Among the Russians(74)

There were as many grown-ups as children, and all the tiers were packed. What we witnessed were reckless acts of life rather than of theatre. It was as if each feat were being attempted for the first time, at the limit of its performer’s strength or skill. And it was this sense of peril which kept the audience on its seats’ edge. A man extinguished a candle-flame with the stroke of a ten-foot horsewhip, but the blazing lasso which he twisted round his body burst into uncontrollable fire and he had to leap through it. A tightrope artist lost her balance as she descended on her partner’s shoulders, and was left dangling from her safety-belt seventy feet up, like a fish floating in light. A trapeze artist who tried to complete a quadruple somersault in mid-flight twice fell into the safety-net before angrily succeeding.

The audience itself was electrified by failure. But the performers, a troupe from Leningrad, were better than any I had seen. A pyramid of acrobats skipped on a bicycle. A contortionist folded and uncoiled herself in an invertebrate dance, gliding like a snake between repulsiveness and beauty. The clowns were conjurors, the tumblers were dancers. I felt as I had at the Kirov Ballet—that I was watching the spirit of a people unleashed under cover of make-believe. The clowns, in particular, become national heroes, spokesmen of the people’s heart. A few years’ ago they used to burlesque the shortcomings of Soviet bureaucracy (but not the Party) with a loved and merciless forthrightness. Perhaps they still do; or perhaps the shortcomings have become too painful for laughter, because I never saw this. I was struck how the audience responded, not to the clowns’ humour, but to their pathos. The lover-clown’s passionate heart revived a withered bouquet for his girl; the painter-clown fell in love with his own canvas and carried it away with him spotlit into the darkness; and all the while both children and adults followed them with anxious gaze, and greeted these sentimental exploits in a stricken and disquieting silence.



If I wanted to reach the rock-cut churches in the hills east of Erevan, there was nothing for it but to accept a guide. But I waited for him apprehensively. My image of an Intourist guide had synthesized into a blend of Misha and Alexander, barely modified by the kindlier contours of Cossack Yury. I wasn’t hopeful. The Intourist office that morning was crowded by dough-faced men with badges and files, every one a likely candidate for my discomfort.

So she came as a shock. She looked a classic Armenian. In Erevan her face was almost a type—a satin sliver of features and sable eyes, divided by a long, sculptural nose. Such faces were both fragile and austere. They seemed to belong less to life than to antique bas-relief. Irina’s beauty, in particular, was hieratic and superfine. I felt vainly pleased, as if a carved Assyrian princess—purely for my benefit—had detached herself from the walls of Nineveh.

But there was no underestimating Irina, she made sure of that. Her father was Armenian but her mother was Russian, and she had spent the past six years in Moscow. To her, Russia meant the future, Armenia the past. Her dyed, ash-blond hair asserted her chosen identity. The Armenians, she said, as we drove into the hills, were hopelessly patriarchal. She thoroughly disapproved of them. She had clear ideas of the things she wanted, and these did not include an Armenian husband. No, she was engaged to a Russian-Armenian like herself. ‘I prefer Russian men—they’re easier to boss.’ She straightened her shoulders and laughed: the sound was like tinkling iron. ‘I can tell you from experience that the men get better as you go north. The Georgians are less domineering than the Armenians, but the Russians are milder than either. In a Russian home, the woman can rule.’ She gazed confidently ahead through the windscreen. She’d got everything worked out. Her fiancé was an airforce radio operator, but there wasn’t much money in that, she said, so her father had persuaded him to train as an engineer.

‘I don’t know why the Armenians are so impossible. I suppose it’s the climate down here. We live in a dust-hole all summer. But up there’—she waved a painted finger northwards—‘everything’s cooler and slower.’ She not only felt that she could coerce that coolness, but that it was partly her own, through her mother’s blood. ‘The Russians mature slower than the Armenians. I remember that from school—feeling young, looking young. You know, flat.’ She glanced down, satisfied with what had happened since. She wore her good looks like a weapon.

Decisiveness ran in her family. Her grandfather had escaped hanging by the Turks in 1915 even while the rope was being fastened round his neck. Her father had joined the Communist Party. ‘But he wishes he’d had me christened now—and he wants a church wedding for me.’ The Assyrian nose crinkled in disgust. ‘But I can’t tell you what an Armenian wedding’s like. You’d die. The groom arrives at the bride’s house all dolled up, then everybody showers them with sweets to symbolize the future sweetness of their lives. Ugh! I’m refusing to go through with that. Later all the relatives dance, holding money between their fingers, to pay the orchestra—showing off how rich they are. By this time you’re ready to retch. In the end the bride has to dance as well, and everybody sticks money between her fingers. I’m refusing to do that too, and I don’t want ribbons flying all over my car as if I was somebody’s yacht. They generally stuff a doll on the leading carbonnet—that’s meant to be good for babies—and a bear on the next one.’

‘A Russian bear?’