For The Record

No one can remember exactly what we were doing the moment we heard that the Ministry of Ideology was on its way, but there really weren’t too many options: scrubbing the dishes with sand in the river, battling frogs in the toilet trenches, playing poker while staring at the cement factory. 

Or maybe we were snacking on the vodka and pickles that were a recurring gift from the Most Eligible Bachelor in Krasnasielski. His name was Denis. Every time he appeared on the horizon he would fade into focus like a mirage, thanks to his beige linen suit, which he pressed each morning to a high gloss. He shimmered in the sunlight as he strode through the meadow towards our camp, a jar under each arm, kicking up storks in his wake.

One day he arrived with a small entourage, a man with the eyes of a pirate plus a child. The Most Eligible Bachelor was not himself a member of the Ministry of Ideology, and somehow this was the first time we learned that he held no less significant a position than Director of the cement factory museum; the pirate, its resident artist; the child, a mystery. Together they brought the news that the local representatives of the Ministry of Ideology were inviting—insisting—that we attend an ideological summit planned for the following weekend, as representatives of our home countries.

He told us there would be athletic events. Or maybe that was just our assumption. We, American-Canadian-British-Portuguese visitors plus a few gray-area Lithuanians, were very aware that from time to time we would need to be lightly, publicly humiliated as a condition of our stay. Really just a formality. But sports were going to be the way.

We decided to attempt light preparatory training, so we did some axe throwing, plus badminton, though in badminton—despite being kind of good from playing every day to pass the time between visits to the dig site—we were quickly routed by the larval first-year Belarusian history students from our very own camp, who did nothing but read. This was a bitter pill to swallow, and we gave up quickly on the one event we thought we could actually win, if it was even on the menu. 

When we abandoned physical practice, we started talking strategy and alliances. These would be more useful than skill anyway. We went to eat in the cement factory cafeteria, for strength and visibility. We visited the cement factory museum and took the two-hour tour of its single room, led by Denis with his telescopic teaching stick. We beheld cases upon cases of zoomorphic blobs of chalk unearthed on walks in the forest by the resident artist—this one looks like a dog, that one’s a foot. We learned about the raspberry and the importance of looking out for a smetana-like consistency when manufacturing cement of the highest caliber. Smetana is sour cream and we’d see it again.

On the day of the summit the bus picked us up at the observation deck next to the factory. The observation deck was a pile of cinder blocks, cantilevered for style and frosted with cement, with a corrugated aluminum shed perched on top. It overlooked the derelict railroad tracks and the pool of factory runoff where the locals liked to spearfish. We were the last ones to board; the Polish team and the Belarusians had already been picked up at Vaukavysk and its nearby prison.

The ideologues first drove us to the chalk quarry and spoke at length in Russian about, we guessed, its importance, size, and contributions to the glory of cement. There was a dog, covered in chalk. Two members of the Polish team stared at the pit in disbelief. The minder took video, and there was a man in shorts—a rare choice in Belarus, as far as we could tell, practically as daring as wearing nail polish (though we’d all noticed the Most Eligible Bachelor had immaculate nails). The man in shorts gazed into the turquoise water below and smiled softly.

Back on the bus, we returned to the cement factory proper. We peered into the raspberry, the giant combustion chamber where the raw materials were incinerated. This was the section where Stalin once forced prisoners who had been condemned to death to work because breathing such nasty air would kill them naturally within a few months. Sunglasses were available for anyone who wanted to stare into the burning core of the raspberry; they sat next to a machine that dispensed salt water (for health) into a communal drinking cup on a chain.

Through a door off the raspberry was the control room where factory supervisors adjusted the final mix to achieve the exact right smetana consistency in the cement. There were two public-service notices on the wall: one discouraging drug use, which showed a faceless man chained to a syringe, and another promoting environmental stewardship, which showed a man clutching a globe that was stuck to his head.

The man in shorts announced at the end of the cement factory tour that the time had now come for us to depart for the sanatorium. Brief, quiet debate erupted among us on the difference between a sanatorium and a sanitarium, if there even was one, and we decided that it was more likely that this meant a spa and not an asylum, though we were prepared for both or either. 

It turned out our destination was neither, at least according to the sign on the rutted path leading into the woods: we were arriving at a place called Bus Station Number Four. As the bus eased into the trees, birch branches needled us through open windows. Once deep enough that we couldn’t see back to the main road, the driver let the bus roll to a halt in a clearing and killed the engine with a flourish. 

All around us, peeking out from paper-white tree trunks, were cabins with fresh coats of paint: red, yellow, green, blue. There was a swing, designed for two adults to share, facing each other, while rocking back and forth. Dancing Natasha, the local journalist, was already on it with a friend. A candy-striped van sat parked between two pines. It was partially obscured by bushes, and several men in Special Forces uniforms camouflaged themselves against the shrubbery, smoking.

The Polish and Belarusian teams began to stake their tents while we, guests of honor at this ideological summit, were ushered into the cabins. A small truck—actually more like a tall El Camino—rattled over and came to a dying stop. Four local women in skirts and frilly headscarves materialized from under the cover of the cargo bed, unveiling aluminum barrels shaped like grenades, which contained lunch: pink soup with sour cream, meat and potatoes, rye bread, more sour cream. The ladies dished it onto metal plates and gave us tea from another barrel. 

We’d barely finished when the man in shorts appeared from nowhere and announced that the athletic competition was about to begin. The Polish team, competing independently, claimed it had no idea any of this was going to happen, though they’d somehow had the foresight to design, print, and wear matching orange t-shirts—and maybe this was just their way: assume team sports could break out at any time and always be prepared.

But with no court or net in sight, the game was unclear. It dawned on us that the man in shorts, the minder, and a few lesser ideologues had spent the lunch break running around the forest with ropes, pegs, stakes, and mallets, and we were about to be subjected to their creation.

They’d built an obstacle course, and suddenly—the soup wasn’t even cold yet—the race was underway. The first station was a tent, or rather a pile of canvas on the ground with some spears, and our job was to fashion it into a freestanding shelter as fast as possible while an ideologue chanted numbers from a stopwatch. Next we squeezed through some fence rails, sprinted through a gap in the trees, and flung ourselves on to a rope swing that if approached correctly would float us down a gentle rocky slope. If approached incorrectly, it would drag and spin us like wet tea bags, knees bouncing on stone.

After that it was the mud pit, next to which was a stack of wooden disks—this explained the distant chainsaw noise over lunch—which we had to fling down, running all the while, to use as stepping stones through the muck. The last teammate had to pick them up behind us, also running, otherwise we would be assessed a penalty. The man in shorts had been thrilled to announce that penalties were extremely important on this obstacle course.

Around the bend from the mud pit there was a gauntlet of hurdles: at last, something easy. They were comically low. Then we realized we weren’t going over them. We were going under them. Evil clouds had been gathering all morning, and now the sky opened up with torrents of rain.

After the hurdles, we threw a single dart at a dartboard nailed to a tree, and then a final 500 meter dash through the woods. Two weeks earlier, arriving in Minsk on not enough sleep, I’d sprained an ankle after taking a false step and flipped myself upside down on the Metro stairs under the weight of my house-sized backpack; kind strangers had offered what seemed like medical help but I’d been too shy to accept and the ankle was currently, post hurdles, the size of a grapefruit. Now, Oleg of the opposing team grabbed my hand and pulled me through the last of the woods toward the finish. The man in shorts, who’d been following the whole time, screamed encouragement, for everyone we think, as we all finally crossed the line.

Times were announced, the man in shorts tallied penalties with glee, Dancing Natasha snapped photos from the side. The storm let up just long enough for the ideologues to declare an impromptu tug-of-war. We were halfway through a last-minute log-throwing competition when the rain returned with a vengeance. We huddled in the bus shelter pavilion. 

Time passed. The dartboard started to take on water and bulge. Everyone made a break for the observation deck.

In this particular place the OD occupied the top floor of a three-story building alongside a bog. We’d completely missed this on the way in. All glass, with a pointy roof, and a lot of broken window panes—so rain was pouring in and running down the stairwell in sheets. The bottom floor was the banya, plus its antechamber and a pitch-black shower. The second floor sat empty except for a middle-aged DJ behind a laptop in the corner, feeding deafening disco tunes to a pair of amps. This floor smelled of urine.

Dancing Natasha had let loose on the top floor and seemed to be recruiting. We fled to a gazebo across the way. As we watched the dancers shimmy behind the watery broken glass one of the amps washed down the stairs and out the ground floor door with a crash.

The minder swooped by with his camera, the man in shorts strutted about, and a nervous fellow bureaucrat checked in to make sure we were having fun, which seemed unideological but sweet. He rallied us to the banya. We suited up.

Some men we hadn’t seen yet (more ideologues?) were already there, drunk, and one of them was on an extended freewheeling monologue about Belarusian independence. Another poured beer from a plastic liter bottle over the hot coals. Half the men were in standard-issue government speedoes; the other half were just in their underwear.

The benches were packed, so they pushed—literally, pushed—us up to the top: that was the best place for beginners, the only way we’d get the true 170 degree F banya experience. We could barely breathe and begged to descend, which was okay, because it gave the ideologues the chance to move into birching. Out came the branches, and we were spun around and flogged with wet birch leaves, with brief pauses to grind the bark into our skin.

We stumbled out, a little blind from the heat and the beer vapor, past the firefighters who were lurking in a stand of trees and chatting with the Special Forces guys, and into the cold lake. Steam rose from our skin. None of us had showered in a week.

Meanwhile, back at the bus shelter pavilion, the ideologue ranting drunk about independence was being disciplined by his superiors, and last we saw of him he was being walked away in the direction of the outhouse. The four local ladies in the food truck had returned and were doling out the evening’s protein/starch combo. We settled down to a meadhall-size picnic table in the open air and watched a lone police officer reposition the amps (the one that fell down the stairs seemed to be working fine) in a clearing over by the banya. Seconds later, Dancing Natasha was on the scene.

A black Mercedes sedan soon pulled up. The driver popped the trunk. It was filled with salami, cucumbers, tomatoes, bread, two 10-kilo wheels of homemade cheese, and several cases of vodka, brand name Taste of Victory.

We were admonished to never, ever drink vodka without eating (bez zakuski, a crime). Luxurious platters appeared on the table. We were also admonished to never, ever take shots without toasting. Shot one was for friendship, shot two for country, shot three for international brotherhood, shot four for hospitality, shot five for peace, shot six for masculinity, shot seven for feminine wiles, shot eight for good times, shot nine for disco dancing, shot ten for forests, shot eleven for salami, shots twelve plus for something else.

In between there was the disco, with the bathhouse DJ at the helm. We danced to pop songs, wedding songs, sad songs, all of it. Certain tunes charmed the whole dance floor into forming a circle—the Taste of Victory at work—then charge the center, throw our hands up and scream, then run away and in again; repeat. Platonic slow dancing took place, to the fleeting discomfort of the westerners. Rain came and went. No one cared. From time to time we’d be summoned to the bus shelter pavilion for another round of shots and snacks, then back through the spooky sylvan mist to the dancefloor in the middle of nowhere.

Things died down around four in the morning. A few hours later we awoke to the rooster call of the man in shorts. He was no longer even wearing shorts—just a speedo and a utility belt with an iPod holster, doing his morning calisthenics. Back to the bus shelter pavilion we went for bowls of mashed potatoes, each decorated with an entire sausage, along with the first of the morning’s five mandatory vodka shots. Upon completing the fifth we each received a ceramic diorama, a forest scene centered around a giant phallic mushroom house, a gift to cement our friendship. We said our sincerest thank yous to the lunch ladies and boarded the bus back to camp. En route we pulled over—really—to buy more vodka, which the ideologues poured into plastic shot glasses as they advanced merrily down the aisle. They dropped us off at the security gates to the cement factory and we waved to the bus as it pulled away, the minder’s camera rolling on. 


Krasnasielski, Belarus
2008
Neolithic Flint Mines Expedition