Ice Trilogy (7 page)

“Ye
s...
this is Snegirev. He’s been dismissed from the university, but he’s — ” Masha muttered, but Kulik interrupted her.

“I don’t care about that. Have you been on an expedition before?”

“No.”

“All right,” Kulik’s eyes drilled right through me. “Do you know how to dig?”

“Wel
l...
” I faltered.

“Haul heavy loads?”

“In principl
e...
yes.”

“In principle! Well, I’ll tell you the way it goes.” Kulik took out a worn, gilded watch, looked at it, and put it back. “In principle, I’ll get rid of you halfway there. And now — follow me.”

He turned sharply on his thin legs and took off in a sweeping stride, almost running along the hallway. Masha and I hurried after him. Kulik turned once, twice, ran up a staircase, and disappeared into the open doors of an auditorium. We ran in after him.

“Close the door!” he shouted from the rostrum.

With a habitual movement Masha fastened the hook. I sat at the edge of the room, half turned, and surveyed the place: there were sixteen people sitting in the spacious lecture hall.

Kulik took out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped his glasses. He put them on, immediately took complete control of the rostrum with his long, wiry fingers, and began speaking.

“Hello, comrades. Now then, today we will get acquainted with our greenhorn meteorologists, that is, the newcomers, and we’ll correct the vector of our route to the place where the Tungus meteorite fell. Considering that only three of you remain from last year’s expedition, since the rest I had to throw out to the dogs, I’ll begin by introducing each of you.”

He opened a thick, well-thumbed notebook and introduced everyone, naming each person’s surname and profession. He didn’t mention me. Closing the notebook with a bang, Kulik continued.

“Now I will permit myself to make a short announcement about the so-called Tungus meteorite, because of which so many spades have been broken and so many kilometers traversed. Thus, on June 30, 1908, a huge fireball fell to earth in eastern Siberia. Siberians saw and heard its fall; it created quite a hullabaloo and left incredible traces: a powerful wave of sound carried across all Siberia, forests were felled over hundreds of square kilometers, and there was a huge flash of light and an earthquake, recorded by an impartial seismograph in the basement of the Irkutsk observatory. The meteorite was seen not only by thousands of illiterate and superstitious inhabitants of eastern Siberia but by completely civilized people looking out the window of a train near Kansk — with whom I have had lengthy discussions. To summarize the accounts of eyewitnesses, it can be confidently stated that a huge meteorite fell in Siberia, probably one of the largest that has ever plummeted to earth. But twenty years ago meteorite studies had not yet won irrefutable rights to citizenship as an independent science. Meteorites were studied not only by scientists but by blatant charlatans, who introduced many lies and much confusion into the story of the Tungus meteorite. To the shame of our native science, no one even tried to organize an expedition in the hot traces, literally speaking, of the meteorite: the whole thing ended with a dozen newspaper articles and pseudoscientific publications. And it was only under Soviet power that your humble servant was able to organize the first meteorite expedition, in the difficult year of 1921, thanks to the personal support of People’s Commissar Lunacharsky. Comrade Lunacharsky got the necessary sums of money through Narkompros, and NKPS — the Commissariat of Communications — sent a train car for the expedition and provided the necessary equipment. Nikolai Savelevich Trifonov, who is here with us, is the next-to-the-last of the Mohicans of that legendary expedition — en route he will tell you in more detail about the first campaign for the Tungus marvel. The first expedition didn’t find the meteorite, but was able to precisely define the area of its fall: the basin of the Stony Tunguska River, or Katanga as the Evenki people call it. Having systematically analyzed the eyewitness evidence of the fall, I came to the conclusion presented in my article for the journal
Earth Science
: a meteorite of colossal size fell in eastern Siberia in 1908. Unfortunately, for a number of objective and subjective reasons, one of which was NEP, the next expedition was able to leave Leningrad for Siberia only last year. This time we were aided by the academician Vernadsky and by Comrade Bukharin personally. Expedition No. 2 almost made it to the place where the meteorite fell. But ‘almost’ doesn’t count in science, comrade meteorologists. The mistake of the second expedition was in its choice of time. In order to get through the swamps of the taiga, we decided to leave for Katanga in February, when the ice would establish a natural means of access across the bogs. On the one hand, this helped; on the other, it hindered us. The horses couldn’t make it from Vanavara along the deer trails to the place where the forest had been felled: there was too much snow. Making an agreement with the Evenki, Trifonov and I traveled on reindeer, sending the whiners and panic-mongers back to Taishet. Alas, not every scientist is prepared to suffer in the name of science! After three days of the most difficult route across the snow-covered taiga, our indefatigable Evenki guide, Vasily Okhchen, brought us to the edge of the collapsed forest. When Nikolai Savelevich and I climbed a hill and saw the felled, broken trees stretching to the very horizon, we felt genuine terror and joy: such a phenomenal destruction of the taiga could have happened only by the volition of an enormous meteorite! What an incredible spectacle! Centuries-old trees had been snapped like pencils! That was the power of a messenger from space that fell to earth! No wonder that the Evenki refused to go farther — the shamans forbade them to enter the ‘accursed place.’ When the meteorite fell, some of them had deer that perished there and tents that burned. Okhchen will forever remember the terrible rumble and the fire from the sky. Yes! Not only was the forest felled, it burned, was scorched by the fierce fire from the explosion. And so, comrades, the second expedition turned back. Expedition No. 3 is now in this auditorium. And I would verrrry much like to hope that it will not be overtaken by the sad fate of the second expedition! Henceforth, I will be merciless toward whiners and panic-mongers. I am certain that there are none among you. And so! There are more of us this time. There are people here of different professions: astronomers, geophysicists, meteorologists, drillers, and even a cameraman. The student enthusiasts desiring to come with us will, I hope, satisfy their longing for discoveries and adventures. We are taking serious gear with us: equipment for meteorological, hydrological, geological, and photographic work, sets of drills, a water pump, and various other instruments. Now, about the rout
e...
”

Kulik stepped down from the podium, unrolled a map lying on the table, hung it on a blackboard, and picked up a wooden pointer.

“We leave tomorrow from Moscow station. We will travel by train to Taishet. There we will be met by thirty wagons, which will take us and the equipment four hundred kilometers along the horse route to the village of Kezhma on the Angara River, where we will change horses, saddle up, and ride over the taiga path another two hundred kilometers to the village of Vanavara on the banks of the Stony Tunguska. There is a Gostorg trading station in that settlement that supplies the Evenki with goods, gunpowder, and small shot in exchange for fur pelts. The last outpost of civilization, so to speak. The location of the meteorite’s landing is eighty kilometers to the north of Vanavara. We will get there on foot, following the reindeer trail. On passing into the forest blast zone and determining the exact place where the meteorite landed, we will build a barracks from the timber the meteorite has already felled for us, have a housewarming party, and begin our scientific activity. Any questions?”

The plump astronomer Ikhilevich raised his hand. “How long might the expedition last?”

“Colleague, don’t pose metaphysical questions,” Kulik retorted. “Until we find it!”

“As long as the provisions last,” smiled the homely Trifonov.

“Until the cold hits!” the small, fidgety driller Gridiukh added.

A slouching student enthusiast with a barely distinguishable beard stood up. “Comrade Kulik, is it true that smoker
s...
wel
l...
you don’t take them?”

“That’s the genuine truth, young man! I cannot abide tobacco smoke. And I believe smoking to be a most harmful habit of the old world. You and I are building a new world. So make your choice — tobacco or the Tungus meteorite!”

Everyone laughed. The student scratched his chin. “Well, I gues
s ...
the meteorite.”

“An excellent choice, young man!” Kulik exclaimed.

Everyone laughed even louder.

“Oh, God.” Masha shook her head. “How awful that he doesn’t take women on expeditions. It’s such a mistake! I would keep a journa
l..
.”

“One more thing, comrades!” said Kulik, growing serious. “The local population that we will be working with — the Evenki and Angara peoples — prefer goods to money, and most of all gunpowder, shot, and alcohol. We have an abundance of ammunition, but we aren’t getting much alcohol. So if each of you could bring a flask of alcohol, it would noticeably hasten our progress across the taiga. Questions? No? Then — to work, comrades! Nikolai Savelevich will instruct you further.”

“I’ll ask everyone to proceed to packing the baggage,” said Trifonov, standing.

The group stood up and people began talking. Kulik took off his glasses and wiped them, squinting shortsightedly.

“Oh, yes! One more thin
g..
.”

Everyone immediately fell silent. Kulik put his glasses on and looked at me. “Among us there will be a person who was born at the moment the Tungus meteorite fell.”

And I realized that Kulik had accepted me on the expedition only because of this. Everyone turned toward me with curiosity.

“Where were you born?” asked Trifonov.

“About thirty versts north of Petersburg,” I answered.

“Kilometers, kilometers, young man!” Kulik corrected me. “Your mother heard the thunder during the birth?”

“She did hear it. And she wasn’t the only one,” I answered.

“It was heard all over Russia that day,” the glum geologist Yankovsky spoke up.

“And what else were you told about the day of your birth? Was there anything else unusual?” asked Kulik, staring intently at me.

“Unusua
l..
.” I thought a minute and suddenly remembered. “Of course. There was something. My family said that there was no night at all. And the sky was lit up.”

“Absolutely right!” Kulik raised a long finger. “This phenomenon was noted along the entire coast of the Baltic Sea, in the northern parts of Europe and Russia — from Copenhagen to Yeniseisk! An anomalous luminescence of the atmosphere!”

“Which Torvald Kohl and Herman Seidel wrote about,” nodded Ikhilevich. “A bright dawn and dusk, a massive development of silvery cloud
s..
.”

“The mass accumulation of silvery cloud
s..
.” Kulik repeated in a loud voice. He grew thoughtful and suddenly banged his fist on the rostrum. “This time we are obliged to find the meteorite!”

“We’ll find it! It won’t get away from us! That’s why we’re going!” Everyone began talking at once.

“Sasha, Sasha, it’s so wonderful!” Masha turned her reddened face toward me. “Find it, find the Tungus meteorite!”

“I’ll try,” I muttered without much enthusiasm.

I just wanted to travel somewhere. To travel and travel, as I did
back then
.

The next day we left on the Leningrad–Moscow–Irkutsk train, in which we had been assigned an entire car. The four days to Taishet passed in conversations and arguments in which I was a passive listener. In our car, No. 12, they argued about topical questions: Communism, free love, industrialization, world revolution, the structure of the atom, and, of course, the Tungus meteorite. All this was accompanied by what was excellent food for that time, and endless drinking of tea with unlimited sugar, which for me, after my half-starved existence, was particularly pleasant. Having stuffed myself with horse sausage, Baltic herring, boiled eggs, and bread with cow’s milk butter, and drunk my fill of strong tea, I climbed onto the top bunk and, half asleep, looked out the window where the endless Vologodsky and Viatsky forests sailed by. After the low Ural Mountains, that view was replaced by the incomparable Siberian landscape. From Chelyabinsk all the way to Novosibirsk the depths of an ancient sea, according to Kulik, stretched in boundless breadth, overgrown with pine and larch. Gazing at these expanses I fell asleep.

Relations among members of the expedition were good, everyone was friendly and well disposed. The mysterious meteorite, which the Soviet newspapers had begun to write about, thanks to Kulik, captivated and excited the imagination. I liked to think about it when I lay on the top bunk. But I always imagined it still gliding through the Universe. That way was even
more pleasurable
for me. Arguments about its composition, velocity, and size went on endlessly. Kulik infected everyone with his enthusiasm, which bordered on fanaticism. For this everyone forgave him his dictatorial manner, his everyday terrorism and intolerance in discussion. On the expedition he called everyone “comrade,” as a matter of principle, ignoring names and patronymics. After the victory of the Soviets in Russia, his “scientific Marxism” grew even stronger. Kulik deified “Stalin’s iron consistency” and believed in a coming Soviet economic leap capable of “proving to the whole world the dialectical objectivity of our path.”

We arrived in Taishet in the morning.

We were met by men driving solid Siberian carts, hot sunny weather, and clouds of mosquitoes. I had never seen such quantities of bloodsucking insects in the air before. Everyone was given a panama hat with cheesecloth netting, manufactured according to Kulik’s design, since he had a great deal of experience in dealing with the local mosquitoes. In these identical gray panamas we looked like Chinese peasants. Loading ourselves onto the carts, we set off for our distant destination along a tract that our drivers called “the highway” — a wide but uneven packed-earth road, pocked with ruts and potholes. Fortunately for us, June 1928 turned out dry in eastern Siberia, and the mud puddles on the road were entirely surmountable. The bridges over small rivers, however, were almost all in a sorry state and required repair. Some of them had been almost completely destroyed by the spring floods. We had to go around them and cross at a ford. When, once more pushing our carts over a shaky bridge in a hurry, Kulik would quote a French traveler: “And along the way we came across constructions that had to be circumvented, and which in Russian were called ‘Le Most.’”