Kolymsky Heights (19 page)

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.

‘Oh, but there are. At Novokolymsk, the collective. You haven’t been there yet?’

‘No.’ Chukchees there, too? It must be a collective for all the native peoples.

‘And even nearer at hand – at Panarovka, this side of the river. I go there tomorrow. It should have been today. If you want I’ll take you. Then you can talk Chukchee.’ There was now – was he wrong? – something taunting in her expression.

His smile easily outshone hers. ‘I would like that! Thank you.’

‘All right. I have a few things to do at Green Cape. Be outside your building at eleven and I can pick you up. I have to stay overnight, but there’s accommodation for you, too. Bring what you need – pyjamas, toothbrush. A razor,’ she said, looking at his head.

He went out in a daze.

In the bobik, he saw it was a quarter past six. He’d missed Vassili; the Light Vehicles depot would be shut. But there was more urgent and serious business here. She knew something. The inch-by-inch examination of him. She had examined him before …
She knew
.

But had she told anyone else? So far as he could tell he hadn’t been watched. Perhaps she hadn’t been sure until now; perhaps was still not sure. But tomorrow she would be sure. The Yukagir had not thought him a Yukagir, or the Evenks an Evenk. Was he any more likely to fool the Chukchees? … Perhaps with Khodyan’s screwed-up background – Anadyr, Novosibirsk, here, there – he might just swing it.

But
she
had swung it, against him. A clever as well as a tough bitch. With Khodyan’s suspected murmur she had effectively stopped him from leaving her district. She wanted to keep an eye on him. And tomorrow she would have ample opportunity. With Chukchees to confirm her suspicions.

What then? Should he get out of it? And afterwards be stuck here, a week off work, not knowing what she was doing? No, not that. But was it any better staying close to her?

He couldn’t think.

‘Pussy cat, where have you been?’ Lydia Yakovlevna was huddled in the doorway. ‘I haven’t seen you for days!’

In the same confusion of mind, he had driven back, parked the car, walked into the building, quite unaware of any of it. He looked at her.

‘I’ve been to Bilibino,’ he said.

To Bilibino! Oh, what a lot of money. But poor lamb, you’ll be tired. Come in, have a drink and we’ll do things. Tonight I’ll really relax you.’

And that night she almost wore him out. But relax him she did, and as the big girl worked away he knew what he would do. He would keep to the plan. He would go with Komarova the next day; but if anything untoward happened, she would not see another.

The broad Kolyma, shining white; a blinding white. At eleven-thirty the day had not long dawned but already they needed their snow glasses. She was in her cap and parka, and she handled the bobik efficiently – a white one striped with red which he recalled having seen at the road station.

‘You drive everywhere yourself?’ he said. This he said for something to say; she had said almost nothing, buzzing quite fast on the river.

‘I fly if I have to. It means arrangements. Driving is easier.’

‘Yes. On a fine day.’

Today was very fine, the sky clear, faintly blue. Smoke stood straight in the air from occasional houses on the bank; from the opposite bank also, three or four miles away across the white expanse, the air crystal clear. This was no good. It was the way to Anyuysk, and he knew it. No good.

‘But not in bad weather,’ he said, ‘or for long distances. The road station we met at – a long distance.’

‘Yes. The limit of my district.’

‘You treat people there?’

‘Settlements. They send a tractor over for me.’

‘And take them food also?’ She had picked up a couple of crates at Green Cape, evidently from store; fruit and vegetables, canned goods.

‘No.’

She had seen him glance behind at the stuff, but made no other comment.

All right, tough baby. No questions from her about Chukotka, or even his driving experiences, which would have been normal. Well, he could wait too. Until tomorrow, at any rate. He needed information from her first, to find out how far the thing had gone. He had decided to dispose of her anyway. The matter of Murmansk would always remain in the air. All he needed was a place for the accident.

‘It’s up a creek, this settlement?’ he said.

‘A small river. Panarovka.’

‘That’s the name of the river?’

‘Of the village. The river is the Little Ghost.’

‘A strange name. Why Little Ghost?’

‘A camp used to be there – an old one, from Tsarist times. It was used since, of course. Many people died there. Their ghosts remain.’

‘You believe that?’ he said incredulously.

She smiled.

‘The Chukchees believe it.’ And now she became suddenly talkative. ‘You’ll know a good many of the old beliefs, I expect?’

‘Well, some. A broken childhood,’ he said cautiously. ‘And my father a teacher – he didn’t believe.’

‘These are old-fashioned people here.
They
believe. They’ve been here for generations. And they know many things. Maybe they even know you.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said regretfully. ‘I never was here.’

‘But they go there – to Chukotka. They fly out, they keep up their contacts.’

‘They do?’

‘Oh, yes. Regularly. They know everything that goes on there – a wonderful knowledge of family networks. It’s good to keep such things alive. Don’t you agree?’

‘Yes, it’s good. It’s nice,’ he said.

‘They’ll certainly know of your family – parents, aunts, cousins. You will have a lot in common. It will be interesting even apart from the language.’

‘Yes, interesting,’ he said.

‘I thought so. I have a good relationship with them. They tell me everything. Now here,’ she said, ‘we’re just coming to the Little Ghost. Over there, the opposite bank, is Novokolymsk, a few kilometres farther, you can’t see it from here. It isn’t far in a bobik. They are more up to date at the collective. As a modern person perhaps you’ll have more in common. If you want to visit, I can arrange it for you.’

‘Yes. I’d like it,’ he said. ‘Maybe while I’m off work I can run an errand for you there?’

‘Maybe. I’ll try and think of something.’

‘You could write me a letter here. I could take it later.’

She smiled behind her snow glasses. ‘You prefer more up-to-date people,’ she said.

‘Well. While I have nothing else to do – I could meet them.’

‘All right, I’ll write a few lines. Remind me.’

‘I will. Good,’ he said. And everything now was good. The little Ghost river was good. The bank of the Kolyma had fallen away and they were in the tributary. A wonderful little tributary, like the one to Provodnoye; winding, sharp bends. The banks were not so high, and not so vertical; but high enough and vertical enough. And quite narrow, no more than four metres, in places only three. Yes, easily done here.

He sized it up carefully as she wound around the bends, but in twenty minutes – rather too soon – Panarovka came into view. The river widened suddenly into a small curving bay and the bank fell to form a beach. The village was set back on a snow-covered slope, perhaps 300 metres away; at first glance a huddle of small blobs with a taller one behind. A track had been made, climbing from the river, and she turned up it.

Closer to, the small blobs became recognisable as three rows of houses. The taller one was no less recognisable.

‘A church,’ she said, as he peered. ‘The place is old.’

‘Do they use it any more?’

‘Yes, they use it.’

Both the church and the houses were of wood, the houses detached and with a fence of palings round each. Smoke came from the houses but no one was about, and she drove along the upper row and parked outside the last house on the corner.

‘Your clinic?’ he said.

‘Yes. Bring the other crate.’ She had got one out of the back and was walking up the stamped snow path.

So that was it. The bearer of gifts used one of the Chukchee houses as her clinic. She could have explained, if she’d wanted. What she wanted was evidently to confront him right away with some Chukchees. Okay; he braced himself.

A Chukchee woman, elderly and shapeless, opened the door as they reached it. ‘I heard the car,’ she said in Russian.

‘Yes. I’m sorry I’m late. There’s fruit here, Viktoria.’ To his surprise she kissed the Chukchee. ‘And some tinned stuff. Bring it in,’ she said to Kolya.

The woman barely glanced at him as she took the crate of fruit and looked into it, and he followed with the other crate through a little hall, curtained to keep out the draughts, into a large room. It was very warm, a big porcelain stove set against the far wall. The walls were of wood and the room dark, the windows small. Another woman was sitting in a big armchair, knitting, and Komarova bent and kissed her too.

‘Tanya!’ the woman said. She was a little bag of bones with a shawl; a walking stick leaned against the chair. ‘We expected you yesterday.’

‘I know, I’m sorry. Wait – she’ll come and take it from you,’ she said to him. ‘Mother, I’ve brought a visitor – Nikolai Dmitrievich Khodyan. He’s from Chukotka. Alexandra Ivanovna,’ she introduced her mother. ‘He can’t shake hands with you now, he’s holding a crate.’ But the Chukchee woman returned just then and took the crate, glancing at him as she did so.

‘Nikolai Dmitrievich?’ the old lady said, holding out her hand.

‘Kolya,’ he said, shaking the hand.

‘You are visiting us from Chukotka?’

‘Bend down, she can’t see you,’ Komarova ordered.

He bent and the old lady felt his face, and his head. ‘Ah, an old person?’

‘Not as young as I should be, but not that old.’

‘His hair fell out. He’s my age,’ Komarova said.

Was he now? Khodyan was thirty-six.

‘Khodyan
?’ the Chukchee woman said, returning to the room. ‘One of the Khodyans from Anadyr?’

‘Yes, I am. You are Viktoria –’

‘Eremevina.’ The Chukchee woman shook his hand. ‘And if I am not mistaken – did you say Nikolai Dmitrievich?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘The son of the schoolteacher?’

‘That’s me.’ They were talking now in Chukchee.

‘Then I was present at your birth! Heaven save us all!’ She
gave him a resounding kiss on the lips. ‘But your family moved to Novosibirsk! And your elder sister, the one who was so ill – what was her name?’

‘She died,’ Kolya said promptly. ‘It hurts me to talk of it.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry!’

‘What are they babbling at? Why babble?’ the old lady said. ‘I am also here.’

‘Viktoria is telling him she was present at his birth. His father was a schoolteacher in Anadyr. He had a sister who died.’

‘Well, I’m sorry to hear it. But they can speak a Christian language. While I am still here! Nobody has come to talk to me for half a year!’

‘I was here six weeks ago,’ Komarova said coldly. ‘And this is a busy time. Is my consulting room ready?’ she asked the Chukchee.

‘Of course. And ten people were sitting here waiting yesterday!’

‘Well, tell them I’m here now. And prepare a room for Nikolai Dmitrievich, he will be staying the night. I expect you’ll find something to talk about,’ she told him.

She was looking at him curiously, and he returned the look.

She had understood every word of the Chukchee. Well, what of it? His story had held up – indeed had been miraculously confirmed. If Khodyan did not have too many other siblings to dispose of, he could hold his own. She would question this Viktoria, he had no doubt of it, and the other Chukchees; ten patients … A very comprehensive checking out of him. A thorough bitch, and cold; brusque with her mother, and this old retainer. All of a piece, at any rate. He could handle her as long as he had to. Not so long now.

He brought in their two bags, and was shown to his room; all wood, dark, smelling of camphor.

She had gone to her consulting room when he returned and he sat and took a glass of tea with the old lady. But presently as patients arrived and, after introductions, began talking loudly
to him in Chukchee, the old woman struggled wrathfully to her feet, and was helped by Viktoria to her room.

But so far, so good. His story was sound, reasonable. A schoolmaster a little above himself had taken his family to a big town, and preferred it there. The daughter had died and the boy, detached from his background – even speaking his own tongue with an accent! – had gone on the loose. But he had hankered for the far north, had healthy instincts himself, a good young fellow.

He heard Khodyan’s antecedents discussed, flashed his smile of rueful ignorance, listened to their own stories, told of his driving experiences, of the money to be made. A levelheaded young fellow, as well as charming.

So many invitations came his way that he was able to skip the late lunch at the house and take it elsewhere: a snack here, a drink there, mainly among women and old men; and he learned the reason for this.

In summer the villagers fished and farmed. Because the river had no bank here, when the ice broke the first flood came up and washed the top metre of ground almost all the way to the village. In the good soil they grew everything – potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, beans – flowers even. Yes, in the gardens, sunflowers, this high!

But in winter the men went to the traplines, came home maybe only once in ten days. They sold the pelts through the collective at Novokolymsk. All sorts were there, Yakuts, Evenks, Yukagir, Chukchees – yes, Chukchees too. Not
quite
our sort, but decent people. If he was interested someone would always take him there, easily arranged.

He began to see he wouldn’t need Komarova for this. But he needed her for something else, of course, and he took dinner at the house. An endless meal, in which the daughter’s impatience with her mother grew.

The old lady talked. And talked. The villagers had told him, no doubt, of her late husband, Dr Komarov? An angel to them. When he had come out of the camp he had been eagerly
awaited in Leningrad, where his reputation stood so high. But no, he had set up his surgery here. An angel. They kissed his feet.
Wouldn’t
leave them, had selflessly ministered to all here. And now lay in his final place here. Which she would never leave, no never. Had he seen the graveyard?

No, he had not yet had that opportunity; he would like the opportunity.

Just beyond the church, on the high ground. Was he a churchgoer?

Sometimes
he was a churchgoer; in his job it was not always easy. And there were not that many churches!

Well, tomorrow he could go to church, Sunday. They would all go to church. This one had a beautiful, a holy history –’

‘We will go out now,’ Komarova said.

‘Out? Out where?’ her mother said.

‘To the graveyard. He wants to see it.’

‘Tatiana, are you mad? It will be pitch dark.’

‘There’s a moon.’

‘If you can see it, it will be freezing hard. He’ll see it in the morning, of course. We’ll all go.’

‘There might be no time in the morning.’

‘No time – what are you thinking of? I’ve arranged flowers for you to lay there!’

‘And tell Viktoria we’ll need fresh tea. We’ll have it when we return. It won’t be long.’

‘But you’ll freeze! It’s iron hard out there. Put everything on that you have!’

They put everything on, but he still gasped as they stepped outside. The cold was so intense it seemed to burn the backs of his eyeballs. The night was dead still, glaring white. Below her cap Komarova had wrapped her head and mouth in a woollen scarf; he held gloved hands to his mouth and smelt the leather.

They mounted the path to the church. It stood squat in the moonlight, its wooden steeple sheathed in ice. Beyond, the graveyard was set out like a camp on the white slope, neat
rows of small knobs, the tops of iced crosses. They crunched between the rows. On the mounds wisps of dried flowers poked through the snow like bits of tinsel. She paused between a couple of mounds and bent to brush the snow off one, peering.

‘Your father?’

‘Piotr Petrovich … Yes. More flowers here. Five bunches. Remember that, she’ll ask.’

Her mouth was muffled through the scarf, but her eyes when she straightened up were looking at him very levelly.

‘But we didn’t come out here to look at graveyards, Nikolai Dmitrievich,’ she said. ‘There is something I have to say to you.’