Sunbathing in Siberia (18 page)

I was worried we wouldn't make the plane in time. I really appreciated that Masha had agreed to fly to Moscow on the same flight as me but, after waking up at 4.30 a.m. to get to the airport two hours early, when Masha arrived just five minutes before boarding I had to bite my tongue to keep from being hurtfully sarcastic. Masha had this way of not caring too much about timekeeping. It wasn't arrogance, because she was never late, yet she never seemed to rush anywhere or feel the need to be anywhere early. After final tearful hugs with Nastya, Masha and I said goodbye to the entire family and entered the departure lounge of Yemelyanovo. When our flight number was called, still being unable to understand Russian, Masha got up and sprang towards the exit leaving me behind. I followed to where she was stood at the back of the queue. When the attendant motioned to open the gate, Masha called out that she had her baby boy and should therefore be allowed on the flight first. It worked. She parted the crowd carrying Kirill and I followed with the pushchair. Sat on the plane, I suspected that had been Masha's plan all along. I wondered how many times she had used her status as a young mum to push to the front of a queue, or as an excuse for her own lack of punctuality. At the same time I couldn't help but admire her audacity. She was courageous – I suppose she needed to be as I had never seen her with her husband, who, as quite an important scientist, didn't have any free time to visit his in-laws with his wife. I had only seen pictures of him on VKontakte, the Russian social network. I wanted to ask Masha about how she felt, with her husband being so busy, but I couldn't as we were sat on different ends of the plane.

It was my last flight out of Krasnoyarsk, or it would be if I played my cards right. I couldn't afford to make another error with the certificates. It had been a real blow finding out my two trips to the Russian embassy in London had been absolutely pointless. They hadn't come cheap – I had spent roughly £100 each time for travel, food and Tube rates. Not the most costly error but still, I had no room in my budget to allow for another one. This time I had to get it right, or my last flight out of Krasnoyarsk would become my last-but-one. We were so close to finally being able to live together in the same country permanently, under the same roof with never a need for me to leave again. I felt determined I could make it happen, and felt very sure of myself for the first time in a very adult way. The summer had changed me. Our new apartment had changed me. I had tasted the life I wanted and lived it for a full three months. Being just one certificate away from legal residency, our entire future was in my hands, just like Kirill's entire future sat in Masha's hands. Thinking about it, Masha's attitude was something I needed to emulate. With so much at stake it wouldn't hurt to become as self-assured as her, and determined to the point that I didn't see other people before me, or queues, or bureaucracy, just obstacles that I would treat with complete disregard. Still, I was comforted by the knowledge that the hard work was behind me. The right wheels were in motion because I had set them in motion, plus I had a definite place on earth I could now call home.

Summer, Liberty and Leprosy

During my early twenties I had been a bit of a loner. A serious love affair from the age of sixteen had left me heartbroken. Consequently I didn't have any girlfriends between the age of twenty and twenty five, because I was still nursing my broken heart. As I had nobody to spend my money on, I bought a lot of things for myself including jewellery. I even went through a phase of designing some individual pieces. While some of my male friends thought this was a bit effeminate I didn't care because I learned a great deal about the jewellery-making business while accumulating quite a handsome collection of one-of-a-kind rings. On a few of my previous trips to Russia I had noticed that quite a few Russian men also wore rings. Not just wedding rings but elaborate silver rings with huge rubies. These men were always very well-dressed with smart suit jackets and shiny shoes. As it was approaching summer and there was no pressing need to dress for the snow or extreme heat, I tidied myself up properly before leaving Wales. Regardless of the fact I wore trainers, with my tan leather coat and three ruby rings I looked quite similar to some of the wealthier Russians I had seen on previous flights. It had the desired effect. Aeroflot's flight attendants treated me better although they had never been unkind before, and I sailed through customs like a fish on a water slide. By the time I reached Krasnoyarsk I felt like a king. This illusion was quickly shattered when my luggage returned to me on the conveyor belt inside Yemelyanovo airport. It had gotten stuck somewhere and because it was made of thin material, had turned into a ball of ribbons with Chocolate Oranges inside. Clutching my stash I was met at the airport by Nastya and Boris who drove us back to our new apartment.

Unable to be far away from her family, Nastya had bought us an apartment just down the road from her parents' place. Our building didn't look as modern as theirs from the outside, and was ten storeys tall as opposed to their five. It was made with large grey bricks and had much smaller balconies. It sat in close proximity to another building of similar design, with a mishmash of square concrete slabs and messy sections of grass separating the two, plus a single rusty old children's swing from the Soviet years.

The design of the building meant that our apartment was west facing, with a balcony that looked across to the neighbouring building and down onto the communal square. We had been spoilt by the view of mountains over Semka's school back at Nastya's parents' place. Another difference was that there were two entrances: one east, one west. We were on the western side, where it was easier to park cars. Nastya opened the main door with her magnetic key, and it was clear that it wasn't any kind of palace. It looked like it should have been condemned a decade earlier. The foyer floor was a soup of cigarette butts and empty bottles. The walls were grey through years of abuse and from grubby hand prints. Despite all this I managed to see a bright side; our building did have one plus point, a lift – a 4 ft by 4 ft box, with heavy steel buttons, dulled from decades of jabbing fingers. There were more bottles and cigarette butts here too and some kind of fluid – a mix of blood and spilled beer – giving it an exceptionally grubby feel, which wasn't helped by the strip lights that blinked off and on. It reminded me of scenes from horror films, where the ghost of a small girl would appear every time the light went off. God only knows what had taken place in that lift over the years. It was a tight squeeze stuffing ourselves in there with my suitcase, but we managed and Nastya pressed the fifth button. The lift's one redeeming feature was its speed. The doors closed as soon as Nastya touched the button, which meant it was good in emergencies. At this point, I could imagine many scenarios where I might want to exit this building and fast.

On the fifth floor Nastya led Boris and me into a long corridor. Ours was the last door on the right, and boasted a front door that was built with love. It was built to stop tanks, armies and even Godzilla should it decide to try breaking in. I made a tremendous noise as I approached. On the ground were six subfloor access panels between our front door and the foyer – flat steel squares sat on square holes in the floor. Nastya and Boris had obviously made a note of where they were and avoided them, even though the hallway was only lit by one small bulb.

Once inside the apartment, we had a cup of English tea with milk. By request I had brought a variety of teas from Marks & Spencer, and Nastya had already bought a pouch of milk before coming to collect me. I say a pouch because not all milk in Russia comes in cartons. To save money, milk can be bought in plastic pouches; these are then plopped into a plastic pouch holder that looks like a funny sort of beaker with a large handle. We didn't have a beaker, so we simply leant our milk pouch against something else in the fridge to stop it from spilling everywhere. Calmed by a nice cuppa I decided our apartment was quite homely. Though it was a great deal smaller than what we had been used to it seemed lighter. Just off our hallway complete with little coat hooks was the kitchen with a new fridge-freezer, and a small balcony connected to it, which, though it had closed blinds, filled our kitchen with natural light. Our bedroom on the other side of the wall was the length of the kitchen and hallway combined. It had red satin curtains that bunched up against the floor because they were too long. Nastya had borrowed them from a friend of hers, as we couldn't afford our own yet. They added to the feeling of homeliness because they were very similar to the red velvet curtains my parents used to hang in the living room when I was a boy. My mum and dad had fought over them so many times. Mum wanted them open but dad wanted them closed. He had grown quite paranoid over the years. Often I would come home from school to find him stood at the curtains, open just a fraction so he could peer out and see who was lurking nearby. We had a gulley next to the house and sometimes people would hide there. When nobody was looking, they would come out and siphon the petrol out of my dad's van. No one ever caught them at it and my dad must have wasted hundreds of hours over the years peering through the little slit. When children were walking home from school my dad would stand there and watch them go, just in case one of them threw stones at his vehicle, which had happened only once before. The absence of light in the living room made it quite a depressing place to be, especially in my teenage years. Countless times I can remember coming home from a gig in my late teens only to trip over my parents' feet as they slept on the floor. It was worse after the divorce. Long after everyone had left except my dad, I would go to visit him on Saturdays. The split had a terribly negative effect on him and for several years he insisted on a complete absence of light, even going as far as to nail the curtains closed permanently. It took years of visits and coaxing him out before he finally let the light back in. My dad and Boris were actually alike in many ways. While my dad hated putting old bills in the bin in case someone stole his identity, Boris was afraid of the internet, saying ‘It's a military invention.' Though I found both their attitudes humorous to begin with, I can't say that either of them was wrong. Coming from the USSR, Boris was unusually paranoid about people he or his family had contact with. If Nastya had any sort of interaction with someone Boris would ask, ‘Who are they? Why do they want to know you? What is their agenda?' Occasionally his suspicious nature rubbed off on me and I had to be careful not to be overly inquisitive of every new person who entered my life.

Unfortunately, with another identical building just across the square with balconies and bedrooms that looked over at ours, our curtains had to remain closed most of the time. This made me feel that no matter how far from my family I lived, I would never be able to escape certain patterns of behaviours, and I would need to be careful not to fall into the same trap my father had.

During the first two weeks back in Siberia there wasn't any time to get settled in. Nastya had a fortnight off work, and we thought it best to get all the immigration stuff out of the way as soon as possible. Firstly, we had to register my visa. As it was my first private visa I thought it would need to be registered at the Federal Migration Service (UFMS), but the post office didn't question us when we went there and registered me anyway. It was the usual headache: forms had to be completed perfectly; we had to give photocopies of my passport pages, immigration card, copies of Nastya's residence papers, copies of the declaration of human rights (handwritten), forty-nine thousand copies of my finger prints, prints of my arse, and a brain scan. As usual, Nastya made a small mistake on one of the forms so we had to go to the photocopy shop to make more, fill these in, and go back. Like most previous occasions, registering took more than an hour of fussing about, queuing and going from place to place. This was the easy part.

Obtaining the chest X-ray certificate should have been simple – we just needed to make an appointment by phone and go to the hospital at the right time. Only the hospital was indistinguishable from every other building and it took ages to find. Eventually inside we registered, paid and then headed to the basement to wait for the nurse to show up. We were the only people there waiting for this service. Once the nurse came I had to get my shirt off, stand inside a machine, wait a second, and then it was all over. The nurse wrote something on a piece of paper, which we took and handed into one of the previous desks to get my certificate. It was only when I had it in my hand that I saw I didn't have TB; for some reason the nurse couldn't tell me beforehand, which was a bit nerve wracking. I was quite relieved. Not that I had any symptoms of any sort, it's just that when I have to be tested for something I have a tendency to think ‘Oh no, what if I've had it all this time?'

The HIV test was an intimidating experience. Once my name was down on the clipboard we had to leave the clinic and come back at 4 p.m. for the test. We decided to go and have some more form-filling fun and went to get my drugs test. This was in another clinic, in a different part of the city. Again, the building looked like any other. It could just as well have been an office block. Inside we had to register and pay, hopping from desk to desk to desk, then queue up in a tight corridor full of people all waiting for the same thing. We stood and waited for about thirty minutes. When it came to my turn to go in to the little office people had been disappearing into, I had to put stretchy blue plastic covers on my shoes. This was the measure they took to prevent the spread of disease, however, doctors were coming and going, seemingly from lunch break to lunch break, and they never wore the blue things. Having the test involved sitting on a chair, similar to a dentist's chair, while blood was taken from my arm. The results and much needed certificate would be available a week later.