Cursing, he led the way to his aircraft. He knew nothing of the research station at Tcherny Vodi – a frozen world away, far, far to the north. But at Tcherny Vodi much was known of General Liu.
At Urumchi he learned that soon he would be back at Lop Nor. A re-test had been ordered – extremest urgency. It had been ordered for November.
28
By November with the weather hard and the roads good, Kolya Khodyan had won golden opinions from his comrades at the Tchersky Transport Company. This was due to his cheerfulness, his modesty and his generosity. His generosity was exceptional.
Already sickness and injury among the crews had moved his name high up the reserve list; and already he had twice declined lucrative long-distance hauls. Family men needed the money more, he said; he was a bachelor, just filling in for a friend. He didn’t mind pottering about the area.
By now he had pottered widely and knew every route in and out, short hops that had him frequently back in the despatch depot. At the depot too he was very popular – no moans, no arguments from Kolya. Anything to go, he took it, wherever, whatever. And always smiling, a lovely fellow. He’d even help with the loading – no way his job! – to give the fellows a break.
He was familiar now with every aspect of the depot, knew the stacks, the destinations, was never in the way. A really bright Chukchee, true gold.
He’d seen the four one-ton crates stencilled Tch. Vod., in Local Delivery: radius fifty kilometres. Tcherny Vodi! He hungrily haunted this bay, fearful somebody else would get it; and as the bay emptied, tried to precipitate the action.
‘No, Kolya, no. That’s not to go yet.’
‘What is it?’
‘Turbines. For a place up in the hills. They had some kind of blow-out a few months ago. There you don’t just deliver. They have to call through and say when. They have the stinking heads there.’
‘Ah, stinking heads.’ Stinking heads were high-ups, usually security services, usually Moscow, but here sometimes Irkutsk or Novosibirsk. ‘What do they want with stinking heads there?’ he asked in surprise.
‘God knows. We don’t ship them much. They fly in what they need, they have a strip. It’s just sometimes heavy gear – this has been here weeks, from Archangel, maybe they don’t need it yet.’
‘Is funny that. Stinking heads! I have friends in that place, I think – Evenks.’
‘Right. They have Evenks there, you’re right, Kolya.’
‘I like to see my friends there. I take this stuff, eh?’
‘Sure you will. Sure, Kolya. You’ll take the job – just when we get the call.’
And they got the call, and he took the job. He took the four crates on a Ural and helped load and strap them right way up. The Ural had a hoist and a hydraulic tailgate. He headed out of town and followed his map and picked up the creek. The creek was flagged at entry to show the weight it could take and he drove fifteen kilometres along it to be sure he had it to himself; though there wasn’t much doubt. Apart from the road gang who had checked it, nobody had used the creek this season. Then he got out and climbed in the back.
He undid the straps on the tarpaulin, picked out a crate and got to work with a screwdriver and a pot of paint. He scored out parts of the stencilling and overpainted fresh marks. Then he smudged the result with a grease rag until it was hard to tell which was the correct marking. It was now very cold. The exterior thermometer of the Ural showed forty below, but the air was dead still, no wind. The oily mess hardened immediately and he refastened the tarpaulin.
Twenty kilometres farther along the creek he saw the red flag and the turnoff he had to take out of it. The river bank was steep but a ramp had been lowered and strewn with grit. He saw the bundled-up figures waiting on top, and they waved him on as he crunched slowly up. There were two men, their breath standing in the air, quite jovial, ear flaps down, automatic weapons slung, beating themselves in the cold. They had come out of a wooden guard hut in a small levelled area. A military jeep stood next to the hut.
‘Found it okay?’
‘No problem.’
They were gazing at him curiously, not expecting a native; quite friendly, though.
‘You unload all this on your own?’
‘Sure. Only there’s a problem with the manifest.’
‘Bring it inside.’
It was snug inside, two oil stoves going; and it became snugger still when he produced his flask. He heard, what he knew already, that they had run down here an hour ago, to open up the post, flag his turnoff and lay the ramp. They would wait until the tracked vehicle came down to pick up the load, and then take up the ramp and return: the post wasn’t manned normally.
‘What’s the problem with the manifest?’
‘See, is some kind of cockup,’ he said. ‘The marks don’t tally – we couldn’t understand it there.’
He took them out and showed them the marks and they puzzled over them.
‘Well, the crates are all the same.’
‘Sure, we got a hundred crates like that. Is Archangel crates.’
‘Just dump them anyway, and they’ll sort it out.’.
‘Is fine with me. You sign for it, you got it. But you don’t sign, I can’t leave it. Maybe you sign and it’s wrong.’
The two men looked at each other.
‘Well, what’s to be done about it?’
‘I don’t know. Either I run it up there and they, check it or someone comes down and checks it here.’
They went back in the hut and made a call on a communications set. The call established that someone would come down and check it.
They finished off the flask while waiting for the tracked vehicle to come down. Two Evenks and an officer came down with it. The officer was irritable and he paced impatiently while the Evenks prised open the suspect crate. Then he mounted the Ural and perched on the cab top while consulting a piece of paper and peering down into the crate.
‘It’s all right. Of course it’s all right. Bloody nonsense! Seal it.’
Then he paced again while the crate was sealed and Kolya and the Evenks transferred the load. They chatted merrily while they did this – the Evenks, like the other Siberian natives, intrigued that he ‘had the tongue’.
‘How is it up there, brothers?’
‘Fine. Good conditions, good pay. A job.’
‘It’s as well you came down. I thought I was going to have to run up there with this.’
The Evenks laughed. ‘Not in a million years. They’d never let you.’
‘Oh, the stinking heads – I forgot. What goes on up there? What kind of problem with stinking heads?’
‘They’re no problem. Not if you have a pass. We don’t mix with anybody. It’s just scientists there – who knows what they do?’
But he learned more. The Evenks’ reindeer herds were far away, at the other side of a mountain. From there they helicoptered you in. You rotated the jobs at the hill station, a month at a time. They didn’t let you stay any longer. But anybody could do it. A stinking head came down and made out the passes; he dealt with Innokenty, the headman.
Then they finished the loading and took off, and his manifests were signed and he took off too, and drove back along the creek, thinking.
The Evenks were the way in, obviously. They were the only way in. Herdsmen, nomads. With a headman, Innokenty. He would have to meet this Innokenty. He would have to get out to the herds. But there were no deliveries to the herds …
He turned the matter over in his mind. Somehow there would have to be a way of getting there.
And in the days that followed he found it; and before it, something else.
The load was for a big Kama to Provodnoye, 260 kilometres each way, and nobody wanted it: not while the huge backlog for Bilibino and Pevek still remained, real mileage and proper money. Good Kolya took it, in a Ural, two journeys. They broke up the load, window frames and central heating for a new apartment block, and he took off, single-handed. A jewel, a piece of gold dust!<
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The Provodnoye route was a new one to him, and it looked interesting: you could lose yourself here if you needed to. He ran south on the river, and turned off for the section of made track to Anyuysk. This part he knew. Then he left the made track and picked up the winding tributary to Provodnoye. The tributary ran between steep banks and in season it evidently ran fast; in the narrow bends coves were gouged out of the banks.
He kept a steady sixty kilometres an hour, slowing to thirty and twenty on the bends, and was changing up as he pulled out of one when a flock of ptarmigan exploded out of a piece of bush. A beautiful sight! White rockets in a lead sky. He watched them in his rear-view mirror as they returned to the bush but they did not return to the bush. He could not make out where they returned.
He stopped the truck and got out and walked back on the river. The cluster of bush grew out of the bank; stunted willow, white with ice but mottled where the birds had nibbled the twigs. He padded softly but still they knew and rocketed up again; fox also padded softly.
They had rocketed not from the bush but from behind the bush. The clumps overhung a hole in the bank. Quite a large hole, torn out by fast spring floods. He pulled the frozen vegetation aside. All dark inside, but high, broad, deep. He felt cautiously with his hands. Ice on the walls, a crackling underfoot; twigs the birds had brought in. He could see nothing, but it was deep, deeper than the span of both arms. A cave. He had left his torch in the truck, and did not venture any farther. He had started a little late. Provodnoye was still a couple of hours away.
He slept the night at Provodnoye, was held up in the morning by faulty goods for return, and made Green Cape in the afternoon, too late for another journey. He did it the day after.
The bend, the ptarmigan rocketing up again. He stopped the truck alongside, unshipped the ladder and went in.
It was even deeper than he thought. Some obstruction, centuries past, had sent the river thundering in and out of here. He shone his flashlight round. Only a skin of ice on the walls, and under it rock. The same with the roof. Rock, not permafrost. He tried it, all the same; set the ladder, climbed it, bored with the battery drill into the roof. Granite. After an inch he didn’t bother any more. He could go as deep as he needed. It could hold what it had to hold.
He had his chat with Vassili soon after. In between he had made a trip to Ambarchik on the coast and from there had brought back a fish, an Arctic chir. Vassili’s old woman had been bemoaning the lack of chir, and this was a present for her. Very often now he had been sharing the old Yakut’s food.
He produced the fish in a sack; quite fresh but stiff as a board, and Vassili’s eyes popped.
‘This is a fish,’ he said. He examined it all over. ‘This fish goes a metre.’
‘Yes, it’s a good fish.’
‘She’ll go mad with it.’ He stood the fish on its nose and with his knife pared off a sliver and ate. ‘By God, an excellent fish. Full of oil.’ He pared a sliver for the Chukchee and gave him it. Kolya ate the sliver and nodded. A nutty flavour; not fishy, not bad, slight oily aftertaste.
‘Good,’ he said.
‘The best. With a half of this fish she’ll make a fantastic stroganina. You’ll come and eat it.’
‘With pleasure.’
‘Did you eat lunch yet?’
‘Not yet.’
They shared the Yakut’s pot.
‘Vassili,’ he said, chewing, ‘I need a bobik.’
‘Take one.’
‘To keep. For myself.’
‘What for?’
‘I want one.’
The Yakut nodded, cutting a piece of meat between his teeth. They were eating boiled foal and blood sausage stewed in mare’s milk.
‘Do you know any Evenks?’ Kolya asked him.
‘There are no Evenks here now.’
‘Where would you find them?’
‘You said you knew some at the station in the hills.’
‘They’re not there. I ran a load for that station.’
‘Then either they’re with the herds or at the collective.’
‘Which collective?’
‘Novokolymsk. What other?’
Kolya pondered this. Evidently the collective was not only for the Yukagir. For Evenks also. And they rotated not just from the herds to the station. They rotated from the collective as well.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Vassili cut off more meat in his mouth. ‘I hear the Evenk women are good,’ he said.
‘I hear that.’
‘I never tried one myself. Where is she?’
‘Who?’
The Yakut’s face split, but whether with a smile or from tugging at the meat he couldn’t tell.
‘I think you are a young bastard,’ he said. ‘You have an Evenk girl and don’t know where she is – the collective or with the herds. Right?’
Kolya grunted and got on with his meat.
Vassili wiped his mouth. ‘All right,’ he said, sucking his teeth, ‘you need a bobik. I’ll think about it.’
Next day he told Kolya, ‘She wants you to come and eat stroganina. You can come tonight.’
‘Good. Thank you.’
He went and ate stroganina. The two elderly Yakuts lived in a tiny apartment in one of the earliest blocks; the Europeans had moved out to better blocks. A table came with the apartment but they ate on the floor, on cushions. Vassili’s wife gave him a bowl of his own but the two old people ate out of. the pot; the stroganina was a rich oily fish stew, highly seasoned, and on a wooden board alongside it was a mound of the raw fish flaked like coconut.
The old woman had put on a Yakut party dress, brightly embroidered; her centre parting and brilliant dark eyes were directed intently on him as he ate. She was silent as a mouse but very busy, refilling his bowl until the pot was finished, and piling on the flaked fish.
‘A man needs oil,’ she said to him significantly. ‘A young man has to have it.’
It was all she said to him, but in the morning Vassili told him, ‘She says you have a nice face.’
‘Well, it’s younger than yours,’ Kolya said.
‘She also says you are a young bastard. She says you should stop fucking Lydia Yakovlevna.’
‘Who says I am fucking Lydia Yakovlevna?’
‘Our grand-daughter cleans in the supermarket. Lydia Yakovlevna says you fuck her every night and give her presents, also take her to the best parties. Is that the way a young man like you should get it?’
‘Or?’
‘It’s better to fuck this Evenk. She says they don’t want presents and it’s healthier for you.’
‘Well, it’s true.’
‘Of course it’s true. Where would you keep the bobik?’
‘I know a place.’
‘You can’t just steal one – they’re all registered. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course I know it.’
‘So how would you get one?’
‘I could put it together, if I had a friend with the parts.’
The Yakut smiled. ‘You think you could do it on your own?’
‘With a manual, why not? It’s a toy, you said.’
‘One man can’t fit an engine on his own. It’s too heavy.’
‘With a block and tackle?’
Vassili mused. ‘The block and tackle would be for borrowing only? I can’t make a deficit out of a block and tackle. I only have two.’
‘Of course for borrowing only. What do I want with a block and tackle?’
‘It’s a strong heavy engine. The block would need a strong roof to support it.’
‘I have a strong roof.’
‘Well, I’ll see. Don’t bother me with it now.’
Kolya began taking parts for the bobik the same week. Vassili gave him a printed specification of the car and they ticked off the parts as he took them. The first parts he took were the wheels. He had been angling now for regular deliveries to the area.
To Anyuysk was no problem. Scattered de
velopments there meant frequent trips by light truck. The problem was the further leg to Provodnoye. Factories and apartment blocks were going up there – top class ones, an inducement for European Russians to stay in the wilderness; good heating, big boilers, triple glazing. Heavy loads, and for a big Kama. As the season went on, and the drivers could pick and choose less, big Kamas would regularly do this journey. Two-man crews. No good. He had to be on his own.
He saw he was going to have to do it at night. He could always get a bobik for the night. But there were difficulties here, too. He could get a bobik, but how about the parts? The Light Vehicles depot wasn’t open at night. He would have to take the parts during the day and keep them somewhere. Where? Not in the apartment. How could he run an engine up there, gear box, transmission?
He thought about it while taking the wheels, and a load, down to Anyuysk. He dumped the load quickly, and took off with the wheels towards Provodnoye.
Off the made road and on to the tributary; round and round the tight bends. It took him sixty-five minutes from Anyuysk to the cave. With a bobik he could cut that to maybe forty-five. And from Green Cape to Anyuysk itself – another hour and a quarter. Total, two hours. Four hours there and back. If he started at nine at night when nobody was about, he could be back soon after one in the morning. Nothing.
It would take time to build up the parts before anything could usefully be put together. The heavy engine would be a problem. He would need help getting it in the bobik. Vassili would help him get it in. Then he would have to take off immediately with it, in the lunch hour – whatever other jobs were scheduled for him. He couldn’t leave an engine dumped in a bobik. He would have to take it right to the cave. And then? How to get it out of the bobik and into the cave? A block and tackle could raise and lower it. It couldn’t get it in.
The ptarmigan had shot up again as he approached.
He left the engine running and walked over to the cave and parted the frozen branches. The entrance was wide, far wider than it looked. He tried to find a way of keeping the shrubbery held back but couldn’t. He got back in the truck and, with his headlights on, drove slowly through the screen of branches, careful not to break any off: the screen effectively hid the cave.
Kolymsky Heights Page 18