18.1 An Astronomical Twilight

Tyler Friesen sat in the classroom going through the day’s lesson of painting your picture book. He figured kids loved their work more when it started looking good. He would apply some strokes of finishing touches on the artwork, giving it shades of dark and light tones. A fruit basket picture of a stamp print turned three dimensional to the real thing and the kids grasped the technique.

The harrowing days of the winter passed by, the howling winds and the blizzards forgotten, land turned to flat earth covered of snow where the taiga remained the loneliest place on earth. Cold dawns and chilly nights gave such a shiver. Rivers froze and roads non-navigable but nothing stands in the way for the sledger. Banks and creeks, along with the mighty Yenisei, disappeared under the snow. A morning sun peeked through the pines with bare branches like uprooted trees and scarce around that made the taiga look like the tundra.

They heard a helicopter flying over the rooftop. It was relatively low and not too frequent in this part of the world. Occasionally, on better days, small aeroplanes touch down on the airfield lying a mile to the north.

That deafening noise subsided and the children returned to their work. Half an hour later, a tall man in a greatcoat appeared by the door with the principal.

“Mister Friesen!” he tapped lightly.

Tyler remained silent.

“Mister Friesen! Comrade Friesen!”

“Mister Murphy! He’s looking for you!” called the school principal.

Intuitively, Tyler realised it was him and rushed to the door, “Hello! Nobody here calls me Friesen.”

“Good morning!” he greeted, “It’s me, Ilya.”

“Oh yes! Comrade! I remember now.”

He produced a bundle of letters from under his coat, secured with a band of elastic. “Your letters but you don’t have time to read this. We need to talk.”

The entire field covered with snow and blue sky above. Those two colours quite distinctive on a clear day like this – white and bright. There was some gracefulness to see this tranquil land flattened to earth and beyond its horizons of the taiga biome. It was still freezing cold.

“Twelve,” he counted, “from my wife.”

“Your letters remained in Krasnoyarsk. Orders, my friend,” said the starshina, “I am here to pick you. You are going back, not to Moscow. You’re going to Georgia.”

“Why?” asked Tyler.

“I do not have all the details but I can assure you it is a good move. You’ll walk free. I have received orders from MVD and Tbilisi, believe me. There’s one little thing. You’ll not be able to take a telephone call until you meet the minister.”

“Who is this minister?” asked Tyler Friesen.

“Pack your bag! We have just thirty minutes.”

Back in Erkin’s house, he quickly tucked his stuff into a bag and in second thought, slipped the poetry book of Ariadna Sergeevna Efron between his clothes with that tiny photograph of her younger self. Bid farewell to both Erkin and Tomam, stepped out of the door to collide with the school principal who came to take him to the MVD.

After filling the forms and signing off, he came out of this place to come faced with his pupils and their parents who came to wish him goodbye. It brought tears to his eyes. They all brought gifts in appreciation to what he did at school in a matter of months. Even the principal said those pupils achieved high grades on average during the last semester. One person he could not meet that day was the Lithuanian. Jõnas Katinas was out of town.

A vehicle rolled in their way making three lousy noises of its engine, ripped gaskets and a fairing clanking on the wheel. A Mercedes prison van came to a screeching halt. This truck dubbed ‘black crow’ – chornyi voron – was used in the hay days of the Gulag camps located ten miles in the depths of the taiga in Turukhansky District.

Tyler climbed on and settled between the driver and the starshina who kept observing with icy blue eyes as the kids ran after the van in the snow. The truck rolled forward keeping straight towards the airfield.

There it was a Mil Mi-1 4-seat helicopter waiting for him amidst the barren land. They all climbed aboard; Sergeant Major Ivanovich, Tyler Friesen and the pilot. The rotors started to spin and the snow blew up engulfing the machine, visibility turned to zero before she rose up into the sky.

Tyler Friesen remained silent though excitement soared in the nerves. Tuesday, 5^th April 1966, the day his big sleep in Siberia came to its end and almost a year after he put his foot on the ground.

After two hours, they landed at the mining town of Norilsk, 2400 km from the North Pole. Vehicles in the park were buried in snow. This region was known for vast deposits of natural resources and an industrial site full of chimneys from the factories and refineries. The town of Norilsk also served as a strategic air force base in the north. Here they climbed an Ilyushin Il-14 transport aircraft and flew south to Krasnoyarsk, 1500 km away. She flew at 3000 ft over the permafrost of tundra, out of the Arctic Circle and cruised at 5000 ft, right below the cloud ceiling and over the taiga across the Great Siberian Plain. It gave a breathtaking sight of twisting rivers and frosty forests to his eyeshot. Tyler couldn’t hide the delirium.

This flight touched down at Krasnoyarsk base at 17:47 in the golden hour under the rays of a reddish sun. The sergeant gave him a handful of rubles and told him to take dinner and breakfast before the next flight at nine in the morning. Then a soldier drove him in a jeep to the barracks in the base. There stood hundred rooms in a row where the vehicle stopped and ushered him in to show a bed to rest. Each room accommodated eight sleepers. Nobody showed up that evening except for a couple of times and one of them told him to walk a short distance around the corner to find an eatery.

It was the longest night with an expectation that lingered on in a glimmer of hope. It was also the quietest night. He came across no one, he didn’t see a light coming from a single room out of the lot. Not one vehicle turned up from either side, the light posts lit dimly as the night grew cold. A heap of snow piled up on the opposite side of the barracks and a full moon climbed in the deep blue sky in an astronomical twilight that remained throughout the night. He felt hungry but made no attempt to go out and get some food. They left water, beer and vodka in the fridge. Every bed seemed occupied as they left their stuff all over the place. He sat down in the faint light and read those letters from his wife. Eventually, Tyler went out for a walk in the cold dawn in a flurry of snowfall, at 0° C, 32° F for him, and a constant breeze at seven miles per hour. He found a pub in a fairytale corner lit in dim lights and candles as if it was Easter but not in an Orthodox world. Tyler had breakfast and returned to the barracks just in time before the GAZ arrived to pick him up.

He boarded an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-114, one of the most beautiful aircrafts ever built as for the interior with sleeping cabins. It was the largest and the fastest at the time and held the longest flying range. He hit a bunk and slept all the way to Georgia.

For some peculiar reason, Tyler Friesen always remembered that night he spent alone in the barracks.