Displaced, page 24
“Why don’t you put your Hagi-Vagi in the trunk?” the girls hiss at their brother.
“No, Hagi-Vagi stays here with me!”
My dog approaches. My big black mutt that looks like a pointer. He seems sad but tries to behave.
“It’s not your fault, buddy. I’ll come back for you.” This is what I say to my dog, but honestly, I don’t know whether I’ll come back or not.
We get in the car and drive. The lilacs are blooming, and tulips . . . there are many, many tulips. Out of the seventeen million square meters of Russian land, I managed to develop less than a hectare—my house and my garden.
The dog runs after our car. I can see him in the rear-view mirror. He runs as far as the intersection and, as if figuring out—No, they won’t take me with them!—sits down at the intersection and watches us go. He doesn’t bark, he doesn’t howl—he just watches. My son turns back and waves at the dog with his Hagi-Vagi: “Bye! We’ll come back for you!”
But I don’t know whether we can come back.
We’re driving through land that is blossoming in spring. The birch groves are shimmering in the sunlight, but the fields are barely plowed. The fields of northern Russia are mostly covered in hogweed shoots. Among all possible human activities, my homeland has recently chosen oil production and waging wars. There are many vehicles with the letter “Z” driving in the opposite direction. Most of them are municipal vehicles—garbage trucks and intercity buses; private citizens are not as eager to write that cursed letter on their cars. The state does it.
It’s a long trip. The children get tired. We won’t make it to Riga in a single day, so we stop in Pskov to spend the night. We take advantage of this to take the children to see the Pskov Kremlin. Look, children, this is Veche Square. Do you know what “veche” means? Do you know that this used to be a republic? A very long time ago, Russia was able to govern itself not by the Horde autocracy of one cruel man, but by the democratic votes of free people. We lost this opportunity. We lost many opportunities. We even use alphabet letters for wrong purposes—to scare our neighbors.
THE BORDER
The next morning, we approach the Russian-Estonian border, and my son sticks his Hagi-Vagi’s nose against the window to watch a line of trucks many kilometers long. This is a noticeable effect of the international economic sanctions against Russia. The drivers talk about eating, drinking, and taking a shower on the Estonian side because, on the Russian side, there are no cafés or showers. There’s no place to eat, to wash up, there aren’t even any bathrooms—the drivers go to the nearest woods, which is full of snakes. If a snake bites someone in the woods, an ambulance can come from the Estonian side, but not from the Russian side—it’s a closed border zone.
The line for cars is not as long—we’re eighth or ninth. The characters in my book, the Ukrainian refugees, have to cross the border by foot. They’ve come by bus and, on the Estonian side, they hope to get on another bus. The car owners contemptuously refer to the refugees as “those people.” “Oh, I hope there won’t be any of those people today.” “That’s it, those people are here. Now they’ll have to check each of them for at least half an hour, and we’ll have to wait.” As if the refugees themselves demanded these hour-long inspections. As if it’s not Russia who kicked them out of their homes. As if they decided to travel through Europe just for fun.
There’s a little yard near the border checkpoint—three evergreen trees, two benches, and an ash tray. As we wait our turn, my children play in the yard, and Hagi-Vagi climbs a tree.
Suddenly, a nice expensive car appears out of nowhere. A sprightly fellow jumps out and greets everyone in the line, even the children. He shakes everyone’s hands and says that he’s terribly late for his flight—the plane will be taking off literally in a couple of hours from the Tallinn airport. Of course, he’s lying, but he does so with great enthusiasm! In an instant, literally, he convinces everyone in the line to let him pass, the customs officer to inspect his car as fast as possible, and the female border patrol agent to stamp his passport without wasting any time. I look at this fella and think—he’s just like Vovan. Remember the driver who took people across the frontline in Ukraine? He had to deal with Russian as well as Ukrainian soldiers, and he could get through places no one could imagine. Here he is, my Vovan.
We wait in line for three hours then cross the border in three minutes. The border patrol officers are giving me the cold shoulder. The female officer who was just smiling and chatting with the sprightly fellow, looks at me with contempt:
“The border is closed. You know that Russia’s land border is closed, don’t you?”
Actually, she’s lying too. Our papers are in order, and she has no right to keep us from leaving. But for several minutes she exerts power over us, and she is thoroughly enjoying her little power game:
“Wait! You aren’t going anywhere yet!”
With these words, she takes our passports and returns fifteen minutes later with our passports stamped.
“Kids, get in the car, quick! We’re leaving.”
We cross the Estonian border quickly, in no more than ten minutes. In Estonia, we stop for a smoke on the side of the road. You can still see the Russian influence here—there are cigarette butts all over the roadside and in the ditch and used paper cups with the letter “Z.” Everything will be clean from here on.
The older girls are laughing and singing a song they made up, “We left Putin behind,” but suddenly my son screams:
“Hagi-Vagi! Where’s my Hagi-Vagi?! I left it in the pine tree in the other country! In that courtyard! I left it! Hagi-Vagi!”
And there are tears in his eyes. I begin to realize that I might have to cross the Russian-Estonian border two more times—there and back. We can’t leave Hagi-Vagi behind, can we?
The girls try to comfort their brother:
“Don’t cry! Daddy’ll go and get Hagi-Vagi. Don’t worry, we won’t lose him.”
“Hagi-Vagi!” our little boy is unconsolable.
I’m smoking and thinking about how in a few moments I’ll reach the Russian border, leave the car there, and . . . It’ll probably be impossible to convince the border patrol officers that I’m going back for just a few minutes to find a toy my son left behind. So, I’ll have to go through inspection again, follow all the protocols, and tolerate the fifteen-minute exercise of power by that female border patrol officer. And one more thought pounds in the depth of my conscience and tortures me—the scary thought that they might let me back into Russia but not allow me to leave again.Why would they not allow me to leave? But the thought continues to pound in my brain.
“Hagi-Vagi!” my son is screaming.
“In a second, in a second, I’ll go and bring him back”
“Hagi-Vagi!” the tone is different this time: It’s a happy voice. “He’s here! He got under the seat, dad. He was under the seat! He’s here!”
“Hagi-Vagi! Hoorah!” The children are hugging and laughing as if everything that could possibly go wrong is now behind them. And they’re singing “Hagi-Vagi is found” to the tune of “Happy Birthday to You.” “Hagi-Vagi is found!”
“Okay,” my wife says, “it’s time to get going.”
I put out my cigarette and place the butt in my pocket, to avoid littering. I get in the car and turn on the engine.
“Is everyone buckled up? Okay, let’s go.”
And now I don’t have a homeland either.
THE END
2022
Amelfino
Amatciems
Riga
8 Vladimir Kara-Murza (b. 1981) is a Russian opposition leader and journalist, and vocal critic of Vladimir Putin. Since February 2022, he has been a member of the Russian Anti-War Committee. He was poisoned in 2015 and 2017, and in October 2022 he was arrested and charged with high treason, which carries a prison term of up to twenty years. Ilya Yashin (b. 1983) is a Russian politician, public figure, and journalist. In December 2022, he was sentenced under Russia’s wartime censorship laws to eight and a half years in prison for spreading “fake news” about the Russian Armed Forces.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Valery Panyushkin is a journalist and writer, the author of thirteen books, including 12 Who Don’t Agree: The Battle for Freedom in Putin’s Russia (Europa, 2011). Born in Leningrad in 1969, he has left Russia and currently lives abroad.
Valery Panyushkin, Displaced
