‘We went on for another two hours and ought to have made it out of the marsh, but instead we found ourselves in such dense undergrowth it was getting frightening. We were also wet through. Gulidov was still harping on about the porridge. “I’m worried it’s going to be watery. Perhaps you should put it under that leather coat of yours to thicken.” The undergrowth gave way to a quagmire, as I was the first to discover, sinking in shoulder deep. I might have gone in deeper if the knapsack with the porridge hadn’t stopped me. I climbed out and Nikolai asked, “What were you sitting down for?” “I didn’t sit down, I sank into the swamp.” “Oh, I thought perhaps you’d spotted a bear and crouched down.” Twilight was falling. We were tired, soaked to the skin, and starving. For the time being, though, we didn’t touch the porridge. Gulidov said it was not quite ready. We ate some tinned food, looked at each other, and didn’t have to put it into words. “We’re lost,” I said, nevertheless. “Yup,” Gulidov concurred. We couldn’t spend the night there: there was nowhere to sit, let alone lie down. We needed to find somewhere tolerably dry. I climbed up a dead birch tree and could see a large fir forest in the distance, which meant dry land. “See anything?” Nikolai asked. “Yes, there’s a spruce forest over there, which means a dry shoreline.” “Well come down and let’s go. My shoes are getting soggy.” I spiralled down the trunk and, by the time I was at the bottom, had forgotten which direction we had to go in. “You’ll have to climb back up and tell me which way to face. I’ll walk in that direction and you can shout ‘A bit to the left’ or A bit to the right’ from up there.” “And how do I get out of the marsh?” “You don’t need to. It’s dry up there and you’re hardly going to fall off.”
‘I climbed up, pointed my arm in the right direction, and waved it for greater emphasis. This was too much for the rotten birch tree, which broke but fell pointing in just the right direction. “Ho ho ho!” Gulidov guffawed. “We certainly won’t get lost now! Why didn’t you think of doing that in the first place? You could have pole-vaulted straight over into the forest, like a glider off a mountain! Might have had to leave the porridge behind though. Well, bring it with you now. Let’s go!”
‘It was pitch-black. We took our bearings from the silhouette of the tallest spruce and could hear the rustling of a big forest. We squelched out on to the water meadow and tiptoed along a path of tree trunks. “How about that? Just like a pavement in Moscow.” The clang of a cooking pot rang out as I fell off. “The porridge! Look after that porridge will you?” Nikolai yelled. “Damn!” I rejoined. “I was so busy gawping at shop signs I tripped over the kerb!” In another half hour we were by the fire of a watchman guarding his horses.
‘“Can you tell us how far it is to Tugoles?” “Where’s that? Don’t believe I’ve heard of it.” We exchanged glances. “Well, what’s the nearest village?” “Oh, Peski will be a bare four versts from here.” “And do you know Krivandino, the railway station?” “That I do! Sixty versts that is and more.” We glanced at each other again. “Well, Nikolai, it’s lucky we chose the right firebreak. That really was the shortest route.”
And you were laughing at me going round in circles in the forest looking for my gun,’ Doc notes. ‘The two of you didn’t do much better going in a straight line. Shall we move on?’
‘Let’s!’
We have barely gone fifty paces when the dog stops and points. ‘What the hell?’ Doc exclaims. ‘Have the grouse been sitting there listening to us?’
‘Difficult to be sure,’ I say. ‘Maybe they were, and were reassured about the kind of hunter you must be.’
‘But you’re just fine?’ A grouse flies up. Doc shoots, and misses.
‘There, I told you they’ve worked out the kind of shot you are.’
A second grouse rises up. I shoot. And miss.
‘And what did I say?’
Silence. The dog stares at us in disbelief. We trek on. Something rises with a squawk. Perhaps a hawk, perhaps not. I fire at it. It banks to one side and falls abruptly behind a bush. I go over. It is an owl.
Doc stands next to me. ‘Take your wood grouse, only don’t lose it on the way home.’
‘All right, all right.’
‘We can get it stuffed.’
Things go right when you least expect it. Right at the edge of the marsh, almost on the meadow, the dog halts again. Doc says mockingly, ‘What game are we going to find here. A crow or an owl?’ In fact, two grouse rise up. I shoot. One falls at the dog’s feet, the other is hit by the shot high above the forest. Somersaulting extravagantly, it falls heavily to the ground. That’s more like it! That’s real shooting! That’s . . . ha! Bang! I’ve already reloaded and death comes to one more young grouse that flew my way.
‘How are you doing, Doc?’
‘Oh, well . . . ’
‘One of mine surrendered instantly and the other is looking for a place to die.’
‘Finish it off.’
‘You—’
Bang!
‘You scared the living daylights out of me there! My hands are shaking. What’s up with you?’
‘I was leaning down to get the owl and it suddenly flies up and practically knocks the gun out of my hand.’
‘Have you killed it now?’
‘Yes!’
It seems too early to head home, but we don’t feel like going on. We settle ourselves in a place with lots of berries. Doc crawls about on all fours, gorging himself on ripe cowberries. ‘Delicious! These are great berries!’ My teeth are hurting and I can’t join in. I sit down on a tree stump, but jump up as if I’ve been stung.
‘Have you sat on a drawing pin, or what?’
‘Come over here!’
‘What for?’
‘Just come over.’
‘What? You want me to sit there too? No thanks. Sit there yourself.’
‘Stop fussing and come here.’
‘No!’
I pull off the string bag with the owl and the other game in it. Either it decided to remind me of its presence before dying or else it is just bad luck that its claws are now embedded in my body. ‘Ah!’ Doc murmurs. ‘A taste of your own medicine! Poor owl. Next time you’ll know to shoot game and not just anything that flies.’ Somehow he disengages the claws. ‘Is it itching? I’ll fix a dressing with nettles. That’s supposed to help.’
From somewhere far away, barely audible, comes a peal of thunder, then another. A breeze ruffles the treetops. A flock of crows flies up out of the forest, cawing, and disappears.
‘There’s rain coming.’
‘Let’s get home, Doc.’
Another gust of wind, stronger this time. The sky darkens. A thundercloud moves towards us from the west. Its ragged violet-blue edge, tinged with reddish lilac, appears in the gap of the firebreak.
Day 3
It’s morning. One raindrop, another, a trickle. The closer they are to the edge of the roof, the more substantial the rivulets and, as they pour into a crack in the roof beneath which Doc is sleeping, they form a stream. But Alexander feels nothing. There is a blissful smile on his face. Perhaps he is dreaming about how happy he was as a child, unaware of how wet he is now. I am reluctant to wake him but the rain shows no sign of stopping. There is a rhythm, even a certain melodiousness, in the tapping of the raindrops on the roof. They seem to be singing:
‘Petrovich! Hey, Petrovich, come and drink a cup of tea!’
‘Thank you kindly, so I will, come and drink a cup or three.’
I really need to wake Doc. But how? I decide to tie a string to his blanket, lower it from the hayloft and tug. I do so. First, I hear inarticulate moaning. Then, ‘Stop it!’
We are in a log hut. The best room is thirty metres long and has three windows looking on to the street. The walls are scrubbed and smoothly planed, as are the floor and ceiling. In the middle is an oilcloth-covered table. Beneath the windows is a wooden bench and there are chairs on the other three sides. The floor is carpeted with home-made runners. On the wall in an oak
frame, almost life-size, are Lenin, Kalinin and Voroshilov. There are several family photographs.
Here is the daughter, an agronomist. The grandfather is a hero of the Russo-Turkish war, in gold braid and with a medal on a ribbon; a fine soldier, scornful of his superiors, stony-faced, contemptuous of the world because he is a hero. He has been wounded for his faith, the tsar and his fatherland, but that is as nothing because he has that medal on his chest. No matter that the little land he owns is infertile, the important thing is that the congregation in church point him out as a distinguished ex-serviceman.
Next to Grandfather is his granddaughter’s husband. He too is a hero, having been decorated for his courage in battle by People’s Commissar Klim Voroshilov. On his jacket he sports the Order of the Red Banner. He is an engineer but people do not point him out. But occasionally there will be a note in the newspaper that ‘the generating machinery at the plant is now operational and the power station is delivering electricity to the mains. Engineering work was carried out under the direction of N.’ He too has little land. He descends deep underground into mines and ore workings. There is even talk of building an underground railway in Moscow. This commander of the army and industry is sitting here now, squinting with one eye at the grandfather and with the other at Voroshilov. He is reminiscing about the Civil War and how, after the Battle of Volochaevka, he and Blyukher developed the plan for carrying the offensive forward. We settle ourselves down. The samovar, burnished with crushed brick, murmurs hospitably.
Steam rises from potatoes newly fried in sour cream. Next to them are two gamebirds, the partridges we brought down yesterday. There is fresh and boiled milk, lightly salted cucumbers. Maria Sergeyevna, the wife of our host, Ivan Bolshak, is at the samovar. Bolshak resembles Turgenev’s hunter: tall, with curly hair and a lean, tanned face. He wears a shirt, once blue but now faded in patches to grey, and a rope belt. The grey striped trousers that don’t reach to his ankles emphasize how thin he is. If we add that he is the best hunter in the neighbourhood, that his old ‘cannon’ has a broken stock held together by two metal clamps and has been fired so many times that the ends of the barrels have widened like the muzzle of a musket and that one of the triggers is operated with the aid of a piece of wire, and that this hunter manages ten to fifteen kills a day as he sways from side to side, limping on a broken leg, then you will have a good overall picture of the man.
A crow settles on another dead birch tree fifty metres from the window. Doc gets up and loads his small-bore. ‘That’s the stuff, Voroshilov sharpshooter!’ The Voroshilov sharpshooter spends ages taking aim, then: click. A misfire. He reloads.
‘Get it in the head!’ Bolshak recommends.
‘Of course.’ He fires, but the crow caws and flies off. ‘The shot went through its open beak,’ Doc asserts. Another crow lands. Another shot. This crow also caws, but falls to the ground. We go over to take a look. The bullet has hit the base of its tail, breaking one leg.
‘You’re a crafty one, though, Doc! If you’d missed you would have said it waggled its rump at you.’
‘Excellent! Right in the head!’ Bolshak comments ironically. ‘Next time, load salt. If you hit it in the rear with salt the bird will stay put.’
The sun peeps out. ‘Shall we go, Doc?’
‘Let’s be off.’ But then the thunderclouds come back and it starts raining again. ‘Why don’t we go back to sleep in the hayloft?’
‘In the army, I served in the Caucasus,’ Doc begins. ‘That’s the place for hunting bears. But I know you’re a man with a lot of experience: you’re something of an expert on how to hunt elephants in Africa, so I expect you already know how to hunt bears in the Caucasus.’
‘Actually, I know how to hunt lions in the Sahara.’
‘Really? Tell me more!’
‘Well, as you are no doubt aware, lions roam the sands of the desert. Sand and lions, lions and sand. So you take a sieve, sift the sand, and what’s left is lions.’
‘That’s really clever!’ Doc admits.
‘But,’ I enquire, ‘how would you hunt bears in the Caucasus?’
‘You just take a plywood shield and draw a man on it, with a hole for the mouth. You fix handles at shoulder height, take a hammer with you, and run straight at the bear, holding the shield in front of you. It works best if you also stick your tongue out through the hole. The bear lunges at the shield and its claws go straight into the plywood. You keep your head and hammer its claws down to the plywood from the back. The animal is now stapled to the board, and you can just push it on its back and cart it away.’
‘I notice, Doc, it’s always the big game you go for down there in the south. We hunt bears in the north too, of course, only polar bears, and we have a different approach.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, you choose a day when it’s around minus 70 degrees, take all your clothes off and go hunting in your underpants. The bear can’t believe you’re a man. You take him by the ears and lead him away. He still doesn’t believe you’re a hunter. You skin him, and he’s still not believing it. You start smoking the meat and he realizes you are a human being, but by then it’s too late. Once he’s been smoked he’s no longer a bear but a ham, and a ham is really nothing to be afraid of.
‘Actually, we don’t go hunting bears all that often. Usually the weather isn’t right. We go looking for wolves, hares or ducks. By the way, do you think hares like cabbage?’
‘Of course they do!’ Doc obliges.
‘So that’s the way to catch them. What we do is take a brick, sprinkle snuff on it and put a cabbage [word crossed out] on top. The hares eat the cabbage, take a sniff of the snuff and start sneezing. They bang their heads on the brick and die. Then you just go round with a sack and pick them up.’
‘Do you catch many that way?’
‘It all depends. Mostly it’s the older hares you catch. Their parents don’t let the young ones indulge in tobacco.’
‘What about wolves? How do you hunt wolves?’
‘Wolves? I’ll tell you. With them you need vodka rather than tobacco. Surgical spirit, ideally.’
‘All your animals up there seem a bit neurotic. Some of them are taking snuff, others getting drunk—’
‘Don’t interrupt. You don’t give the vodka to the wolf, you fool, you drink it yourself to give you courage. Right, so you drink a litre or so and off you go. The wolf comes charging towards you and you run straight at it. As soon as it opens its jaws you stick your hand in, but right down to the end of the brute, catch its tail and turn it inside out. Without its fur it ceases to be a proper wolf.’
‘That sounds splendid. It’s nice that you get to have fun, and the wolf is probably pleased too because it won’t be so hot in the summer without its coat.’
‘Mind you, I’ve only done it once myself, and the wolf was quite short. I was feeling around in there and just couldn’t find the tail. The wolf was suffocating and I didn’t know what to do. Luckily some lads ran up and yelled at it and the wolf ran away.’ ‘Do you know what?’
‘Well, what?’
‘What do you mean, “Well, what?” Have you read Baron Munchausen?’
‘Of course I have!’
‘Well, nowadays we think he was an eccentric, but in his time they called him a [word heavily blacked out] lunatic.’
‘Take a look, will you? Has the drizzle stopped?’
‘The drizzle has but the rain hasn’t.’
‘I’m asking you a serious question.’
‘Well, don’t you think that’s a serious answer? Supposing it had stopped, it’s only going to start again.’
‘When it will start again is another matter altogether. What is important is whether it’s raining now.’
‘I hope you’re not thinking of going hunting.’
‘I’m not thinking about it, but I may just up and go. The game will be sitting there getting wet right now, and won’t feel like flying very far.’
‘In that case, I’
ll come too.’
‘Get ready, then!’
I notice how much everything has changed since the rain. The dust has been washed off the leaves and now we can see they’re bright green. The grass has perked up. Just three years ago you would have seen individual strips of land and that hillock which had been sown was barren because the boundaries between the private holdings took up maybe more than half the land, plus there were blank areas, plus some of the seed didn’t germinate. Now, though, over an area of three square kilometres there is a lush carpet of buckwheat. The path running diagonally across it is lost to view: you can’t see it for a solid wall of potential porridge. How could people in the past not understand how wasteful boundaries and private smallholdings were? And now there are so many haystacks that it’s impossible to take them all in. They stand there so proudly, as if they want to shout ‘See what a lot of us there are’ and that’s only the ones still left in the meadow. An equal number have already been taken away. I’m moved to breathlessness.
Beyond the forest we glimpse the marsh. ‘Are there ducks here, then?’ Doc asks.
‘Yes. It’s a pity we haven’t got any melons.’
‘What do we need melons for?’ he wonders.
‘Catching ducks, of course! Never fails, although sometimes you catch frogs by mistake because they have the same webbed feet.’ I begin explaining how to catch them. ‘What you have to do is get, say, a wagonload of melons and dump them in the lake where the ducks are swimming. They get used to them being there. Then you take a melon and put it on your head and get into the water yourself. You make eyeholes to look through. A duck swims up to you, you grab it by the feet and put it in your bag. It’s an admirable method, and you don’t need gunpowder or shot to do it. Simple and convenient! The only snag is, while you’re sitting in the water, someone might steal your clothes, but you don’t need to be upset because there is a straightforward solution. In order to get back home you can just hang the ducks round your waist. No one is going to check whether you are wearing underpants or not. You can pretend you’re getting a tan. In fact, none of the local villagers pay any attention to me, even when I’m not wearing ducks.’
The Day Will Pass Away Page 24