Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

his
destiny.’
    By which time it was a fucking milk-run, and there was no
fucking Soviet Union, so get on with it –
    ‘During the turbulent years of the late 1980s, Major
Davidov took some political stands about which his friends and
comrades may honesdy differ-’
    Nice one, he was a fucking Yeltsinite, get on with it
–
    ‘ – but which testify to his true Soviet and
Kazakh patriotism and the seriousness with which he took his
civic duty and the Leninist ideals of the armedforces, which in
his view proscribed the use of violence against the
people.’
    Myra was not the only one who had to choke back a laugh.
    ‘After the Republic of Kazakhstan became independent,
Major Davidov’s expertise in the areas of nuclear weaponry
and questions of nuclear disarmament gave him a new field for his
great political skill and personal charm…’
    Myra bit her lip.
     
    He was in front of her in the taxi queue outside the airport
at Alma-Ata. Tall, even taller than she was, very dark;
swept-back black hair, eyebrows almost as thick as his black
moustache; relaxed in a stiff olive-green uniform; smoking a
Marlboro and glancing occasionally at a counterfeit Rolex.
    Myra, just arrived, lost and anxious, could not take her eyes
off him. But it was the yellow plastic bag at his feet that gave
her the nerve to speak. Printed on it in red were a picture of a
parrot and the words:
    THE PET SHOP
    992 Pollockshaws Road
    Glasgow G41 2HA
    She leaned forward, into his field of vision.
    You’ve flown in from Glasgow?’ she asked, in
Russian.
    He turned, startled out of some trance, and looked at her with
a bemused expression which rapidly became a smile.
    ‘Ah, the bag.’ He poked it with his foot,
revealing that the carrier was bulging with cartons of cigarettes
and bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label. Toil’re a
stranger here, then.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘These plastic bags have nothing to do with Glasgow.
They’re used by every shop from here to China, God knows
why.’ He laughed, showing strong teeth stained with
nicotine. ‘Have you been to Glasgow?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Myra. ‘I lived there for several
years, back in the seventies.’
    Something cooled in his look. ‘What were you
do-ing?’
    ‘I was writing a thesis,’ Myra said, ‘on the
economy of the Soviet Union.’
    He guffawed. ‘You got permission to do thai?’
    ‘It wasn’t a problem – ’ she began,
then stopped. She realised that he’d taken her for a
former-Soviet citizen. Former nomenklatura, if she’d
had clearance for such dangerous research.
    ‘I’m not a Russian, I’m from the United
States!’
    He raised his eyebrows.
    ‘Your accent is very good,’ he said, in English.
His accent was very good. They talked until they reached the top
of the queue, and then went on talking, because they shared a
taxi into town, and went on talking…
     
    Would she ever have spoken to him, Myra wondered, if it
hadn’t been for that yellow bag? And if she hadn’t
spoken to him, would she ever have seen him again? Perhaps; but
perhaps not, or not at such a moment, when they were both free,
and on the rebound from other lovers, and in that
case…
    She wouldn’t be here, for one thing, and Georgi
wouldn’t be in that coffin, and… the consequences
went on and on, escalating until she didn’t knowwhether to
laugh or cry. For want of a nail the kingdom was lost – and
the result of that triviality, the fictitious Pollockshaws
pet-shop address on the plastic bag, had gained her a republic,
and imposed on others losses she could not bear to contemplate.
Or so it might seem, if anyone ever learned enough about her to
see her hand in history.
    But then again, maybe not, maybe old Engels and Plekhanov had
been right after all about the role of the individual in history:
maybe it did all come out in the wash – at the end of the
French Revolution someone, but, of course, ha-ha,
‘not necessarily that particular Corsican’, would
have stepped into the tall boots which circumstances, like a good
valet, had laid out for a man on horseback.
    She’d never found that theory particularly convincing,
and it gave her small comfort now to even consider it. No, she
was stuck, as were they all, with her actions and their
consequences.
    ‘ – in recent years Georgi Yefrimovich played a
leading part in the diplomatic service of the ISTWR, in which
duty he met his death.’ The eulogist paused for a moment to