Victor nodded to Tarasov and motioned him into the living room.
“Good morning, ladies,” Tarasov said with a smile. It was an engaging smile, and Katherine realized suddenly that though Tarasov bore the scars of a terrible ordeal, he was still a handsome man.
“Good morning,” said Katherine.
Oksana said nothing. Her arms were folded across her chest.
Tarasov came toward them. He put out his hand to Katherine. “So you’re Katherine Sears. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”
Katherine shook his hand. Women in Russia are expected to offer limp handshakes, but Katherine defied convention and gave him a good old American handshake — three pumps, one-two-three.
Next, Tarasov offered his hand to Oksana. “And you must be Oksana Filipova.”
She stared at his hand as though it were a rotten fish under her nose. He withdrew it and looked around awkwardly for a place to sit. No one spoke, so he sat in the armchair at the end of the coffee table. Victor sat down in a chair across from the women. So now the four of them — Victor, Katherine, Oksana and Konstantin Tarasov — formed a square around the small coffee table.
The room was quiet.
Tarasov looked at Victor. “You’re on,” said Victor.
Tarasov cleared his throat. At that moment, in spite of herself, Katherine felt a little sorry for the KGB man. What could he possibly say to convince them that he deserved a place in their square?
Then Tarasov began to tell the most remarkable story.
47
The reindeer goddess’s name was Kamala Tuchana. It was an Urguma name.
She found Konstantin Tarasov, near death, in the wreckage of the C-9 helicopter on Upper Sharuleis Flats. She had been traveling on foot with her husband, three children and a small herd of reindeer when she spotted the black smoke. The weather was good, so the family decided to detour across the flats. It took them two days to reach the crash site.
Kamala’s husband lifted Tarasov from the wreckage. The other men were dead, so he left them. He carried Tarasov to theirchum , a tiny wooden hut on a reindeer-drawn sled. In the old days,chums were tepees made of reindeer hide. Nowadays, Urguma preferred something more solid. They kept the traditional name, though.
They traveled for two weeks across barren tundra. The weather was good, and their pace, six miles a day, was about maximum for an Urguma family with achum , an injured Russian and twenty-seven reindeer.
Tarasov remembered little from the journey. He was delirious most of the time, with a few snapshotlike moments of clarity. He would awake in thechum , which was not much larger than a large outhouse, and listen to the jingle of the bells on the reindeer and theshhh of the snow gliding under the sleds. The Tuchanas talked among themselves — and to the reindeer — but their language was strange. It would blend with his dreams, and then he would fall back into his delirium.
They joined the tribe on the fifteenth day. By then, Tarasov’s fever had broken, but he was still too weak to get out of bed. He felt sick every time he looked at his empty sleeve.
Already, Tarasov was a child of the reindeer. The herd sustained him, as it sustained all the Urguma. At first, Kamala had given Tarasov reindeer milk to keep up his strength. Later, she added reindeer meat to his diet. Kamala rubbed a salve made of ground reindeer horn into his wound. He lay beneath a blanket of reindeer hide. Kamala’s coat, hood, pants, boots and mittens were all made of reindeer hide. It was why, when Tarasov had lain delirious and near death in the wreckage of the helicopter, he had mistaken Kamala for a reindeer goddess.
Chief Yulan came to his bedside that first night in camp, the Tuchanas clearing out of theirchum in anticipation of the meeting.
The sight of the chief was a disappointment to Tarasov. He wore the same reindeer-hide clothing as the other Urguma. There were no extra beads, no necklaces, no hats, nothing at all to distinguish him from everyone else in the tribe — except for his age, that is, which was certainly greater than those of the others. But how much so? Tarasov, who prided himself on his detective’s eye, could not guess. What were the dynamics of aging out on the tundra, where a warm day was zero degrees and the nearest tomato was five hundred miles away? The chief might have been a hundred; he might have been forty. He had a round, weathered face that was as tight as an aging movie actress’s. He had eyes as black as onyx, frozen into a perpetual squint.
“You are able to talk?” he asked Tarasov, and his breath was visible in the dimchum. His Russian wasn’t good, but it was understandable.
“Yes.”
“Then you must tell us who you are.”
“I’m a KGB agent.”
The chief nodded grimly. “That accounts for the gun.” The chief rose. “We have a radio. I’ll call Ust-Nera and — ”
“No,” said Tarasov.
The chief sat back down and waited.
“Don’t call anyone. Please. Not yet.”
“Your arm needs professional attention.”
“My helicopter crash was not an accident.”
The old chief contemplated him. Something in his gaze told Tarasov that one didn’t lie to the chief. “Why do you think this?” the chief asked.
“Because of what my death would erase,” said Tarasov.
The chief looked at Tarasov a long time, and Tarasov had the distinct feeling he was looking deep inside him. It was unsettling. After several minutes, the chief stood up and went to the door. “I will think on your request,” he said and left.
The chief was a slow thinker, and the weeks passed. Meanwhile, Tarasov grew stronger. Kamala moved him to his ownchum, where he remained in bed. From Kamala, Tarasov learned that the tribe was made up of fifty people, ten families so interrelated that they were really like one family.
“In all the world, there are only sixteen hundred of us,” Kamala told him one day as he lay in bed eating. At least he was feeding himself now. “Half our people don’t even know our language. Only about two hundred of us still live by the old way, and as you see — ” she smiled. “ — it’s not quite the old way.”
The children, she said, went to Russian schools in Ust-Nera. Helicopters came to collect them.
“Few want to return to the old life once they’ve lived in the outside world,” she said. “They’re glad that some of us still keep the old ways alive. But they think we’re crazy.”
“What do you think?” Tarasov asked.
She thought a minute. “It’s a hard life on the tundra, that’s true. But I have noticed that few of our people find happiness in the outside world. They’re not part of that world. I don’t think you can just say, ‘Up until now I’ve been one person, now I’ll be another.’”
“Do they ever come back?” Tarasov asked.
“Some. But by then, they’re not part of our world anymore, either. A lot of them are alcoholics. It’s like they’re stuck in a place that is neither here nor there.”
“A forbidden zone,” Tarasov said to himself.
Kamala looked at him strangely. “You talk in riddles, Konstantin Tarasov. Perhaps we will make an Urguma of you yet.”
The logic of Urguma life was the logic of animal husbandry. Reindeer grazed on frozen grass beneath the snow. That grass was so sparse that each reindeer needed many acres of land just to survive. As a result, the reindeer herders moved constantly over enormous distances.
A week passed, and they moved. Three days passed, and they moved again.
“Why doesn’t the chief answer?” Tarasov asked Kamala one day.
“He is greatly troubled by you,” she replied. “He looks into your soul, and he sees blackness.”
So they moved again. Tarasov learned that they were moving west, toward Olengorodok, where part of the herd would be given over to the collective for slaughter. Technically, the Urguma were members of a very large collective farm. They tended the collective’s herd, for which they received wages. They migrated between slaughterhouses at the two endpoints of their migration — Olengorodok
in the west and Oimyakon in the east.
In the fifth week, Tarasov got out of bed. Kamala gave him a reindeer-hide coat, boots and a single mitten for his right hand. She had sewn closed the left sleeve just over his stub. He fumbled with the clothing for a half-hour, but at last he was dressed. He went outside. Kamala saw him and giggled. He looked at himself miserably.
“I look ridiculous,” he said.
“Like a white Urguma.” She laughed.
So he began to train himself for his new life with one arm. He learned to button a button and to lace his boots. It was maddening. Tarasov tried to help with the herd, but there was little he could have done even if he had both arms. The animals shied from him. He did help with chores by cutting reindeer meat with a bone-handled knife. That proved to be a source of amusement for the tribe, since it was considered women’s work.
“At least I’m good for a laugh,” he said morosely to Kamala.
In that time, Tarasov thought a lot about his predicament. The world believed he was dead, and for the time being it would have to stay that way. Marina would marry Vladic Titovo, and there was nothing he could do about it. Tarasov felt keenly the pain of the ruin of his family: It was as if he had lost his other arm. But he consoled himself that at least young Sasha would be provided for. Marina was doing her duty as a mother in the only way left to her. Now he would dohis duty. He turned his mind to the helicopter crash. The conclusion was inescapable: The helicopter had been sabotaged in Oimyakon, or perhaps the previous day at Leslog-11. And that meant he had been betrayed by someone in the KGB. But who? Leo was the only person who had known he was in Siberia. What did Leo have to gain by his death?
One day, as he walked among the herd with Kamala, he asked about Stepan Bragin’s wife, Nadia.
“Never speak this name to the chief,” she said sharply.
“Why?”
But she would say no more. And that was the end of the matter until one day in August, just a week from Olengorodok, when the chief called Tarasov to hischum. Tarasov went, and they sat on opposite sides of a tiny picnic table.
“I have watched you,” the chief said. “And I have looked every day into your soul. Now I see that your arm was the source of your darkness. This is why it was taken from you: In order to save the rest of you.”
Tarasov didn’t know what to say to that.
“There are things you have not yet told me, yes?” asked the chief.
Tarasov nodded. “When the helicopter crashed, I was coming to see you.”
The chief nodded as though this didn’t surprise him. “Why?”
“I have been warned not to speak this name to you.”
“Speak it.”
“Nadia Bragina.”
The chief gave no reaction. “What do you know of her?” he asked.
“I know she died of cancer. I know she was married to a foreigner who spent many years in the camps.”
“How do you know this?”
“I was at theiryurt.I saw her grave.”
Again, the chief looked at Tarasov a long time.
“You are a puzzle to me,” said the chief. “I cannot help feeling that an evil has been delivered to us, yet that this evil is also part of a purpose that is good.”
“Look, Chief,” said Tarasov, shifting in his seat. “I am grateful to you for saving me and hiding me here. I think I have been very patient. But I can’t wait forever. I need to know things. And I need straight answers. No more riddles.”
“What do you wish to know?”
“You helped Stepan Bragin escape from Oimyakon, didn’t you?”
The chief stared at him.
“The man with the stub nose?”
He said nothing.
“Answer me!”
The chief just stared.
“I know you did,” said Tarasov. “Do you realize you could be arrested for giving aid to a fugitive? Now that he is dead, shot while trying to escape — ”
“Enough? said the chief, and for the first time Tarasov saw the old man angry. “I see now I have acted foolishly with you. When we reach Olengorodok, I will inform the police of you.”
“You would sign my death warrant,” Tarasov said fiercely. “And your own.”
The chief glared at Tarasov, absorbing the veracity of the threat. Then, without a word, he turned and went out.
That night, after the camp went to sleep, Tarasov slipped out of bed. He dressed quietly and got his bone-handled knife from the table. He went out the door of hischum. It was summer so the sun shone low on the horizon. The only sound was the jingle of the bells of the reindeer and the crunch of the snow beneath his deerskin boots. He crept to the chief’schum and pulled open the door. The old man was asleep with his head beside the entrance. One of his daughters slept with her young son on the opposite wall.
Tarasov knelt beside the chief and put the knife to his old throat. The onyx eyes snapped open and looked at Tarasov with alarm, and then sadness.
“You cannot kill me,” he whispered.
“I have killed before.”
“So you believe.”
Tarasov paused. “What are you talking about?”
The chief sighed. “Put away your weapon, Konstantin Tarasov. I have already decided to give you what you seek.”
The chief slid out of bed and got dressed. His daughter awoke and looked at him with concern. He said something to her in Urguma, and she rolled over and went back to sleep. The chief retrieved something from the cupboard and slipped it into his pocket. They went outside and started to walk toward the herd.
“Yes,” said the chief. “I helped Stepan escape Yakutia. He traveled with us exactly as you are traveling with us now. We took him to Olengorodok. From there, he traveled with the Yevenki Eskimos, who passed him to the Dolgani Eskimos, who took him all the way to the Urals. From there, he made his own way to Norway. At least, that was the plan. I never worried about Stepan. He was the only white man I ever met who knew more about life in the Arctic than an Urguma.”
“Why did you do it?”
“For my daughter.”
“Nadia.”
The chief nodded. “She left the tribe to marry the foreigner. I was against it. Not because I oppose the outside world. Our life is not for everyone. But Nadia was special. She had a deep connection to the spirit world, like a shaman. But shamans are men. It was very puzzling.”
They reached the herd and began to move among the animals. From time to time, the chief would brush a reindeer’s nose or pull at an antler the way a mother fusses with her child’s hair even when it’s fine. The chief was leading him somewhere, and Tarasov wondered where.
“Nadia believed that Stepan was kept alive all those years in order to fulfill a purpose. You have told me he is dead. This saddens me, but I believe you speak the truth. So, I wondered, was my dear Nadia wrong? For a while, I doubted her. But then I realized I was making the same mistake as you white men, who see death as an ending. That is why I was so angry when you told me Stepan was killed.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Stepan’s death is part of his purpose.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” The chief sighed and looked hard at Tarasov. “But I am forced to accept that you are part of it, too, Konstantin Tarasov. And that is why I have decided to give you what you want — not because of your knife.”
The chief stopped beside a large pine tree. It had a low branch that bent almost to the snow. A boulder lay just beyond the tip of the branch. It looked as though the tree were straining to touch the boulder.
“Before she died, Nadia asked me to help Stepan with his journey. It’s an Urguma belief. You can’t ascend to heaven unless your body is buried in the ground of your birth. Stepan was worried that he would fail to complete the journey, so he gave me something, which he said I should keep safe.”
The chief reached into his pocket and pulled out two leather-bound books. He held them in his mittens and waved them.
&
nbsp; “This is what you’re looking for,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Stepan’s memoirs. He worked on them all summer as we traveled to Olengorodok: He was as useless with the reindeer as you are. He gave them to me exactly one year ago on this very spot.” He slapped the boulder. “He said if I ever learned that his quest had failed, then perhaps these could help him see it through.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t read them?”
“I can’t. They are in English.”
“English!”
Tarasov’s eyes widened. “English!”
The chief nodded.
“I read English,” said Tarasov.
The chief handed the books to Tarasov. “So let us begin. Read.”
With his one hand, Tarasov fumbled to open the first book. On the inside page, in carefully printed letters, was written:
The diary of Stepan Bragin. Volume 1
The two men sat down side by side on the boulder. Tarasov flipped the page and began to read aloud, translating simultaneously into Russian for the chief:
My name is Stepan Bragin, but it was not always so.
I consider myself a lucky man. For how many men can claim to have livedthree lives?
My first life began with my birth on February 12, 1923, in Rochester, NewYork, in the United States of America.
Tarasov stopped reading. “My god! Bragin was American!”
“Yes,” said the chief. “Read on.”
Myparents were John and Sarah. They gave me the name I used throughoutmy first life: Donald Mortimer Turnhill. As I recall, Mortimer was my great-grandfather’s name. Growing up, I showed no special talents, but I could fix acar pretty well. When I was old enough to work, I got a job at the biggest autogarage in Rochester. I was saving money to open my own garage. Such were mydreams. At nineteen I married Martha. A year later, we had a son, David. Myson was not yet one year old when I left for Europe to be a navigator in the war. Iflew reconnaissance missions for three months. On September 19, 1944, my planewas shot down near Prague. And that was my first life.
The Forbidden Zone Page 43
