Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier Read Free Book Online Page B

You forget that a machine’s ability to fly is really an act of sorcery, until you observe the thing just sitting there before takeoff, gleaming in the sun. A common Russian word for airplane,
samolyot
(literally, “flies itself”), is not a coinage made to describe a new invention but has been around since the Arabian Nights, when
kovyor samolyot
meant “flying carpet.” As we came to the boarding stairs, the two pilots, neither much more than a teenager, stoodtalking casually by the plane as if they’d just finished building it in their backyard.
    On this flight, unfortunately, we sat in the same section as a bunch of mafia guys. I use the term for sake of convenience. I don’t know if they were really mafia. They wore dramatically tailored suits, they emitted strong fragrances of cologne, their women had on skimpy clothes and furs, and Katya said they were mafia guys. A small man accompanying them carried bags of expensive provisions, mostly alcoholic, like cognac and champagne, and foods that sent off odors to fill the plane. The group occupied many seats together, putting their belongings on empty ones and ignoring any passengers who showed up complaining that the seats were theirs. They also ignored everything they were instructed to do for takeoff, made no use of seat belts, did not remain seated, walked around the plane, drank and laughed and yelled, and (remarkably) did not pass out, frustrating passengers who were hoping they would. They kept the party rolling all the way to Ulan-Ude.
    Movies and TV shows about gangsters expect you always to identify with those characters, and it’s fun to do that, and I try to. Sometimes, though, the fantasy falters, and I find myself identifying not with Tony Soprano and his friends but with anyone unlucky enough to be next to him in an enclosed environment like a plane.
    The airport at Ulan-Ude lay in the middle of an immense flat space covered with low tufts of grass. Sasha Khamarkhanov and his brother Kolya met us at the gate. Sasha was a thin, shy, bespectacled man with the attentive manner of someone who always expects to hear something great. Kolya was of a comic-foil rotundity, almost oval, and wore a blue suit and shades. The luggage took about an hour to appear, and as we waited, Katya and Kolya and Sasha discussed our flight and the weather. Katya mentioned the heat, and Kolya said, “Yesterday was even hotter, and that was difficult for me, because I’m fat.” Finally the luggage came and we put it into Kolya’s English-made car and drove into Ulan-Ude.
    The impressions of first-time visitors to that city often rise to and descend from their first glimpse of the sculpture of the head of Lenin overlooking Ulan-Ude’s central square. For me these impressions were: sooty, yellow-gray air, reminiscent of Akron, Ohio, in the 1950s; extensive industrial plants, with a silver aircraft or a monstrous black locomotivewith a red star on it poised on a platform by the plant gates; tiers of gray buildings, some connected to one another by aerial walkways; apartment-building roofs thick with antennae in every possible style, some like flowers, some like hot-dog grills, some like spirals, or asterisks, or radiators, or Afro combs; then a huge open square; and then, The Head.
    It is said to be the largest head of Lenin in the world. Indeed, without even bothering to check, I’ll assert it’s the largest head of anybody in the world. (I’m talking whole head, now, and not just the face, as on Mount Rushmore.) The Head is gunmetal blue-gray, almost Mayan in its strong features and its upcurled top lip. Including its pedestal, The Head, with just a hint of neck, and no shoulders or body, rises about thirty-five feet above the ground. An open parade-type area spreads in front of it, and it’s flanked by rectangular, hedge-enclosed lawns. Government buildings of four and five stories, in predictable Soviet-era architectural styles, face the square on all sides. The first