Parisian on the Arctic Circle

Pascal Kramer is a French -speaking Swiss writer and publicist, author of nine novels translated into English, German and Italian. Laureate of the prestigious Swiss Prize Ramber for the novel "Merciless cruelty of awakening." In December, the writer, who lives in Paris, spent almost two weeks on Yamal in search of original stories for art essays.

- Please tell us about your project.

- The project was initiated by Reportagen magazine. This is not quite journalism in the traditional sense of the word, but what is called literary report: instead of a presentation of facts, a story is written, which is based on real stories. The idea was that five Swiss writers, three German -speaking and two French -speaking, visited the largest countries of the world - South Africa, Brazil, Egypt and Russia - and returned from there with stories about local life. I chose your country, and then my friend, who is from Russia, asked: why don't you go to Salekhard? This is such a remote city, it is curious to observe how people live in difficult climatic conditions.

- Western person tends to romanticize Siberia or the Far East, but Salekhard is not the most obvious choice.

- In a sense, this choice turned out to be random, but it can be explained: this is the only city on the polar circle. I needed to choose some city, not the capital, besides in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod I had already visited that time. Salekhard was a good choice, because I had no expectations regarding him.

- Is there really any?

- I imagined that it would be cold and dark, but I had absolutely no ideas about the people there. According to the plan, I had to live in a family and worried somewhat about this, because I am a fairly shy person. But the family turned out to be beautiful: very simple and very pleasant people, a married couple with two children. From the first minute we got along well, despite the fact that the man knew only a few words in English, and his wife-not one. In order to communicate, we used a special application installed on the phone, and this was surprising to us surprisingly easily and simple. In addition, these people were extremely warm to me.

I first ended up in a city that seemed younger than me.

In general, the trip gave me the opportunity to get a wonderful experience. For example, I met an English teacher, Mormonka. She took me to the Evangelist Church, where I met people from Korea, Finland and America who came to the region to conduct missionary activities among the Nenets. It is interesting that people get to Salekhard from everywhere - Russian residents rush to the city for economic reasons, and foreigners, as in the case of these Mormons, go there at the call from above.

- Who else did you have to meet there?

- I met a young man from Tunisia, who married Russian from Nizhny Novgorod. They have been living in Salekhard for about three years. Now he works as a guide, shows the Tundra and Nenets settlements to tourists, studies the customs of the Nenets, lives with them in the plague.

- I did not know that there are so many foreigners in Salekhard.

- Yes, I even asked if there was a mosque in the region, because I also met an Egyptian to everything else and I know that there are Turks in the city. Most of the buildings in Salekhard are new, they are a maximum of fifteen years. Previously, the houses were wooden, but then they began to be rebuilt. The construction of houses in polar conditions requires special equipment, because local soil is very mobile. Therefore, the Turks who are versed in construction come there.

- And what made the biggest impression on you?

- The city itself, its impeccability. The absolute whiteness of the snow and the special sunlight that occurs on the horizon is pink blue, completely dim, completely magical. And for the first time I was in a city that seemed to be younger than me. The contrast with Paris is colossal here: in Salekhard, everyone can tell you when this or that building was built. And, of course, the lack of roads. I had to cross the Ob by car on clean ice. In winter, in this way you can get to the city, which is located on the opposite side of the river, and this is a whole adventure. It was difficult to imagine a similar situation, especially in a rich region.

The Nenets feels acutely in the lack of young women. Girls get an education and do not want to return, because the life of a woman in a nomadic family is difficult.

- In your novels, you talk about the most commonplace things, write about routine, about people and relationships between them - so simple and at the same time complex. How does life in Salekhard differ in this sense?

- Take the family in which I lived. The father works as a driver, and the mother in the city administration. They treat each other with great tenderness, extremely warm, they are incredibly attached to each other. Family life for the inhabitants of Salekhard means a lot. They like to spend time with each other, mostly, of course, at home. It could be assumed that they are sitting in front of the TV all the time, but this is not so: they talk, play chess. There is a large center in the city where children can play slot machines, and young people come there to warm up, spend time together, chat, generate. Interestingly, the city is empty in the summer. At first I thought that in the summer it should be pleasant, but it turned out that because of a large number of mosquitoes, people prefer to leave.

- In one of your novels, “goodbye, the north”, the action takes place in the north, but - French. The north of France is an extremely difficult region with a lot of problems, especially if we compare its brutalism with the carelessness of the Provence or the Dolce-Visit French Riviera. Is it possible to find any specific brutality in Salekhard?

- I did not feel it on myself. The north of France is the poorest region, people live in the same place for years, and alcoholism there is a giant problem. In Salekhard, everything is exactly the opposite: people earn much more than in other regions, and I especially did not notice the drunk there. I met one teacher who came from somewhere from afar. According to her, in Salekhard she earns ten times more than she could earn in her hometown. There are good schools, gyms. A family person is good there, he has a comfortable life.

- You and I know that this comfort is one - gas. The regions that live by selling oil and gas, such as, for example, some countries of the Persian Gulf like Qatar or the UAE are simply obsessed with consumption. How are things in Salekhard?

- There is no consumerism. Several stores, and that’s it. If you want to treat, you will have to travel outside the city. The city is focused exclusively on family life, and in fact, families living there are hard to call really rich. After all, they do not have access to the resource, and the bosses who manage gas money do not live in Salekhard - probably, they all sit in Moscow. Ordinary people earn normally, but these are not fabulous amounts: they simply get the opportunity to live a better life compared to the one who lived before.

Everything seems to be turned inside. It is impossible to guess what is in the building - a cafe or a store. The city does not peek out.

- And what about in the region with a traditional way of life? I mean the so -called small peoples of the North and their customs.

- I was also curious, I even wanted to spend the night in the plague, but people from the city administration, who were responsible for me, were dissuaded me. In the city, you can really notice two neighboring ways - modern and traditional, but the latter is more noticeable in the tourist sector: a museum, postcards, souvenirs, etc. I found out that among the Nenets there is now a lack of young women acutely feels acutely. Girls go to school, get an education and then do not want to return, because the life of a woman in a traditional nomadic family is incredibly difficult. Nenets girls get a job, they can be seen at the shelves of stores, and so they integrate into secular, modern life. The Nenets receive some benefits from the state, no one encroaches on their lifestyle, but gradually this life is still modernized. Despite the fact that many of them live in the same way as hundreds of years ago, judging by rumors, some have already had iPads. Nevertheless, I am completely delighted with their reverent attitude to nature. I thought about how they cherish both the tundra and their deer, along the way from the Moscow airport. I looked at all these terrible industrial buildings on the outskirts and thought: unlike the Nenets, you and I just littered the planet. Interestingly, in the region there are no conflicts on ethnic grounds. A man from Tunisia, whom I had already mentioned, told me that he had never had to deal with the manifestations of racism - unlike his friends living in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

- A special page of Russian history is connected with Salekhard: the notorious “construction 501” is a section of the railway, the construction of which was carried out by the hands of prisoners of the Gulag. The ambitious plan of Stalin was to build a railway that covers the entire Russian North. Now the unfinished “road of the dead”, as it was called, has been abandoned (in the 53rd year the construction was stopped), but in some places the remains of camp structures can still be found. What do Salekhard say about this?

- Yes, the city even has a memorial - a steam locomotive that reminds of those events. If I understood correctly, then not all liberated campers were allowed to return to the same Moscow, and they had to stay in Salekhard. Those who have survived to this day make up the most elderly contingent of the city’s inhabitants. People say that former prisoners, and among them there were many people of art, made a great contribution to the development of Salekhard culture. I had a meeting with local writers, and one of them said that his father was one of the rehabilitated prisoners of the Gulag.

- And what kind of meeting with local writers?

- This is an organized meeting that took place in the library. Everyone was extremely inspired, because not many guests come to Salekhard. Among the writers were a variety of people: some kind of well-known ethnologist, a very eccentric woman who writes love novels and love lyrics, and even a healer who tried to heal my cough by handing her hands. There was also a historian who is engaged in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. He arrived in Salekhard to create a television channel there.

- Orthodox television channel?

- It seems that exactly. His daughter became the novice of the monastery, and therefore he became interested in the history of Russian Orthodoxy. He used to work on television, and several years ago he was offered to make an Orthodox television channel in the region.

-And yet what in Salekhard it seemed to you the most unusual, different from everything that you saw before?

- Lack of windows in stores and cafes. Everything seems to be addressed to himself, inside himself. It is impossible to guess what is in the building-a cafe, or a store, or something else. And when you open the door, you get into the hallway, then in front of you is another door, then the corridor - and finally you see a small store. The city does not peek out, but peers into itself. Nothing is displayed.

-If in Salekhard nothing is flaunted, then does it somehow affect the behavior of people?

- It seems to me that the thing is that these people do not have an audience. Take television: it was difficult for me to make out what specifically was talking about, but I drew attention to the fact that the entire agenda is somehow connected with the life of the region. The inhabitants are not yet in need of someone else, in what is outside their world. If they wanted to establish a connection with everyone else, they would do something for this. According to my feelings, they like to stay in their narrow circle. This isolation really makes an impression. Still, it is strange: a prosperous, rich region, and at the same time so poorly connected with the rest of the world. As if this is such a private, secret town, whose inhabitants do not particularly spread about their lives. You know how much France has succeeded in branding itself: everyone has the image of Paris, and this image never coincides with reality. You have images of many cities in your head, but Salekhard is another matter. You get there in the search for something special, and that you fell on the hook, it belongs to you, because such experience is unique.

-Do you already have any ideas about the essay based on the motive of the trip?

- I would like to write the story of a man from Tunisia, who was so carried away by the life of the Nenets. It was not easy to get north from Africa without any knowledge of the Russian language. He came to Russia shortly after the Arab Spring, and I think that his story will allow me to collect all my impressions.