Central Australia bakes for much of the year while Siberia is mostly chilled to unbelievable degrees of cold. But these far-flung lands have more in common than you might think. Both are vast, remote areas populated by hardy people, distant from the city ways of Sydney and Melbourne or Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Both Australia and Siberia have convict and pioneer histories. Both build their economies on mining and the export of natural resources, leading to environmental issues in society. And both have Indigenous communities with age-old culture and wisdom.

My Aussie friend, violinist Dian Booth, and I were thinking about these differences and parallels when we came up with the idea of organising an exhibition of Indigenous art from Siberia and Australia. Initially we thought of collecting paintings that would compare and contrast the wild and beautiful landscapes of the northern and southern hemispheres.

“But why stop there?” said another friend, American anthropologist Jessica Einhorn, an expert in the weaving crafts of North American Indians. So what started as the Ice and Fire Project, linking Siberian and Australian landscape painters, might now widen to take in other art forms and Indigenous artists from Canada and the USA as well.

We are open to suggestions because Ice and Fire is still just a work in progress. Of course, one day we hope to hold a real exhibition but at the moment what we have is a virtual exhibition, featuring one artist from Siberia and two painters from here in Alice Springs.

With British, Irish and Australian media colleagues, we made a short film, imagining what it would be like if Feodosia Ivanova, the painter from Siberia, were to meet Mervyn Rubuntja, one of the Alice artists. In the film, they compare the creation myths of their peoples, speak of their ancestors and tell us what inspires their art. The film, receiving its premier here on AliceOnline and simultaneously in The Siberian Times is called: When Mervyn Meets Feo.

Feodosia was born in 1971 in the village of Uritskoe in Sakha or Yakutia, a diamond-mining region of Siberia. Her distant ancestors were either Poles, exiled after one of the Polish uprisings in Tsarist times, or Russian Old Believers, who intermarried with Buryats and Yakuts. In an interview, she spoke movingly about how she felt cut off from urban culture in her childhood but had the compensation of seeing vivid dreams that suggested subjects for her painting.

Eventually Feodosia did travel to see the concert halls, theatres and galleries of Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Baltic States but she found herself coming back to the wild nature of Siberia for inspiration.

Feodosia acknowledges the influence of the great Russian painter, explorer and mystic Nikolai Roerich and has had exhibitions in the Roerich Museum in Moscow. She paints not only landscapes but the myths and legends of Siberia and also does beautiful silk prints.

Mervyn and his fellow Alice Springs artist, Kevin Wirri, are following in the footsteps of the great Aboriginal watercolourist, Albert Namatjira. They paint the red sand, distant blue hills and stately gum trees familiar to those of us who live near the MacDonnell Ranges.

Mervyn also paints in the traditional dot style and has had exhibitions not only in the Northern Territory but also in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

You can see the paintings and photos of the artists at our website: www.rusozartexchange.webs.com

Planning the exhibition made us think of music to go with it. Dian, a classically-trained violinist who used to play at the ballet in Covent Garden, now practices as a sound-colour healer and also spontaneously composes music in response to art works in galleries. She recently went to Moscow to “play” the paintings of Nikolai Roerich and this was where she met Feodosia.

If we can get funding for air fares and reach the stage where we are able to hold a real exhibition, Dian has promised to play at the opening. But we also want to involve Indigenous musicians, who might enrich the sound tapestry with Australian didgeridoo or Siberian shamanic drums and throat singing.

Above: the first two paintings are by Feodosia Ivanova,  and the third by Wenton Rabunta.

If you would like to contribute to the Ice and Fire exhibition, initially online but hopefully one day in reality, please contact British journalist Helen Womack, who is normally based in Moscow but is visiting Alice Springs for the next three months. Her email address is hrwomack@yahoo.com

You can also see Siberia by visiting www.siberiantimes.com

The Ice and Fire website is at: www.rusozartexchange.webs.com

Written and illustrated by Nelen

Li-Lo was so happy that she was tempted to ask him to marry her. He was her man, her muthabadah, and she was his udjerlah. There was no longer any doubt about that.

But if she had learnt how to go with the flow herself, she remained doubtful that two shackled people, a couple, could hope to do it together.

Udjerlah had married herself. She had found her soul mate within and thereby become whole. And her Muthabadah was a whole man himself. Marriage was for people who were looking for their other halves. A white wedding dress and a black tuxedo married each other and hoped in this way to become whole.

How could two people who were already whole marry each other?

Only on another planet, thought Udjerlah. Only on Mars, she said.

“Or in the red desert,” said Muthabadah and he threw two air tickets down on the table.

He had just taken an audience on a high flight in one of his best ever concert performances. The representative of an airline had been sitting in the front row. She had been so impressed by his playing that she had asked him to make a recording of the music to be used in the airline’s commercials. The reward was two air tickets to anywhere in the world.

Udjerlah and Muthabadah drank champagne all the way to the Other Side of the Globe. When they arrived in the desert, they went to find Edith, the unconventional marriage celebrant.

“We want a sky wedding,” they said.

“No worries,” Edith replied and took them out in her jeep to the Valley of the Rainbows.

The sun was setting; the heat was going out of the day. Like the first people on earth, they walked naked on the clay pan, under the orange rock that looked like the mysterious Sphinx.

“Do you accept this man, just as he is?” asked Edith.

“Yep,” said Udjerlah.

“Do you accept this woman, just as she is?” asked Edith.

“Yep,” said Muthabadah.

That was all that needed to be said.

They knew that promises were pointless, for who can say what the next day will bring? Hand in hand, they stepped off the edge of the known world together. What happened afterwards, well that is a whole new story.

And still there was no need to wear clothes because it was a balmy summer night.

Udjerlah danced with her Muthbadah while squadrons of chattering green budgies flew home to their nests. Edith laid out a simple picnic of cheese, biscuits and apples. The insects started up their hum and the stars came out like diamonds.

This was the final chapter in Udjerlah’s Song, an adult fairytale set in Moscow and Central Australia. Many thanks to Nelen for sharing  her love story! If you would like to read previous chapters of Udjerlah’s Song, simply type the name in the search box and press enter.

Written and illustrated by Nelen

Reconciliation with Slava took a little longer. He and Li-Lo continued to meet and go for walks with each other at weekends. How could they not? For who could they really talk to, who were their true companions if not each other?

In the summer, she invited him to spend another holiday at her seaside home on the Rainy Island. They walked for miles on cliff and beach; under a white cliff, they found their own private beach, where salmon and young seals rode in on the brisk, blue tide.

In winter, back in snowy Moscowville, he presented her with a fridge for her kitchen. It was a complete surprise. She was thrilled. He melted her heart with a fridge.

They lay in bed together, mostly talking. Their sex was very occasional now, middle-aged love. “I am quite happy with what we have got,” said Slava. “It is enough.”

Strangely, when the sex all but died, it seemed the music between them might be returning. Without any pressure, they resumed the singing lessons at home and they went rather well. So well, in fact, that he surprised her by suggesting she take part with his professional divas in a Christmas concert. She started working hard towards this goal. She dared to hope that at last her voice would sound with all its heights and depths, the voice of the freed spirit Ariel.

But on the night, the concert was a disaster. Why had Slava raised her hopes, only for this burning shame? They had a blazing row; she whacked him with a pillow. And then she fired him as her maestro. From now on, she would sing in the bath, exactly as she pleased. And she would take up a new hobby, painting perhaps.

To her surprise, he took his sacking easily.

“What a relief,” he said and laughed.

After that, their relationship blossomed like the crazy Amyrilis on her window sill, which threw out pointed buds and flaming flowers when it seemed the bulb should long since have exhausted itself.

Thank God we did not fall into that old singing trap again, she thought. Thank God we work in different professions; that I have my business and he has his.

She revelled in the oxygen, the space, the freedom… She carried her man inside her and there was no need to cling to him, as he followed his path and she pursued hers. They were weaving the tracks that were the pattern of life itself…

Udjerlah’s Song is an adult fairytale set in Moscow and Central Australia.

Written and illustrated by Nelen

Li-Lo moved out of the flat in Pinebox and went to live in her half-renovated office in the centre of town. She was not really very angry with Slava but she desperately needed her own space. She feared that she always would. Even if she married him, she would not want to see him all the time. The first night, she sat on a broken chair in the main room, looking at the shadows that the streetlamps cast on the bare walls, and revelled in the silence.
After a few days, she brought Blackjack the black cat to join her. This was her clearest statement that the office would now be her permanent home and she would live alone. The kitchen was not equipped but there was a plug for the kettle. Li-Lo went out and bought a fleecy blanket for the bed. Arctic blue, it was covered with protective polar bears. She also bought some spring flowers. These things were enough.
Blackjack warmed the bleak flat with his purring. She would keep him with her always. The cat had waited for her the whole time she had been away in the Upside Down Country. She had not realised a feline was capable of such fidelity and she suddenly felt full responsibility for the creature she had tamed.
Li-Lo began to get work. The Frozen Country was always producing the kind of grim or wacky events that her editors loved and if there was a quiet spell, she could always teach English. She could earn her bread and pay the rent. It was enough. She was happier than she had felt for a long time.
Then Li-Lo remembered her old rival, Slava’s first wife Deva. Deva was doing quite well now. She had remarried, given up drinking and become respectable. The children, nearly grown up, were living with her, studying or working, and all was well that ended well. Li-Lo had not forgotten the old telephone number. She picked up the phone and rang Deva.
“I just wanted to say,” she said, “that my falling in love with Slava was not done deliberately to hurt you. It was part of my life’s path. And you and I were cast in opposing roles; we had to play them. I think you know that.”
“Yes, I always knew that,” said Deva. “And I for my part just want to say that if I had to have an opponent, I could not have had a more decent opponent than you.”
And so they became reconciled.
Then Li-Lo picked up the phone and rang the Snow Maiden.
“I just wanted to say,” she said, “that I know you did not deliberately set out to hurt me but I was hurt nevertheless. You were the instrument of me being hurt. I want you to know this.”
The Snow Maiden was rather shocked. She did not know what to make of this telephone call.
“I am not going to apologise,” she said.
“You have nothing to apologise for,” said Li-Lo. “You played your role perfectly.”
They talked some more and understood each other and so they too became reconciled.

Udjerlah’s Song is an adult fairytale set in Moscow and Central Australia.

Udjerlah’s Song is an adult fairytale, set in Moscow and Central Australia , written and illustrated by Nelen.

They washed their clothes in the bath and both understood that a washing machine, if ever it appeared in their lives, was down to him to purchase. He owed it to her. It was a symbol of their equality. Li-Lo did not expect a washing machine to materialise in the near future.

But that was where she was wrong. To her surprise, a few weeks later, Slava announced that he had bought a washing machine on credit. It was delivered to the flat one afternoon while he was out at work and Li-Lo was at home alone. They drank wine that evening to celebrate.

The dinner was going well when he happened to mention that while she had been away in the Upside Down Country, he had gone for walks in the botanical garden with the Snow Maiden. Li-Lo felt a stab in her heart. They retired to bed to read the instruction manual for the washing machine. Slava’s enthusiasm for the new white box verged on the erotic.

“Kiss me,” she said. “Kiss, kiss,” he said and moved over to his own, separate mattress. In the night, Li-Lo tried to attract his erotic attention towards her but he wanted to sleep. She felt insecure; she persisted.

“I know something is wrong,” said Li-Lo. “I feel as if you are behind a glass screen.” Then the glass shattered and on the night after they got their new washing machine, they washed all their dirty linen, in private.

“What is going on?” she demanded.

“Shut up and listen,” he began his confession.

It turned out that while she had been away in the Upside Down Country for the second time, working hard and living like a nun, believing that he was her knight in shining armour, her reliable rock, he had been having an extended affair with the Snow Maiden.

It was because he had felt rejected by Li-Lo, he said. “But it’s over now. She was like an alien to me. I fucked her for the last time and said goodbye to her in August.”

“I knew it. I knew you were lying to me.”

She was reeling with pain. It was the dishonesty that hurt, just as her deception over Bobby had wounded him.

“How could you have done this to me? We had a deal. And I have been living here all these weeks… When were you planning to tell me? When?”

She stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door. She ran a bath, using half a bottle of his best foam. She was boiling mad but strangely, a part of her remained absolutely cool.

She noticed the orange and purple rag on the floor that he called a bathmat. It was in shreds, like the cloth of their love, hanging by a single thread. That old thread that bound them; that bond that often seemed like bondage. What if she were to break it finally?

Her heart reared up. When she got out of the bath, slopping water all over the floor, she was pink as a lobster and foaming at the mouth.

“Why? Just tell me why?”

“I wanted to understand you,” he said.

“Don’t give me that crap. You wanted to have an affair with the Snow Maiden and you deliberately chose to interpret my loving messages as meaning that I had left you. And you had your sordid affair. Was she sexier than me? Was she juicier? Well, was she?”

“I wanted to understand you,” he said again.

Li-Lo thumped the pillows in a frenzy of frustration.

“OK, OK,” he admitted, “and I found my dark side. Wasn’t it you who told me to go and find my dark side? So I discovered that I am a whore. A man can be a whore as easily as a woman.”

At that, they fucked each other. They cried. Afterwards, they went to drink tea in the kitchen.

Li-Lo was not stupid. She saw the wonderful symmetry of it all, that she had been him and he had been her. Everything she had felt, he had felt and everything he had felt, she had felt. Furthermore, if she was him and he was her, one body, then by extension, she was the whole world and the whole world was her, one body. The implications were mind-blowing. She would have to think more about that later. Still some anger remained.

“But how could you do it? And you haven’t even apologised.”

“Hit me,” he said, “go on, punish me.”

So she picked up the breadboard and bashed him over the head with it. After that, it was a strange sort of day. The grey dawn came up. They slept for a few hours and then sat again in the kitchen, drinking more tea. They were at peace. Or was it just that they were too tired to fight any more? The washing machine hummed with its first load of dirty bedding. Like idiots, they stared into its window, as if at a television screen.

Li-Lo donned her bright red raincoat to stand out in the crowd when she arrived at Moscowville airport. She had a sharp new haircut and new silver spectacles like cubes of ice. Slava would not recognise her, looking so flash, she thought.

“Unrecognisable,” he said dryly when he picked her instantly out of the throng. “Hi,” she said. They embraced in a businesslike manner.

But it was Slava who was unrecognisable, she realised later, when she started to live with him in the tiny flat in Pinebox. It was as if aliens had taken him over. His eyes were shifty. He was wooden in his behaviour. He was there in body but not in spirit. Despite all that had passed between them in the Lion Room, it seemed that they had become strangers again.

“So, how are you?” she asked on the first evening.

“How are you?” he echoed.

It was impossible to have a conversation with him because the phone kept ringing. Could he not take the phone off the hook for once and pay her some attention? They had not seen each other for nearly a year. He did not seem in the least excited about her arrival.

Li-Lo unpacked her suitcase. “So, how are you?” she asked again. “How are we?” and she encircled him with her arms. “I have not made a diagnosis yet,” he said coldly. That night they slept on separate mattresses and the next morning he went out to work, leaving her to range over her new territory.

The box was as Spartan as ever. There were a few plants on the windowsill but otherwise he had done little to decorate it. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was restful, homely even in a bachelor’s sort of way. Li-Lo sniffed around for evidence of another woman but could not find any.

She set up her laptop computer on the kitchen table. Work would have to wait until she had a connection to the Internet. The fine autumn weather drew her outside to explore the wider world, the suburb of Pinebox.

Down by the river, she found a tree-lined promenade, where young mothers pushed their prams. The local market was bright with fruity and spicy colours. She bought beetroot and tried to please him by making borscht.

Desperately she searched for the old intimacy. After all, that was what she had come back for; she had come back all the way from the Other Side of the World.

“Let’s have a lie down,” he offered one evening and they curled up together on the divan. He turned the radio down low. Then he confessed that he had thought she was breaking off their relationship when she had sent the photographs of herself, followed by the manuscript that had spoken of her “seeing her beloved for the last time”.

“But surely you understood it was fiction?” she said. “And in any case, why would I send you photographs of myself if I was leaving you?”

“I’m an idiot. You should know that by now.”

They hugged each other. The embrace turned sexual and the sex provided its usual dose of reassurance. The misunderstanding seemed to have been cleared up. “Let’s go out together tomorrow,” she said.

The next day they had a beautiful walk in the forest. Then he made dinner. He was a far better cook than she was. “Marry me,” he said. “I won’t ask you again.” She nodded.

After that, Slava redoubled his efforts on the practical side to make her life comfortable. He sorted out the lack of a link to the worldwide web and he allowed her to bring her beloved black cat, Blackjack, to live with them. She tried to put a bit of a feminine stamp on their joint home by buying thick towels in jewel-like colours for the plain bathroom.

“Things will work out,” she told herself.

She knew there was a limit to how long she could play the role of Pinebox housewife but once she started working properly, it would get better. And yes, she might marry him, she might…

But still she sensed that something was wrong. A woman’s instincts are rarely wide of the mark.

Udjerlah’s Song is an adult fairytale set in Moscow and Central Australia.

“And so you see,” Slava whispered to Li-Lo, still looking up at the sky, “I found the dark, deceitful and manipulative side of my little self. And that is why a part of me is dying to see you, my dear, my only one, while another part of me does not want to see you at all. That is why I am shit-scared.”

Slava shivered. A faint light glimmered on the horizon. On a nearby allotment, a cock crowed three times.

Udjerlah’s Song is an adult fairytale set in Moscow and Central Australia.

Written and illustrated by Nelen

I am on my way

to be

a bed rock,

a cliff,

a stable ground.

That is my intention.

In the little flat in Pinebox, Slava stared blankly at the resolution he had written for himself in thick marker pen and stuck up on the kitchen wall. He felt sick. Li-Lo would be arriving in a few days and he needed to get himself into enthusiastic-welcome-mode but instead he felt shit-scared.

Several times he had tried to explain to her; several times he had attempted to compose a fax but he could get no further than the words “My dear, my only one…”

By day, he paced the apartment like a caged beast. By night, he tossed and turned in bed. When he could stand it no longer, he packed a rucksack and went to stay out at the dacha.

Sleep came no easier to him in the hut but at least in the countryside, he could walk out into the moonlit fields or sit up all night by the pond, looking at the stars. It was the location of his first love scene with Li-Lo. He hoped he could talk to her here. He tried to still her voice that filled his head.

“Listen,” he said to her, “will you just shut up and listen?”

“I am listening,” she said, or was it the wind in the grass?

“OK, then,” he said and took a deep breath. “Remember the Lion Room?”

And he told her how euphoric he had felt when he had left the Rainy Island after their reconciliation in the golden bedroom. He had been flying with happiness then.

“All excitement ends in tears,” as his favourite Indian author said. The euphoria had been followed by a terrible depression.

On his birthday, a package had arrived from Li-Lo. She had sent a postcard of the reclining, golden Buddah, a weird birthday card and a manuscript, which as far as he had been able to see had clearly spelt the end of their relationship.

“Sod it, then,” he had thought. And right on cue, the Snow Maiden had been there to caress his poor brow, to wipe away his tears.

Afterwards, Li-Lo had rung to find out if he had received the package. It had been a loving phone call. In horror, he had realised his mistake. At the same time, he had known he must not try to explain to Li-Lo when she was so far away. She had been about to launch her magazine and needed his support.

“I am still waiting for you. I’ll be your rock,” he had said.

Then he had felt utter self-disgust. He had felt like a very small, dried-up turd. He had known that all his fine words and promises to Li-Lo meant nothing, nothing whatsoever.

He had told the Snow Maiden to go away and leave him alone. He had taken up smoking again. That winter, he had smoked like a factory chimney.

“It’s hard to explain,” he whispered to Li-Lo, looking up at the constellation Orion. “Try,” she said, or was it the wind in the grass?

He had felt he had some unfinished business with the Snow Maiden; that there was more of his own dark side that he needed to explore with her. He had already ruined everything with Li-Lo; the situation could not have been made any worse. “What the hell…” he had said to himself.

Of course, if he had done things properly, he should have betrayed Li-Lo three times with three different women but he had been lazy; he couldn’t be bothered to go out and find the women. The eager Snow Maiden had always been on hand, ready to come to him when he clicked his fingers.

He had clicked and she had come a second and a third time, varying her guise as much as her imagination allowed.

Only after that had he said to her: “This is the last time, absolutely the last time.” And finally the Snow Maiden had believed him and the very next week found herself a new lover, while taking a romantic river cruise.

Udjerlah’s Song is a adult fairytale set in Moscow and Central Australia.

Written and illustrated by Nelen

Her stomach was in knots. She felt very nervous about returning to the Frozen Country. She walked the beach some more, gathering shells and paddling in the shallows.
Coming to meet her, also paddling, was a golden-haired woman. She looked like Venus rising from the waves. She smiled and introduced herself as Charlene. She was in fact a granny, who had just retired to the little seaside town. Li-Lo and Charlene went off together for afternoon tea in a cafй.
Charlene, it turned out, was a shaman. She read the anxiety on Li-Lo’s face and offered to take her on a journey to meet her power animals.
“We can do it now,” she said. “Come home with me. I just live round the corner.”
Li-Lo was skeptical but where could be the harm in allowing this kindly old bat to light a few candles and incense sticks, shake her feathered rattles and relax her on a couch? Li-Lo closed her eyes and, to the sound of native American music, allowed herself to be relaxed on the couch.
“I see a beautiful white polar bear,” said Charlene. “He is walking with you, taking care of you.”
So be it, thought Li-Lo when the session ended. She did indeed feel much calmer and stronger.
And so when she walked the ice walk back to the Frozen Country, she allowed the idea that the polar bear might be accompanying her. She feared no more. Whatever would be would be.

Udjerlah’s Song is an adult fairytale set in Moscow and Central Australia

Written and illustrated by Nelen

Back in Moscowville, the Ministry of Warm Welcomes was in no hurry to issue Li-Lo with a visa. “Your letter of application was not respectful enough,” said a bureaucrat, who finally answered the phone between one of his many tea breaks. “You must write it again, adding six more kowtows.”

Li-Lo had hoped to return to the Frozen Country directly from the desert but now she saw that she would probably have to go back to the Rainy Island and wait for the visa there. That would be no hardship. She could see her parents, enjoy her seaside home and walk on the beach. Her neighbour Evelyn had proved to have great prescience. Li-Lo would indeed be back in time for the bluebells in the northern hemisphere. That year, she enjoyed a double summer.

As things turned out, she spent the whole of that summer walking the beach and waiting for the visa. She began to worry. Perhaps the bureaucrats in Moscowville were going to refuse her entry.

She remembered a line from Homer: “However far a man has strayed, a friendly god can always bring him safely home and that with ease.” The words comforted her.

She rang Slava.

“Still waiting for the visa, I’m afraid, but soon my odyssey will be over.”

“Well don’t think that I am some Penelope, who has been sitting here knitting while you have been away,” he said in a flinty tone.

That upset her. Something was definitely wrong in Moscowville.

Li-Lo paced and pounded up and down the beach but until the visa arrived, she was impotent. Finally, when the sea buckthorn berries on the cliff top were turning orange, heralding the arrival of autumn, her permission to travel came through.

Udjerlah’s Song is an adult fairytale set in Moscow and Central Australia.