Sibir: My Discovery of Siberia

by Farley Mowat

  The regard in which Alexandra is held is shared by both men and women, and a visitor encounters it wherever he goes. A Chukchee student at the university decribed to me how she had almost quit her course as a result of an unhappy love affair with a young Russian mining engineer.

  “But,” she said, “before I did, I thought I might as well ask Ovchinnikova for her advice, so I went to her office and she told me she would be so upset if I spoiled my career she would cry all night. I knew she would, too. And so I stayed.”

  To western eyes this incident may read like a saccharine-coated episode from a bad nineteenth-century novel. However, the Yakut (and, indeed, most people in the Soviet Union) do not have the emotional reserve which characterizes Anglo-Saxon society. For one who knows her, it is not difficult to believe that if the Chukchee girl had quit, the lady President would indeed have wept.

  Alexandra Yakovlevna has many facets to her character. Not only young girls in love, but hard-nosed experts in the new technology, consult her freely when they find themselves in trouble.

  “If I can’t find an answer to a problem,” said a young engineer engaged in installing a natural gas distribution system in Yakutsk, “I just slip up and ask Ovchinnikova’s advice. If she doesn’t know the answer herself, she always knows just how to go about finding someone who does. But usually she can put me on the right track herself.”

  There is a strangely ingenuous quality about this woman who blushed like a schoolgirl when John de Visser wished to take her picture. She had to be coaxed into it because, as she said, “Women of my age should perhaps sometimes be heard … but not so often seen,” an attitude somewhat at variance with the most unpolitic shape and content of a remark she addressed to me a moment later.

  “When are you Canadians going to start acting like real men and women and stop behaving like simple little children? Don’t you realize you are giving away your country to anyone who wants to steal a piece of it? Haven’t you the will to fight for what is yours and, much more important, for what belongs to the generations not yet born? Oh, you make me furious!”

  It so happened that she had recently played hostess to a delegation of Canadian government officials and politicians, and she showed a most extraordinary disregard for protocol as she told me what she thought about these men who set the policies for, and administer, the Canadian north.

  “When I visited Canada they refused to show me any of your native people, or where they lived and worked. The authorities would not even take me to the Canadian Indian-Eskimo pavilion at Expo. Nevertheless I made up my mind when they came here I would be sure to show them how our people lived. Can you believe it? They wouldn’t look! All they wanted to see was how we manage to build mines and mining towns in eternal frost! Don’t they care at all about people? Are they only interested in the quickest way to turn their country into a colony for exploitation by the Americans, the Germans and Japanese? Such foolish little men! You really should get rid of them!”

  When I asked her if these were private comments, she laughed gaily.

  “I know the diplomats don’t like it but it is a woman’s special privilege to say what she thinks and feels. I make the most of it. You can publish anything I say … if you feel brave enough.”

  I felt brave enough to ask her a pointed question. “You’re pretty hard on our politicians, but don’t you think Yakutia is being exploited by European Russia in much the same way we are?”

  She gave me a charming smile. “Tovarich Mowat, you have beautiful blue eyes. However, they are not entirely meant as ornaments. I’m sure you know how to use them. You have been to Mirny and Chernychevsky and a dozen other places in my country. How would you answer your own question?”

  She left me to fumble over that one for a moment, then continued: “The Soviet Union is many countries, but it is also one country. In the past some parts were rich and others were very poor. It would still be that way if the people from the various parts had not learned how to help one another. Yakutian diamonds and gold, for instance, help the whole people of the Union; and in return we have received the help we needed to become a strong and happy nation in this modern world. No one is exploiting us … it may even be the other way around, but don’t tell that to the Moscow people, please.”

  Two days before I was to leave Yakutia, Moisie Efrimov brought me a supper invitation from Alexandra Yakovlevna. I felt some trepidation in accepting. Dealing with a forthright woman is never easy, but dealing with one of such uncompromising directness as Madame President for an entire evening promised to be something of an ordeal. In preparation for it I asked Moisie to tell me more about her.

  “Like all good Yakut she was born in the taiga. Her father raised cattle for a living, and children on the side. I don’t know which job he liked best, but he fathered sixteen daughters and two sons. That was before the Revolution and of all those children only four survived. Alexandra was one, of course; but then nothing in the world or beyond it could have prevented her from staying alive.

  “Please don’t ask exactly when she was born. She won’t tell anyone; but she was still a child when Soviet Power came to us, and she was one of the first Yakut children to go to school. She studied very hard because, she says, she felt the most important thing to be done at once was to make roads and connect up all the isolated little places so they could share the Revolution better. After grade school she enrolled at the Road Building Institute, graduated as an engineer, and spent twenty years building roads and bridges all over the place. While she was at that she took correspondence courses and got her diplomas in history, economics and several other subjects.

  “Everyone came to know her, so it was inevitable we should elect her as our Chairman. You won’t find anyone in Yakutia who has done more for our country, who is more modest about it, and who is better loved. Of course, she does speak her mind rather plainly, but we are used to that.”

  I said I hoped I would get used to it too, but my fears proved groundless. Madame President showed another side of her nature at the party. She is an ardent Yakut traditionalist, and one of the great and inviolable traditions of her people in that hospitality transcends all other things.

  She had chosen the dozen guests entirely from native peoples and had selected individuals whom I already knew and liked. From the moment we sat down to table, she directed the evening with masterful subtlety, setting the tone for one of the gayest gatherings I can recall. We drank enough; but for the first and last time in Siberia, not too much. The toasts were frequent and emotional, but not sentimental. Conversation was controversial and witty, and almost completely apolitical. My good companion, Yura Rytkheu, was so lifted out of his rather gloomy self (he had then been on the wagon under doctor’s orders for some weeks, which is enough to make any Siberian gloomy) he was moved to stand up and sing a Chukchee song – and a love song at that!

  Somewhat carried away myself, I inadvertently committed a dreadful gaffe. Alongside everyone’s plate stood a wooden kumiss drinking cup and a champagne glass. Now kumiss is very nearly a sacred drink in Yakutia, and one simply does not take liberties with it, but in an absent-minded moment I poured champagnsky (as the Russians call it) into my half-filled kumiss cup.

  I realized what I was doing only when a dead silence settled over the table. Greatly flustered, I jerked the bottle away, spilling champagnsky into Alexandra Yakovlevna’s lap. She laughed – a lovely rippling laugh – reached over, picked up my kumiss cup and tasted the contents. For a moment she closed her eyes then she stood up and proposed a toast.

  “Comrades, friends – for many thousands of years the Yakut people have made the most beautiful drink of all – our kumiss! We thought nothing could taste better. Now our good friend from Canada shows how wrong we were. He has invented a drink so good it will change everything. It will be a peace drink to link our two northern countries together in the future. Please, all of you, do as he has done … then drink with me to our benefactor and to this new drink which we will hence
forth call … kumpansky!”

  Because our plane was to leave at dawn, this remarkable woman gently brought the party to an end at 10 p.m. with the presentation to John and me of Yakut winter hats made of superb muskrat fur – and with a last brief toast.

  “John and Farley. We ask you to carry back to your country our love for your people and our great wish for abiding peace and closely growing friendship. We ask, too, that you will soon return to us, bringing back with you the same message we send now, for we want your people’s love and friendship with all our hearts.”

  Someday I hope it will be possible for me to do this simple thing.

  Fifteen

  SHORTLY after Claire and I reached Yakutsk in 1966 Simeon Danielov asked us if there was any particular place we wanted to visit. Since at that time we did not know the name of a single locality in the republic except Yakutsk itself, this posed a problem.

  “I’m sure there must be hundreds of places we’d like to see. However since you know them and we don’t, I’d prefer to leave the choice to you. One thing, though, I’d like to visit a town in a remote northern region.”

  Simeon merely nodded. During the days that followed, Claire, Kola, Yura and I saw several northern towns, all of which appeared to be satisfactorily remote. I assumed my request had already been granted until one afternoon Kola announced we would be leaving before dawn the next day for the town of Tchersky.

  “And where is Tchersky?” I asked.

  Kola who, as a Muscovite, knew as little about Yakutia as I did, shrugged his narrow shoulders and looked more bird-like than usual.

  “Who knows? Somewhere in Siberia. We’ll see. One thing you can be sure about. It will have a lot of kindergartens and we will be taken to see every last one of them so we can tickle the dripping little monsters under their fat chins.” Kola didn’t really dislike children. He had just had enough kindergartens during our trip.

  Yura Rytkheu could have given us some idea of where Tchersky was located, but during the 1966 trip Yura was not on the wagon; in fact he had apparently determined to personally create an alcoholic drought in Yakutsk. When we met him for dinner that evening he was unable to speak any known language, unless it was his native Chukchee, so he was no help in satisfying our curiosity about the whereabouts of Tchersky.

  Kola rousted us out of bed at 2 a.m. Grumpily, and without even the solace of a glass of tea, we clumped into a Volga and were driven to the airport where, as was to be expected, we found the flight had been delayed “indefinitely.” The pilot’s room was locked so we had to join the proletarian masses – masses and masses of them, filling every available chair and even sleeping fitfully on the floor.

  It was 25° below outside, though somewhat warmer inside. We were exhausted, hungry, irritable and gradually freezing to death, but I was fascinated by two ancient ladies who had built themselves a lair under a staircase. Here they had a small stove over which a big, black kettle was suspended. The two old girls hovered around it, cackling balefully and occasionally making a sortie into the den of sleepers to slap wet mops as close as possible to the feet, and sometimes the heads, of the unconscious travellers. Kola, whose long nose was dripping and who was shivering uncontrollably, eyed the old dames uneasily.

  “I’ll bet your William Shakespeare could have done something with that pair of witches!” he said through a clash of chattering teeth.

  Truly the world looked dark – was dark – and dawn was many hours away. At 5 a.m. our flight was called and, led by Ivan Danielov, our guide for this expedition, we stumbled onto the pitch black and bitter field to seek our plane – a twin turbo-prop carrying Polar Aviation markings on its fuselage. Everyone crowded to get inside out of the cutting frost, but the plane had been sitting out all night and the temperature inside was exactly the same as that outside. It was like a dead machine, without even any illumination, except for the dim glow from a tiny bulb over the entrance door.

  Must be the wrong plane, I thought. But, no, a few minutes later the crew arrived, big hearty fellows bundled up as if bound out on a real polar exploration. As the pilot shouldered past, breathing out jets of steam, he gave us all a booming: “Dobr-oe ootro!” – “Good morning!” If any of the passengers agreed with this outrageous piece of optimism, none of them said so.

  The jovial pilot wound up the engines and away we went. I still did not know where we were going. I had intended to ask Ivan but was too preoccupied keeping Claire and myself from freezing to death to bother. An hour later, when the interior of the plane had warmed up sufficiently to allow us to loosen our fur ear flaps, we began to descend. It was none too soon. Claire had begun to whimper softly, like a dog that urgently needs to be let out.

  We landed, still in pitch darkness, and I began pulling oddments of luggage off the racks until Yura stopped me.

  “Not Tchersky yet! Only stop here for breakfast. Take your time.”

  “You take your time!” Claire hissed at him. “Get out of the way or you’ll be sorry!”

  We had landed at Khandyga, a little log town in a taiga clearing on the shores of the Aldan River – the greatest of the Lena’s tributaries. A pretty girl, bundled up in an immense dog-skin coat, met us at the plane’s door and led us to a blissfully warm log hut where all except Claire were served huge plates of mashed potatoes, reindeer meat and gravy. Claire had vanished into the black night on urgent personal business.

  We had almost finished breakfast before she reappeared, pushing her way weakly through the great double doors that guarded against the frost outside, and looking as if she had just escaped from an arctic version of the nethermost pit. It was some hours before she could bring herself to tell me all the details of what had happened to her.

  On the way to the café she asked the pretty guide where the restroom was, and the girl waved an arm in the direction of a tower-like log structure across the road. Claire raced for it, climbed a flight of outside stairs, pushed open a door and found herself in a large throne room containing nothing but a hole in the middle of the floor. It was a huge hole, black and menacing. Previous visitors had recognized its potential threat and had stayed far enough away from the edge to be reasonably safe. This had resulted in a build-up of ice which increased the dangers and caused still later comers to use even greater caution. When Claire arrived it was hardly safe to step inside the door without risking the possibility of glissading into that gaping hole.

  Claire was not about to take such an appalling risk. She stayed where she was, barely inside the doorway … and at the critical moment someone else ran up the stairs and seized the outer handle of the unlocked – and unlockable – door.

  Claire instantly grabbed the handle on her side; forgetting she had taken off her gloves; that the temperature was 40° below zero; and that the latch was made of iron.

  She was now faced with a complex problem. She had to try and adjust her clothing with her left hand, while with her right hand she engaged in a tug-of-war with a stranger of unknown sex on the far side of the door. The situation was complicated by the hellish prospect that she might lose her precarious balance, slide down the icy slope, and vanish forever from human ken. She could not give up the struggle with her unseen antagonist in order to concentrate on saving herself because her right hand was frozen to the latch. Her agonized howls for mercy got her nowhere because the stranger knew no English.

  Fortunately the door swung outward, else I might never have seen my bride again.

  The exasperated customer on the other side gave one mighty heave – the door flew open and Claire was snapped out of her private purgatory like a released elastic band. Her hand came free of the latch in time to let her avoid being trampled underfoot by an irate woman of elephantine build, who had no time to indulge in polite amenities. Claire slunk down the stairs and over to the café, having lost only a little skin from her fingers but an incalculable amount of dignity.

  I think what really hurt her most was the discovery she made when we boarded the plane again …
a neat, clean little lavatory in the tail section, equipped with a lock that worked.

  We departed from Khandyga in the first light of dawn and began to climb steeply into the northeast. I leaned over and asked Ivan where Tchersky was.

  “On Kolyma River.”

  “Yes, but where is that?”

  “Across Verkhoyansk Mountains.”

  “How far across?”

  He shrugged. “I do not know. Never go there before.”

  I gave up, looked out the window, and instantly forgot all about Tchersky.

  We were climbing steeply but the earth was tilting skyward at almost the same rate. The taiga-covered plateau which I had come to associate with Yakutia had vanished, to be replaced in the dawn light by a stupendous upheaval of snow-dusted rock – a titanic wall at the end of the world, which our plane was labouring to overleap.

  I have flown over many great mountain ranges but none as brutally violent, as bleakly hostile in appearance as the ranges of the massif which leaps skyward beyond the Aldan River. I have since crossed these mountains by air several times and have visited some of the rock-trapped little towns in their chill valleys, but these monstrous arctic peaks remain amongst the most awesome sights in my experience.

  The Ilushin-14 whined higher and higher and the peaks, white-hooded now, kept pace until we cleared the first outlying range at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Beyond lay a chaos of broken mountains. The one sign of life was a frail fringe of leafless trees at the bottom of the deepest valleys. We flew over the Verkhoyansk Mountains for an hour; then almost imperceptibly the image began to change, softening into a mountain terrain of less terrifying character. The plane banked to the right and a frozen river came into view in the bottom of a well-wooded valley. Beside a meander in the river several score wooden buildings smoked blue plumes into the brilliant morning sky.