Nakhodka High Life, Part I

I have lived for major periods of my life in different Russian cities – in Moscow, twice, once from 1987 through 1989, and again from 1997 through 2001; most recently in St. Petersburg, from 2006 through 2008; and in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii, on the Kamchatka peninsula, from 1992 through 1994. For some reason, though, the Russian city that stuck with me most in terms of experience was Nakhodka, where I lived in 1995 and 1996, while on contract with Sealand Service to work as the Operations Manager in Vostochny Port. Vostochny Port, located about 170 kilometers east of Vladivostok, and maybe 20 kilometers outside of Nakhodka, is the largest container terminal in the Russian Far East.

Life for any westerner in Russia is an adventure, in the best and worst senses of the word. On the positive side, you grow and stretch and expand, and learn things about yourself and the world you never dreamed possible. Living in Russia at that point in my life meant, for me, complete and total immersion in Russian language, culture and society – a continuation of the baptism by fire I had undergone on Kamchatka and earlier, on the fishing fleet with Marine Resources. I wanted the whole kolbasa; I wanted to work with Russians, speak Russian at work and at home, watch only Russian television, eat only Russian food, play basketball with Russian buddies, go the banya at night, explore all of the familiar and unfamiliar mazes of foreign life, lose myself in the experience. Strengthening the positive were two mighty circumstances working in my favor – first, I had a serious girlfriend from Kamchatka, the wonderful, mystical, baby-blue-eyed Oxana (whom I later married and who remains with me, the angel). Second, I somehow had a serious job, a job with career prospects, with Sealand, and the thousands of dollars per month flowing into my bank account would go a long way towards easing my debt burden of student loans.

There were, of course, multiple downsides to complete and total immersion in Russia. Once you get past the romance of living in a foreign land, I realized, you quickly realize that the country you moved to has exactly the same proportion of idiots, greasy lowlifes, greed heads, blowhards, moral degenerates and pinheaded mean-spirited dingdongs as the country you left behind. The good citizens of your adopted country will be more than willing to laugh at you, kick your ass, take your money, degrade and try to destroy you, mentally defenestrate you in their native language (which, no matter how hard you try, will never really and truly master), make you a figure of fun, rip your heart out, hand you your head and have a grand old time talking about you long after you’ve fled the scene with your tail between your legs. Russians in particular; remember, these are the people whose ancestors shot foolish Polish pretenders to the throne of the Russian Empire out of cannons towards Warsaw, back during the Time of Troubles. And, as Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grand Army learned, they would rather burn down Moscow than let any foreigner get the best of them.

I knew I was in for it the first time I saw Nakhodka, at the tail end of a sweltering hot August day. I had just spent three days in Tokyo on the way over, visiting Sealand’s corporate headquarters there and going from conference room to conference room to meet with my new Japanese colleagues, who would shake their heads and admonish me, “Things are very very bad in Votostochiniy! Very bad!” At one point one of them grinned and asked me, “Peter-san, you like in Vostotochsiniy?” “Yes, I do, Hiroto-san,” I answered politely. My colleagues whispered quickly among themselves in rapid Japanese and then entire room erupted into gales of laughter. “Hahahahahaha! Peter-san like in Votstotochniniy! Hahahahahaha!” I felt like some sort of sacrificial chicken; the omens were all bad. On the train ride from Tokyo to Niigata airport, Dan, my partner, hung-over and panting in the heat, sweated and fussed incessantly with his bags and briefcase until he wound up losing his passport and plane ticket, a fact he only discovered while registering for our flight. Hordes of sullen beer-bellied Russian men in cheap suits and their garishly made up, leggy molls, waiting for the flight to Vladivostok, pillaged the duty-free shops and lurched around the cocktail lounge, guzzling liquor and chain smoking.

By the time we landed in Vladivostok and cleared customs, I was delirious. Oxana met us at the airport, radiant, fresh and sunnily blonde, all smiles for me. Dan had arranged for our driver, Andrei, to meet us and take us to Nakhodka straightaway. Andrei, whose slouch and haircut suggested a previous incarnation as a brown throw rug, stood in the parking lot, stuttering out some explanation about the disappeared tire from the company Blazer, which he had changed the day before, only it turned out to be defective and he left it at the shop and so now we had to drive on the spare...

The drive from Vladivostok to Nakhodka is, actually, quite lovely – a sporty windy two-lane asphalt track winding through sun-dappled groves of live oak and picturesque high fields with views of the Sea of Japan sparkling in the distance. Every few dozen kilometers it passes through rough villages of one and two story ramshackle houses surrounded by fruit trees and lush green gardens. A long stretch of the road runs right along the ocean with lovely views of islands like gumdrops scattered here and there on the bounding blue – and many times I would enjoy nothing more than to pop some jazz into the tape deck, Coltrane maybe, and tool along with Oxana, bopping to the beat and the sunshine and the cool sea breezes.

Not today, though. Today heat, jet-lagged misery, humidity and lack of sleep adrenalized me into a buzzing insectile wakefulness. Everything whitewashed, colors fading in the hot air before my bulging bloodshot eyes. I blabbered nonsense in Russia to Oxana who, irritated at my incoherence, scrunched up against the opposite door and pretended to look out of the window. Up front, Dan and Andrei argued incessantly about the lost Blazer tire. The road had a long unpaved stretch and billows of choking white dust flew up around us as we bounced blindly through the gritty clouds. Periodically the grime parted to reveal other cars slaloming madly through an obstacle course of potholes and gravel piles – little rocks peppered our windshield as we swerved around avoiding head-on collisions.

At last, we got out of the dirt and back onto asphalt. The road climbed steeply up a pass into green rolling mountains, the Blazer laboring on the relentless grade until at last we topped out. There was a huge gray wooden boat stuck on top of a boarded-up dilapidated old concrete building up in the middle of a parking lot on top of the pass, a symbol, Dan explained, of Nakhodka’s proud maritime trade history. Although as nearly as I could remember, Nakhodka’s proud maritime history consisted mainly of its role as a transit point for political prisoners, whose only view of the city came when they were kicked out of livestock wagons after traversing the Siberian hinterlands and herded onto boats sailing north for Magadan, the frozen gold mines of Kolyma and certain death.

A few minutes later, we turned off into our new neighborhood, a sloppy aggregation of five-story unpainted concrete block buildings known locally as Bolota – the Swamp. We passed a small market of open stalls; women in housedresses walked slowly through the heat and dust, laden with groceries and packages. Cows wandered around the roads and yards between the buildings. One sauntered up to a dumpster, reared up on its back legs and, forelegs resting on the edge, poked in its head for a little snack.

Our apartment was three flights up a dank unlit garbage-strewn staircase that reeked of urine and frying onions. We let ourselves through three locks on the red iron door, then another two on the wooden inside door. It was your basic Russian flat. Russian flat design dates from the Soviet design period, when everybody had the choice of one type of apartment and one type of furniture. Therefore, all Russian flats use the same basic layout – kitchen to the left, living room straight ahead, bedroom and bathroom to the right; and the same basic interior design – Oriental rug hanging from one living room wall, check. Brown nubby fabric couch under the hanging rug, facing the wall armoire and television, check. Brown nubby fabric easy chair facing the television, check. Brown throw rugs on the floor, check. Immersion beckoned; for a brief moment, I was like a terrified six-year old whose laughing sadistic older brothers grabbed his arms and legs and heaved him flailing into the deep end, knowing he can’t swim.

There’s no place like Russian flat, though, and Oxana and I soon settled into life in the Swamp. We rustled up some dinner and collapsed into bed for our first night in Nakhodka. Soviet planners built the Swamp for railroad workers from the Nakhodka Switching Yard, and conveniently located it less than a kilometer away from the main operation. All night long, the loud harmonic rumble of freight trains and bang crash boom of wagons coupling and uncoupling filled the humid air, broken only by the hysterical instructions of an obviously overstressed woman dispatcher yelling over a loud hailer: “TRAIN FOUR TO TRACK THREE! WHAT?! KLAVA SERGEEVNA, FOUR TO THREE! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?! WHAT?? NO, TRAIN FIVE TO TRACK FOUR IS LATER!! WHAT? WHAT?! LOOK AT THE SCHEDULE, KLAVA! MORON! SAME TO YOU!!!”

Fortunately, Soviet planners designed the type of building we lived in to retain heat during the summer and shed it in the winter, so that it was uncomfortable year-round, no matter the weather. The cleverly laid-out apartment design guarded against any whiff of fresh air from moving into the building from outdoors, meaning we didn’t feel so bad about keeping the windows closed against the swarms of gigantic mosquitoes rising from the swampy marshland surrounding the Swamp to feed. The closed windows kept the noise from the Switching Yard down to a dull roar for most of the night and ensured a sleepless night for us as we marinated in a twisted tangle of sweat-soaked sheets and slow-roasted in the airless bedroom.

Morning found us heat-blasted and even more exhausted than when we arrived. To our dismay, when we turned on the taps to take a shower, only a weak trickle of water came out for a few seconds, before dying away into nothing. Oxana called ZheK – the Communal Housing Services association, the Russian agency tasked with providing water, heat and electricity for the neighborhood. “Don’t you know anything!” the woman on the line shouted at her so loudly I could hear her across the room. “We’re having water shortages! Water is only available from one a.m. to five a.m.!” Oxana looked up at me. “That woman just hung up me, the witch,” she said.

Thus began the first of many skirmishes with ZheK that would eventually escalate into a full-blown war….