White Russians (a non-spy story)
chapter one: Oxford Street Santas
As 1960 and the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower drew near their ends, John F. Kennedy and the new year waited in the wings. The cold war between East and West stood at an escalated level due to the so-called U-2 Spy Plane Incident, and people were building backyard bomb shelters. But, none of that concerned twenty-one-year-old Sophia Stravnova, seated on an English chartered bus. Her thoughts actually were of the Soviet Union, but about how returning to it seemed a death sentence. On a sketchpad, she absentmindedly wrote 1961. After contemplating the number for a minute, she showed Milla, seated next to her, that the page turned upside-down still read 1961.
As the ballet company’s hired bus turned into London’s busy Oxford Street, it met with a solid traffic jam. On the sidewalk up ahead, a rain-washed group of war veterans dressed in Santa Claus costumes slowly grew in number as the rest of the forty-four Santas filed across the intersection. The company’s director and the English driver stepped off the bus to speak with traffic police, and Misha, the odious security man/Communist Party watchdog, stood at the open door, keeping his beady eyes on the troupe. When the director returned, he announced in Russian, “There will be a short delay while the rest of these undisciplined buffoons come across the road. They will be marching past us along the sidewalk, and you will all get a good look at these ridiculous hooligans. Don’t worry; we will be at the airport on time, and soon we will be home.”
Sophia gazed along the sidewalk and began sketching the red-hooded men in their traditional Father Christmas cloaks. Their beards looked to be made of makeup artist Milla’s cotton batting. The robes brought to Sophia's mind some red velvet material in one of her wardrobe trunks, carried in the hired lorry that followed directly behind the bus. Directly behind the lorry, she knew, followed a car from their embassy occupied by two KGB men. Her thoughts strayed to a trapdoor in the lorry’s wooden floor, which she and Milla had discovered while preparing to load the wardrobe. A quick inspection of this emergency exit had shown its latch and hinges were freshly oiled and it opened without effort or noise. They had held it open just long enough to see a clear path to the road below and to check for electronic surveillance devices – a skill possessed by most young, city-dwelling Soviet citizens. The first costume basket to come aboard had served to conceal the trapdoor’s existence.
Nebulous thoughts that had haunted Sophia since before the flight from Moscow were now congealing. Ten days earlier, she had pondered both her past and future while at a well-attended state funeral, held for the last of her relatives, her grandmother, Katarina Stravnova, a celebrated ballerina. The family had been eight strong at Sophia’s birth, but by 1946, the Horsemen: Conquest, War, Famine, and Death had spared only the youngest member, Sophia, and the oldest, Katarina – for whom the pale horse had finally come.
Sophia knew she would have to forsake her romantic desires by marrying a man before some bureaucrat discovered she had no family within the Soviet Union, and her official dossier would be stamped international travel disallowed. Petty bureaucrats liked nothing more than stripping away privileges from members of the elite professional artist class. With her influential grandmother gone, Sophia’s position as assistant wardrobe mistress of the Bolshoi Theatre Ballet would soon be gone, as well. She envisioned her name on a KGB to-be-watched list. With her socio-political status so diminished, she would be lucky to find work in the garment factories of Minsk. And so it came as no surprise when the director summoned her to his office just one day before the company’s departure to England. But instead of the imagined dismissal, she received a promotion. The director informed her that Comrade Kropotkin, the wardrobe mistress, had taken ill and could not travel. Expressing his complete confidence that Sophia could adequately fill the position, he congratulated her, adding that he had insufficient time to acquire a proper assistant, one cleared for international travel, so members of the chorus would have to assist her. She would be solely in charge of wardrobe for the London engagement.
As Sophie sketched Santas from the bus, an overwhelming sense of resolution gripped her. She found herself amazed at how crystal-clear the future appeared: one possible future. With pulse racing, she stood and approached the director. Feigning a worried look, she told him that they must check the wardrobe, as some valuable costume jewelry may have been left behind. The director gave his consent, and Sophia briefly returned to her seat row, placing the sketchpad on her seat while stealthily kissing Milla's forehead. She then set off for the wardrobe lorry and, win or lose, a new year turned upside-down.
As she had expected, the repugnant Misha walked with her along the sidewalk, persistently making his tiresome innuendoes regarding her love life, or absence of such, pausing only when they stopped to speak with the lorry driver. Sophia wished she had Misha’s knowledge of English, notwithstanding all the vulgarisms he would have memorized.
As they continued alongside the lorry, she deliberately dropped a glove into the gutter, where a stream of rainwater flowed over it. Crouching down to retrieve her glove, she quickly scanned the lorry’s underside. While rising, she observed the side-view mirror. Her plan would work, provided that Misha stayed true to form and did not miss an opportunity for sucking up to the KGB escort, thus leaving her alone with the wardrobe.
At the lorry’s rear door, the driver helped her up and handed her a flashlight. Misha, as counted on, waited with the KGB men. Sophia wondered if they would be less chummy by day’s end, or more so, having foiled her plot. The plan could still be aborted, and her inner voice of reason begged her to do so. She recalled how each of the troupe members had sworn an oath not to attempt defection to the West –– how the party officials had made it clear that anyone breaking this oath would live out his or her short life in the misery of a Siberian gulag. Yet, Sophia pressed on, channeling her fear into action.
Despite the faulty flashlight flickering on and off and drops of sweat stinging her eyes, she found what she needed. From a utility trunk she took a large pair of scissors and a handful of safety pins. From another trunk came a roll of red velvet, from which she cut five meters. All proceeded according to plan, but as she opened one of Milla’s two makeup trunks, a smaller case fell noisily to the floor, prompting the driver to climb up. He asked with a Cockney accent, “Everything alright, Miss?”
“Five minuets,” she replied in her best English.
When the driver had climbed back down, Sophia quickly found a large swath of cotton batting, cutting off a piece sufficient for her needs, and after a few minutes of extremely skillful impromptu costuming, she stood ready before the trapdoor.
Time now seemed suspended, for she had reached the point of no return. Up to this moment, she could have claimed her masquerade to be a great joke for the troupe, but once through the trapdoor, she would be “Alisa down the rabbit hole – and her life would change forever.
With pounding heart, she switched off the flashlight and slowly opened the trapdoor, admitting into the silent, black interior the busy street sounds and a glowing orb of daylight, in which she stood like a fairytale wizard.
On the bus, Milla sat admiring the recent drawings in Sophia’s sketchbook. Suddenly, she gasped and looked toward the Santas, who were now coming down the sidewalk. She squeezed in with the others, all joyfully swarming the windows – and as the Santas marched past, only she noticed the red-hooded figure scuttling from beneath the lorry to become the forty-fifth Santa. Tears streamed down Milla’s cheeks to meet with a broad smile.
When they were well beyond the KGB car, Sophia shouted, “Politics asylum!” to the other Santas whom, she now realized, were mostly three sheets to the wind.
Several minutes after the Santas had passed, questions as to Sophia’s whereabouts were answered. The director, Misha, and the KGB men stood in the back of the lorry looking down at the open trapdoor, remnants of red velvet, scraps of cotton batting, and Sophia’s soaked glove, the fingers of which she had arranged to form an unladylike gesture for Misha’s benefit.
When the penny dropped, the KGB men chased after the marchers, running along the sidewalk and pushing past umbrella-wielding Oxford Streeters amidst protests of “I say!” and “Steady on!”
But they were too late. Sophia sat in a taxicab between her two savior Santas, a former army captain and his sergeant-major, who were escorting her to the sanctuary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Six years later, British citizen Sophia Star (formerly Sophia Stravnova) opened Sophie’s, which became one of the most successful fashion boutiques of London’s famous Carnaby Street. Two years after that, still unmarried, she gave birth to a baby girl, Katarina.
Each December, Sophia would make ready the Santas’ costumes, and she did so until the final parade in 1968, as the tradition gave way to more somber and sober street marches.
Sophie’s exists to this day – although bought out by corporate interests – and upon the wall, as it always has done, hangs a mounted enlargement of the 1960 London Star news photo of the marching men, entitled, “Oxford Street Santas.”
That is how my grandfather, the army captain savior Santa, recounted the story. I call him my grandfather, but, more accurately, he was simply the biological father of my mother, Katarina “Kat” Star. Grandma Sophie had wished to remain unwed.
Mom grew up in Chelsea through the psychedelic 60s and 70s, through the Disco Days and into the glitzy, Glam-rock 80s, where she came into her own as a free-spirited, très chic playgirl.
My birth slowed her down somewhat, though, and being single, she began nesting with various actors, painters and musicians, all of whom I would call uncle – or aunt. That environment was not what social workers of the day would call wholesome, or even normal, but it brimmed over with fascinating people, loads of laughter, and kind-heartedness. Eventually, Mom hooked up with a Russian-Canadian artist who legally went by the single name Axel. We moved to his beautiful home in Vancouver, and there, Mom and he were married. She and I became Canadians, but kept “Star” as our surname – and we three were the happiest Canuckleberries ever to be.
Not until I’d graduated university, did I realize we were in trouble. I’d known Axel had been drinking more than his usual copious quantities of vodka, but I’d been unaware that it had become a serious problem. To make matters worse, he hadn’t produced any good work in over three years; he was going broke; and he’d taken up with one of his models.
Mom and Axel divorced the following year. Our home had to be sold to settle multiple mortgages, and mom went back to London. She wanted me to come with her, but I stayed on in Vancouver, as I then considered myself an actor and wanted to make a name in Canadian theatre before giving London a shot. Besides, my beloved Anna was still at school. This brings me to my sad and sordid tale.
chapter two: When Dumpster Divers Get The Bends
part one
With a small but regular part on a Canadian TV sitcom, my acting career had finally achieved professional status. And, financially flush for a change, I decided that when we wrapped for the year, I’d take a special vacation with my soul mate, Anna. Southern Thailand seemed a good destination.
And so, on December 25, 2004, on a moonlit patio at a Patong Beach hotel, on bended knee, I asked for Anna’s hand. She accepted; life was good. And then came December 26.
The sea drained from Patong Bay as if somebody pulled the plug, and it left behind colorful fish struggling on the sand, drowning in air. I decided to lead my beautiful fiancée and our raggedy stray dog companion in an attempt at moving as many fish as possible to tide pools.
Out on the exposed sea floor it seemed strangely calm and quiet, until hundreds of birds suddenly filled the sky and the dog started barking at the rising ocean horizon. Soon a monstrous wave devoured the rocky points at either side of the bay.
We ran for shore, but the wave quickly caught up—its cold spray raining down on us. Lamely, I yelled, “Bodysurf!” and lamentably let go of Anna’s hand. A second later, the monster swallowed us: an appetizer before the main course.
I would never see Anna again. While the monks and the military diligently cremated all the bodies, I lay unconscious in a hospital bed.
part two
Several drunken years later, the dog day evening sun cast long shadows of me and my shopping cart rattling along a Vancouver sidewalk. Then came welcomed silence as I turned into a freshly paved alley. A short downgrade allowed me to ride the cart, sailing over smooth, hot asphalt. This always reminded me of when I learned windsurfing in my past life. Farther down the alley, a chain-link construction fence protected a halfway-finished, pricey condo building. Drawing nearer, I saw a juicy, industrial-size dumpster sitting just inside the fence. I needed only to wait till dark, climb the fence, and I’d have it made. With the record heat wave we were having, there’d be pop cans galore. Even a nice, light, aluminum ladder stood against the 14-foot-high bin on the side hidden from the old night watchman’s wooden booth.
I wedged the cart between a telephone pole and the springy fence and, sitting there on a piece of Styrofoam, polished-off a bottle of Purple Haze wine. The sinking sun colored the buildings burnt sienna and the windows golden yellow, like the beautiful, bad-news autumn leaves announcing the party’s over. Seaward, the view reminded me of sunsets in the Andaman Sea, and in my head were vague images of palm trees and drinks filled with ice cubes. The flipside of these good memories would play when I slept, revisiting yet again the Boxing Day Tsunami.
At twilight, a streetlight clicked on, shining straight into the dumpster. Everything seemed to be going my way. As night closed in, I stuffed a plastic garbage bag into my pocket and hustled my six-foot, 135-pound, 33-year-old skeleton over the fence and up the ladder – a bit off-balance from the wine, but focused.
Standing on the bin’s eight-inch-wide metal rim and pulling up the ladder to flip it inside, I realized that some sort of gooey stuff covered the rim, and my sneakers were getting stuck. I tried tugging them loose, but my right foot came free of its shoe, causing me to fall backwards and drop the ladder. The left foot also came unshod as I did a header into the bin. My sneakers were fixed in place by the chemical goo like some symbolic “no trespassing” sign: Binners Beware. Losing the sneaks didn’t matter much; they were already toxic waste.
What I remember of the landing is everything going white before fading to black, and being treated to another horror-fest of nightmares, from which I awoke to the light of dawn and a rooster's crowing. I wondered what a rooster was doing in such a trendy neighborhood.
After checking for blood or broken bones and finding neither, I pulled out the plastic bag and went to work. I’d figure out later how to get back up the bin’s sleek walls.
Enthusiasm faded as I searched amongst the broken chunks of drywall, tangled scraps of wire, and the smell of something dead. The dumpster had turned out not to be the canucopia I’d hoped for. The binner’s word “uncanny” applied. Then, moving some plywood for a look behind, I spied a small backpack, barely noticeable in its dark corner.
My mood and my mission changed radically when I opened the pack and found it stuffed with neat, little packets of $100 bills, each packet wrapped with a band that shouted $10,000. A quick count came to $300,000.
To me, finding this amount of cash was like stumbling upon Captain Kidd’s lost treasure. I knew it had to be drug money, so losers weepers. No doubt, dealers being followed or chased had tossed it into the dumpster. It didn’t figure, their not showing up in the night, but they’d be coming, and they’d be heavy.
If you’re gonna steal the giant’s gold, you’d better get your ass back down the beanstalk.
I strapped on the pack and started building a ramp that would get me far enough up the wall to grab hold at a goo-free spot on the rim. At first I tried using the plywood, but, too flimsy to hold even a bone-rack like me, it snapped, dropping me back into the trash.
Next I tried leaning some pieces of narrow electrical conduit pipe against the wall. It looked good, but under my weight the pipes spread apart, and I dropped through, scraping the hell out of my ribs. It was getting monotonous, and my whole body ached. I needed a drink bad!
Taking stock of the binage, I devised Plan C. I’d take pieces of wire and make a climbing rope. All I needed to get it hanging from the rim was a bent piece of conduit pipe used as a single-prong grappling hook.
The wire, all in three-foot lengths, had to be untangled and tied end-to-end – taking forever, while I expected the heavies to show up any minute. By the time I’d finished rigging my grappling line, it must have been nearly eight o’clock. The building now echoed construction cacophony, and I could see movement on the open floors above.
The hook caught on its first throw, and a good tug on the wire proved it would hold. For better footing on the steel wall, I jettisoned my socks (no loss there), and I was up and over the top in less than a minute, with an ugly landing on the downed aluminum ladder¾in more pain, but happy to be free. Now, I had to make it off the site, and climbing over the fence in broad daylight wasn’t an option.
Peering around a corner of the bin, I watched workers come and go through the wide-open main gate; and there lay my escape route. I’d just walk straight out the front door as if part of the project.
Trying to hide my bare feet, I made for the gate along tracks left by heavy equipment treads. The powdery, dried mud felt good, soft and cold, like walking on the moon. The plan worked well right up to its sudden death 60 feet short of the gate, where a big guy wearing a spotless, white hardhat and sporting a Site Foreman badge on his electric-green safety vest noticed me: “Hey, where’s your brain bucket?”
Then, looking down for safety boots and seeing my toes, he freaked, calling over another burly boy for backup (as if he’d need it), and they walked me to the empty security booth at the main gate. Outside the booth, they started quizzing me: “What’re you doing on this private property? What’re you after? What’s in the pack?”
At the last question, my energy started crashing. “Nothing, just my medicine and some needles,” I bluffed.
The dumb sidekick took a step backwards, but the foreman called me: “Oh yeah? Let’s have a look.”
Stalling, I fumbled with the pack’s zipper while racking my brain for ideas. Making a run for it was the only plan I could come up with, but I knew it wouldn’t stand a chance. I felt sick, sicker than usual, thinking I might barf, and how that might cause him to rethink checking the pack. But my hope sank when he snatched the moneybag from my hands.
Just when the game seemed over, onto the site roared a shiny, black dump truck with a rearing stallion chrome hood ornament and Uppity Bitch written on the fender in fancy, silver lettering. From where we stood, I could hear every note of the driver’s blaring country music, which was probably why he didn’t hear his rear bumper snagging the chain-link swinging gate and all hell breaking loose. The foreman dropped my still-unopened backpack, and they chased after the Uppity Bitch truck, shouting and waving their arms. Meanwhile, I picked up the pack, slipped it onto my back and strolled through the gate, expecting to be grabbed from behind any second.
When my feet hit the asphalt, I took off as fast as my skinny pins could carry me. At the alley’s end, I looked back to see nobody after me; I was home free.
Fifteen minutes later, at my lair in the forest of Stanley Park, I lifted the camouflaged trapdoor of my hand-dug burrow, fished out a recently refilled plastic water bottle, and guzzled it dry. Next I fished out a plastic bag that contained all my worldly goods. From the bag, I pulled a pair of duct-tape-patched gumboots (my winter footwear), and I was back in action. After withdrawing three $100-bills, I wrapped the moneybag in plastic and hid it in my Paleolithic treasure stash, a hole in the ground covered with a large rock. Then I set out for the big, early-open booze store – stopping along the way at a public beach washroom to take my usual cold-water shower and to brush my still-healthy, capped teeth.
On the sidewalk in front of the liquor store sat an old, panhandling juicer known as Robert Often-hammered. His street name came from the fact that he actually had a Ph.D in astrophysics and once upon a time had been director of the local astronomical observatory. Nowadays, he looked as though he’d been sucked through a black hole and spit out the other side as a battered, little space troll. When I said I’d buy him a bottle of his hooch of choice, he cracked me a wide, toothless smile, babbling something in Trollese.
For myself, I chose a dozen plastic flasks of assorted liquor and one bottle of the finest vodka. The cashier eyeballed me and asked for ID. No ID is a good excuse not to serve a street creature, but I always carried the two worn cards that confirmed I was old enough to poison myself. When I passed him the $100 bills, he started examining them under UV light, and it hit me that the money might be counterfeit. I could hear impatient sighs from the line forming behind me, but the cashier, intent on proving my money bogus, called over the manager. This brought more sighs, and two guys moved to another checkout. Days seemed to pass as the manager scrutinized each bill. Finally, he said to the cashier, “I guess we have to serve him.”
Stoked, I almost didn’t notice the voice coming from behind me, “What do you mean: you guess you’ll have to serve him? He’s not disturbing anyone or behaving inappropriately.”
I turned to see an angel with ruby hair and gleaming, jadeite eyes. Halting her, I said, “Thanks for caring, but everything’s okay,” and I headed out the door clutching my big, beautiful bag of booze.
Outside, Often-hammered shared a poem with the unreceptive pedestrians scooting past:
…Devoid of foreboding and dread,
The warrior divine would not resign,
Till the sea should give up her dead.
With bated breath, he awaited death,
But never would it embrace him.
'Twas futile to try; they’d not let him die.
No other soul could replace him.
As I ended the recital by giving Hammered his jug, the angelic redhead appeared at my side. She asked if I remembered her. I didn’t, but couldn’t bring myself to say so.
“We were together in a play at UBC,” she added, which explained the déjà vu I was getting from her entrancing, green eyes. She continued, going on about what a great actor I’d been and how my making it as a pro had surprised no one –– an attempt at restoring my long-gone self-worth, I assumed. Then she rocked me with her empathy about Anna, telling how she’d experienced a loss similar to mine. “I thought I’d never survive,” she said, “but life goes on . . . don’t you think?”
I stayed silent, trapped in her eyes, as her words came like a tidal wave washing away everything in its path.
Slipping her business card into my hand, she kissed my grimy cheek and whispered, “Call me when you get sober.”
To no one in particular, Hammered said, “Life sucks, but you’d be dead without it.”
This brought a giggle from Diana (her name on the card) as she opened the back door of a waiting taxi. Turning back to us and indicating Hammered with a nod, she said to me, “He needs your help, you know.” Then, with a mystical smile, she hopped into the taxi and disappeared in the urban traffic.
My head reeled: Diana: goddess of the hunt and woodland beasts? Great synchronicity, or delirium? I stood frozen in place, my gaze fixed on Often-hammered, who was sprawled on the sidewalk and contentedly slurping from a paper bag. Then, as in Robert Oppenheimer’s quote about the radiance of a thousand suns bursting at once, a nuclear epiphany exploded in my mind. My knees buckled, and I momentarily blacked out.
Coming to, I found myself sitting beside Hammered, who, with one arm around my shoulders, offered a swig with the other. His breath was science fiction.
A few minutes later, as lucidity returned, I pulled myself together, stood up, gave all the booze to Hammered, and took a cab straight to the detox treatment centre.
Several sober days later, freshly released from detox, I went to the park and collected my pirated loot. I then bought some new clothes (the first in years) before checking into Pacific Pines, a ritzy rehab resort that had the most impressive brochure in the detox library’s pamphlet display. When we phoned for a reservation, they said it would be quite acceptable to pay with cash.
Blowing town would’ve been the smart move, because a new detox enrollee whom I knew from the street told me that gangbangers had been around asking questions, looking for a binner who’d recently come into money. They must have found my cart against the fence, as well as my enshrined sneakers and the grappling line at the dumpster. Connecting the dots wouldn’t have been hard. But I stayed around and completed rehab, after which I went back into Hell and brought out Often-hammered.
As of this morning, Hammered is safely in Pacific Pines, and now I feel worthy to call on the one who appears each night in my untroubled dreams – the firey-haired goddess Diana.
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