Quotes of the Day

By conservative estimate there are about 100,000 homeless in Moscow. Between October 1 last year and this January 9, 330 of them froze to death. I went to a landfill on the edge of the city to talk to some of them. With me were Yuri Kozyrev, a photographer who had been there two years ago, and my 18-year-old daughter Katharine. Here are my diary notes from that day . . .

"Twenty-seven below freezing," the weather report read. "Feels like -37," it added encouragingly. Then the good news: "visibility endless." It was a stunning bright blue day, sun bouncing off a foot or so of quite fresh snow, the perfect Orthodox Christmas Eve, though even macho Muscovites looked pained, or at best determined, as they strode down the streets. We drove 45 minutes or so to Dolgoprudny, not far from Sheremetevo airport. Once a village of small wooden houses?only the fences remain?it is now an industrial settlement whose main features are cemeteries with their plastic flower stalls, and a snow covered garbage tip?mountain might be a better word?looming a hundred feet or so above us.

Nobody knows how many homeless live around the mountain, though fifty is a reasonable guess. They scavenge wood, metal or glass to sell and food to eat. They live in hovels scattered throughout the surrounding woods, so well hidden that the only way to find them is by tracking their footprints in the snow. We stopped at the "administration," a collection of improvised huts and containers, and asked for directions. The car seemed to scare hundreds of crows working the top of the dump, and they rose noisily into the sky, darkening it for a moment before landing in trees behind us. One of the administrators had an offbeat sense of humor: a bright "currency exchange" sign dominated the door of one outhouse, an institutional red "solarium and massage" plaque, probably from a military hospital, graced another. They were, however, unwelcoming. One man had frozen to death that night, they said; they vaguely remembered the family we asked for, but the only directions offered was a vague wave of the arm.

We drove a little further, then dumped the car in a snow drift and trudged up the track, noticed footprints going off in thick snow to the right?not fresh ones, as they were already half filled?and stumbled after them. Even with a wind chill of -37° you could smell the mountain about half a mile away. The tracks led single file into the forest. Suddenly to our right we saw a tiny green hovel. A small man in filthy clothes, pants down, was squatting by one corner. We called to him, he stared angrily, and we asked for the family. He pointed to another tiny house a little further in the woods. "Seryog, people have come," he shouted.

Sergei?Seryog is one of the many diminutives Russians can create from this or any other first name?emerged energetically, half-friendly, half-anxious, from an improvised hovel. Young, burly, lightly dressed for the vicious cold, he was joined by an older woman smiling broadly from a mouth of rotten or missing teeth. Sergei introduced her as his wife, Lena, who was just back from prison, where she had served a year for murder. I felt stupid: I knew exactly what he said, but had difficulty processing the information. I went over it again: yes murder, she said unselfconsciously. She had got four years, but had been amnestied. She had killed her former husband. Two years ago, when Yuri had visited the family, Lena had another baby. That one had been adopted, she said. The investigator who handled her case said he would find the child a good home. "Now I have a new baby," she said proudly, and Sergei dove back into the stinking hut to bring out Svetlana, or Sveta. She was a chubby thing, 14 months, though she neither walked nor spoke. "A very quiet baby," Lena said approvingly, "she doesn't play much." Sveta had been born in Mozhaisk prison where Lena was serving her time.

The small group?Lena and Sergei, along with Yuri and, in the other hut, Volodya?had all been living out in the woods for three or four years. They kept to themselves. Another, bigger group living nearer the dump was constantly fighting, they said. The man who died the previous night?he got drunk, passed out in the snow and froze to death?was from the other group. Here it is quiet, they said. The police never came, officials did not hassle them, and the only problem came occasionally from local young toughs who ventured out to scare them a little. None had a coherent point-to-point story of how they got there?all alluded vaguely to families who "didn't help" or "threw me out," and with a flick with the fingers on the side of the neck?the gesture for having a drink, usually one too many?made it clear that alcohol had played a big role. Somewhere along the way they had lost their identity documents, a fact which in this security obsessed bureaucracy makes you a non-person, with neither identity nor rights, open to abuse by employers, beating by the police or anyone who feels so moved, and a flat refusal of help by most government officials. You become, in a word, invisible.

Sergei was brought up in Kuntsevo, one of the nicest districts of Moscow, had finished high school and technical college, and worked as a bus driver until an unexplained accident left him injured?his sight was obviously very bad?and sliding towards the garbage mountain. Yuri was a former cook, Volodya a metal worker who said he had fought in two wars, Afghanistan and Angola. The men were fuzzy from booze. Lena may have been too, though her vagueness more likely stemmed from psychological problems.

"You shouldn't photograph me today," said Volodya. "It's my birthday and I've had a little drink." He was 51, he said. His face was ravaged, deeply lined and dark?windburn, dirt or a combination of the two?but his eyes were a piercing blue and, as he leaned over a fire that they started in our honor, I noticed his long fingers like those of a pianist. Sergei and Lena had a certain bravado about them?things aren't bad here, it's quiet, we can make a living. They talked almost like suburbanites. We just had Sveta baptized, Lena said. Yura, a little further gone, gave the odd apologetic smile and said little. Volodya, however, was more aware that this place led nowhere. He spoke half in gesture, half in words. As Sergei jauntily said this was a good place to bring up a kid, Volodya turned to me. "Tomorrow, or the next day I'll"?he leaned his head on his folded hands as if falling asleep?"and then it'll be over there," he said pointing to the cemeteries.

Just before we left he asked me how Manchester United was doing. At Lena's request I kissed her three times on the cheeks, Russian style, to celebrate her coming 41st birthday. As we made our way back to the car against a wind that cut into our faces, Yuri said: "you know, the description the workers gave of the man who lived here with Lena was the man I met here last time." The man she had killed. "It's as if they did not even know he was dead."

• PAUL QUINN JUDGE/Moscow
• A day in the life of the people of the dump