The Story About Simferopol And The Stupid Bitch COPYDUDE
The train to the Black Sea is packed with holidaymakers. Pasty faces of city Russians look expectantly out of every window. Soon they will acquire some summer colour. Maybe they’ve caught a little sun already. It’s a fine day. You can tell it’s a holiday train because everyone is getting up, sitting down, getting something out of a bag, putting it up on the rack again, then getting up again to check that - whatever it was - was put away safely. Babies cry, older kids are getting bored. Cue for the adults to pass around the vodka and salt cucumber and make a party of it.
‘So why are we stopping?’
‘Kharkhov. Customs’.
Those who have done the journey before exchange resigned looks, sit
back and fold their arms. The party is put on hold. Along the
platform, Ukrainian customs officials are boarding the train.Unbelievably slowly, the officials work their way through the
carriages. They do the regular Russians first: those who have saved
every penny, maybe for two or even three years for this holiday.
Papers are
examined, opened, folded, turned over. One by one, each holidaymaker
is asked the same stupid question.
‘Why are you travelling to the Black Sea?’
‘Holiday’.
The customs man never looks up or gives any indication that he has
heard the answer. He slowly folds the paper as if to return it to the
passenger but, just as the outstretched hand comes up to retrieve it,
he stops. ‘Proof?’
Sometimes the Ukrainian demands a letter or a paper from an employer, stating that the holidaymaker really does have a holiday, or something stating the dates of the holiday, or when the factory is officially closed and when the man should be back at work. More papers come out to be opened, turned over, scrutinised, folded and given back. There’s always a good chance that a holidaymaker has forgotten something or other. Better, that he doesn’t know the regulations. And that means a nice fat fine for the official’s back pocket.
By now the train is heating up like an oven. It has already been standing for two hours in the high afternoon sun. The wailing babies are now wilting. Anxious mothers beg for bottled water or anything to dampen a cloth for babies’ foreheads. The toilets were locked half an hour before Kharkhov. But the customs men are unmoved. One man’s inconvenience is another man’s income.
‘How much currency do you have?
The Russian woman in the coupe replies rather too quickly: ‘Oh, I only have 100 dollars’.
‘Show me’.
And as she goes to open her handbag, it is taken from her. Dirty official fingernails poke into her letters, make-up bag, contraceptives, purse. About 1000 dollars are finally counted out. Nine hundred are confiscated and buttoned into the Ukrainian’s tunic.
The woman begins sobbing uncontrollably. ‘No, please no.’ she keeps saying. ‘I beg you. That’s all the money I have . . . all I’ll ever have . . . I beg you.’ The woman’s distress draws passengers from other compartments crowding into the corridor. Even the customs man begins to feel the heat. ‘That’s it’, he snaps. ‘I’m putting you off the train. ‘ ‘No, oh . . please no’, she sobs.
The Ukrainians form a little huddle on the platform to discuss the situation. Putting her off the train is a clean kill. If she carries on hysterically, she could cause trouble. On the other hand, putting her off the train means filling up a form. They would have to split the nine hundred with the Stationmaster at least, maybe the local police. They decide to play the long shot and the train finally moves off.
At Simferopol, the woman is met on the platform by her man. The whole saga of the journey is blurted out in an instant. They exchange words. The distraught woman starts howling all over again and he slaps her face. Through the window, everyone can read the man’s lips. ‘You stupid bitch!’.
Everyone on the train couldn’t agree more. Three hours with a locked toilet had been a living hell. And how can you possibly feel sorry for someone with more money than you. Let alone someone carrying 1000 dollars in her purse. That can’t be right.
The Story Of Sveta and
Andrei
COPYDUDE
Perestroika opened the floodgates of opportunity and Sveta and Andrei were carried on the tide.
In the market, Sveta haggled for two stout canvas holdalls and Andrei set out for Turkey the next day.
Soon he was travelling once or twice a week, bringing back the kind of shirts and lingerie that looked like satin and lace against poor Russian offerings in the local market.
In those heady, early nineties days of the new economics, Andrei had enrolled in the the sect of bag carriers. The clanking train to Turkey became an enterpreneur’s university, where everyone graduated to dreams of bigger schemes. To pass the long hours away from their wives, the suitcase men traded tips and addresses and contacts. And it was here that Andrei learned about pyramid selling and Herbalife.
Herbalife will change your life! Russians had been waiting years for a miracle and now they had two: perestroika and the wonder food. While losing weight and looking ten years younger, everyone could become millionaires, simply by telling their friends. The Herbalife pyramid scam fed easily on the Russians’ naďve consumerism and ignorant diet.
From amongst her many clothes clients, Sveta recruited Herbalife agents. In her imitation Cacharel suit and Istanbul Gucci shoes, Sveta was the picture of everything new Russians aspired to become. All the same, both she and Andrei expected the bubble to burst. Already people were muttering that Herbalife was just dried grass, and that all the profit was creamed off at the top– as indeed it was. So while the couple creamed, they cast around for an exit strategy.
By some quirk of fate, at about this time, Galina Fedorovna came into Naberezhnye Chelny. It was known that she travelled freely between Russia and North America. It was whispered that, for a price, she could arrange transit papers for Canada. While Andrei took tea with Madame Federovna, Sveta visited all the different places in the apartment where Russians hide their money: the mouse-poison box under the sink, the secret chapter in Pushkin’s poems, the bottom of the chess set. Then Andrei handed over two thousand dollars, almost the entire Herbalife hoard, on the promise of Canadian papers. Of course, he did not doubt Madame Federovna’s credentials. A Turkish clothes trader could see it at once. There was nothing false here, not a trace of polyester in her cotton, nor of polymer in her shoe leather.
The summer months dragged for Sveta and Andrei. While anticipating the call to Canada, they sold their apartment, their furniture, their shoe shop, all their remaining stock. They waited in a cheap rented studio with nothing much to do, with just their life savings for company. Normally Sveta had no time for family matters but this time, when a cousin called, it was a welcome distraction.
The cousin told a familiar story. The marriage was over, her husband simply had to go, but had nowhere to go to. Perhaps he could stay, only for a week or two of course, in the temporary studio? You know, just until he got himself sorted out? And Sveta, you and Andrei are so lucky and my life is so unfortunate, isn’t it? And so it was that the cousin’s husband moved in.
One day, coming back to the studio, Sveta must have sensed something in the atmosphere. It was a natural, subconscious reflex that prompted her to inspect the life savings. In frantic disbelief, books were swept from the shelves, drawers tipped out and cushion covers ripped apart, but everything, including the ex-husband, was long gone. There is a saying, ‘those that hide can find’. Suddenly Sveta realised how obvious all the hiding places were, and that she now knew exactly the whereabouts of all the money in Chelny.
The papers for Canada arrived. Well, not exactly Canada. First they must travel to Mexico and wait there for Madame Federovna’s notary. Andrei borrowed money from everyone he knew, promising to send money home as soon as he was working in Canada. He pledged and pleaded until finally the couple were able to take the plane. But as a result of the delay, they arrived too late to meet the notary from Canada. In fact, the notary would not visit Mexico again for many months, by which time the couples’ hopes and visas expired.
Russian women are frequently striking. With her blonde hair and delicate fair skin, Sveta outshone the local Mexican women and captivated Mexican men, one of whom took her in and set her up as a hairdresser. With her own hair and beauty as advertisement, a rich clientele followed.
For as usual, in adversity, Russian women cope, the men drink, and Andrei’s canvas holdall now only carries back empties to the bar. Many people ask him: ‘What’s a Russian doing in a pub in Mexico?’ How dearly he would love to return home to Chelny, but he owes too many people there too much money. So he answers simply, ‘Herbalife can change your life.’
The Story Of Galina, Viktor And The Paris-Dakar BY COPYDUDE
Galina Nikolaevna speaks faultless French. She is one of those truly gifted linguists, a simultaneous interpreter. If she lived in New York, Galina would be pulling down a heavy salary at the United Nations. But living in Naberezhnye Chelny, only the odd job from the Kamaz truck factory supplements her teacher’s pay.
There’s an air of studious calm about Galina’s apartment. Somehow, she contrived to have three children who don’t jump on the furniture or trail boots and toys across the floor. Instead, they fill their exercise books with disturbingly neat handwriting and always get fives for homework. So, all in all, it comes as a surprise when you discover, from the graffiti covering the staircase, that Galina Nikolaevna is the biggest whore in Chelny and that someone should pour vitriol on her tits. It was about five years ago when Galina Nikolaevna first met Vladimir Marchenkov. That was when she agreed to give him French lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At the time, Vladimir was living in a dismal one-room flat, a couple of blocks along Moskovsky Prospekt from Galina and equally a couple of blocks from his estranged wife and two daughters. Like many Russian couples, the Marchenkov’s just hadn’t got around to an official divorce. In any case, Vladimir had his time pretty well filled. Kamaz trucks were entering the Paris Dakar rally and Marchenkov had been appointed driver mechanic. French lessons formed part of the team’s meticulous preparation.
On his way home from the factory, Vladimir couldn’t believe how well his life was going. The rally truck was the most exotic thing ever seen in Chelny. It promised him Moscow, Paris and the continent of Africa. Its decals dripped with a lifestyle he would soon indulge. Moreover, every Tuesday and Thursday, he was now visited by an exotic, French-speaking woman. Pushing forty yes but, all the same, she still had a good figure and Vladimir told her so. Perhaps that was a mistake. Things stopped going well for Vladimir when Galina got pregnant.
Few on Moskovsky Prospekt knew or cared about the Paris Dakar rally but they had a lot to say about local events. Obviously, the pregnancy was deliberate. Well-meaning neighbours told Vladimir not to be blackmailed and to ditch the scheming tart. But Vladimir argued against the idea of a marriage ploy. After all, Galina already had two children from different fathers and neither of them had married her. How could she possibly imagine that such a ruse would work?
With the talent that all Russian men have for critical decision making, Vladimir quickly put out of his mind his two daughters, the two illegitmate sons, his wife and the kid on the way. He was then able to focus on the real issue: that he had a miserable apartment, most of which was taken up with a bed without a woman in it. The next day he divorced his estranged wife properly and moved in beside Galina.
It was then that the phone calls started. Vladimir’s ex started calling Galina every day. Slut, whore, bitch. Three bastard kids. Three bastard men. Slut, whore, bitch. Spit, spit, spit. The calm order of Galina’s home exploded. The children got fours instead of fives for their homework. Respite only came when it was time to leave for Moscow and to parade the Kamaz contender in Red Square, a final flagwaver before the rally proper. Fired up and feted, the team moved on to Paris. Galina accompanied them as the official interpreter.
When Kamaz won the truck class on the Paris Dakar, there were no street parties in Chelny. The closest Vladimir got to a heroes welcome was from the police. Returning home, he was able to drive the truck over the speed limit without getting a fine. This, he said, was the highest accolade, ‘because you have no idea how much Russian police like money.’ But it was really said to cover up his feeling of disappointment, deepened by the fact that all the prize money was pocketed by the Kamaz directors. By now he had remembered about supporting two daughters, two illegitimate sons, a new wife and a kid on the way.
The real reception in Chelny, however, was waiting at Galina’s apartment. Vladimir’s ex-wife had paid it a visit. The furniture had been trashed and the curtains shredded. The walls and windows spewed paint. The words Slut, Whore and Bitch were repeated as regularly as a wallpaper pattern. Only a few pieces of jagged glass were left in the framed picture of the world-beating truck, presented to Vladimir by Kamaz management before they set out.
These days, in the street in Chelny, some people may point out Vladimir Marchenkov to you. But still it’s never to say, ‘hey, that’s one of the guys who won the Paris Dakar’. They point him out as the stupid sod with the crazy wife who lives with that whore Nikolaevna. Someone should really put vitriol on her tits.
