Stephen Burke - The Reluctant Contact

‘You fixed it?’ asked Semyon. ‘By yourself?’ His eyes, magnified by his thick glasses, were burning a hole in the side of Yuri’s head.

‘Yep, all back to normal, nothing more to worry about. You didn’t think of those valves, did you?’ he added, out of pure malice.

‘Sure I did,’ blurted Semyon, ‘I checked some of them. I didn’t find anything.’

Yuri thought the man might bust a blood vessel, he was frowning so much.

‘How many did you have to check before you found it?’ the Latvian asked.

‘Oh, let me see,’ replied Yuri. He made a show of silently adding up with his fingers. ‘A dozen probably. That one was rusted right through. Could have gone at any time.’

‘Can I see it?’ asked Semyon, in a tone that Yuri did not like.

He turned and gave his assistant a cold look. He was a cocky little bastard. Most people would think twice about calling someone a liar. Especially if that someone was their boss. Yet he had known the Latvian would ask for proof. He would have done the same under the circumstances. He walked over to where his coat was hanging, pulled the offending valve from his pocket and looked at it. Then, without warning, he turned and threw it low and hard. The speed of Semyon’s reaction was impressive and he just managed to grab it before it hit the wall.

Yuri smiled and shrugged. ‘Good catch. You’ve been playing American baseball, haven’t you?’

Yuri had fought boys with Semyon’s physique at school. They looked like pushovers but turned out to be little wiry bastards that you could never get a good hold of.

Semyon lifted his glasses and scrutinised the metal object, holding it right up under his nose. But it backed up everything Yuri had said. He had held on to it for months for that very purpose.

‘Satisfied?’ asked Yuri.

Semyon didn’t reply. He avoided making eye contact with Yuri, and said nothing further. That’s right, thought Yuri, you’ve nothing to say now. In Yuri’s opinion, which he kept to himself, the glue that held the Soviet empire together was dishonesty. Corruption equalled survival, and potentially success and happiness, if you were very good at it. Honesty condemned you to a frustrating life. Within such a corrupt system, it was possible for anyone to bend the rules as they saw fit, as long as they did not allow themselves to get caught. That was the key.

At noon, Pyramiden’s residents began to assemble outside for the official opening of the new street Yuri had walked to work on that morning. The wooden walkway, connecting the town square to the power station, had been built to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Great October in 1917. ‘Great’ because it was the beginning of the people’s revolution and year zero of the communist age. Nearly everyone was there to mark the day. An absence without good reason would be noticed, though the community here didn’t need much encouragement; there was little else to do, so they liked to participate in any organised event. They could even be persuaded to assemble outdoors, and freeze their asses off, just for a bit of diversion.

The adults formed a large loose circle, and chatted giddily among themselves while they waited for the mine president to arrive. The children ran around and through the group, swaddled in layers of outdoor clothes like babushka dolls, their rosy faces and wide eyes peeking out with excitement from under their hats. Yuri had always considered it strange that their parents would bring them, by choice, to one of the harshest places on the planet. Svalbard had the distinction of having the northern-most human settlements in the world. The younger ones did look happy, he had to admit. For them it was probably an adventure. It was the teenagers who seemed depressed. Suicidal, Yuri would say, by the looks of the spotty ones in front of him, staring vacantly at the ground. But dissatisfaction was what teenagers were good at, wherever they were.

He scanned the faces of the women in the crowd as the director’s speech began. He spotted English Catherine again. For some reason, she was positively beaming with delight at being present for this occasion. Standing behind her right shoulder was Anya, the teacher. Yuri waited an age till he caught her eye and then gave her his best smile, but she looked away as though she hadn’t seen him at all. Yuri sighed. Perhaps this wasn’t going to happen, and he should move on. She had airs, this woman, as though she was on a different plane of existence to everyone else. Not a snob, as such. Her clothes were no better than the next person’s. Just, she gave the impression of being elsewhere.

For a moment, he tuned in to the mine director’s voice. As usual he was speaking at length about coal. How the town was meeting its targets and more. How the five-year plan was progressing according to the five-year plan. How when it was successfully completed there would be another five-year plan to take its place, and so on. The director told them they should all be proud of their collective contribution to these achievements.

Am I, thought Yuri? Yes, he decided, he was. Not for the mine director, or Mother Russia, or communism, or Emperor Brezhnev. He was proud of what he had built here, with his own hands. It gave him personal, individual satisfaction. He did not care if anyone else noticed or appreciated what he had done.

After the director’s statement on the rude health of the mine, English Catherine started a round of applause, which everyone felt obliged to join in with. Then it was the turn of Grigory, Pyramiden’s resident party man. Yuri had no time for party hacks but he and Grigory were friends, mainly because he was not an average politico. A short, portly man in his late fifties, he was out of place in this raw frontier, more suited to the intellectual cafe society of Leningrad. His wavy grey hair and matching bushy moustache made him resemble Albert Einstein. To complete the picture, the moustache was often dotted with the crumbs of whatever he had eaten last.

Yuri enjoyed his company. Their conversations were a step up from any other he was likely to have here. With some exceptions, miners tended not to provide the most stimulating encounters. The two men played chess sometimes in the library, though Yuri suspected his opponent was guilty of postponing his best moves in order to prolong the game and make him feel better about his limited abilities.

Stuck up here in the Arctic Circle, Grigory was probably the only party man in the whole of the Soviet Union who wasn’t making a prince’s fortune dealing on the black market. There was not much to trade in Pyramiden. No one coveted a new fridge, or a washing machine. The town provided for all their needs. It was the only place in the whole of the Soviet Union where communism worked as it had been intended. Almost.

Grigory dabbled in poetry and was an eloquent speaker, though, as the party expected, his orations were peppered with the limitless wisdom of Lenin. The great man’s bust listened, unmoved, from its plinth nearby. Grigory knew his audience, and his speech was mercifully short, rounded off with one of his two jokes about snow, both of which Yuri had given him. As the crowd dispersed, with smiles on their faces, Yuri walked over to greet him.

Yuri often wondered if Lenin would have remained so revered, and for so long, had he not passed away young. No doubt, had he survived he would have fallen out with younger men who were eager to take possession of his throne. Khrushchev had famously denounced Stalin, once the dictator was safely dead, and later Brezhnev had not waited as long before he took Khrushchev’s power for himself. If Lenin had lived to old age, then his words might have become subject to censure, as had happened to so many other former heroes since.