Kolymsky Heights (16 page)

Or?

As the last man to sign on, Kolya Khodyan joined the reserve list. He had seen the short block of names at the bottom of the wall rosters – men who were sick or for some other reason not assigned to a team. Now he saw his own name added there, as available for general duties. At the beginning of a season, with nothing yet rolling, this was not important; but from the other drivers he heard that to stay with General Duties was bad news.

Under union agreements the men were paid whether the ‘boats’ ran or not. But once they were running, the teams were eligible for bonuses. With the distances involved here the bonuses were huge – easily outstripping the already high basic pay. The trucks ran through storms, through blizzards, through every kind of hazard the country could offer, and they ran twenty-four hours a day. Any hour over the week’s norm was an overtime hour and paid double. Long hauls were obviously much in demand, and General Duty men rarely got them. They got short hops and road maintenance jobs, seldom running into overtime.

The new Chukchee driver accepted his listing with good grace, and this together with his cheerfulness soon made him
popular. He was very cheerful; he smiled all the time. He took on any job without argument – and in fact volunteered for one the same day when a call was put out. He could stand on his dignity (and it was understood he wasn’t to be addressed as a Chukchee), but in general he was a good comrade and, as a Chukchee, almost a mascot.

The job he volunteered for was to haul freight up from the dock. This was, strictly speaking, the work of the Green Cape port authority, and the men doing it were dockers. But when further snow made the task urgent, he took a Tatra flatbed down and joined the shuttle. He had seen right away that many of the workers below were Siberian natives and he wanted a closer look at them. He saw that several were Evenks or Yukagirs; this was the end of their seasonal work and soon none would remain in town. Ponomarenko had given some information on this.

He jockeyed his truck into line and saw he’d won a team of Yukagirs. He climbed out in the swirling snow and stood by, beating his gloved hands as they loaded the truck in front. It didn’t take long to identify the likeliest man; a cackling bundled-up little fellow, robustly swearing, the wit of the gang.

‘Warm work, brother!’ he called to him.

The man glanced round in surprise. He had called in Yukagir.

‘You got the tongue?’ the man said, looking him over.

‘A few words. Glad to see the end here, eh?’

‘You’re right. Except for the money. And the booze. Here the bastards keep it to themselves. We don’t smell it where we go to.’

‘Where do you go – traplines or the herds?’

‘Traps. But first the collective. The maniacs here work you till you drop. We need a rest.’

‘There’s a collective here?’

‘Sure. Ours. Novokolymsk. You don’t know the area?’

‘Not so well. A few friends who work up at the station, in the hills. You know that place?’

‘With the scientists?’

‘That one.’

‘See, it isn’t any use now,’ the Yukagir told him. ‘They don’t allow traps there any more, not for years. It’s useless.’

‘You could make it up there on foot?’

‘Sure – a few kilometres, no distance. But it’s useless now. Your friends are Evenks?’

‘Evenks.’

‘Yes. It suits them. They do a few weeks with the herds and a few weeks there, turn and turn about. They fly them in, they don’t want whites, and not bad money. But it isn’t for us. This is good fox country, and ermine – the best ermine. Not prime for a couple of months yet, but the best when they come on. You speak the tongue nice,’ the Yukagir told him.

The line moved then, so he got back in the Tatra, and no further opportunity offered. But he’d heard enough …

In summer, in the camp, he had watched week by week as the research station had been repaired. He had watched it from satellite photographs, a world away. Now he was there − a few kilometres, no distance … And now the planning was his; and now he was on his own.

He learned something about the bobik that week.

He had been sent out with spares and some instruments to a road gang fifty kilometres out. The road stretched 700 kilometres to Bilibino and it had been out of use all summer, a bog. Now it was hardening, and this was the first section to come into condition. When fifteen centimetres of new frost showed, treatment could begin. The heavy equipment for it was kept at road stations 100 kilometres apart; the stations served also as rest centres for the drivers, and as bases for the rescue and recovery service, tracked vehicles that patrolled the route all winter.

Porter ran out to the gang, dropped his supplies and headed back, and was halfway into the journey when the bobik stopped.

He got out and had a look at the engine. Nothing wrong with the supply or the plugs. Or the points. No shortage of fuel. He turned the engine by hand – the little brute also packed a handle. Nothing. The weather was not yet tremendously cold, maybe fifteen degrees below, but his fingers were freezing up without gloves. He swore. He tried everything again. Fuel okay and getting through. Distributor okay. Spark. What the hell!

On all sides the dreary taiga stretched for miles, snow covered, iced. He must be twenty, thirty kilometres along the way and nothing whatever would be coming past. Not for several hours at least, until it occurred to somebody at Green Cape to come and look for him. He had no communications set. He couldn’t walk to Green Cape. He couldn’t walk back to the road gang. The road was like a rink. He’d had to use a gentle hand just to keep the thing moving.

You bastard, he told the bobik, and took a swig at his hip flask; and while doing it thought of something. In midwinter, he’d heard, they often had to start the engines with White Dynamite, high-proof vodka. He had no White Dynamite in his flask but plain vodka might help. Maybe the fuel was contaminated or the carburettor faulty; a drop of the volatile spirit might fire and clear it. He warmed his hands in his gloves first and beat them together before fumbling with the carb. Then he gave himself a small swig and the carb one, and got a kick and a cough, and the thing rumbled hesitantly into life. He kept it running, revving cautiously by hand till he was sure of it, and then closed the hood and got back in and started off again.

It happened twice more on the way, and he knew it was the carburettor. The trick worked with petrol, too. He’d sucked a bit out of the tank with a plastic tube, and he dripped it in and
got the kick and the cough. The fuel was okay. The carb was dodgy.

He drove back to the Light Vehicles depot where he had picked up the loaded bobik in the morning, and looked around for Liova. Faults had to be reported to the chief mechanic. But Liova and all the mechanics were at lunch and only Vassili, the old Yakut storeman, was there, eating out of a pot on a kerosene stove. He told Vassili the problem.

‘This isn’t a problem,’ the Yakut said. ‘I’ll give you another carburettor and you’ll fit it. It takes two minutes.’

‘I’m reporting a fault. I don’t need a carburettor,’ Porter told him.

‘You do. You have another load, a rush job. There’s no spare bobik, and they have no time to repair it. Here, I’ll give you it now.’

And the old man left his meal, wiping his mouth, and took the Chukchee into the storeroom and gave him a carburettor; and Porter’s eyes popped. A whole bay, neatly arranged, was stuffed with bobik spares. Gearboxes, shafts, clutches, doors – engines, even. The old man looked at him and shrugged. ‘It’s a toy,’ he said. He hunted around and found a greasy manual. ‘A child can do it.’

And Porter did do it while the old Yakut, picking his teeth, pointed out the details on the exploded diagram. It took a single spanner. The carb worked right away.

‘I told you, it’s nothing,’ Vassili said. ‘Did you eat yet?’ They had been talking Yakut which had intrigued and pleased the old man.

‘Not yet. What have you got there?’

‘Proper food. My old woman’s. Not that garbage in the canteen. Join me.’

Porter joined him, and grunted favourably over the food, and presently signed for the carburettor, and the Yakut helped him load up. He was gone before Liova and the mechanics
returned. He drove down into Tchersky, listening to the engine. Not a thing wrong with it. A workhorse, robust, primitive, and all of it put together the same way, with a spanner. He thought about this. A number of plans had been prepared for getting him out. They were neat enough plans, but obviously someone else must know of them. It might be an idea to have other plans. He thought about this all the way there, and all the way back.

That same night the doorbell rang and a young woman stood there; of considerable development; he saw, and had already gathered so from her underwear.

‘Nikolai Dmitrievich,’ she said, ‘you don’t know me. But I have a request to make.’

‘Is it Lydia Yakovlevna?’

‘Ah, you know!’ Both hands had gone up to her mouth, but whether with embarrassment or amazement at his shaven head he could not as yet tell. ‘You have a small parcel of mine, I think.’

‘The linen you lent Alexei – yes indeed. Anna Antonovna said you might call. Please come in.’

The old lady had cooked up the story herself. She had laundered the goods and asked if she should return them; the girl only worked in the supermarket below. No, he had said, if she wanted her pants and bra she could come and get them. But Kolya, Kolya, Anna Antonovna had said, cackling and nudging him, only think of her feelings! I’ll put them in a parcel as if it’s handkerchieves or something she lent Alyosha – it will spare her blushes.

And indeed the girl did seem to be blushing a bit. A big girl, big all over, somewhat puffy, and pale – anaemically pale as all the white women of Siberia seemed to be; winter for nine months of the year and the summer tan soon gone. But an easy mover, and with a coquettish look. He knew Anna Antonovna had told her he didn’t know the contents of the parcel, but he saw from the girl’s knowledgeable eyes that she knew that he
did know. It intrigued him. Was she so short of knickers and a bra? Surely she could have waited for Ponomarenko’s return. Why the hurry for collection?

‘Coffee? A drink?’ he said.

‘Oh no, Nikolai Dmitrievich. I didn’t mean to −’

‘Kolya. Please,’ he said.

‘Kolya. I didn’t mean to disturb you. Just in passing I thought I’d see if maybe you were in. You men spend so much time in the clubs –’

‘I know few people yet, Lydia Yakovlevna.’

‘Lydia – please.’

‘A lovely name.
Have
a drink, Lydia!’

‘Well, a small one, perhaps.’

Just in passing she had jumped into her party boots: stiletto heels. Her outdoor ones must be in the large shopper she was carrying, hurriedly changed in the hall outside. A huge plunging neckline appeared once she was out of her fur coat. And hair piled ornately high as her headscarf came off; together with a seductive odour not long applied. Her eyelashes flickered about the room.

‘Ah, that kotek! Still here.’

Kotek: pussy cat. She had picked up the panda.

‘Yes. And still wearing his lipstick. Now I wonder,’ he said gravely, ‘who gave him that?’

She laughed. ‘A crazy night. Friends … ’

‘Ah.’ From Anna Antonovna he had already learned that the only friends in the apartment that night had been Ponomarenko and this girl; it had been the first of their friendly nights.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘we are both good friends of Alexei.’

‘Ah, Alyosha, that crazy boy … Thank you.’ He had given her a cherry brandy, and noted her approval of his good manners. A lady’s drink; although he had also heard from Anna Antonovna that this girl had no trouble with a vodka.

In no time they were chatting easily, and he saw that his
startling head in no way fazed her. Quite the reverse; she seemed fascinated by it and was coming on fast.

‘Your Russian – so beautiful,’ she softly told him.

‘Thank you.’ Her own was far from high class, and he was fracturing his in the manner he had adopted here from the start. But he saw the remark as less a tribute to beautiful Russian than as a hint that ethnicity was no problem here. At the drop of a hat this girl could be tumbling in the Finnish bed. But the blatancy of it puzzled him. It also alerted him. Did she know that Ponomarenko would be absent a long time? And if so, how?

‘So what do you hear,’ he asked, handing her a third shot of cherry brandy, ‘from our friend?’

‘Alyosha? … What, another drink? I shouldn’t. But I also get lonely sometimes … Oh,
Alyosha
doesn’t write. Too busy with those Georgian girls, I expect.’

‘After you? Water after wine? Of course not.’

‘Liar,’ she said delightedly, and showed him more leg. ‘I’m sure you’re just as bad. Didn’t you go for those gorgeous Batumi girls?’

‘In Batumi I just relax.’

‘And have parties?
He
loved parties. I’ll bet you had parties.’

‘Parties, yes. There were parties.’

‘Loved
them. And now he’ll miss one here. He’d be back if he knew that! Oh yes, like a shot. Pavel Grigorovich’s.’

‘Pavel Grigorovich?’

‘Bukarovsky. His sixtieth. Everybody’s going. You didn’t know?’

‘Oh. Yes,’ he said. And now he saw. Everybody wasn’t going. The mayor was going, and the top brass of Tchersky and Green Cape were going. Many of Bukarovsky’s drivers were also going. But supermarket assistants weren’t going.

‘He’d be showing me off there, all right. He loved to see me dressed up. I mean, what I’ve got on now isn’t anything. I’ve got some lovely clothes – and nowhere to go in them.’

‘I’m sure you look lovely in anything. Isn’t that cherry brandy a little sweet for you?’

‘It is a little sweet, yes.’

‘Try a sip of vodka.’

‘Oh, no. I must be going.’

‘From mine,’ he said, and displaced the panda to sit beside her and give her a sip; which the girl refused so playfully that she managed to spill it down her dress front. He helped her mop up with a handkerchief.

‘Quite dry now?’