Frozen in Kyusyur [ Stories from Siberia continued] FROZEN IN KYUSYUR! [From the memoirs of Irena K] One day my sister Victoria had to go to a neighbouring village on a Yakutian sleigh. She bundled herself up in all her furs and set off on the back of the sleigh. Unfortunately, as the sleigh was going sharply around a bend, she fell off and couldn’t get up because of all her clothing. She starting yelling for the driver to stop, but it was only after he’d gone a kilometre that he glanced around to find Victoria gone. When he turned back, he found her huddled in the snow and gave her a stern talking to in Yakutian and Russian and told her how lucky she was not to have been frozen stiff in the tundra like many others who’d got lost when they’d strayed too far from their huts. Another time, on a cold autumn morning, the director of the post office suddenly instructed my sister Victoria to take some parcels immediately to the little airport about 3 km away. That day she had worn her woollen winter coat that she’d brought over from Lithuania. By the time she got back she freezing and as pale as a sheet. We were horrified to see Victoria’s eyes frozen shut . Unfortunately she developed mastitis due to the freezing conditions she endured that day. She became dangerously ill and one of her breasts became infected and full of pus. When the village doctor tried to drain it, he discovered that the infection was so great, that Victoria’s breast had to be amputated. She bore that terrible, unsightly scar all her life.