Chapter 3
Takeover
On August 1, 1990 I collected my baggage – about 150 pounds, I had a ticket for excess weight – and hired the former husband of Margaret, my neighbour, to transport me to the airport with his ancient Polish FIAT 125.
My flight has not been bad, but the arrival was hard. First I had to queue up – earlier there was nothing like that – before passport check, then wait for my baggage to come out of the tunnel. When I left Budapest, it was hot, I have been dressed accordingly. In Moscow there was a weather not cool, but my suit has been too little. At last all my baggage was together. Looking for a carriage I discovered that to get one you had to pay 1 rouble. I had no Soviet currency with me, I was to get my money from Joe B. With my seven pieces of baggage I crept through customs first and then through the exit gate. There Joe met me and took half my load. He took my case easily, he had very little empathy, it was just a funny story to recount later to his friends.
I give here only a short account of my stay in Moscow, as in Canned Roaddust I disclosed everything. Anyway, I should like to make a general picture of the city of Moscow.
It is worth to make some explanation about the character of settlement of Moscow and about roads in the town. It is an interesting mixture of instinctive and planned city development, instinctive its growth has been during the middle ages, for its wooden structures it has been completely wiped out sometimes in big fires, then a little differently rebuilt. Stone has been used for building only more recently, first at the walls of fortresses like the Kremlin. That has also been the fortified permanent living place of the monarchs, for this reason it has been changed to stone centuries ago. This is also the explanation, why its look has not been altered significantly. The Kremlin takes the form of an irregular pentagon, one of its sides is parallel to the riverside. The river Moskva enters the city at its western limits, it makes big turns, then leaves the town in a south-western direction to bring its water into the river Oka. In the centre of the city the river flows from south-west to north-east, with the Kremlin lying at its north-western bank on top of a small hill. Outside the north-eastern wall of the fortress you find Red Square, originally "Beautiful Square", as the meaning of the word krasnaya has gone through some modification in the recent centuries. The square is made up by four buildings, one of them is the Kremlin at the longer side, as I mentioned, with the Mausoleum of Lenin near the wall, and in the wall itself there is the burial place of important statesmen with their urns walled up. On the opposite side of the square you find the department store GUM, but recently it has become more of a commercial centre with a lot of independent shops. On the south-eastern end of the long square the Vasily Blazhenny Cathedral has been built, that is a very important building, but doesn't look like one. It is not bigger than a small village church. And its walls that look very fine on colour slides, are only covered with colourful plaster, resembling mostly to coloured dry mud. The fourth side of the square is made by a really Russian style building of unified red colour. At that time it has been used commonly by the Museum of History and Lenin Museum. The latter has recently given its place to a fashion institution.
The geometrical centre of the town is Red Square, or rather some old houses near the square left intact at the construction of the hotel "Rossiya". One of them is the House of Envoys. Here Ivan the Terrible made envoys from foreign countries wait, until they became so soft that they were ready to accept any conditions, even if they were quite different from those included in their letters of mission. At that time when Mongols were still at large and there were fears of attacks, the enlargement and development of the town happened always behind closed walls, in a limited space. Outside the walls any settlement would be impossible to defend from attacks, there were only fortified complexes out-of-town, as monasteries for monks and convents for nuns. Such a convent is Novodyevichi, today functioning only to a certain extent, but it can be visited as a tourist attraction. It was out-of-town, and had to suffer some sieges. The fortified wall around the town has made an almost perfect circle with a length of seven miles. After the disappearance of the wall it became a circle of road, today it is known as the Inner Circle, an endless highway of twice six lanes. In Russian it is called Sadovoye Koltso, i.e. Garden Ring. Its name comes from the time of Peter the Great, the town became an open one at that time, people dared to settle outside the wall. On the outer side of today's Inner Ring large mansions have been built by nobles having money and the consent of the Czar for it. But the monarch was very strict in forbidding construction at the street front, the owners had to create large gardens in front of their mansions. This way, garden beside garden has been created and the road got its name. Some of these estates that were lucky enough after the Revolution to get into the ownership of a public institution, can be seen today and they are really fine 18th century treasures.
History repeated itself once more, when the town grew out the outer highway ring. That time the length of the perimeter was around seventy miles. From this you can estimate the size of the city, its diameter is nearly 20 miles. The outer circle is a little oval, its north-south axis is longer. Inside this circle the nearly eight million inhabitants of Moscow (Moskvich in Russian), and, of course, the many million employees and visitors try to get their places. About ten years ago the city grew out this circle too, the highway ring is not equal to the city limit any more, there are protrusions outside, like bubbles. Until these places were called zagorod (out-of-town) there were mainly recreation sites here, as there were so many brooks dammed in order to get water and fishing ponds, that people could find places to swim, to boat or simply to make a picnic. Nowadays you must drive a lot of miles out-of-town to find a place really far from civilisation. About Moscow I am going to give more information, but let's now return to my trip of reconnaissance.
I was to sleep in the office, one of the rooms was a bureau with two desks, a telex table, a file locker and a kitchen table with a typewriter. The other room was for night guests. An out-of-order sofa, two armchairs, a coffee table, a conference table with chairs and a set of wardrobes along the wall. All have been old, but still working, except the sofa.
The office had another guest, Louis R., my would-be successor, who had been one of my competitors, only stepped back for family troubles. He has been there to have a practice in Russian language after his course and to help Joe manage the business for both companies, as the representative of the other one has been on holiday.
From my arrival the sofa would be mine, he would sleep on a foldable bed. During daytime there was another man in the office from the co-tenant company, its former representative, but he was more absent than present, doing his own business. The man on holiday had been serving for one year.
My first visit after arrival has not been to the office, but the agency building to take our lunch. I have not been in a big need of that, as our airlines gave us a hot meal for lunch, but Joe left the office early to meet me and he had to eat something. I utilized this time to visit the husband of my niece in his office. I also met by chance one of my former companions on my trips, the import executive from the commercial division of shipyards. He was on a replacement trip for their representative.
Our country is not a large one, circles of a certain language and field of business can make a group of acquaintances very little indeed. Almost all of the people I met on business all over the world had come from the same team and had been familiar to me. It was the same here in Moscow.
In a week Veronica would come to arrange the office takeover from my predecessor. A check of inventory would also happen.
I have known Moscow by foot well, Louis has been amazed by my talent. As he had to step back from this mission, he had been promised he would be my successor and was also promised a month of stay in the office for his language skills every summer. As I would write about it later, this gentlemen’s agreement has been forgot quickly – sure, where have been gentlemen?
At last Joe B. went to the airport, the car has been handed over to me and it was my first trip with it to take it back to town. Soon I would have another trip, not very pleasant. Louis went with Joe and Veronica home.
In the office it was my first evening alone, as after working time Joe S., who has come in the meantime from holiday, also went home. I remained alone. At late afternoon an early dusk came. It was a great thunderstorm with hailstones. I have seen vast rains in Africa, once there remained about two tons of hails under the gutter of our house on the ground, that melted away in two days, but that day it was different. Flood was flowing on the street, people were pushing there cars as they went out-of-order for the flood. In half an hour it all has passed, but in the TV evening news – I have not seen, but Joe said the next morning – and the next day’s newspapers all have been reported.
About 300 feet from us there was the Kiev Railway Station, with a junction of 3 METRO lines. The flood has gone into the uppermost line, stopping trains and flowed further downward, until all the three lines have been lamed.
My living in the office has lasted, until maintenance activities in the apartment - painting, wallpapering, repairs of taps – have been finished.
During that final week of mine accommodated in the office my things have come by a truck. The driver helped me to place my things in the office, but to take them home I had no help. Only Joe S. helped me once in pushing the furniture, but his back has been overloaded and I would not expect him to do more. He helped me anyway to sell the sofas.
I took everything over to my home from the office myself with my service car and in the middle of September I have been settled in my new home. During my first weeks in Moscow I called my wife as frequently as possible. It has not been easy, as line have always been engaged and there was a two-hour time difference between the two cities. She had a certain female problem and she had to go for a day into the hospital. I tried to comfort her, but it has not been easy from 1,100 miles away. Later, when my time became denser, it was she who called me from time to time.
During evenings I have been busy with reading my newspapers – the company subscribed for a daily and a weekly for me –, watching TV-news and putting my things into order. Anyway, there were other programs, for example visiting Joe’s family or the same with Maria, my niece, receiving them in turn, etc.
With Joe we sometimes made detours at our return from the agency after lunch. In those cases I bought necessary things, instruments, room-antennas for TV-sets, etc. You always had to buy things you saw, otherwise you would have go without, when you needed. It was the S.U., after all, with its suppliers’ market and shortages. I bought the small antennas, as my cable from central network brought me nothing. With that small one to look out of the window I could pre-program 6 different stations.