Free Compartment No 6 by Rosa Liksom

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, tasselled hats shaded their open, innocent faces.
    When the Pioneers had disappeared behind the schoolhouse, the man and the girl went back to the car and continued their leisurely journey.
    â€˜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 sand-banks. The cold dry reeds rustled coarsely. The sobbing north wind carried sharp, powdery snow. The man stopped to listen to the silence.
    â€˜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 winter-killed 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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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