steals in, breathing chill and dark over our lips. The fishermen haul in their boats and I wait for a contract. I dig out the front garden, setting fence posts and ordering in the Siberian Larch. The eccentric millionaire swinging his sledgehammer to smash the lilac stump. Scratching at the earth. ‘That it should end like this,’ said the tank commander in Kolyma Tales, staring out at the taiga scrub from his escapee bear-cave hideout. I haven’t known cold like that. Only up in the Altiplano did I get a sense of cold that will kill you, cold to chrystalize your lungs. I’ve never seen an ice forest to every horizon, though I tried to write a tank duel in an imaginary one – the Kassan Woods. I had a German crew pursued by ghosts – it was cold and scary. But I don’t know real cold. I’ve only read London, and Albanov, and Cherry-Garrard, and the most frightening opening chapter I’ve read in years, Simmons’ The Terror. I light a candle and count my luckies, curl up with the cat. I’m a fairweather scribe.
