Sunbathing in Siberia (19 page)

We made it back to the HIV test clinic in plenty of time. The waiting room was packed. What made it worse was that it wasn't so much of a room but a hallway at the bottom of a staircase, now used as a torture chamber for immigrants. There were at least fifty people, so many that some waited on the stairs. This annoyed nurses going back and forth. At 4 p.m. a miserable-as-fuck security guard, with huge shadows under his eyes came to the room's double doors. He locked the left one closed with a top bolt and blocked the way through on the right with his body using a wooden stand with clipboards on as a kind of barrier. At first I thought this was unusual – why a barrier? When he began calling names out, everyone else in the room got up and surged forward, pressing against the barrier and blocking the way. This pissed some of the nurses off even more when they needed to get through. It was unnecessary as everyone's names were on a list and were being read out in order. The other ‘immigrants' were a bit different from me. They had dark hair and dark eyes like Nastya; most were from Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan or Georgia. Nastya could tell by the way that they spoke. I'm sure that most of them were nice people, looking to make a new peaceful life for themselves in Russia, yet a few of them looked seriously dangerous. They were lean, muscular, and wiry with mad staring eyes and they tended to wear thin combat-style clothing. They pushed and jostled each other like people in a bar fight. I was afraid of them, and so was Nastya who kept pulling on me slightly when one of them got too close.

The security man called out names, one by one by one, slowly. At first he shouted the names to carry over the noise made by the would-be-assassins, but he quickly tired of this and later called names in a normal voice. I think he'd been in control of would-be-assassins for too long; his patience was sorely tested. It was hard to hear my name being called out because it was said quietly and mispronounced as Meekul. When I was summoned, Nastya grabbed me and pulled me through the crowd. This was only the beginning. We had to go back to the front of the building, hand over my passport and copy of its translation for inspection, and obtain a piece of paper. We then had to get to a small booth where an old lady collected the fees and stamped the bits of paper. This paper then had to be handed over to a nurse who was taking everyone's blood. When my turn came, Nastya asked the nurse if she was using a fresh needle, which pissed her off greatly. I put on the plastic shoe covers and sat on a regular old wooden chair. She took some blood from my left arm while trading curses with Nastya, and then we were free to go. To obtain my certificate we would have to return the next day and live the same ritual all over. The following Groundhog Day we stood in the same room with the same mad-staring-eyed hard men, heard names shouted out, got jostled, queued, ferried bits of paper from one room to another, until we left with the right piece of paper – an ‘I don't have Aids' certificate. My favourite certificate so far. I was well pleased because my last test had been in 2007 and I had had a few dodgy encounters with late night women since then. It also meant Nastya and I could finally have some fun without condoms, which we both hated.

After all the stress of queuing and clinics and forms and tests we took a few days off to splash about in fountains and eat ice cream. The experience of the HIV clinic had drained us and we weren't quite ready to start Round Two. Thankfully, when we were, we found that the syphilis, chlamydia and leprosy tests were all done in the same clinic and appeared on one certificate. It was a similar experience to before: indistinguishable hospital, rammed full of would-be-assassins waiting for tests and doctors/nurses walking around on permanent lunch breaks. A blood test was all that was required to be tested for syphilis and leprosy, but for the chlamydia test they wanted some piss. I had totally forgotten what STI tests were like and had already had an enjoyably long morning piss, as I do every morning, just before we left our apartment. When it came to sharing some with the nurses, I was out of piss. There were many of us queuing in the corridor, each in turn being handed a little cup to pee in, which had to be done alone in a stinky little room with a thousand-year-old toilet. When it was my turn to piss, Nastya came with me into the pee-room because she didn't like being in the corridor without me, and I think she wanted to see what the pee-room was like. The nurse, whose job it was to make sure nobody cheated, queried why Nastya and I were going into the pee-room together; she thought Nastya was the immigrant, and I was peeing in Nastya's cup to cheat the system. It was a bit embarrassing, but when she saw I couldn't speak Russian she realised I was the immigrant and let us both into the pee-room. Although I'm not at all sure why she gave Nastya permission to come in with me solely on the basis that I couldn't speak Russian. There were no instructions on the cup and, even if there were, it was quite obvious what I needed to do. This was the moment it hit me I was out of piss. Bone dry. I did my best to squeeze out a few tiny drops but it just wasn't enough. I was supposed to fill it by half at the very least, and it was a tiny cup, no bigger than a shot glass. When we exited the pee-room, I had to suffer further embarrassment because Nastya had to explain the situation and the nurse who then had to speak to another nurse, and I had to hold up my little cup with three drops of pee in it for everyone in the corridor to see. They said it might be okay, but would depend on the test. Once everyone had a cup of pee, we had to queue again at a pee-testing station: a woman with some litmus paper behind a window with iron bars. She had rubber gloves on, which was good because it was her job to dip the litmus paper into the pee cups, one by one. When it came to mine she left the paper in a while, but it was successful. I didn't have chlamydia. After going to several different offices in the same building to have my passport inspected, stamps put on papers and so on, we got the certificate. A few days later we went back to the other clinic to pick up my drugs test certificate, which said my blood was clean. This was no surprise to me. The only big task left was to fill out the temporary residency forms, but first we had to obtain them.

The centre for immigration is located on the north east of the city. It's a long bus journey from our district, and quite a difficult place to find. The district of the immigration office had taken a beating during the winter. It looked like World War III had been and gone already, with broken panels hanging off and bits missing at the bottoms of the buildings; everything has a kind of collapsed look. The ground around it is uneven to the point that cars driving past totally avoid the middle of the road, driving in a zigzag fashion. Inside the immigration centre there is a large waiting room with a number of private interview booths on one side. We made several trips to this place at the end of June. Once to obtain the residency forms, another to query sections of the forms, and again to hand all the documents in. We were told during our first visit there that once we had everything ready we had to make an appointment by phone and appointments can only be made at the end of a month for the beginning of the month following. In the last week of June Nastya was so frustrated at never being able to get through on the phone that she sent them a complaint fax from her office, saying their service was shit and that they should be ashamed of themselves. It worked. We were given an appointment in the first week of July.

On the day of the appointment our bus failed to show on time. Traffic was building up, which is unusual in the middle of the day and so when our bus came, we didn't get anywhere in a hurry. We made it as far as the west of the city centre, and got off the bus near Revolution Square with a giant statue of Lenin. Traffic was at a standstill. Our best bet was to run across to the eastern side and get a taxi. This took thirty minutes, leaving us only forty minutes before my appointment. We asked many taxis what their fare would be, and many of them took advantage of the situation by quoting 500 roubles for a 250-rouble journey; all taxis in Krasnoyarsk operate on a fixed fare basis. Finally, we found one who would drive us at a decent rate. When we told the driver our destination and explained that we were late, he put his foot down; he had also immigrated to Russia earlier in the year and appreciated how hard it was to get an appointment at the immigration office. We got there ten minutes early.

When our time came, and we stood inside the booth, the official locked the door after us using a switch underneath her desk. This was essential, as there were at least thirty other people waiting, some with just small queries, who pulled at the door in frustration. We laid out our forms, certificates and photographs and the official went through a checklist in a very matter-of-fact way. We didn't get very far down the checklist as there was a problem with my certificate of no criminal record, in that it was the wrong one. I had had a funny feeling about this certificate before I had left the UK. When I sent it to the foreign office to obtain an Apostille, it had been refused because it was issued by a ‘foreign government organisation'. The certificate did say I did not have any criminal record, both in English and Russian, however it did not state in which country. It referred to any possible criminal record in Russia, not Britain. I had the wrong bloody certificate. We were told that my application for residency could not be accepted and we had to leave. Nastya burst into tears and pleaded with the official, who demonstrated that she did after all have a heart, and a smile. We were told that if we went back to their website, we could apply online and our application would be registered from that day. After five months, if my application was successful we could use all the certificates we had struggled so hard to obtain except the HIV certificate. In the meantime, I was told I could obtain the correct criminal records certificate during those five months and return at wintertime on another private visa.

We went home shattered and slightly demoralised. Nastya filled in the form online and submitted it; this took several attempts as my photograph needed to be scanned and attached to the form with the focus perfect and lighting just so. In addition, the photograph we had taken by a professional photographer had a light blue background, and it needed to be grey. It was all very annoying and Nastya cursed a tremendous amount. Meanwhile I contacted the British embassy in Moscow who replied the next day. The certificate I needed had to be obtained from my local police station in Cardiff and would be issued forty days exactly after I paid £10 and made an official request. Both those trips to London had been unnecessary. It was the first and only mistake I made with regard to visas and immigration stuff. Not bad really, considering how many Hula-Hoops I had to jump through.

Propaganda

Sitting in the new apartment I felt relief at being able to stay in one place for three months. When in the UK I usually had to travel a lot for work; not only that, but I had rented rooms since the age of twenty and had to leave the house I had been living in for five years after I left my bank job in 2007. Since then, and before meeting Nastya, I had spent years trying to make my way in the world of literature while sleeping here there and everywhere. I didn't make the transition to my parents' houses immediately, at first I sofa-surfed. In one year I slept in over two hundred different places, including one night on a large inflatable crocodillo. Many see the life of a poet as debauched, full of women, drink and dossing around for the fun of it. In reality, a poet's life is full of study with the constant worry of where to spend the night. Drink just eases the destitution a fraction. Now we had an apartment of our own, a bed, walls, a door, and a new fridge – I had never had a new fridge before – the sensation of beginning a fresh life was exaggerated because everything was shiny. We had to buy forks and spoons and things like measuring jugs. We only had two plates; we needed more. It had taken many years of trying different careers, travelling around, sleeping in odd places, and a few failed relationships, but looking around at our very own place of tranquillity I could see that life was finally shaping out just like I wished it.

As Nastya was the breadwinner, I took it upon myself to clean the apartment and do the cooking. Vacuum cleaners do exist in Russia, although I have never seen one, or know of anybody who has one. Instead, Russians use a broomstick, like the type that witches are supposed to fly about on, but with a slightly shorter handle. When Nastya was in work I would sweep away, and then do the mopping. I became a perfectly house-proud househusband. Washing machines in Russia are also a bit different. They look like normal machines front-on but they are not very deep. This is because there simply isn't the room in most Russian apartments to house a full-size machine. It is a waste of space. Washing machines can be anything from 8,000 roubles (about £160); we didn't have that sort of money lying spare so I carried our washing to Nastya's parents' apartment and used theirs every two weeks or as needed. When we only had a few small things to wash like pants and socks, I did them in the bath by hand. At first I was pissed off by the situation – because I had grown up in a world of washing machines – but it also served as a reminder about my childhood. When I was a boy we had had a humungous machine that took up half the kitchen, and when it died my dad put it in the back garden to rot. It wasn't completely useless as it turned out to be the perfect place for my sisters and I to store our Plaster of Paris sculptures of soldiers we made from a kit we had been given by an aunt. We never painted them, and so when the machine was later taken by the council to the scrapyard it had in its drum a ball of white powdery soldiers, bound together by fungus. During that time my mum had to wash the clothes in the bath. I must have been about five or six but I remember with absolute clarity how hard she worked. Her hands were red, blistered, and cold to the touch because the hot water was too expensive to use. Rinsing my pants in unlimited hot water, I thought of her and all the pains she had gone through to raise four kids. It was hard enough for me just to wash the clothes of two, let alone a family of six.