Kolyma Tales (57 page)

A yellow flame would race up the trunk of a larch, gather strength, roar, and shake the trunk. The trees’ convulsions, death convulsions, were always the same. I have often seen the hippocratic death mask of a tree.

It had been raining for three days at the hospital, and I couldn’t help but remember the fire. Rain would have saved the town, the geologists’ storehouse, the burning taiga. Water is stronger than fire.

All recuperating patients were sent out to gather mushrooms and berries across the river, where blueberries and cowberries grew in unbelievable quantities and where there were veritable thickets of colorful mushrooms with slippery cold caps. The mushrooms seemed cold – like live cold-blooded animals, like snakes. They seemed like anything but mushrooms.

Mushrooms appear late. Sometimes they come after the rains, but not every year. But when they do appear, they surround every tent, fill every forest, pack the underbrush.

We were to gather them in baskets, sort them for drying or marinating by Uncle Sasha, the camp cook who, on this occasion at least, recalled his glorious past as a cook in Moscow’s fashionable Prague Restaurant and his culinary education in Geneva. Uncle Sasha had been a chef at government dinners, and had even once been entrusted with preparing a meal in honor of the arrival of William Bullitt, the first American ambassador to the Soviet Union. The dinner was in the Russian style, the Russian genre. There was bortsch, Russian cabbage soup, suckling pig with kasha. Uncle Sasha’s assistants brought five hundred miniature ceramic pots from Kostroma. Each held a single serving of kasha. The creation was a success.

Bullitt praised the kasha. But the suckling pig! Bullitt pushed the pig away, ate the kasha, and asked for a second portion. Uncle Sasha was awarded the Order of Lenin.

Soon after that, Uncle Sasha was arrested. It was recorded in his file that Filippov, the director of the Moscow restaurant, The Prague, had invited Uncle Sasha to become head chef, promised him an apartment, an enormous salary, and trips abroad. ‘Soon after I switched to The Prague, Filippov asked me to poison the government. And I agreed.’

Uncle Sasha directed our labors. Gathering wild mushrooms and berries is one of the Kolyma psychoses. We did it every day.

Today it was cold. There was a chilling wind, but it had stopped raining, and the pale autumn sky could be seen through the torn clouds, clearly indicating that it wasn’t going to rain.

We had to go. A patient in the convict hospital couldn’t feel secure if he wasn’t doing something for the doctor, for the hospital. The women would crochet, a carpenter would make a table, an engineer would use a ruler to make up a supply of blank forms, a laborer would bring a basket of mushrooms or a bucket of berries.

We didn’t choose to go for mushrooms; we had to go. There was a rich harvest after the rain, and three of us set out across the river in a small boat – just as we did every morning. The water was rising slightly, the current was swifter than usual, and the waves were darker.

Safonov pointed his finger at the water and then upriver, and we all understood what he meant.

‘We’ve got enough time. There are a lot of mushrooms,’ Verigin said.

‘We can’t go back,’ I said.

‘Let’s do it this way,’ Safonov said. ‘The sun will be right opposite that mountain at four o’clock. Let’s return to the shore at four. We’ll tie the boat upstream.’

We split up in various directions – each of us had his favorite spot.

But as soon as I had entered the forest, I realized there was no need to hurry. A mushroom kingdom lay right here at my feet. The mushroom caps were as big as a man’s cap or the palm of his hand. It didn’t take long to fill two big baskets. I carried the baskets out to the meadow, near the tractor road, so I could find them right away and set off to at least take a look at the spots that I had selected long before.

I entered the forest, and my mushroom-gatherer’s soul was shaken. Everywhere were enormous mushrooms standing separately – higher than the grass, higher than the cowberry bushes. The firm, resilient, fresh mushrooms were incredible.

Beaten by the Kolyma rains, these mushrooms had grown into monsters with caps a half-yard in diameter. They grew everywhere the eye could see – so fresh, so firm, so healthy that it was impossible to make any decision other than to go back, throw away everything I had gathered earlier, and return to the hospital with these magical mushrooms in my hands.

And that was exactly what I did.

It was all a question of time, but I calculated I would need half an hour to get back down the path.

I descended the hill and pulled the bushes aside. Cold water covered the path for yards. The path had disappeared under water while I had been gathering mushrooms.

The forest rustled, and the cold water rose higher. An ever-increasing roar could be heard. I walked back up the hill and around the mountain to the right, to the place where we were to meet. I didn’t abandon the mushrooms; the two heavy baskets hung from my shoulders, tied together with a towel.

From higher up on the hillside, I approached the grove where our boat was supposed to be. The water had already reached the spot and was rising.

I climbed a hill on the shore.

The river was roaring, ripping up trees and flinging them into the current. Not a single shrub remained of the grove where we had beached that morning. The soil holding the trees had been washed away and the trees had been ripped up and carried off. The terrible muscular strength of the water was like that of a wrestler. The far shore was rocky, and the river was forced to vent its rage upon the wooded bank where I stood. The stream that we had crossed in the morning had long since been transformed into a monster.

It was getting dark, and I realized I had to retreat to the mountain and wait there for dawn – as far as possible from the raging, icy waters. Soaked to the skin, constantly slipping in the water, jumping from one hummock to another, I dragged the baskets to the foot of the mountain. The autumn night was black, starless, and cold, and the dull growl of the river drowned out any voices that I might have been able to hear.

Suddenly a light gleamed from a narrow valley, and I didn’t even realize at first that it was not an evening star, but a bonfire. Could it be escaped convicts? Geologists? Fishermen? Hay-mowers? I set out in the direction of the fire, leaving two baskets near a large tree so I could pick them up at dawn. The small basket I took with me.

Distances in the taiga are deceptive. A hut, a boulder, a forest, a river, a sea can be much nearer or farther away than they seem. The decision ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was a simple one. There was a fire, and I had to go there; that was all there was to it. The fire was another important power in the night. A saving power. I was prepared to walk as long as might be necessary – even if I had to feel my way. After all, the nocturnal fire meant people, life, salvation.

I walked along the valley, careful not to lose sight of the fire. After a half-hour I circled an enormous boulder and suddenly saw a camp-fire before me – higher up, on a stone outcropping. The fire was burning before a tent that was as low as a rock. People were sitting round the fire. They paid no attention to me. I didn’t ask what they were doing here but walked up to the fire to get warm. I wanted to eat, but it is not the custom to ask strangers for bread in Kolyma. They were convict hay-mowers from the hospital – the same hospital for which I had been gathering mushrooms.

I couldn’t ask for bread, but I could ask for an empty tin can. They gave me a smudged, dented pot in which I scooped up some water and boiled one of the giant mushrooms.

The head mower unwrapped a dirty rag and silently handed me a piece of salt, and soon the water in the pot began to leap and squeak as it whitened with foam and heat. I ate the tasteless monster mushroom, washed it down with boiling water, and warmed up a little.

As I drowsed by the fire, dawn came slowly and silently, and I set off for the river-bank without thanking the mowers for their hospitality. I could see my two baskets a half-mile away. The water-level was already dropping. I made my way through the forest, clutching at those trees that had survived. Their branches were broken, and their bark was ripped off. I picked my way along the stones, occasionally stepping on heaps of mountain sand. I approached the shore; yes, it was a shore – a new shore defined by the wavering line of the flood waters. Still heavy from the rains, the river rushed past, but it was obvious that the water level was dropping.

Far away, very far away – on the other shore, which seemed like the other shore of life – I could see figures waving their arms. I saw the boat and began to wave my arms as well. They understood me. The boat was carried upstream on poles about a mile from the spot where I was standing. Safonov and Verigin brought it in much farther downstream than the spot where I stood. Safonov handed me my bread ration of 600 grams – a little more than a pound – but I had no appetite.

I dragged out my baskets with the miracle mushrooms. What with the rain and my having hauled them through the forest at night and bumping them against the trees in the dark, there were only pieces left in the basket – pieces of mushroom.

‘Maybe we should throw them away?’ Verigin said.

‘No, what for…’

‘We threw ours away yesterday. Barely managed to get the boat across. We thought of you,’ Safonov said firmly, ‘but we decided we’d really get it in the neck if we lost the boat. No one would give a damn about you.’

‘No one gives a damn about me,’ I said.

‘That’s right. Neither we, nor the chief would get in trouble over you, but the boat… Did I do the right thing?’

‘Yes, you did the right thing,’ I said.

‘Get in,’ Safonov said, ‘and take those damn baskets.’

We pushed off from shore and began our journey back – a tiny boat in the still heaving and stormy river.

Back at the hospital we were met without cursing or joy. Safonov was right to give first priority to the boat.

I had dinner, supper, and breakfast. Then I had dinner and supper. When I had eaten my entire two-day ration, I began to feel sleepy. I got warm. But for perfect bliss I needed tea – just boiling water, of course. Only the camp administrators drank real tea.

I sat down next to the barracks stove and put a pot of water on the fire – tame water on a tame fire. Soon the water began to leap furiously in the pot. But I was already asleep.

Which ink is used to sign death sentences – chemical ink, the India ink used in passports, the ink of fountain-pens, alizarin? No death sentence has ever been signed simply in pencil.

In the taiga we had no use for ink. Any ink will dissolve in rain, tears, and blood. Chemical pens cannot be sent to prisoners and are confiscated if discovered. Such pens are treated like printer’s ink and used to draw the home-made playing cards owned by the criminal element and therefore… Only the simple, black graphite pencil is permitted. In Kolyma, graphite carries enormous responsibility.

The cartographers discussed the matter with the heavens, peered into the starry sky, measured the height of the sun, and established a point of reference on our earth. Above this point a marble tablet was set into the stone of the mountaintop, and a tripod, a log signal, was affixed to the spot. This tripod indicates the precise location on the map, and an invisible network of meridians and parallels extends from this point across valleys, clearings, and marshes. When a road is cut through the taiga, each landmark is sighted through the cross-hairs of the level and the theodolite. The land has been measured, the taiga has been measured, and we come upon the benchmark of the cartographer, the topographer, the measurer of the earth – recorded in simple black graphite.

The topographers have crossed and criss-crossed the Kolyma taiga with roads, but even so these roads exist only in areas surrounding settlements and mines. The clearings and naked hills are crossed only by ethereal, imaginary lines for which there are no reliable benchmarks, no tagged trees. Benchmarks are established on cliffs, river-beds, and bare mountaintops. The measurement of the taiga, the measurement of Kolyma, the measurement of a prison is based on these reliable points of reference, whose authority is biblical. A network of clearings is indicated by benchmarks on the trees, benchmarks which can be seen in the cross-hairs of the theodolite and which are used to survey the taiga.

Only a simple black pencil will do for making a notation of a benchmark. Ink will run, be dissolved by the tree sap, be washed away by rain, dew, fog, and snow. Nothing as artificial as ink will do for recording eternity and immortality. Graphite is carbon that has been subjected to enormous pressure for millions of years and that might have become coal or diamonds. Instead, however, it has been transformed into something more precious than a diamond; it has become a pencil that can record all that it has seen… A pencil is a greater miracle than a diamond, although the chemical make-up of graphite and diamond is identical.

It is not only on benchmarks that topographers may not use pens. Any map legend or draft of a legend resulting from a visual survey demands graphite for immortality. Graphite is nature. It participates in the spinning of the planet and resists time better than stone. Limestone mountains are washed away by rains, winds, and waves, but a 200-year-old larch tree is still young, and it will live and preserve on its benchmark the code that links today’s world with the biblical secret. Even as the tree’s fresh wound still bleeds and the sap falls like tears, a number – an arbitrary mark – is written upon the trunk.

In the taiga, only graphite can be used for writing. A topographer always keeps pencil stubs, fragments of pencils in the pockets of his vest, jacket, pants, overcoat. Paper, a notebook, a carrying-case – and a tree with a benchmark – are the medium of his art.

Paper is one of the faces, one of the transformations of a tree into diamond or graphite. Graphite is eternity, the highest standard of hardness, which has become the highest standard of softness. A trace left in the taiga by a graphite pencil is eternal.