Heirloom

The escalating drone
of a moped accelerating
some way off
stirs up silence and the night,
thickening the mix,
as the dated woollen curtains
come to rest
on a varnished windowsill:
coffee-brown, with dashed threads
of spicy orange peel, are they still here?
They’ll do for now, we said, on moving in
eight years ago.

Those curtains sealed into a tomb
each Saturday afternoon
of your childhood,
slim panes of blazing summer
dividing the semi-darkness, the vortices
ascending from dad's Old Holborn rolls-ups
as the anthem began for Grandstand
and we joined in boisterously,
returning then to a reverent hush
for the reading of
the line-up card for the 1.15 at Haydock,
bought off with shared offerings—
a bag of dolly mixtures,
peeled prawns in vinegar.

Examining those years
between
thumb and forefinger,
as with a length of worn fabric,
through machine-woven squares
you can still see
their smoky light
shine through.

Wed 9th Feb 2011

Forks in the road

Economic prospects in the CIS in 2011

Main patterns of growth in 2010
A drop in real GDP of almost 6% in the east European transition economies in 2009 was the most severe of the regional recessions of that year. Beginning in the first quarter, however, most of east European economies saw a return to economic growth in 2010, which averaged about 3% for the year. In the main, the recoveries were export-led, with the lagged effects of large international stimulus packages, and in some cases substantial multilateral aid programmes, also playing a role. The pace of growth in domestic demand was generally much weaker, or in some cases remained negative. In particular, investment remained weak, depressed by low levels of business confidence linked to the uncertainty of the macroeconomic outlook, as well as to spare production capacity. In addition, household spending was weighed down by low levels of consumer confidence linked to poor employment prospects, high unemployment, falling or slowing wage growth, high levels of indebtedness, the paucity of credit as banks continued to repair their balance sheets, and a drop in workers' remittances.
Notably, the recoveries in the economies of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) were generally stronger than for regional economies further west. The contrast was starkest between those economies that had been tipped into recession in 2008-09 by a fall in external demand and international commodity prices, and those that, before the crisis, had relied for rapid growth on domestic credit booms fuelled from external borrowing. Some of the bigger countries in the CIS, such as Russia and Ukraine, exemplify the first situation, whereas a number of countries in the Baltics and the south-eastern Balkans exemplify the second. [Some latest growth figures, highs, lows, averages, contrasted with rates before the crisis.] A second contrast with the countries of central-eastern Europe is that, whereas their prospects are bound up with those of the EU, where unfolding sovereign debt crises in peripheral countries have threatened the integrity of the common currency, the crucial relation for many CIS countries is with developments in Russia and Kazakhstan, the leading hydrocarbons-exporting economies within the organisation.
Finally, the political uprisings in the Arabian Peninsula and Arab North Africa may hold mixed economic and political prospects for the authoritarian hydrocarbons producers in the CIS, boosting state resources by pushing up hydrocarbons prices on world markets, while at the same time providing potentially replicable models for political confrontation with authoritarian state apparatuses.

The main, interlinked policy dilemmas
With the recovery having gained purchase, governments are now turning to a number of tough common policy dilemmas. The first weighs fiscal austerity against growth, because of the potential damage of withdrawing budgetary support before economic recovery has become self-sustaining. This concern is accentuated by the expectation of a downturn in global economic growth in 2011, as the boost from the big international stimulus packages fades. Thus, with fiscal and growth imperatives pulling in opposite directions, the benefits of running a loose monetary policy are likely to be cast in a favourable light, at least for a time longer. This is because maintaining liquidity could help to sustain economic activity, both directly, through its impact on domestic demand, and indirectly, by way of aiding the repair of bank balance sheets. This second effect could encourage a return to higher rates of credit growth, which plummeted during in the crisis and which are still well below the rates seen in the boom period. Without this, lower rates of economic growth will remain the norm for longer. However, for some governments, the return of inflationary pressures, both from rising international prices for commodities and food, and, further off, from individual economies as consumption demand begins to revive and spare capacity to dwindle, will create pressures in the opposite direction, pitching the desire to boost economic growth against the need to contain the pace of rise in the general price level. Another policy priority facing some governments across the region, and especially a few of the weaker economies in the CIS, will be the need to pursue policies to maintain external stability in the face of large external deficits and the build up of external debt.

Policy and performance in Russia and Kazakhstan
In both Russia and Kazakhstan, high and rising prices for hydrocarbons internationally, relative to 2009, will continue to sustain economic recovery in 2011. In Russia, the pick-up of consumer demand has been relatively unhindered by an overhang of private debt. In contrast, despite some progress in 2010, in Kazakhstan the inability of households and firms to pay pack loans—aggravated by the depreciation of the tenge that was induced by a sharp fall in inflows of foreign-exchange from the end of 2008 as a result of the global financial crisis—continues to place limits on the lending of the Kazakh banks, as they are forced to raise provisions against non-performing loans (NPLs). Thus, NPLs across the banking sector had risen to 26% in the first half of 2010, according to the IMF. Domestic credit growth in Kazakhstan dropped from a peak of almost 80% year on year in 2006, to just below 7% in both 2009 and 2010, according to the Fund. (In contrast, the peak rate of annual domestic credit growth in Russia was lower, at around 44% in 2007, and it dropped much less steeply, to around 22% in 2010.) This will restrict the speed of growth not only of the domestic economy, but also of its smaller Central Asian neighbours in particular. It should push policymakers in Kazakhstan to keep short-term policy interest rates low for the near future.
Of the two, Russia would thus appear to be in a better position economically to attempt to reduce the fiscal deficit in 2011. The possibly short-term boost to hydrocarbons export earnings as a result of a fresh round of political turmoil in the Middle East, which has stoked market fears over supply, should ease official plans to bring down the fiscal deficit, which reached the equivalent of almost 6% of GDP in 2009. Nonetheless, addressing the underlying problem of a structural non-oil fiscal deficit could remain, or even be discouraged by the same development.
Another important factor to keep an eye on for assessing regional economic prospects is the construction sectors in both countries, which continue to perform poorly, reflecting both excess capacity and a reluctance of the financial sector to lend. Construction is traditionally a large employer of migrant workers from other countries in the CIS and will thus feed into the prospects for a revival of private consumption and some kinds of investment in those states, through the link of remittance returns.

Fiscal consolidation in Central Asia

Fiscal consolidation is required not only as the payoff for any fiscal expansion undertaken during the economic crisis: following events in Greece in the first half of 2010, there is the additional incentive for governments to do so to try to convince international lenders of their fiscal rectitude. The kind of response possible will depend on the resources available. Broadly, just as hydrocarbons exports had allowed some countries to build up funds to draw on to cushion the full impact of the fall in external demand during the recession, so the recovery of oil prices and revenue will afford them greater room for manoeuvre for fiscal consolidation during the recovery. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan both appear to be aiming for fiscal consolidation in 2011. In practice, in Kazakhstan this is planned to happen not only by means of a reduction of transfers from the NFRK, the sovereign oil wealth fund, but also through the imposition of an export duty and a progressive income tax. In Azerbaijan, overall deficit reduction is planned to go hand in hand with a rise in transfers from SOFAZ, its own oil windfall account, for social and infrastructural programmes, as well as part of the medium-term goal of industrial diversification. On the revenue side, non-oil fiscal consolidation will be hampered by an expected sharp slowdown in economic growth in 2011 linked to a fall in oil production volumes, which will put a dent in the growth of fiscal inflows. Hydrocarbons revenue may discourage necessary structural reforms in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

My Gypsy Song

Found this old translation of mine of a song by the great Russian bard, Vladimir Vysotsky:

In the dream come yellow lights,

in the dream, I yell till I'm hoarse:

"Hold on! Hold on! It won't seem so bad

once the night has run its course."

Even then, though, nothing seems right:

where is the joy and the laughter?

Either you smoke before breakfast is done

or you drink on the morning after.

In the tavern: green bottles of vodka,

white napkins that have been there an age:

a heaven for jokers and scroungers,

though I feel like a bird in a cage.

In the church, there's a stink: the deacons

are burning incense in the half-light.

No, even in church nothing seems right,

nothing seems right, it's not right.

So I rush before anything happens

up a mountain, in full retreat.

At the top of the mountain an alder stands

and below it, a cherry tree.

If only some ivy had covered the slope

perhaps it would ease my plight;

it's odd, but something is missing…

no, nothing seems right, it's not right.

Then I'm in a field by a riverbank—

light as hell, but of God, not a sign.

In the untouched field of cornflowers

a long road beckons to the horizon.

And along the road is a forest,

it's dense, full of witches and hags,

and there at the end of the road that's long

is a chopping block and an axe.

Somewhere horses are dancing to a beat—

unwillingly, but not without grace.

On the road, nothing seems right—

at the end, it's even more the case.

And not in the church, nor the tavern

is there anything good or divine.

Oh no, it's just not right, my friends,

it's not right, oh friends of mine.

We are Scythians

My wife has told me to get a move on with this book, so I've set myself the deadline of April 28th 2011 to finish it by.

Chapter 23
The brownstone facade of the Historical Museum stretched almost symmetrically along two quiet, sunny backstreets behind Lenin Avenue. Zhenya approached from the direction of the market, having picked up some dried fish to go with her beer that evening. (It was going to be another slow, awkward night at her mother's, she feared, avoiding conflicts, or any possible breakthroughs in communication, in front of a TV cop show—but at least there were only a few days now before she could go home to Britain, thank God.) At the back of her throat a maddening tickle, which she had carried about with her since she'd arrived in town, made her splutter at intervals fitfully, though it was still nice along there, away from the noise of the market. The building itself must once have seemed quite grand in its provincial setting, and may even have been the townhouse of a prosperous factory owner before the revolution, she thought. Now, its pallid-green, mock-Doric plaster columns, which were squeezed in on either side of the corner entrance-way, reminded the visitor of nothing so much as Miss Havisham's ancient wedding cake, as if something important had been irretrievably lost.
It was Independence Day and a small group of cadets from the military academy were milling around the museum’s entrance, eating ice-creams, somehow too timidly. Despite the weather, which was already stifling at that early hour, they were making the most of the holiday atmosphere on what was probably one of the last bursts of summer. They were dressed in dark jackets and white, creasy trousers, like dishevelled naval officers from the nineteenth century.
Zhenya wondered why she'd chosen the place for a visit. She'd never been that interested in the past—not that past, anyway—and she was not a tourist. She was beginning to think she might have picked the wrong day for such an excursion. But she was there now. It gave her a chance to spend more time away from the house—and, you never knew, she might even enjoy it. Along the bottom right-hand wall of the museum, an array of bulbous stone figures, the totemic remains of a previous steppe culture, were rotting away in the sun; three tall, imperious poplars, swaying every now and then only at their heights, lined the pavement in front of them. At the foot of the short flight of steps up to the double front-doors the young woman noticed a worn-out metal boot-scraper, so that the image of a horseman in a white peasant smock, dismounting his steed after a swift ride over the steppe, flared briefly across her consciousness. Then the horseman scraped the mud from his high riding boots before entering the townhouse for a sumptuous dinner at a long, polished table, and Zhenya followed him in.

Maternity Ward No. 6

I got stuck on that last chapter: I think it started in the wrong place. In the meantime, here's a short one.

Chapter 21

Lodged in the doorway between the corridor and her ward, Vita looked the agitated stranger up and down.
“My wife,” he said, “how is she?”
He was a short, slightly-built man with greying, unruly hair, aged between 40 and 45. In the dim hallway of Maternity Clinic No. 6, against walls of pale mint-green, Vita could make out the signs of controlled strain on his patchily stubbled face. He had the grin, she thought, of an ingratiating wolf.
With one arm behind her, one on the handle of the ward’s swing-doors, it was as if she thought he might try to force his way in past her. It had been a busy afternoon and she'd been run off her feet (though, because of staff shortages, she’d be on duty for a couple more hours yet), and had only meant to dash out for a drink from the canteen, when the visitor, who was waiting for news on the condition of his pregnant wife, had pounced on her before she'd emerged fully from the ward entrance. A strong whiff of freshly smoked tobacco suffused the fabric of his dark-blue suit. He had on a denim-blue shirt and a grey tie, which he had roughly loosened.
“Look, I’ve been here for two, no, more than three hours, and no one will tell me a thing.” His pale, apprehensive face loomed out of the semi-darkness disconcertingly like an unattached balloon. “Is she alright?" he said. "I came as soon as I heard. You see, she's never been very strong.” Then he tapped nervously on the glass cover of his watch, which looked expensive. “How is she?" he added after a pause. "Can I go in?”
“No visitors at this stage,” replied the nurse, confident in the authority of her white staff coat. “It is not permitted.”
At this, the visitor hopped awkwardly, as if he suddenly felt prickly all over—as if the walls of the hospital had trapped him in a role he was unused to, draining him of his strength. He seemed to wobble between attack and retreat. Finally, the visitor managed to master himself—calculating, perhaps, that a friendly approach on this occasion might be more fruitful. As he prepared for this change of tack, the little man tugged at the woollen lapels of the jacket draped over his shoulders against the chill of the dark corridor, where not even the famous late summer heat of the Black Sea Steppe could penetrate.
“It’s just that she’s not very strong,” he repeated, with greater reticence than before. “With our last child, she was in a lot of pain. The doctor said they were lucky to survive—though both did, thank God.” As he blessed himself, he coughed violently into the clenched fist of his free hand.
“You must let us do our job,” said Vita. “Look, she’ll be fine. We’re just waiting until the contractions become more regular.”
The man nodded, unable to speak through his coughing fit. He pulled a hanky from his inside jacket pocket and phlegmed into it vehemently. For as long as he had been there, he had eaten nothing, drank nothing, and the sly self-assurance of his face, which seemed to have become etched in it, had taken on a waxen translucence. He popped out onto a stairwell to smoke a panatella, blowing the smoke out of a window hatch in a glass wall that looked out over a Spartan car park two stories below, where, on the pavement approach, under the shade of some ailing poplars, motionless invalids in wheelchairs had been parked up, out of the way. On a wall above a notice board beside him, an old cardboard sign read, “Children are the future of the State.” He shuddered, imagining the children of Beslan running through the flames of the burning school-building, mown down in the crossfire (the incident had happened almost a year before). Then he thought about his own children—two boys and a girl, all below the age of eight. Perhaps he would call work. Flicking open a mobile, he was soon back in a world he knew, berating an unfortunate subordinate on the other end.

Up in the air

Chapter 14
Kiev, late summer 2005

The smell of unburnt petrol fumes filled the grimy-white BMW. In the back seat, feeling queasy, Zhenya was on the verge of sharing the observation that she could hardly have guessed, when she’d phoned for a cab that morning, that they were willing to throw in a fairground ride as well.
“Mind if I smoke?” said the driver as they juddered over some tramlines. He reached confidently for a carton of cigarettes in the front pocket of his checkered shirt, anticipating no objection.

“But the car,” spluttered Zhenya, genuinely afraid, “won’t it explode?”

In the rear-view mirror, she saw the driver pull a down-in-the-mouth expression of disappointed resignation, and he hunched his shoulders as if to say “suit yourself”. Since then, he’d been zipping in and out of the lanes of heavy traffic on the long, straight road to Borispil, swerving ever more wildly, ever more recklessly from side to side, coming up short behind a convoy of slow-moving Kamaz trucks, or belting down the wrong side of the road, slipping back into lane just ahead of an oncoming school bus, so that the young woman's hangover, which she'd acquired during an evening spent on a stool at the bar of the Ukraine Hotel, was rocking about in her head like a bag of stones. Then, just before the airport, without saying a word, he'd pulled in to a siding next to a row of silver poplars and Zhenya had tensed up, ready for the worst. But the hollow-faced driver just hopped out of the car and removed the magnetic taxi light from the car roof, got back in and restarted the engine.

Humdrum

Chapter 24

Osip Galkin trudged solemnly along the tarmac path back through the YunKom estate, tired now, but heading home. Twilight as it fell was almost granular, like soot, but at least the heat seemed to be lifting at last. On the corner, a feisty young mongrel was yapping at flies and passers-by, its head held stiffly, proudly, and behind the dustbins, from some withered bushes that rustled with the bright sound of tinsel, the inevitable crickets were scratching a weary tune. Coming towards him on the path, a tiny old woman, taking quick, short, bird-like steps, and wearing white pop socks on her sandalled feet, carried in each hand a galvanised-iron bucket of cold potatoes, which she’d probably been hawking down at the railway station. She was grimacing under the strain.

Vita hadn’t been pleased to see him: one of the women on her ward was having a difficult delivery and she would have to work late. She’d thanked him absent-mindedly for the chocolates and flowers, but would he mind taking them with him, and she would see him later at home? It occurred to Galkin that his wife might be having an affair. Who with? At the hospital, there must be plenty of opportunities. Osip's monobrow lifted at this novel possibility; what bothered him most was how little it worried him. What did he think of her, after all this time? They’d been teenage sweethearts and, apart from a brief and ill-advised marriage to a law student at the institute in Kharkov, they’d been together ever since—almost 20 years! Of course, he had no wish to see her harmed, and more often than not now he stayed silent when she said something he thought overbearing or crass. There was still a certain sentimental tenderness, but in truth he found her a bit vulgar, grasping, lacking in philosophical perspective, too swamped in life’s minutia to be able to develop an overview of it.
Alongside the tarmac strip, some telephone cables sagged mournfully between two wonky posts and a crooked birch leaned forward as if into a stiff wind. He looked behind him at the path spiralling up the hill he’d just climbed, continuing to harangue himself bitterly over of the day’s failures. Of course, he'd have shot Kulyeba, if Kulyeba had turned up—he had to believe that. It wasn't as if he didn't have the evidence of his guilt. But Osip couldn't even plan that properly. Time was running out and he was going in circles. What use was he? He felt transparent, light-headed, nauseous. There was a sensation, low in his belly and not fully articulated, that he was walking back through his own life, but could not recognise anything. He looked ahead again, but could not go on. Quite calmly, he considered the possibility that he was going mad—but what were the giveaway signs? How was he supposed to tell?
Osip frowned with the effort of thinking. What good was he? He recalled the look on Mila’s face once as she'd opened a box of perfume he’d bought her—crafty and bright-eyed, full of real delight and feigned surprise (she had a great sense of entitlement). At her flat, he liked to sit on the shabby sofa and watch her through the shimmering rainbow curtain over the doorway as she stood out of the balcony, puffing away happily on her long, slim cigarettes. This soppiness made him wince. The worst was he'd had no-one to talk to about her since her death, not even Arkady. Yet what was the use dredging up the past? He had long regretted confessing the affair to Vita—and not just because of the tears and tantrums, which he thought he understood. It was unseemly to foist yourself on others.

In the hallway of his flat, only the sour smell of burnt cooking fat, tinged with cabbage and gas, was waiting to greet him. Heavier than the air around it, his being sank. He stooped to switch on a low floor lamp under a row of coat hooks—it was quite dark now—but the lamp’s sphere of illumination was unable to penetrate very far into the gloom. As he hung it up on a wall peg, he felt as worn out as his bomber jacket—as if he were hanging himself up there, his own flayed hide. Really, what was the point of him? He forced off first one boot then the other, but without loosening the laces enough, side-footing them in the vague direction of the passage wall. Wiggling his toes into a pair of black slip-ons, the coolness of the slippers' lining through his socks gave him some momentary low-level relief.
In the kitchen, which was small and cramped, a saucepan of cabbage soup was laid out on the cooker and a wicker basket of bread on the folding table over by the window. There was a tea towel laid over the basket to keep the bread fresh. Trying the dials of the radio, a blast of raucous folk music assailed him, and he switched it straight off. From a biscuit tin on top of a cupboard by the cooker, he fished out a small package. Then he opened the door onto the balcony, which was little more than an oversized window box with a railing, and squeezed out onto the narrow platform, freeing from the light blue “Prima” carton a single cigarette.
Vita was sure to find out. A childish fear surged through him. He closed the door to, defiantly, the blaze of the struck match absolving him temporarily.
Behind the metals plant, the sun was melting away and the structures of the gas-storage tanks were the huge helmets of medieval knights in silhouette. How nice it was out there, above it all. Between his fingers, he let the cigarette consume itself. He couldn't understand why he'd stayed with his wife. He couldn’t fathom why he’d split with Mila. She wasn't everyone's idea of a beauty—she seemed always to smirk out of the side of a crooked mouth, and she wore an old black beret everywhere. But with her, it had always been easy: they’d just play cards, listen to music, chat about this and that, have a drink or two (she liked white beer and sweet Russian champagne). Also, she loved to dance and didn’t care at all if he wore his shoes indoors. But it was too late. He’d chosen the easy path: this cowardice not only sickened him, it baffled him, as he couldn’t quite work out how or when it had happened. For an easy life, he’d left important things unsaid. Or he'd tried to say them, but they'd come out sounding reflexive, insincere. One god-awful night towards the end, they'd been walking along a miserably rainy street in Donetsk, when she’d said without a lead up, “But I love you,” and he had mumbled to the pavement: “I love you, too”. Now, he could no longer tell if the memory was real. And his life had been no easier. He and Vita had so little in common. It was a strain simply to find new ways of avoiding her. He suspected that, at bottom, he might have stayed with her just to avoid an awkward scene. He looked down at the decrepit playground, which was deserted. In the distance, a great white smog-cloud had formed over the steel plant in the shape of an anvil, as if there had been an enormous explosion. Why was it so bloody difficult to get what you want?
From the direction of the steelworks came the clatter of numerous invisible machines, and a low unexplained rumble, like rubble, filled his ears. He peered up at the cosmos, but there was so little there he recognised: the Great Bear and the Little Bear, which looked more than anything like a couple of household saucepans, and the Milky Way, a stain on a tablecloth. Humdrum, monotonous, unspeakably dull. How tedious life was, how tedious it was to live—a bind, and irritation, the irritating buzz of an insect that you are not quick enough to swat, or even see. A humdrum buzz in the eardrum. Mundane as the clatter of domestic pots and pans. In the distance, Osip heard a discordant train whistle, like two bum notes on a harmonica fighting it out to make it to the top, struggling for air.

Memo

As I've got older, novels and plays have become more important to me for some reason. So, just to remind myself of what I've read, or might want to reread, here is a list, as far as I can recall, of the fiction that I've perused over the past five years or so.

Novels and short stories
The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
The Yacubian Building, Alaa Al-Aswany
A Room with a View, Forster
Barry Lyndon, Thackery
Vanity Fair, Thackery
The Power and the Glory, Greene
Brighton Rock, Graham Greene
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky
Candide, Voltaire
Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee
Don Quixote, Cervantes
Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell
Homage to Catalonia, Orwell
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Emma, Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Mansfield Park, Austen
To The Lighthouse, Wolfe
Mrs Dalloway, Wolfe
Farewell Gulsary, Aitmatov
Jamila, Aitmatov
Fiesta, Hemmingway
The Old Man and the Sea, Hemmingway
Hemmingway’s short stories
If This Is A Man, Primo Levi
Life and Fate, Vassily Grossman
Robinson Cruesoe, Defoe
Swann’s Way, Proust
The 42nd Parallel, Dos Passos
The Hobbit, Tolkien
The Foundation Pit, Platonov
The Inheritors, Golding
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
The Return of the Native, Hardy
The Trial, Kafka
The Rainbow, Lawrence
Selected Tales, Lawrence
War and Peace, Tolstoy
Yellow Dog, Amis

Shikasta, Doris Lessing
Blade Runner, Dick
Time Out of Joint, Dick

The Lady with a Dog and other stories, Chekhov
The Steppe, Chekhov
The Dual, Chekhov
The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov

Shakespeare
Anthony and Cleopatra
Richard II
Julius Caesar
Macbeth
The Merchant of Venice
Hamlet

Detective and crime stories
The Woman in White, Collins
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle
Wysteria House, Conan Doyle
The red-headed league, Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskevilles, Conan Doyle
White Queen, Boris Akunin
Leviathan, Boris Akunin
The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
Tishomingo Blues, Elmore Loenard
Get Shorty, Elmore Leonard
The Silver Pigs, Lindsey Davis
Three Hands in the Fountain, Lindsey Davis
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie