off for a bottle while the other two go to order some snacks.
In the canteen we’re held up by a woman from the shop floor who is already drunk and arguing with the server: “I asked for soup – what are these slops?”
“Push off, Zhenya, we want to get finished tonight,” says the serving woman.
“What do you know about work? We’re up to our knees in DDT all day.”
“If you don’t like the job go somewhere else.”
“Someone has to do it.”
“Get a move on ladies,” shouts my drinking-partner, Lyokha-Tuba.
Zhenya rounds on him: “And what do you men know about hard work? You technicians sit around on your arses all day while we’re getting ourselves in a sweat.”
“With Igor Fyodorovich in your case,” remarks the serving woman.
Everyone starts screaming, so Lyokha and I give up on bread and pickles and sit down to wait for our mate. He comes running in with the bottle, takes his seat and pours out three glassfuls. I raise mine: “To women.”
“The trouble with this place,” Lyokha remarks, “is that however long you spend in the shower you still come out smelling of DDT.”
“Yeah, it makes me feel as though I’m crawling with lice,” 11 I say. “Never mind. We’re the envy of the town for breathing in this crap all day long.”
“But what’s the use of getting higher pensions if we don’t live long enough to enjoy them?”
“It could be worse. How many of those poor sods who made mustard gas before this place was converted are still alive?” 12
“My mother does okay,” I observe. “For a dose of Lewisite she trots off to a sanatorium in the Crimea each year.”
“Funny how Party lungs are more sensitive than anyone else’s,” says Lyokha.
Lyokha’s face and hands are coloured bright tomato-red, making him appear an even heavier drinker than he actually is. A couple of weeks ago a woman worker sprinkled potassium manganese on his head while he slept. When he stood in theshower after work the powder dyed him a deep red. It’s taking a long time to wash out and everyone laughs at him, especially the women.
That woman was getting her revenge on Lyokha for a trick he played on her. Night-shift workers like to take forty winks behind their gas masks. Last month Lyokha crept up as the woman slept and painted black ink over the goggles of her mask. Then he shook her awake, shouting: “Fire!” She awoke in terror and blindly leaped into the water tank. Unfortunately it was empty and she broke her arm. She couldn’t complain because she shouldn’t have been sleeping and besides, no one grasses on their fellow workers.
After we’ve drunk the bottle I put on my beret, sling my gas-mask container over my shoulder and say goodbye to my friends. I have a date with my former classmate and pen friend Olga Vorobyova.
Now that I’m back in Chapaevsk, Olga and I are talking of getting married. The problem is finding somewhere to live. The waiting list for a flat is twenty years. In the meantime I cannot live with my parents and I will not live with hers.
Olga works as a gynaecologist in a local clinic. That night she takes me out on her ambulance rounds, disguising me in a white coat. I’m interested to see the inside of other people’s flats, although they all look alike. At midnight I strike lucky, for while Olga is attending an emergency I manage to pinch some morphine from her supply and inject myself. I haven’t lost my taste for the drug.
***
The first months of our marriage are happy ones. We move into a flat of our own in Stavropol-on-the-Volga where communismhas almost been built. 13 The Kuibyshev hydroelectric power project has flooded old Stavropol and convict labour is building a new town on the banks of the reservoir. I go over and find a job in a synthetic rubber factory. After three months the plant allocates us a flat and Olga comes to join me.
We live like everyone else, going with the flow like shit down the Yenisei. Our one-room
In the canteen we’re held up by a woman from the shop floor who is already drunk and arguing with the server: “I asked for soup – what are these slops?”
“Push off, Zhenya, we want to get finished tonight,” says the serving woman.
“What do you know about work? We’re up to our knees in DDT all day.”
“If you don’t like the job go somewhere else.”
“Someone has to do it.”
“Get a move on ladies,” shouts my drinking-partner, Lyokha-Tuba.
Zhenya rounds on him: “And what do you men know about hard work? You technicians sit around on your arses all day while we’re getting ourselves in a sweat.”
“With Igor Fyodorovich in your case,” remarks the serving woman.
Everyone starts screaming, so Lyokha and I give up on bread and pickles and sit down to wait for our mate. He comes running in with the bottle, takes his seat and pours out three glassfuls. I raise mine: “To women.”
“The trouble with this place,” Lyokha remarks, “is that however long you spend in the shower you still come out smelling of DDT.”
“Yeah, it makes me feel as though I’m crawling with lice,” 11 I say. “Never mind. We’re the envy of the town for breathing in this crap all day long.”
“But what’s the use of getting higher pensions if we don’t live long enough to enjoy them?”
“It could be worse. How many of those poor sods who made mustard gas before this place was converted are still alive?” 12
“My mother does okay,” I observe. “For a dose of Lewisite she trots off to a sanatorium in the Crimea each year.”
“Funny how Party lungs are more sensitive than anyone else’s,” says Lyokha.
Lyokha’s face and hands are coloured bright tomato-red, making him appear an even heavier drinker than he actually is. A couple of weeks ago a woman worker sprinkled potassium manganese on his head while he slept. When he stood in theshower after work the powder dyed him a deep red. It’s taking a long time to wash out and everyone laughs at him, especially the women.
That woman was getting her revenge on Lyokha for a trick he played on her. Night-shift workers like to take forty winks behind their gas masks. Last month Lyokha crept up as the woman slept and painted black ink over the goggles of her mask. Then he shook her awake, shouting: “Fire!” She awoke in terror and blindly leaped into the water tank. Unfortunately it was empty and she broke her arm. She couldn’t complain because she shouldn’t have been sleeping and besides, no one grasses on their fellow workers.
After we’ve drunk the bottle I put on my beret, sling my gas-mask container over my shoulder and say goodbye to my friends. I have a date with my former classmate and pen friend Olga Vorobyova.
Now that I’m back in Chapaevsk, Olga and I are talking of getting married. The problem is finding somewhere to live. The waiting list for a flat is twenty years. In the meantime I cannot live with my parents and I will not live with hers.
Olga works as a gynaecologist in a local clinic. That night she takes me out on her ambulance rounds, disguising me in a white coat. I’m interested to see the inside of other people’s flats, although they all look alike. At midnight I strike lucky, for while Olga is attending an emergency I manage to pinch some morphine from her supply and inject myself. I haven’t lost my taste for the drug.
***
The first months of our marriage are happy ones. We move into a flat of our own in Stavropol-on-the-Volga where communismhas almost been built. 13 The Kuibyshev hydroelectric power project has flooded old Stavropol and convict labour is building a new town on the banks of the reservoir. I go over and find a job in a synthetic rubber factory. After three months the plant allocates us a flat and Olga comes to join me.
We live like everyone else, going with the flow like shit down the Yenisei. Our one-room
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