The man and the girl walked back to the shop. Two tractors were parked in the shop’s parking area. One of them had a cab built of rough boards with a windshield made of an old screened house window. The other had loose caterpillar tracks instead of wheels and a bicycle wheel where the steering wheel had been. The girl bought some oven-fresh cabbage rolls and a bottle of compote, the man a bottle of moonshine. They sat down on the steps of the shop next to a tousled white cat. Five lively little honey bees appeared from somewhere. They buzzed around the girl’s cabbage roll in the shrieking cold. When she waved them away, they flew off offended, except for one that tried to land on the branch of a rose bush and died before it touched down.
An orchestra came out from behind the shop. Sons and daughters of Siberia dressed in Pioneer uniforms marched in rhythm with a song and a little drum along the village road. The children’s puny bodies were covered in loose brown shirts blown by the cold wind. Their red Pioneer kerchiefs hung prettily against their brown shirts, and multicoloured, tas-selled hats shaded their open, innocent faces.
When the Pioneers had disappeared behind the school-house, the man and the girl went back to the car and continued their leisurely journey.
‘People used to think that God was nature, but nowadays you hear people say that God is the city. I’m in the latter camp. Some say that cities are cancerous cells. Bullshit! They say it’s just common sense that a dozen worms can’t eat off the same apple forever. There’s enough nature here to last forever. It’s free, it’ll go on forever. Our supply of people is inexhaustible. We’ll never run out of the masses. In the fifties, in the village of Suhoblinova, a machine-station brigadier once told me that freedom is open spaces you can walk through your whole life long, breathing the open air, filling your chest full of the breeze, feeling the endlessness of space over your head. Maybe it is. Maybe not.’
Between the hillsides wound the broad, ice-trapped, sunlit Ob River. Long, stiff, frosty grasses peeped out from between piles of snow on its banks to greet the travellers. The river wound faithfully beside them, sleeping under a thick crust of ice. They stopped often, merely out of curiosity or when the motor started to smoke.
They walked for a while on the mighty river’s frozen sandbanks. The cold dry reeds rustled coarsely. The sobbing north wind carried sharp, powdery snow. The man stopped to listen to the silence.
‘If some yellow-eyed wolves pop out from somewhere over there we should listen to them and answer, We’re doing fine, thank you, brothers.’
There was a small current in the water near the shore. Bits of ice floated in the swirl of water. Farther off, a boat covered in the snow’s deep winter dream and a birch bark hut were tumbled into the land’s embrace, hibernating. Two male capercaillies crouched side by side beyond a row of winterkilled rowan trees, a few crows glided across a sky promising snow. To the north of the birds, a strange black space opened up. The man wanted to go there, to the middle of the fields of snow gnawed by early spring mists. The wind whistled over the white expanse where verdant grass grew in summer. The sun blazed orange, like a glowing ember. The dazzling snow stung their eyes. Under its icy, knife-sharp crust the snow was so fluffy, dry and soft that they sank deep with each step, up to their knees, then their thighs, then their hips, and finally as high as their navels. As they came to a clearing there was less and less snow until it turned to a smear of clay that clung to their boots.
They soon reached their destination. It was a patch of asphalt, its surface warm. The naphtha scent of the tarmac smelled like the hot summer streets of Moscow. The man sized up the spot enthusiastically.
‘A space ship landed here. You can tell from the crater shape. There are landing sites like this all over Siberia, especially in Kolyma. There’s about a dozen stations here where scientists study UFOs and outer space.’
As they waded sweating through the deep snow back to the road, the throb of IL-14 engines roared overhead. Farther away, at the edge of the expanse of snow huddled a lone, grey, wooden house. A birch bark Ostyak yurt had been built in front of it. The girl wanted to go there.
‘The Ostyaks live like wild animals,’ he warned her. ‘They live poorly. Nothing works. They’re a rotten people. Crooked. Liars. Every geezer you meet’s named Ivan.’
They walked along a little snow path and into the drift-encircled yard. Dogs ran out to meet them, their tails wagging. The snow had been trodden away in front of the porch; they could stand there without sinking to their hips. The roof of the house was sagging, the chimney half collapsed. They stood in the brisk air as if waiting for the inhabitants to come out, then the girl climbed the rotted steps to the door and knocked. Nothing happened. They tried the door – it was unlocked. The man was turning to go back to the car when a fearless Ostyak woman with beautiful features appeared at the door and gestured something to the girl.
‘She’s deaf,’ the man said in a weary voice.
The girl gestured towards the skilfully built yurt and then pointed to her eyes. The Ostyak woman laughed silently and nodded. She put on a large pair of rubber boots and came out of the house to escort the girl to the yurt, smiling shyly. The cold wind swept over the frozen dirt floor of the yurt. The quickening light of spring made its way in through the yurt’s open door. It served as a fishing shed. Rotting, crumbling net staves, fish traps woven from bast, a small rusted milk separator and a lidless box made of planed birch full of mouldy grain.
As the girl stepped back outside, the man pulled the car up next to the yurt.
‘A filthy bunch, arms half a metre long and bodies a metre, and shapeless,’ he snorted, turning the car back towards the highway. ‘That whore right there’d be in her element hunting rabbits. They all ought to be forced to be normal Russians, without sparing the torture, if that’s what it takes. What they need is a father’s iron hand!’
Silence pressed heavy on the car for a moment.
In the afternoon, when the disc of sun hung over the roofs of the highest houses, they reached the godforsaken town of Tomsk. The man drove up and down the unploughed, truck-rutted streets. The sun was fleeing purple into the far west, to the north the bashful, rose-red evening blush held still for a moment as a gritty yellow snow began to fall. The north wind battered the sides of the car. The man stopped in front of a beer house on the outskirts and left the engine running.
The girl stretched her legs in the back seat. The engine chugged and sputtered tiredly, sometimes screeching and lurching as if it were having a heart attack. The chassis shuddered, the springs squeaked. Exhaust seeped into the car and made her cough. She turned off the engine. Soon it was so cold in the car that she got out.
The door to the beer house was in constant use. An endless stream of thick-soled felt boots came and went.
When the man got back to the car reeking of yeast it was the wee hours of the morning.
‘I got caught up in talking with a kid in there. One of those Samoyeds from the Taimyr district. A genuine drinking spirit.’
The wind had changed to the south and had a spring-like tune. Clumps of snow slid from the roofs of the houses and thudded onto the shovelled pavements. The man passed out in the front passenger seat with a bottle of vodka in his hand. The girl turned the ignition key. The engine grumbled angrily and died. She turned it again – it howled for a moment. She imitated the man, coaxing the engine for a long time with gentle words, then turned the key again. It squawked pathetically, but didn’t die. She let it run, praising it at length before she gave it some petrol and somehow got it to move forward.