Travels in Siberia

by Frazier

  I ended up going to Alaska many times. On flights from Seattle to Anchorage I always asked for a window seat on the right-hand side of the plane, because from it (if the weather was clear) I could observe white cruise ships on the deep blue of the Inland Passage, and the shrinking bigness of the Hubbard Glacier (usually described as larger than Rhode Island), and the delta of the Copper River with its glittering, complicated channels. I got to know the Anchorage airport well. In the big hexagonal waiting room on Concourse B there is a mounted Kodiak bear on all fours next to a polar bear standing on its hind legs. Both bears look fierce, both are “record class” animals (according to the plaques), and both were killed by dentists.

  In Anchorage, I came across books on Siberia I hadn’t known about, many of them from the University of Alaska Press, as well as some obscure ones in the public library. In midwinter, when snow plowed up from the parking lots blocked the first-floor windows and a day from sunrise to sunset was just a few hours long, the whole dark world seemed to hover around the light on the page. At first I mainly read about the Bering expedition—how Vitus Bering led an expedition to the North Pacific in 1725, following the instruction of Peter the Great; how he was supposed to see if Asia and America were joined but did not sail far enough north to establish that for sure; and how he returned to Petersburg in 1730 only to be reproached by the authorities and sent back to try again. Crossing Siberia and sailing from Kamchatka a second time, he managed to reach the Alaskan coast in July 1740. Upon the first sighting of America his men congratulated him on his success, but Bering merely shrugged. He was becoming apathetic and strange. He turned back for home quickly, spending not even a night on the Alaskan mainland, thereby infuriating George Steller, the naturalist on board. Mishap then followed mishap for Bering. Almost everybody onboard, including him, got scurvy, the ship drifted helplessly, and finally it washed ashore on an island a few days’ sail from Kamchatka. On that island, Bering died.

  A team of Russian and American archaeologists began excavations on Commander Island (as it became known) in 1979. The Bering expedition had been a massive undertaking, involving thousands of people at its various stages, and it was well supplied, even oversupplied. A lot of the stuff Bering and his men had on the island was still there. The archaeologists found an optical lens from somebody’s spectacles, and an iron rope-splicing tool, and sticks of sealing wax, and a silver kopek from the reign of Boris Godunov, and a bottle of turpentine, and four iron boarding axes, and flasks of pharmaceutical glass, and iron crampons for walking on ice, and a dog- or wolf skin with a crucifix sewn to it, and little iron hammers, and fragments of an hourglass, and a box of the type cannoneers wore for holding their fuses, and a large number of objects whose purposes were unknown.

  In the roofed dugout Bering’s men made for him, he lay on the floor, and the sand slid onto him. He said he didn’t mind because it kept him warm. When he died he had to be dug up to be buried. In 1991, the archaeologists found his grave. He had been laid out facing east, Christian-fashion, with his head propped up against one end of the too-short coffin. He was five foot nine, slightly bowlegged, and in possession of all but six of his teeth. The archaeologists kept his skeleton whole, shrouded it in plaster, and sent it by ship to Petropavlovsk. From there it was flown to Moscow, speeding in hours over the Siberian expanses he had taken decades to cross and recross. In Moscow, scientists from the Research Institute of Criminal and Forensic Medicine examined the skeleton. After the studies were done, the skeleton retraced its route to Commander Island and was reinterred in a redug grave—all postmortem developments that probably would have been a surprise to the dour and incurious Vitus Bering.

  Beyond Anchorage, I often continued another two hours by plane to the town of Nome, on the Alaskan coast where Norton Sound turns north to join the Bering Sea. I always looked forward to going there. Nome serves as a jumping-off point for destinations in Russia; the regional headquarters for U.S. Customs and Immigration are in Nome. Along the U.S.-Mexican border are numerous cities like Tijuana, and on the boundary between the United States and Canada you find many towns like International Falls, Minnesota. Nome owns the distinction of being the only U.S.-Russian border town.

  During the early days after the fall of communism, when it looked as if a boom in Russian trade and tourism might replace the total shutdown of the border that had characterized the Cold War, some Nome businesses changed their signs to include both languages. Even today in Nome, a few remnant signs in Russian can be seen. In those heady years, some Nome merchants accepted payment in rubles, and when Russians did arrive these merchants amassed rubles by the sackful. Due to Russian currency laws, the bills turned out to be unredeemable. Now in Nome rubles are sometimes used as decorations, or are handed out to tourists as souvenirs. Also in the days of optimism, some men in Nome became aware of the short-skirted, high-heeled, thoroughly made-up Russian women who lived in Chukotka just a short flight away. That the women maintained this style even in the coldest weather won them much admiration. In time, international marriages resulted, and some Russian women relocated to Nome.

  Nome does not go out of its way to be ingratiating. To an unromantic eye, the town in certain seasons may look like an expanse of mud with pieces of rusted iron sticking out of it. Trees in Nome are so rare that the town’s official architectural walking tour features both of them; it is perhaps ungenerous to point out that in other places such landmarks would be considered shrubbery. During stays in Nome, I was usually depressed, in an uninterrupted and satisfying manner I never could have pulled off at home. Often I was waiting for a break in the weather so I could fly somewhere. I would emerge from my room in the Nome Nugget Motel in the morning to see what the chances were today, and I’d find the usual lowering, stormy sky draped above sea and land like a tent you have to hold up with your head to keep it from collapsing on you. On such days the best course was to return to the room, lie down, and stare up at the acoustical-tile ceiling.

  Bering Sea waves the color of wet cement landed on the shoreline with dull thumps; rain slashed the windows. Eventually I would put on my rain gear and wander the town. Facing northwest on the beach—Nome’s famed “Golden Sands,” source of fortunes during the gold rush—I was looking directly toward Siberia. The border here is so unyielding, and the sea and sky and climate so forbidding in every way, it seemed that the line of the horizon, instead of being level, should go:

  Nome is not the end of the road, because all roads connecting to anywhere have ended long before. The town is accessible only by ship, plane, or snow trail. The famous Iditarod dogsled race ends in Nome. Nome is the end, period. The whole continent, in a sense, makes a final diesel-fueled spasm in Nome. Its irregular waterfront lots accumulate crumbled-up Caterpillar treads, school bus hulks, twisted scaffolding in rats’-nest heaps, rusted gold dredges, busted paddle wheels, crunched pallets, hyperextended recliner chairs, skewed all-terrain vehicle frames, mashed wooden dogsleds, multicolored nylon cable exploded to pompoms, door-sprung ambulance vans, dinged fuel tanks, shot clutch plates, run-over corrugated pipe, bent I beams, bent rebars, bent vents. The pileup at land’s end is almost audible, as if you could still hear the echoes of the cascade from the continental closet where all of it once was stored.

  In general, people in Nome have time to talk. On my first visit, and often on later ones, I stopped in at a store on Nome’s west side called Chukotka-Alaska, Inc. This store sells furs from Alaska and Russia (wolf, red fox, wolverine), Soviet army hats, Russian wood carvings (stork, moose), CDs of the Red Army chorus, etc. Behind the counter, among items and their price tags hanging around his head, sits the store’s owner, Vic Goldsberry, a stocky, gray-haired man with a blunt nose.

  Sensing my affection for Russia, Vic Goldsberry set out straightaway to disabuse me: “I don’t think I’ll be going over to Chukotka much anymore,” he said. “In fact, I don’t care if I never go over there again. Can’t do honest business there. The governor of Chukotka just bought himself
a one-point-three-million-dollar dacha in Miami Beach. He’s already got a beautiful house in Anchorage and spends a lot of time there. He gave all his henchmen new Fords, so I don’t think you’ll hear them complaining, either. I just read in Alaska Businessman magazine that according to the Russian government, American businessmen won’t have to pay bribes in Chukotka anymore—of course the person supposedly enforcing that is the governor’s number-two man, who also spends a lot of time in Seattle, so we’ll see what comes of that decree.

  “It’s not safe for a foreigner to travel in the Russian Far East. The governor has even said he doesn’t want tourism, because tourists don’t spend enough money. The only people the Russians want are Japanese nature-documentary crews, and there’s an endless supply of them, and they don’t blink at paying gigantic bribes. I never paid bribes, myself, and I resent people who do, because they’re perpetuatin’ the system. It won’t really be possible to travel there until the system changes. Besides the Japanese, the only people who can travel there right now are criminals and missionaries. The criminals pay the bribes because they have no morals, and the missionaries pay because they think their higher purpose justifies the means.

  “When the border first opened up after Gorbachev and everything a few years ago, you had thirty–forty flights a month from here to Provideniya and Anadyrsk, and people thought this border would become like the Canadian border. Now the bribery’s got so bad—five hundred dollars and up just to get a visa—that the border’s almost completely shut down. Customs and immigration here doesn’t care about it and would like to close it and forget about it. Now there’s maybe two–three flights a month, if that. The Russian Far East is a place without law and it’s going to stay that way, far as I can see. Foreigners who go over there get beaten and robbed, Russians who live there get beaten and robbed. Some U.S. Coast Guard guys came in here last month. They’d been to Alaskan ports and then to the Russian Far East, and they said they were ashore somewhere on Sakhalin Island comin’ back to the ship early one evening, not even drunk, when they met up with a big group of Russians who beat them senseless and took everything they had except their clothes. No law at all, just no law at all. Businessmen from other countries pay bribes up front and that gives ’em a competitive edge on Americans, because for us it’s a federal crime to bribe a foreign official to do his job. Most travelers just accept the bribery, but that’s not the kind of country we are—not yet, anyway. No, I won’t do business that way.”

  The bell on the door jingled and an older couple I recognized from the motel came in. Like me they were grounded by weather and had taken a stroll. The woman said to Vic Goldsberry, “Oh, you have such beautiful furs here!”

  “We have native crafts, books, and some Russian stuff,” he said. “Everything here is one of a kind, and everything has its story.”

  “—And if it doesn’t, you’ll make one up!” the woman finished for him, cheerily.

  Vic Goldsberry became grave. “No, ma’am,” he said. “For that you’ll have to go uptown.”

  The first time I went to the Chukotka-Alaska store, I bought an anthology of short works of Russian literature with notes in English for students. From the lessons I had taken at Brighton Beach, my Russian had improved enough that I could read some of the abridged stories, aided by the notes and glossary. The bad weather did not lift, so while the rain pelted I spent days on my bed at the Nome Nugget Motel slowly reading: first, “Taman’,” by Lermontov, and then “Stantsionnyi Smotritel’ ” (The Stationmaster) and “Vystrel” (The Shot), by Pushkin.

  Until then I had never got the point of Pushkin. Russians, of course, worship him, but I think I’m right in saying that he has not translated well to other languages, and thus remains above all a Russian poet. But for some reason, reading him there in the Nome Nugget—maybe because Russia was only a hop away, and Pushkin had promised that someday he would be read from one end of Russia to the other—I finally understood what was great about him, or thought I did. To explain, I have to describe the plot of “Vystrel.” Russian readers who know the story, and those who do not wish its suspense ruined should they ever read it themselves, may skip the next few pages.

  “Vystrel” is the story of a duel. Its main character is a strange, intense former army officer named Silvio. He lives in an out-of-the-way village where he often invites the officers of the local regiment to his quarters for supper, drinking, and cards. One of the officers is the narrator of the story. Silvio practices regularly with his pistols; the walls of his quarters are full of bullet holes from his target shooting. During a card game, a drunken officer insults Silvio. Everyone expects Silvio to challenge the officer to a duel, but he does not. The narrator cannot understand this, and although he had admired Silvio, after this incident he mentally dismisses him and considers Silvio’s honor stained.

  One day Silvio receives a letter that he reads to himself with great excitement. He then announces to the officers that he must leave the village right away, and he asks them to come over for a final evening at his place. Later, as his guests are departing, he takes the narrator aside and says he does not want him to have the wrong impression. He says he declined the duel with the drunken officer because he cannot risk his life until he finishes something he has to do. He then tells this story:

  Some years before, when Silvio was still in the army, he developed a jealous antagonism against a fellow officer. The object of his jealousy was noble, rich, handsome, and gifted in every way. His witticisms were funnier than Silvio’s. Women adored him. At a ball one evening, Silvio whispered a vile insult in this officer’s ear, and the officer slapped him. A challenge was made and accepted, and a duel was arranged for the following morning.

  Silvio showed up first, so upset and enraged he could hardly control his shooting hand. His antagonist, carefree as ever, arrived carrying his cap, which was full of fresh cherries. Winning the draw for first shot, the lighthearted young officer fired first and put a bullet through Silvio’s cap. (Here Silvio takes the cap from a box and shows it, and the bullet hole, to the narrator.) Then came Silvio’s turn to shoot. As he sighted along his pistol, his enemy stood smiling, eating cherries from his cap and spitting the stones. Silvio stood for a moment, then lowered his gun. Depriving a person of life who had so little concern for it seemed pointless. Silvio told his enemy that he had decided not to fire just now; the young officer replied that Silvio was free to fire whenever he liked, and that he would be available at any future time Silvio chose.

  Today (Silvio continues), he learned by letter that “a certain person” is about to marry a beautiful young girl. Silvio tells the narrator that he is leaving immediately to find his enemy—the “certain person”—and see if under his new circumstances he still does not care whether he lives or dies. At this point the carriage comes and Silvio rides off.

  Time passes. The narrator retires from the service and is managing his estate in the country. He does not have much to occupy him socially, so when a countess comes to spend time at her estate not far away, the narrator goes to meet her. The countess is young and beautiful, and her handsome husband, the count, is a former army officer, thirty-two years old. The narrator is brought into the library, where he notices a painting on the wall with two bullet holes in it, one beside the other. He and the count begin talking about marksmanship. The narrator says the best shot he ever knew was a man named Silvio. The count says, “You knew Silvio!” The countess turns pale. The count tells the narrator this story:

  He (the count) is indeed the same officer who had been the focus of Silvio’s jealousy and had eaten cherries during their duel. Some years ago he and the countess married, and immediately afterward they came to stay at this estate. One afternoon they went for a ride. The countess’s horse became balky, so the count rode home leading it, and she walked. When he got back he found Silvio in the library waiting for him. Silvio announced to the count that he had come at last to take his shot.

  The count stood at one end of the
room. Silvio paced off twelve steps and aimed. The count asked him to shoot quickly, before his wife returned. Silvio paused and said this seemed too much like murder. Another pistol was brought and loaded. They drew for the first shot. As in the first duel, the count won the draw. He fired at Silvio but missed and hit the painting.

  Silvio aimed at the count. Just then the countess came in, saw what was going on, screamed, and clung to her husband’s neck. Her husband told her not to worry, this was just a joke. Silvio said yes, this was much like jokes her husband enjoyed, slapping his face, shooting his hat, and shooting the painting just now. The countess threw herself at Silvio’s feet. The count shouted at her to get up, wasn’t she ashamed? After a moment, Silvio said that he had decided not to fire; now, he said, he was satisfied, having finally seen the count lose his nerve. Silvio turned to leave and, looking back, fired a shot through the painting right next to where the count’s bullet had struck.

  Nobody ever heard from Silvio again. Rumor said that he died in Greece while fighting in the revolution against the Turks.

  I put the book down and went out into Nome’s peculiar late-summer twilight. It arrived filtered through gray-white rain clouds that now were dropping a kind of floating mist. All the town’s colors were gray’s imitation of them—gray-red, gray-yellow, gray-blue—and yet the effect was still of twilight in summer, somehow. I’m not sure that the above summary of “Vystrel” makes it clear why Pushkin was great. I know that when I finished the story I was convinced that Pushkin was one of the coolest people who ever lived. Later I learned that in an actual duel Pushkin fought, he ate cherries from his hat while waiting for his rival to fire, just as his character does.