“What about money?” I hauled myself back to the present: “And there’s no guarantee that the book will find a publisher…” I was guessing that this man shared the usual unrealistic Russian hopes of the West.
Ivan waved his hand in dismissal. “I don’t need money; I want my story to be told.”
Like a latter-day Ancient Mariner. We never mentioned the subject of money again.
I arrived for our first session at Ivan’s address in Hackney. He lived in a substantial Victorian terrace carved up into a warren of units that sheltered the newly-arrived. I hesitated by the bell. Above it ‘Ivan the Fifth’ was scrawled in Cyrillic letters on the rough paintwork of the wall. How much of his life would this man be able to remember? He had not had a drink for a year, he told me. He had been writing down his memories.
The slow thump of Ivan’s stick approached the door. He ushered me into a communal hall where giggling Somali children tumbled over a musty carpet. We went upstairs to the two-roomed flat he shared with another asylum-seeker. An entire wall was lined with books: politics, history and classics, in Russian and English. He could read English with the help of a dictionary, he said, although he spoke it badly.
He had prepared a meal of adzhap sandal — Georgian vegetable stew. Then we watched a Soviet film: The Cold Summer of ’53, about a struggle between criminal and political prisoners. That was to become our pattern. Each week or fortnight we would spend an afternoon together, Ivan smoking and drinking strong black tea while I ate the excellent lunches he prepared. Afterwards we would discuss the work-in-progress and then watch an old film. Some, like Cold Summer, were about a facet of life that Ivan wanted me to understand; occasionally we would enjoy a Soviet romantic comedy that evoked a lost, more innocent age. As I left Ivan would hand me a tape with a recording of the next instalment of his story. Later, he bought a second hand typewriter and gave me a few pages each week, which saved me the chore of transcribing words that were not always clear, consonants often vanishing through gaps where his teeth had fallen out.
As we worked, I crosschecked factual details. Later I had an English-speaking Russian check a draft of the story for authenticity, for nuances that I as a foreigner might have missed. My reader said he laughed his way through much of the tale: “That was our lives!”
Ivan’s long-term memory seemed remarkably intact. Although his drinking bouts had generally ended in blackout, he was able to describe the periods between drinking sessions, including his years in prison camps where he — usually — could not get hold of alcohol. There had also been times when alcohol failed to bring the oblivion he craved. Then he recalled his physical and mental agony in searing detail. In fact, it may have been the ‘dry’ periods — sometimes extending for a couple of years or more, that saved Ivan from developing alcoholic dementia, like those sufferers he saw in his many sobering-up hospitals.
A discrepancy emerged between the character he portrayed and the way I saw him. He was always solicitous of my well-being. When my computer broke down he arranged for a friend of his to sell me one cheaply and help me install it. When I was recovering from flu he brought me honey sent over from his nephew’s beehives near Chapaevsk. On the occasions when we worked in my flat he never arrived empty-handed. He brought ingredients and taught me to cook Russian dishes.
One day in December I pressed my front door buzzer to admit Ivan. He seemed to take longer than usual on the stairs. The thumps of his stick slowed. I opened the door to see Ivan climbing the last few stairs, bent over beneath a Christmas tree he was hauling on his back: “For you, Caroline.” He always addressed me by the respectful ‘vui’ form of the Russian ‘you.’
The warmth and generosity of the real life Ivan were missing from his story, but I understood that years of drinking had eroded his self-esteem to the bone. He wanted to relieve himself of his memories as honestly as he could and I trusted him all the more because he painted himself in such a bleak light.
As I listened to Ivan an understanding grew — a sense of familiarity. At first I put this down to environment. I had seen the factories Ivan described and the football stadium where he watched his local team — except by 1993 the stands had collapsed.
But it was more than that; I recognised the features of Ivan’s internal landscape: his self-destructive behaviour and his justifications for it. Over the course of two years he recounted his life with a logic I never had to question. For I was essentially no different to him; I reacted to alcohol as he did. If I had one glass I needed a dozen more, just as some people have to finish the whole box of chocolates.
There was a time when alcohol gave me a sense of elation and invulnerability — like being at the helm of that Volga cruiser with a Kalashnikov by my side. Inevitably, the effect began to diminish and it took longer to recover from drinking sessions. Work was an irritation; friends were confined to those who could match my capacity. I shared Ivan’s restlessness. He tramped the Soviet Union; I travelled the globe. When things didn’t go my way I blamed others, just as Ivan did. But I could not believe I was an alcoholic, for they were people like him who lived on garbage dumps. And I never drank anti-dandruff lotion, although I did develop a taste for samogon — Russian home-distilled spirits. When I first arrived in Samara people would take me into their bathrooms and show me their stills. I congratulated myself on my choice of destination. Then one night I walked home after a dinner party, oblivious to the cold, entranced by starlight on snow. I ended up in hospital. The Kazakh urologist told me to stay off the vodka and for a while I heeded his advice.
As I pieced together Ivan’s story I recognised the rationales, the fear, the self-obsession and the compulsion. He described it all so vividly that I felt as though I were looking into a mirror.
We never drank together; neither of us wanted to drink. In our own ways we used the book as a life buoy, letting go at the end and swimming off in opposite directions.
At times it hurt Ivan to relive episodes of his life — particularly those that involved his wife and daughter. Looking back, I probably should not have been surprised when he went silent for a month. No one answered the phone. I started to worry, fearing the worst. I dreaded to think that the work we had begun might have been in vain. Finally a call came. A hoarse voice invited me round.
“Yes, I drank.” Ivan admitted. “I had the dt’s. I went to hospital. They refused to give me anything to help. They probably thought I was a drug addict too.”
Tea spilled from the cup he handed to me.
“I’m sorry,” he apologised, “I haven’t written anything this time. But I will. I’m better now.”
His eyes were unfocused, as though no one was home.
The following week we carried on as usual.
But then, as we neared the end of his story, I had a call.
“Caroline, help me. I am going to die tonight.”
I went through the local directory, trying all the treatment centres listed. Eventually a place in the Elephant and Castle agreed to admit him. But a few days later they phoned. They had had to ask Ivan to leave. He had smuggled in vodka in a hot water bottle. I called him at home. He was barely coherent. I slammed down the phone in futile rage.
I was afraid the book would not be finished.
But at Christmas he called to wish me well. We made it up. I went to visit him at his new flat. A Georgian restaurant was paying him to make homemade meat dumplings. His ex-wife had been in touch he said. He sounded happy. We resumed the work.