Watson, Ian - Novel 11 (18 page)

 
          
The Middle of Nowhere (alias a Tungusi camp
on the
Chambe
River
)

 
          
My most dear Masha,

           
We’ve left the ‘metropolis’ of
Vanavara far behind. Mind you, it was hard enough getting there in the first
place. Without Tolya to guide us, I’m sure it would have taken us twice the
time to cover the distance.

 
          
Our
compass was little use; the latitude was already too high for accurate magnetic
readings. The map we had brought from
Krasnoyarsk
was mostly wishful thinking—so Mirek began
making his own map. But the terrain was vilely confusing: such a chaos of
rugged gullies and steep hills, with creeks snaking everywhere—and the larger
of these still unfrozen, so that we had to plodge through them, while the
smaller rivulets were iced over and camouflaged with snow, providing excellent
pitfalls for us and the horses . . .

 
          
Yes,
Tolya proved invaluable. But as our mutual comprehension improved, he started
to act oddly—particularly during our stay in Vanavara itself, which Tsiolkovsky
and I devoted to questioning witnesses of the explosion two years ago.

 
          
Naturally,
we had already asked Tolya about the strange event; but given his bastard
Russian it was hard to say exactly what his answers were. Now that we were this
much closer to the area of devastation, and now that he saw us actively
pursuing our enquiries, our Tungusi friend became at once jittery—and almost cloyingly
coquettish. It seemed to me as if, with our camera and our theodolite and other
wonderful gear, we had become a sort of magic talisman of protection for the
man—a safe conduct, or lucky charm—yet one whose efficacy might fail at any
moment, bringing down a terrible nemesis upon his head.

 
          
As
I say, while we were in Vanavara, Konstantin Eduardovich and I interviewed a
number of the more reliable local farmers and traders. Faithfully we copied
down their tales of fearful thunderclaps, and a pillar of light flaring into
the sky, followed by an oven- hot wind fierce enough to knock a man off his
feet and bring sods tumbling from the roofs—and a black mushrooming cloud.

 
          
Countess
Lydia snapped photographs of some of our informants, but then she got bored
and took herself off for a snowy gallop on borrowed horses with
Vershinin—supposedly to try to pot a hare—and that left the two of us to get on
with the job, helped or hampered as the case may be by Sidorov and Tolya. Tolya
had insisted on tagging along, though he was acting weirdly—and Sidorov also
seemed to have suffered a sudden fit of nervous instability. At each additional
vindication of the stories he originally related on that fatal night in the
inn, our Ilya (“At your service!”) Alexandrovich would grin inanely in a way
suggesting quite clearly to me that he was incapable of separating the wheat
from the chaff in any scientific manner. Boiled turnip head, boiled
brains—alas!

 
          
As
we tramped back from an outlying farm, Tsiolkovsky fell behind with Tolya—and
the two men fell into a kind of conversation, leaving me with my spaniel
Sidorov; and I gained the impression, from a few paces ahead, that rapport had
somehow been achieved between our Tungusi with his hamstrung Russian, and
half-deaf Konstantin.

 
          
This
was amply confirmed later on, in the ‘inn’.

 
          
Lydia
and Vershinin hadn’t yet returned. Sidorov
was staring at the notes we’d taken, as though they were the Holy Bible. Tolya
had gone off somewhere—and Mirek was poring over his charts.

 
          
Tsiolkovsky
leaned over Mirek’s shoulder, and planted a finger on the map about one hundred
versts north of Vanavara. “From what Tolya says, the spaceship must have
exploded about
here
.”

 
          
Masha,
if you have any sort of map of this area, you’ll see that the
Tunguska
flows westwards from Vanavara towards its
confluence with the Chambe. Our original plan was to have some more rafts
knocked together, and head downstream, then somehow to haul our rafts up the
Chambe—infested with rapids though we had learned it to be—until we reached the
Makirta River. On the map the Makirta is a very sinuous watercourse, though
Mirek surmised that the map-maker might have put in all those loops and twists
just to make the river look like a river. Tsiolkovsky’s finger was indicating a
spot some way beyond the headwaters of the Makirta.

 
          
“Is
that what he says? So that’s where the meteor crater’ll be . . .’’

 
          
Tsiolkovsky
turned a deaf ear to Mirek’s remark. He traced a line from Vanavara directly
north through a blank on the map.

 
          
“And
here’s the Tungusi track that Tolya’ll show us—as far as his family’s tents on
the upper Chambe. We can stay there overnight. After that, it’s up to us.’’

 
          
“Hang
on,’’ said Mirek, “this is where he comes into his own. It’s his territory—he
can’t chicken out just short of the finishing post. We’d better offer him some
more roubles.’’

 
          
“But
he’s scared—that’s what he was trying to tell me, only it’s a bit more
complicated than that . . .’’

 
          
“Is
that why he stayed down south all summer?
Because he’s
afraid?’’

 
          
“It’s
partly that . . .’’

 
          
“He
promised to guide us, damn it! ‘
As far as we need to go.”’

 
          
“I
think he meant: as far as we
ought
to
go.’’

 
          
“I
get the impression,’’ said I, “that while he’s our guide, equally we’re his
escorts.”

 
          
“That’s
it in a nutshell!” exclaimed Konstantin. “He has what you might call family
problems . . . Ach, families!” And Tsiolkovsky got quite steamed up about it.
“Families have rights over you. They make demands. You can bind yourself in
slavery because of a family. It doesn’t matter how much you all love each
other, and care for each other—it’s still slavery. As far as I’m concerned,
true freedom and joy comes from the mind. It comes from thoughts, free of
hidebound conventions! A family can cripple you . . .’’

 
          
If
I might digress here, Masha, and venture quite frankly upon a delicate topic,
well, it’s perfectly true in theory that a man needs a wife, and a woman needs
a husband in our society. But in practice where would I ever find a wife as
attentive and understanding and ever-helpful as
yourself
?
And where could you find a suitor whom I could fully trust to take care of you
as you deserve? A suitor may have lots of attractive qualities on the surface,
but if you aren’t blinded by emotional caprice or by foolish desperation—a fear
that it’s all getting too late—then you’ll soon find this wrong, and that
wrong. In a word, you’ll make a big mistake if you’re too impetuous.

 
          
(I
suspect,
Masha, that
I’m
not
going to send these pages to you after all. Why should I
confuse you unnecessarily, when you’re obviously perfectly happy with things as
they are?
As is your devoted brother . . .)

 
          
I
could understand why Tsiolkovsky was all het up about the subject of the
family. I’d gathered during the course of several conversations that his father
was a bold and honest man—outspoken on politics and religion—and consequently
he was a complete failure in life. (It’s the rogues who thrive!)Tsiolkovsky’s
father was dismissed from his post as a forest ranger, which destroyed whatever
home security the family had—and Konstantin had to rely on the home, since he
couldn’t easily make friends outside because of his deafness and gawkiness.
Then to cap it all, his mother died when he was just thirteen. His father tried
to be an inventor, but of course he got no thanks from the world for
that—though he encouraged his son splendidly, all
be
it with precious few roubles in the purse. He remembers best from his childhood
the thrill when his Mother presented him with a toy hydrogen balloon . . .

 
          
Compared
with him,
we
enjoyed a real family
life, eh Masha? No matter that it was presided over by a blundering,
narrow-minded tyrant! (I suppose you remember how cleverly our mean and bigoted
father dealt with the matter of that dead rat drowned in the barrel of oil—by
calling in a priest to exorcise the ratty influence, so that by the next day
the news was all over
Taganrog
, and nobody would stop by our grocery store for weeks?) We were a
resilient lot—we needed to be—and even so it took its toll. All the more
reason, I submit, for keeping our surviving family as closely together as
possible! Anyway, I’m straying far from the point. . .

 
          
“What
sort of family problems has our tribesman got?” asked Mirek.

 
          
“Well,
it’s all because of the spaceship exploding—”

 
          
“Ah yes, the meteorite.
Did it hurt his family? Kill
somebody?”

 
          
“Not
exactly . . .”

 
          
“So it’s the sickness among the reindeer—the herds dying off?”

 
          
“No!
It’s all because of an ignorant, superstitious reason! Tolya’s grandfather was
some kind of tribal sorcerer. The Tungusi aren’t even Christians, you know.”

 
          
“Are
you? Am I?”

 
          
“What
I mean is
,
they haven’t even got to the stage where
they can
reject
Christianity. Tolya’s
grandfather died just before the explosion, then the explosion itself scared
them out of their wits—so the Tungusi all want Tolya to take over as
witch-doctor, because he showed the right signs when he was a boy. He had fits
or something, and frothed at the mouth and babbled. And he went through some
kind of ordeal, which is secret. But he doesn’t want to be the village sorcerer
now. He’s seen trading posts, he’s learned a bit of Russian . . .”

 
          
No
wonder there had been a few moments of rapport between these two men,
superficially so different in their background and beliefs. Konstantin’s feeble
and lonely childhood had turned him into a genuine scientist—and Tolya’s boyish
fits and foaming at the mouth had thrust him into a similar role within
his
society; but Tolya’s was a society
which lacked any notion of science or reason. Had I even hinted at such a comparison,
I suspect that Tsiolkovsky would have felt deeply insulted . . .

 
          
“What’s
wrong with Tolya’s father?’’ asked Mirek. “Didn’t he froth at the mouth enough
to inherit the mantle from his dad?’’

 
          
“No,
you see their custom is for the sorcerer’s son to provide for his father—then
the grandson takes over, and
his
son
provides for him . . .’’

 
          
“So
Tolya would have to get married quickly?’’

 
          
“I
think he was trying to escape his fate by staying on in Kezhma.’’

 
          
“Are
the women as ugly as that?’’

 
          
“I
mean the fate of being witch-doctor. He doesn’t want it.’’

 
          
“So
why’s he going back to it?’’

 
          
“He
really has no choice—those are his people. We Russians aren’t, and he knows it
now.’’

 
          
Now
I understood in what way we were a talisman for Tolya. “We’re a little bit of
Russia
going
back
home
with him—a bit of the civilization he wants, and can’t get to grips with:
that’s it, isn’t it?
The poor confused lad.’’