Little Tenement on the Volga:
An Anthology of the Journal for Medical Research Subjects
by C.S. Walton
2003
ISBN: 1891053787
$12.95 + $1 postage
Excerpt from
Chapter One: Number Four, Specialist Alley
Little Tenement on the Volga
by C.S. Walton
A small boy pointed at the portrait of Lenin hanging on the waiting-room wall.
"Who's that, Granny?"
"That's Lenin, dear."
"Who's Lenin?"
After a moment's reflection the old lady replied:
"He was a president, son."
I was in the Department of Visas and Foreign Affairs to register my temporary domicile in Samara. The waiting-room gave me the impression of stepping back into the 19th century. It was almost dark and quite silent except for the buzz of flies and the clack of a typewriter coming from an inner office. Wooden benches were crammed with peasant women in headscarves and shabby men in felt boots. I asked: "Who's last in the queue?"
Silence. I repeated the question in a stentorian voice. A few weather-beaten faces looked up, but no one answered. Each lumpy face radiated priterpelost -- a characteristically Russian expression for patience and the capacity to endure.
In frustration I strode past the row of supplicants and barged through a forbidding door. It opened into a calm and sunny office. A pair of plump ladies in fluffy jumpers sat behind their desks stirring glasses of tea. They looked up in annoyance at having their peace disturbed. I announced that I was a foreigner who wanted a propiska. As I had expected, they were pleased to have such an unprecedented distraction. I praised the beauties of the city while one of the ladies galvanised herself to pick up her pen.
A family group was gathered around a farther desk. The younger members were encouraging a man of about 60 to sign a paper. His face was twisted into a grimace as he drooled onto his shiny black suit. A girl directed his hand along the page. I was wondering what rights the poor fellow was signing away when one of the officials interrupted my thoughts.
"This document must be copied. Go to that side-office over there."
I obeyed, sticking my head through a hatch in a cubbyhole and addressing the clerk within. She snatched my papers and scanned through them. Seeing my nationality she barked: "This paper must be translated!"
"But it's already written in Russian -- otherwise you wouldn't have been able to read it!"
She shoved the document back into my hands and slammed the shutter down. I knew I should open my purse and wave a couple of dollar bills through the glass, but I was suddenly overcome with bitter fatigue.
I seized my papers and stomped out through the waitingroom of dead souls. No one stirred in the gloom.
Back home in Specialist Alley I let off steam to my neighbours.
"You see, this is how we lived and how we still live," they replied. "The bureaucracy stamps on us at every turn. They have it all sewn up. We can do absolutely nothing for ourselves. Our only recourse is bribery. Bureaucrats increase the number of rules and regulations in order to get paid for breaking them.
"We know that place. It's always the same. Those peasants in the waiting-room have probably been there so long they have forgotten why they came. They visit the city twice in their lives, for marriage certificates and death certificates. Now you see what the Soviet system has done to our people. The bureaucracy weighs down on us from cradle to grave. There is nothing we can do except wait and endure."
Read more of C.S. Walton's journey to Samara in Little Tenement on the Volga.
All rights reserved.
Garrett County Press