A hammer and sickle in the sand

I have a totalitarian confession. I see a beach; I have to draw a hammer and sickle on it. Sunbaked Thais, windswept Irish; frozen Latvians; pulsating Brazilians. All have seen fleeting celebration of (Soviet) unions by the seaside.

But Odessa was the greatest. Visible from space.

Its station platform swayed as I alighted, the train wobbled too. Then I realised it was me. My travelling companion on the train from Kiev had spent our nocturnal journey prone, reading a slim volume of difficult French verse. Chuckling to himself all night, a bottle of Armenian cognac regularly chiming against his teeth as the train clattered through the darkness. My Irish passport is for warzones and Ukraine was then still whole, therefore I was too British to complain. So I joined in with him.

Our party of four had been spread randomly across the night train. Bedraggled, we assembled in various states of sleep deprivation on the concourse. I was so tired I was sleep depraved. A man slumped shabby and shoeless by the ticket booth. For a moment I thought he was one of us. He was wailing loudly, and surprisingly in Turkish, his sole English phrase interjected at intervals, “It’s killing me! KILLING ME!” I couldn’t fault him there. The cold air hit you like a fist.

The Black Sea Hotel was our destination. Apt. It was so cold everything looked like it was in black and white. But then a collective smirk arose… a new town to newly career around. Checked in, hipflasks refilled, only one thought, Potemkin Steps? No! Let’s go to the beach!

The sand was so pale it could have been used for a white balance. The Black Sea was dreamlike - colourless and dangerous. Our labour divided, we stood together, on a count of four, we walked in different directions. Counted to 100. Each then dug in a heel and began to trace. One the sickle; one its handle; one the hammer; one its shaft. Working collectively, one union. Our grateful onlooking proletariat? An old man staring at the sea, the dog that was walking him, and Ukraine’s most optimistic piroshky vendor, steam rising from his lonely kiosk.

An hour later he had his four best customers of the season. As we bit hard into his hot pies he had only one comment: “Balshoy molotok.” Big hammer.

Wind biting, hipflasks empty, a fresh toast was needed. A bar waved from the road above the beach. Inside, Lenin looked down from one wall. Glasses charged we sat at a low table, and then the five of us watched the tide turn against him once again.