Probably Monsters

by Ray Cluley

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  It startled him, but after a quick look around he nodded and said, “You?”

  And so their first dinner had been on a cold riverbank, fish split across an open fire. Afterwards, Aleks put the salmon’s heart and its bones back in the river. “So the salmon will return,” he told her. She didn’t know if he meant the one they’d eaten or if it was a superstitious ritual to ensure the salmon would run again next year.

  “My name is Aleksandr.”

  “Anastasia.”

  “Like the princess.”

  That was how they met.

  Sergei slows the Land Rover, looking left and right at foliage close enough to scrape the doors. It reminds Ana of the first time she’d seen him, steering a johnboat through a narrow channel as he helped Aleks gather salmon.

  “That day I met you,” Ana says, “you asked if Khantai had sent me.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you meant for Aleksandr, but you meant for the fish.”

  “I did then. I don’t now.”

  “What does Aleks think?”

  Sergei shrugs. “I know he’s happy you’ve come home.”

  “How do you know that? Did he say anything?”

  “No. That’s how I know.”

  Sergei turns from what little road there is and takes them into a narrow space between the trees. “Now we walk.”

  S

  Of all Kamchatka’s exported fish, one hundred and twenty million pounds of it is illegal. It’s big business. The eggs are particularly sought after; caviar fetches a high price and is very easy to preserve, to hide, to transport. Ana learnt all about it in her first weeks at the hatchery. A team of inspectors had even showed her a stash of stored eggs they were watching, waiting to capture those who came to pick it up. The confiscated eggs were always burnt.

  “A small team can work very fast and take many eggs,” one of the inspectors had told her. His name was Kirill Krechetov. He helped protect the interests of places like Malki hatchery. “Five tonnes?” he estimated. “Yes, five tonnes in one season I think. With fifteen or so crews working during any one season, that makes . . . seventy-five tonnes? I think so. My math is not so good.” He smiled, flirting with her, the naïve girl from the hatchery, but Ana was more interested in what he was saying. In less than a year she’d be working for the Wild Fishes and Biodiversity Foundation.

  “What happens to the fish?” she’d asked.

  Kirill made a tossing gesture. “Tonnes of fish, wasted.”

  Ana nodded, imagining the rivers empty. She saw how it would happen, fewer and fewer fish returning each year to spawn.

  Kirill put an arm around her. “You come and work with me,” he said. “We will make a great team and wipe out poaching forever!” When he released her he shook his head and said, “But we are not well paid. The poachers? They earn ten times as much as they would fishing legally.” He shrugged. “We are outnumbered.”

  They didn’t earn that much, Ana had thought, thinking of Aleks. The second time she’d met him he’d been with Sergei, Moisey, and Pyotr. They’d been fishing quite openly, though it was a rather secluded spot. Sergei was towing a net across the river then guiding it back downstream, directed by Aleksandr, herding the salmon with Moisey and Pyotr. They’d worked quickly, grabbing fish as they flopped and leapt, tossing them by their tails into another boat which would take them to a waiting truck. Ana watched them take a thousand pounds or so of fish in half an hour. Only when she met the wives, Yuliya, Nadya, Rebekka, did she learn the men were poachers. The wives had assumed Ana already knew, and maybe she had. It made little difference. She was already in love with Aleks. Had fallen in love with him over that first riverside supper.

  My name is Aleksandr.

  Anastasia.

  Like the princess.

  She even helped the men gather their catch that first time. Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, chinook, the king salmon. Fat, with purple dorsal markings from their time in the sea. To Ana these had looked like deep bruises, a testament to their struggle.

  Jumping down from one boat and moving to the next, Sergei asked, “Is this her?” and Aleksandr nodded. Ana was pleased he’d spoken of her.

  Sergei had smiled then. “Did Khantai send you?”

  “Maybe,” she said, smiling at Aleksandr.

  Aleksandr looked at her and smiled briefly. Then the fish wriggling in his hands managed to twist away from him, a flash of silver in the air, folding one way and then the other before escaping into the netted river. He would get it again, or someone else would.

  S

  Across the Pacific, American salmon runs had been depleted not only by over-fishing but because of development, logging affecting drainage patterns, new dams and other constructions reducing or polluting the habitat. This is something they worry about less in Kamchatka, but there are still plans for precious pipelines and new mines, both of which bring their own dangers; not just potential spills and poisonings but roads. More roads make the rivers more accessible to everyone, including poachers.

  Not that a lack of road is deterring Sergei right now; Ana watches his machete flash left and right as he cuts down shelomainik, nettles, tall grasses, ferns. She has to watch her step—the terrain is sometimes rocky, sometimes wet—but with Sergei cutting the path it’s easy to keep up, even with her pack. She can tell they’re nearing the river because of the white-flowered meadowsweet, and occasionally she thinks she hears the engine of a johnboat.

  “It’s beautiful here,” she says. “I’ve missed this.”

  “Yes,” Sergei says between strikes of the blade. As he stamps down a tangle of foliage he says, “Yuliya has a proverb for you.”

  Ana smiles. “Of course she does.”

  “I was supposed to tell you as soon as I picked you up, but here is better.”

  Ana can see glimpses of river ahead. Sergei quickens his pace, waiting until they have emerged from the forest before delivering Yuliya’s message.

  “V gostyakh khorosho, a doma luchshe,” he says.

  Visiting is good, but home is better.

  They’re standing at one of the Kol’s tributaries. The water is in no hurry except where it bubbles and froths around some rocks. It’s muddy, and the sky’s grey, but still it’s beautiful. “There’s no place like home,” Ana agrees. She puts her hands to her stomach. She isn’t showing but that doesn’t matter; she can’t see any salmon in the river either but she knows they’re there.

  Sergei points to where the river splits around an angle of forested island. “There.” He starts away but glances back at her and sees her hands. The way she cradles herself.

  Ana strokes circles over her stomach. “Do you think it was Khantai this time?”

  Sergei goes back to her and gathers her in for a careful hug, awkward around her backpack. “It is always Khantai,” he says. “How—”

  “Not long.”

  It’s easier than explaining.

  Sergei holds her at arm’s length and looks at her stomach. She caresses it again, this time self-conscious.

  “Congratulations?”

  Ana nods, then shrugs.

  “And the American man?”

  She shrugs again. “Still in America.”

  Sergei holds her face. His hands are rough but his touch is gentle. “I’m sure Yuliya will have another proverb for you,” he says. It’s his way of apologizing for having nothing himself. Then he takes his hands away and points down river. “Ready?”

  “I think so.”

  She fidgets her pack into a more comfortable position and follows Sergei with all that she carries.

  S

  Ana can hear singing. It’s an old song, calling the fish and dedicating them to Khantai. She smiles.

  “The
y’re singing for you,” Sergei says.

  Ana wonders how the men will greet her. “This is a reserve,” she says. “The fish here are protected.” Not that she’s here on any official business.

  “People still poach.”

  She wonders how Khantai would feel about that, then answers her own question. “It’s all connected,” she says quietly.

  Sergei glances at her but doesn’t ask.

  Tom had been the one to explain the connections. The American man. He worked for the Wild Salmon Center, and the WSC was partnered with Ana’s foundation. He’d come to Kamchatka as part of an exchange project in support of the Kol-Kehta Regional Experimental Salmon Reserve. Partly it was to warn them of what could happen if Russia followed America’s example, and partly it was to learn from them, to benefit from some of the same precautions the WFBF were putting in place. They were especially interested in the ambitious project that would see five more areas added to the reserve—the Kolpakova, Krutogorova, and Utkholok area, plus the Opala and Zhupanova rivers. “It could work,” Tom had said. His Russian was clumsy, but the attempt was admirable. He was the only one of the Americans who could speak any at all without a translator.

  “English is okay,” Ana told him. “My mother taught me. She’d always wanted to see your country.”

  Tom smiled, his gratitude obvious. “You’d have the world’s biggest salmon reserve and maybe we could do something like it back home.” He smiled again. “Anything you can do, we can do better.”

  His enthusiasm had been exciting, his passion inspiring. At the time, Ana had been balancing a relationship with Aleks with her job protecting the fish. Tom made it clear how important her job actually was. “It’s all connected,” he’d said.

  Their team had been out on the Ozernaya River, checking the numbers of sockeye. Ana thought it was an ugly fish with its long head and hooked nose. The way its upper jaw overhangs the lower gives it a permanent expression of stupidity, an imbecilic menace. They were spawning, scales mottled red as if they’d swum through an ocean of blood to get this far, scouring themselves against the current as if trying to wash it off in cleaner water.

  “You mean the rivers?” Ana asked.

  “Well, yeah, they’re connected. I do mean that. Rivers join rivers, and there’s the aquifer underneath it all, but I mean it’s all connected. An entire ecosystem. Look.” He scooped a fallen leaf from the water they stood in. “See? Leaves fall and provide food.” He held it to her.

  Hungry?

  “Nutrients,” he said. “The insects feed, and the fish feed.” He pointed to a leaning tree and said, “Entire trees fall, and they provide shelter for the fish. And the fish, they swim upstream. They mate,” he gave her a thumbs up while waggling his eyebrows and Ana laughed. “Then they die.” He turned his thumbs down and exaggerated a sad face. “But their bodies decay and release nitrogen and whatever phosphorus they’ve picked up at sea and they replenish the nutrients in the water. They stop it all simply washing away downstream forever because they come back and—”

  Ana held up her hand to stop him; she knew all this. But Tom asked, “Too fast?”

  “A little.” But she liked being reminded, and hearing her own previous passions expressed back to her in another language made it all clearer somehow.

  “They come back,” Tom said. “And life comes with them.”

  “And if we lose the salmon . . .”

  “You lose everything else. Yeah. That’s pretty much it.” He sighed and added, “All gone,” in Russian, dropping the leaf he’d been toying with into the river.

  Ana watched the current carry it away.

  “Well, we better pray to Khantai then,” she said, turning her attention from the river to smile.

  Tom frowned. Ana didn’t know if all Americans were so expressive or just Tom. Everything he felt was on his face to see. “Khantai?”

  She nodded. “A river god.”

  Tom pretended to look for Khantai in the water moving around them. He thought it some quaint superstition—that was clear on his face too—but he wanted to humour her because he liked her and he wanted Ana to like him as well. She thought maybe she did.

  Did Khantai send you?

  “Before the others came, before immigrants made their home here, the people of Kamchatka had great respect for the salmon. The Itelmen especially. They made the fish a part of their culture, their religion. You know the Itelmen?”

  Tom shook his head no.

  “The first men, the early men. And women. They worshipped Khantai, who was half fish, half human, and they gave him thanks for the salmon. Made offerings of their catches to feed their god.”

  It was everything Aleksandr had told her that first night by the river. When he’d cooked for her the fish others had worshipped. When they’d thought themselves the only people in the whole world.

  “Do they still believe?” Tom asked.

  Ana thought of Aleks. After their first meal he had placed a salmon heart with its bones back in the river. It meant the fish would return. “Some do,” she said to Tom.

  The river flowed around them. Ana felt fish swimming between her legs, hurrying towards breeding and dying.

  “So they still exist? The Itelmen?”

  They did. Mostly in Kovran on the west coast, their wooden idols worshipped only during special festivals now.

  “A lot has changed since the Soviet era,” Ana explained.

  “I bet.”

  “Stalin’s enemies of the state, Gorbachev’s perestroika, privatization; none of it left much for the people.” She looked at him and waved her own rant away. “Sorry.”

  Tom shrugged. “No wonder they become poachers.”

  Again, Ana thought of Aleksandr.

  “Altynnogo vora veshayut, a poltinnovo chestvuyut,” she said.

  Tom waited for her to explain.

  “Altynnogo vora veshayut, a poltinnovo chestvuyut,” she said again. One hangs the thief who stole three kopecks but honours the one who stole fifty. She didn’t tell him this, though. She just said, “It’s all connected.”

  S

  “Come on, we’re nearly there,” Sergei says.

  Ana picks up her pace. “Doesn’t it worry you? Poaching in protected waters?”

  Sergei smiles. “It worries me in a different way now.”

  “Because of Yuliya. Because of your children.”

  “Yes. But not the way you think.” He stops for a moment and steps aside to point. “Look.”

  Ana had expected a simple camp, a hastily constructed lean-to with a johnboat dragged close to the trees so it couldn’t be seen from the air. She’d expected Moisey and Pyotr, opening up salmon stomachs at this time of year and scraping them empty of eggs, bright orange roe glistening like tiny wet gems. But that is not what she sees.

  There are several shelters—semi-permanent constructions—and an array of tents. There’s a johnboat, blatant beside the riverbank, and a tank-tracked vehicle as well. The men gathered around it are wearing camouflage trousers and thick jackets with furred hats. They’re still singing, not only for the pleasure of the sound but for the rhythm to help them work, unloading equipment, putting up more shelters.

  “What’s going on?”

  Instead of answering her, Sergei takes up the song, startling her. His voice is loud and deep and he marches to the rhythm, glancing back at her and beckoning her to hurry. “It’s dinner time.”

  Ana inhales the aroma of seared fish and the warm curling smell of wood smoke.

  One of the men stands back from whatever task he had been busy with and Ana knows immediately from the way he holds himself tall and strong that it’s Aleks. She takes another deep breath, this time for courage, and follows Sergei to the camp.

  Aleksandr has changed less than Sergei. Phys
ically, anyway. His hair is still dark, his body straight, thick with layers of flannel and wool. He doesn’t smile at her, but that’s not unlike him either.

  “Anastasia,” he says.

  Like the princess.

  Ana smiles. Her hands are on her stomach but in the pockets of her jacket.

  “She returns,” Aleks adds. He looks like he might say something else, perhaps “to me,” perhaps “at last,” perhaps even both, but he closes his mouth on it and offers her a plate instead. “Hungry?” If he remembers the significance of the question it doesn’t show.

  Ana takes the plate. “Thank you.”

  Some of the other men look at her with interest. She’s a new face, that’s all.

  “Where’s Moisey?” she asks. “And Pyotr?”

  “They don’t work with us anymore.”

  “What’s going on?” She’s looking around at the camp, the tank-tracked vehicle, the rusted oil drums set up as tables. On the tops of these and leaning against them are rifles.

  Aleksandr sees what she sees. “Poaching has become more dangerous,” he explains, cutting a potato with the side of his fork and bringing it to his mouth.

  “You have rifles.”

  “We’re authorized to use them. But we don’t, if we can help it.”

  “Authorized?”

  Aleksandr exchanges a glance with Sergei. “You haven’t told her.”

  Sergei smiles and shrugs. “I thought you could.”

  “Told me what?”

  Sergei spears fish and potato but before he eats it he laughs, and because Aleksandr is still silent he says, “Grom ne gryanet, muzhik ne perekrestitsya.”

  A man won’t cross himself until thunder strikes.

  “We don’t poach any more,” Aleksandr says. He speaks to his plate, pushing potato around in the juices of his fish.

  Ana smiles. She nods and puts a forkful of hot food into her mouth. It’s delicious.

  “Good,” she says. “This is good.”