iii. North Korea Invades
Within a few days of arriving back in Krasnoyarsk I received a letter in the post from Siberian immigration. I had been granted temporary residency for three years. The type of residency I was given meant I could only live in Krasnoyarsk unless I could prove a means of sustaining myself elsewhere. All I had left to do was get my new certificate of no criminal record – which had recently been granted to me by Cardiff Police Station – translated and notarised, together with its Apostille, and get a new ‘I don’t have Aids’ certificate. This meant I had to go back to that clinic again, and be crammed into a room full of scary-looking people. Getting the translation was a piece of cake; an office in the city centre took care of it overnight. Obtaining a new HIV certificate was going to be the headache it had been in summer. Early one morning Nastya and I went to the clinic to register, as we had done a few months earlier. Because we got there at about 11 a.m. and the taking of blood happened at 4 p.m. sharp, we decided to hang around the centre that day. It was -28°C. We ate a lukewarm potato pie and then washed it down with piss-poor tea in every café we could afford to enter.
At 4 p.m., frozen, we went back to the clinic. On this occasion there was a battalion of men in matching camouflage clothes, the kind Boris wears. These men were short but extremely well built. They didn’t speak in any language I recognised. It turned out they were all from North Korea. Even though my name was above theirs on the list, they were processed first as one large group. It seemed no one wanted to argue with them. The following day we went back for my results and certificate and, because we had left my dad alone in our apartment for ages the day before, we thought it best to take him with us. At the very least he would get some fresh air. He needed stamps for his postcards and wanted to visit a post office anyway. We left late. After visiting the post office, getting no less than four stamps for each postcard, licking them as fast as we could, sticking them on and throwing them in the first postbox we found, we arrived at the HIV clinic.
Nastya had worked a nightshift and rushed to the clinic in the morning to put my name down first. Because of this we didn’t have to wait long. When my name was called, Nastya and I squeezed ourselves through the would-be-assassins, past the guard and into the certificate office. My dad would have to stay and wait for us. As I left that room I looked back at him and hoped he kept his hard-man stare to himself. Once we had the certificate and I had been given a lecture I didn’t understand but can only assume was about how important it is still to use condoms and be a good boy, we grabbed my dad, bought some cakes at my favourite patisserie near the Krasnoyarsk Hotel on Central Square then caught a bus home. All we needed now was an appointment at the immigration office.
iv. Hypothermia
Unlike the previous winter, this year’s cold was earlier and slightly more extreme. Within two weeks of our arrival it had quietly gone from -5°C to -25°C, with occasional days of -31°C. There was no room for error when we went out. With all my attention focused on making sure my dad was covered up properly, I made the schoolboy error of neglecting myself on more than one occasion. Three times during the month I left the apartment without my shapka. Although this was easily fixed, as soon as I stepped outside I was instantly reminded that my head was uncovered, and even if I didn’t go back for my shapka, my jacket has a hood that would have been more than adequate for a few hours. One day however, while we were planning a trip to the local outdoor market, just five minutes from our apartment, I had neglected to put sufficient cover on my legs. I wore one pair of thermals and one pair of thick trousers. I had also failed to notice that I had a crack in the rubber of my snowboots. Needless to say I got ill. We got to the market without incident and spent a good thirty minutes looking round. Nastya and my dad were talking about taking a ten-minute walk up the road to buy some of the same tea towels we had at home (for some reason my dad took a fancy to Siberian tea towels). During this time, it seemed that I had become increasingly irritable and nauseous. I told them both that I felt a bit cold and that my toes were cold, but they didn’t realise just how freezing I was. After five more minutes at the market I felt something strange at the core of me. It felt like I had begun to disintegrate from the inside out. I mentioned this to Nastya, who, after telling me how stupid I was decided on a course of action. We would go to see Boris, as he would know better than anyone how to make me feel better and would also be able to lend me some snowboots without holes in. When we got to Nastya’s parents’ apartment, I had to take off my shoes and socks and sit with my feet in a bowl of water. The temperature of this water was then increased gradually. My legs were extremely cold. It took nearly an hour for the warmth to creep up into my body. While sat in this funny position, I was also made to drink hot water. Lots of hot water, and made to eat hot fish pie. As it turned out, it wasn’t such a bad experience. The fish pie was excellent and being pampered was something I could get used to. When we left Boris to go home again, with me wearing a pair of Boris’s old boots, I made a promise to myself never to be so stupid again. I had worn several layers, but had made the mistake of underestimating the cold and not speaking out soon enough when I knew something was wrong.
Siberians don’t spend their entire time outside when they are wearing all these clothes. They do all the same things that people do everywhere else, like visiting shopping centres, friends’ apartments, cinemas and cafés. And, just like our apartment, all of these places have the heating on permanently. As you can imagine, in a hot building with four or five layers, Siberians sweat heavily unless they are in a place where they can strip off a few items. There are several consequences of sweating so much. The worst of these is something I’m sad to say I have experienced. With thermals, pants, trousers and long coats on, the part of the body that heats up the most is the groin. I think this problem may be worse for men although I can’t say for certain. You must remember that the man rocket area was specifically designed to hang loose outside the body, because man rockets and their accompanying parts are supposed to be a few degrees cooler than the rest of the body. When they are forced to live in an environment that is too warm for them, they can become slightly unfriendly to the nasal senses. There must be some kind of medical term for this but the only name I know is one given by the Americans: jock itch. It may sound funny but during the increasingly harsh winter, I noticed that when I got home and stripped down, there was an odour of the unwanted variety. On closer inspection in the bathroom mirror I was alarmed to see that the skin around my man parts looked slightly distressed. After a quick Google search I discovered that this particular problem was common among athletes and men who work in warm places, like steel factories and bakeries. People have long debated the best way forward in curing it, E45 cream and hydrocortisone are both popular, but what I found to be the most effective way in making sure my man parts are happy is by putting on some big shorts in the evening that allow everything to hang loose. I later learned that Siberian men avoid this situation by wearing baggy thermal trousers. I had been wearing skintight thermals. Not long after I went to the shop and invested in a pair of the lovely baggy thermals – one of the best investments I’ve ever made.