Chapter 18
Moscow Seminar
Before getting my new job, I have been selected for my Russian knowledge to take part in a seminar about new NC control units with a lecture in Moscow. The event has been organized by our Soviet partner foreign trade company. I was to complete that task before going over to brakes.
The cold was severe in Moscow, when we arrived. My room-mate in the hotel opposite the foreign ministry building has been a very intelligent young man from our lathe factory. He would later become a member of the inner circle of our sales manager for his sheep-like nature to do everything told. We have gone together everywhere, as he did not speak Russian and needed me.
The exhibition and seminar was a success, only it was engagement for a bad marriage. All the customers here worked for the military complex and products to be ordered by them would go to far-away places in closed army bases. Technical products go out-of-order, they have to be maintained and repaired. Our servicemen in the Soviet Union would not be allowed to go there and repair. Service would be done through phone by local personnel trained in our factories. The enormous cost of guarantee repairs, the parts for those repairs and replacement of recalled machine tools would be deducted from the income of the company.
This business trip made me feel something new in that city. They were past the Olympics and everything has been exhausted. It looked as if an elderly woman had been decorated for her late wedding by make-up and after that in the morning light she would be seen clearly. The reserves of the empire began to go out. This was the time of political jokes, for example: the Americans sent a message to the Soviets, if they were not to alter their policy in Afganistan, the supply of spare parts for their Party Chairman would be stopped. Well, he was to pass the next spring.
Anyway, food supply and that of expired ORWO films was ample. Drinks have been everywhere and relatively cheap. Tarifs on METRO and trams were 5 and 4 kopeks respectively. Something has changed, however. Our hotel allowance has been barely enough for the bill. And everywhere you were stopped by youths asking for chewing gum or money change. Africa came nearer.
Returning from that trip I started to assess all knowledge necessary to do my job with the brake-units perfectly. I began to renew my German first in an autodidact way, later, on the advice of my deputy department head, at a morning course in the foreign trade company for machine tool business. I would do it for half a year and in the autumn – 1982 – I would sit for a medium-degree examination successfully.
In the meantime my family tried to adapt themselves in their environments again. My wife has been long wanted, she had no problem with her job. My son did not have to sit for any examination from his 4th grade, his American – International – School certificate has been accepted after translation. But his life would not be very simple.
Our acquaintances, G., the man and old colleague of mine from the repair yard and E., the woman an elementary school teacher, were giving advice where to register him. She said the building of a new school instead of the old one has not done any good. The new director was an autocrat, she herself had to leave the school for a far-away place because of him. She advised us to take the child into a school about half a mile farther in a new living estate.
We did as we were advised. I think, he could have gone anywhere with his African past, our teachers were against children coming back from abroad. His form-master in the new school has been a neurotic woman. She called us in the first week. She said the boy was insane, too lively, he was going around during lessons. I tried to convince her it was good rather than bad. I recounted her the story of his teacher in Africa, Miss Barlaz, but she would not listen, perhaps she did not want to understand it.
We told the boy to try to behave, as she had the ability to ruin him. Partly because of these problems, partly, because we wanted to secure a continuation for his English knowledge, we tried to find a school, where it would have been possible. Alas, in the capital there was only one such school. Either he would have been living in college – we would not be able to pay for the expenses – or he would have gone daily to the other side of the city. At last we gave up.
There was another line for our actions. We were constantly looking for a suitable house to buy. For a whole year our attempts have been futile. Either houses were far from our familiar places or they were unsuitable in quality or too expensive. That was the time I tried to align my ideas with possibilities about my inherited site. Actually I accepted the improved offer of my co-owner only then, when we found a house fit for us and we needed the money.
With the sale of my car I had not too much luck. As soon as I got a plate number at the beginning of September, the husband of my sister-in-law, Leslie, advised us to take it to the second-hand car-market. I would not, but he argued so fiercely that at last I agreed. He wanted to drive. He has not been a cautious driver, even in his manner there was some aggression. On the market-place we soon found a potential customer, and to show them what the car was able he drove as a fool. He was lucky not to cause accident, but in the moment, we wanted to get out of the car to give hand on the bargain, there was a bump at the rear, and our heads wanted to fly off. Another driver with a Trabant crashed into my car from behind. He has got out and said:
"Sorry, I was looking sideways to find a parking place.”
The son of our (never) would-be customer, a young man of 19, answered him:
"You had better drive oxen.”
Anyway, that business has been postponed. The insurance company made a survey, and I got money for repair and depreciation. The broken backlight I changed at once from spare parts I bought with the car. But an order for repair has been very hard to place. Our body repair shops that time knew only Skodas, Ladas, Wartburgs. A Honda was a magic to them.
At last, when I ordered the paint by mail, a small shop did it. To sell it, we placed ads twice in vain, until Leslie’s colleague took it. Of course, Leslie disclosed my minimum price, and I had to sell it on that level. For L. his colleague was more important than me.
We could use this money for first payment for our house later, when we found it. Further funds we paid from money that we have got for our apartment. To sell it was not very hard. We placed an ad in a newspaper also on the flat, and for two days nobody phoned. We have lost our hope, but on my complaints my colleague said: "You need not many callers who find the price high. You need one who will buy it.” It was true. A young couple before their marriage who inquired about it, soon came back with the parents of the young man, who paid the money. We still had a little mortgage on the flat, we paid it to the bank and handed over all the documents to the buyers.
In some years I would pass near the old apartment and would see that those vertical iron bars I had mounted in place of the central glass square of the balcony railing, to enable my son to sit there and look out to the street while licking his ice-cream made in our small ice machine from Leningrad, would still be on place.
News have come about the death of Brezhnev. I guessed that something had happened when both our TV programs were altered. There was music of mourning and documentary films. In the evening news it has been broadcast that he had passed.
I remembered that moment on the low-draught tug in 1964, when our radio operator had got news about his coup against Khroushchev. Well, it was long before.