Landfalls (33 page)

*   *   *

Barth
é
lemy de Lesseps departed Bolsheretsk on January 27, 1788, his twenty-second birthday. The party included Golikoff, thirty-five sleds, almost as many guides, a few Russian soldiers, and three hundred dogs. Lesseps drove his own sled, keeping the dispatch box in an enclosure beneath his seat. When they finally stopped for the night, he couldn't sleep—not that night or the next or the next. The dogs howled with hunger, new tempests threatened to blow them away or bury them alive, and all night long his sable rattled in its cage.

The creature had never grown accustomed to captivity; it refused most of the food Lesseps offered and tried to bite him again whenever he approached. Lesseps thought the journey through the snowy wilderness might restore the animal, but it lurked listlessly in a corner of its cage all day and rattled piteously, gnawing on the slats, all night. Perhaps it would settle down if they succeeded in finding a mate for it, he thought. But they didn't, and within a week of their departure, it was dead.

Lesseps's sadness over the animal's loss surprised him; he had not been aware of any attachment to it. Golikoff took the carcass away and returned with the fur. “Give it to your queen as a gift,” he said.

Yes, he would do that. But meanwhile he wore it around his neck. At night, trying to fall asleep, he leaned his face against the impossibly soft fur and tried to remember the Kamchadal words Daria had taught him:
sable, woman, hair, love, cage
.

*   *   *

The road north, such as it was, snaked through a birch-filled valley between roughly parallel chains of volcanoes. At first he marveled at the stark beauty of the landscape—the watchful white trees ranged like sentinels in the snow, giving way occasionally to reveal, on a clear day, massive volcanoes smoking benignly against a sky so blue it hurt to look at. But the beauty palled after a while—it was monotonous, unrelenting, and altogether indifferent to their human presence. When they finally reached the Pacific at the coastal village of Nizhne, Lesseps rejoiced to see the ocean again—and experienced a sudden stabbing longing for the friends who were out there somewhere, exploring the same body of water.

In the village itself, Lesseps was shocked to meet nine Japanese mariners, survivors of a shipwreck in the Aleutians who had been rescued by a Russian merchant ship the year before. Lesseps spent an evening with their captain, a short, solid man with a serious, intelligent face who called himself Kodai. He wore his long, straight hair tied French-style at the nape of his neck and smiled when Lesseps pulled off his fur cap and sable cravat to demonstrate the similarity in their coiffures. After eating, a task he accomplished by deftly wielding two polished sticks, Kodai pulled out a kind of notebook and showed Lesseps some Japanese writing. It looked just like Chinese to Lesseps, but he didn't say so, worried the comparison might offend his new friend. “What does it say?” he asked instead. Kodai explained in halting but passable Russian that he was recording their experiences in Kamchatka.

Lesseps undid his deerskin jacket and retrieved from within his own notebook. “I'm doing the same,” he said. “It's called a
journal
,” he added.

“You will write about us,” Kodai said gravely.

Lesseps promised to do so.

Later, when he returned to the fishy, smoky dwelling that was their lodgings for the night, he found Golikoff asleep with his arm around the dispatch box. Lesseps tried to be quiet, but when he started undressing, Golikoff mumbled, “It's very late.”

Lesseps pulled on the fur-lined stockings he wore to bed. “Golikoff,” he whispered, not wanting to wake the guides sleeping nearby.

“What?”

“Is there any chance for them to get home?”

“Who?”

“The Japanese.”

Golikoff opened his eyes and turned toward Lesseps. “Our ships can't get anywhere near their shores,” he said. “No captain will risk it. Anyway, we hear they kill their own people who leave then try to come back.”

“We've heard that too,” Lesseps said, lying down in the space next to Golikoff. He sighed. “Imagine the desolation of being stuck in a place like this with absolutely no hope of getting home.”

Golikoff reached out toward Lesseps with one hand, then drew back. “
Barin
, it's my sworn duty to make sure you're not stranded here.”

“I know, Golikoff,” Lesseps said. “I wasn't really thinking of myself.”

*   *   *

Storms assailed them for the next hundred leagues and more. No village, woods, or running water lay in their path to provide shelter or provisions. More than once they were forced to stop overnight in the open with nothing but frozen reindeer to eat. They rationed the dogs to one fish a day. The poor creatures looked thinner under their coats every morning and howled even more piteously at night. Lesseps was so tired and hungry himself that he mostly slept through it.

Every day a few of the dogs would collapse. At first the guides would call a halt, rush over, undo the harness, drag the dog's inert body to the roadside, and shout for the party to move on. But then they started allowing the remaining dogs to eat their fallen comrades. After a few days they abandoned one sled to consolidate the remaining dogs, and two days later, another.

When they ran low on water, Lesseps was incredulous. “How is that possible?” he cried. “We're surrounded by
snow
.”

Golikoff explained that melting enough snow for all the drivers and dogs to drink was impracticable; they needed to find running water.

Later, his throat aflame with thirst, Lesseps stuffed fistfuls of snow in his mouth although Golikoff and the others shouted at him not to. His thirst remained unassuaged, and then he grew terribly chilled. That night he ran a high fever. Golikoff remained at his side, plying him with tea and watching him with concern.

“Go away, Golikoff,” Lesseps muttered. “I don't want your face to be the last thing I see.”

He woke up shivering the next morning; his fever had broken, but his clothes were soaked. He turned to find Golikoff sitting next to him, sharpening a straight razor. “The doctor on the
Astrolabe
didn't believe in bloodletting,” he said.

Golikoff started.
“Barin,”
he cried. “You're alive!”

Lesseps struggled to sit up. “Don't sound so surprised,” he said. He trembled violently as he tried to peel off his clothes. “I'm freezing,” he said. “Help me out of these and into something dry.” He looked over at Golikoff, who was standing over him pressing a cloth to his forearm. “What's the matter?”

Golikoff looked embarrassed. “I nicked myself with my blade just now.”

“What?”

Golikoff hastily bandaged his own arm, then made his way to Lesseps's bags. “You surprised me when you suddenly woke up.”

Lesseps watched Golikoff fumble for a fresh set of clothes. “Were you about to cut me open?” he asked, his teeth chattering.

“No!” Golikoff cried. He came to Lesseps's side and wrested him out of his clothes, the outermost layers of which were stiff with cold. “I— I was going to shave you, actually,” he said, not meeting Lesseps's eyes.

Lesseps ran his hand over the uneven, scraggly growth on his chin and laughed. “Do
not
touch a Frenchman's face while he's sleeping, Golikoff,” he said.

Once dressed and warmed by a few sips of tea, he insisted over Golikoff's protests that they press on. “I'm fine,” he said. “It's just a cold.”

Golikoff shook his head. “Your overconfidence is going to kill you,” he barked as he signaled to the rest of the party to move on.

*   *   *

Most of the Kamchadal guides left when they entered the territory of the Koryaks, a people rumored to be restive and bellicose. Lesseps thought they just looked hungry and wary. At the first village they reached, two men appeared and refused to sell the party any food, even though Golikoff offered them an excellent price. When he persisted, the men pulled long knives out. In an instant, Golikoff had a pistol aimed at the younger villager's head. “If you will not sell us any food,” he said, “we will take it.”

The men cowered and pleaded that they had none to sell or give.

“We'll see,” Golikoff said, then instructed the remaining guides to take a few of their stronger and more trustworthy dogs to sniff out the village's stores.

The starving animals immediately led them to a cache buried behind the village's cluster of yurts. Golikoff stood guard while Lesseps and the soldiers loaded dried fish and whale meat onto their sleds. They also found an Imperial Army tent.

“Well,” Golikoff said, directing one of the men to add it to their haul, “I think this makes us even.”

A low, unearthly wailing, hollow and almost musical, started up around them.

“What is that?” Lesseps cried, the back of his neck creeping.

“Never mind,” Golikoff said.

One of the guides pointed toward the yurts. The rest of the villagers were hidden within but were obviously aware of the devastation being wrought upon them.

“Come!” Golikoff shouted to the party.

“How will they survive?” Lesseps asked.

Golikoff's brown eyes, the only part of his face visible from behind the fur hood and chin cloth, glinted hard. “I promised to get you out of here alive no matter what,” he said.

That night, three young Koryak men came to their encampment and asked to be taken on as guides. Golikoff assented after searching them and divesting them of their knives.

*   *   *

In mid-March, they reached Penzhina Bay, where Kamchatka joined the mainland, and came upon a large encampment of nomadic Chukchis, a people said to be even fiercer than the Koryaks. The bundles of spears and arrows marking the entrance to each tent seemed to confirm the rumors. Lesseps could see Golikoff, riding in the sled ahead of him, feel for the pistol in his overcoat as they approached. But when their guides explained to the men who barred their way that they were conveying a Frenchman toward St. Petersburg, the party was welcomed with more warmth than they had met anywhere else—offered water and dried reindeer for themselves and their dogs, and invited to spend the night.

“By all means,” Lesseps said.

“No,
barin
,” Golikoff whispered. “We should pay for the provisions and move on.”

“We have nothing to fear,” Lesseps said.

“The Imperial Army has waged many wars against these people.”

“I'm not the Imperial Army,” Lesseps said. “And look at their cheeks, Golikoff, how fat they are. Well-fed people are friendly.”

“Is this what your travels have taught you?”

“Yes.”

“My travels have taught me that a man will try to kill you for no reason at all.”

“Dear Golikoff,” Lesseps said. “How very Russian you sound.”

The two men pitched the confiscated tent at the edge of the encampment. Golikoff had almost regained his good humor when Lesseps insisted they hide their weapons and refused to let Golikoff stand sentry at the entrance. “It shows we trust them,” he said.

“But I
don't
trust them.”

Golikoff sat glumly beside Lesseps while the leading men of the encampment crowded into the tent to talk to their exotic visitor. Their solicitousness led Lesseps to suspect that their guide may have introduced him as the French ambassador. He offered them tea and rye biscuits and gifts of tobacco, and tried to satisfy their prodigious curiosity about the world. He tore a page from his journal and drew a rough map of the world on it, showing them the extent of his travels.

“Why have no other Frenchmen come?” one of them asked.

Lesseps smiled. They had no notion of the distances involved, of course. He explained how he had spent two years by sea and six months by land to reach them. But the same man pointed to the place on Lesseps's map that he had identified as England and said, “But we sometimes meet men from this place.” Well, of course you do, Lesseps thought peevishly, resenting the English compulsion to go everywhere.

The evening ended with a surprising invitation to choose a companion for the night from among their many wives. When he tried to decline, they pressed him, and the interpreter whispered that it was part of Chukchi hospitality to an honored guest and considered rude to say no.

“In that case,” Lesseps said, “perhaps my hosts could choose someone for me.”

This satisfied the men, who vied with one another for the honor of offering a woman from his household. “And for your man here?” one of them asked. “He looks like he needs cheering up.”

Lesseps turned to look at Golikoff. Indeed, the soldier's face was rigid with disapproval. He refused to speak or to meet Lesseps's inquiring glance.

Two women came to the tent with food and drink and a whale-fat lantern, after which the Chukchi men retired with knowing leers and gestures. One woman was short and round, with dark eyes that disappeared into her face when she smiled. She sat beside Lesseps and plied him with a kind of flower bud steeped in whale fat, tastier than expected. The other woman was taller and more graceful in her movements, but obviously uneasy about being there. She kept her fur hood up so her face remained hidden. A thick braid of black hair was the only visible part of her body. She seated herself next to Golikoff but would not look at him, nor he at her.

The woman who'd chosen Lesseps seemed quite enamored of the brass buttons on his coat. She used gestures to ask for a few of them, and when he said yes, alarmed and tantalized him by biting them off. Removing her many layers of clothes, she revealed without embarrassment a lumpy, middle-aged body that smelled of fish but also demonstrated, Lesseps mused, the extent to which enthusiasm could make up for lack of beauty. He wanted to see what the other woman looked like, but she and Golikoff remained next to each other, not touching.