Day 12: Dignity and Desecration

Saturday May 17 - North of Manchuria

After travelling through sparsely wooded valleys, in which the trees sprout like whiskers, and following shallow icy rivers, we had a twenty minute stop late yesterday morning at an anonymous Siberian town. Fiz spotted and headed straight for a vibrantly coloured war memorial that had the years 1941 and 1945 carved in stones about three metres high, either side of the red Soviet emblem. Beneath the logo, were huge bouquets of bright flowers. And at the corners of the memorial were two artillery shells, painted red, green and silver and two oversized helmets.

The memorial was a rare splash of colour and celebration in an otherwise insipid town. While editing my photographs later, I said to Fiz that I intuitively want to increase the colour saturation. ‘It just wouldn’t be right,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be Russia.’ She was right.

The sky is permanently ash grey, the soil is duller than sombre mud, the omnipresent silver birch and fir trees do little to increase the greenery and the houses are solemn, silent witnesses to their monochromatic world. The train – in its red and blue livery – the labels of the products on sale at the platform side shops, and the garish outfits worn by the Russian passengers offered the only vibrancy to the scene.

For the last few days, I had been wearing a bright blue, round neck shirt and a pair of long trekking shorts. As we walked back to the train from the war memorial, Fiz said jokingly: ‘You look like an Aussie tourist.’ I know that she is not keen on Aussies, so I took it as a mild insult. But with a camera, a telephoto lens and a video camera in hand, I suddenly felt foolishly conspicuous.

Back on the train, I changed into jeans. It was piercingly cold on that platform and, as we continued our journey, we could see ice floes on the river and large patches of snow in clearings in the forests. The month of May is halfway through, but it is still freezing in Eastern Siberia. The nature of real winter here is beyond my comprehension.

I spent much of the day editing photos while Fiz sat opposite, sketching me and trying to capture my concentration scowl. She did pretty well; her sketches looked like me and scared me with the accuracy of my lines and wrinkles.

Among my photos, there were some evocative shots of people – traders, passengers, and random loiterers - on the platform that I had zapped with my telephoto lens. They are pretty good but I always feel intrusive when snapping people without their permission, especially with a telephoto lens, even more so if I then try to sell them. I’d never make a paparazzo.

But there again, how can I catch people in their natural state if I need to warn them in advance? I guess every people photographer with a heart and soul has faced this dilemma. I just need to deal with it in some way and my chosen answer at present is to convert them into black and white, thereby turning humans into monochromatic art. One could say, this merely dehumanises people but that is another debate.

We made a further short stop late in the afternoon. It was only for two minutes so there was no time to get off the train. The carriage attendant stood in the door way in her winter coat, surveying the platform and blocking the progress of any passenger who dared try to venture out. It was too cold anyway, so people just leaned on the railing in the corridor and idly scanned the dreary scene.

The only person in view was an old man on the opposite platform. He was bent double with arthritis, with two walking sticks, a beard, and tatty hair sticking out from his black woollen hat. He looked like the archetypal Russian peasant. As soon as our train stopped, he slowly but deliberately climbed down from the platform and hobbled across the track. The bovine German man, Klaus, was standing next to me, excitedly pointed him out to me and then swung his camera into action through the open window.

I’d seen the man at the same time as Klaus and my initial reaction was the same. I switched on my camera and pushed it out of the window but something stopped me from focussing and clicking. My conscience said I couldn’t photograph a person in such a state, as if they were a distressed zoo animal. I hesitated as he crossed the track. Klaus craned his meaty neck through the narrow window and snapped away. I felt repulsed by his actions but still, much to my shame, I took one photo before the man went out of view.

Seconds later the man was below our window, holding his filthy hands up, and straightening his back as best he could. His eyes begged for money, his mouth moved but said nothing. No doubt he does this every time a train passes through his shabby town and yet the mere act must be excruciating.

The lack of dignity was intense but his need was greater. Klaus dug in his pocket and threw some roubles. I was frozen with confusion and felt the train lurch. Just in time, I dropped a handful of coins and my last sight of the man was him bending to the gravel to collect his pitiful charity.

In the evening, I shared several cigarette moments with Slavic. He will be getting off the train in an hour or so and I wanted to somehow make him feel a little better about going back to his unit. He usually smokes long, thin, mild cigarettes so I introduced him to Golden Virginia. He told me about a brand of cigarette that soldiers smoked in the Great War, called Prima. They are still available – at five roubles (or about 10p) a pack. He described them by comically holding his throat, choking and spitting out imaginary, loose tobacco.

As a token gesture of friendship, I gave Slavic the half smoked pack of tobacco and the papers. He was suffering from a headache too, so I dug three sachets of Lemsip from the under-bed locker and told him to take one every four hours. Small gifts of little value, but somehow they cemented our bond.

The respective plights of the old man and Slavic put my anxieties into brutal perspective. The cripple is hanging onto dignity in a way that I cannot fathom. If I was in his position, instead of crossing the track to scoop up tiny change from the gravel, I would surely put my head on the track the next time a train arrived and hope for a better deal in heaven.

And if I was in Slavic’s position, about to begin another six months of uninterrupted service as a scout on the Chinese border, unable to see or even contact my lover or family, I would surely desert, or maybe even consider a terminal ending.

I am always hesitant to stereotype nationalities, either positively or negatively, because in my idealism, I like to believe that we are all human beings and, hence, we are all made of the same stuff.

But when I see women standing patiently and without drama on the platform, with a few pounds’ worth of food spread before them, hoping to sell enough to keep their household going, it makes me wonder if the Russians are a different breed. Would a British woman ever do this, even if times were really hard?

It is this stoicism, this ability that Russian people seem to have to face up to and deal with hardship that has made such an impact on me. I have seen countless documentaries about Russian suffering in the Second World War, but it is not until you hear stories like Slavic’s, see the dignified industry of the platform sellers, and encounter the real unfortunates like the old cripple, that you realise Hitler never had a prayer. He really was insane to invade this country. Its size, geography and climate are significant barriers in their own right, but its people are impermeable.