One steppe beyond, p.3
One Steppe Beyond, page 3
Arriving at the yard one grey and overcast morning later in the week, the smell of damp wood filling the moist air, I passed Janis heading off in a forklift, cigarette in mouth, with a look of desperation on his face. I spent the morning shredding wood in the sawmill before being introduced to the ‘green monster’ – a superior shredder, used to dispose of all junk wood in the yard. Its product was bagged up and sold as fuel to a local power station. Olavi had only recently been able to afford the machine, so they had been renting a second-rate equivalent, which simply hadn’t been able to keep up with demand. This had resulted in piles of junk wood rising uncontrollably, blotting out much of the surrounding skyline. I started working with two hardy Russian men, who brought to the job the traditional Soviet work strategy: half an hour on, half an hour off.
They worked for thirty minutes then took a coffee break, joining a constant stream of men coming and going from the yard, which made it difficult to concentrate on any work. It wasn’t until maybe the fifth break that I was given the nod to join a small group, and was led conspiratorially to the staff room located in a concrete building hidden away at the back of the yard. The room was jammed, faces distorted by a haze of smoke as men were packed in like sardines. If that was what they put themselves through during their breaks, I would sooner be working, and it was with great relief that I got the nod to return to work.
On the second day working with the green monster, one of my Russian comrades was sacked. I never gathered the reason why; when I asked about him his mate simply ran a finger across his neck. He was replaced by a fresh-faced young Estonian who went slightly easier on the breaks, and whose eagerness to work was only matched by his enthusiasm for swigging beer all day. The remaining Russian was no fool and just sat back and let me and the new boy do all the work. By the end of the week we had cleared up most of the yard, and I thought I had certainly earned my weekly wage of 500 kroons – about 40 pence an hour. Meanwhile Jo had completed her tour of Pärnu junior schools and seemed to be enjoying her new-found celebrity status, which was just as well, for when she received her brown envelope, she realised that at 600 kroons for the week, Estonian celebs were never going to get rich.
As the second week progressed, the initial interest in me from my fellow workers turned to suspicion. One week was a novelty, a bit of fun for me and something for them to talk about. But why was I still there? The yard was now pretty much clear of the junk wood and it was hard to see what work there would actually be for me to do when the spring clean was finished. I was beginning to have motivation issues myself; it was always at the back of my mind that I was getting out of bed for £3.20 a day. The gainful employment I had invested with so many hopes and possibilities was fast turning into, at best, ungainful employment and, at worst, not far off slave labour. I also had a growing feeling that my fellow workers thought I was patronising them by being there voluntarily.
It was half past eight in the morning and the sun was already generating a burning heat, not unusual for the end of April. Children were walking past the perimeter of the yard on their way to school proudly sporting baseball caps. We had been working on the green monster for only half an hour, but my two comrades had slowed right down, drawing the work out, and I sensed that they too had realised that there might well be no more work when we were done. Unlike me, if there was no work they would have to leave – which meant making no money. At that moment fate intervened and with a coughing and spluttering, the grating roar of the monster ceased, replaced by distant sounds caught on the breeze.
My two friends muttered something before sitting down and lighting up. Within moments a group had gathered around the unconscious beast. Men were appearing from nowhere, having quickly caught on that there was a bona fide time-wasting opportunity in the offing. I looked on as cigarettes were passed around, along with various diagnoses. One of the men, his new blue overalls giving him an air of some importance, eventually stepped forward and began fiddling with the monster’s undercarriage. He was fast to conclude: ‘Kaput.’
For the next hour members of the assembled group took it in turns to make an assessment of the ailing wood shredder. It could have gone on for much longer as the group was definitely growing in size; however, it was Janis who took the decision to inform the suits upstairs of the problem, and soon no less than Olavi himself made an appearance. He was closely shadowed by another smartly dressed man, with the look of an accountant about him – wiry physique, and matching wiry spectacles perched on the end of his nose. Since being at the yard I had seen him around and about and he had always had a warm smile for me.
Whilst Olavi was taking control of the situation, I had found a log to sit on, taken a piece of paper from my pocket and begun to write. The bespectacled man, obviously having decided he had little if any contribution to make, made his way over and sat down next to me. He introduced himself as Yens and proffered a skeletal hand to shake.
‘What are you writing?’ he asked.
His directness surprised me, so I replied as a joke, ‘I am writing bad things about Estonia in a letter home.’
He looked put out and became defensive. ‘I sorry, no you must not,’ he said, without a hint of irony. I was quick to reassure him, ‘I’m not really.’
His body language was strong yet shy at the same time, his English wasn’t good, and whatever he did say was turned into an apology. He looked on at the green monster.
‘I sorry, this is not good, it cost us much money.’
Perhaps he was indeed the accountant.
‘What is your job here?’ I asked, slightly concerned that I would receive a prickly response. He simply replied, ‘I work,’ accompanied with a deep sigh. I thought it was probably best not to ask any more questions as Yens apparently had other things on his mind. Or maybe conversation was awkward due to a lack of language, as a few minutes later he turned and said, ‘I sorry, I not so good, but play basketball.’ This brought a smile to his face and began a pidgin-English conversation. What came out was that Yens was exactly the same age as me, having been born on the same day in 1971. So there we were, two people sitting on a piece of wood in a timber yard, having grown up in completely different worlds, living completely different lives, but having been given the same time in history in which to do so. The bond I had with this man was probably greater than I knew, certainly greater than Yens knew or cared – as the discovery provoked no more than a barely audible grunt.
Our talking was interrupted by Olavi raising his voice above the chatter from the group. I don’t know what he said, but it had Yens jumping to his feet and the rest of the group slowly dispersing – back to whatever they had been doing several hours earlier. Olavi came over to my log and merely said, ‘It’s dead,’ with an expression that suggested he spoke of his new-born baby, rather than a wood shredder, before walking back towards his office with Yens closely behind him.
We had been in Pärnu nearly three weeks and the longer we stayed the harder it became. Our circle of hosts had done all they believed they should do as such but we sensed that our novelty had gradually become an annoyance. After Jo’s second week of celebrity her appearances had dried up and I was pretty much just standing around the yard all day like a spare part, hoping that someone would ask me to do something – which didn’t happen. I had even given up collecting any money at the end of the week – it didn’t feel right. I had begun to ask the same question that everyone else at the yard must have been asking, from Janis to Olavi… What was I doing there?
The truth was we were both still there because we simply weren’t yet ready to face the inevitable, the crushing disappointment of what was staring us in the face... that ‘things just weren’t working out’. The taunting voices in my head from people back home who had asked, ‘But why Estonia?’ or even worse, ‘Where is Estonia?’ started to get louder. Our expectations of the complete unknown had simply been too high. Neither of us had made any contingency plans. Neither of us had a Plan B, hence our reluctance at letting go of Plan A. We had invested heart and soul and some into this new start. It was nobody’s fault, it simply wasn’t the dream we’d both signed up for; that is, having jobs that would enable us to save some money in a part of the world that accepted us and didn’t look upon us as curiosities. We had failed on all of the above.
I still felt an obligation to Uncle Tony. I couldn’t help but feel like something of an ambassador for him after he had organised the job, as he couldn’t have known what it would be like. He had been running a timber yard and manufacturing wood products for decades back in the UK. His business was solid and safe, and possibly in reaction to that security he had cultivated an enthusiasm in his dealings with his new ‘friends’. He was a risk taker by nature and a gambler at heart, and his advances into the ex-Soviet zone had been purely opportunistic.
Straight after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the old party hierarchy and factory chiefs had begun privatising the organisations they controlled; by the mid nineties over 60 per cent of all state enterprises had been privatised. These ‘bosses’ channelled raw materials and money out of Russia and into private banks – not illegally, as there was no law to prevent it at the time. It is believed that an average of one billion dollars left Russia in this way every month during the nineties.
Whilst this was going on, the ex-Soviet zone was awash with Western experts preaching the Western model – which was still highly regarded – and tapping into business opportunities when they appeared. I think secretly Tony liked being part of that ‘anything goes’ wild East, especially as it was making him money and he could bail out as and when.
I had known that Tony would make a visit at some point, I had just hoped under different circumstances. Seeing Olavi bounding along shoulder to shoulder with Tony somehow made me feel even guiltier about telling him that we would be returning home. I had never really associated Olavi and his timber yard in Estonia with Tony, the man at the kitchen table back in England. For the first time Olavi appeared submissive in the company of the booming Englishman, who was decked out in a garish brown and orange check suit, his trousers tucked into his socks, which in turn disappeared into a pair of patent brogues that possessed a flipper-like quality – as if Tony was bounding up the beach having spent the morning snorkelling.
Jo had as yet not met Tony so introductions were necessary, which left me witnessing a ‘Monty meeting I’ type moment from Withnail and I. Tony breathed down on Jo’s diminutive frame, invading far too much of her personal space – made more uncomfortable by Tony’s very obvious interest in Jo’s chest. My laboured response to Tony’s initial enquiries about how things were going quickly produced a questioning look. Having deduced that I was holding back in front of Olavi, a drink was suggested.
‘So where’s the local hostelry? I’m parched!’ Tony barked, and we all simultaneously looked over to the Marlboro sign just visible through the trees. Olavi led the way with Jo, and I dropped back with Uncle Tony.
‘What’s the problem?’ Tony instinctively began.
Tentatively I responded, ‘Look, everyone’s been really good to us, it’s just not what we expected – we’re going to have to come home.’
‘Anything I can do?’ Before I could answer, a warm smile came over his features and he continued. ‘Look, don’t worry about a thing, you do what you have to do. The truth is, I’ve never spent more than a couple of days here – I fly in, get drunk with Olavi, say all the right things and probably plenty of the wrong ones, toast his family a hundred times and fly out.’
I was off the hook – and now I felt even worse. It looked like we were on our way back home. All I could think of was egg and cress sandwiches and a bike with a crooked axle.
We joined Jo and Olavi at the tiny pub. There was just enough room for Almo, who soon came to meet us. After two Sakus’ worth of hearty small talk we left Pootsi’s pub and headed into Pärnu for some dinner. Olavi led us down some uneven stone steps into a dimly lit cellar restaurant just off the town’s central park. The stone walls were adorned by skins and antlers on which hung tankards of pewter and, surprisingly, wood. Heavy wooden tables – gnarled and distressed, yet more attractive for it – added to an atmosphere that led us back several centuries. Perhaps the Tardis back in Pootsi had time-travelling qualities after all. The most mouth-watering aromas of roasting pig wafted in from the open-plan kitchen area, where a bandana-ed chef was hard at it. Estonian dining at the time was a long way from haute cuisine but if meat and potatoes were your thing, disappointment wasn’t likely. Which was the case for us all – with the exception of Jo, who had recently become a vegetarian. Her timing was bad. As we were fast discovering, the ex-Soviet Union was no place for humane sentiments in the kitchen – ‘vegetarian friendly’ still had a long way to go. So when the rest of us sat back stuffed and thinking about coffee, Jo was still glancing through the menu hungrily.
Coffee arrived at our table just as Tony cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid, Olavi, I’m going to have to take these two off your hands.’ His eyes passed over me and Jo. Olavi said nothing, simply nodded his head. Not even an ‘oh, that’s a pity’. He genuinely appeared not to care. (What it is to be wanted…) Tony continued, ‘I’ve got a business partner in Vladivostok, who I need them to visit.’ I had only caught the name Vladivostok, as egg and cress sandwiches drifted back into my grey matter. Getting no reaction, Tony turned up the volume: ‘How does that sound to you two?’ I re-engaged. ‘What – how does what sound?’ ‘Taking that old rust bucket of yours to Vladivostok.’
CHAPTER TWO
TALLINN
The sun sat high in the sky, reflecting off the many puddles left by the previous night’s storm that patterned the road north. We shared the short drive to Estonia’s pocket-sized capital with a light breeze that joined us from the looming coastline. Effervescing with anticipation for the exploration that lay ahead, having eagerly and thus unevenly parked up, we were drawn towards Tallinn’s old town, signs of which peeped out from behind its protective medieval wall.
Quickly lost in its network of winding cobbled streets, eventually we emerged onto Pikk Jalg, a narrow road that cuts through the city’s historical heart. The cobbles of Pikk Jalg, which translates as ‘long leg’, would have been traversed by German and Danish merchants using the town to trade goods from Scandinavia as far back as the fourteenth century. The street runs from the lower part of the town up to Toompea, a limestone outcrop which looks out over the rooftops below. Toompea started life as a wooden fort before the Danes captured it and built a more substantial castle in the thirteenth century. The castle is still there, along with the invitingly pink hue of the Riigikogu – the Estonian parliament. The Book of Cities says that Toompea ‘represents less than one per cent of Tallinn’s area but possesses all its charm’, which is a bit unfair as there was plenty of charm to be found all over the city. It also says that Tallinn is ‘the most beautiful German city in the world’. In appearance at least, it was hard to argue with this. With the old town’s plethora of spires, steeples, turrets and Hanseatic town houses it could have been plucked straight out of Bavaria.
Once our cursory investigations were complete, and we concluded that we had probably exhausted much of the town’s sightseeing potential in only a couple of hours, we settled into a car park a skip and a jump from the old town, behind a newly built Statoil twenty-four-hour garage. It was a location where we thought we wouldn’t draw too much attention to ourselves, overshadowed by articulated trucks, and insignificant below the cranes that decorated the nearby docks. Tram tracks close by provided a pleasant soundtrack as trams clattered past. From our vantage point in the car park we were able to see the ferries coming and going to Helsinki and Stockholm. The Tallink line regularly delivered Finnish booze cruisers travelling to Estonia for cheap shopping and drinking. Booze was cheaper in Estonia than Finland, and even cheaper on the ferry. Many Finns didn’t bother or were simply too drunk to go ashore, while those who did could be seen trudging unsteadily, weighed down with spoils, between the docks and the town like a battle-worn army in retreat. The best thing about the Statoil car park was that we were anonymous again, like the Scandinavian truckers who frequented it. Beholden to nobody.
TWO ESTONIAN PROVERBS
Beauty does not fill your tummy.
Make fun of the man, not of his hat.
We didn’t plan a particularly long sojourn in Tallinn. The truth was, we were only really still in Estonia because of Uncle Tony, in a somewhat misguided belief that to remain in the country for a little longer was something of a debt that had to be paid. For better or for worse we were driving to Vladivostok – well, in the direction of Vladivostok, for neither of us was entirely convinced at that point whether we’d reach the Estonia–Russia border, let alone get to the Far East. Tony’s suggestion had bought us some more time away from England, and a rather fragile plan had been conceived around it. Tony had worked with Nikolai from Vladivostok in the capacity of consultant – helping Nikolai set up his timber business.
‘Delightful man, you’ll get on like a house on fire!’ Um, now where had I heard a similar sentiment...?
‘OK. So why do we want to go all that way to visit Nikolai?’
‘Because he should be able to give you both some work.’ Tony paused, realising the thin credibility of this statement, before continuing with the customary glint in his eyes.
‘And you’ll have a bloody good time getting there! I’ll call ahead and let Nikolai know you’re coming – once you’re there I’m sure he’ll find you something to do.’
Jo listened with a ‘here we go again’ expression. I was inclined to agree but the desire not to return home with my tail between my legs had now become so strong, I would probably have driven pretty much anywhere on such flimsy intelligence...
