but in Central Siberia. The major asked no unnecessary questions and signed Leonid’s pass.
A transport plane that picked up foodstuffs for Sakhalin Island brought him to Khabarovsk. From there, it was another fifteen hundred miles to Yakutsk, the capital and chief city of Yakutia, where he landed on a gloriously sunny morning. On the drive to the city center, he saw some of the so-called Yakutsk Cripples: houses whose heat had melted the ground under them. As a result, their cement piers had sunk into the mud, and the structures leaned in all directions. Only when he stepped out into the open air could Leonid feel how dry and cold it was; the first sign came from the tiny hairs in his nose, which froze at once and began to bend and crackle with every breath he took.
He’d sent Galina a letter a week before and waited until his departure for an answer, but in vain. From Sakhalin, a room had been reserved for him at the Red Army Officers’ Residence in Yakutsk; he dropped off his luggage there and made inquiries in the motorized unit concerning the address on Cosmonauts Street. While speaking with the comrades, Leonid noticed that every vehicle in the yard had its motor running. “In the winter, they run twenty-four hours a day,” a driver explained. “Sometimes we have to light a fire under the engine block so they don’t freeze solid.” He laughed merrily. “So what? We have more than enough oil around here.”
One of the trucks was headed in the direction Leonid wanted, and the driver gave him a ride. The town looked featureless, he thought; all the architecture served but one purpose, namely, to keep the frost out. On the roadside, he saw cars whose tires had burst from the cold. The windshields of vehicles contained double layers of glass; house windows had triple layers. People on the streets were so thoroughly wrapped in warm clothing that only their eyes showed. At a mobile street stand, milk was being sold in frozen blocks; for easier transport, wooden handles were frozen into the milk.
“What I don’t understand, brother,” said the driver, yanking Leonid out of his contemplation, “is why a man on leave would come here, of all places.”
“I’m visiting someone.”
“A relative?”
Leonid nodded to forestall further questions. They turned into a wide, tarred road lined with apartment blocks. Leonid thanked the driver and jumped out. He’d been warned not to take leather boots to Yakutia, because leather freezes and cracks apart in extreme cold, so he’d had the wardrobe officer give him some felt boots. Shod with this ungainly footwear, he stamped down Cosmonauts Street. He had to walk a long way, because every building had only a single house number; 119 was almost past the city limits. By the time he finally reached it, his face had gone numb. The nameplates and doorbells were behind a protective door; in semidarkness, he searched for Galina’s name. When he finally found it, a peculiar feeling of nervousness overcame him. He pressed the button, but there was no sound to indicate that his pressure had triggered a signal in one of the apartments. After several tries, he pressed the button next to Galina’s. A female voice cautiously responded, and Leonid said that he wished to speak to Doctor Korff.
“Is it you who’s running around on foot outside?” asked the voice in the loudspeaker, and before he could answer, a buzzer sounded.
On the second floor, a door opened as Leonid approached. “How can anyone be so reckless?” said a thin-faced woman. She was wearing so many layers of clothing that everything on her person flapped a little. “Comrade Korff doesn’t sleep here very often,” she said, offering Leonid a seat on a kitchen chair.
“Does she spend the night at a friend’s place?” he asked. The thought had occurred to him before, but now, for the first time, he feared that his journey to Yakutsk had been a mistake.
“When she works late, there’s no transportation available, so she sleeps in the hospital.” Galina’s neighbor shook her head. “You’re a madman. At this time of day, most people are at work. You could have frozen to death with nobody around to help you.”
“I don’t find it so cold.” Leonid put his fingers up to his cheeks but couldn’t feel his own touch.
“People have died just from breathing. The moisture in their breath turns to ice, they swallow it, and it chokes them,” the woman said. She poured him