The Suitcase

The Driving Gloves

I FIRST MET YURA SCHLIPPENBACH in Tauride Palace in Leningrad, at a conference of newspaper editors. I represented Turbobuilder, and Schlippenbach was there from a film-industry magazine called Close-Up.

Second Secretary of the Regional Party Committee Bolotnikov had the floor. At the end of his speech, he said, “We have model newspapers like Banner of Progress. We have average ones, like Admiralty, and bad ones, like Turbobuilder. And then we have Close-Up, which is in a class of its own – it is spectacular in its mediocrity and tedium…”

I hunched down a bit in my seat. Schlippenbach, on the contrary, proudly straightened up – apparently he felt like a persecuted dissident. Then he called out, “Lenin said that any criticism has to be substantiated!”

“Your paper, Yura, is beneath all criticism,” the secretary replied.

In the intermission, Schlippenbach stopped me and asked, “Excuse me, how tall are you?”

I wasn’t surprised; I was used to it. I knew I should expect the usual stupid exchange: “How tall are you?” “Six four.” “Too bad you don’t play basketball.” “I do play.” “That’s what I thought.”

“How tall are you?” Schlippenbach asked.

“Six four. Why?”

“You see, I’m doing an underground film. I want you to play the lead.”

“I can’t act.”

“That’s not important. You have the right look.”

We agreed to meet the next day.

I had known Schlippenbach from seeing him around the central newspaper offices. We had never met personally. He was a thin, edgy man with long, dirty hair.

He claimed that his Swedish ancestors are mentioned in historical documents. In addition, he carried a single volume of Pushkin verses in his carryall. ‘Poltava’ was bookmarked with a candy wrapper.

“Read,” Schlippenbach would say nervously. And without waiting for a reaction, he’d bark out:

“And soon the foe begins to yield.

The cannons roar: platoons are shaken,

Mingled, dismembered, crushed in mud:

The fiery Schlippenbach is taken,

And Rosen leaves the field of blood.”*

People were wary of him at the news headquarters. He was very bold. Perhaps the ardour inherited from the Swedish general was coming through. Schlippenbach refused to give up or give in. Once, when the old journalist Maryushin died, someone took up a collection for the funeral and approached Schlippenbach. He exclaimed, “I wouldn’t give a rouble for Maryushin alive. I certainly wouldn’t give a copeck for him dead. Let the KGB bury its informers.”

Meanwhile, Schlippenbach was constantly borrowing money from his co-workers, and he was reluctant about returning it. The list of creditors took pages in his notebook. When he was reminded of a debt, he would threaten, “You keep nagging me and I’ll cross you off my list!”

That evening after the meeting he called me twice, for no real reason. His offhand tone bespoke our closer relationship: you can call a friend for no reason. “I’m bored,” he complained. “And there’s nothing to drink. I’m lying here on the couch all alone, with my wife…” At the end of the conversation, he reminded me, “We’ll discuss everything tomorrow.”

We spent the morning in the newspaper offices. I was going over proofs, and Schlippenbach was laying out his issue. He kept shouting things like, “Where’s the scissors? … Who took my ruler?… How do you write South African Republic – with or without a hyphen?”

Then we went to lunch.

Back in the Sixties, the canteen of the Press Centre was a closed club with access to hard-to-find foods: it sold veal hot dogs, canned goods, caviar, marmalade, tongue and smoked sturgeon. Theoretically, the canteen served only people who worked at the Press Centre, including writers from the industry papers; in practice, you would find people off the street in there – freelancers, for instance. That is, it gradually became less and less exclusive. And that meant fewer and fewer hard-to-get things. By this time, all that was left of its former glory was the Zhiguli beer.

The canteen took up the northern part of the sixth floor. The windows opened onto the Fontanka River. The three rooms could hold over a hundred people. Schlippenbach dragged me into an alcove, to a table for two. Apparently we were going to have a highly confidential conversation.

We got beer and sandwiches. Schlippenbach lowered his voice a bit and began.

“I turned to you because I value cultured people. I’m a cultured person. There aren’t many of us. To tell the truth, I’m surprised there are as many as there are – aristocrats are a dying breed, like prehistoric animals. But let’s talk business. I’ve decided to do an underground film on my own. I’m tired of giving the best years of my life to run-of-the-mill journalism – I want to do real creative work. Anyhow, I start shooting tomorrow. It will be a ten-minute film, a satire. Here’s the plot: a mysterious stranger appears in Leningrad. We see right off that he’s Tsar Peter the Great, the man who founded this city two hundred and sixty years ago. Now the great sovereign finds himself smack in the middle of vulgar Soviet reality. A policeman threatens to run him in. Two winos ask him to chip in for a bottle. Whores take him for a rich foreigner. KGB agents think he’s a spy, and so on. In short, it’s a drunken whorehouse of a city. The Tsar cries, ‘What have I done?… Why did I ever build this whorish city?’”

Schlippenbach laughed so hard that the paper napkins flew up in the air. Then he added, “The film will be politically touchy, to put it mildly. It will have to be shown in private apartments. I’m hoping Western journalists will see it – that will guarantee worldwide resonance. The consequences may be most unexpected. So, you think it over, weigh the facts. Do you accept?”

“You said to think it over…”

“How long can you think? Just agree!”

“Where will you get equipment?”

“No need to worry about that. Don’t forget, I work at Lenfilm studios. Everyone there is a friend, from the top directors down to the lighting crew. The equipment is mine to use. I’ve been running a camera since I was a child. So think about it and decide. You suit me. This is a role I can trust only to a like-minded individual. We’ll go to the studios tomorrow, get the necessary props, talk to make-up. And we’ll start.”

I said, “I have to think about it…”

“I’ll call you.”

We paid and went back to the office.

I really didn’t have any acting talent, even though my parents were theatre people – my father was a director and my mother an actress. Although my parents didn’t leave any deep mark on theatre, which may be a good thing.

As for me, I had been on the stage twice. The first time, back in school, we put on a stage version of the story Chuk and Gek.* As the tallest, I got to play the polar-explorer father. I had to come out of the tundra on skis and then give the final monologue. The tundra was played backstage by a straight “F” student Prokopovich. He cawed, howled, and roared like a bear. I appeared onstage shuffling my feet and waving my arms – my impression of a man on skis. That was my own idea, my contribution to stage conventions.

Unfortunately, the spectators did not appreciate my formalist invention. Hearing Prokopovich’s howls and seeing my mysterious movements, they decided I was supposed to be a hooligan. There were plenty of hooligans in the post-war schools.

The girls were outraged and the boys applauded. The school principal ran onstage and dragged me off. The literature teacher had to give the final monologue.

The second time I acted was four years ago. I was working on the regional Party newspaper and was assigned to play Grandfather Frost. I was promised three days off and fifteen roubles. The editorial staff was giving a New Year’s show for an affiliated state school. Once again I was the tallest. They glued on a beard, gave me a white hat and jacket and a basket of gifts, and let me out on the stage.

The jacket was tight. The hat smelt of fish. I almost burnt the beard lighting a cigarette. I waited for silence and said, “Hello, kids! Do you know who I am?”

“Lenin! Lenin!” they cried from the first rows. I laughed, and my beard came unglued…

And now Schlippenbach was offering me a leading role.

Of course, I could have refused. But for some reason I accepted. I always responded to the wildest proposals; no wonder my wife says, “You’re interested in everything except conjugal obligations.” By “conjugal obligations” my wife means sobriety, first and foremost.

So, we went down to Lenfilm. Schlippenbach called some guy named Chipa, in the props department, and got a pass.

The room we came to was jammed with cupboards and crates. I smelt mildew and mothballs. Fluorescent lights blinked and crackled overhead. A stuffed bear reared up in the corner. A cat strolled down the long table.

Chipa came out from behind a curtain. He was a middle-aged man in a striped T-shirt and top hat. He stared at me a long time and then asked, “Did you use to serve in the guards?”

“Why?”

“Remember the isolation cell in Ropcha?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember the convict who strung himself up on his belt?”

“Vaguely.”

“That was me. They pumped me for two hours, the bastards.”

Chipa treated us to some watered grain alcohol and was generally complaisant. He said, “Here you go, Chief!” and laid out a pile of junk on the table: tall black boots, a brocade waistcoat, a frock coat, a broad-brimmed hat and a sword. Then he got out a pair of gauntlets, like the ones early car enthusiasts used to wear.

“What about trousers?” Schlippenbach reminded him.

Chipa opened a crate and lifted out a pair of velvet breeches with gold braid. I pulled them on with great difficulty. They wouldn’t fasten. “They’ll do,” Chipa said. “Use twine.”

As we were leaving, he suddenly said, “When I was inside, I wanted out. But now, if I have a few drinks, I start missing the camp. What people! Lefty, One-Eye, Diesel!”

We put the stuff in a suitcase and took the elevator down to make-up.

By the way, this was my first visit to Lenfilm. I thought I’d see lots of interesting things – creative bustle, famous actors, maybe Chursina trying on a French bikini and Tenyakova standing next to her, dying of envy.* In reality, Lenfilm was like a gigantic government office: plain women carrying papers through the corridors, the rattle of typewriters from everywhere. We never did run into any colourful individuals, except maybe Chipa with his striped T-shirt and top hat.

The make-up woman, Lyudmila Alexandrovna, sat me down at a mirror and gazed into it from over my shoulder for a while.

“Well?” Schlippenbach demanded.

“The head’s not great – C-plus – but the overall look is fantastic.”

Lyudmila Alexandrovna touched my lip, pulled at my nose, brushed her fingers over my ear. Then she put a black wig on me. She glued on a moustache. With light strokes of a pencil, she rounded my cheeks.

“Amazing!” Schlippenbach was delighted. “A typical tsar!”

Then I suited up and we called for a taxi. I walked through the studios dressed as the great emperor. A couple of people turned to look – not many.

Schlippenbach dropped by to see one other pal. This one gave us two black boxes of equipment – for money this time.

“How much?” Schlippenbach asked.

“Four roubles and twelve copecks,” was the answer. The price of a bottle.

“I heard you switched to white wine.”

“And you believed that?”

In the taxi Schlippenbach explained: “You don’t need to read the script – everything will be built on improvisation, like in Antonioni. Tsar Peter finds himself in modern Leningrad. Everything is disgusting and alien. He goes into a grocery store. He starts shouting, ‘Where’s the smoked venison, the mead, the anise vodka? Who bankrupted my domain, the barbarians?’ That kind of thing. We’re going to Vasilyevsky Island now. Galina is waiting for us with the van.”

“Who’s Galina?”

“From supplies at Lenfilm. She has a company van. Said she’d meet us after work. Incredibly cultured woman. We wrote the screenplay together. At a friend’s apartment. Anyway, let’s go to Vasilyevsky. Do the first shots. The Tsar heads from the Rostral Column towards Nevsky Prospekt. He’s in shock. He keeps slowing down and looking around. Get it? You know – be scared of cars, look puzzled at signs, shy away from phone booths… If someone bumps into you, draw your sword. Go with it – be creative.” My sword lay on my lap. The blade was filed off, inside the scabbard: I could draw about three inches of it.

Schlippenbach waved his arms with inspiration. But the driver was unmoved. As he dropped us off, he asked in a friendly way, “So, what zoo did you escape from, pal?”

“Terrific!” Schlippenbach cried. “We can use that line! Ready art!”

We got out of the taxi with the boxes. A minivan stood across the street. A young woman in jeans was pacing near it. My appearance did not interest her.

“Galina, you’re a marvel,” Schlippenbach said. “We start in ten minutes.”

“You are the bane of my existence,” she replied.

They puttered with the equipment for about twenty minutes. I walked up and down in the slush in front of the Kunstkamera. Passers-by examined me with interest. A cold wind blew from the Neva River. The sun kept ducking behind clouds.

At last Schlippenbach said we were ready. Galina poured some coffee for herself from a thermos. The cover squeaked revoltingly.

“Go way over there,” Schlippenbach told me, “around the corner. When I wave my arm, start walking along the wall.”

I crossed the street and stood behind the corner. By then my boots were soaked. Schlippenbach kept delaying: I noticed Galina hand him a glass of coffee. Meanwhile, I was wandering around in wet boots.

At last Schlippenbach waved. He held the camera like a halberd beside him. Then he stooped behind it.

I put out my cigarette, came around the corner and headed for the bridge. It turns out that when you’re being filmed it’s hard to walk. I did my best not to trip. When the wind gusted, I had to hold on to my hat. Suddenly Schlippenbach yelled something. I couldn’t hear what he said because of the wind, so I stopped and crossed the street to him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I couldn’t hear you.”

“What didn’t you hear?”

“What did you shout?”

“I shouted, ‘Brilliant!’ That’s all. Go on back, do it again.”

“Want some coffee?” Galina finally asked me.

“Not now,” Schlippenbach said. “After the third take.”

I came out from around the corner again. Headed for the bridge again. And once more Schlippenbach yelled something. This time I paid no attention.

I walked all the way to the parapet. I looked back; Schlippenbach and his girlfriend were inside the van. I hurried over.

“Just one comment,” Schlippenbach said. “More expression. You should be absolutely amazed by everything you see. Look at the posters and signs in astonishment.”

“There aren’t any signs along there.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll edit them in later. Just look amazed. Every three yards, stop and throw your hands in the air.”

Schlippenbach made me do it seven times. I was exhausted. My breeches kept slipping down under the waistcoat. It was hard to smoke with the gloves on.

But finally my suffering ended. Galina handed me the thermos, and we drove to Tavricheskaya Street.

“There’s a beer stall there,” Schlippenbach said. “More than one, I think. Winos all over the place. It’ll be terrific – the monarch among the scum.”

I knew the place – two beer stands and a vodka window, not far from the Theatre Institute. It really was loaded with drunks.

We parked the van in a courtyard and set up there.

Schlippenbach whispered excitedly, “The scene is simple – you approach the counter. You look indignantly at all these people standing in line for a drink. Then you make an address.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Whatever you want. The words don’t matter. The important thing is your expression, your gestures.”

“They’ll think I’m an idiot.”

“That’s great, say whatever you want. Ask about the prices.”

“They’ll really think I’m an idiot then… Who doesn’t know the price of beer?” “Then ask who’s last in line. Just so your lips move. We’ll record the soundtrack later and dub it to match. Go to it.”

“Here, have a drink for courage,” Galina said. She got out a bottle of vodka and poured it into my coffee glass.

My courage did not increase. However, I got out of the van. The show must go on.

The beer stall, painted green, was on the corner of Rakov and Mokhovaya. The line stretched back across the lawn to the Central Food Council building. People were jammed up near the counter; the crowd thinned out farther away. At the end it was just a dozen grim and grumpy people.

The men wore grey jackets and vests. They were aloof and apathetic, as if at a stranger’s grave. Some had brought jars and teapots for their beer. There were only a few women, five or six. They were noisier and more impatient. One of them kept nagging, “Let me go ahead of you, out of respect for an old woman and mother!”

When they got their mug in hand, people would move aside in anticipation of bliss. Grey foam flecked the ground. Everyone had a small personal fire inside; once it was extinguished, people grew animated, lit up cigarettes, looked for a conversation. The ones still in line asked, “How’s the beer, OK?” “Seems OK,” the others answered.

I wondered how many beer counters like this there were all over Russia. How many people died and came to life again like this every day?

As I approached the crowd, I felt afraid: why had I ever agreed to this? What was I going to say to these people – exhausted, grim, half-mad? Who needed this ridiculous masquerade?

I joined the end of the line. Two or three men glanced at me without the slightest curiosity. The rest simply paid no attention at all.

In front of me was a Georgian or an Armenian in a railroad-uniform shirt. To my left stood a bum in canvas shoes with the laces untied. Two steps ahead, an intellectual was breaking matches trying to light his cigarette. He gripped his skinny briefcase between his knees.

My situation was getting more and more ridiculous. No one said a word to me, no one was the least bit curious, no one asked me any questions – what could they ask? Their only concern here was getting the hair of the dog. And what could I say to them – ask them who’s last in line? I was.

I realized I had no money on me – I had left it in my regular, pedestrian trousers.

I saw Schlippenbach waving his fists from the courtyard, directing me. I could see that he wanted me to follow the plan – he was hoping it would make someone hit me over the head with a mug.

I just stood in line, and quietly moved along to the counter. I heard the railroad man explain to someone, “I’m behind the bald guy. The Tsar’s behind me. And you come after the Tsar.”

The intellectual spoke to me. “Excuse me, do you know Sherdakov?”

“Sherdakov?”

“Aren’t you Dolmatov?”

“More or less.”

“Glad to see you. I still owe you a rouble. Remember, we were leaving the Sherdakov’s house together on Cosmonaut Day? And I asked you for a rouble for a taxi? Here.”

I had no pockets; I stuck the crumpled rouble note into my glove.

I actually did know Sherdakov – a specialist in Marxist-Leninist aesthetics, an assistant professor at the Theatre Institute. A habitué of the vodka bar. “Give him my best,” I said.

I saw Schlippenbach approaching. Galina followed, sighing.

By now I was almost at the counter. The crowd grew denser. I was squeezed in between the bum and the railroad man. The end of my scabbard was pushed against the intellectual’s hip.

Schlippenbach shouted, “I don’t see the scenario! Where’s the conflict? You’re supposed to antagonize the masses!”

The line grew wary: here was some busybody with a camera trying to get people riled up.

“Excuse me,” said the railroad man to Schlippenbach. “You’re jumping the line.”

“I’m on duty,” Schlippenbach replied, thinking fast.

“We all are,” mumbled someone in the crowd.

The dissatisfaction grew, the voices got more aggressive. “There’s all kinds of wise guys and jokers around here.” “They take your picture and then they use you as a bad example, like ‘Another Troublemaker’.” “We’re just getting a drink in a perfectly civilized way, and he comes here stirring shit.” “A bum like that should be locked away.”

The crowd’s energy was close to the bursting point. But Schlippenbach was angry himself.

“You’ve boozed Russia away, you vipers! You’ve lost the last remnants of your conscience! Up to your eyeballs in vodka from morning till night!”

“Yura, enough! Yura, don’t be an idiot, let’s go!” Galina tried to pull Schlippenbach away.

But he resisted. And then came my turn at the counter. I took the crumpled rouble out of my glove and asked, “How much should I get?”

Schlippenbach calmed down immediately. “Get me a large one, warmed up. And a small for Galina.”

Galina said, “I do not indulge in beer. But I’ll drink it with pleasure.”

There was little logic in her words.

Someone complained, but the bum explained to the disgruntled one, “No, the Tsar was in the queue, I saw him. And that fag with the camera is with him, so it’s OK, it’s legal!” The winos grumbled a bit more and quieted down.

Schlippenbach put the camera in his left hand and picked up his mug. “Let’s drink to the success of our film! True talent will always make its way.”

“My fool,” said Galina.

When we were backing out of the courtyard, Schlippenbach said: “Those people! Those are some people! I was even scared. It was just like — ”

“The battle of Poltava,” I finished for him.

It was hard changing in the van, so they brought me home, still in the emperor costume…

The next day, I ran into Schlippenbach at the cashier’s desk. He told me he wanted to get involved in human rights. So the film-making was over. The tsar costume lay around my house for two years. A neighbour’s boy took the sword. We polished the floor with the hat. Our extravagant friend Regina wore the waistcoat as a spring jacket. My wife made a skirt out of the velvet breeches. I brought the driving gauntlets along when I emigrated; I was sure I’d buy a car first thing.

I never did get round to it. Didn’t want to. I have to stand out somehow! Let all Forest Hills know me as “that crazy Dovlatov, the guy who has no car!”