x
The Middle of Nowhere (a.k.a a Tungusi camp on the Chambe River)311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7cwmZZFGYh
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhptSmz3FSg
To my dearest siblings, Oxana and Dmitri.....311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl6rfEK0Xzm
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV9ztCPCQFh
(Don't worry, Ludmilla. I haven't forgotten you. You are my wife, after all)311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfHzZaTMtgw
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm2HPg1I1ga
We've left the "metropolis" of Vanavara far behind. Mind you, it was hard enough311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTNgvpaOoOq
getting here to start with. Without Basha to guide us, I'm sure it would've taken us twice the time to cover the distance.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf1vvkFojdq
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLke5e4d4gX
Our compass was little use; the latitude was already too high for accurate magnetic readings. The map we'd brought from Krasnoyarsk was mostly wishful thinking, so we all began drawing our own maps. But the terrain was vilely confusing: such a chaos of rugged gullies and steep hills, with creeks snaking everywhere---and the larger of these still unfrozen, so that we had to plodge through them, while the smaller rivulets were iced over and camouflaged with snow, providing excellent pitfalls for us and the horses...311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ2Lez4CSIh
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG3BFOs2Dbw
Yes, Basha proved invaluable. But as our mutual comprehension improved, he began to behave oddly, particularly our stay in Vanavara itself, which Tsiolkovsky and I devoted to questioning witnesses of the explosion two years ago.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG6AhrQenZY
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZOxDWGIKeA
Naturally, we had already asked Basha about the bizarre event, but given his bastard Russian it was hard to say just what his answers were. Now that we were this much closer to the area of devastation and now that he saw us actively pursuing our enquiries, our Tungusi friend became at once jittery and almost cloyingly coquettish. It seemed to me as if, with our camera and theodolite and other wonderful gear, we had become a sort of magic talisman of protection for the man---a safe conduct, or lucky charm, yet one of whose efficacies might fail at any time, bringing down a horrible nemesis upon his head.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPg1QCEID4s
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY732t7zUEs
As I was saying, while we were in Vanavara, Milorad Yanovich interviewed a number of the more reliable local farmers and traders. Faithfully we copied down their tales of fearful thunderclaps, and a pillar of light flaring into the sky, followed by an oven-hot wind fierce enough to knock a man off his feet and bring sods tumbling from the roofs, and a black mushrooming cloud.
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhptSmz3FSg
To my dearest siblings, Oxana and Dmitri.....311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl6rfEK0Xzm
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV9ztCPCQFh
(Don't worry, Ludmilla. I haven't forgotten you. You are my wife, after all)311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfHzZaTMtgw
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm2HPg1I1ga
We've left the "metropolis" of Vanavara far behind. Mind you, it was hard enough311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTNgvpaOoOq
getting here to start with. Without Basha to guide us, I'm sure it would've taken us twice the time to cover the distance.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf1vvkFojdq
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLke5e4d4gX
Our compass was little use; the latitude was already too high for accurate magnetic readings. The map we'd brought from Krasnoyarsk was mostly wishful thinking, so we all began drawing our own maps. But the terrain was vilely confusing: such a chaos of rugged gullies and steep hills, with creeks snaking everywhere---and the larger of these still unfrozen, so that we had to plodge through them, while the smaller rivulets were iced over and camouflaged with snow, providing excellent pitfalls for us and the horses...311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ2Lez4CSIh
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG3BFOs2Dbw
Yes, Basha proved invaluable. But as our mutual comprehension improved, he began to behave oddly, particularly our stay in Vanavara itself, which Tsiolkovsky and I devoted to questioning witnesses of the explosion two years ago.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG6AhrQenZY
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZOxDWGIKeA
Naturally, we had already asked Basha about the bizarre event, but given his bastard Russian it was hard to say just what his answers were. Now that we were this much closer to the area of devastation and now that he saw us actively pursuing our enquiries, our Tungusi friend became at once jittery and almost cloyingly coquettish. It seemed to me as if, with our camera and theodolite and other wonderful gear, we had become a sort of magic talisman of protection for the man---a safe conduct, or lucky charm, yet one of whose efficacies might fail at any time, bringing down a horrible nemesis upon his head.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPg1QCEID4s
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY732t7zUEs
As I was saying, while we were in Vanavara, Milorad Yanovich interviewed a number of the more reliable local farmers and traders. Faithfully we copied down their tales of fearful thunderclaps, and a pillar of light flaring into the sky, followed by an oven-hot wind fierce enough to knock a man off his feet and bring sods tumbling from the roofs, and a black mushrooming cloud.
Countess Lydia snapped photographs of some of our informants, but then she got bored and took herself for a snowy gallop on borrowed horses with Mishin (supposedly to try to pot a rabbit) and that left the two of us to get on with the job, helped or hampered as the case might be by Yanovich and Basha. Basha had insisted on tagging along, though he was acting weirdly, and Yanovich also seemed to have suffered a sudden fit of nervous instability. At each additional vindication of the stories he originally related on that fatal night at the inn, our Rudolph ("At your service!") Abramovich, would grin inanely in a way suggesting quite clearly to me that he was incapable of separating the wheat from the chaff in any scientific manner. Boiled turnip head, boiled brains---oh, Jesus Christ, please have mercy!
As we tramped back from an outlying farm, Tsiolkovsky fell behind with Basha, and the two men fell into a kind of conversation, leaving me with my spaniel Yanovich; and I gained the impression, from a few paces behind, that a rapport had somehow been achieved between our Tungusi with his pidgin Russian, and a half-dead Milorad.
This was amply confirmed later on, in the "inn."
Lydia and Mishin hadn't yet come back. Yanovich was staring at the notes we'd taken, as if they were the Holy Bible. Basha had gone off somewhere and Richard was poring over his charts.
Tsiolkovsky leaned over Richard's shoulder and planted a finger on the map about one hundred versts north of Vanavara. "From what Basha says, the spaceship must have exploded about----here."
Oxana, Dmitri, if either of you have any kind of map of this area, you will see that the Tunguska flows westward from Vanavara towards its confluence with the Chambe. Our original plan was to have some more rafts knocked together and head downstream, then somehow haul our rafts up the Chambe----infested with rapids, though we'd learned it to be, until we reached the Makrita River. On the map the Makrita is a very sinuous waterway though Richard surmised that the mapmaker might've put in all those loops and twists merely to make the river look like, well, a river. Tsiolkvosky's finger was indicating a spot some way beyond the headwaters of the Makrita.
"Is that what he says? So that's where the meteor crater will be."
Tsiolkovsky turned a deaf ear to Richard's remark. He traced a line from Vanavara directly north through a blank on the map.
"And here's the Tungusi track that Basha will show us---as far as his family's tents on the upper Chambe. We can stay there overnight. After that, it's up to us."
"Hang on," said Richard, "this is where he comes into his own. It's his territory; he can't chicken out just short of the finishing post. We'd better offer him more rubles."
"But he's scared; that's what he's been trying to tell me, only it's a bit more complicated than that."
"Is that why he stayed down south all summer? Because he's scared?"
"That is partly why."
"He promised to guide us, dammit to hell! 'As far as we need to go,' were his exact goddamn words!"
"I think he meant as far as we should go."
"I get the impression," I said, "that he's our guide, equally, we're his escorts."
"That's it in a nutshell!" exclaimed Konstantin. "He has what you might call family problems. Families! Humbug!" And Tsiolkovsky got quite pissed off about it. "Families have rights over you. They make demands. You can bind yourself in slavery because of a family. It doesn't matter how much you all love each other and care for each other---it's still slavery! As far as I'm concerned, true freedom and joy comes from the mind. It comes from thoughts that are free of hidebound conventions! A family can cripple you!"
If I may digress here, my siblings, and venture quite frankly upon a delicate topic, well, it's perfectly true in theory that a man needs a wife, and a woman needs a husband in our society. But in practice where would I ever find a wife as attentive and understanding and ever helpful as you? And where could you find a suitor whom I could fully trust to take care of you as you deserve? A suitor might have lots of attractive qualities on the surface, but if you're not blinded by emotional caprice or by foolish desperation (a fear that it's all getting too late) then you'll soon find this-and-that wrong. In a nutshell, you'll make a big mistake if you're too impetuous.
(I suspect, Oxana and Dmitri, that I'm not going to send these pages to you after all. Why should I confuse you unnecessarily, when you are obviously perfectly happy with things the way they are? As is your devoted triplet.)
I could understand why Tsiolkovsky was all bent out of shape about the subject of the family. I'd gathered during the course of several conversations that his father was a bold and honest man (outspoken on religion and politics) and consequently he was a total failure in life. (It's the evil ones who thrive!) Tsiolkovsky's father was dismissed from his post as a forest ranger, which destroyed whatever home security the family had, and Konstantin had to rely on the home, since he could not easily make friends outside because of his deafness and gawkiness. Then to top it all off, his mother died when he was only thirteen years of age. His father tried to be an inventor, but of course he got no thanks from the world for that, though he encouraged his son splendidly, albeit with precious few rubles in the bank. He remembers best from his childhood the thrill when his mother presented him with a toy hydrogen balloon.
Compared with him, we enjoyed a true family life, didn't we, you guys? No matter that it was presided over by a blundering, narrow-minded tyrant! (I suppose you remember how cleverly our mean and bigoted father dealt with the matter of that dead rat drowned in the oil barrel: by calling in the local priest to exorcise the ratty influence, so that by the next day the news was all over Taganrog and nobody would stop by our general store for weeks?) We were all a resilient lot---we had to be---and even so it took its toll. All the more reason, I submit, for keeping our surviving family as closely knit as possible! Anyway, I'm straying far from the point....
"What kind of family problems has this aborigine bastard got?" asked Richard.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqfMZDXPVff
"It's because of the spaceship exploding."311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr4GPOlk2iv
"Oh, the meteorite. Well, did it hurt his family? Kill somebody?"311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyXXt3BJlep
"Um, not quite 'somebody.""311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3wzcdKWGku
"Then it's the sickness among the reindeer, the herds dying off"311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnUaZaeoNXM
"No! It's all because of a bunch of superstitious bunk! Basha's grandfather was some kind of tribal shaman. The Tungusi aren't even Christians, you know."311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfjAAEhMYOI
"Are you? Am I?"311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCtylcuHe2x
"What I mean is, they haven't even got to the stage where they can resist Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Basha's grandfather died just before the explosion, then the explosion itself scared the living hell out of them, so the Tungusi all want Basha to take over as shaman, because he showed the right signs when he was a boy. He had fits or something and frothed at the mouth and babbled. And he went through some kind of ordeal, which is secret. But he wasn't want to be the village shaman now. He's seen trading posts, he's learned a bit of Russian..."311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFqu9iFTabS
No wonder there had been a few moments of rapport between those two men, superficially so different in their backgrounds and beliefs. Konstantin's feeble and lonely childhood had turned him into a genuine scientist---and Basha's boyish fits and foaming at the mouth had thrust him into a similar role within his society; but Basha's was a society which lacked a notion of science or reason. Had I even hinted at such a comparison, I suspect that Tsiolkovsky would have felt deeply insulted.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyEGx5J288i
"What's the matter with Basha's father?" asked Richard. "Didn't he froth at the mouth long enough to inherit the mantle from his dad?"
"No, you see, their custom is for the shaman's son to provide for his father, then the grandson takes over and his son provides for him."311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4o5RvZ7g7A
"So Basha would have to get married fast?"311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2dBZ5yEPgj
"I think he was trying to escape his fate by staying on in Kezhma."311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW9c64veNaU
"All Tungusi women are as ugly as that?"311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡObf8GCDCme
"I mean the fate of being shaman. He doesn't want it."311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhjBqulnJVu
"Then why is he going back to it?"311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbEMphdOKF8
"Because he has no choice. Those are his people. We Russians aren't, and he knows that now."311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4FCvsstPqU
Now I understood in what way we were a talisman for Basha. "We're a slice of Russia going back home with him, a bit of the civilized world he wants, and can't come to terms with: that's it, isn't it? The poor confused boy."
"I don't care, as long as he guides us," said Richard.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgjHJu2JdmL
"We've all got problems," Konstantin said. "Our challenge as human beings is to rise above them."311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxawrx3oVyU
Oh yes, indeed, rising above them on a toy hydrogen balloon---or in a "jet-propelled" rocketship!311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIIAvFikveh
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIC8z2J8AZ0
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAsShTR5UWQ
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIC8z2J8AZ0
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAsShTR5UWQ
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfTk2xUmeQQ
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvNWFDQthjZ
So now, dear siblings, after another strenuous and freezing trek, we find ourselves in an authentic Tungusi tent on the south bank of the Chambe, accepting hospitality overnight before pressing on into the unknown---with or without our guide. Basha, the long-lost prodigal, is back in the bosom of his people; and in this setting he seems a different breed of fellow from the one who accompanied us hither. He's in his proper place at last. And this place controls him, just as I would be controlled by a little country farm with a few fruit trees and a decent angling stream.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtvkLmxI3GC
The Tungusi camp is passably habitable (for savages, that is). Which is another way of saying that life is no more degraded here, than your average Great Russian village. Instead of houses made of mud and wood, there are in this clearing half a dozen big conical tents sewn from reindeer hide. In place of a church, there is---well, the mighty forest.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuwmkwJTZuv
These Asian herdsmen are amiable enough, for we have returned to them their long-lost son; though we cannot exchange a single word with them, save through Basha. But they have set a whole tent aside for our party, and they have feasted us royally on fish soup; and now it's time to go to sleep.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8elohe1J1B
Goodnight, Oaxana. Goodnight, Dmitri.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrsG9mxSkEK
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDgZyHYj7jo
Goodnight, beloved Ludmilla.311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3wHyT6PjTs
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ51l8Nw2fb1
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9ibY2uIELZ
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4t4sSOMTD6
311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQQfUhN7FCd
ns 15.158.61.55da2 311Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQQfUhN7FCd
