Strangers in the night [ Stories from Siberia continued] Strangers in the Night [Stories from Siberia continued] Translated from Lithuanian from the memoirs of Irena K Since we lived in such a remote area, no one had any locks on their doors as there were few people about our part of Siberia. As women, we knew that we would be defenceless against a gang of bandits. I slept with the wood axe next to me since I was the tallest and sturdiest. We had one window without any glass and if you really think about it, anyone could have come in and just helped themselves to all our meagre worldly possessions. One moonless, winter’s night, our mother Jadze was awoken by the smell of smoke. “Fire! Fire!” She screamed so loudly, that I fell out of my pallet and hit my nose on the metal part of the axe which I always kept beside me at night. Half asleep, we stumbled out of our pallets thinking that our little hut was on fire. “Kuba! Kuba!” Victoria yelled, searching for our dog. We couldn’t see Kuba anywhere and decided that she must have jumped to safety through the open window. Just as we ready to run out, there sitting by our stove, was a middle aged man smoking a pipe. Obviously he was the Yakutian owner of the hut, who’d come back thinking his home was still there waiting for him. He was a gruff man, dressed from head to toe in furs. He calmly continued to smoke his pipe and growled, “Kapse!” This meant “Talk!” We were able to communicate a bit, as he knew some Russian and it was he who told us Kuba’s name. He was overjoyed to see that we were looking after her. No wonder Kuba didn’t bark when he entered the hut! I am sure that the Yakutian had a proper name, but it was so long ago that I can’t remember it. Between ourselves, we christened the Yakutian “Pypke”, which means a tobacco pipe in our Lithuanian language. Pypke was an itinerant fisherman who would visit us from time to time and we all became firm friends. Since we no longer had any jewellery to barter, Mama would give him our tobacco ration cards and in exchange he would bring us fresh fish. That certainly made a welcome change from our rations of hard black bread. He showed us how to insert a wire through the fish and cook them outside our hut over an open fire. He was certainly a welcome guest in winter time when it was -45C, the Lena River froze over and we didn’t have any fresh food.