Igor Savelyev - Off the Beaten Tracks - Stories by Russian Hitchhikers

Then his medals were pinned onto Nastya’s bag. She was even more of a hippy then than she was now… For example, like a lot of young people in Tyumen at the time she used to wear a swastika in her left ear. And the first badges to adorn the famous bag were also in the form of Nazi helmets, though over time they were hidden by the Soviet medals.

You don’t think I’m criticising her, do you? It’s certainly not my place to say, “ O tempora! O mores! ” It’s more a case of Turgenev’s “eternal reconciliation and life without end”.

Suddenly the emergency clinic swam out of the night — a squat breeze-block building, with its very own moon. Seriously! A flat, round lamp hung over the entrance, flickering weakly and casting as much despondency as the real moon. It was a lonely beacon in the night, attracting only big grey moths and other unpleasant nocturnal insects.

“Looks like there’s a light on in those two windows,” said Vadim after a pause. They’d been looking at the building for a long time. “Huh! I thought there was no one there at first.”

“I thought it looked like a morgue.”

“You’re right, you know. That’s exactly what it looks like.”

They approached the building. The surrounding area looked serene.

“Ufa must be a fairly calm place!” said Vadim, with a dry laugh. “I thought they’d be queuing round the block…”

“Hey, don’t speak too soon! Maybe they’re all inside.”

Vadim cleared the blood from his throat.

But it was just as quiet and empty inside. The only sign of life was a nurse in a dirty robe sitting behind a desk at the end of the corridor. She glanced up as they came in and continued speaking in a bored monotone into the telephone receiver that was clamped to her ear.

“Just stop it, Gleb. You’re crazy. Gleb, you’re behaving like a child. I’ve told you over and over again, and you never listen, do you? Gleb!”

Because she was frequently ill as a child, or maybe because she had overprotective parents, Nastya had spent a lot of time inside Soviet medical institutions. As a result, she had come to hate them with a passion. And here she was again! The cheap linoleum floor stained with various bodily fluids, bloodstains on the deathly pale fabric of the bench… But the main thing was the smell, that sickly smell of disinfectant. It was unbearable.

“I’ll wait for you outside, OK?”

The nurse looked pointedly over at the door of the doctor on duty, indicating that Vadim should go straight in. Honestly! She couldn’t be expected to drop everything to attend to every long-haired hippy that came wandering in with a black eye… Not when she was in the middle of an emotional crisis.

Nastya came out onto the steps and spotted a bench. On closer inspection it was spattered with blood, as though it had come from a torture chamber. She had to sit on the back of it and hunch over, with her feet on the seat. So, what was going on? It had been a particularly bad night, and now there was no chance of getting a decent sleep because she’d have to get up early if she wanted to make it to Nizhny before the following night.

It was that dead hour just before dawn, when you can walk the streets without meeting another living soul and roam the darkest courtyards at your leisure, safe in the knowledge that all the local thugs are tucked up in bed, dribbling onto their pillows and dreaming their innocent dreams.

There was an apartment block behind the emergency clinic, one of those enormous breeze-block monsters built in the late Soviet period. There wasn’t a single light at any of its numerous windows. Surely someone somewhere was awake… No. The entire building was devoid of life.

What was she doing here, alone in this strange, hostile city? She was always alone, always running, running away from herself.

Nastya sat on the bench and cried bitter tears. She felt utterly alone in the universe.

I started listening to ‘alternative’ music when I was fourteen. I started with the easier stuff — Mumiy Troll, Spleen, Zhanna Aguzarova’s later stuff, Zemfira’s early stuff. I can remember my mum listening to a couple of songs and saying, “It’s awful! You can’t make head or tail of it. What a load of nonsense!”

I was deeply offended, even though I didn’t understand the words any better than she did. But I didn’t need to understand them! I just knew that those meaningless words expressed a certain view of life. You didn’t really need words at all. Why not just sing a rhythmic collection of sounds? Or sing in Latin, or something… Why not? I couldn’t believe that nobody else had thought of it. I was a musical genius!

When I was fourteen, or rather, the day before my fourteenth birthday, we went out to the country. It was a beautiful sunny evening. You could hear the sound of an electric saw humming. I picked a daisy and started pulling the petals off one by one, trying to work out whether or not I would fall in love at fourteen. I remember picking another daisy and doing it again, because I really wanted the answer to be yes. Why? I wish I knew. My head was so full of nonsense back then.

I think it’s a cultural thing. I mean, just look at the kind of popular culture kids are exposed to these days: 70% of books and 90% of films are about love. Every single pop song is about love, as are most rock songs, and I somehow knew that all the ‘nonsense’ I was listening to was about love too.

I had such a romantic idea of love when I was fourteen! Now I’m twenty, and I’m standing under a street lamp in a strange city kissing an amazing girl called Nastya. We’re kissing cautiously, because we’ve just been to the emrgency clinic about my nose. It’s not broken or anything, but it’s still pretty sore. We even had to go to a kiosk and buy an ice cream in a plastic wrapper for me to hold against it. So now we’re taking our time, kissing carefully, and our tongues are made for each other.

I didn’t have a clue about kissing when I was sixteen or so. My first kiss wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience. I was acutely aware of my sudden proximity to a gaping void, an alien vacuum… then my teeth caught against hers. It was a girl from my class, a straight-A student. She had curly hair and there was something vaguely ethereal about her, and I was head over heels in love with her.

I used to wait for her after school. I kept calling her and telling her how I felt about her. I wrote “Good morning, my love” outside her apartment — or rather, I tried to. Now, of course, I understand why we could never be together. I was a gawky teenager suffering from acne, and I had a stammer too — basically, not much of a catch. Anyway, I managed to gather a few crumbs of happiness from the experience, so I can’t really complain.

One good thing to come out of it was that I suddenly understood all that ‘nonsense’ I’d been listening to! Whereas before I had just liked the sound of Zemfira’s voice, now the lyrics, apparently the same nonsense, made perfect sense. It was quite a shock to realise that every single word was about me, that every word perfectly articulated the way I was feeling. It wasn’t like Latin at all.

When I look at Nastya — I can’t believe I’m actually kissing her! — my head is full of song lyrics, the kind of nonsense that now makes sense. But the real paradox is that when you’re in love you’re the one who doesn’t make any sense. Your thoughts are all mixed up. Only someone else who feels the way you do can understand the rubbish you’re coming out with, and that’s basically the point of all that ‘nonsense’, the way it all works. Simple, really!

I understand it, and she seems to understand too. At least she’s thinking along similar lines… She seems to be talking about her ex-boyfriend now, why they split up, all that stuff, but I’m not even listening. It’s a good thing I’m not jealous of the past. After all, she didn’t know she was going to meet me! But still, I’m curious to know how many boyfriends she’s had. Not many, by the sound of it.