On the Run in Siberia

2. A Post-Soviet Nightmare

19 2 a post-soviet nightmare Uffe is one of those people whom I would without hesitation call a calm character. He always encounters problems of any kind with an almost stoical calm. Whether it is because he lived for decades in a remote cabin in the Swedish forest , or because he studied Tibetan Buddhism in his youth, I cannot say. But the fact is that it takes a lot—an awful lot—to worry him. But that day in January 1996, when Uffe steps in through my front door, I can see that his trip to Siberia has been unusually harsh. Not only does he look extraordinarily tired, but his entire forehead is lined with one worried wrinkle on top of another. “Well, that was an adventure,” he says in his own soft, laconic manner. I pour him a cup of coffee. He takes a sip, leans back in his chair, and starts to tell his story. The trip, which should have formalized our fur project, had instead become a grotesque demonstration of the many transition problems of the post-Soviet period. The problems manifested themselves from the first day. Shalugin had never turned up as agreed. Uffe and the two others from the Fur had sat and waited in the airport in Moscow, where they had planned to meet. For three long hours their only company had been a coffee vending machine and the sound of Russian pop music from a loudspeaker on the ceiling. Uffe had naturally been at a loss. Shalugin was his only link to Yakutsk and the hunters. The whole business adventure seemed to be at an end before it had even begun. But as usual, Uffe had pulled himself together and had not panicked . Had he not, by chance, been given the phone number to ShaluThe desolate urban landscape of Zyryanka. 20 . a post-soviet nightmare gin’s home in Nelemnoye? Paging back and forth in his notebook, he found it and called. The telephone connection to Siberia from Moscow is as unstable as the distribution of everyday goods, but after several patient attempts he succeeded in getting patched through to Nelemnoye. It was not Shalugin but Dusha who answered: “He’s not here. He’s in hospital in Moscow. He has never tolerated it, Mr. Christensen. It has always made him sick.” Uffe, who was both surprised and shaken, hesitated a little before enquiring further: “I don’t quite understand. What has always made him sick?” His stay in Moscow had obviously been too intense for Shalugin. While he had been waiting for Uffe, he had visited old friends, and suddenly everything had disintegrated for him. Having vanished without a trace for a month before the meeting, he had now been admitted to the hospital in Moscow with massive alcohol poisoning. Uffe had stood with the phone in his hand and a feeling that all was now lost. But before he managed to say good-bye, Dusha suddenly announced , “Yegorov, he’ll meet you in Yakutsk and send you on to Zyryanka. We’re looking forward to your visit.” In a few seconds, Dusha had arranged everything. “I jumped on the plane to Yakutsk, a tad more skeptical with regard to the project than when I had left Copenhagen,” Uffe tells me. “But my doubts didn’t diminish when we landed at the airport in Yakutsk. The first thing to welcome us was the cold. I must confess, it came as a shock to me. Minus forty-eight degrees cut through my lungs. The transition from the comfortable, air-conditioned airplane to the inhuman frost almost knocked me out. I held my breath for the first couple of hundred paces on Siberian soil.” Uffe pauses for a moment and stares intensely at me. “Can you guess who was waiting for me?” I shake my head. “Inside the little house that serves as an arrivals hall for the landing strip stood not just Yegorov, but the manager of Sakhabult, Petrov!” a post-soviet nightmare . 21 “Really? What did he want?” I ask. “I actually don’t know,” Uffe replies. “But one thing is certain, he was not enthusiastic about our sudden visit. ‘Forget it,’ he said, when I told him about my business in Siberia. ‘The Yukaghirs don’t understand business. They are lazy and don’t know the value of money. They are a primitive people, Mr. Christensen. No matter...