Diskea
The minibus driver who takes us to Ikea is an industrial engineer, but engineers have been out of fashion in Russia for a long while. Few new industrial enterprises are being built, while existing manufacturing plants were often cleaned out of anything saleable in the early 1990s. Many stand hollow and idle, creating the problem of dead towns, where virtually the entire population had been employed by a single Soviet-era factory. Pikalyovo, in Leningrad oblast, almost shared that fate recently -- it's an example that comes up often in conversation. In 2008, the world financial crisis reached the three main plants in Pikalyovo, cement and chemicals producers owned by oligarch Oleg Deripaska's Basel Cement. They suspended output and laid off workers. With no other employment options, some people began to starve, gathering dandelions to make salad. Crime rates rose sharply. Finally, when hot water and heating were cut off, residents rioted and blocked a federal highway. This act of protest, rare in Russia, alarmed the authorities. Putin, like a deus-ex-machina, descended onto Pikalyovo and pronounced that this was unacceptable, the show must go on! And what a show it was: Deripaska is summoned to be publicly knighted Sir Cockroach, Putin throws his mighty pen down on the table and tells him to sign a written promise to restart the factories – "and don't forget to return my pen". So Pikalyovo had a happy ending, of sorts, while the obedient Deripaska remains a member of the Kozy Kremlin Klub. I wonder if he is the kind of man to hold a grudge, and how long Putin's infallibility can last.
As for our driver, Sergei, a handsome man with long sinewed arms and short greying hair, he tells me that he first worked as an auto mechanic, then during the 1990s traded cloth for eight years. Later he decided to start up a corporate taxi business, bought a couple of vans and sent them to Ukraine to be retrofitted, seats installed and windows cut into the sides. One of the windows leaks, but it's cheaper than buying a ready-made passenger van. Sergei is lucky that his wife works as a chief accountant, but he is tired of Moscow life, his passion is hunting, and they are slowly building a large timber-frame house in the countryside, where they plan to move as soon as they can. Sergei clearly relishes the opportunity to linger over the details of his dream, down to the wood-burning stove heating system; gas is cheap in Russia ofcourse, he says, but only if there is a pipeline nearby. The stove has to be fed twice a day. Listening, I glimpse him from a distance through the long wild grass, chopping logs at the back of the house, a river twining beside. He is one of those rare people who thrives easily in nature.
Halfway through my search for quasi-necessities at Ikea – table lamp, can opener, cutlery sorter – my vision blurs and pinpoint lights begin to dance in my right eye. A migraine. No. I concentrate all my willpower to force through the fog and use what I know will be my last fifteen minutes of vertical mobility to pick up some plants, which is what I really came for, some extra oxygen in the flat to counteract Moscow's smog. I manage to pay, before running, pale and covered in sweat, to the toilets, heaving but not quite throwing up, as pain lances my frontal lobe. While the others shop at the next-door big box discount store, Auchan, I lie on the back seat of the minibus for the remaining few hours, Sergei offering me a pillow and a cup of sweet hot green tea with simple kindness.
By evening, I feel less terrible and spend a brief hour at the language school, where they have organised a disco-themed night. Amid the hazy chatter, I overhear someone whispering that the young man in the red waistcoat is a distant descendant of the Romanovs.
The migraines will last three days. I expected this, the stress of the past few months leaving my body at last.
