by Robson Green
‘What? But we need to be in Ashington.’
‘Well, I need to be in Newcastle – my band’s in the National Brass Band Championships.’
‘Well, why the hell did you agree to drive us?’ I said, infuriated.
‘I thought it would work out but it didn’t.’
It was of course his first, and last, driving job, and the band didn’t even make the finals.
The crew and I unpack the van. We now have to lug our stuff half a mile up the hill, through three foot of snow, to a wooden shack where the Nanai are waiting to do a dance – well, they do! Peter and I bemoan the fact that we have no vodka with us. Everything is slowly coming apart at the seams. Matt’s blood pressure is rising but veteran Craig tells him to keep on filming the story and it will be OK. I am carrying the least, as usual, so I bound on ahead to act as crevice spotter.
‘If I disappear, then it’s deep!’ I shout.
I start throwing snowballs at the crew. None of them thinks it is funny. I get Peter slap-bang on his baldy head.
‘Stop it, Robson!’
‘I am just trying to boost morale,’ I say, throwing more.
At the top I am pelted in a revenge attack. Snowball fights always improve spirits.
At the top of the hill we find the Nanai people. There are two women wearing traditional purple embroidered tunics and holding long sticks, and a larger lady in a red outfit with a woolly hat, who’s on drums. They couldn’t be less pleased to see us. We are an hour late, and because of that the men have buggered off. A dog bounds out of the woods and runs at Prada. It looks like a Rottweiler. Prada, carrying his heavy sound pack and boom, legs it through the snow like John Cleese. This dog is obsessed with him; it snarls and barks as Peter runs in the opposite direction, knees high. It’s comedy genius but Peter is genuinely scared. We look to the women to stop the dog. They look over vacantly and do nothing.
Without anyone to translate, Matt is using sign language to communicate to the tribeswomen. There is a ten-foot square of space next to the hut. The large lady hits a Mike Oldfield-style drum with a stick: boom, boom, boom, boom. She is bored and looks as if she is waiting for a bus. The other two girls move their sticks side to side, up and down, and stomp the ground. There is no moving, no singing – that’s it.
Matt wants me to react. I say, ‘That has to be the worst dance I have ever seen, and if this is a blessing, we are not going to catch anything.’
It’s like bad Morris dancing without beards and bells.
The drumming and stick twizzling stops. ‘Thank goodness for that,’ I say.
It starts again, only this time with one of the girls wafting cotton wool around. Craig is shaking with laughter, Matt is despairing and Peter is still dealing with a growling dog. We can’t find the two Nanai guys, Alexei and Andrei, who are meant to be taking us fishing. After the stunning musical and dance performance that could rival the Bolshoi, we finally find them out on the frozen Amur River. There is no meet-and-greet, no hole to be dug – they are on stools, already fishing. I walk over and they don’t even flick me a look.
The Amur River is half a mile across and not totally frozen. The middle is still flowing, but where we are is solid ice. There are huge blocks of ice floating down the centre. The theory is that pike, frightened by the ice blocks rubbing together, flee from the vibrations and take shelter under the ice. Well, now I am going to drill a couple of holes into that shelter with my corkscrew drill. To maximise their chances, the experienced fishermen here use two rods and two holes. I set up my fishing camp midway between Alexei and Andrei. I am piggy in the middle. They sit stock-still and expressionless, and they stay like this for hours.
It’s painfully clear I’m not going to learn anything from these two today so I get on with the task in hand. I’ve got my two twelve-inch rods, which are two sticks with line tied to them, and my lure. I am using a brass circle an inch across with legs like a little crab. These brass crabs bounce off the bottom six to seven feet down. Pike have a voracious appetite and will eat almost anything, so hopefully one will come along, take a look, and wallop. Pike are vicious and strike fast so there won’t be any doubt about a nibble.
I look over hopefully at Alexei. I’ve been proactive and am all set up for fishing; maybe now he’ll acknowledge me. Nope. After an hour in the sub-zero temperatures the blokes still haven’t said a word to me; talk about being sent to social Siberia. I jabber away to camera: ‘I am so glad I am with these guys. I am having so much fun. Since the moment we got here we haven’t stopped chatting. Alexei just doesn’t shut up. Such fun. Such a bond.’
Even though I am mentioning their names loudly, neither of them moves. Finally Andrei moves his arm. I say, ‘Thank God for that. I thought you had frozen to death.’
He looks at me like I am a Chechen separatist. Still, it’s significant progress. Andrei suddenly gets up and silently walks across the ice to drill a hole somewhere else. The crew are wetting themselves.
‘I don’t think he likes you,’ says Prada.
‘I’ll set the dog on you again,’ I warn him.
I look over at Alexei and say in Russian, ‘Where are the fish?’
He grunts an inaudible ‘dunno’, but I am happy. At last I have got him to speak. My objective this week is not landing an extreme fish, it is getting two fishermen to say anything at all. But of course I know why these guys are not up for talking: the secret to this method of fishing is total silence. It’s the vibrations of my voice that are quite possibly frightening the fish. I shut up and it does the trick – Alexei and Andrei both catch an Arctic pike. I am thrilled and run over to Alexei, lauding praise on him. I want to go in for a hug and pick him up but I know that might end in violence so instead I hold his fish forth and say, ‘Esox lucius, from the Ancient Greek lucus, meaning “wolf”, which refers to the fish’s predatory skills.’
It’s been five hours, it’s dark and I haven’t got a fish because I have been talking all the time. Alexei and Andrei are either side of me holding their pike up for the camera and I say, ‘There you have it: Alexei caught a fish, Andrei caught a fish, and as you can see, they are over the moon, not only to have caught two lovely pike but also to have met me.’
They look stony-faced, not even a flicker of a smile or even a glower, just total and absolute indifference.
Deflated and tired, we trudge through the snow back to the van. Isabella has had the van pulled out of the snow by a 4×4. However, instead of transferring us into the 4×4, she has sent it away again. The shitty van makes its way down the hill, through the snow and ice, slipping sideways. Isabella is not speaking to us either; she is still obsessing about her cat. Louise Allen, our assistant producer, has been trying to organise another fixer with the office in Glasgow. When we arrive in Khabarovsk Matt and Louise take Isabella off for a word. She is paid and free to get back to feed her hungry ginger Tom.
Peter, Craig and I all trudge off to bed while Matt and Louise head to a bar. Matt needs a stiff drink. As luck would have it they bump into some students who are studying media studies in Russia. One girl called Anna has particularly good English and agrees to help us. She turns out to be a wonderful breath of fresh air.
Khabarovsk City
‘Are you Red Fox?’ I ask a random man. ‘The seagull flies high tonight,’ I say to another. I have on a large Russian hat and am hamming it up. I whisper to an old lady, ‘Are you Red Fox?’ She hits me with her handbag.
Matt wants to set up a thread of espionage and my mission is to find the agent who will help me succeed on my latest fishing assignment. I sit by the Amur River waiting for a signal, any signal. I get a tap on the shoulder. It’s Anna; she is Red Fox and she has come to rescue me from this fishing debacle. She takes me to a tackle shop in town. We’re fishing on the Amur in the centre of the city today, so I need to buy a rod and variety of lures. We are going for lennock, char, grayling and catfish. In the shop there is a wide variety of lures, many of which I have never seen before. There is
a mouse lure the size of a field mouse, a hamster lure, and a squirrel lure the size of an actual bloody squirrel with a hook hanging out of its bum.
‘What kind of a fish would go for these?’ I say.
I ask the shopkeeper if it is a joke but he assures me it isn’t. Apparently Amur catfish love squirrels. I nod but know he’s talking out of his bottom. I get loaded up with a variety of lures, including a squirrel lure for fun (honest).
Anna takes me to the river, where supposedly a contributor is waiting for me. We scan the lunar landscape and indeed there is a fat Russian sitting on a seat. He raises his hand and then immediately lets us know that he doesn’t want to be filmed. Anna translates, ‘He thought he was just here for advice.’
He has the same depressive demeanour as many others I have met on this journey. Matt is overwhelmed with frustration but just when I think this episode has hit rock-bottom, enter a larger-than-life old guy called Victor, who saves the day. He has a bag of swag on his back full of fish. And he is smiling. He talks to us in front of camera and says, ‘You have got the wrong equipment, it’s the wrong time of day . . .’ He inspects my luminous green rod.
‘Ohhh. I have no words,’ he says.
He picks up the rod and mimes throwing it away. He looks at my corkscrew drill with contempt and starts digging a hole with his spear. It’s a wooden branch with a metal end, which gouges out the ice. I have just paid the equivalent of £75 for the drill and it’s no use. He tells me the hole will be too small to get the fish out. With a spear he can make a hole four times the size.
I show him the squirrel lure. He chuckles, his whole body shaking visibly, and he agrees it must be some kind of joke. He tells me to use the crab lures. The temperature is plummeting to –20 but Victor has warmed our hearts. He shows us his haul, around twenty small Amur catfish, then bids me good luck and walks off across the frozen river. I am now on my own. I say to camera, ‘It’s hard to make friends in this part of the world. Victor has gone and I miss him.’
Off camera we tried to keep him. We offered him money, fame, friendship, but he said, ‘No, no’, and went about his business. In this place people wander on and off the stage when they want to – it’s like being in a perpetual Beckett play.
The temperature has now plummeted to –25 and my line is frozen. There are no fish here – Victor must have taken them all. The guy who sold me the squirrel lure saw me coming and the drill is as much use as a chocolate fireguard. I throw it down in disgust and walk off. I need a drink and a strong one. No wonder there are so many alcoholics here, I think.
That night all the crew, save Craig, who’s the sensible one, go to the pub with the one sole mission of getting mullered with the locals. An AC/DC tribute band is singing ‘Highway to Hell’ in heavy Russian accents. The band are all overweight and drinking beer as they play. It’s a brilliant atmosphere. We go long and we go wrong. It’s a ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’ and a whole lot of Vodka. My face hits the pillow at 4 a.m.
Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka Peninsula
I wake up an hour and a half later at 5.30 a.m., fully clothed – but then that’s normal in Siberia. We are meant to be flying to the Kamchatka Peninsula. I am so hung-over and the flight is at seven. Craig pops his head around the door.
‘Don’t ask. You have no idea what these eyes have seen,’ I groan.
He shakes his head. Louise helps me pack by shoving everything into bin bags. She’s in the hurt locker, too, but as the AP it’s her job to grip the situation. At the airport, I hold Peter’s hand.
He says, ‘Shall we go upstairs to the café?’
I say, ‘Please don’t leave me.’
I am so vague and frightened. Peter is florid and I am concerned about his blood pressure. I squeeze his hand. I am on the verge of a theatrical breakdown and think I am going to die. I keep telling myself that it’s just a hangover, but it is the mother and father of them all.
*
We fly to Petropavlovsk, the capital of Kamchatka, situated between the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. The salmon-shaped peninsula is twice the size of Britain but with a population the size of Cardiff. The facts rattle around in my head as I throw litres of water down my neck; it feels like sand. My raging thirst is unquenchable. As I wave to the air hostess to bring me more, she huffs like Kevin the Teenager and flounces back with another cup. I drink. The prospect of going out to sea today is increasing my mania. Matt has arranged for us to go out on a trawler. My stomach knots a bit tighter.
We pile into a van and head to the coast. By the side of the road, someone has fashioned several snowmen and -women. They are really good with sculpted noses and detailed boobs, and all of them are smiling and waving. They are some of the most cheerful people I have come across on this journey, save Anna, Victor and the people at the bar last night. Louise’s phone rings. It’s the office. There are no trawlers going out today because the sea is too rough, too cold and parts of it have iced over. My colour returns but Matt goes grey. It’s day four and we still haven’t caught a single fish.
We go to various landmarks and film some GVs (General View shots), which help the viewer establish where the hell in the world we are. However, the weather’s closed in overnight and what is meant be a spectacular view, a view to end all views on a clear day, is obscured by monochrome cloud and mizzle.
Matt says, ‘Just say something about the view, Robson. Anything.’
‘But we can’t see a bloody thing!’
The facts spin in my head and I feel sick again. The Red Bull is beginning to repeat.
‘Err . . . Kamchatka is in the Ring of Fire and the bay that you can’t see behind me is surrounded by a chain of volcanoes. There are more than a hundred and sixty volcanoes here, twenty-eight of which are active, but if one erupted today you’d only hear it; you wouldn’t see it. Lava could be spewing out but nature’s fireworks would be completely wasted. I’ve travelled five thousand miles for this stunning, breathtaking view. I could be at Whitley Bay, Northumberland.’
Poor Matt is now looking terrified. We need to get out of Petropavlovsk and fish in the Siberian wilderness, fast. We meet up with Sergei and Tatiana, who are descended from the Itelman tribe, Kamchadal natives who have lived here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. We are hoping – no, praying – that they might help us catch a fish. Any fish will do, we’re not fussy!
Tatiana comes up with a brilliant idea – she suggests we visit the fish market (!) to buy the ingredients for a traditional Itelman soup called Uuka. The main ingredients are crab, Arctic char and whole salmon, including its eyes and head. I’m not sure about the eyes, I don’t like my food staring back at me, but some of the best meat is found in the cheeks and under the gill plate of a fish. It’s always worth using in a soup or adding to a meal. At the market we look at the various fish. I spot Stalin crab, introduced to the area as a source of cheap crabmeat. Like king crab, they can grow to huge sizes and are very deadly predators. Everything is frozen and nothing is fresh, as it has been caught in the warmer months. I buy the salmon, and know to my core that we are not going to catch anything today – that’s why Tatiana is getting us to buy all the ingredients. In spite of my deep-down reservations I say to Tatiana, ‘Leave the final ingredient to me.’ I am determined to catch an Arctic char – or at least try my damnedest.
We head straight to the fishing location on the Kamchatka River at a place called Pinchoseheeva (pinch means ‘fire’ in Russian). Here the river is the same size as the Coquet, but it’s –20 by midday and will plummet to –42 at night. Despite this, the river has not frozen over and that’s because of the hot springs heated by the molten lava of the volcano, which keeps the water flowing. We don’t need to ice fish here, I can cast a spinner. First of all I build a fire for Tatiana at the edge of the river, and get it going.
I tell her, ‘Stay here, it’s going to take a real man to catch a fish today . . . [pause] . . . and here he is, Sergei Lukiv.’
Sergei crumbles in front of the lens,
staring at Craig as if he is pointing a Kalashnikov. We try to warm him up but he is not one for small talk. Sergei would also rather stand by the fire and watch me fish than have a conversation.
The river is freezing and I need to wade in to get a decent cast. Almost immediately I can’t feel my toes. In order to cast I use bare hands, which I need to warm up every few minutes. I’m using Tatiana’s old tights filled with salmon eggs as bait, which I trot along the river and let the current take downstream. It’s an unusual method and an unusual use of tights. I like to keep my wife’s hosiery to buff up my brogues or polish the car. It comes up lovely.
The cold is perishing, my fingers are painful and the whole experience is far from enjoyable. Everyone is by the fire, including the crew. Craig is using a long lens and Peter has good signal – they are nice and toasty. There are no fish in this bloody river. Off in the distance to my right is a half-formed oxbow lake. Water is still flowing in and there are fish in there. We go and inspect. I can see dozens of char, but it’s difficult to cast into and impossible to wade.
Luckily Sergei has a plan. I dangle my line into the lake while he runs upriver to scare the fish towards my balls of eggs. Slightly surprisingly he starts throwing snowballs at the fish, pounding lumps of snow into the water. Splosh! Sure enough the fish head in my direction, but the last thing anyone being pelted with snowballs wants to do is eat. When I smacked Prada on the bonce with one on the hill up to the Nanai, he didn’t react by saying, ‘Do you know what, I really fancy a steak sandwich now.’ God help us! However, we are so up a frozen Shit Creek that all ideas, however bonkers, are being considered. Suddenly I feel a faint nibble on my line. I reel in a small parr (baby salmon) about three inches long. Sergei smiles; he’s delighted for me.