Part 5
One of the agency drivers returned after I'd spent an hour twiddling my thumbs and I got into the brown Lada with the loose seat belt."Not fixed yet", the driver advised as we lurched out into the traffic. Through the swing doors, past the Lufthansa staff, up in the elevator, retrieved my key from the VIP blonde. "Are you staying tomorrow?" "I expect so." "You will have to register again in the morning" The room-rate has increased by one hundred dollars." "A night?" "....It includes breakfast." "Jesus." Back in my sanctuary I opened a bottle of Coca Cola, regardless of cost, and dialled home. Home, so far away in so many senses. Sue answered, surprisingly clear as if in the next room. "It's bad news. Your Mum passed away at ten o'clock this morning ... two hours ago." I hung up. One time zone and five hours behind. Just about the time I was telling the Russians what I thought of their artwork. My passion must have been summoned by some genealogical speaking tube. What do people say when they find themselves facing death? In plane crashes, before it all turns to howls and screams, the sound of an imminent end often begins with 'shit' or 'fuck'. Or 'God', I suppose - a more appropriate greeting to one's maker. "Sorry, Mum", I said out loud. Then I cried, the sobs choking my breath. I lay down or rather writhed around on the Tsar's bed for a while, still in my black Crombie, still clutching my Coke bottle like some talisman. After an hour I called Sue back. "I feel lonely." "When can you come home?" "Not till the end of the week, I think all the flights are booked. I'll see if I can get home Friday, instead of Saturday." "The hospital is taking care of the body, they say there's no immediate rush. I explained where you were." "The body...? It sounds so remote. I'm shaking." "Try to eat." "I can't." "Well try to rest." "OK I'll call you later." And so began a fitful night. Nothing on the TV seemed to console me, not even the relentless life-affirming German pornography, or vigorous sun-dappled Australian tennis, the latter a spectator sport of which my mother had been very fond. At three in the morning I was paralysed with the fear that I might soon follow. I was so wired from the lack of sleep and tension aided by the three bottles of Coca Cola I had consumed, that I began to panic feeling that I was actually becoming paralysed. Some mental loop was saying "Don't think about paralysis because if you do you will become paralysed." Then overlaying that came the fear that maybe this is how people have a stroke, this mental loop thing. I needed to calm down. I took a shower. I felt just the same, only cleaner. I looked out of the window. Yellow sodium light and brown streets. I looked like Leeds on a winter's night, where I had spent my days at University studying English. My Mum always said that was when I really left home, those three fun-filled years in that town that hated skiving students with a righteous mill-owner's vengeance. Well, now would begin the long return home to sort out her affairs. 'The child is father of the man', so to speak, or some such artfully revealing phrase from Wordsworth. 'I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.' Amen Bob Dylan. 'It's all right Ma...it's life and life only.'
I fell asleep at ten to six and woke up at twenty past eight. Twenty past three in the morning back home. I shaved and dressed and blankly went down to breakfast. The same conveyor belt, the same scene. I drank some coffee and munched on a dry rusk. I was trapped. Stuck here with one job less to return home for. For twenty years since my father's death, I had been a dutiful son to my mother. Now that role was over. I was no longer a son. I was now demoted to a husband and a father. There and then I vowed I would earnestly throw myself into my diminished duties as soon as possible. But first , no point grieving yet, there would be time for that later, I had a job to finish here. I could hear my mother say the words: "Get on with your job Julian. My funeral can wait." People never die, their memory just becomes fainter with time. At this moment I was still having a conversation with someone thousands of miles away and physically absent. Proof that death liberates the soul from the body, perhaps? The years of being an only child and hearing my mother's always sound advice stood me in good stead. "Cross your bridges when you come to them", she would say. OK let's cross this rope suspension bridge twisting in hurricane strength winds between a workers collective and an advertising agency right now then, shall we?
I arrived at the office to be greeted by Helen. "Simon is back from St. Petersburg and he wants to meet you. He's in his office." Simon was the Managing Director of this far flung outpost of the agency. A decent sort of chap, obviously extremely brainy with a first class honours in Russian from an Oxford college, and labouring with the knaves he was obliged to do business with as a result of it. "There was a robbery on the train from St. Petersburg last night. Again. They fed gas into some of the compartments then robbed the passengers while they slept." he said resignedly. "Who did?" "Who else? The Mafia. Which reminds me, I take it you've met our clients?" "Yes. I was wondering why they bothered with an advertising agency, since they seem keen to do the work themselves." "They're all like that. They don't understand that we do it then charge them for it. It's a new concept for them, capitalism." "They seemed rather taken aback by what I told them of their work." "Ah well they haven't been exposed to modern advertising ideas much." I liked Simon a lot. We were on the same wavelength. Neither of us suffered fools, gladly or otherwise "Will they ever listen to us?" "Possibly". "Any suggestions as to how I might get them to understand?" He paused for a moment then came up with this insightful suggestion, fighting fire with fire it was. Meeting anarchy head on. "You must struggle", he said. Right, exactly, on the money that one. I felt like the Nazis frozen to their guns at the end of their supply line. I only had days. The Russians had generations on their side, and that vast hinterland of concealment. "I'll do what I can while I'm here Simon, then try to keep up the assault from London, but I must go back soon." "Oh, why?" I told him about my mother. He seemed shocked that I was able to be there at all. He went quite pale. What for me had become a sensible plan of action was coming across as tragedy to others. "It's OK. We said our goodbyes before I left." I explained. "Nonsense you must leave tomorrow. Get Helen to organise a flight. Make sure Yuri understands everything in your absence. How are you getting on with Veronica?" "Extraordinary woman." "Indeed. She won't be in today, I'm afraid. She tried to kill herself last night." "What?" "Her flat is above mine. I heard a thump on the floor when I got in at two last night. I have a key. She'd cut her wrist. It's all right, she'll pull through. She was drunk and lying naked on the floor. A doctor friend came and took care of her." "But why?" "Close the door, Julian." I pushed the door to behind me and Simon turned on the TV rather loudly. He leaned across the desk and whispered to me. "Can't be too safe, even in here. She has friends who are in street gangs. Last night they tried to launch a rocket attack on the Coca-Cola bottling plant. They were caught." "By the police?" "Worse, by the Mafia. Coke pay dues to prevent just such things happening. It's unlikely Veronica will see her friends again."
I left his office and returned to my own, now free of the grunting Japanese. So much death and destruction. They never said advertising would be like this at the Leeds University Careers Office. I went to get a glass of plum tea and tried to focus my mind on writing a TV script. I sat in the room off the kitchen. The cook was not there today. There was no rabbit-skinning going on and the room felt calm and comforting like a kitchen should. Frost patterns sparkled in the cold sunlight on the outside of the windows. Two women wrapped in layers of clothing made their way through the courtyard enjoying the respite from the roaring traffic out on the main road.
Next morning I packed my bag and paid my bill at the Penta. Today was the day I was flying home. It felt as if I were on automatic pilot. I simply went through the motions of packing, walking, getting into a Volga taxi and arriving at the office. Now it almost seemed sad to be giving up my sanctuary. Now I was between camps. No sanctuary to return to. But not yet on the way home. I sat with my bag in the agency reception, not really working here any more either. I was in transit I had handed in my scripts to Yuri and the clients were coming in for another meeting later today. I would be gone by then and any changes they would undoubtedly make would be faxed on the precious machine to me in London. Whether they would have paper in the machine to see my revisions was another matter. But what did it matter really? There was a course of events set in motion here that would occur regardless of my intervention. There was a brute force operating behind it all.
My plane was due to leave at four. I had to wait for my passport and tickets to come from the travel agent who needed to get them stamped at the British Embassy to permit me to leave. I was one of the lucky ones. None of these people, Helen, Yuri, even the lottery clients could do what I was about to do. Leaving Mother Russia was impossible. One of the agency Ladas was coming to take me to the airport. It arrived and waited like me, frozen motionless in a foreign country. Time stood still as we waited for the ticket to come from the Embassy. The golfball crashed from side to side in the typewriter. Floorboards creaked heavily as solid imitation leather Russian brogues clumped down the corridor. Doors slammed. "Your ticket has arrived, Mr. Moseley. Have a good trip. I am sorry about your mother." "Thank you Helen. Thank you for ....being so ...nice. I didn't expect to find people so friendly here." "Russians are friendly people, Mr. Moseley. It's just Russia that's cold. Good Bye".
I put my bag in the Lada's boot and strapped myself into the front seat. The belt still didn't work. We swung out into the traffic, my seat swung sideways. It was two o'clock and the sun dangled tantalisingly in the western sky. Almost immediately we plunged into a huge traffic jam. There seemed to be no reason for it and there were no traffic police to do anything anyway. We crawled along staring at the back axle of a huge truck. At two thirty we started moving again, past the Moscow Dynamo stadium, past endless kiosks with shivering beggars in blankets, out on the six-lane highway past the frozen Nazis and eventually at three o'clock arrived at the airport building. My driver swept up the ramp towards Departures, mercifully written in English. He stopped fifty yards from the entrance behind a line of taxis. "Dangerous for me to go closer", he confided. They would beat him up for taking their trade, I suppose. I walked into the terminal building, its jangling cookery pots swaying from the ceiling in the rush of outside air.
As with most airports, Departures is grander than Arrivals. Here at Moscow's Domodevo airport it was certainly larger, but in no other way was it grander. The cooking utensils seen on my arrival were only the starter to the banquet I now enjoyed. Row upon row of copper-coloured circles swayed and clanked above. In several places where the fastenings had worked loose they dangled in four or five long strands, swinging a good ten feet above the heads of the departing travelers. The building was constructed with height uppermost in mind, the huge panes of glass above the entrance doors affording the traveller a last glimpse of the plain and woods over which so many lives must have been lost keeping invaders out. The architecture was not on a human scale. A giant Departures board hung stage centre and arrows indicated A side and B side of the terminal. Beyond them against the far wall was a narrow staircase ascending to a tiny bar. This was the only provision for enjoyment, and the only bar I had seen in all Moscow. I ascended as no mention of the London flight was shown and sat down in a cramped booth. I went to the counter and ordered a bottle of Carlsberg and a ham roll. Fifty dollars. Who cared anymore? I watched the crowds milling around below. They seemed to be in ones and twos, men in fur coats, groups of rough and dangerous looking youths with sideways darting eyes and soldiers with machine guns. And several western businessmen trying to look inconspicuous with their smart briefcases perhaps unwisely on display.
On my return to the lower level there had been a change. BA flight 751 to London Heathrow was showing, the BA shining out like a beacon. I remembered my incoming pilot's words about 'their usual stand' being to the extreme right of the airport , which from my outgoing point of view was extreme left, so I went over to the emigration desks on that side. Nothing was open for business yet but I sat on one of four connected plastic seats and waited for some movement. Spotting a clerk in a grey suit accompanied by a guard with a Kalashnikov threading their way through the knots of people, I eased surreptitiously out of my seat and walked purposefully toward the check-in desk. My momentum would have carried me straight though onto the plane had I not been slowed by the group which surged to join me. I was near the front of the pack waiting to be processed. We began to ease forward towards the clerk now enthroned in his booth. He scrutinised tickets and ripped the paperwork of the exit visa out of passports before stamping the remaining half with an elaborate rolling mechanism stamper and scrawling on its imprint in pen. I was next, then it was my turn, then I was through for a fifty yard walk across to the next desk where passports were being offered up. Presumably the long gap was to act as a killing zone should anyone not have the right papers and need to be gunned down before he could board a plane. Passport checking was a desultory business as it turned out. Scarcely a glance at mine, just the way French officialdom greets you when you arrive on the hovercraft from Dover. And so up the stairs to the delights of the Duty Free.
The lighting was on low again, as if the mighty Soviet power plant was only able to generate enough energy for the six sixty watt bulbs that dangled from the ceiling amid the cake tins. The Duty Free shops were just opening and the shopkeepers thrust their roller shutters into place above the windows as we punters approached, determined to wrest the last scraps of hard currency from our wallets. It sounded like a round of football rattles cheering on the god Mammon. Following the scent of home, I found Sue some Van Cleef and Arpels 'First', then a bedraggled looking teddy for the children and a model of a Volga car. There was nothing else I wanted. Certainly no Absolut vodka in Red Army barrack-room size bottles. I sat with my bag and purchases and waited. I could see the top of my plane below, to the left where the inbound Captain had said it would be. I wanted to get on and be in the warming cocoon of the national carrier now. My fellow travelers. arrived in twos and threes and were a cosmopolitan looking lot, in furs and overcoats. One or two were Russians actually leaving the country. In particular, there were two men in their early thirties, dressed in expensive, undoubtedly, but none the less appallingly cut clothes, who were already drunk. They were grinning at each other with rosy faces. I wondered whether they would be allowed on. Over the Tannoy I heard "Passengers to London, Heathrow please proceed to gate number one." It seemed odd hearing "Heathrow" pronounced with a Russian accent. Almost spoken with distaste. I stood and moved into a line with every one else. The line took a U-turn behind a glass partition where we could see the slow process of ticket collection taking place by the BA stewards, as usual accompanied by a soldier with a Kalashnikov. It was not entirely over yet.
The BA crew seemed genuinely pleased to see us. Maybe it was part of their training. I certainly felt glad to be back under the control of my fellow countrymen. Strange that. I've never felt ill at ease in other countries, not even Colombia which was so out of control as to be understandable. Maybe it's the long cold war and the feeling that beneath the surface these Russians have only recently stopped hating us. It is rather like visiting those apfelwein Steuben in Sachsenhausen in Frankfurt. Their faux-rustic sheds dated 1935 constantly reminds you that the SS must have used them, and when you're all linked arms and swaying sideways with a hundred aging Germans you realise that these are the same people who were trying to kill your father. But we're all friends now, of course.
The two young Russians were being kept under close scrutiny by the stewardess as they'd made it plain they were going to drink anything and everything on the drinks trolley. It seems their only concept of happiness was coming with them. How they had acquired passports and visas, heaven knows, but here they were in their smartest C&A-style outfits downing whisky after vodka after red wine after beer. As the flight progressed they quieted down and at Heathrow were the last ones off the plane. My final image was of the captain standing over them, arms folded wondering what these two pieces of alcohol sodden trash were doing on his immaculate aeroplane.
We descended through clouds into a murky London night. I waited half an hour for my bag to appear on the carousel. A friend once advised me to buy brightly coloured luggage to save time and anxiety during this ritual, strangely familiar to viewers of the Generation Game. Toaster, cuddly toy, vase, golf clubs, bright green suitcase... And then out into an airport that usually seems grubby, but this time I felt as if I were strolling down Rodeo Drive. Never has Britain seemed so elegant and smart. So civilised and safe. So welcoming. Like returning to the womb.
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