Siberian Wallpaper

Four days later news arrived that the coup d’etat had failed. Mike McDowell organized a party that evening in the dining room, and everyone dressed up. Elaborate toasts were made, which Igor translated. The chief engineer’s wife stood up and belted out a patriotic song in Russian, and the officers joined in the chorus, their hands over their hearts. A group of five Australians, led by Mike McDowell, sang “Waltzing Matilda.” The waiters wove through the crowd with trays of drinks. A Brazilian gentleman held up a glass and shouted, “Death to our enemies!” and a large man in a floral shirt sang the first two verses of “It’s a Grand Old Flag.”

Soon afterwards I was swept up to the chief engineer’s suite where he and his wife pressed us with dishes of smoked fish, bread, sliced apples and bottles of Russian liqueur. My grandfather sat beside me, his eyes half-closed, grinning from ear to ear. Across the table the Brazilian gentleman was telling a joke that involved a paratrooper and a fierce tribe of Eskimos. A stout German man with white hair to his shoulders translated the joke into Russian for the beaming chief engineer.

The German’s name was Willy. I complimented him on his Russian, as the chief engineer wiped his eyes and poured another round of vodka. My grandfather had dozed off on the couch. Willy told me he’d spent three years in a Russian POW camp during World War II. When he finally made it home, half-dead, he found his wife living with an American soldier of the Occupation. “Who could have guessed,” he said, his voice husky, “that I would one day be sitting on a ship such as this, celebrating the end of a coup in Moscow?”

We came to the town of Pevek a few days later. The military had closed the Communist party headquarters just three hours before. The party sign had been broken and the door sealed with a large sticker bearing signatures and the date. The outlawed flag of Russia, instead of the hammer and sickle, flew from the Town Hall. Leaving the anthropology museum I heard a window across the parking lot bang open and a voice called out, “I LUF YOU AMERICA!”

At the end of our tour we were taken in groups to visit local homes. Our guide brought ten of us to the apartment of a friend, an engineer for Aeroflot. The bus stopped at a tall, run-down apartment complex and our guide led us up four flights of stairs. The engineer, his wife, and a neighbor welcomed us at the door. We crowded into the narrow hall and stopped. To the left was a children’s room, just big enough to hold bunk beds. Next to this was a kitchen the size of a closet. There was a main bedroom to our right, with a bed, two chairs, and a huge poster of Muhammed Ali wearing red boxing gloves. Except for a tiny bathroom there were no other rooms. The last of our group squeezed in and a silence fell. In the hush I knew we were all thinking the same thing: How could a family of four possibly live here?

Then our hosts ushered us into the bedroom and began pouring vodka and cherry liqueur. Our coats were whisked off and plates of cut fruit, chocolates and smoked fish passed around. One of the women turned on a radio and a garble of Russian pop music poured out. Our guide cleared a space on the floor and pulled the neighbor, a vivacious woman in a short black skirt, into a sort of disco routine. We cheered them on. Our hostess took the hands of the Brazilian gentleman. While she moved her hips to the music, he began to dance the salsa, one hand on his stomach, the other flung over his head. A gray-haired couple from Connecticut started to waltz in a circle. We left over an hour later, flushed and smiling, and they walked us down the stairs and waved as the bus pulled out, beckoning us back with sweeping gestures.

“Peking was a beautiful city then,” said my grandfather. We were up on the bridge, although a thick fog had lowered and we couldn’t see a thing. “There were great flocks of pigeons, not like now, with tiny bamboo pipes strapped to their backs.”

“What?!” I said, “Who put them there?”

“The townspeople. Then they’d release them. When the birds flew overhead the air rushed through the pipes. It made a beautiful sound. I’ve never heard anything like it.” He shook his head. “Everyone kept songbirds, too. They used to carry them through the streets, and at festivals they’d hold the cages up so the birds could see the processions. The more they saw, the richer their songs were supposed to be.” He paused and we looked out at the fog. At the other end of the bridge the Russian officer on duty lit a Marlboro cigarette. The smoke trickled up the window.

“How long were you in Peking?” I asked.

“Over a month. War with Japan was just breaking out and the Americans were all evacuated, but I had a British passport and couldn’t leave. Then the Japanese captured the city.”

“How did you get out?”

“Luckily, I’d kept that document from the zoologist gentleman in Manila, the one we gave the cockatoos to. He was collecting animals for Hirohito’s private zoo, and we thought that’d be a fine home for our cockatoos. They were driving us mad by then; they loved to chew my colored pencils. The zoologist was very excited. He’d never seen that species before. That’s when he gave us a fancy scroll, saying we’d presented this gift to the Emperor.” My grandfather grinned. “Well, when I showed it to the Japanese authorities in Peking they almost fell over themselves. It was like having a letter from God. Once I made it to the border I was able to get on the Trans-Siberian Railway.”

“What cockatoos?” I asked, “Where did the cockatoos come from?”

“The Goffin’s cockatoos. I didn’t tell you about them? They’re very rare. The only place they nest is the Tanimbar Islands. We picked them up for a couple sticks of tobacco.”