Kolymsky Heights

by Lionel Davidson

  He was pouring himself more vodka, and the thoughtfulness arose from his growing awareness that Medical Officer Komarova was getting drunk.

  ‘No. I’m following,’ he said.

  ‘Then pour me one, too.’

  ‘Tatiana Petrovna, there are important –’

  ‘Tanya will do.’

  ‘Important matters here. Is it wise for you to drink so early?’

  ‘It isn’t wise. But is it every day one faces one’s murderer? And discusses the subsequent funeral. My God – in cold blood!’

  ‘You aren’t facing your murderer. There was no murder.’

  ‘Through my presence of mind! And your Russian has improved. Who are you?’

  ‘Tatiana – Tanya. Questions will be asked about me later. Isn’t it better that you don’t have the answers?’

  ‘All right.’ She drank a little, watching him. Her eyes were now very bright, the flush in her cheeks accentuating the pallor. She lit herself a cigarette and sat back with it in her mouth. She looked different again – longer, lankier, the injured foot stretched out on a stool, the drawn-back hair no longer unremarkable but now severely elegant.

  He looked away from her, around the dark room.

  ‘You think this a strange place for me to live?’

  ‘Perhaps I would have expected a modern apartment.’

  ‘I married into a modern apartment.’

  ‘It didn’t suit you?’ he said, after a pause.

  ‘Neither the apartment nor the little swine I married. A cardiologist, from the hospital. Now making his fortune in Moscow. Private clinics, rich crooks. His speciality was the heart but he had no heart. Far less a soul,’ she added, nodding. ‘No children, thank God. Do you have children?’

  ‘No … You were speaking of your own childhood.’

  ‘Correct. Well then, Rogachev stayed here three months, to my great delight – a playful man, good with children – and I was desolate when he left.’

  ‘Did he come in connection with the research station?’

  She shook her head. ‘He couldn’t have known anything about it then. Nobody did. It was thought to be some kind of weather place. No, he had some low-temperature experiments going on, he went out with the trappers. Then he’d come back and we would play. He was full of little games. I was Tanya-Panya, and he Misha-Bisha – our secret names.’

  ‘Misha-Bisha?’ Rogachev’s name was Efraim – Efraim Moisevich.

  ‘Misha the bear. He was a burly man. Just funny names. He gave people names.’

  ‘Yes.’ He remembered them. ‘Then what?’ he said.

  ‘Then he went away. And later so did we, to Panarovka. My father retained this house; he was helping them set up the medical service here … Anyway, there I was at Panarovka, apart from school and medical studies. And later I became a paramedic – all leading us to the point.’ She took a sip of vodka. ‘Which was when I became medical officer of this district a couple of years ago, and he asked me to help him – Rogachev did.’

  ‘You said you’d never seen him again.’

  ‘I haven’t. A note, unsigned. Just greetings from Misha-Bisha to Tanya-Panya.’

  ‘He sent you it?’

  ‘Through an Evenk. In an envelope.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There. At Tcherny Vodi. They have a surgery. I provide the medical supplies. It’s in my district.’

  ‘You go into the place?’

  ‘To deliver the supplies. And to treat patients – the Evenks and the security staff. The scientists have their own doctor, also on the staff. I’ve never seen him. I receive a list of what he wants and I supply it.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Porter said, slowly working this out ‘If an Evenk gave you the message – they see Rogachev?’

  ‘An Evenk does. Rogachev’s body servant. The job’s hereditary. That is, his father had it before him, and so on with all the previous heads.’

  ‘The manservant gave you the message?’

  ‘No, I’ve never seen him, either. But he’s allowed to meet the other Evenks, to discuss family affairs. He’s totally trusted. He wouldn’t discuss anything else – even if he knew anything. He just does what he’s told.’

  ‘And he was told to get this message to you.’

  ‘Yes. It seems Rogachev had heard there was a new medical officer – the daughter of Dr Komarov. That first note was just to check it was truly me. Later he told me what he wanted.’

  He got up and walked about the room. In a recess beside the stove an icon was on the wall. The stove was cold, the house now electrically heated, very stuffy, very warm. Books were everywhere, on shelves, tables. He couldn’t make out the titles in the dark.

  ‘What did he want?’ he said.

  ‘He said he had discovered something of great value, which they were preventing him from publishing.’

  ‘Did he say what it was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or what they’re doing up there?’

  ‘Not that either. Except I know now that it involves dangerous substances. They had an accident a few months ago, and the results of it contaminated the lake. Their filtration plant was out of action for some days and we had to send them drinking water. A few scientists flew in and made a great fuss checking out the area. But the wind was the other way and there were no effects here.’

  ‘Were the Evenks affected?’

  She shook her head. ‘It was at night and they were in their dormitory. They were locked in all next day, too. There’d been a fire and fumes were still in the air outside. It was some kind of explosion … You know about it, of course,’ she said.

  He made no comment on this.

  ‘How did he think you could help him?’

  ‘Stepan Maximovich – that’s the servant – had to get some cigarettes to me. You know all this, too.’

  ‘And what did you have to do with them?’

  ‘A Japanese ship had been coming here for the past couple of years. Some of the Evenks work as dockers during the summer, and they’d told Stepan Maximovich that one of the sailors had been asking for drugs. It was a joke – the Evenks had no access to drugs. But he passed it on to Rogachev, a piece of gossip. This was the first Misha-Bisha heard of the ship and it gave him his idea.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  She sighed. ‘For me to board the ship, of course, when it came. And contact the drug-taker.’

  ‘The Evenks pointed him out to you?’

  ‘Of course not. They know nothing of this. I saw it in the man’s eyes. I was taking the crew one at a time in a cabin set aside for me. The man was on heroin. I offered him a derivative, rather less dangerous, if he would do something for me. I explained what it was and told him I would give him more, when he came round again. The ship was coming twice in a season – in early June and in September.‘

  ’In Japanese you were explaining all this?’

  ‘In my bit of English. Enough for a hungry addict … Is this some kind of interrogation?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘What reason did you give for examining the crew?’

  ‘That I was tightening up health requirements. The ship had come from tropical parts, it was due to take on fish after unloading. And you are now making me very tired. And also hungry. In the kitchen you will find salt fish, and some bread and sour cream. Also a tray.’

  She hobbled on a stick when she had to and for the rest of the day sat with her leg up. The day was very overcast, and the windows of the old house small; but by three o’clock it was night anyway, and he had gone round switching on lamps and drawing curtains. She watched him doing it.

  ‘You’re a long fellow,’ she said, ‘for a Chukchee. But you’re not a Chukchee. Or an Evenk. Or anything I know. You’re of the north, of course?’

  ‘You identified my instep,’ he said.

  She smiled coldly. ‘Also very careful. Well, how far have your automotive works gone?’

  He had told her some details of the bobik – having decided he
needed her shed – and now he told her a few more.

  ‘You plan to leave here in this machine?’

  ‘If necessary. An alternative exit,’ he said.

  ‘Some more formal exit is planned for you, of course.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right.’ But she remained staring at him. ‘So where are you building this vehicle?’

  ‘You don’t need to know that either.’

  She lit herself a cigarette. ‘Too much smoking. But this is hardly normal.’ I’ll have another drink, too.’

  She had it on the sofa, her leg more comfortable there, and she gave him more information on the herds. They discussed the matter until supper, which he also assembled and brought from the kitchen; together with a coffee jug and two mugs.

  ‘Well, quite the housekeeper,’ she said.

  ‘Practice. Do you have help here?’

  ‘Yes. A Yakut woman comes in twice a week.’

  ‘Does she go into the shed?’

  ‘No.’ She stared at him. ‘You’re the most cunning man, I think, that I’ve ever met. That’s where you’ll keep the motor parts, is it?’

  ‘A few things, yes.’ He got on with his meal, and she got on with hers, glancing curiously at him.

  She told him the layout of the research station and he listened closely.

  ‘So where’s your consulting room?’

  ‘In the guards’ quarters. The Evenks come there.’

  ‘Is that the only place you have contact with them?’

  ‘Well, they have to unload the car and load it again.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Various supplies. Big distilled water jars. They use a lot of it there, laboratory work. It’s not worth flying in, and we produce it in Tchersky anyway. Various oilier drums and containers. I take the empties back.’

  ‘Where do they keep this stuff?’

  ‘In a storage shed, near the airstrip.’

  ‘Is that where you park?’

  ‘No, I’m not allowed there. I go to the commandant’s office. And they bring along a sled, or a tractor. It depends how much there is.’

  ‘Do you supervise this operation?’

  ‘The security people do. They have to check everything that goes in or out. Were you thinking I might smuggle you out?’

  ‘Well … What if somebody’s ill?’

  ‘They’d be flown out. And not to Tchersky. No contact is allowed with Tchersky. And nobody goes in or out without an escort anyway.’

  He drank his coffee, musing.

  ‘So how do I get out?’ he said.

  ‘The same way you get in?’

  ‘And stay there a month?’

  ‘That would complicate matters in Green Cape, wouldn’t it?’ She nodded. ‘Well, you’re not thinking so badly. Go and bring the cognac. Maybe you’ll do better.’

  He went and got the cognac, puzzled. She had drunk a lot today, but it had not noticeably affected her judgment or the authority of her manner. Evidently he was being subjected to some other test, a probe of his reactions. She had done it before, in the church. She was taking risks, of course, for herself, for Rogachev.

  He turned with the cognac, and saw she had shifted position on the sofa.

  ‘Come and sit here,’ she said. ‘I’m tired of shouting.’

  He sat slowly, and carefully poured.

  ‘Your hands are long,’ she said. ‘Also your femur.’ She examined the femur. She examined it all the way up, and unzipped him and slipped a hand in.

  He gazed at her.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said.

  ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘You have examined me once already.’

  ‘Now you can examine me.’

  With her other arm she pulled his head down and kissed him. It was quite an affectionate kiss, and she was smiling as she drew back and looked into his face. ‘Long fellow,’ she said, ‘today you tried to kill me, and I could be dead. But I am not dead, and nor are you, and this is my house. You attract me. I am accustomed to getting what I want. And it’s something to celebrate, after all – being alive. You can take me to bed now.’

  *

  She was not as well found as Lydia Yakovlevna; lankier, less yielding. But she was lithe, controlled, and quite used, as she said, to getting what she wanted. She was also very much more genuine, arching without histrionics when her moment came, and he arched at the same time, and afterwards she kissed his face and stroked it.

  ‘Yes, worth celebrating,’ she said. ‘And altogether satisfactory. But now there’s work to do.’

  They got up and did it for some hours: planning how he could get into and also out of the place he had come around the world to reach. Before midnight they had agreed the first steps, and these were detailed steps.

  34

  On Monday he took his sick-note to the administration block, and immediately afterwards went to see Vassili in his store room.

  ‘You didn’t come Friday,’ Vassili said.

  ‘They gave me a medical. I’ll take the stuff at lunch time, Vassili. And, listen, I need a bobik for a week.’

  ‘A week?’

  ‘They laid me off, at the medical. They say I’m tired and need a week’s rest.’

  Vassili looked him over. ‘Well, you’re looking shagged,’ he said. ‘That’s your Evenk girl, is it? What use are you going to be to her if you’re worn out?’

  ‘Never mind – I need a bobik.’

  ‘So go and ask Liova.’

  ‘If I’m off work I’m not entitled … Vassili, put in a word for me.’

  The old Yakut chuckled silently. ‘All right But let him take a look at you himself. He’ll see what a wreck you are. You don’t need to mention anything.’

  He grunted and went to find the Light Vehicles chief.

  ‘Well,’ Liova said, staring at him, ‘you need a rest, it’s obvious. You’ve been working hard.’

  ‘I don’t. But it’s what they said. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Kolya – take it easy, now. You’re a good lad.’

  At lunch time he went back to the depot and found Vassili alone, eating from his pot.

  ‘You got your bobik,’ the Yakut told him, chewing. ‘And Liova said shove one into her for him, too. I never saw him laugh so much. You want to take the axles now?’

  He took the axles and he also took the manual, to see how to put the thing together. And in an hour and a quarter was at Anyuysk,

  He took the made track fast and was soon off it and on to the tributary. The days were now shorter, barely two hours; this one grey, clear, very cold; a still life, set in ice. It was a week now since he’d been here. He found the overhanging bushes and got out and inspected the cave with a torch. All as he had left it. He drove the bobik in with the lights on, kept the engine running, and unloaded the axle assemblies. Then he stood back and looked around. Spacious enough, but no room for two bobiks. When he started assembly, the other one would have to stand outside.

  He became aware of another problem. For the assembly he was going to need light. Not light from the delivery bobik – that was out of the question; even from the air it might be seen. And not just torchlight. Proper lighting. He needed a generator, and some wiring rigged, and a tarpaulin or sheet for the entrance. Well, it could be done.

  The ice box was chilling him to the bone and he got back in the bobik and sat with the heat on, leafing through the greasy manual. The first job: bolt the chassis together. And get it on wheels. Then what? He studied the drawings and the exploded diagrams. Steering assembly, brakes, transmission, clutch. Hours of fiddling in the deep freeze. He would need a heater, too.

  It was dark outside now, and he reversed out and drove back along the tributary. He drove slowly with only side lights until he came to the made track and Anyuysk, and then put on speed. The plan called for him to go home now.

  Anna Antonovna heard him enter the apartment, and sho
rtly afterwards was tapping on the door herself. He had given the old lady her own key but she was discreet in using it.

  ‘Well, I tidied you in here,’ she said. ‘But what happened this weekend? You said you wouldn’t be working.’

  ‘No, I was with friends.’

  ‘Here, or in Tchersky?’

  ‘Neither. At Novokolymsk.’ This was the story they had agreed. ‘I’ve got a week off so I thought I’d pay them a visit – with a bobik I borrowed. I’ll be running out there again,’ he told her, grinning.

  ‘Ah, you found the natives at the collective, did you?’

  ‘Sure. And they can sleep me. I only looked in to pick up a few clothes.’

  ‘What, you’re going back now?’

  ‘For a few days.’

  ‘Well, I know who won’t be pleased at that,’ Anna Antonovna said; but the old cat face was smiling as she left.

  She would be passing on this interesting item to the young lady in the supermarket. All as planned. Everybody had to know. He took a shower and sat in one of Ponomarenko’s bathrobes, with a vodka.

  There was no phone in the apartment, and he didn’t want to use the public one below. He waited until he could hear no traffic and then dressed and packed a bag and left. At Tchersky the lights were on behind her curtains, and he turned into the driveway. She had given him a set of keys and he parked the bobik with hers in the shed and locked it again. Then he let himself into the house.

  35

  The house of Dr Komarov had stood a hundred years – a long time for a simple one of wood, but the wood was good. It had seen out Tsar Alexander III and Tsar Nicolas II, and also the entire communist régime. Though tilted sharply in two directions, it still looked good for many years to come, for now it was rooted firmly in the permafrost.

  Now but not always. In 1893 when the cellar had held prisoners of Alexander III they had lit a fire in it to try to stay alive. This had thawed the permafrost, and occasioned the first tilt. The second was Dr Komarov’s. In an onslaught on the bugs and lice that infested the place he had treated every centimetre of it with a chemical solution; and to make sure of remaining larvae had boiled them with a steam hose. He had steamed out the cellar too, and in the summer of 1959 the house had lurched slowly forward.