This was quite a difficult time. Nastya and I spoke online most days and discussed options, which was all quite pointless as we didn’t have any. We were stuck on a treadmill of the same questions. Could she somehow move to Britain? Could I find a job that paid me £20,000 in a short space of time? Could we possibly move to France? By the end of May I was thoroughly depressed. I spent my days looking for work, pushing for any job I could find, while bunking down each night at one of my parents’ places. All the while I was conscious that I had a wife in Siberia, and that we ought to be making plans together. I was in despair at being torn in half by immigration regulations, but at the same time I was happy because I had Nastya and knew that whatever happened, we would be together in the end. By mid-June I had enough money for another tourist visa and a set of return flights. I could have, if I’d wanted, gone to Russia on a longer visa, because I was now part-Russian, but there was a piece of me that was still very much afraid; not only of Russia, but of the massive changes I knew I had to make. Though I was married, my head hadn’t caught up with my heart.
I left for Russia on July 19th with a suitcase half-full of clothes, half-full of chocolates. Our first month had been expensive with Nastya meeting me in Moscow, taking the Trans-Siberian and then returning to Moscow with me. So this time I had to do it alone. Negotiating Sheremetyevo to catch my connecting flight to Krasnoyarsk had been easy as all the signs are in English as well as Russian.
After our plane had descended to a level that allowed us to see everything well from the windows, we had to circle Krasnoyarsk and the surrounding area due to a queue of planes also ready to land. As the frost evaporated from the glass, I got a bird’s-eye-view of the hydroelectric power station.
Two weeks after we were married, when the snow began to melt and the grass started showing, Boris had told us that the roads were clear enough to drive far outside the city to visit the hydroelectric power station, also known as Krasnoyarsk dam. The only pictures I had seen of it were on the back of the ten rouble note and a few postcards. At first I was slightly bemused. I’d seen dams before. Surely once you’d seen one you’d seen them all? But I went along as it was something to do, and I had spent too long in the apartment.
Driving to the dam was slightly scary because we had to travel on roads that had been little used through the winter and were still iced over in places. The road ran through a dense forest area. It looked like bear country because it was their country. At the start of our journey, we had to pass through the south side of Krasnoyarsk, which is much older in appearance than the north. The roads on the south side have more potholes and because trams make up a large percentage of the public transport system, we had to drive across railroad tracks every few minutes. I was amazed at how little the south had progressed compared with the north. There were more factories, and the air seemed thicker. It made me glad that we lived on the other side of the river. So many of the buildings looked as if the Second World War had only finished the week before, however, I knew the German invasion hadn’t made it so far east. Arriving at the dam wasn’t much better. The giant concrete structure could be seen for miles on the approach. In front of the dam was a large glass-fronted building, similar to the residential apartment blocks. It looked like the factory from the beginning of the Dr Zhivago movie, where Alec Guinness is looking for his brother’s daughter. Next to this was another slightly smaller one. Although less intimidating in size, the smaller building had a giant picture of Vladimir Lenin’s face in red and black on its side; a terrifying 50 ft homage to the Communist Party.
I later learned that this dam and its accompanying buildings were partly built by Gulag slaves during the 1950s and were completed just nine years before I was born. It was impossible to get close to the neighbouring buildings, let alone the dam, as a high perimeter fence surrounded the entire complex. This steel fence had a couple of rows of barbed wire on top. When I walked close to it, Nastya and Boris called out in Russian. I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I could tell from their tone that they were trying to warn me. Outside the perimeter fence were a few patches of long grass. The snow had melted sufficiently for the deadly Siberian grass ticks to come back; they were waiting for some stupid Westerner to come close. I backed away from the complex and admired its impenetrability. There were a few other tourists there, speaking Russian. One of them managed to get close enough to touch the fence. At that point an electric voice rang out from speakers I hadn’t noticed and the man backed away very quickly. They left soon afterwards; which prompted us to follow.
From the plane it didn’t look anywhere near as menacing as it had up close. It was impossible to see Lenin, and the big grey buildings looked a lot like one of the residential buildings. If anything, with the great body of water behind it, it was a much better experience to see it from the sky.
PART II
a. Aeroflot Flight SU778. August 17th 2011. Krasnoyarsk – Moscow
Arriving back in Krasnoyarsk had felt different from the first time, in that it felt like I was returning home. Although the three months I had spent in the UK were busy, I had felt very claustrophobic, which I think had more to do with staying with my parents than anything else. It’s not that I felt I had become Siberian or that my life in the UK was awful, but home was wherever my wife was.
Another reason it felt different is because it was summer, and it was this summer that I learned about the Siberia I had never known or heard of back in the UK. In summer most of southern Siberia is exceptionally hot, and the temperature in places can reach the high thirties. Those first few days in the apartment I had to learn how to cope with extreme heat. In place of the shirt, jumper, trousers and thick socks I had worn in the early spring, I now had to wear shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops. I hadn’t worn shorts since the 1990s, so we had to go to the centre to get me some from one of the Chinese markets. Once I had my shorts and flip-flops I was able to enjoy myself, although I was self-conscious with my skin so pale that I reflected as much sunlight as the moon.