Mute Hands

It seems a lifetime ago that I went to Russia for the first time. Ever since I read Tolstoi's “War and Peace” I had wanted to go to St Petersburg in the winter. So, shortly after Christmas 1990, I boarded a plane that flew me to Leningrad, as it was still called then. Now it's St Petersburg again.

I can't remember anymore the picture of the Nevski Prospect, gathered from Russian novels, that had lingered for so many years in my mind, because it was replaced immediately by the real one when, trembling with anticipation, I set eyes on it. “No sooner one has set foot on the Nevski Prospect, than one is overcome by the desire to saunter there,” Gogol wrote in the past century. If that was true, it must have been a whole different sight from what I saw. What I came upon was a dismal, dirty avenue, full of milling, hurrying pedestrians, which seemed far too wide for the few belching and hiccuping cars that slithered through its brown-and-white snow cover.

At night it became even worse. At night the once so lively Nevski Prospect was deserted and spooky as a ghost town, and grimy as a dried dish cloth. But in the folds there was hidden life. It was “Perestroika” time, and as soon as we emerged from the subway, our eyes still on street level, we were jumped at by the shadow economy. There was no telling where they came from, those hunters for Western currency, with their threadbare bags, their hopeful glances, their broad grins, and their desperate attempts to keep their dignity. Their greatest problem was that they had little to offer to the spoiled visitors from the West. Business, though dangerous, had been relatively flourishing when there was still money to be changed against fantastically deflated rates, but since the official exchange rate of the ruble had plummeted by one thousand percent, they were blasted out of that racket overnight. The goods they now offered for sale had only tourist value: Russian flags (not in the shops), and for the rest mostly Soviet army stuff (belts, watches, even whole uniforms – but without the badges). Two products, however, were still in full demand: caviar (a quarter of the official price) and fur caps, the latter particularly because few Westerns visitors had taken the precaution to arm their heads adequately against the Russian cold.

One member of our group suffered from a big head and couldn't find his size. However, under the arcades of Gostiny Dvor, St Petersburg's largest department store, luck finally seemed to smile on him. Two teenage boys were offering black fur hats, one of which fitted his scalp perfectly. A truly satisfied customer, he handed them a ten-dollar bill, the usual price, but one of the boys shook his head. He wanted fifteen. He wrote the number on the palm of his hand and showed it to him. Though I had seen that happen before, most Russian black-marketeers were perfectly able to count to a hundred in English, and only further communication was done by gestures. But it struck me that these boys hadn't spoken at all. The moment of enlightenment came when I saw them making signs to each other and I realized that they were deaf. Of course! I thought. It was precisely those segments of Soviet society who were wholly dependent on government support for their livelihood and who were incapable of fully partaking in the budding free-market economy – old-age pensioners, handicapped people, etc. – who suffered most from the current economic tolerance. Anything worth having was seeping away to the expensive shadow circuit, where it could only be bought dearly with Western currency. If they wanted to survive, they probably had no other choice than to join the black market.

I signed to them that I had seen they were deaf (I once attended a sign language course for a term) and they were delighted. I noticed two other boys of the same age and the same outfit joining them, so I asked them if they were deaf too, but a blank stare was the only answer I got. Then suddenly, one of them did something strange. He took the fur hat, put it on the head of our fellow tourist, grabbed the ten-dollar bill and shoved it into the pocket of the deaf boy. He proceeded to push him against one of the columns of the arcade while shouting something in his ear. But of course the deaf boy couldn't hear him. Only then did I understand what was going on. They were policemen, undercover agents of sorts. Black-marketeering was still officially a criminal offence, and this was one of their tactics to arrest perpetrators and pack them off to God knows where.

Utterly perplexed I stood by and watched as the two boys were led to a waiting van, their hands tied behind their backs.

They couldn't speak anymore.