1980 found me working for a company that was constructing shelters for mobile surface to air missile launchers in Dar es Salaam. Tanzania had just kicked Idi Amin out of Uganda and there were gaps in the air defense that had to be fixed. The Air Wing had a hangar behind Dar es Salaam's international airport and Soviet transporters would land and offload stuff there. The shelters we were constructing were in and around the airport’s perimeter.
The problem with the USSR was that it did not have the money to pay its bills. As such, no commercial company would supply them fuel - unless they paid for it in cash. The Soviet aircraft captains had to arrive in Dar with a briefcase full of US dollars, if they required fuel for their return trip.
One Saturday evening, my boss invited me to his home saying that he was going to prepare crab curry. There is only one seafood dish that people from Porbandar prepare as well or better than Goans and that dish is crab curry. I usually get into trouble every time I suggest that others have a better crab curry than Goans - but so be it.
I went over to my boss’s place, expecting the best and my boss knew it. We had a few drinks and then my boss said, "Let me tell you the real reason why I called you here today." He then said, "You Goans should know the proper way to prepare this” and showed me a six centimeter in diameter by four centimeter high, mini jar of black caviar.
We had just been through a war. Food was scarce in Dar and I was very surprised by his find. The boss smiled and whispered that a Soviet Captain had exchanged three mini jars of caviar for a dozen ripe pineapples. I informed my boss that all he had to do was toast some bread, apply lots of butter on it, a thin layer of caviar and eat.
A few years later, I found myself taking a short course in a "Friendship Academy" in one of the Soviet republics. Those academies were akin to a gulag camp. Once you went in, you required ten people to sign a document for a half day pass to leave the camp. The problem was that even if you obtained the pass, there was nowhere to go. You required another permit to visit the state museum, the local university - with international students - was out of bounds, the farmers market had little produce and fewer customers, etc., etc. About the only place you could visit, without a permit, was a monument with a brass bust of Lenin. This site was also the favourite venue for newly marrieds to take wedding pictures. The other place was the train station where the passenger train arrived once a day but never on schedule. The standing joke was, if the train did not arrive early, it never would.
Easter was approaching so I asked the translator at the academy - who had earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from a Canadian university - if he knew a place where I could go to fish. The translator said that he could do better. For US $25 he would arrange to take me fishing in a boat with an engine. He also would provide all the homemade vodka that I could drink. We are talking about 1980s dollars here. $25 was a lot of money (for me) then but I also knew I probably would not get another chance to fish in the USSR, so I agreed.
The mathematician drove us for an hour to a settlement built where a river entered into what looked like a lake. Across the water were miles and miles of fertile flat land. An Orthodox Church with its brass and copper onion tops stood at the highest part of the village, but the church had not been used for years. The village itself was tired looking and there seemed to be only old folks walking on the cobblestone roads. The main road led down to the waterside and the rickety wooden dock there had just one boat tied to it.
The four meter long rowing boat moored there had an engine alright but the engine must have been from a war prior to WWII. On the bottom boards of the boat were four oars but the boat had only two oarlocks. I knew without asking that I had once again made my most repetitive mistake. I had asked if the boat had an engine when I should have asked if the boat had an engine that worked.
Now, I have had two recurring nightmares since childhood. The first is that I am in Paris standing below the Eiffel Tower, holding a miniature souvenir of the same when I accidently drop the miniature and then the actual tower starts to collapse on me - in slow motion.
The second - and more frequent nightmare - is that I am on a wooden rowboat on a shallow artificial lake adjacent to an ancient English castle. It is a Saturday evening and I am in a dark grey pinstripe suit, sitting on the forward thwart nibbling on a mayonnaised and peppered, cucumber and egg sandwich. A young woman, dressed in a summer, white cotton lace dress with a matching, veiled, wide brimmed hat is sitting on the center thwart, rowing.
Birds and crickets are chirping. Butterflies are in abundance but as I absorb and enjoy the beauty of my surrounds, I notice that the water in the lake is flowing in slow concentric circles and that we are gradually being pulled into a spiral. It strikes me that the plug of the lake might be broken. In every successive nightmare, the swirling gets faster and faster but I have always woken up before I get sucked into the drain.
Sitting in the wooden USSR row boat was a sinewy grandmother complete with a yellow kerchief tied under her chin. Both - grandmother and the headgear - are called babushkas. Soviet grandmothers were always strong and no nonsense people.
I knew that our babushka would be able to handle those oars better than the English lass and that this row boat trip would not end in a whirl, but I also knew that my first impressions are often wrong. When asked, the babushka confirmed that there were no life jackets but she offered sage advice instead. She said that the best solution was to swim to the nearest shore.
The anchor on board was a smooth, circular granite stone with a hole in the center. It looked like it had previously been used as a grinding stone for rye. Material goods were scarce in the USSR and it seemed like everything else aboard that rowing boat had been repurposed or repaired just enough to keep the vessel afloat.
I got into the boat and kept my fingers crossed that babushka would row upstream while she was still fresh. It is much easier to steer back to the dock when you are being carried downstream - whether in the boat or not. Thankfully, she did row upstream. She found a spot where the flow was not too swift and anchored there.
The fishing lines that we were provided were for heavier fish but the hooks were for smaller fish. The bait, was a bunch of snails. Everyone knows that the way to make friends with any grandmother is to ask her about her grandkids. Babushka was very proud of hers and informed me that one was winning the war against the locals in Afghanistan.
We soon began to get bites and pulled up a few 25 to 30cm shads. While they were not impressive, they kept us occupied and happy. What bothered me, were the peasants fishing from the banks. They were few and far between but they all had a bottle by their side and long, heavy duty lines that they were casting into the center of the river. I thought that was strange as catfish are usually found nearer the banks.
Doing my cost analysis, I calculated that each fish I caught cost me about four dollars. Four dollars would have bought me a basket full of tasty fish back home and twenty five dollars would have bought seafood dinner - with drinks - for four. Complicating my costing was that I would have to give the fish I caught to the translator as there were no cooking facilities at the academy.
As the afternoon dragged on, water began to seep into the boat at a faster pace. Babushka was using an old, five liter plastic bucket to periodically bail out the water. The sun was just starting to set when she suddenly cried out loud. A fishing line tied to the bow had become taut and it was evident by the pull that there was a very large fish on the line. The Ph.D. was given instructions to haul up the anchor but the way he dropped it into the boat caused me to skip a heartbeat. I was sure that he had caused permanent damage to the old boat.
The fish started swimming downstream and into the lake and the boat moved like it was a jet ski - with a turbo engine. By now, babushka was giving rapid instructions in hushed tones. I guessed that the fish on line would be over 25kgs and would feed a lot of people in her protein starved village. I could see that she was extremely excited but I could not figure out why every instruction was uttered in hushed tones.
We got pulled back to our starting point and then past it and the grandmom had made no attempt to pull in the fish. By now, I knew that I would not get the privilege of “catching” that fish - but it was still exciting. Half a mile later, babushka decided to put on the breaks but the fish was still strong. Another half mile passed before she brought the fish alongside.
I then understood what the excitement was all about. The fish was a two meter long sturgeon. One swift movement brought the fish aboard and another swift movement harvested a liter of fish eggs. To my amazement, the fish - in the protein deficient part of the CCCP - was dumped back into the water.
I then figured out what was going on! The grandmother had harvested caviar probably worth the same as her annual income and I had gone from being in a local fishing jaunt to potentially - in the eyes of the Union - being a participant in an international poaching ring. Harvesting caviar was exclusively a state operation, the bottling process was a state secret and anyone challenging the state got rewarded with a 'holiday' in Siberia.
The grandmom turned the boat around and started rowing back to the dock. A few minutes later, she started turning red. This bothered me as all along, I thought that she was in a good physical shape. Then I noticed that her eyes started to bulge, so I spun around to see what she was looking at.
Half a mile away was a grey Soviet navy vessel. As I watched, it was evident that the vessel was laboriously changing course - and with tons of black smoke billowing from its funnel - turning to our direction. As it approached closer and closer, it became clearer that the vessel was taking a course to ram us. I thought to myself, this is the year 1984 and not the novel, this cannot be happening.
I finally found the guts to ask the mathematician what our chances were. The closest bank was two hundred meters away but the water was cold. We would only survive if the current was to our advantage and we knew how to use it. The mathematician replied that the lights of the naval vessel were still off, so it was operating in stealth mode and would not stop us but the wake of the vessel might be strong enough to capsize our little rowing boat. As always, the priority of Soviet naval vessels was to make it clear to all as to who was the boss of the river.
The grey naval vessel passed within four meters of our boat yet I was not able to see a single person aboard. The wake was strong, but babushka was stronger. After the naval vessel passed, a whole lot of heated chatter took place between the translator and babushka. I knew they were arguing about the one liter of eggs in the former bailout bucket but I was wondering if babushka could deal with the interpreter. In the bad ol’ days of the USSR, it was only the informers who rose to positions of influence.
I did not see any caviar being brought into the vehicle, but I promised myself that evening that I would never return to the Soviet Union. I did not want to go to prison over fish eggs! Luckily, I only had to keep that promise for a short time.
I was studying in the sacred heart of Alabama a few years later when the USSR began to implode. The central structure of the Union, seemingly larger and stronger than the Eiffel Tower could not hold up on its own. The day it collapsed, I thought about my fishing trip, drove down to the liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka. Then I crossed the road, walked into a supermarket and splurged on an ounce of caviar and some rye bread. I ate a toast for my former comrades, hoping that their lives would change for the better and not continue in endless circles.
The Cossacks have a long history of fighting for the rulers of Russia and then against them. Now that their homeland is in the news again, I carefully watch the TV whenever they show old people dressed in threadbare overcoats shuffling down the cold streets. Although I would love to spot one of my fishing friends, I also keep hoping that they did not live long enough to witness the ruins of their country today.
Mervyn
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