This is another in a series of excerpts from my new book How the Future Worked, available on www.roperpenberthy.co.uk or on Amazon.co.uk.
Another member of that narrow circle was Zhenia Kapman, a top student at our German-language department. That took some doing as Zhenia was blind from birth. He lived with his girlfriend Valia whose heart was bigger than her body, which was saying a lot. She looked after Zhenia without ever complaining and was effusive about his amorous stamina which, according to her, wasn’t so much hampered as enhanced by his disability.
Zhenia was a slim man of about 5’5” whose pockmarked face was of indeterminate age and ethnicity, a condition I’ve often observed among blind people. In his late twenties at the time, he could have passed for 50. And, though Jewish on both sides of his family, Zhenia could easily claim to be anything else. As I once found out, he often parlayed that ability into material gain, not only his own but also his friends’.
It was yet another bitterly cold winter and Muscovites were all wearing fur hats with earflaps down, fluffy scarves wrapped around their faces and layers of clothing under their heavy overcoats. That made us look like a nation of brown bears, but even those four-legged animals would have found it hard to negotiate the sheet ice covering every pavement – while dodging icicles falling down from the roofs. Some of those projectiles were two feet long and ten inches in diameter, which made them good to avoid.
As everything else in Russia, winter clothing, especially fur hats, was in short supply. Thus those hats acted as status symbols, ranging from patrician mink for 150 roubles to plebeian rabbit for 12. No one who was anyone would have stooped below nutria. I myself never rose above a succession of rock-bottom rabbits, as I was so absent-minded that every winter I’d leave at least one hat behind on a bus. Finding a replacement was never easy and I often had to brave Moscow frosts wearing an inadequate cloth cap worn over a heavy scarf protecting my ears from an otherwise guaranteed frostbite.
It was during one of those cold spells that Zhenia asked me what kind of fur hat I had. ‘None actually,’ I admitted ruefully. ‘How come?’ ‘Lost it. You know how I am.’ ‘Now that was a stupid thing to do.’ Zhenia liked to state the bleeding obvious.
‘You’ll end up like Van Gogh, missing an ear or two. But not to worry. If you have twelve roubles on you, we can go to any fur shop and buy you one. You’re size fifty-nine, aren’t you, big-headed bastard that you are?’
I laughed with the bitterness that only a fellow Russian would have understood. ‘You a tooth fairy, or a magician? How are you going to pull a rabbit hat out of a shop when not a single counter in the city displays one?’
‘Sasha, Sasha, Sasha,’ reproached Zhenia. ‘You have no faith in your friends. I’ve done this a million times. Come on. Let’s go.’
Not knowing what to expect, I led Kapman to the fur shop in Stoleshnikov Lane and pointed him towards a pretty salesgirl with smudged mascara disfiguring her baby-blues. ‘One twelve-rouble rabbit hat, please. Size fifty-nine,’ said my friend nonchalantly.
Kapman was fortunate not to be able to see the contemptuous smile that made the girl’s face look rather less pretty. ‘Which planet are you from, comrade?’ she asked rudely. ‘Can’t you see… oops, I mean, don’t you know that we hardly ever have those things?’
‘But you are a fur shop?’ asked Kapman who liked to dot all the t’s and cross all the i’s. ‘Yes we are.’ ‘You are a fur shop and yet you have no fur hats.’
The girl’s voice effortlessly went from ennui to irritation. ‘That’s right, comrade. We’re a fur shop and yet we have no fur hats. Will there be anything else?’
By contrast, Zhenia’s voice was deadpan. ‘I’d like to see the manager please.’ ‘A whole lot of good that will do you. Well, all right. Pal Palych!?!’ shouted the girl who by then had had enough of us.
Pal Palych, a bald fiftyish man whose face looked liked a blob of butter propped up on top of a giant jumper-clad ball, appeared instantly, no doubt smelling trouble. ‘What can I do for you, comrade?’ Talking to a blind man, he was making an effort to sound polite.
‘One twelve-rouble rabbit hat, please. Size fifty-nine,’ repeated Zhenia affably, turning his whole body in the direction of the manager’s high-pitched voice. ‘Sorry, comrade. Didn’t get our supply this month. Try us in April. Or in May.’
‘You sure you don’t have just one, somewhere?’ Zhenia was still calm and collected. ‘Sorry,’ repeated the manager as he turned to go back to his office.
‘Right,’ said Zhenia, taking a step back. Suddenly a horrible convulsion distorted his face, white foam appeared in the corners of his mouth, his whole body began to shudder like a Pobeda that wouldn’t start, his fingers curled each at its own angle, and he screamed louder than I’d ever heard anyone scream indoors: ‘Thieves!!! Robbers!!! Jewboys!!! One thief on top of another!!! Nothing but blood-sucking thieving Yids!!!’
hat last accusation was rich coming from someone named Kapman, but then his audience didn’t know Zhenia’s surname. He then went into a shamanistic dance, ending up on the floor, frothing at the mouth and jerking his limbs in uncoordinated directions.
‘Christ killers!!!’ he bellowed, showing a well-tuned psychological insight. ‘D’you know who I am?!? I burnt in my tank in the battle of Rzhev! I lost my eyes protecting kikes like you!!! Should’ve let Hitler finish the job!!! Bloody Yids!!!’ Zhenia was actually born in the year of that historic battle, but his face, as I’ve mentioned before, was ageless.
His audience were stunned, and so was I. The manager and his employee, neither of whom looked Jewish, carefully helped Kapman to his feet, as if handling a precious statue. ‘Please, comrade, please,’ implored Pal Palych, ‘everything will be all right. You’ll be fine, just please calm down…’
Calm down Zhenia did, instantly. ‘Right,’ he said as if nothing had happened. ‘One twelve-rouble rabbit hat, please. Size fifty-nine.’
‘Well, you see, comrade,’ the manager sounded nervous and contrite, ‘we really, really don’t have any today. Wait,’ he begged hastily as Zhenia produced a grimace that looked even more awful than the one before.
‘Just come tomorrow. I promise we’ll sort it out, comrade. As God is my witness,’ he added in a most un-Soviet way.
Throughout this whole scene I felt like fading into the wallpaper, thinking that losing my ears to frostbite would have been the easier option. But the manager was as good as his word. The next day I stopped by the shop and walked out wearing my new hat. Everyone in the store was polite to the point of servility, asking after my friend’s health.
A fortnight later I lost my fur-lined gloves, a loss almost as irreplaceable – and potentially as perilous – as the loss of a hat.
‘How come your hands are so cold?’ asked Kapman as we greeted each other at the university. ‘Lost my gloves,’ I answered unthinkingly before I could stop myself.
‘Buy yourself another pair,’ suggested Zhenia. ‘I can help, as you well know.’ I assured my friend that no help was necessary. I’d wear my father’s spare gloves.
‘As you wish,’ frowned Kapman. As far as he was concerned, the sighted were an ungrateful bunch.