Chapter XI Russian Finishing School

 

 

‘My name is Valentina Naryshkin. I was born near Vitebsk in the Soviet Union. My family was Russian. My father was a party official, my mother a railway engineer. When I was a little girl the old Union fell apart and Vitebsk became part of a new country called Belarus. My father lost his job and we had many problems. We were very poor. I won all the prizes for mathematics at school and I was a good chess player. We had relatives in Moscow and when I was 18 years old they told my father that I should come to Lomonosov University in Moscow and study there. Because we were poor I got a scholarship and then my aunt and uncle let me stay with them as a student, provided I became their housekeeper. They slept in one room and I bedded down on the sofa in the other room which doubled as a kitchen. Their children had already grown up and lived in other parts of Russia.

‘For two years I studied and slaved, because my aunt treated me very badly and my uncle was always trying to seduce me. I didn’t complain to my parents as it would only make them unhappy. They were so proud of me, especially as my studies were going well and I had just won a competition to continue my studies in London under an exchange scheme. The only thing I lacked was the money to go there.

‘Towards the end of the second year my aunt and uncle got very drunk one evening. I came back from a party in a friend’s flat and was met by a shower of abuse from my aunt who accused me of being a slut and of leaving their flat filthy and untidy. I was still a very quiet person then but I lost my temper and shouted back at her. She made to hit me and I pushed her back. My uncle, who was my mother’s younger brother, grabbed me by my hair (you remember my pigtails?) and demanded I apologize. I found my courage and shouted at him to let me go. He dragged me by my hair to their room and told me again to apologize or I will be punished. I laughed in his face. He hit me hard around the face and made my right cheek puff up. I pushed at him with all my strength and knocked him back against the side of the table. He lost his balance and hit his head on the floor. He temporarily lost consciousness and I ran out of the room. My aunt called me a murderer and telephoned the police. I was totally panic stricken as I had nowhere to go.

‘When the police arrived my uncle was just recovering but my aunt still accused me of assault. The police handcuffed me and took me downstairs to a waiting van. I was driven to the local police commissariat and thrown into an individual cell. A burly woman police officer came in and told me to undress to my underwear. My clothes were removed. It was quite cold but I was very frightened and did as I was told. After nearly 3 hours, the woman officer came back, handcuffed me again and led me along the corridor to a lift. Two floors up we got out and I was led into a large room with a female police inspector sitting at a table looking at my file. The burly police woman remained in the room and waited.

‘I stood to attention shaking with fear. The inspector eyed me up and down and inspected my swollen cheek which now nearly covered my eye. She accused me of being a hooligan. She said that I would be sent to correction camp for 6 months and then deported back to Belarus.

“But I was the person who was assaulted,” I protested. “Just look at my face”.

‘She then made me an offer. She played on my patriotism and said that Russia needs clever young scholars like me to learn from the West. I would be moved immediately to the police barracks in Lefortovo and live in a harsh regime. I would not be going to college but would still be able to continue my studies. The following September I would be allowed to travel to a university in London for a 3 year course that will be paid for. However I would have to show obedience and carry out any tasks that would be set for me. And just to show they meant business I was brutally caned there and then in the police station.

‘So what choice did I have?

‘In Lefortovo we lived 10 to each dormitory. We were all girls aged between 16 and 25. Many of us were students, others were former criminals, including armed robbers, pickpockets and confidence tricksters. That is where I met Ludmila Kulchik, a chemistry student from a peasant family in Crimea. She had also had the promise of a university place in London, after being caught travelling on the Moscow metro without buying a ticket. Each of us had had a similar experience where we had been entrapped or caught by the authorities for some minor offence, had suffered a caning or other method of physical punishment and were promised the earth if we cooperated with the authorities.

‘In fact Lefortovo was a training school of unspeakable severity and depravity. We had to shower every morning in cold water and undergo tough physical exercises. We were only allowed to speak to each other in the dormitories, wash rooms or at dinner and we had strict orders not to converse with any of the males in the building. We were allowed to receive and write one letter a week to a friend or relative and these letters were checked and censored to make sure that no mention was made of where we actually were and we were not to describe or criticize any of our experiences.

‘Every day, except for Sundays, we would attend lectures and classes on various topics ranging from electronics to handling a gun and from knowledge of the human anatomy to diplomatic etiquette. We had to learn by heart the details of military equipment in the Russian Army and practice how to read maps and draw with invisible ink. We were given the opportunity to hone our computer skills, to send e-mails in code and to hack into each other’s programmes. We learned a number of martial arts though we were not allowed to socialize with our male instructors and we were only allowed outside of the training compound once every two weeks for a few hours provided we had been well behaved and scored good marks in our classes. In the first few weeks we received no money, but with each week after that we were given more generous pocket money as long as we were making good progress.

‘If we broke any of the above rules we could expect to lose the money we had earned, or suffer food and sleep deprivation, press ups and knee bends, even standing or kneeling naked in the corner of the dormitory for a few hours. Where we compounded more than one transgression we would be caned, either on the spot, with hand outstretched or bending over.

‘As you can imagine with such a regime we girls began to bond closely with each other and I became very close to Ludmila. Let’s face it, we became lovers. Some of the other girls formed closer relations with each other too and frankly we all became horny with each other, especially after a good punishment. We hated and loved the rituals of a punishment just as some of us loved the rituals of the Orthodox mass we had to attend in uniform every Sunday.

‘Our studies intensified. We had a wonderful old professor called Denisov who taught some extraordinary things about sexual diseases and sexual practices around the world. We had a couple of excellent English teachers who had lived in London for many years. We got familiar with some Shakespeare plays and read poets like Donne, Keats and Rochester. You want me to recite some? Then we had a glum guy from Belfast who taught us about handling weapons and bomb-making. He was a miserable bastard. Bomber Casey we called him.

‘In May I had sat my mathematics entrance exam to a London college. The same week Ludmila sat a London chemistry paper. In July we learned that we had both passed and were sure of a place. We knew we were definitely travelling to London now. The organization was very pleased with us. “Valentina Ivanovna,” she had said, “we can organise a little thank you party for you.”

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“Sorry to interrupt this fascinating narrative,” I said, “but can you clarify why you are sometimes called Ivanovna? Surely your name, you said, is Naryshkin?”

“It’s what is known as a patronymic.” Valentina explained. “We Russians always take the name of our father as a middle name. My full name is Valentina Ivanovna Naryshkin. Ivanovna means I am the daughter of Ivan. If I were a boy my second name would have been Ivanovich, son of Ivan.”

I thought this was very original and said so. “It implies an older paternalistic society, where the father’s name is always honoured. What if you do not have a father?” I asked. “What if your mother does not even know the name of your father?”

“Then it is a matter of great shame to the mother and ultimately to the child,” Valentina explained. “You should do this in England, you know.”

  ”That’s difficult,” I suggested. “There are so many children born outside marriage or where parents aren’t even regular partners now. Some English mothers don’t even know the father’s truck number plate after they picked him up at the all night transport café, let alone his name.”

“I see you are joking,” laughed Valentina. “Is that why you have surnames like Longbottom? It’s the only part of the anatomy the mother remembers?” We both laughed.

“Anyway, Peter?” she asked. “What is your father’s name?”

“Well, he’s dead now, but his name was Thomas Axtell.”

“Then you should call yourselves, “Peter (or Petya) Tomasovich Axtell. Doesn’t that sound better?”

I had to agree that I rather liked the sound of that. However, I asked her to continue.

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“Where was I?” she racked her memory. “Yes, I remember now. Ludmila and I had a party and we were allowed to dress in full uniform. We both met two gorgeous cadets and had the best sex ever. It was wonderful after what we had experienced before.”

She continued her tale of her training at Lefortovo, and then her arrival in London with Ludmila, the tall gangly Olga and some other girls in London, where she was at the beck and call of the organization which had paid for her upkeep and now her university course. In fact when they were about to leave their accommodation in Moscow to catch the plane, Sheremovsky met them personally one at a time, sodomized each one and then gave each one 500 dollars. One of the other girls that refused to submit herself to this painful indignity, was told to travel separately from the other girls on the plane. Then she was arrested on a drug smuggling charge at Heathrow. Valentina was convinced the drugs were planted on her. This was a warning to the other girls to do what they were told, for which they would be richly rewarded. She and her three remaining colleagues were like a prisoners in a gilded cage, corrupted by their training, subservient to the will of their boss’s organization, which was called Nafta Ural, and was primarily an oil company, with many sinister subsidiaries. Her scholarship was paid for by something called the Volga Education Trust, but that too was an affiliate of Nafta Ural. She used her training and her feminine wiles to carry out various favours. She enjoyed the excitement and the fashionable outfits she could buy for herself every time she was given a bonus for carrying out some salubrious task or other. She was not complaining, but hoping she would not have to return to Russia, or Belarus, once her course was finished.