Whereas Krasnoyarsk used to be known as a strategic military city, which was closed to Westerners, it is now known as the Russian City of Fountains. This is due to the work of the previous mayor Pyotr Pimashkov, who restored all of the Soviet fountains after they fell into disrepair and threw in some new ones for good measure. It’s impossible to walk or take a bus ride without passing at least one. Although people are not technically allowed to splash around in them, everyone seemed to be at it, so we did it too. It was so hot we spent whole days in the city centre walking from fountain to fountain, getting soaked to the skin and eating ice creams. When militia passed in their cars, Nastya cautioned me to stop jumping so hard in the fountains as they might pull over and have a word with me, but they never did. As long as you don’t make a public nuisance of yourself, they leave you alone. My whole first week back in Krasnoyarsk was spent this way. It was bliss. I would even dare to call it paradise if it wasn’t for the mosquitoes. Unfortunately, these little blood thirsty bastards stage an annual invasion of Russia every June and bugger off again in October. Night-time was the worst. It was so hot that we couldn’t leave the window closed, but when it was open, hundreds of mozzies would stream in. We compromised by leaving the window open just a fraction and invested a hundred roubles in one of those plugin anti-mosquito devices that fills the air with scenty stuff and makes mosquitoes breakdance. However, the sound of mosquitoes buzzing away as the madness took them was just as annoying, and when I woke in the morning I had to shake their little corpses off the bed cover and out of my hair.
i. Ira
Nataliya Petrovna’s mother was back from the hospital and living in the small back room next to Nastya’s. Because of the language barrier, I never engaged in conversation with her, and neither did Nastya. Opportunities didn’t present themselves as she spent most days in her room listening to the radio. Nastya’s parents had gone to live at the dacha, though one of them would come back every day to give Ira her pills. Ira had a dodgy heart and needed looking after, having aged rapidly since a bad fall ten years earlier. Before this she had apparently been quite spritely. Nastya told me that after Ira’s accident all those years ago, anyone who would lend a hand had to spend many hours a day coaxing Ira back onto her feet. She hadn’t quite given up the will to live but had given up the will to walk. Thankfully everyone’s efforts were successful.
In the middle of the afternoon Ira would make her daily trip to the balcony, to sit and watch the world go by. To get there, to get anywhere, Ira, hunched and frail, would lean on a small wooden stool and inch it forward. Every journey she made was equivalent to a long mountain trek for someone in the prime of their life. The sound of that stool scraping across the floor haunted me, especially at night. Ira – silent and solitary – was a kind of ghost. She existed and yet she wasn’t present in our lives. When she was younger, she had been a highly celebrated Soviet scientist and engineer. Having studied at the Yekaterinburg polytechnic at PhD level, she went on to become a leading specialist in platinum and other rich metals. However, she never managed to finish her PhD as her tutor passed away, and there was nobody to replace him at the time. Ira went on to marry Pyotr Karbovski, and had three children, two of whom are now dead. When her husband passed away, it was felt that the best place for her was with her one surviving daughter.
Regardless of Ira’s failing health, she still managed to maintain a normal dignified appearance. Before I woke in the morning, she would already be dressed in a long flowing gown and wore a red beret to mask her thinning hair. She made regular trips to the bathroom, sat on her stool and washed as best she could. She even cooked all her own meals and did the washing up if we left any dirty dishes by the sink. I was impressed by her stamina and will to continue living as normal a life as possible but sad that she spent so much time alone. To remedy the loneliness of senior citizens, Russian social services provide retired soviet comrades with state of the art mobile phones. Ira had one; I heard her talking on it quite often, though I don’t think she knew what any of the other applications were for.
With my brother-in-law Dima and his wife, Marina, working every day, their son Semka would normally spend his weekday evenings with his grandparents. Although they were hardly at the apartment in summer, when they were, Semka would pretend to be afraid of Ira, and nicknamed her Baba Yaga. In Russia Baba Yaga is a fairy-tale witch that chases people around in her dacha, which has a pair of legs of its own. Ira, who we would normally refer to as Baba Ira, as Baba is short for grandmother in Russian, was called Baba Yaga so many times by Semka that I made the mistake of referring to her by that name also. Thankfully Nastya always managed to put her hand over my mouth at the right moment when her mother was around, as she would have been upset by it.
ii. Superstitions
Some people believe in the strangest things. My mother believes her grandmother, my great Nana-Collie was a witch who could make people fall in love with others, or make people ill, by planting certain roots in the back garden with a bit of that person’s hair. My mother still practises some of this stuff and reads tarot cards for my sisters and me once a year. Though I don’t quite share my mother’s views, I can forgive her mystic beliefs as they are, for the most part, quite unobtrusive. The same can’t be said for Russian superstitions. For although they are charming in their own way, I have occasionally been really annoyed by either being told not to walk around something, or to say hello a hundred times in the street. It isn’t simply a case of not walking under ladders or stepping on the cracks. Russian superstitions are extremely common and practised by almost every Siberian I know; if they are not carefully observed at all times it’s possible to cause a great deal of offence. During my earlier visit I had witnessed occasional references to certain mystical beliefs, but it wasn’t until summer that I fully understood the extent of them.
Nataliya Petrovna, who occasionally suffers from high blood pressure, would sometimes use very archaic methods to get this pressure down to an acceptable level. While we watched TV, she would sit with a jar of leeches bought earlier in the day, and attach two behind each ear. They were horrible to look at, and even worse when they were all fat with blood. They wriggled and writhed like the eels that were put into Commander Chekov’s ear in the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. When she had the leeches on the ear, I felt compelled to watch them grow bigger. With each passing minute they evolved from slithers into full grown monsters. It was during one of these evenings that Nataliya Petrovna, complete with ‘eels’ behind the ear, sat down with Nastya and me to discuss superstitions.
Before leaving for a long journey, travellers, and all those saying goodbye are supposed to sit for a moment in silence before the travellers depart. This allows time to sit and think of anything you may have forgotten but it’s also supposed to bring you some luck. When I left Siberia at the end of spring, we had to begin our travels at 5.30 a.m. I hadn’t slept and therefore was a bit irksome. I had taken the time to pack the night before and so after a shower and a cuppa I was ready on time. I have always made a point of being exactly on time in everything that I do. Nastya it seems is the exact opposite. She woke up late, insisted on breakfast, and took half an hour in the shower. Boris, whose job it was to take us to the airport, woke up even later. When I was really quite pissed off, and full of anxiety over the possibility of missing the flight, Nataliya Petrovna insisted on us sitting for a few minutes in silence. While this apparently brought a sense of calm to everyone else, it made me want to scream. But this is another major cultural difference. In Siberia, there is an attitude of ‘We’ll get there when we get there’. Nastya for example is always late for work. And if Boris says he’ll take you somewhere at say 4:30 p.m., you always know you have time to see a movie before he is actually ready three hours later. It’s not just my Siberian family. Nearly every Siberian I know is relaxed when it comes to schedules. I don’t know whether it’s a British thing, or a Welsh thing, or whether it’s just me but I’ve worn the same watch on my wrist for twenty years as a means to be punctual and not upset people. It’s hard for me to understand why other people don’t do the same.