But then dogs, spying us, began to bark, and people came out of the houses. They greeted Kulik and Trifonov like family. For this trading post isolated in the taiga, our arrival was an event. A bath was fired up in the bathhouse that stood below on the riverbank. They didn’t begrudge firewood for it, and the steam filled the room in thick whirls. When we had sat in the steam so long our skin was wrinkled and our eyes dimmed, we ran out on a little wooden dock and jumped into the cold Tungus. It was already getting dark. The northern white nights had passed, and a dark-blue sky scattered with stars hung over our heads. Turning onto my back and feeling the strong current of the river, I gazed at the stars. In Siberia they were higher up and seemed very far away.
They fed us fish stew and shangi and put us to bed. In the morning I looked over the trading post. Twenty-eight Russians lived there, along with sixteen Evenki, three Chinese, and two Chechens who had been exiled to Siberia during the czarist regime for a blood feud. Here they were blacksmiths. Gostorg bought up fur pelts from local hunters and the Evenki for a song, as it did everywhere in Siberia, and traded them for what was brought in by wagon train. During the winter, the pelts were taken to Kezhma on reindeer sleds.
Our wagon train arrived a couple of days later. It had had its share of adventures along the way: a horse had broken its leg and they’d had to shoot it, and two drivers had run off, taking three guns and a rucksack of ammunition with them. But Kulik wasn’t particularly upset: he was happy that they had brought the equipment and provisions. After our arrival in Vanavara, he had become quite nervous and often grew furious over trivial things. He yelled at me when I dropped a barometer, and he threatened two of the drillers with exile for carelessness with the baggage. Yakov Ikhilevich, the thirty-year-old astronomer, carried on constant professional “meteorological” conversations with Kulik. They almost always ended in arguments with raised voices, and Kulik was the first to explode, reproaching Ikhilevich for “narrow-mindedness and metaphysical thinking.” Ikhilevich had been educated as a mathematician; in calculating the fall of meteorites, he had come up with his own universal formula, according to which a meteorite larger than 248.17 tons could not fall to earth without breaking up into very small pieces. He was absolutely convinced that almost nothing remained of the Tungus meteorite and was in the expedition only to confirm his own theory. Kulik, however, longing to find “material from other worlds” fallen to earth in the form of a huge block, or many-ton pieces, had taken “the bore Ikhilevich” with him in order to “laugh at all the cabinet scientist-worms in the person of ‘the bore Ikhilevich.’” Falling asleep by the campfire, I could often hear Ikhilevich’s dull, nauseatingly detailed muttering and Kulik’s sharp, high voice through my sleep.
But in Vanavara the endless discussion with Ikhilevich came to an end. The moment the short Yakov Iosifovich Ikhilevich, resembling an owl in his pince-nez, opened his mouth about the “crumbling of the hyper-meteorite mass on impact,” Kulik interrupted him: “Colleague, if you have come with us in order to get in our way, I will send you back.”
That was too much. Ikhilevich got mad and stopped talking to Kulik. The falling-out strengthened the general excitement. We were only eighty kilometers from the forest collapse zone. The young people were chomping at the bit to go on, but given his past scientific experience Kulik wanted to calculate and prepare everything this time. Farther on we would have to move along a narrow reindeer trail. The wagons couldn’t follow. All the baggage was loaded onto horses. It was decided that we’d travel in two groups: the first, with light luggage, would set off on horseback, make camp and pitch tents twenty versts along, prepare food and night quarters; the second group would lead heavily loaded horses on foot and arrive at the camp by evening; everyone would spend the night there, and in the morning the groups would change places — those who led the horses the first day would ride ahead in order to pitch a new camp. Kulik planned to cover the “Okhchen path” in four days. One third of the provisions would remain at the trading post and would have to be brought to us by the Vanavara people.
Vasily Okhchen himself, Kulik’s guide from the previous year, showed up in Vanavara the day after our arrival. The fifty-year-old Evenki came from his camp. As he put it: “Okhchen feel big man lord master come.” The lord Kulik was glad to see him, although it was in part because of Okhchen’s fear of the “cursed place” that expedition No. 2 had turned back. Okhchen was a man of few words. But our alcohol untied his tongue. They asked him, of course, about the “fireball.”
“Mine then there with reindeer camp at Chamba. Mine brother left Khushma with wife, fishing there. Then all fast it attack. Made very much lotta noise, break forest, dig up earth, finish off reindeers. Brother break arm, lose wife. We run here to Katanga. Now no one people there — no man, no reindeer.” He spoke the words through clenched teeth, sucking on his narrow bone pipe.
Okhchen was certain that nothing fell from the sky, but simply that the terrible beast Kholi (a mammoth), who lived in the underground world Khergui, where the shamans used to go to swallow his breath and build up their powers, got angry at the people and shook the earth. And the heavenly birds, the agdy, their beaks blazing with flames, went with Kholi’s brother Uchir the dust devil to pull down the forest and set fire to it. This happened because the shamans had started drinking firewater (alcohol) too often and had forgotten Kholi. When he was totally drunk, Okhchen told us about hearing Kholi’s voice once when he was a boy.
“Winter were very strong, big pine he cracking, reindeer no going. When Elk” — Ursa Major — “stand on back legs” — at midnight — “earth open on Khushma, steam come out, and Kholi yell: ‘Ooooo!’ Mine fall down lay down no move. Mine very ’fraid Kholi.”
Instead of himself, Okhchen offered his eighteen-year-old nephew Fyodor as a guide.
“He know taiga very good.”
Fyodor said nothing, merely nodded and smiled. Okhchen gave him a red Berdan rifle and two knives.
Early the next morning the first group left camp, led by Kulik and Fyodor. I was in the second group. We set off at noon. Trifonov led us. The loaded horses walked slowly. We led them by the bridle along the reindeer trail. Each winter the deer trampled down the bushes and saplings, and for this reason the path was never completely overgrown during the summer. In some places even this path was invisible, but the two Vanavarans who walked ahead with axes easily cut a way through. The taiga here was thicker than the Angara taiga. White, gray, and green moss covered the ground underfoot. I noticed for the first time that there are no meadows or grassy clearings in the taiga: empty space is immediately overgrown with bushes and other undergrowth. The sole places that aren’t overgrown are ponds and swamps. One can move rapidly only along the animal trails. But we hadn’t gone halfway to the camp when a heavy rain shower began. We had to put on our peacoats and move ahead at a goose’s pace. We arrived at the camp long after midnight. The first group had also been rained on and had lost an ammunition belt. A wet, angry Kulik shouted at everyone. Having eaten wheat porridge with lard and drunk our tea, we fell asleep in wet tents. Kulik woke us up at six.
Despite all this, we made it to the border of the collapsed forest in four days, just as planned.
But along the road something began to happen to me. The third night I suddenly dreamed my recurring childhood dream, which hadn’t happened for at least ten years. Once again I stood at the foot of my great Mountain, lifting my gaze with difficulty along its endless slopes toward the summit. And again I crumbled, like a bread roll in milk. Again I shook before the huge and incomprehensible. Again I had to lift my head with my hands. But the light that poured down on me from the summit was faint and somehow timid, as though the Mountain was fading, was being extinguished like a volcano. I didn’t disappear in the Light, as I did in childhood, didn’t dissolve into it; I didn’t die from its immense power. There was a sort of sorrowful doom to the entire dream. Something was dying and departing forever. This stunned me: my Mountain was dying. Sobbi
ng, I stood in front of it, holding my head. I gazed at the summit. And nothing happened to me! I saw the Light going out. But I couldn’t allow that to happen. I had to help the Mountain, to save it. I had to exert all my strength, I had to do something, do, do, do, do something, in myself. Like in childhood dreams, when you wave your arms, wave, wave, wave, and suddenly you fly off. I mustered all my strength. The Light of the Mountain was going out. I waved my arms, roared, jumped up and down. But I could feel that my muscles, bones, brain, and voice weren’t connected to the Mountain. They had no influence on it at all. However, there was something in me that was directly connected to the Mountain. But what? The Light was disappearing! It was melting, going away. I understood that it was leaving FOREVER! Sobbing with helplessness, I leaped, wailed, and kicked the ground. It didn’t do any good. I grabbed my body, began to punch it and tear at it, looking for its connection to the Mountain. I looked in my body the way you search for a treasure. My fingers tore at my muscles, pierced the skin. It became painful. Very painful. That didn’t stop me. The Mountain was dying. “Don’t die!” I sobbed, mangling my body. Suddenly, a finger passed through my ribs and touched my heart. Something in my heart moved, shifted. As though something sleeping had shuddered but didn’t awake. Something else, other was living in the heart, something other than my heart itself. And it was precisely this that was connected to the Mountain. I had to wake this up! But — how? I began to beat my chest with my fists, to scream at my heart. It didn’t help. The Light was departing! I thrust my fingers into my chest, grabbed my ribs, and pulled. The ribs cracked. Breaking the ribs and screaming from pain, I stuck my hand into my chest and felt my heart. Warm and resilient, it beat indifferently beneath my fingers. I squeezed it hard. My heart hurt unbearably. But the pain didn’t awaken the something other that dozed in my heart! It lived on its own! I squeezed my heart as hard as I could. I cried out and woke up.
“What is it, a nightmare?” the unruffled, unflappable cameraman Chistiakov asked me sleepily; he and I shared a tent.
“Yes, yes,” I mumbled.
“Take some iodide before bedtime, young man...”
I was hot and suffocating. My hands shook in the darkness and my mouth was dry. I touched my chest: it was whole. Somehow managing to get out of my sleeping bag, I crawled from the tent. The taiga was growing light. I sat on the moist, soft moss near the tent. Its coolness calmed me. My shaking fingers nestled in it. Sweat rolled down my face. Growing calm, I drank some water and touched my chest. It hurt, as though I had actually tried to break my breastbone.
When we set off that day, I felt a certain alarm and agitation. These feelings grew with each step the horse took. Everyone made the last crossing together. Kulik hurried us, the guide Fyodor sang something in his own language, Chistiakov took photographs, and Ikhilevich told the students about the Galileo comet. The taiga grew rosy, small swamps came into view, overgrown with tussocks. On rest breaks we gathered blueberries and whortleberries. Our path widened and it became easier to walk. Everyone was anticipating the encounter with the unknown and talked excitedly. I walked along, silent, leading my homely, piebald horse by the reins. My agitation grew, my heart beat more rapidly. This made me remember the glass of spirits and the cocaine brought to me, when I was thirteen, by the porter Samson at the Krasnoye station. At that point I hadn’t slept all night; I’d been energetically arguing for a ridiculously long time with half-literate carpetbaggers who were laughing at me. Right now I didn’t feel like talking at all. I walked and walked along the mossy path, going around the trees, listening to the beat of my heart.
That evening we entered the forest impact zone. For me it was unexpected. Our expedition caravan had stretched out: the impatient Kulik had gone ahead with Fyodor, and the young people were trying to catch up with them. I wandered along at the end of the caravan with my horse, looking glumly at my feet and remembering the strange dream. Suddenly the sun struck me in the eyes. It was strange and I was unprepared; usually the eternal taiga hid the sun, the rays got stuck in the thick pines. For a moment I thought it was now early morning: the inadequate sleep of the last few nights was making itself felt. Remembering that we were walking northwest, however, I collected myself and raised my head.
There was no eternal forest surrounding me! Instead, all the trees lay on the ground, and a young, low, sparse undergrowth had taken root. In front of us it was as though a curtain had been drawn open. It was possible to see far ahead: the sun was setting between hillocks that stood bare all the way to the horizon, without the taiga growth, just lightly covered in green. I could see our expedition, which had moved far ahead. The tiny figure of Kulik took a gun off his shoulder and shot in the air. All the others cried out victoriously. The path crossed the first prone tree. I walked up to it and squatted down. The powerful fir tree lay in all its thirty-meter length, pulled out by the roots. In places its trunk was touched with rot, the bark had peeled almost everywhere, and the branches had been broken off. Nearby, almost parallel to it, lay a similarly thick, long Angara pine. Its trunk, snapped off midway, was now covered in moss and mushrooms. Farther on, the felled forest began in earnest. All the trees lay with their crowns pointing toward me, and their roots toward the setting sun. Sticking up here and there were the trunks of broken giants whose roots had held fast in the earth but whose crowns had not been spared by the terrible impact of the air waves. The dead forest impressed one with the scale and force of its sudden demise. I placed my hand on the graying, cracking fir, dappled by timber worms. My heart fluttered, my eyes grew dim. And suddenly I felt wonderful, terribly wonderful, as one can only feel in childhood, when everything around you is big and loud and you are really small, but there’s a profoundly familiar palm that will warm and protect you, in which you lie as though in a shell. My eyes filled with tears. An involuntary stream of urine flowed with warmth and tenderness down my legs. I began to sob. The horse looked askance at me, stretched its indifferent muzzle, and grabbed a sprig of Saint-John’s-wort growing on the rotten side of the pine. I sobbed and urinated, completely forgetting who and where I was. The urine stopped running. I sniffled and stood up. My legs trembled. I wiped the tears away and looked at my black woolen pants. Urine seeped from them. I unbuttoned my pants, took them off, and squeezed them out as well as I could. My head was empty and my heart was beating fast. The horse chewed. I held it by the bridle and led it between two prostrate trees. Their menacing, deracinated root systems almost closed in on one another. The horse, still chewing, loaded down with provisions, snorted as we squeezed between them.
Reaching the others, I stood a ways off with my horse. Everyone was celebrating noisily and their amazement at the fantastical landscape knew no bounds. Kulik was so excited that he was ready to move farther on. But the sun was going down. They set up camp and lit a large campfire from the dry branches of fallen trees. In honor of reaching the site, Kulik allowed everyone to drink some spirits. The group quickly grew jolly and noisy, and began singing songs. Slightly tipsy himself, Kulik sang an old prison-camp song that he had heard while in exile. I kept my distance and remained silent. I had no desire to talk. I just stared into the campfire flames. People handed me a flask with spirits, pushed food at me. I shook my head: I didn’t feel like eating, either. I felt good. A pleasant stupor engulfed my body. No one paid any attention to me. My heart pounded, I listened to it. Soon I climbed into the tent and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I awoke rested but still uneasy. Looking at the rising sun, I suddenly understood that it was no accident that I had ended up in this strange place. I had some strong connection to this lifeless landscape. And something awaited me ahead.
We made the campfire and heated the tea. But again I didn’t feel like talking during our quick field breakfast. I still didn’t have any appetite. I took a cracker, dunked it in the tea, and sucked on it.
“What do you think, Snegirev, is it iron or stone?” asked the student Anikin.
I shrugged my shoulders.
>
“For some reason I’m certain that it’s stone,” said Anikin, his glasses glinting just above the thin stubble that had grown on his face. I shrugged my shoulders again.
We set off.
Kulik determined the route according to the direction of the fallen trees. We had to move from the tops to the roots, that is, in the direction from which the blast had come. Traveling about five kilometers across the dead taiga, I suddenly noticed that the clouds of midges that had constantly pursued us had disappeared. And the birds had stopped singing. Young saplings grew bashfully between fallen giants. There was absolute silence all around. Within it, our steps, voices, and the snorting horses sounded timidly. The silence was much greater than us. The voices gradually fell silent, and people walked along quietly, spellbound and overwhelmed. Every so often we came across reindeer skulls and bones, and a couple of times I saw moose antlers sticking up out of the moss. Not a single crackle of an animal’s step disturbed the silence. There was only the dead forest drifting past.
Gradually the hillocks flattened out and there were more swamps. We went around them. In the evening, as usual, we stopped for the night. But the previous gaiety was gone. Everyone around the campfire looked tired, they ate without talking. Even Kulik was subdued. Thin and sharp-nosed, with a thick, bristling mustache, wearing his large, round eyeglasses, he looked like a frightened animal.
At the campfire I once again felt a growing agitation. But it was no longer accompanied by fear and malaise. I was calm. And I was not the least bit tired, although I had walked fifteen kilometers with my horse, skirting swamps, making my way over storm-tossed trees, stepping over mossy tree stumps.
Ice Trilogy Page 7
