Kolymsky Heights

by Lionel Davidson

  He got the nose of the truck in and climbed out and looked about him. The headlights brilliantly lit up the place, a hoary ice box: roof, walls, floor, all glittering like diamonds. A spacious ice box, too. Plenty of room to build a bobik, and also to drive one right in. He looked up at the roof, and the hole he had drilled. In the wrong place, but yes! Of course. A piece of cake! He could fit the block to the roof at the rear of the cave. Then back the bobik in and hoist the engine out. No problem.

  He wasted no more time, got the wheels out and stacked against the end wall, reversed the truck on to the river and drove back to Green Cape.

  He’d build up the supplies fast; on as many days as he could. And night after night if possible. Yes, he’d start seriously now.

  And this he did, by day and also by night.

  29

  The Despatch depot: ‘Kolya – Yura wants you. Run down and see him now.’

  ‘But I’ve got a load here, ready to go.’

  ‘Leave it. He’s in a temper, very excited. Take the bobik there – the key’s in.’

  He drove down to the Kama hangar, puzzled and cautious.

  The place had greatly changed, he saw. No longer the vast array of vehicles lined up row on row. Only a dozen or so of the giant trucks were scattered about now; most being worked on by mechanics.

  Yura was in his glass booth and on the phone again. He frowned at the Chukchee and motioned him in.

  ‘Kolya, what’s this?’ he said, putting the phone down. ‘Piddling about all the time to Anyuysk – and with little Tatras and Urals. What is it?’

  ‘It’s trips. It’s okay. They give me the jobs.’

  ‘They’re taking advantage of you. This is no good, Kolya.’

  ‘I don’t complain, it’s fine.’

  ‘You don’t complain, but it bloody isn’t fine! You’re picking up no money! And getting no time on a 50! What experience are you getting?’

  ‘I didn’t come for experience. I’m filling in.’

  ‘You’re mine! My driver! I told you so. There’s a good distance man in you – young, stamina, plenty of go. You need time on a 50. Piddling about locally is no good. It’s no good, Kolya!’

  ‘They want me, what can I do?’

  ‘You can go to Bilibino. Tomorrow. I’ve cleared it with Bukarovsky. You’re down on the sheet. No arguments. It’s done!’

  Well, if it was done; on the sheet. He couldn’t make a fuss about getting off it. To Bilibino and back was 1400 kilometres – a plum three-day job for the drivers, and soon to be scarce as the backlog cleared …

  He cursed as he drove back. Three days away, and what shape would he be in for his night work afterwards? To hell with Bilibino!

  But to Bilibino he went.

  They left at eight in a snowstorm and day didn’t dawn till almost eleven. They drew a twenty-ton trailer, with another one hitched on behind, and were in a convoy of four, all big Kamas. The two in front could not be seen through the wall of snow in the headlights, but as the day slowly came and the dim shapes emerged lumbering ahead, Vanya relaxed. He was a grizzled elderly fellow, specially selected as a mentor for the Chukchee.

  ‘You’ll take over after the first stop,’ he said. ‘There’s a straight stretch coining, but plenty of uphill shifts. Mustn’t lose your footing – it’s a long slide down for these bastards.’ His yellow teeth showed in a grin.

  The first stop came soon after eleven, No. 1 of the road stations. The two trucks in front had pulled in, together with another couple going the other way; and behind them, as they parked in a clutter of bobiks, came the fourth of their convoy.

  A radio was going and it was very warm and smoky in the log hut. Cooking smells drifted from the kitchen, and cigarette smoke hung over the tables where the drivers sat so that in the fug it was some minutes before he saw that one of them was a woman. She was also smoking, and in conversation, and his eyes were drawn in that direction because he heard his name mentioned. The drivers were grinning as he looked over.

  ‘Sure, that’s him, our Chukchee … Kolya, come over here. She wants to meet you. Medical Officer Komarova.’

  Her eyes gazed at him coolly as they shook hands. She wore an open parka and a cap like the others, and was sitting with a cigarette over a cup of coffee.

  ‘You’re new here, I understand.’

  ‘Yes, not long. A few weeks.’ They had made room for him on the bench opposite, and his smile flashed brilliantly at her. He decided to take his fur cap off.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ the old waitress said. She had slapped his plate of kasha and gravy down, and was also staring at his shaven head.

  ‘Coffee.’

  ‘From Chukotka?’ Medical Officer Komarova said.

  ‘Chukotka. I’m filling in for a friend.’

  ‘They haven’t sent your papers in yet. Have you had all your shots?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Tetanus, polio, yellow fever?’

  ‘Sure, sure.’ He forked in the kasha, smile still flashing.

  ‘Don’t worry about his shots. He’s getting all his shots in,’ one of the drivers said.

  ‘The condoms come from her place. She calls the shots,’ another said, as the laughter continued.

  Medical Officer Komarova smiled thinly herself. Under the cap her face looked paler, longer, slightly anaemic; but the eyes were as uncompromising as he remembered.

  ‘Check into the office, anyway,’ she said. ‘I’ll see they have your papers. Are you outward bound now or coming back?’

  ‘Outward. Bilibino.’

  ‘That’s three days.’ She held the cigarette in her mouth and with her eyes screwed up opened a zipper bag and took out a notebook and a pen. ‘Today’s Tuesday? … Make it Friday. The afternoon, 4 p.m. You’ll need a lie-in in the morning.’ She wrote in the book and on a card and gave him it. ‘It’s the administrative building in Tchersky. Anyone will tell you.’

  ‘You want to check me over or what?’

  ‘I won’t be there. They need to update your papers and get you on our records.’

  She went soon afterwards and he finished his breakfast, still in doubt. Had she recognised him? Would she so specifically have mentioned the yellow fever if so? Surely not. It was the Chukchee interest: he looked different from the others. And totally different from the Korean seaman. No. He was a new face in town, a new driver. A matter of papers.

  He finished his coffee and in twenty minutes was out with the convoy again. The snow had stopped. He took the wheel and steered the big rig into place in line.

  ‘We keep two hundred metres,’ Vanya told him. ‘Give him plenty of room to get off in front. And practise the gears. You’ll be running up and down them soon.’

  ‘Okay. She seems a decent sort, that medical officer.’

  ‘You think so? Don’t bet on it. The slightest thing wrong with you, she has you off the long runs.’

  ‘Does she check all the drivers?’

  ‘See, the company sick bay is hers – the nurses, the supplies, all from Tchersky. They keep the medical histories there. She’s a strict manager, Komarova.’

  ‘To me, she was like one of the boys.’

  ‘Try getting a dose of clap, and you’ll find out. All this is her district and she knows what goes on in it. Change down now. Watch him in front – he’s climbing.’

  They were climbing, and they continued climbing, the ice road running through a series of passes, first between hills and then mountain peaks. From Green Cape they had ascended 2800 feet, and now went much higher – on all sides the icy crests smoking in clouds. More snow was waiting in the clouds and Vanya silently observed it through his window. But the road was straight, and continued straight, even in the switchbacks that now came. After the climb, a sharp drop, and then up again, and down again, and up and down, a glassy and treacherous ribbon of ice.

  ‘Not your brakes! Only the gears!’ Vanya yelled. ‘And leave him room – two hundred metres.’

  The convoy pulled on, stoppin
g every hundred kilometres at the road stations. At each one they replenished the flasks of tea and coffee, and the day slowly went. The straight also went, and with night came the snow, and Vanya took over; and sharp bends now began to zigzag through the mountains.

  Between stations the men were supposed to alternate in sleep. But with the bends and the snow, Vanya now drove from every station. And there was no sleeping through the constant roar of oaths that came from him as they swung and lurched behind their headlights in the white dazzle of snow; only a few metres of track visible ahead. He drove through the night, and he drove the first turn of the day as well, until the road straightened out. At one o’clock Kolya took over, sleepless himself, and he drove into Bilibino, Vanya snoring beside him.

  Bilibino, named for Bilibin the geologist who first assayed the reefs, was the centre for the most northerly goldfields of Siberia, and the big trucks and the ice road were the only means of getting heavy equipment there: this was what they carried. Scores of thousands of tons of it had built up, shipped from St Petersburg and Archangel in the summer. Only in summer could it be shipped, and only in winter could it be hauled. And now it was here, Bilibino.

  They reached it at four in the afternoon, left the trucks for unloading and reloading, and went to bed at a hostel. Eight hours later, after a meal, they left again on the return journey; midnight; the night black, road white in their headlights.

  A hard country, an exhausting routine, and he took the first leg. Over thirty hours of driving still ahead – thirty-two, in fact, the timekeeping good through all difficulties – and nonstop except for brief rests at the road stations. Which would get them in – what? – late tomorrow. No, not tomorrow; the time confusing. All tomorrow they would be driving. The next day. Friday, early.

  Well, after a good rest he’d organise a bobik for that night, see Vassili in the afternoon. But in the afternoon, Jesus, the medical centre at Tchersky! Well, he’d do it, wouldn’t make waves, an administrative matter. Nothing wrong with Khodyan’s papers; they just hadn’t received them. He’d handed them in himself when Bukarovsky had signed him on. In the early confusion, the start of the season, they hadn’t been sent on. An administrative matter.

  He would sleep all morning. Get up and see Vassili. Arrange a bobik. With the bobik run into Tchersky and get his papers settled at the medical centre. Then the time was his. Yes.

  He finished his stint at the first road station and Vanya took over. And now he tried to sleep, and managed it, no curses coming, just slow steady driving through the zigzags.

  The next turn, still in the mountain labyrinth, still not snowing, Vanya put him on the wheel again but remained awake himself to watch. And the night went, and the day went, and the following night; and at eight on Friday morning, seventy-two hours after leaving it, they pulled back into Green Cape.

  30

  At half-past two, as arranged, Anna Antonovna woke him and gave him his dinner. He was stiff, creaky, aching all over. But after a shower he felt he could make it. He went to see Vassili.

  ‘What do you want to take?’ Vassili said.

  ‘The frame members.’

  ‘All four? The sides won’t go in a bobik. You’d need a roof rack. Take something else.’

  ‘The axle assemblies?’

  ‘Yes, they’d go.’

  They ticked off the pair of axle assemblies on the specification, and Vassili made a careful note in his deficit book. These goods had never arrived at the depot; either hadn’t been sent or had gone missing on the way.

  ‘What time are you coming for them?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. Say five.’

  ‘Remember, we shut at six.

  ‘it will be before.’

  ‘And the back door here.’ They were in the stores room. ‘Don’t go through the garage. People will be working there. Bring the bobik round to the back.’

  ‘Okay. First I have to get it.’

  By a quarter to four he had the bobik and was running down to Tchersky in it. He knew the administrative building, and parked outside. He found the medical centre, and presented himself at the enquiry window.

  ‘Khodyan,’ he said to the woman clerk who answered the buzzer, ‘I was told to be here at four.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I’m a new driver with the transport company.’ He handed in the card he had been given. ‘You were getting my papers.’

  She had a look at the card. ‘Oh yes. Khodyan. We have to update you. Just a minute, I’ll get them.’

  He looked at the two other clerks at work in the room while she went out, and presently she was back and letting him in. ‘Yes. Come through,’ she said, and he followed her through the room and into a corridor, and into another room. ‘Khodyan,’ she said, and left him.

  Medical Officer Komarova was in the room, writing at a desk. She was in her white hospital coat. She glanced up briefly. ‘Please sit down,’ she said.

  He did so, after a small jolt.

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t be here,’ he said.

  ‘I thought so, too. Work.’ She continued writing for a few moments and then screwed the top back on an old-fashioned fountain pen. She drew a dossier towards her.

  ‘You had rheumatic fever at age twelve,’ she said.

  ‘Very slight. If I even had it at all.’ He flashed his smile.

  ‘Diagnosed at Anadyr. Streptococcal infection.’

  ‘But at Novosibirsk, not. There everything fine. All checked out. Nothing wrong with me.’

  She read further. ‘Yes. What were you doing at Novosibirsk?’

  ‘My father was a teacher, without a degree. Nothing doing for our people then at Anadyr. We went to Novosibirsk and he got one.’

  ‘I see. And then the family went back?’

  ‘No. They like Novosibirsk.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I don’t. I just knock about – no student. For me is better up here.’

  ‘Where did you learn your – Russian?’

  ‘Everywhere. Is not very good, I know.’

  ‘Better than my Chukchee,’ she said. She said it in Chukchee and his smile flashed wider.

  This tough and knowing cow knew something. What? The faint smile was there again, elusive, slightly mocking. If she had Chukchee, she had mixed with Chukchees. Did she know he wasn’t one? He couldn’t make her out. She looked different every time he saw her. In the hospital, the cool doctor; at Bukarovsky’s banquet the stern suited spectre; at the road station the gamin in the cap; here, calmly managerial. Yet the same face – pale, thin-nosed, vaguely anaemic. No lipstick or makeup. The hair blondeish, severely drawn back; not remarkable. Nothing about her was remarkable, except the air of pale competence. Was she forty, thirty? Impossible to say. The grey eyes were looking him over.

  ‘Are you pure Chukchee?’

  ‘I don’t know how pure I am. I’m Chukchee.’ He allowed a spurt of temper to show as he said this, and she looked down at his dossier again.

  ‘There’s nothing further we should know about, here?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘All right. Let’s have a look at you. Strip off over there. There’s a bench.’

  His mouth opened, but she had risen immediately and was washing her hands at a basin. The bench was behind a plastic curtain. He took his boots off, then closed the curtain and took everything off down to his socks and shorts.

  ‘I’ll need to see your feet,’ she said, briskly parting the curtain.

  ‘My feet? My feet are fine.’

  ‘Have you had frostbite ever?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Show me.’

  He took his socks off, and she closely inspected the feet. ‘Yes. Good. A fine instep – all you northern people have it. Now the shorts.’

  ‘My shorts? What –’

  ‘I will examine your testicles.’

  He silently removed the shorts and she examined the testicles.

  ‘Cough.’ He coughed.

  ‘Again
.’ Again.

  ‘Yes.’ She examined further in the area, and then his abdomen, ribs, arms, armpits, mouth, ears, eyes, head.

  ‘The head. Have you had alopecia?’

  ‘I had delayed shock, after an accident. All the hair fell out.’

  ‘This has been shaved recently.’

  ‘I shave it. You don’t like it this way?’

  She made no comment, adjusting her stethoscope. She listened to his chest. She listened to his back. She listened to his chest again.

  ‘Well, I think Anadyr was right,’ she said, ‘and Novosibirsk wrong. You have a murmur.’

  ‘A murmur?’ He had no murmur. Khodyan might have one, but he didn’t. ‘What murmur?’

  ‘The streptococcal infection had an effect on the heart. Very slight, but it’s there. You can get dressed now.’

  He got dressed, thinking this over. What was going on here? He absolutely had no murmur. He had been checked out thoroughly at the camp. He went out of the cubicle, very wary.

  ‘I can’t recommend that you drive long distances,’ she said. She was writing again, and nodded to him to sit. ‘It’s dangerous, for you and for others.’

  ‘But I’m a driver!’

  ‘You are entitled to a cardiological examination. I will arrange it for you at the hospital if you wish. But for the present, no long journeys.’

  ‘Then what will I do?’

  ‘Are they so important to you, long journeys?’ She had glanced up quickly as she said this.

  ‘Well.’ He had seen the advantages at once: a word from her and no more of Yura’s Kamas. But what was her game? ‘It’s my work,’ he said.

  ‘You can do other work, short journeys. That I will allow. After a rest. You are quite tired. I am authorising a week off work for you. Hand this in to the office there.’

  He stared blankly at the form she gave him.

  ‘A few days’ rest isn’t a punishment,’ she said, the faint smile appearing again. ‘You have friends here, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, friends.’

  ‘But not Chukchee – is that it?’

  ‘No. No Chukchees here,’ he said with more confidence.