by Farley Mowat
The palatial spa of Talaya is built around a hot spring which the Evenk once believed could effect miraculous cures. It houses three hundred patients at a time, most of them afflicted by vague ailments which resist orthodox medical treatment. They come from all over the Soviet Union, but the majority are from the eastern regions. Here, under the sardonic eye of an Armenian, Dr. Vasily Romanovich Avanjan, the patients take the waters while enjoying luxurious surroundings which would be envied in many of the world’s famous flesh-pots – especially when one considers that the price, ‘all found’, and including medical treatment, comes to about two rubles a day. For three hundred patients there are three hundred attendants including some of the best cooks in the U.S.S.R. Greenhouses heated by the hot springs produce luscious watermelons, and an array of other fruits and vegetables the whole winter through. Lucky indeed is the patient who rests here, eating in kingly style, waited on regally, lolling in the huge indoor pool, skiing or sunbathing on the sweeping slopes, or just walking off a full stomach in the brilliant mountain snow.
John and I were given a standard double room which could have offered pointers to Conrad Hilton, a swim, a magnificent dinner; and then were taken in tow by the saturnine Dr. Avanjan for a ramble through the curving, flower-lined corridors and the treatment rooms. It was a rather puzzling ramble because most of the patients seemed in better shape than I was. However this was my first visit to a Russian spa and I was under the delusion that “spa” was synonomous with “hospital.”
Talaya is actually a luxury faith-healing clinic where the talisman used to generate the requisite faith is not a sacred relic embellished by an aura of religious mysticism, but a spring of hot, sulphur-stinking water, transmuted into a magic elixir by the sorcery of science and technology.
Logic and reason have almost as little relevance at Talaya as they do at Lourdes. Illusion is the thing, and no expense or effort has been spared to produce an overwhelming illusion. From the moment of arrival the patients are under the all-pervasive influence of the magic water. They drink it constantly, refilling their glasses, as they amble about, from fountains installed in small grottos recessed into the corridor walls – grottos which bear a startling resemblance to little religious shrines. They bathe in it, swim in it, have their food cooked in it, and are kept warm by it (the entire complex is heated by the springs). Even the water which flushes their toilets is hot and, presumably, imbued with the general magic.
The patient also spends a good many of his waking hours receiving the blessings of the waters on, or in, whichever portion of the anatomy is giving real, or imagined, trouble. For those with sexual problems the suspect parts are immersed in flasks of elixir (for the male), or subjected to a gentle and continuous inner flow (for the female). There are mud baths made with pungent slime from the small marsh into which the spring once emptied itself. There are rubber mouth-pieces from which a steady flow of elixir laves the gums, tongue, and teeth. There are oxygenated sulphur cocktails to be sucked into queasy stomachs from a Rube Goldberg machine. There are ear washers, eye rinsers, scalp bathers, and toe soakers. The elixir is applied as steam. It is electrified. It is frozen, and used as ice packs. But everything done with, and to, it is done with such scientific panache that even when you suspect the whole thing is an illusion … it still seems to work. How else can I explain the fact that my own liver and lights, which were in a state of collapse after too much Siberian hospitality, were restored to their pristine vigour during my brief stay at Talaya. Furthermore they have given me no trouble since; but it was some months before a slight aroma of hydrogen sulphide ceased to accompany me wherever I went.
The visit to Talaya provided an hiatus during which the kaleidoscope of too many impressions began to steady into patterns. The new world of Siberia began to assume coherent form in my mind’s eye. I was able to reflect a little on the vast changes that had taken place in this immense subcontinent which, for so long, had been an ice-bound wilderness defying the hungry aspirations of industrial man. Now, months later, I am still reflecting, still considering the portent of those changes.
One thing is indisputable. Soviet physical accomplishments in Siberia are unmatched for their brilliance of conception and execution. The Soviets have, in not quite half-a-century, attained effective mastery over the entire region and are now able to direct its almost inconceivable potential toward their version of progress.
In terms of technological man, whether he calls himself a capitalist or a communist (or any other label of equally irrelevant distinction), the ‘conquest’ of Siberia must stand as one of his most impressive achievements. However, there are other terms … and other values.
Sibir, the Sleeping Land, the Void of Darkness, is no more. Where, so recently, the Siberian tiger, the wild reindeer, Baikal seals, Yukagir, Chukchee, Yakut and all forms of life, obeyed the implacable but impartial rule of that omnipresent force we refer to vaguely (and so often superciliously) as Nature; now there is a new ruler, and a new law. One of the last remaining primaeval regions of the earth is being rapidly re-shaped. Nature, who was the mother, has been relegated to the role of step-child.
Is it for better or for worse? Many human beings are becoming increasingly distrustful of the validity of our constantly accelerating pursuit of Progress. I, myself, am one of the unreconstructed people who have still to be convinced that the general industrialization and mechanization of our world will lead to the achievement of paradise on earth. Before I can become one of the new believers I must be shown that the future toward which man’s febrile capabilities are so hotly directed, holds more – much more – than the cold rewards of Ultimate Production and Mindless Consumption; more than the enforced exchange of our primordial allegiance to the laws of nature, for an increasing servitude to the frail and capricious laws we contrive in their stead; more than the conversion of this world (and others we may grasp) into seething anthills totally dependant for survival on the insensate whims of machines. I must be shown that the Goddess of Progress is not the true bitch goddess.
In terms of the new creed of technology, and of the godhead of the machine, I am, verily, a man of little faith. I suspect that those who talk so glibly of the brilliant future dawning for mankind do not possess either the ability or the will to look with honesty and clarity into that other potential future which may await us if we continue our headlong course – a future which may be a timeless sleep from which our species will not again awaken.
Cassandra talk? Maybe. In any event there are some comforting signs amongst the Siberians which suggest that technological men will not be permitted to chart the human course unchallenged. One of the most exciting and heartening things I found in Siberia was the growing tendency to reject, or at least to question, the mechanistic blueprint for the future of our species. And the genesis for this rebellion (for that is what it is) indubitably lies with the native races; those once forgotten Small Peoples who, under Soviet rule, have not only been enabled to survive as strong and viable segments of society but who have been permitted to retain their deep and subtle awareness of themselves as natural men. Their roots have not been severed. They remain a proud and integral part of the continuum of life.
It is not inconceivable that these enduring peoples may some day be the seeing-eyes to lead the rest of us (self-blinded by the glitter of our own Creation) into a better day.
These, then, are the real Siberians. Together with those who share their sensibilities and their understanding, they are the men and women whom I shall forever remember. With hope. With abiding friendship. And with love.
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