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.