With Natasha and Rachael I saw Kira Muratova’s film The Asthenic Syndrome, which was excellent. It’s in two parts. The first shows a woman in her late thirties whose husband is suddenly killed. Her grief totally alienates her from her surroundings. She rejects her friends, resigns from her job; when someone bumps into her in the street, she belts someone else; she picks someone up, then when she realises it’s not her husband, she throws him out. She can’t stand anyone and she’s desperate.
The second part switches to Soviet life and shows everyone zombified on the metro, then dashing and fighting their way out; the bizarre fights and rows in shops and on the street; the constant brimming over of talk, talk, talk and aggression. The main character is a teacher who is always falling asleep, because he can’t take his surroundings. By analogy, it is as though the whole of Soviet society is disorientated and feeling-less, because of some past grief. What was heartening and impressive was that a Soviet filmmaker and Soviet actors could see everyday life so vividly.
You would think they might be inured to it. What was disheartening was that the main character just can’t stand it anymore and is slumped asleep at the end.
An encouraging late-night call from Tolya. Off his own initiative he has got the firm in to measure our security door today, and it will be fixed by the end of the week. Just what I was wanting.
Tuesday 18 June
It has happened: the hot water went off this morning.
I met Tolya in the morning to give him money for the door, then had two interesting interviews. The first was with Valery Rudnev in the offices of Izvestiya, although he works for the RSFSR Supreme Court journal Soviet Justice. He was interested in the death penalty and wants to run a monthly Amnesty column on anything we want. Excellent.
From them I went to New Times, where Lev Yelin whipped out his tape recorder and our chat became an interview. What interested him more than anything was that I am living here on roubles, not hard currency. He was astonished and stopped the tape recorder. He said he could imagine going to live in the jungle in Colombia, but not living on roubles in the USSR. Apparently New Times now has a financial department which is selling iron ore and timber in order to finance the paper. He said the people in it look as though they wear guns under their jackets. The staff had been surprised to see a fax in which their financial department was selling a submarine, “whisky type” to the USA.
Wednesday 19 June
Had a lousy night’s sleep with the heat and the mosquitoes, and woke up in the depths of depression. Rachael came round with a hangover to take the mail for London. She was wondering how much bad temper and shouting went into Kira Muratova’s film about bad temper and shouting. That’s a point.
It was sweltering hot all day. I bought my first milk for ten days. The woman in the vest was sitting drinking juice out of a jam jar – there is a great shortage of glasses. On the bus there was a sign saying, “There are no bus tickets and there will be none!!!” so no one could pay for their ride. There is a great paper shortage. This really is a crappy, crappy system. You’d think the country had no resources or was at war – but it’s not. The No. 1 trolleys were doing lightning strikes all day, so everyone was fit to burst by the time they got on one. A woman wanted to open the skylight and another one said, “You need a man.” “Who needs men?” the first one asked, shoving the skylight open with her umbrella. “All they do is drink and smoke.” “And women don’t?” someone said, and a rumbling row broke out. Looking round at everyone I felt like screaming.
I spent the day collecting official stamps on my piece of paper. First to the Bureau of Technical Administration where a sweet, mousey woman gave it to me with a smile. Then I travelled to the Administration of Architectural Monuments. They were not open but I took a chance and had some luck. They are in an old merchant’s house in a courtyard of Pyatnitsky Street, and have a lovely Art Nouveau staircase. I was admiring it to a young man and he spontaneously took me through all the three offices where I needed to go, each time to a barrage of cries and objections. He finally broke into a drawer, took out a stamp and stamped my paper there and then. I said that his work was very “operativno” – meaning efficient – but he heard me say “protivno” – revolting – and he said yes.
One of the rooms, I noticed, was full of flowers and even strewn with packets of roses that had not yet been put in their vases. Presumably they were bribes from people wanting their papers stamped quickly. At the Privatisation Commission earlier this week, the Aeroflot woman in front of me had been hurriedly handing out calendars. I went back there, but my luck didn’t hold. While I was standing waiting for the boss to appear, I met two funny men from the International Federation of Artists, who were planning to start a car-repair division under it (?). They were convinced I wanted to start a hairdresser’s. Well, stands to reason – I’m a woman.
Oleg and Father Nikon came round and Nikon cooked us dinner. I need company – it does me good. At night I found my telephone wasn’t working and my electronic mail link has been cut off.
Thursday 20 June
At the Privatisation Commission today we all seemed to be the “go-getters” who had made it to the last lap. There was a kind of post-Sahara rally atmosphere, with people reminiscing about difficult parts of the race. “Here they ask you to fill out the form from left to right, but the Bureau of Technical Administration asks you to do it from right to left” etc. There was an extraordinarily bossy woman queuing, who kept calling out, “Comrade in the glasses, who’s in front of you?” I got to see my nice woman again, and the final document will be ready next Thursday. So we’ve got by, without being registered, having no bank account, no tax certification and no office seal of our own. A miracle!
I spent one hour queuing there, twenty minutes queuing for a Pepsi in the street and another hour queuing at the post office to send a money transfer to the Privatisation Commission for our “order”. Came home and fell asleep, because last night had been another broken night with heat and mosquitoes. I had also been woken at 3.00am by a deafening grinding and roar, which I’ve only heard before when a tank went down the road in London. Here it lasted for about five minutes.
It was 33 degrees today and again there was a massive storm in the afternoon.
Friday 21 June
Another thundery, headachey day. I got my air tickets for home, but though I kept phoning the Foreign Ministry, I couldn’t get through to sort out my visa.
Otherwise it was a social day. I met the man with black rage again, who seems to have calmed down considerably, said some very touching words at the end and kissed my hand. I then met a young German student who is interested in Amnesty. She’s studying in Vilnius and says Lithuania is just as bureaucratic as Moscow and just as exhausting. Its nationalism, she says, is also very “Soviet”.
Lunch with Valya, which was nice as usual. She said she was enjoying life, going to tennis lessons and discussing ground strokes and the possibility of a military coup. This last because the USSR Supreme Soviet has voted to take away powers from Gorbachev and give them to Prime Minister Pavlov. However, by the end of the day Gorbachev appeared to have reasserted his position.
I met up with Ruslan, who had brought two bottles of beer and a round of cheese, so we sat on a bench and consumed them. He said this was Russian exotica: drinking from a dirty bottle, on a dirty bench, eating cheese with dirty fingers. He is just 10 roubles above the poverty line. He has no hot water, his gas has been cut off and he’s afraid his lighting will be next. Like many people who are really poor he is always immaculately turned out. While we were sitting there a dog jumped up and muddied his only pair of trousers.