Sunbathing in Siberia (7 page)

Apart from the street sellers and kiosks there are several larger shops that range in size and quality. Firstly, there are small convenient stores that are attached to residential blocks, taking up the space where a ground floor flat would be. These shops are unique in that you can't simply walk in and pick up the things you want, when you enter the store you walk into what can only be described as a large cage. In these shops you have to know what you want, ask for it, pay for it through a small square opening in the bars and take your goods from the same place. Awkward if you have a long list of things you want or if you can't speak Russian.

The supermarkets are a different affair altogether. They are very similar to their UK cousins; however, when you enter, if you have any bags with you, you must lock them away in one of the many lockers provided near the till points. They have most of the same products you can find in the West; however they do range greatly in quality and cost. Some sell much better meat products than others, but what they all have in common is that many products are out of date. This makes shopping even more tiresome because it becomes a quest to find the products you want that are the least past their use by date. My theory is that while many people in Russia grow food on their own plots of land, having become dependent on these plots after the fall of the Soviet Union, supermarkets have no choice but to keep selling out-of-date stock because people just don't buy it fast enough.

When it was just the two of us, we had to do some kind of supermarket shopping to avoid using the out-of-date products in the fridge. One evening, while in the middle of cooking, we decided to go to a supermarket near Nastya's office. It was a Friday evening and the streets were full of drunken Russian men. We weren't accosted or spoken to on our way there as all the drunken people were either too busy enjoying themselves to notice us or they had fallen asleep on the street.

Once we had our goods, Nastya led me to another main road that could also take us home. Not only would it have made our journey shorter but there would likely be fewer drunken people. When we approached the road it was pitch dark. Because of the lack of shops of any kind it hadn't been fitted with street lamps. Halfway down we could see a police car with two militia sat there quietly. Nastya began to walk back, appearing as if she had taken a wrong turning. She explained that though they could be decent people, and I had my passport in my pocket, complete with immigration card and registration, they could stop us if they wanted to, ignore the fact I had my papers in order and attempt to get a bribe. It was safer to go back the way we came.

Khrushchev's Permanent Thaw

Russian apartments are noticeably different from those I have known in the UK in that they are usually confined to one floor and are made with the same love and care that the buildings are made with. Instead of skirting boards, many floors have lino, which is cut in such a way that it rides up the wall three inches on all sides and bunches up in the corners. Paint is used sparingly – many ceilings in Russia are covered in those horrible polystyrene tiles with coving made of the same material, and the wallpaper is badly fitted. Nearly every joint of paper overlaps the other. In places where a wall meets a cupboard and there is a gap that would normally be disguised with a wooden panel in the UK, they simply apply a badly cut strip of wallpaper over it. These often peel slightly and so small holes are usually visible around cupboards, and there are many cupboards. Any void above a doorway is usually turned into a cupboard. In this way Russian apartments are similar to submarines – every inch of space counts.

To counter the poor standard of decoration, Nataliya Petrovna had hung pictures wherever she could, only none of the frames matched or seemed in keeping with the colour of the walls. Some pictures were even without frames and were simply pinned to the wall. There was also little evidence of personal possessions. Nobody seemed to own much of anything. Looking at other peoples apartments, it became clear that this was typical of most Russians. With the exception of a few fridge magnets and pictures on walls there is very little of anything in any apartment to give an indication as to who lives there. I got the impression that people primarily concerned themselves with objects that were of use. My mother would have cried. As the world's most finicky and house-proud woman, she would have had a fit had she seen it. None of the furniture matched or the walls and curtains. It may sound silly, but as a twenty-eight-year-old man, who has lived in countless rented rooms, and has never really given much thought to furniture or wallpaper, it even jarred with me. Because my dad's a builder we had had to suffer stacks of tools and various ‘might come in handy later' bits-n-bobs, but still, my mother hoovered every day and would never let a guest enter if the house wasn't perfect. I think I have inherited her genes. Either that or I have inherited my father's; my father who is known for being a perfectionist in his building work, and therefore a real pain to work for. When laying new wooden floors my dad always insisted on using scrim cloths before varnishing. I remember speaking to a working eighty-four-year-old builder mate of my dad in one of the buildings they were fixing. When I had asked him about working for my dad, he said ‘Your dad uses scrim cloths. Scrim cloths to dust surfaces after they've been brushed with a duster. Nobody uses them anymore; even I never even used 'em when I was twenty.' So as the son of Wales's fussiest builder, and a hoover-crazy mother, Nastya's parents' apartment was a slight shock to the system.

However, like the house I grew up in, all the cupboards above the doors, and the balcony leading off from the living room were filled with Boris's things: spare car parts, old shoes with worn soles, and jars of ‘might come in handy one day'. In the living room, against the left wall, stood a large, brown laminated unit typical of the 1960s, that spanned the whole length. Through the glass panels I could see at least fifty books. Other sections without a glass front were filled with more of Boris's gear and spare parts, and one glass-fronted section had its glass covered with silver foil to prevent anyone seeing the piles of spare machinery parts inside. I later learned this is something Nataliya Petrovna had forced Boris to do as she felt ashamed at guests seeing so many of Boris's dirty tools. The only item that truly reflected Nataliya Petrovna's personality was a large black Enisei piano that stood against the wall opposite from the one with the large brown unit. She'd had musical training and had come from relatively good beginnings.

Towards the last two weeks of my visit, Nastya's parents kept appearing unexpectedly and would often stay the night. They slept in the living room, which is where they had slept most nights since Baba Ira moved in roughly fifteen years earlier. This may sound strange to some people but it was something I was used to before coming to Russia. Growing up with three sisters in a two-bedroom house, my parents actually slept in the living room until their divorce. As a teenager, this was something that had annoyed me as I couldn't stay up late and watch TV, or walk through the living room to the kitchen without waking up my parents. Similarly, in Krasnoyarsk, I couldn't walk to the balcony at night for a smoke, which was the only place permitted; but it felt cosy, like it had when I was a small boy. One of my fondest memories is coming home from a school trip at the age of seven. We had been to the dinosaur exhibition in Cardiff Museum, and I had bought a plastic woolly mammoth. As the trip finished at about midday, when I got home, my parents, who had decided to have a lie-in, were still in their blankets on the living-room floor. I woke them up and showed them my new toy. It was quite lovely being able to walk through the front door and find them sleeping. I suppose Nastya would have similar memories, only in hers she would have gone to the Krasnoyarsk Museum, which had an actual woolly mammoth in it.

Occasionally the sky was so bleak and snow-laden it was as if it contained all the Sundays of my teenage years. Although it was spring, it was still fairly cold, and we couldn't stay out for too long in the evenings without catching a chill. To pass the time, Nastya and I spent any night she wasn't working watching British sitcoms in the permanent warmth of home. Usually, after about four hours of
The
IT Crowd,
we were so bored that we would go to sit in the kitchen for a change of atmosphere. With Nastya's help I sometimes plucked up the courage to ask Nataliya Petrovna about the family's history.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, hyperinflation left many starving to death. People famously queued down the street for a loaf of bread or some milk. Nataliya Petrovna and Boris, who both worked for the energy company, had to continue working for three years without pay until the economy began to recover. They continued working without pay as the company still paid for their apartment, the utility bills and Nastya's and Dima's musical tuition. This was normal under the Soviet remuneration system and continued until the country stabilised once more. Had they stopped working, they would have lost their pensions, the apartment and dacha; all of which were crucial to their survival. During this period of instability, at least two of Nataliya Petrovna's friends and work colleagues drank themselves to death. The Semenov family would have starved if it weren't for Boris's hunting skills.

It was clear from the start that Boris and his wife were very different from each other. Boris, who had originated from a small hunting village in the Evenkiyskiy district a few hundred miles west of Krasnoyarsk, came to the city as an engineer and worked at the same energy plant for his entire career until retirement. Although he was a member of modern civilised society Boris never left his hunting roots behind. At any and every opportunity he goes hunting or spends his time preparing for hunting trips. Boris has a vast amount of equipment that is spread throughout the apartment, dacha and a garage he owns. Because of the way he has lived his life, and the mountains he climbs regularly, his physique is something to be in awe of. He put me to shame. In fact he would put most people to shame, including a large percentage of athletes.

When Boris was in the apartment he would sit at the kitchen table and repair things. Because of his age and failing eyesight, he would wear goggles that looked a lot like a cross between a welder's mask and a jeweller's eyepiece. Even when he wasn't fixing something, he would walk around with them still on his head, making him resemble a mad professor. Boris makes a lot of his own equipment or modifies things he buys. His headlamp has several different lenses and a home-made battery unit. His backpacks are enlarged and home-sewn. When Nastya and I came home, we would often find Boris sat at the old-fashioned sewing table in the hallway making some new bag for carrying meat. On two occasions, I have seen a glimpse of his gun, a semi-automatic Kalashnikov rifle that looked modified to the extent that it appeared home-made. This weapon was never left lying around but kept in a locked steel box somewhere in the storeroom next to the bathroom. I only saw it when Boris was checking it over for his next hunting trip.

With his education as a technical engineer Boris is good at making and repairing most things; especially his car. When his previous vehicle died a death, he bought the exact same model from a second-hand dealer and used his dead car as parts to make the new one like new. When Boris wasn't sitting at the sewing table or the kitchen table with his goggles on he would fall asleep on the living room sofa and snore loudly. Looking at him, it was like watching a sleeping beast. For although Boris is very mild mannered and loves to joke, he also has a fiery temper. This, coupled with his perfectly formed body, makes Boris one of the world's deadliest people though I must say that I've never felt intimidated by him. He keeps his temper stored up for when there is a need for it, and there has been occasion it was needed. While out on his hunting trips, Boris has had to face bears and wild cats. He has fought for his life against some the world's greatest and most ferocious creatures, and so far has never lost a fight. Although Boris snores like a beast, whenever I walked past him sleeping I had the sense that he was watching me with hawk eyes. I could never be sure if he was watching me or not, although he gave the impression of sleeping heavily Boris is actually an extremely light sleeper and can spring from slumber into fast action in a second. I suppose this comes from his inherited hunter's awareness and from hundreds of nights sleeping out in the taiga.

For Boris to catch his prey, he has to catch a train heading north carrying anything up to sixty kilos of equipment or more. In his large rucksack, he carries all the potatoes he needs to survive a month in the wild, as well as knives, medicines, and weapons. He also carries a pair of 10 ft home-made skis. These skis are unusual in that they are covered with fur and are longer as well as wider than normal recreational skis. They are essential for travelling in the taiga where snowdrifts can be as high as 15 ft. Without these Boris can't hunt. Once the train has been travelling north for seven hours, Boris disembarks in what seems like the middle of nowhere, and because he always catches a train in early evening he normally arrives in the early hours of the morning when it is pitch black. He then has to hike an hour before reaching a wide and treacherous river. To cross this he has a home-made boat that he keeps buried in the woods. As the river is fast, and very deep, Boris has to use all his strength to paddle his boat and his sixty kilos of gear across to the other side. Once on the other side he then has to hike a few hours to reach his first hut. This hut is in such a remote part of the taiga that it is never disturbed, except by bears. Here he takes as much sleep as he needs before taking a further ten-hour hike to his second hut, which is closer to his hunting ground. Boris can spend as much as a month at this second hut with only himself for company. There is no mobile phone coverage either. If he wants to make a phone call, he has to climb a different mountain to get a small signal. This he does quite often to call Nataliya Petrovna. His calls are never necessary, but he likes to speak to his wife and play jokes. Sometimes he says an earthquake has destroyed his hut and he is sleeping in a tree, or he will say he is being chased by a party of bears with rifles. Anything to amuse.