Ice Trilogy (11 page)

When the camp was finally snoring, I again began to walk around. The stars and moon were hidden behind clouds. But the northern sky was light even at night. I wandered among charred trees, touched their trunks, sat down on the mossy earth, then stood up, strolled over to the swamp, to the stream, and touched the water.
The huge and intimate
was somewhere close by. It was waiting for me. It banished sleep from my body, leaving only the excitement of anticipation. It made my heart thrill and tremble.

I met the dawn among dead trees.

In the morning Kulik announced the order of the day to everyone: he and Trifonov, Fyodor, and Chistiakov would head out in search of remnants of the meteorite and draw up a map of the area; all the rest would erect a barracks under the direction of the builder Martynov.

The construction began after breakfast. The stocky, pockmarked, taciturn Martynov finally felt that his time had come: his face reddened from shouting. In a loud voice he ordered everyone around right up until dinnertime. Under his command, the scholars and seasoned geologists looked like pitiful apprentices. First we dug holes for the posts of the barracks, then we knocked down charred trunks, sawed them, and rolled them to the construction site. We chose the deciduous trees because almost all the pines were moldering. The larch trees had been wonderfully preserved over twenty years and sounded like iron when they fell. Only their tops had rotted and broken off. It was difficult to saw them: dried out at the root, they had become harder than the saws we used to cut them. We drove thick-bottomed logs into the pits and crowned them with the first charred crossbeams. The barracks began to grow quickly; the crowns, naturally, were not planed — no ax could manage the hard dry wood. Kulik had given Martynov the directive: build simply, not for posterity. But the meticulous Martynov forgot this admonition: he shouted and demanded the highest quality from us. Finally, the driller Mishin told Martynov that if he didn’t stop bossing them around, he would end up building the whole thing by himself. Martynov quieted down, but not for long. By dinner five rows of logs had been erected. The barracks ended up being spacious.

After the sun went down, the happy explorers returned. Four kilometers to the southwest they had detected three large craters.

The next day three drillers, and Anikin and I as diggers, set off to the site with Kulik. The craters were more or less identical — about twenty meters in diameter and about three meters deep. Water stood at the bottom of them from the melting ice of the permafrost. At first we bailed out pails of it from the largest crater. Then a driller began to drill the sludgy bottom of the crater with a hand drill. Less than a meter down, the bore came up against something hard. Kulik was ecstatic. Everyone grabbed shovels and pails: some dug, others bailed out the water. Kulik worked along with us. I dug, standing up to my knees in swampy ground. I did everything I was asked without thinking about it. I was indifferent: no work could distract me from my inner
rapture
. My heart continued to sing while, splattered with mud, I scooped out the bog. After about three hours something large and formless turned up in the black water. Kulik tapped on it with his shovel. The sound was muffled, obviously not stone and not metal. Kulik hit harder and the shovel sank into a rotten tree: an enormous larch stump turned out to be in the crater. Checking another crater with the drill, the bore also hit a tree. Kulik was depressed, but he tried to keep himself in hand.

“Well, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” he said, wiping the spattered mud from his face with a handkerchief.

The evening meeting became a kind of scientific advisory council on the tree stumps. The geologists asserted that the craters and the stumps lodged in them were the result of melting permafrost. Kulik didn’t argue with them. He was interested in the meteorite.

Another night passed. I spent it inside the tent dozing. My heart’s ecstatic state wouldn’t let me sleep deeply. I prayed for one thing — that my ecstasy would never end. The expedition members tried not to talk about me and paid me no attention, but they took me on all the jobs. Once I heard Kulik say, “We can thank the stars that Snegirev is a peaceable madman.”

In the morning Kulik set off with Fyodor and Molik to reconnoiter; the rest continued building the barracks.

By the evening all ten rows of logs had been laid. The building of charred logs looked ominous. Between the rows of logs you could see large cracks. We decided to lay a shallow-pitch lean-to roof of slender trees, place the tarp we’d brought over it, and cover the whole thing with mossy turf and weigh it down with stones.

Sitting in the evening by the campfire and looking at the flames while the others ate, I suddenly experienced an unusual feeling. It was as though I had lost my body. The only thing remaining was my heart, which was hanging in the emptiness. I felt my heart. It resembled a fetus. Life pulsed evenly in it. But it was sleeping, as yet unborn. And the most striking thing was that I felt the hearts of everyone sitting around the fire. They were exactly the same as mine. They pulsed the same way. And they were asleep as well. Our hearts had not yet been born! This discovery struck me like lightning.

After that I fell into a trance. I not only stopped talking but didn’t react to questions and requests. I just sat, hugging my knees, staring into the fire with unseeing eyes. I saw only the not-yet-born hearts. They carried me into a tent and poured opium into my mouth. I fell into a deep sleep.

I awoke three days later to the sound of cries and shots. I was calm. But the joy had deserted me. Making my way out of the tent, I saw the entire expedition standing around the finished barracks. They shouted joyously and shot their guns in the air. I walked over to them. They ran up to me, began to hug me. It turned out that there were three causes for joy: the barrack had been built, a huge crater had been found not far away, and that morning a wagon loaded with provisions had arrived from Vanavara. I listened, but had difficulty understanding. I was drained and indifferent. Kulik approached me.

“So then, Snegirev, are you better now?”

He looked me straight in the eyes, all attention. I answered him with my own look.

“So this is what’s going to happen, young man,” Kulik said to me, “from now on you are going to eat well, under my supervision. We don’t need anyone fasting here. Is that clear?”

I looked him in the eye silently. Kulik took my gaze as agreement. They had already had dinner, so the time for force-feeding me was put off until the evening. After the wagon train was unloaded and its drivers rested, it returned to Vanavara with half our horses, two sick people — the geologist Voronin (he had bad diarrhea and a high fever) and the student Berelovich (who had hurt his eye during the construction) — and the mail. They didn’t send me back with the wagon train, feeling that, despite my quiet lunacy, I was capable of being useful. Or perhaps Kulik really did believe that I was a talisman. Soon he gathered everyone and gave an inspired speech. He said that everything was going according to plan, everything was working out in the best possible way: a fifty-meter crater had been found — clearly of meteoritic origin — the bores hadn’t located any tree stumps at the bottom of it, therefore something more important would be found; the geologists had panned the local soil in Chistiakov Spring and found microscopic metallic spheres in it, each no more than two millimeters in diameter; these spheres were scattered almost everywhere and provided evidence of the metallic nature of the Tungus meteorite; the barrack had been built and was being equipped for living, all the provisions were being transferred there. Three men would remain in the camp to set up the living quarters, the rest would move to the crater, which was located only three kilometers away, and would work on excavations until evening.

Martynov, Anikin, and I were left in the camp. The barrack was divided into storage and living sections: one for keeping provisions and equipment, the other for sleeping. First we carried over all our supplies and put them into the storage section; then we began to construct bunks from young trees and to caulk the chinks in the walls with moss. Two small windows were cut through the barrack walls. The weather continued to be warm and dry. Martynov and Anikin set off to look for young trees around the edge of the swamp. Sticking white moss into the chinks between the charred, wormhole-ridden beams, I mechanically watched the two receding figures through the cracks. The ax in Martynov’s hand sparkled in the sun. And this flash of light suddenly awakened me. My heart quivered, my brain began to work. And I finally understood with my entire being WHY people had come here! They came in order to find
the
enormous and intimate. And to take it away from me forever!
I trembled in terror. The clod of moss and the hammer fell from my hands. Why did they take so much time coming here? Why did they put up with such hardships? Why had this barrack been built? In order to find my
joy
! In order to prevent me from meeting it FOREVER!

A cold sweat broke out on my lips. I licked it away. I had to act. I looked around: the barrack. It had been built by people to help them find
the
enormous and intimate
. Without it they were helpless in the taiga. I ran out of the barrack. A little ways off stood a barrel of kerosene. Kulik forbade storing it in the barrack. I rolled the barrel over and dragged it inside. I broke the stopper and leaned the barrel over a pail. The kerosene ran into the pail. I grabbed the pail and splashed it on a pile of boxes and sacks. Then I filled a second pail and poured it on the walls. I splashed a third and fourth pail onto the walls from outside. I took some matches and left the barrack. I lit a match and threw it at the black wall. The barrack caught fire.

I turned and walked into the taiga. Choosing a direction opposite from the one where the people had headed, I walked between the blackened trees. My heart quivered again, stronger and more urgently than before. It beat in my chest as though it wanted to break my rib cage and jump out. I understood that I had to hurry and I ran. Time stopped, the black forest jumped around in front of my eyes, sweat poured down my face. I ran and ran and ran. This lasted for an eternity. The sun was setting; the dead taiga was plunged into twilight. The stars sparkled above the charred treetops. My legs began to give way. The breath burst from my dried lips. Suddenly, in front of me, a felled tree appeared — the only one in the entire dead standing forest. An old, thick deciduous tree lay on the ground in its full length, broken in the middle. The huge roots, not completely pulled from the ground, had frozen, raised just above the earth. With my last breath, I fell on the earth, crawled under the hanging roots, and lost consciousness.

I opened
my eyes.

The dark reeked of earth. I moved, stretched out my hand. I touched the ground and roots. The cold soil crumbled. I immediately remembered who I was and where I was. I began to extricate myself from my den. I crawled out from under the root “roof” of the old larch hanging over the ground, which had served as my refuge, and froze: everything around was bathed in bright moonlight. I lifted my head: a huge full moon hung in the blue-black sky surrounded by scatterings of stars. Its light was so bright that I turned away and looked around: everything, all the way to the horizon, was bathed in this incredible light. A fantastical landscape unfolded before me. The illuminated hillocks resembled frozen waves of an unseen ocean. Spilling over, undulating, crisscrossing, and colliding, they receded into the distance toward the horizon, a subtle glow in the eastern sky. The dead forest stood all around in absolute silence: not a sound, not a rustle. And I stood in the midst of this. Alone.

I felt no fear. Just the opposite: the deep sleep under the roots of the ancient tree had calmed me and given me strength. The fever that racked my body abandoned me, as though it had drained into the ground. I raised my arms to the moon and stretched with pleasure.

And moaned.

I was free!

There was no one around. No one laughed at me or gave me orders; no one asked anything of me, drove me on, or gave me idiotic advice; no one talked about Marxism and astronomy. The hated swarm of words that had pursued me like midges the entire month had dispersed and drifted away along with the people. The absolute silence of the world amazed me. The earthly world froze in front of me in the grandest calm. And for the first time in my life I felt distinctly the vile vulgarity of this world. Our world did not come into existence by itself. It was not the result of a chance combination of blind powers. It was created. By willpower. In a single moment.

This discovery shook me profoundly. I cautiously inhaled the cool night air. And froze, afraid to exhale. Books on philosophy and religion, arguments about existence, time, and metaphysics had contributed nothing at all to my understanding of the world in which I existed. But this moment in the midst of a dead, moonlit taiga opened my eyes to a great mystery.

I exhaled.

And took a step.

My heart began to throb in a now familiar way. And I remembered the
huge and intimate
. That which had made me tremble in mute ecstasy, lose sleep at night, walk without tiring, and silently clench my teeth. It was close by. I again felt it with my heart. But calmly now, without tears or shuddering. The huge and intimate was calling me. And I moved in the direction of that call.

I walked between the blackened tree trunks. The moon followed me, clearly illuminating my path. I saw every stone under my feet, every broken bough. The moon played on the charred trunks. They glinted and shimmered like anthracite. The thick moss was springy under my boots. It was easy to walk: there was no longer anything on my shoulder
s...
No tins, lard, or crackers. Nothing that connected me to people. This didn’t frighten me — I experienced no hunger at all. My inner rapture of the last month had now turned into a staunch, persistent, irrepressible desire: to continue in the direction of the huge and intimate. And to find it.