Without money, Arkady felt like a voyeur. As the two women swept towards the stairs, he retreated in the opposite direction. Passing by the food aisles he saw Lidia Taratuta cramming her bag with instant coffee. Two mechanics shared a box of ice-cream popsicles; they leaned against a freezer, popsicles in hand, like a pair of drunks. How could they resist? Soviet advertising consisted of the directive 'Buy...!' The package might bear a star, a flag or a factory's profile. In contrast, American packaging was promiscuously splashed with colour pictures of untouchably beautiful women and winsome children enjoying 'New and Improved' products. Lidia had moved on to detergents and was starting to fill a shopping cart.
Even Arkady stopped at the produce section. Yes, the lettuce was browning and wrapped in Cellophane, the bananas were liverspotted with age, and the grapes were many of them split and weeping, but they were the first uncanned, unsyruped fruit he had seen in four months, so he paused long enough to pay his respects. Then the only member of the Polar Star's crew able to resist the blandishments of capitalism went out into the road.
The northern afternoon had settled into a slowly dimming light that revealed as gently as possible the wide plaza of mud that was the centre of DutchHarbor. On one side was the store, on the other the hotel. Both were prefabricated shells of ribbed metal walls and sliding windows, and were so long they suggested that some lower floors had sunk into the mud and disappeared. A score of smaller prefabricated houses took shelter on the lower ridge of a hill. There were shipping containers and dumpsters for storage and trash, and stray, unravelling heaps of suction hose used for offloading fish. Mostly there was mud. The roads were frozen waves of mud; trucks and vans rocked like boats as they moved across the plaza, and each vehicle wore a skirt of mud. Every man-made structure was earthtoned, ochre or tan, a calculated surrender to mud. Even the snow was stained with it, yet Arkady could have lain down and wallowed in it, in the unyielding, toothy grip of cold mud.
A dozen Soviets stood outside the store, either because they were putting off the climactic act of shopping or because sheer excitement made them take a break and step out for a cigarette. They stood in a circle, as if it were safer to look at the town over another man's shoulder.
'It's not so different from home, you know,' said one. 'This could be Siberia.'
'We use pre-formed concrete,' said another.
'The point is, it's just like Volovoi said. I didn't believe him.'
'This is a typical American town?' asked a third.
'That's what the first mate said.'
'It's not what I expected.'
'We use concrete.'
'That's not the point.'
Looking around, Arkady saw three roads leading from the square: one along the bay to the tank farm, a second to the Aleut side of the bay and a third headed inland. Earlier, from the ship, he had noticed other anchorages and an airport on the island.
The conversation continued. 'All those foods, all those radios. You think it's normal? I saw a documentary. The reason their stores have so much food is that people don't have any money to buy it.'
'Come on.'
'True. Posner said it on television. He likes Americans, but he said it.'
Arkady took out a Belomor, though a papirosa seemed out of place. He noticed that the store also housed a bank on the first floor and some offices on the second. In the early dusk their lights had a stove-grate warmth. Across the road, the hotel had smaller, blearier windows, except for the blazing plate-glass front to a liquor store which the crew had been warned to avoid.
'There's a place like that at home. A seamen's hostel, ten kopeks a night. I wonder how much that is?'
'I wonder how many men to a room?'
The second floor of the hotel overhung the first, making a protected walkway that must have served during the rainy season or when snow piled high during the winter. On the other hand, the population of DutchHarbor would halve in November when the fishing season ended.
'The point is, all your life you hear about a place and it becomes fantastic. Like a friend of mine went to Egypt. He read up on pharaohs and temples and pyramids. He came back with diseases you wouldn't believe.'
'Sshh, here comes one now.'
A woman about thirty was headed for the store. Her hair had been teased into a yellow froth and her face was made up into a pout. In spite of the cold, she only wore a short rabbitskin jacket, jeans and cowboy boots. The circle of Soviet cosmopolitans admired the view of the bay. An African warrior with a spear could have walked by them without their attention wavering from the water. Not until she was past did they glance after her.
'Not bad.'
'Not so different.'
'That's my point. Not better.' This one kicked at the mud appreciatively, inhaled deeply and gave the dour hotel, hills and bay an authoritative sweep of his eyes.
'I like it'
One by one they killed their cigarettes, tacitly arranged themselves into the prescribed groups of four and, working up their courage with an interchange of shrugs and nods, began moving back into the store. 'I wonder,' one asked on the way, 'can you buy those boots here?'
Arkady was thinking of the end of Crime and Punishment, of Raskolnikov redeemed on the bank overlooking the sea. Maybe he had been seduced in part by Dostoevsky's picture of the intelligent interrogator into becoming an investigator himself; yet here, at this midpoint in life, by some twist he wasn't the police but the criminal, a kind of unconvicted convict standing by the Pacific, just like Raskolnikov, but on the other side of the ocean. How long before Volovoi had him dragged back to the ship? Would he cling to the ground like a crab when they did so? He knew he didn't want to go. It was so restful, to stand still in the shadow of a hill and to know that the hill, fixed, unlike a wave, was not going to slide underfoot. The grass trembling in the breeze would still be on that same slope tomorrow. Clouds would collect at the same peaks and light like flames at sunset. The mud itself would freeze and melt according to the season, but it would still be there.
'I saw you and couldn't believe it.' Susan had come out of the hotel and crossed the road. Her jacket, the one she had worn from the boat, was askew, her hair was rumpled and her eyes were wild, as if she'd been crying. 'Then I said to myself, of course he's here. I mean, I had almost believed that someone on the slime line might just possibly have been, long ago, a detective. And spoke English. After all, that's the sort of man who would have gotten into so much trouble that he wouldn't have a visa to come ashore. It was just possible. Then I look out the lobby door and who do I see? You. Standing here like you own the island.'
At first he thought she was drunk. Women drink, even Americans. He saw Hess and Marchuk emerge from the hotel, followed by George Morgan. All three were in shirtsleeves, though the captain of the Eagle still wore his cap.
'What is today's story?' Susan asked. 'What is the operative fairytale?'
'Zina killed herself,' Arkady said.
'And as your reward you come ashore? Does that make sense to you?'
'No,' Arkady confessed.
'Let's try it a different way.' She aimed her finger at him as if it were a sharp stick extended at a snake. 'You killed her and as your reward you come ashore. Now that makes sense.'
Morgan grabbed the sleeve of Susan's jacket and pulled her away from Arkady. 'Will you think about what you're saying?'
'You two bastards.' She swung her arm free. 'You probably cooked it up together.'
'All I'm asking,' Morgan told her, 'is that you think about what you're saying.'
She attempted to return to Arkady by going around Morgan, but he held his arms out.
'What a pair you make,' she said.
'Calm down.' Morgan tried a soothing voice. 'Don't say anything that we're all going to regret. Because it can get very messy, Susan, you know that.'
'What a perfect pair of bastards.' She turned away in disgust and stared at the sky – a trick, Arkady knew, to hold in tears.
When Morgan began, 'Susan
–', she silenced him by holding up her hand, and without another word started back to the hotel.
Morgan turned a bent smile towards Arkady. 'Sorry, I don't know what that was about.'
Susan pushed between Marchuk and Hess as she went into the hotel. They joined Morgan and Arkady in the road. The Soviet captain already had the glitter of a man who has had a drink or two. It was cold enough now for breath to show. There was an air of male embarrassment about Susan's behaviour.
'Of course,' Morgan said, 'she has just learned that her replacement had to go back to Seattle. She's going to have to stay on the Polar Star.'
'That could do it,' Arkady said.
Chapter Nineteen
* * *
Arkady and the two other Soviets had beers at a table that was redwood caramelized in plastic. As a body bounced against the shoulder-high partition that separated them from the bar, Marchuk observed, 'When Americans get drunk they get loud. A Russian gets more serious. He drinks until he falls with dignity, like a tree.' He pondered his beer for a moment. 'You're not going to run on us?'
'No,' Arkady said.
'Understand, it's one thing to take a man off the slime line and let him loose on the ship. It's another to let him off the ship. What do you think happens to a master whose seaman defects? A master who allows a man with your visa to go ashore?' He leaned forward, as if pinning Arkady's eyes. 'You tell me.'
'They probably still need a watchman in Norilsk.'
'I'll tell you. I'll come after you and kill you myself. Of course, you have my wholehearted support. But I thought you should know.'
'Cheers.' Arkady liked an honest man.
'Congratulations.' George Morgan pulled up a chair and touched his bottle to Arkady's. 'I understand you solved your mystery. Suicide?'
'She left a note.'
'Lucky.' Morgan was the unruffled man in control again. Not a black-bearded tiger like Marchuk or gnome like Hess, but a professional's smooth face pierced by two blue eyes.
'We were just saying what an unusual place DutchHarbor is,' Hess said.
'We're closer to the North Pole than to the rest of the States,' Morgan said. 'It's strange.'
Different, Arkady thought. A Soviet bar was quiet, a gathering place for sedated men; this bar was explosive with sound. Along the counter was a crowd of big men in plaid shirts and caps, with long hair and beards and a physical ease that seemed to naturally lead to backslapping and drinking from the bottle. The crowd and noise was doubled by a long mirror above a gemstone row of bottles. In a corner, Aleuts played pool. There were women at the tables, girls with drawn faces and extravagantly blonde hair, but they were mostly ignored, except for a circle of them where Ridley held court. Morgan's engineer also distinguished himself from the crowd by wearing a velvet shirt and a gold chain; he looked like a Renaissance prince mingling with peasants.
He came over to Arkady. 'The ladies want to know if you have a two-headed prick.'
'What is normal here?' Arkady asked.
'Nothing is normal here. Look at it, all these seagoing American entrepreneurs completely dependent on you Communists. It's true. The banks had the fishermen's balls in the drawer because they'd all borrowed during the king-crab boom. That's why even Gulf boats like ours are up here. When the crabs disappeared, everyone was losing boats, gear, cars, homes. We'd be pumping gas if we weren't fishing. Then the Russians come along in '78 and buy anything we catch. Thank God for international cooperation. We'd be on our asses if it were up to the United States. You want strange? That's it.'
'How much do you make?'
'Ten, twelve thousand a month.'
Arkady figured he himself made about one hundred dollars at a realistic black market exchange.
'That's strange,' he had to admit.
In their corner, under a hanging fluorescent light, the Aleuts played pool with sombre concentration. They wore caps, parkas and dark glasses, all but Mike, the deckhand off the Eagle. He whooped as the cue ball rolled toward a pocket, nudged another ball in and stopped short of a scratch. Three Aleut girls in pastel quilted coats sat along one wall, their heads together, talking. A white girl sat alone by the other wall, her jaw working on gum, her eyes following Mike's shots, ignoring the others.
'The Aleuts own the whole island,' Ridley said to Arkady. 'The Navy threw them off during the war, then Carter gave them the whole place back, so they don't need to fish. Mike, he just loves the sea.'
'And you?' Arkady asked. 'You love it too?'
Ridley not only brushed his hair into a ponytail and tied braids by his ears, but seemed to have supercharged his eyes and sharp smile. 'Fucking hate it. It's an unnatural act to float steel on water. Salt water is your enemy. It tears iron apart. Life is short enough.'
'Your shipmate Coletti was in the police?'
'A patrolman, not a bilingual investigator like you. Unless you count Italian.'
The Scotch came and Morgan poured.
Ridley said, 'What I miss at sea is civilization, because civilization is women, and that's where the Polar Star has us beat. Take Christ and Freud and Karl Marx, put them in a boat for six months and they'd be the same as us, just as foul-mouthed and primitive.'
'Your engineer is a philosopher,' Hess told Morgan. 'In fact, in the fifties we used to have cannery ships off Kamchatka that had about seven hundred women and a dozen men. They canned crabs. The process demanded that no metal be in contact with the crab, so we used a special lining produced in America. However, as a moral point, your government ordered no more lining for those Communist cans. Our crab industry collapsed.'
Arkady remembered the stories. There had been riots on board the ships, women raping the men. Not a lot of civilization.
'To joint ventures.' Morgan raised his glass.
Pool wasn't played in the Soviet Union, but Arkady remembered the GIs in Germany and their obsession with the game. Mike seemed to be winning, and gathering good-luck kisses from his gum-chewing girlfriend. If the tsar hadn't sold Alaska, would the Aleuts be pushing pawns on a chessboard?
Ridley followed Arkady's eyes. 'Aleuts used to hunt sea otters for Russia. They used to go after sea lions, walrus, whales. Today they're busy renting docks to Exxon. A bunch of Native American capitalists now. Not like us.'
'You and me?'
'Sure. The truth is fishermen have more in common with each other than with anyone on land. For example, people on land love sea lions. When I see a sea lion I see a thief. When you go by the ShelikoffIslands they're lying in wait for you – gangs of them, forty, fifty at a time. They're not afraid; they come right up on the net. Hell, they weigh six hundred, seven hundred pounds each. They're like goddamned bears.'
'Sea lions,' Hess explained to Marchuk, who rolled his eyes in understanding.
'They do two things,' Ridley said. 'They don't just grab a single fish from the net and jump. No, they take a bite out of the belly of each fish. If it's salmon in the net, they're stealing $50 a bite. Second, when he's tired of that, the son of a bitch grabs one last fish and dives in the water. Then he does something real cute. He comes to the surface with the fish in his mouth and waves it at you. Like saying, 'Fuck you, sucker.' That's what Magnums were made for. I don't think anything less than a Magnum will even slow a big male. What do you use?'
Hess carefully translated what Marchuk said. 'Officially they are protected.'
'Yeah, that's what I said too. We have a whole armoury for them in the Eagle. They should be protected.' Ridley nodded.
Ridley had an ambidextrous quality, it seemed to Arkady, an ability to play both the charmer and the thug, all the while looking like a poet. The engineer had fixed on him as well. 'From your expression,' he said, 'you think it's murder.'
'Who?' Arkady asked.
'Not who. What,' Ridley said. 'Sea lions.'
Marchuk raised his glass. 'The main thing is that whether we're Soviets or Americans, we're all fishermen and are doing what we like to do. To happy men.'
' "Happiness is
the absence of pain." ' Ridley drained his glass and set it down. 'Now I'm happy. Tell me,' he asked Arkady, 'working down on the slime line all wet and cold and covered in fish guts, are you happy?'
'We use a different adage on the slime line,' Arkady said. ' "Happiness is the maximum agreement of reality and desire." '
'Good answer. I'll drink to that,' Morgan said. 'That's Tolstoy?'
'Stalin,' Arkady said. 'Soviet philosophy is full of surprises.'
'From you, yes,' Susan said. How long she'd been standing by the table Arkady didn't know. Her hair was combed back wet and her cheeks were damp and pale, making her mouth redder and her brown eyes darker, the contrast lending her a new intensity.
Ridley had gone off with Coletti in search of a card game. Marchuk had returned to the ship to give Volovoi his turn ashore. Once the first mate learned that Arkady was on shore he would fly like a winged hangman. Still, two hours on land was better than none. Even in a bar, every minute on shore was like breathing air again.
Though the noise level continued to rise, Arkady noticed it less and less. Susan sat with her legs tucked underneath her. Her face was in shadow within a ring of golden hair. Her usual veneer of animosity had split, revealing a darker, more interesting plane.
'I detest Volovoi, but I can believe in him easier than I can believe in you.'
'Here I am.'
'Dedicated to truth, justice and the Soviet way?'
'Dedicated to getting off the ship.'
'That's the joke. We're both going back and I'm not even Russian.'
'Then quit.'
'I can't.'
'Who's forcing you to stay?' Arkady asked.
She lit a cigarette, added Scotch to her ice, didn't answer.
'So we'll suffer together,' Arkady said.
George Morgan and Hess shared their bottle. 'Imagine,' Hess suggested, 'if we did everything as a joint venture.'
'If we really cooperated?' Morgan asked.
'Did away with suspicion and stopped trying to pull each other down. What natural partners we would be.'
'We take the Japanese, you take the Chinese?'
Polar Star Page 19
