The Lubetkin Legacy

Berthold: Pigeon Fancy

‘Cooo-cooo-cooo.’

I was gazing down from my window and sipping a melancholy cup of Lidl own-brand while pondering arboricide, impotence in all its dismal aspects, the fickleness of fame, and other depressing themes, when I noticed there was a bird perched up on the balcony edge close to Flossie’s cage — a feral pigeon, no doubt displaced from its nest by the tree carnage below.

‘Shut up, Flossie,’ Flossie replied.

‘Cooo-cooo-cooo,’ it warbled, puffing out its iridescent throat-feathers, cocking its head on one side and eyeing her seductively with a round unblinking eye.

‘God is Coo. Cooo-cooo.’

The pigeon hopped closer to Flossie’s cage. I noticed it only had one leg and a scarred stump where the other should be. Maybe it was the same one I had rescued from the wheels of the white van on the weekend that Mother had died. It seemed to be on intimate terms with Flossie. Cooo-coo, cooo-coo. Maybe it had found love — like me.

Then I heard the sounds of Inna scuffling and banging in her bedroom. I thought at first she had got Lookerchunky in there, but it seemed to be going on for an incredibly long time, even by his standards. And there was no singing. Eventually I knocked on the door to see what was going on, and found her sitting by the dressing table, surrounded by heaps of belongings which she was cramming into cases, bags and boxes. Her loose black hair that rippled down her shoulders now had a broad silver channel at the parting.

‘Hey, Inna, what are you doing?’

‘I leaving here, Bertie! I going back in Ukraina, wit Lev!’

‘Is that a good idea, Inna? You know there’s a war on.’

‘Oy, this war will soon finish. She is only for crazies. East, west, we all Ukrainian. Good Ukrainian soldiers don’t want fight good Ukrainian people, they want beetroot soup, kvass, eppy life. Only foreign want war. Europevski, Russki, Americanski, all crazy. Better make love, drink vodka, sing beautiful song of my country. Oy ty pyesnya! Pyesenka dyevicha … Mm-m-mmm …’

‘It’s a matter of democracy, Inna,’ I sighed, for by now I was only half convinced myself. ‘Surely everybody wants that. Good governance, the fight against corruption …’

‘No democracy. Only oliharki fighting against each other. Some oliharki got friend wit Mister Putin, some oliharki got friend wit Mister Cameron. But every olihark got same big house in London, inside wife blonde wit big titties, gangster wit big gun by door, and outside good British policeman for protection. Mmm-m-mmm …’ She started to wail her song again as she carried on packing.

‘Look, we have to stop Putin from taking over the world!’

However self-evident this was, Inna doggedly pursued her own batty agenda. ‘No, no! Putin got popular because he stop Netto in knickers of time. Same like Mister Jeff Kennedy got popular because he stop Russia in Cuba wit Bay of Pork …’ She paused for a moment, and sat back with a smile of reminiscence. ‘Ah! That was good time for Dovik and me!’

‘Look, Inna …’ It was hard to know where to begin to correct her addled perspective. ‘History tells us a slightly different story —’

‘Pah! What use history? History got us Great Patriotic War against Nazi. Twenty million Soviet citizen dead. In history everybody slightly dead. Mmm-m-mmm …’ She looked at me as though I was a Nazi, and carried on with her packing.

‘You never finished your story, Inna, how your father’s leg was amputated, and Dovik went to Tbilisi to study medicine that came from sewerage. Improbable though that may seem to most normal people. And then?’

‘Aha! Soviet bacteriophage medicine was big success! Dovik got medal of gonner. Then in 1962 big creases. American President Jeff Kennedy put rocket inside Turkey for Netto expansionism. Soviet President Khrushchev try put rocket in Cuba.’

‘Not Netto, Inna. NATO.’

‘So what this Netto everybody talking about?’

‘It’s a cheap supermarket chain in the north of England.’

‘Supermarket?’ She looked mortified. ‘I was think it military club for putting rocket all around Russia. Supermarket! Oy bozhe moy!’

I knew of course about the Cuban missile crisis, but for me the big event of 1962 was my first birthday, some months earlier on May 6th. According to Howard there had been a cake with one candle, which he blew out for me, while Mum and Dad got tipsy and went off to try for another baby, evidently without success. Howard told me that in October 1962 Mum had organised an embarrassing candlelit peace vigil in the cherry grove, which he had been forced to attend, and Dad had made two grand from selling foil-lined anti-radiation suits that had fallen off the back of a lorry somewhere near Huddersfield.

I remember some years later watching a TV documentary about the Cuban missile crisis with grainy footage of rocket-laden warships motionless on a grey ocean as the two world powers squared up to each other. Inna told me that in October 1962 all across the Soviet Union, people travelled home to be with their families in what they believed might be their last days on earth. Her parents were by then living in Crimea where her father had a desk job with the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. Dovik too came home from Georgia to his adopted family. Time and distance had transformed him from an annoying older brother into a mysterious and handsome stranger. Together they watched the confrontation of warships on the communal television in the basement of the building — the same images I had seen. She described how they held their breath as the heroic Soviet submariners of the B-59 that protected their warships, running low on air deep below the Caribbean and harried by enemy destroyers, had to choose between rising to the surface in sight of their pursuers, or firing off their nuclear torpedoes and risking igniting nuclear Armageddon which, Inna said, would finish all life on earth.

Biting her lip, she confessed that she did not want to die a virgin. Dovik gallantly offered to put that right for her.

‘Ha ha! Virgin!’ She clapped her hands.

I don’t know whether Dovik ever realised or whether she eventually confessed.

Shortly afterwards they moved to Tbilisi and got married. Dovik continued his bacteriophage research, which according to Inna was a Soviet version of antibiotics made from viruses that thrive in effluent and infect and destroy bacteria. Inna, as a nurse at the same hospital, had administered this yukky remedy to local unfortunates.

‘Mm. Shakespeare said something along the lines that one pain is cured by another.’ It was from Romeo and Juliet. ‘Take thou some new infection to thy eye and the rank poison of the old will die.’

‘Aha! Very clever man! He was Soviet citizen?’

‘It seems unlikely, Inna, but it’s an intriguing thought.’ Could anyone really be as stupid as that, or was she having me on?

Inna and Dovik lived in a two-roomed flat on the ground floor of a low-rise ‘Khrushchyovka’.

‘Council house like this, but made from good Soviet concrete.’

Despite her outspoken distaste for public housing, the young couple were happy in their new flat which, although small, was a home of their own at a time when many families were still living crammed into a couple of rooms with parents and in-laws. They made it nice with flowers, pictures and traditional embroidery, and here they had their two children. ‘Two boys grown up now. Both doctor. One live Peterburg, one live Hamburg. Everybody normal.’

According to Inna, the Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev was a popular leader, spirited and jovial, who denounced Stalin and enjoyed a glass of Ukrainian shampanskoye best-in-world. It seemed as though the Soviet Union was at last crawling out of its grim past of famine, war and repression into a progressive and dynamic world power stretching all the way from Czechoslovakia to Kamchatka. Khrushchev’s diplomacy even saved the world from nuclear destruction while letting Mister President Jeff Kennedy take the credit.

‘No, Inna, it was the other way around. John F. Kennedy saved the world from nuclear annihilation and Khrushchev had to back down. Everybody knows that.’

‘Aha! Same like Dovik know I virgin!’ she chuckled.

I began to feel a bit sorry for this Dovik, who seemed like a decent sort of guy who had obviously drawn a few short straws in life, Inna being one of them.

In 1964, when Inna was pregnant with her first son, Khrushchev was ousted and replaced by Brezhnev.

‘Oy! Such primitive man!’ She threw up her hands. ‘Primitive eyebrow! Primitive politic! Like black bear cover wit medals. Also Ukrainian! What we can do?’

They resolved to emigrate, but had to wait until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 before their dream could become a reality. As the country went into meltdown, Western advisers poured in and shady people grabbed publicly owned assets in a wild spree of shoot-from-the-hip privatisation. Dovik was approached by the gangster-cum-businessman Kukuruza, who was sniffing around for ways of making money out of creaking Soviet research institutions with business potential. Bacteriophage medicine, with its low-cost effluent ingredients and unlimited upside, seemed an ideal prospect. Dovik demurred. He was not ready to hand over his baby to the mobsters, and he had other escape plans. He was already in touch with scientists at the Wellcome Institute in London who were also studying bacteriophages. He wrote a friendly letter from Tbilisi and was offered a research fellowship.

‘So we come in London. Very nice place. Everybody happy. Then one day this gangster Kukuruza come back for Dovik, but now he big olihark.’

Dovik’s refusal to sell his secrets cost him his life. A plate of poisoned slatki in a Soho restaurant did for him — or so Inna said.

‘Oy-oy-oy! Olihark got him dead. Now I all alonely. Time for going home!’

As Inna spoke, she crammed an obscure pink garment brutally into an already full bag. ‘Ah! Ukraina! You cannot imagine, Bertie, how beautiful this country. Yellow-blue, same like our flag. Yellow fields filled wit corn. Sky blue, no cloud. River like glass. Willow tree on bank. Little white house wit cherry trees in garden. Mmm-m-m.’ She was wailing again, hopelessly struggling with the zip of her bag. ‘England is good country but too wet. Too dark. Too much brissel sprout.’

Personally I am fond of Brussels sprouts, but I can see that they are an acquired taste. ‘Brussels sprouts are part of your five-a-day, Inna. Here, let me do that for you.’

I took the bag from her and found the only way I could close the zip was to remove the pink garment, which turned out to be a rubberised roll-on corset. She grabbed the bag from me, undid the zip, and shoved it in again. Then the zip broke. Tears welled up in her eyes. I put my arm around her. I was suddenly feeling quite emotional too.

‘I can see why you want to go to Ukraine, Inna. But I think you’re taking a bit of a gamble with this Lookerchunky guy. I mean how much do you know about him?’

‘I know love. That is enough.’ Tears fluttered on her eyelashes.

‘But love is a bit … you know … unreliable. Wouldn’t it be better if you went to live near your sons?’

‘Oy, I been visit in Hamburg. Nice place but everybody speaking German. Wrong type kobasa.’

‘What about St Petersburg? That’s closer to home for you.’

‘Also nice place, but too much gangster, winter worse than London, son too busy. No, better I go in Crimea wit Lev. Nice climate, nice people, plenty seaside, plenty nice food nice wine.’

‘But Inna, Crimea is in Russia now, not in Ukraine.’

‘No, no, Bertie. Before was Russia, now Ukraina. Mister Khrushchev give it over. I been there.’

‘Now Russia has taken it back. Haven’t you been following the news? The people voted overwhelmingly. Though of course we must assume the vote was rigged.’

‘Oy! Why nobody tell me?’ She clasped her hands in dismay. ‘Where I will go?’

‘But you don’t need to leave, Inna. In fact it would be nice if you stayed. Aren’t you happy here?’ Maybe I had been too harsh with her over the coffee and Flossie’s care. From now on I would treat her like a queen.

‘Everything changing round here, Mister Bertie. Blackie gone away. Mrs Crazy gone away. Romania gone away. Today they cut down cherry tree, same like in play of Chekhov.’

The Cherry Orchard, that’s what I’d been trying to remember! I’d even played Gaev in 1981, in Camberwell. Something about looking from the window and seeing Mother walking through the cherry orchard wearing a white dress. I felt a lump in my throat. She would never walk there again.

‘And yesterday I hear man in wheelchair got dead.’

‘What?’ This was unexpected and shocking. ‘You mean Len?’ Maybe she was confused.

‘Yes, no-leg man wit poison-mushroom hat. Deeyabet must eat to make sugar in blood, and he need electric for keeping insulin in refigorator.’

A finger of guilt poked my ribs. I’d promised to try and help, but I’d forgotten. I’d been selfishly preoccupied with my own survival, and at the back of my mind I’d assumed ‘They’ would look after him — someone like Mrs Penny from the Council, or the Job Centre, or the NHS would be keeping an eye on him. But nobody was. While I’d been waiting for Godot, time had run out for Len.

I bowed my head, remembering his relentless optimism and his occasional bullshit. ‘Poor Len. Didn’t anybody help him?’

‘I give him injection but insulin kaput.’

Alas, poor Len. A black cloudbank loomed on my mind’s horizon. Legless Len, Mrs Crazy, the cherry grove, even Inna Alfandari — now that Mother was gone, those were the last living links that connected a secure past to an uncertain future. It wasn’t just the bricks and concrete that made this place home, it was the web of human spirit, that funny old-fashioned word embroidered by Gobby Gladys: FELLOWSHIP.

‘Coo-coo-coo,’ Flossie cooed from the balcony. She fluffed out her feathers and hopped up and down on her perch, turning towards the one-legged pigeon as it flapped away in the direction of the next-door balcony. Oh yes, I’d forgotten Flossie — she was still here.

‘What’s up wit devil-bird?’ asked Inna. ‘She turning into pigeon?’

‘I think she’s fallen in love.’