Incendiary
The fire broke out at around 8 o’clock. The power had been dying on a regular basis for over a week, and someone must have done a bad MacGyver on the fuse box because, around 7.30, it started spitting out sparks. Dull as a sparkler at first so everyone just walked on by as though it were the most natural thing, then it began to work itself into a wonderful frenzy, spewing little gobs of fire faster and faster in all directions and clear across the hall until, woomph, it burst into flames.
This was Leningrad in 1985, where the closest thing to civil engineering I ever saw was two guys pounding the same metal rod sticking up out of the pavement with a log, in between cigarette and vodka breaks, every day for six months. Where you soon learned that things only ever got done within the system that operated below the official infrastructure (everyone was a cab driver and then some for the right price, a lavish meal for six at the poshest hotels could be had for three packs of Marlboroughs, a copy of Vogue and two Rolling Stones tapes got you gourmet treats flown in from Azerbaijan, and everyone knew that Chernenko had died weeks before it was announced in Pravda).
So in a way it was only natural that the Russians in our dorm just went about their business, only dodging the sparks as they walked on by the growing calamity. But this was the middle of winter, where daylight lasted from 10 in the morning till 3 in the afternoon and temperatures got crueller than -30°, so when the power went out in the whole building and the fire began moving beyond the fuse box and into the walls, somebody went to “call” the “fire department”.
About 45 minutes later, five firemen appeared. They ambled up and down the halls, chatting and flirting and telling anyone who pointed out that maybe they should be doing something about the fire that they were waiting for Sergei to show up because, ‘he’s got the hose.’
No-one was panicking or heading outside, drinks were passed round as students milled through the halls making bets on how long before we all burned to a crisp. And the firemen had learned that there were foreigners in the dorm, which could only mean one thing: American cigarettes. So off they went on their quest.
The halls were getting darker and darker with smoke, the only light coming from the growing inferno and occasional flashlight beam, and it was around 10 o’clock, with Sergei still on his way, that I ran into the fireman by the flaming fuse box, unlit Winston hugged between his lips, sparks flying out around him. He shone his flashlight in my face, smiled and said, ‘Got a light?’
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