A couple of weeks later President Yuschenko of Ukraine announced that he was simplifying entry requirements for citizens of the EU: visas would no longer be necessary for tourists coming to the country for a short stay. My heart sank.
Allow me to explain: of course I know that all cultures are rich and fascinating and believe with all my heart that every nation on our beautiful planet is equally tremendous. But even so, there was a terrible, reactionary part of my soul that whispered to me that Ukraine was one of those places like Canada, New Zealand, or Belgium: not without a few modest pleasures, but otherwise trapped permanently in the shadow of a much more interesting country. The insidious voice whispered further that since Ukraine had been an appendage of Russia for the best part of a thousand years, it wouldn’t be all that different from what I already knew, or at least not different enough to warrant the expense and bother of a trip there. After spending so long in Russia, Ukraine could only be a disappointment.
In a world without exorcisms this would not have been a problem. I just wouldn’t have gone. In a world with exorcisms, however, the situation was a little different. Edward had been trying to persuade me to go there for months. He loved Ukraine and often waxed lyrical about how big the strawberries were and how black the soil was. I was unmoved by these poetic evocations of a rural arcadia, and knowing that the whisperings of my soul would sound too frivolous for a man as intense as Edward, I fobbed him off instead with stories of how difficult it was for British citizens to organise a visa for Ukraine. It was no more difficult than it was to organise a tourist visa for anywhere else, but it did the trick. Now, however, that excuse was gone.
I waited for my mobile to ring.
‘Daniel! Have you heard the fantastic news?’
I met Edward in a café in the south of Moscow two days after Yuschenko had made his announcement. He got straight down to business.
‘I have a plan,’ he said, his eyes gleaming with an excitement that bordered on the visionary.
‘Go on.’
‘We’ll go down to Odessa – I have good relations with many exorcists down there. We will attend some deliverance services, and you will see some very powerful phenomena. After that, we can relax on the beach. They have beautiful beaches in Odessa, you know, and even at this time of year, in April, the water will be warm …’
Odessa: the name, like Paris, or Alexandria, held magic. I’d actually thought about going there seven years before but had been too lazy. On the other hand, I wasn’t very excited by the prospect of walking along the beach with Edward. Beaches bore me, unless they have things like dead whales or rotting nuclear submarines on them. But Edward wasn’t finished.
‘And that’s not all … afterwards we’ll take the train north to Kiev and attend … er … Yevrovideniye. Do you know what I mean?’
Yevrovideniye: Eurovision. Of course. Ukraine had won the Eurovision Song Contest the year before and so now it was Kiev’s turn to host that most kitsch of entertainment extravaganzas. That was why Yuschenko had scrapped visa requirements for EU citizens: to make it as easy as possible for the maximum number of foreigners from the countries involved to attend. In Britain we may scoff, but in a country like Ukraine, Eurovision would be a Big Deal. Ukraine doesn’t get to host many international events, not even the rubbish ones.
‘Are you suggesting that we have an exorcism-musical-beach holiday?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Precisely. Let’s fuse work and pleasure.’
Suddenly all doubts vanished. It was nothing short of brilliant – a stroke of genius, unprecedented in the annals of humanity. Now here was the beautiful car crash that would scramble my senses absolutely, shaking them up once and for all, leaving the world looking entirely different. More than that, Edward had suddenly introduced a startling lightness to the tone of this meeting that had never been present in any of our other ones. Until that moment, exorcism had always been an unremittingly dark topic, a ‘very serious matter’. It still was, but now it was possible to mix in other concepts with it.
By the time I got home, however, the strength of Edward’s vision of things was waning and I was starting to see things differently, doubting the whole plan. The whole of Ukraine’s elite would be attending Eurovision. Tickets would be rarer than a gay-pride rally in the Middle East and pricier than a seat in the House of Lords, New Labour-style. We were doomed.
Except … maybe it didn’t matter if we attended Eurovision or not. If I was serious about it, there were some interesting things about Ukraine.
Do you remember the Orange Revolution? It is forgivable if you don’t, because by the time you read this the euphoria and excitement that surrounded those days in December and January of 2004 and 2005 will be for most people a distant half-memory of a few flickering phantoms on a TV screen: some tanks, a flower held out to an unsmiling soldier, the downfall of darkness, the triumph of light.
It wasn’t the only revolution taking place in the former Soviet Union at that time either. There was one in Georgia just before it, and one in Kyrgyzstan just after it, though that one was met with less enthusiasm by the Western media. The Kyrgyz were just too far away to care, too difficult to describe, too poor and insignificant to bother with.
This is what happened in Ukraine: the scandal-tainted President Leonid Kuchma had reached the end of his second term and everything looked set for his prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych to assume control of the country in a tidy handover of power, just as Putin had taken over from Yeltsin in Russia four years earlier. Yanukovych was viewed as a pro-Russian supporter of the current oligarchic order. He proposed making Russian an official language, a move unpopular with nationalists in the Ukrainian-speaking west of the country. He also had a criminal record, having done time in Soviet jails for assault in his youth.
Yanukovych’s only serious opponent was another former prime minister of Kuchma’s, Viktor Yuschenko. Yuschenko presented himself as the pro-West Ukrainian nationalist candidate. He pledged to root out corruption, bring the country into NATO and to seek membership of the EU. He was especially popular where Yanukovych was hated: in western Ukraine. As the election drew nearer, however, Yuschenko fell ill and had to be flown to Austria for emergency treatment. Yuschenko’s camp said he’d been poisoned. Anti-Yuschenko forces claimed he was a pansy who’d eaten some rotten food.
Yuschenko recovered, but was left badly disfigured, an effect not usually associated with dodgy kebabs. He looked as though he’d aged twenty years. He went on to fight the election and lose, but refused to concede defeat, citing fraud. With his supporters, who included not only his running mate Yulia Tymoshenko but also the head of the renegade Ukrainian Orthodox Church (which had broken away from the Moscow patriarchate) and Ukraine’s Eurovision Song Contest champion Ruslana, he camped out on Independence Square, demanding a recount.
The world’s media descended on Kiev. A sea of orange flags (the colour of Yuschenko’s side) was broadcast around the globe every night. Eventually a recount was held: this time, Yuschenko and Tymoshenko won. There was great jubilation in Kiev, and around the world. Ukraine was coming in from the cold, freedom and democracy were spreading and the bluebird of happiness was trilling in every tree.
I myself was sceptical. Election fraud notwithstanding, practically no journalist or commentator paid any attention to the fact that Viktor Yuschenko and Yulia Tymoshenko were both former members of the preceding president’s cabinet: that is to say, they had at one time been players in the very regime they had just overthrown, a regime in which they had grown rich and powerful. I didn’t think it was possible to have operated at so high a level of a political system that was riddled with corruption without getting a bit of filth under your fingernails, not to mention in your hair, up your nostrils and in every other orifice besides. And so it was hard to believe that they wouldn’t soon start fucking up. As the Russian saying goes: A humpback will only be corrected in the grave.
And if you’ve paid any attention to events in Ukraine since those glorious days you’ll know things did go wrong, and quite swiftly. Within six months Yuschenko and Tymoshenko had fallen out and become political enemies. And in little over a year, Yuschenko, unable to form a government otherwise, was forced to invite Yanukovych, his arch nemesis, the one who had allegedly tried to steal the election, to be his prime minister. And that relationship also dissolved in acrimony, amassed crowds and face-offs on Independence Square; and who knows what new drama will have unfolded by the time this is published …
The collapse of the Orange Revolution, however, lay in the future. There was still euphoria abroad in Ukraine, and bitterness in Moscow towards the country’s new leaders. I had never been to a country in the spring of revolution before. I was too young to visit the new democracies of Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall collapsed and unborn when most of the Third World was cut loose from European control. Mixed with a dash of demon hunting, it could be excellent. I liked the juxtaposition of incongruous elements: probing the promise of a golden future on earth, while pursuing the invisible enemies of all mankind, dedicated to our eternal damnation.
I was beginning to think maybe I had been too hasty in writing off the potential delights of Ukraine. And anyway, as far as exorcism was concerned, Edward was in charge. If I was to get anywhere in my satanic education, I had to subjugate myself to his will. It was his reality, not mine. As soon as I stepped away from his orbit, it would disappear.
And Edward was hell-bent on Ukraine. Within a few days we had tickets for Odessa. The sun was shining the day we bought them, and, buoyed by the promise of new borders to be crossed, we went for a celebratory walk through Moscow. I had never seen Edward so relaxed or in such a good mood. But this was what he lived for: the thrill of the demon hunt, the opportunity to capture his dark vision of the world on film so that others would be forced to acknowledge what he knew but they ignored. We stopped for a coffee in front of Chistiye Prudy metro station and he sketched out a rough schedule of our week in Odessa: there were seven exorcists on that piece of paper. It was going to be tight; we were going to witness many exorcisms. Then he put it aside and started to talk about women.
Edward’s original itinerary: seven exorcists in seven days. It didn’t quite work out that way
He had just turned 29. He thought it was time to get married, but he had no idea how to find a girl who would understand his mission.
‘I mean,’ he said, ‘I need someone who understands my work. I need a girl who isn’t afraid of the subject of my film. And I need a girl who is my intellectual equal, and who doesn’t complain when I spend large amounts of time lying on the sofa, doing nothing. Because I need to think in my work, and that requires me to lie on the sofa for very long periods.’ He looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Do you think it will be hard to find her?’
‘A bit,’ I said.
‘But I am tired of waiting. I would like to have children …’
‘I’ve got a suggestion,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘When you meet a girl for the first time, don’t talk about exorcism.’
Edward laughed. I had just said something ridiculous. ‘But it’s important!’
‘I know, Edward … But it’s not a good subject for romantic conversation. It scares girls off. On the first date, you shouldn’t talk about it.’
‘Come, come …’
‘I’m serious. Tell her about the CD you made. Make out like that’s your main interest. And on the second date, you shouldn’t talk about demons either. Nor on the third. Or the fourth. Talk about your love for children and small animals instead. In fact, you should wait a couple of months before you reveal your interest in evil spirits, and even then you shouldn’t make out that it’s all that serious. Act like it’s a hobby. You can tell her that you’ve dedicated your life to making a film about exorcisms only once you’re married. By that point it’ll be too late.’
Edward laughed. He thought I was joking.
In the days that followed I prepared for my trip south. My reluctance vis-à-vis Ukraine had vanished completely, but at the same time, I could never become completely excited: I could not completely lose myself in anticipation of the trip. There were two reasons for this:
(1) I wasn’t sure how the various priests I was going to meet would take to me. They might be extremely hostile to an outsider sniffing around in an area considered taboo by the church.
(2) I was going to be witness to some profound human suffering. Regardless of whether or not it was caused by demonic possession, the pain on the faces of the women in Edward’s videos was real and brutal; profoundly unexotic, deeply unmysterious. It was not something to be taken lightly. The habitual true/false approach to discussing something like exorcism disguises the reality of the phenomenon as it is experienced – namely, pure suffering. Nor does it affect only the possessed – I had seen traces of it on the faces of the exorcists themselves; I had seen it in Edward’s eyes. Since I wasn’t conducting an investigation into the disputed existence of the paranormal but rather an exploration of it as something accepted and tangible that is lived with I was going to be confronted with this directly.
So on the day of our departure for Odessa, I felt conflicted. There was something unresolved in my attitude towards this trip. Edward had a mission; I had curiosity. Thinking about it like that, I felt uneasy about what I was doing. Curiosity just didn’t seem like enough.
I got to Kievsky station early and was at the platform standing in front of our train a good twenty minutes before it was scheduled to leave. Edward, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Then, two minutes before departure, as the ticket attendants were making the final call for passengers to board, I saw him running towards me, grinning from ear to ear and dragging a huge bag along behind him. It contained all his equipment: two cameras, notebooks, clothes, books.
Edward reached me and stopped, reaching into his jacket pocket for his ticket. It wasn’t there. He searched another pocket, then another, then his bag. Then the train started, very slowly, to trundle out of the station.
Pskov had just been a warm-up, a hint at what he was capable of. Edward truly was a master practitioner of the art of catastrophe.
I had always wondered how it would feel to stand on a platform and watch a train that I had a ticket for trundle away. Now I knew: strangely serene. It was pleasant that this train knew nothing of me, that its driver and passengers cared not a whit for my plans. They didn’t know I wasn’t on it, that I was missing my chance to hunt down demons. They were off to lead their lives without me … And that was somehow good.
Edward, however, had turned pale. Apologies and self-recriminations poured from his lips. ‘I am an idiot, I have messed up your opportunity …’
‘These things happen,’ I said.
‘But never to me! This has never happened to me before!’
I found that hard to believe. ‘Maybe you left the ticket at home.’
‘No, I had it. I checked in the taxi. It was in my hands!’
‘Maybe it fell out of your pocket afterwards.’
‘It couldn’t have. It just isn’t possible. No, there’s something else going on here … Sometimes when you’re investigating these matters, well, the matters that we are investigating, if you understand what I mean, do not want to be investigated. Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s happened before, only not with tickets. But – keys disappear when I need them … Or sometimes I film a deliverance, only to discover that the camera has not recorded … It’s our Enemy. He doesn’t like it when people try to expose what he’s doing.’
Was the Devil riding to Odessa right now, going there in our stead? Could it be that Beelzebub himself, in top hat and tails, and terribly polite, was making his way to our seats even as we stood on the platform? Excuse me … he’d say, and the woman in the berth below him, with the big, red and white checked shuttle-trader bags, would start to feel ill as soon as she got off the train, and would waste away, and the doctors wouldn’t be able to treat her, until, a mere pale skeleton, she expired. And then the tall gentleman would stroll through Odessa, wreaking havoc, causing plant pots to fall on people’s heads, and others to tumble beneath the wheels of oncoming trams and be decapitated …
We ran into the station to get tickets for the next train, but there were none. Or rather there were, but the woman behind the counter was tired of selling them and slammed her metal blind down. It was past ten; she wanted to go home. Edward was devastated.
‘Can you believe that?’ he said. ‘She has tickets, but she won’t sell them … It’s outrageous …’
My own feeling was that since we were surfing the catastrophe wave, the catastrophe tsunami in fact, it was probably better not to go. With Edward, when something went wrong, at least two or three other crises were likely to follow in rapid succession. It was still possible to recoup most of the cost of my ticket. In the end, when it was absolutely clear that there were no more trains that night heading even vaguely in the direction of Ukraine, I persuaded him to wait a week.
I left him, a slightly forlorn figure, standing in front of the grandiose entrance to Kievsky station, looking for a bus. I knew that this was just a temporary setback, however. In VDNKh he had started speculating on mass possession as a prelude to bouncing back. He was resilient that way – demonic forces could only slow him down; they could not stop him, no matter what they threw at him. And that was just as well, if he was going to make a film like the one he was working on, entirely on his own.
I entered the underpass leading to the metro, took the escalator deep below the earth and rode the train home.
Once inside my building, however, I experienced two strange phenomena that are worth commenting on. The first was this: I met my neighbour, the famous and well-respected Soviet actor Vasily Lanovoi, on the landing, clad only in silk Japanese pyjamas. He acknowledged me with a sonorous ‘good evening’ (he always spoke in his stage voice). This was surprising: as he was the recipient of many plaudits and awards, a grubby and obscure foreigner such as I could not hope to register on his plane of existence. He was too high; I was too low. Usually he didn’t see me, not even if I was standing right under his aquiline nose. But that wasn’t the only strange thing. Suddenly he manoeuvred himself towards the doorway, and tried to peer inside my flat. I had to close the door on him to frustrate his voyeuristic tendencies.
What happened next, however, was even more inexplicable. Just after I dropped my bags in the hall, the kettle switched itself on in the kitchen. There was a click, the little red light came on and the water started to heat up … to bubble … then it switched itself off. Eh? I thought. Did I really see that? Then it switched itself on again … the water heated up … and then off. And then on once more …
It was eerie. The hair at the back of my neck stood up. The kettle had never done this before. What was happening? How was this possible?
It was classical, like something from one of Edward’s books: a prelude to a sudden drop in temperature and objects flying around the room. One author had cautioned the reader that the deeper he walked into the world of the diabolic, the more he would start to encounter problems – in both his private and professional life. Demons didn’t like to be spied on, bothered, disrupted, he wrote. They wanted freedom to lead human souls to damnation, without undue attention. Attention made it harder for them to influence people, made their potential victims wise to their tricks. As Edward had said, the matters that we are investigating, they do not want to be investigated. Was this a warning?
But then I thought: What kind of devil is this, switching kettles on and off? That’s crap.
After that the kettle behaved itself.
The very next day Edward bought more tickets, for Kiev this time. His contacts in Odessa were going to be out of town the next week, so we would go to the capital instead. Truth be told, I was a lot less interested in Kiev than Odessa. But I was teetering on the brink of a grand darkness now. It didn’t matter where I found it.