The Driver

Sergei Gerasimenko

First Day

Morning began with the usual long and tiresome phone calls. I didn't feel like talking - you want the morning for yourself, you can solve other people's problems at night. Wash, breakfast, the TV monotonous, like a machine - something wrong with it though. Only two channels are working. Either it's broken, or someone has died. Automatically I shift into the right gear for hearing about the death of one of our beloved and great political leaders. I feel nothing personally.

The day. Twenty minutes flagging down a taxi. I couldn't be bothered talking with the driver. What could he tell me that I didn't already know.

"So what's life going to be like now?" His question only reinforced what I had already guessed; someone had died.

Bored, looking through the window, watching the dust swirl on the road, I mumbled: "Things can't get any worse than they are already. There's no way out of it."

"But don't you think they might improve the situation?"

I glanced at him, interested.

"Who are 'they'?"

It was his turn to look at me. Askance. And I saw a worried man, a player in some risky game. It was the same look, gesture, that I saw in everybody I met that first day of the coup. But the taxi driver was the first. And not knowing who I was, where I stood, he threaded warily as he wove his version of events around me, tugging me out of my peaceful idiocy into a jerkier version of that same world. And he did more than that. The radio was on. The first decree of the State Emergency Committee was being read out in monotonous and minute detail to a background of some symphony or other. It droned on and on, all the way to work.

We trudged through the gates at work en masse. Inertia drove us forward, unthinking, the real world, people, everything, all blurred. I spent the day in listless melancholy. I just wanted to sit or lie down. Apart from an aching clod of bones and stomach, a desire to make my head work, there was nothing. People I knew and didn't know were discussing, arguing about something. I desperately wanted to know and this hunger gnawing at me decided everything. I forced myself to eat (perhaps for the last time at prices like these), growing uneasy. Where were we going? Back to an entombed past? Till now there had been life, and the borders of the past had been defined.

Then the issue was decided for us. Tanks in the city.

Crushed. And a desperate need to know where my family and friends were. My daughter was at my sister's. Call her. Everything okay there. Wife at work, everything okay there too. The shops are open, cars still on the roads. Nothing has changed - so long as you don't count the tanks, tanks, tanks.

I drive around to see friends. Almost all of them are at work. Nothing strange is happening, so long as you don't think about the tanks.

I read Yeltsin's first decree. A few minutes ago a column of APCs had ground and clanked its way past. I pulled up on the side of the road, watching. This news from Yeltsin at the White House is like a cool draught of spring water. An absence of information about the coup had to point to the success of its leaders. Thank God this hadn't happened yet. Yeltsin's decree held out some hope for a stand against the junta. I need to know the truth.

I drove to my sister's to pick up my daughter. In the city, people are standing around the tanks and chatting with the soldiers. Children are clambering about on them. The city is already becoming accustomed to this new argument. At my sister's everything is fine. They think the new authorities will improve the economic situation. No point in arguing or trying to explain. I take my daughter home to my wife. Now I'm free to move.

"I'm going out for a while."

"No you're not. Think about us." And I did think about them.

"I won't be long. I just want to have a look at what's going on down Shabolovka, then I'll come back."

"Then please don't get involved in anything." Inside myself I asked for their forgiveness. How could I not get involved now. I couldn't just stand around and watch this.

Down at the television tower on Shabolovka, tanks bristling stand with their barrels facing the city. How many are there? There aren't any people at the main entrance to the television tower. Strange. I felt that there should have been. Surely the people hadn't swallowed the pill being dispensed by 'Vremya', the 9 o'clock news, voice piece of the past? Rain, raw and cold, almost nobody around. If there wasn't an excited crowd of people here then it meant things were already going badly down at the White House. I drive down the riverbank road towards the Russian Parliamentary building. Then abandon the car for the metro. Pamphlets stuck on the metro wall. Handwritten: "Everyone - to the defence of the White House of Russia, the fatherland is threatened." A young kid, enjoying himself, is plastering them about the wagon. Older people, myself included, share the same bewildered look at the absence of the ordinary underground bustle. This kid, running about, said more than anything, that this bleak and subdued city had still not worked out what was going on.

I approached parliament from the riverbank road on the Kiev Station side. The first barricades of fencing, stone and planks were already in place. Vehicles had been swung in and turned over. The main staircase leading up to the building was completely blocked. People had lit fires, warming themselves. They walked about, stamping their feet to keep warm, and stood around short-wave receivers listening to America, London, Berlin. But what about our own tv and radio stations? The information blackout deprived us of a reason to bicker amongst ourselves. Muscovites here were getting ready for battle. Two young men in paramilitary uniforms, brandishing megaphones, were corralling people, issuing orders, beginning to form a civil defence brigade out of the chaos. The loudspeakers hanging off the walls of the 'White House' crackled with the voices of Sasha Lyubimov from 'Vzglyad' and the woman who hosts 'Fifth Wheel', one of the more popular Leningrad programmes.

"They're coming!!!" The crowd shuddered and swayed in the direction from which the attack was expected.

"Women! Move back! To the 'White House'!" After a minute or two, the tension relaxed: false alarm. A chain passes bricks and fencing. They continue building barricades.

"We need forty men, over there where the fellow has his hand raised." About forty, perhaps a few more, bustle over and head off after the raised hand. Faces indiscernible in the rain, heads bent, only the raised hand to go by.

"We need paper, any kind, to print leaflets, and a photocopier. We have to get printing. It'll be too late tomorrow."

"Those ready to defend Mossoviet: follow that guy there. There's no transport. You'll have to walk. We have to defend the printing presses over there."

"Anyone who needs plastic sheeting? If you haven't brought a raincoat or you're cold come over here and get some."

"Doctors, go to the entrance."

"We need twenty mattresses to build bunkers inside." Well if they need mattresses, let it be mattresses. We go down, and pass by some unfinished road works into a flow of people moving in the other direction:

"Hey, where are you guys going?" Everyone was pitching in to the best of their ability. There was no rite of passage by age, rank or Party membership. There was a readiness to defend the White House simply for what it was. The longer we held out, the more people they would manage to phone and the greater would be the number who knew the truth. Everyone was doing whatever they could, none of them knowing what might happen in five minutes, an hour. A loud 'hurrah' went up from the left side. The roar of tanks, people run towards them. They're on our side? Confusion. Applause, the Russian flag on the leading tank. We weren't alone. Finally we had something to fight with. We clear a path for them through the trucks blocking the way. The soldiers are met with applause, cries of "Hurrah, good on you, Tamanskii!". Isolated cries of "It's a provocation, don't let them through", could be heard. But deputies from the White House come forward holding the Russian flag, ignoring the possibility of a trick. Smiling, open faces peering out of the tank hatches. They're on Russia's side. The tanks settle around Parliament House, pointing their barrels away from it. A short wispy man wearing a deputies badge excitedly explains to the people:

"They were ordered to take up positions around the White House. So we said: "Well, let them obey their commander." See, they're defending the White House. But I beg you: speak with every soldier, make them understand who is in power now, and how this might all end."

And on that first night nobody did know how it might end.

"Attention all able-bodied men, to the entrance! Women pull back."

"Attention! On my right, columns of five, form up!" A leader emerged out of the spontaneously formed brigade of five. An order was given:

"Three paces forward! Quick march." A second, then a third rank formed. A sprinkle of middle-aged men, tailored suits, leather briefcases, you could not but notice, well heeled apparatchiks, not the sort of people you meet riding the metro. The motley crowd formed up to receive its orders.

"The first two ranks, three paces forward, march! Officers? Come over here." The officer is given his task. We stand watching, waiting patiently. Finally the order comes:

"Form up!" (Definitely an officer, his voices swells over the mob.) "Attention! Right turn! At the command, march!" Through the thinning crowd, tired from waiting, cold and rain, past the bonfires and barricades where people seem to have coagulated and stuck. We arrive at the appointed place. Chaos all around.

"Ok! We have to fix this barricade and rebuild it so it faces the direction of possible attack." Dismantle? A sense of camaraderie sets in as we take it apart. It seems there is a whole art devoted just to barricade building. A bristling animal grows out of the piles of fencing, steel rodding, stone, brick and construction machinery. And if the army attacks and the people pour back to the building, a lot of blood will be shed. People will be shoving one another onto their own barricades, impaling themselves on their own spikes. Then we learn that should the army break through, we are to run not in the direction of the White House, but the other way, into the city. But what about you, our commanding officer, a soldier pretending to be a civilian? They'll find out, you know.

The night drags on and on. Snatches of command drift by. Formations of people moving in different directions. Other groups just standing, joking, singing. They haven't joined the voluntary defence units and haven't found anything for themselves to do. Parliament House is ready. Announcements come over the loudspeaker system. Rumours circulate. Ideas on how to cope with a tear gas-attack are thrown around. Waiting, sitting by the fires.

All the faces are familiar now. It feels good to share your joy and sadness, even if it isn't with friends. A human chain stands on the staircase. Behind it, the entrances are closed. We can rest now, weary from the labours of the righteous. Anecdotes swap hands. We talk nonsense about life. Politics is ignored by unspoken but mutual agreement. Enough, everything has already been said. We are here. This already meant a lot. And then finally someone brought something for us to eat - bread and milk. In a taxi truck. It gets bogged driving across the muddied lawn. We push it out, over towards the barricades. We form a chain and start parcelling food out to those above us. A cry of 'hurrah' rings out on the parliament balcony, words of thanks. We're only human and we need to eat. I've got no idea how many people shared each carton of milk and loaf of bread. Towards dawn we cheered up a bit. Sausage and sandwiches appeared. Someone brought coffee. Delicious - here in the early morning, on the riverbank, teeth chattering from the cold and constant anxiety - hot coffee.

The cries: 'Get ready!' and 'They're coming!' were the only ones we heard that night. Loud and unforgiving. And each time they rang out we had to close up our ranks of living bodies.

Early morning. People begin to appear on the streets. The Metro begins running. Buses careen about the streets. How many of us are left by 8am? Very, very few. Parliament House stands naked. I was terribly miserable that morning, Tuesday. I headed home.

Second Day

It was cold. Black clouds lacerated the sky above the city. The day held its own surprises. The TV. A number of the nouveau riche, the new Soviet bourgeoisie, entrepreneurs, had been put behind bars, allegedly for preventing me from living in a free country. Hard currency transactions necessary for going abroad are forbidden. The people welcome the ascent of strong personalities to the helm of the country... It went on and on till I felt like throwing a brick at the stupid black box: "Fuck you, I'm not an idiot!"

I get my car out of the garage and with three mates set off for the White House. We pass through the barricades we built yesterday and stop near the front steps of the building. In comparison with the day before the crowd is much bigger. Our front rank from last night was already in the rear now, the inner rim of a living wheel the army would have to break through if it struck.

The number of fires and tents has also grown. Commands were now being given to ranks that had been given numbers. There was a sense of battle readiness, a greater sense of organisation. Guitars had appeared around the fires. People were singing in muted tones. The occasional smiling face could be seen in the crowd, even the sound of laughter. A short fat woman had forgotten her fear and was shouting at the crowd: "Girls, when the tanks come, we have to scream and shout. It's our best weapon. We'll deafen them with our screaming."

I passed through the chains of living flesh, through a rudimentary check point, and went up to the main entrance to the building. The walls beside the entrance were plastered with lists: the names of those organising the defence of the building's perimeter, where food could be got, people searching for their friends, even someone who wanted to swap apartments had left their telephone number.

Here in the inner ring, the discipline and the organised nature of the defence effort calmed me down. Medical points dotted about. People with gas-masks slung over their shoulders. But the crudely fashioned noticeboards with Yeltsin's decrees, letters and notes, information from other cities in the Union, appeals, all put my nerves on edge again. The wet leaflets shivering from the cold and rain, stuck together, carry me to some huge concert hall where a play about a long forgotten revolution is being staged. What have we come to when I, my friends, my family, my daughter become actors in a play whose curtain call is our actions, our feeling, our lives.

My companions meet their friends from the Institute. Joy at the meeting turns into fear for the safety of Parliament House. Still talking, we walk out onto a parapet on the building overlooking the square. Below there is a heaving sea of people buffeting the White House. Shouts of command, fires, expectation and laughter. The bitter taste of hopelessness has disappeared. A festive mood descends, memories of our cloudless childhoods when we went out to watch the demonstrations and parades. It wasn't an out of place feeling. It was the unity of so many people, united in spirit, in preparation for the struggle to earn the right to call themselves free. There was no place to hide, no corner to shrink into.

Iron bars, bricks, Molotov cocktails and spears fashioned from steel fencing are laid out on the parapet. They feel comfortable to the touch. Some people approach us wearing Red Cross arm-bands. They ask for volunteers to man stretchers and help the medical orderlies in the case of injuries or deaths. They carefully choose four of the strongest out of those who step forward. Our concern switches to our lack of knowledge about where the tanks and soldiers are in the city, and what they are doing. Just then the command runs around the edge of the White House:

"Get ready! Tanks on Leningrad Prospekt!" We scatter:

"Hey! We'll catch up later. Best of luck!"

They head off to the position assigned them, while we make our way through the closed ranks and turned over vehicles.

"Well, you ready then?" There was no point in replying. We had waited long enough for this meeting, whether it was with tanks, or the devil. We jumped in the car and just managed to squeeze through the outer barricade before a heavy crane closed the riverbank road. That was that, then. Tanks or whatever other military vehicles came this way would only be able to reach Parliament after battering their way through the barricades.

What direction could an attack come from? We take a short cut. APCs are drawn up in front of the 'Moskovskii Komsomolets' building. The favourite paper of the young people in the city. And a constant critic of anything conservative. It was easy to see why the Emergency Committee had shut it down. The soldiers there are arguing about something and obviously not going anywhere particularly quickly. We decide that there is quite a good chance of finding troops on Khitrovoye Field. On the edge of town and, tucked in behind the factories and military barracks, it could easily hide at least a motorised division. Along Begovaya St, down Khoroshev Highway, along a street chewed up by tank tracks, we come out on Khitrovoye Field. Sure enough. Behind the Church we can see several lines of tanks standing idle. There is none of the hustle and bustle of imminent battle.

We decide to have a look at Tushina airfield on the edge of the city. And there at the exit to Metro Aeroport we finally meet a column of APCs clanking along Leningrad Prospekt towards the centre of the city. Well, we're taxi drivers after all, these are our roads, we'll just tag along for a while and still get back in time to warn them at Parliament House.

But the column betrays our hopes, does a U-turn and heads in the opposite direction. A military parade, no evil intentions here, strung out in a line, they head back towards Tushina airfield, leaving room for the cars scuttling by them.

At the airfield itself, the Taman Division is drawn up, row after row, bristling with firepower. A lone sentry guards the gates. We go over to him. An Uzbek, he is fully armed and wearing a flak jacket. He ignores our questions, but thumbs us towards an officer emerging from the tents on the edge of the runway:

"The boss is coming, ask him."

A young lieutenant, swaddled in belts and weapons, nods to us:

"Who are you?"

"We're from the White House of Russia. The lads at the barricades there would like to know if you're going to shoot them or not."

He wrinkled his nose: "I'll only shoot at someone who is armed. Are you armed? No. Means I won't shoot you. I'm used to having it out on equal terms." He wouldn't be drawn on political issues, turned and silently walked back toward the tents. His assurances were hardly convincing. We didn't have any weapons. He did. On the other hand, there were weapons inside the White House. But not many. What sort of fight would it be? More than likely brother against brother, father against son. Surely it meant civil war again. Were would a man doing his duty draw the line? We were blind, wandering in a pitch black room with a single exit. Only questions. No answers.

We drove toward the city centre. Heavy tanks were idling on the riverbank road that runs along the Kremlin wall. A group of officers and civilians were standing in a circle discussing something. We walked over. The flagging conversation sparked up at our arrival. A major in battle dress who had obviously had a few to drink smiled, nodding toward the tanks:

"You see, it's just a big tin. There's nothing inside it. Understand. Someone ordered us to drive over here and park. Park? Why? I don't like this any more than you do."

"What exactly did they order you to do?"

The major grinned. "In case of demonstrations, keep the crowd orderly. Don't let them onto Red Square."

"And how do you plan stopping us?"

"We're going to block the bridge with this big bastard."

"Major, it won't be hard to go around it."

"That's what I mean, go ahead if you like. But what do you want? Do you know what our Division emblem is, the Kantemirovskii's?.. You're right - oak leaves. Oak, I'm telling you, thick as bricks!"

We all laughed. Laughter in the middle of a plague. A good joke. But neither you nor I have any guarantee, Major, that tanks with ammunition and quite different orders aren't standing somewhere nearby. Or that lorries won't bring ammunition in: "Arm your tank Major, listen up Major, your orders are..."

Home again.

Watching the TV, I feel sorry for the newsreader. He looks as if he might actually believe the things he's saying. Calls for justice and peace, for understanding of the situation which has developed, justification of the Emergency Committee, the necessity of Gorbachev's retirement and their ascent to power. But following this - announcements, decrees, orders. Too many, and too many contradictions. You can sense it. They're clutching at straws, gasping for breath, they've run out of steam, they're too late. The Emergency Committee is doing everything it can to capture Yeltsin.

I change into something warmer and head off for Parliament House. I don't care anymore who is organising the defence. It could have been Yeltsin or Peter the Great for all I cared. I just went to lend a hand to the opposition to the Junta, this stinking pack of jackals, this dictatorship.

I stop my car on the other side of the river opposite Parliament, on a road chewed up by tank tracks. I walk across the bridge along with other people who have also begun to believe in their victory. Huge Russian flags are being borne along, waving. Through the barricades and the swelling crowds of people galvanised in their joint efforts. Past a group of people listening to the latest news from inside the White House. Further and further, up past the American Embassy, around the front of the Stalinist tower which dominates the square and down the steps at the back, filthy with the thousands of feet which have trod them in the rain, past Metro 'Barrikadnaya', a monument to barricades from another revolution, back down to the riverbank road, frustrated at not finding something to do.

From the direction of the Ring Road, shots, like pop guns, hardly threatening.

A car pulls up by the barricades in the darkness. Faint cries of 'hurrah' swell into thousands of voices: "Shevardnadze, Shevardnadze!" What brought you at precisely this moment? God, Fate, Providence? What a curiosity you've become. People, forgetting the deaths that have just been heralded, are welcoming you.

While you were breaking through the barricades and battery of television cameras, the city joined its bloody brothers - Tbilisi, Vilnius, Riga, Baku, Nagorno Karabakh.

These pop gun sounds were tugging somewhere at the back of my mind. I was being moved towards them by no more than a childish curiosity. It was coming from the direction of the Old American Embassy. I headed up to the ring road.

The rumble of tank and people's shouts could be heard from the tunnel, the roar of motors. From up on the bridge, it was clear that screaming women had not been enough to stop them. In the distance, people were clambering onto the APCs halted in front of the second set of buses.

A boy is standing, arms outstretched, crucifying himself on the barricades. To one side a man drunk, swaying, covers his face with his hands then falls to his knees and begins pounding the road with his fists.

The APCs have already gone into the tunnel. I cross to the other side of the bridge. They trundle up towards the second set of buses blocking their passage. It looks like a man is hanging out of the back of one of them. This particular APC thunders straight into a parked bus. People standing on the roof fall off. The APC rocks back, again and again it tries to bash a way through for itself. People on the bridge and side roads watch helplessly, throwing bricks and sticks. Then the APC lurches around and heads back towards the tunnel and away from the barricade made of buses.

All around me the shocked silence is only broken by sobbing. Then the pitch of the grief changes. The sobbing is drowned by angry shouts and a baying for blood. I take up the call. I howl. Blood for blood.

Below, near the buses, a voice clutches at me, calls me to give them a hand with a bloodied body:

"Get an ambulance." I pick it up. The body has no face. Only blood. There's no way back to the White House. People, thousands of people there. We go left, into the New Arbat. "Someone get us an ambulance." Hold on kid, hold on. You're too young to die. A police jeep crosses the New Arbat. "Stop, you bastard" We run towards it. But it doesn't stop, it keeps going.

Hatred.

"Over here!"

Another police jeep comes through the crowd.

Please stop!

It takes an age to find the key to open the back door.

I'm holding him under the arms.

The left arm juts out at a strange angle, though the bone seems okay.

"Move it, move it!"

"I can't. We can't get though. Barricades."

What makes us so stupid?

"Hold on kid, hold on." I don't know if I was whispering or shouting.

Finally ahead of us we see the lights of an ambulance winking. A woman in white: "Calm down, don't shout, just calm down."

Then I was heading back.

Across the bridge, down the side road towards the Old American Embassy.

The glow of fire out of the tunnel. The thrill of the hunt.

A nervous, aimless, unbroken volley stutters over the New Arbat.

Keep firing you bastard, I'll get you, even if I have to crawl to get at you.

Sergei Gerasimenko
August, 1991