‘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!
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?’