Sunbathing in Siberia (25 page)

Driving away from the airport was a strange experience. I had only ever gone there to leave Siberia. This time I hadn't left the country but had waved someone off instead. In saying goodbye to my dad I had also said goodbye to Wales, my family and my friends. A lump raised in my throat. As we drove past the large red sign welcoming us back into Krasnoyarsk I felt like I was entering new territory.

Dima dropped us at our apartment at around 7.55 a.m. Nastya still had the registration forms to fill out, all four of them. We needed to be at the UFMS at 11 a.m. because they closed at lunchtime on Saturdays. While Nastya was slaving away at the forms in the kitchen, I sat in the bedroom and opened Flightradar24.com on my laptop. This website offers real time satellite coverage for all flights across the globe. I zoomed into focus on Yemelyanovo airport. Nothing came or went for thirty minutes. I asked Nastya if the technology was faulty but she replied that planes can go off radar but only for a few minutes. Never half an hour. If I couldn't see his flight it was because it hadn't taken off yet. My dad was stuck in Krasnoyarsk. I worried about him because he wouldn't be able to understand the announcements, or why his plane wasn't taking off. If two planes left at once in a hurry, he might confuse the two and end up in Vladivostok. Finally, almost an hour late, the SU1481 appeared on the runway. I reasoned to myself that as it was the only plane there my dad would be on it. Now all I had to worry about was him making his connection. Before he left I had drawn him a map of Sheremetyevo airport and had repeatedly told him what it looked like, which corridors were the best and how long it would take. If everything went to plan he would have had one hour and thirty minutes to land, get off the plane, find and follow the path for international transfers, find the lift to the main departure lounge, go to Level 3, walk to the semicircular booth for foreign national transfers, enter customs, face scrutiny, take off his shoes, his belt, his coat; put his keys, wallet and iPod into a little black plastic bucket for screening, and find his plane. But not everything was going to plan: his plane had taken off an hour late, and the weather wasn't brilliant either.

At 10.55 a.m. Nastya and I left to meet her family and go to photocopy the property deeds of our apartment. We waited. At 11.10 a.m. everyone arrived in Dima's car. Instead of driving up the road for one minute, Dima thought it best to drive around a few blocks and approach the UFMS from the back because of ice on the road the way we wanted to go. They stamped my passport. I was given a ten-minute talk on how to obtain a tax number, a work permit and where to go for exit visas, but it was all in Russian and I was too tired to listen to it all. Sat in that office I couldn't really have given a damn about tax numbers, but the hard work was now behind me. I was an actual resident of Siberia. I had the same stamp in my passport that Nastya had in hers. It felt final. I felt secure.

I hadn't realised just how insecure I had felt until that very moment. I had been living in limbo land for a long time. Four times I had left Russia leaving Nastya behind. Four times I had returned to Wales, unsure of where I was going to live. There's a lot to be said for knowing where you're going to be next week or the week after, for being able to leave work on a Friday and go home for the weekend, to be able to go to the cinema on a Saturday night and wake up late on a Sunday, knowing that you have a home to go to, that you belong somewhere. For two years at least I had lived not really belonging anywhere. I had been half in Wales, half in Russia. My mind, soul and actual body had felt torn in two. It was as if I had been living two separate lives and neither of them had been complete. I was exhausted. Walking away from the UFMS I felt free, freer that I had felt in years. To celebrate, Nastya thought we should spend the day at home getting drunk. We bought a bottle of wine and some chicken. It felt strange not being able to share that moment with my father, who was still somewhere 30,000 ft above Siberia, halfway to Moscow.

By the time my dad's flight touched down in Moscow we had finished the wine. I sat in the kitchen, half-drunk, really worried about my dad's situation. He arrived in Moscow at 9.45 a.m. Moscow time (1.45 p.m. Krasno time). His connecting flight to London was due to leave at 10.20 a.m. and had already begun boarding. Because boarding usually closes twenty minutes before take-off, he had fifteen minutes to get off his plane, follow the map I had drawn him, get through customs, find his gate and get on his new plane. It was a tall order. Because he had bought his plane tickets as a set of return package rather than separately, his luggage at Yemelyanovo had been fitted with an automatic transfer ticket, so he wouldn't have to search for it at baggage claim in Moscow. Still, he had a lot to do in a short space of time. Nastya and I stared at the laptop screen, praying he made it. At 10.20 a.m., there was no sign of his plane. At 10.40 a.m., still no sign. At 10.50 a.m. the SU2570 appeared on the runway. It was half an hour late. We were sure my dad was on it; at least we hoped he was. Unlike my trusty pay-as-you-go mobile, my dad had brought his £30 a month, contracted, all singing all dancing touch screen thing with him. Unlike with my phone, my dad needed to talk to his provider before taking a holiday to arrange roaming. He hadn't done this. There was no way he could contact us and vice versa. For all we knew he was still in Krasnoyarsk.

Sat on the sofa where my dad had slept for an entire month, knowing he probably wasn't going to return anytime soon, my sense of freedom slowly turned to sadness and longing. Although my dad is a devout pessimist, moans a lot, hardly ever washed up while he lived with us, and looked like an old sack of potatoes, he was my bag of potatoes, and I was rather fond of having him around. So too was Nastya. We had grown accustomed to the dynamic of having three people in the apartment, and I was used to cooking for more than two. Now the kitchen had a lot more room in it. Once we folded up the bed and turned it back into a sofa, it had even more room. It hit me, sat there, just the two of us that I wasn't going to see my dad again for a long time unless he came back to Russia. I now had three years' residency. I had to find a job, settle in, and make a life for myself. With all the running around – desperation at getting the right certificates, getting to the immigration office on time, getting to Russia, catching the right flights, and making sure I followed the plan – I hadn't taken any time to consider what it would feel like once everything had been achieved. It was a strange feeling. I was now an immigrant, subject to Russian law. All the things I had taken for granted were suddenly so far away. I could no longer pop to Cardiff indoor market and get a breakfast at the Bull Terrier Café, or go to Chapter on a Friday night, get absolutely wasted, stay up till 5 a.m. in Torben's flat singing David Bowie and Peter Gabriel songs and wake up at 2 p.m. the next day not knowing where I was for a few minutes. The beaches of Llantwit Major and Penarth were now more than a short train journey away. My dad and I had gone to Penarth beach so many times. We had skimmed stones and shared any problems we had at the time. I knew that we would likely never share days like that again, and I lamented not having spent more time with him. Nastya felt similar having only known my dad for a month. With the wine finished and no real plans, we spent the rest of the day looking at our photos and trying to remember all the fun we'd had.

Papa in Siberia

After less than three months in the UK, I had found myself sat once again in Heathrow's Terminal 4, only I wasn't alone. After initially agreeing to come for Christmas, my dad had decided it was safer to travel with me in early November and leave in early December, rather than negotiate the various planes and connections on his own. As always when travelling to London from Cardiff I had the hangover from hell after being Torbenated the night before. I was dripping in beer sweat and had a real need for a kebab with all the trimmings. The cafés in Heathrow, like most airports, serve overpriced cardboard similar to old school meals. Thankfully, and typical of my dad, he reached into his breast pocket and produced a plastic bag full of home-made ham sandwiches. I was saved. We left for Moscow on a late morning flight and arrived sometime in the evening. Just like on previous trips there was a wait of several hours in Sheremetyevo before our connecting flight was ready. I used this time to show my dad around the airport. He needed to get familiar with the layout as he would be travelling back on his own. At about 1 a.m. Moscow time we took off from the usual Terminal D in Sheremetyevo. I was weary of this flight due to what had happened on the same flight the previous year. As it turns out I was right to be apprehensive. Soon after take-off our plane started to rattle, and we began to feel weightlessness. This wasn't by any means a normal rattle, and while I know planes usually level out right after taking off, this seemed to go on for too long. After about thirty seconds or so I realised something was wrong and looked at my dad. He had a knowing look. Without saying anything, we were in agreement; the plane was in some sort of trouble. Either gravity had suddenly become stronger or we had lost power. Thankfully the weightlessness subsided, the rattling stopped and the plane started going up again instead of down. Having had a shed load of beer the night before, gotten up at silly o'clock in the morning, caught the National Express to London, and already been on one flight that day, I was totally shattered. I reasoned that if I let myself fall asleep, I would slip into the deepest of sleeps and therefore if the plane went down, I wouldn't feel anything. I woke up just as we were about to land, which thank the lord, went without a hitch. We were met at the airport by Nastya and Dima. After brief introductions, hugs and handshakes we were promptly whisked back to our apartment for tea and eggy-bread. At this point my father seemed too dazed and exhausted to really take anything in. However, neither of us could ignore the fact that we couldn't see through the windows on the balcony. They were iced over. So too were the handles, the runners, even the space between the window that never closes properly and its frame was filled with ice. The entire balcony, instead of being a sanctuary to escape the heat, as it had been in summer, was now a walk-in freezer.

Once Dima had left, we quickly turned the kitchen sofa into its bed shape so that my dad could rest, and everyone including Nastya caught about four hours' sleep.

We were expected at Lilya's at 5 p.m. Dad had no chance of being eased into Russian life slowly. Lilya's hospitality was flawless, and regardless of our lethargic state, neither Nastya nor I wanted to miss her excellent fish. As it was Lilya's birthday, both her daughters had decided to make a surprise visit from Moscow; Masha (with her son Kirill), and Olga, who brought her husband (also named Dima). Lilya's two sisters were also there, as they had been the year earlier. It was quite a sizeable party. I forget how many courses there were but I remember there being more than seven. Every kind of fish cooked in every kind of way, just as it had been the previous December. The difference was that in this party there were also several bottles of vodka, Cognac and champagne. It's not that we got drunk, but after twenty-two hours of travel and only a short period of rest, the copious amount of food alone was enough to make us feel sleepy. We left at about 11 p.m., late enough to have drunk many glasses of good champagne and early enough to avoid the dreaded karaoke.

As this was my dad's first time in Russia we wanted to make a good impression, however, due to the size of our apartment, and the fact that it has only one bedroom (which is also our living room), my dad was relegated to sleeping in the kitchen. He was relatively comfortable, as the sofa bed was large enough and stuck right next to the radiator. If anything, because of the lack of ventilation, he was too hot during the nights. This situation may sound overcrowded, but it was luxury compared to how Dima had been living. Over the autumn period – while I was away in the UK sorting out my new criminal records certificate – Marina's brother Vova, her mother Luda, and Marina's pregnant daughter Natasha, from a previous marriage, all moved into Dima's apartment. I'm not sure what their reasons were. Vova apparently fell out with his wife, Natasha fell pregnant by someone who nobody really knew and consequently she needed some assistance; and as for Luda, there was apparently some discomfort in that she lived with her mother, and wanted to be further away from her. By comparison our apartment felt roomy.

The winter was much colder than the last one. When I arrived with my dad in Krasnoyarsk the temperature was -5 ˚C, but by the time he left it was -35 ˚C, though we had experienced a few days of -38 ˚C. Because of this shocking cold, we had to wear more layers than I had the previous years. The day before we left the UK, I had gone to my dad's house to inspect his luggage. I had made him a list and made sure he had packed everything I suggested: three pairs of thermals, several jumpers, snow boots, undershoe ice grips that fit to the boots, a hat or two, a set of thermal gloves. My dad was prepared in every way except for his coat. I had instructed him to bring his long woollen winter coat that he would normally wear over a suit if he was attending a posh do; it felt really warm and heavy in Wales, in Russia however it was like paper. I didn't realise until at least a week after arriving that my dad was in fact freezing his arse off. Thankfully Boris was kind enough to lend my dad a real fur shapka and a large black cotton hunting coat that could handle temperatures as low as -40 ˚C.

In our apartment, like in all old Russian city apartments, the heating stays on constantly in winter and cannot be turned off. It's controlled by the central heating system elsewhere in the city and is piped to every building. This makes all apartments a bit stuffy; because my dad was sleeping next to the radiator in the kitchen, and because he couldn't open the windows of the balcony, he slept really awfully throughout his visit. Several times he opened the door to the balcony just a fraction, but this injected the kitchen with too much cold air in a matter of seconds. The ice on the inside of the window frames got thicker every day, eventually becoming more than an inch thick in places. Due to the stuffiness of our apartment, and the lack of sleep, my Dad was more lethargic than I had ever seen him; some days he even slept in till about midday. Taking a shower didn't help either. Our shower room has no ventilation, so when you step out of the shower it's near impossible to get dry with the buildup of steam. Even if you do manage to get dry, the constant heating soon has you wet with perspiration. This may have been why my father took fewer and fewer showers throughout the month. Like in summer, we sweated like pigs.