Kolymsky Heights (21 page)

‘Practice. Do you have help here?’

‘Yes. A Yakut woman comes in twice a week.’

‘Does she go into the shed?’

‘No.’ She stared at him. ‘You’re the most cunning man, I think, that I’ve ever met. That’s where you’ll keep the motor parts, is it?’

‘A few things, yes.’ He got on with his meal, and she got on with hers, glancing curiously at him.

She told him the layout of the research station and he listened closely.

‘So where’s your consulting room?’

‘In the guards’ quarters. The Evenks come there.’

‘Is that the only place you have contact with them?’

‘Well, they have to unload the car and load it again.’

‘What with?’

‘Various supplies. Big distilled water jars. They use a lot of it there, laboratory work. It’s not worth flying in, and we produce it in Tchersky anyway. Various oilier drums and containers. I take the empties back.’

‘Where do they keep this stuff?’

‘In a storage shed, near the airstrip.’

‘Is that where you park?’

‘No, I’m not allowed there. I go to the commandant’s office. And they bring along a sled, or a tractor. It depends how much there is.’

‘Do you supervise this operation?’

‘The security people do. They have to check everything that goes in or out. Were you thinking I might smuggle
you
out?’

‘Well … What if somebody’s ill?’

‘They’d be flown out. And not to Tchersky. No contact is allowed with Tchersky. And nobody goes in or out without an escort anyway.’

He drank his coffee, musing.

‘So how do
I
get out?’ he said.

‘The same way you get in?’

‘And stay there a month?’

‘That would complicate matters in Green Cape, wouldn’t it?’ She nodded. ‘Well, you’re not thinking so badly. Go and bring the cognac. Maybe you’ll do better.’

He went and got the cognac, puzzled. She had drunk a lot today, but it had not noticeably affected her judgment or the authority of her manner. Evidently he was being subjected to some other test, a probe of his reactions. She had done it before, in the church. She was taking risks, of course, for herself, for Rogachev.

He turned with the cognac, and saw she had shifted position on the sofa.

‘Come and sit here,’ she said. ‘I’m tired of shouting.’

He sat slowly, and carefully poured.

‘Your hands are long,’ she said. ‘Also your femur.’ She examined the femur. She examined it all the way up, and unzipped him and slipped a hand in.

He gazed at her.

‘What’s this?’ he said.

‘Are you surprised?’

‘You have examined me once already.’

‘Now you can examine me.’

With her other arm she pulled his head down and kissed him. It was quite an affectionate kiss, and she was smiling as she drew back and looked into his face. ‘Long fellow,’ she said, ‘today you tried to kill me, and I could be dead. But I am not dead, and nor are you, and this is my house. You attract me. I am accustomed to getting what I want. And it’s something to celebrate, after all – being alive. You can take me to bed now.’

She was not as well found as Lydia Yakovlevna; lankier, less yielding. But she was lithe, controlled, and quite used, as she said, to getting what she wanted. She was also very much more genuine, arching without histrionics when her moment came, and he arched at the same time, and afterwards she kissed his face and stroked it.

‘Yes, worth celebrating,’ she said. ‘And altogether satisfactory. But now there’s work to do.’

They got up and did it for some hours: planning how he could get into and also out of the place he had come around the world to reach. Before midnight they had agreed the first steps, and these were detailed steps.

On Monday he took his sick-note to the administration block, and immediately afterwards went to see Vassili in his store room.

‘You didn’t come Friday,’ Vassili said.

‘They gave me a medical. I’ll take the stuff at lunch time, Vassili. And, listen, I need a bobik for a week.’

‘A
week
?’

‘They laid me off, at the medical. They say I’m tired and need a week’s rest.’

Vassili looked him over. ‘Well, you’re looking shagged,’ he said. ‘That’s your Evenk girl, is it? What use are you going to be to her if you’re worn out?’

‘Never mind – I need a bobik.’

‘So go and ask Liova.’

‘If I’m off work I’m not entitled … Vassili, put in a word for me.’

The old Yakut chuckled silently. ‘All right But let him take a look at you himself. He’ll see what a wreck you are. You don’t need to mention anything.’

He grunted and went to find the Light Vehicles chief.

‘Well,’ Liova said, staring at him, ‘you need a rest, it’s obvious. You’ve been working hard.’

‘I don’t. But it’s what they said. I’m sorry.’

‘Kolya – take it easy, now. You’re a good lad.’

At lunch time he went back to the depot and found Vassili alone, eating from his pot.

‘You got your bobik,’ the Yakut told him, chewing. ‘And Liova said shove one into her for him, too. I never saw him laugh so much. You want to take the axles now?’

He took the axles and he also took the manual, to see how to put the thing together. And in an hour and a quarter was at Anyuysk,

He took the made track fast and was soon off it and on to the tributary. The days were now shorter, barely two hours; this one grey, clear, very cold; a still life, set in ice. It was a week now since he’d been here. He found the overhanging bushes and got out and inspected the cave with a torch. All as he had left it. He drove the bobik in with the lights on, kept the engine running, and unloaded the axle assemblies. Then he stood back and looked around. Spacious enough, but no room for two bobiks. When he started assembly, the other one would have to stand outside.

He became aware of another problem. For the assembly he was going to need light. Not light from the delivery bobik – that was out of the question; even from the air it might be seen. And not just torchlight. Proper lighting. He needed a generator, and some wiring rigged, and a tarpaulin or sheet for the entrance. Well, it could be done.

The ice box was chilling him to the bone and he got back in the bobik and sat with the heat on, leafing through the greasy manual. The first job: bolt the chassis together. And get it on wheels. Then what? He studied the drawings and the
exploded diagrams. Steering assembly, brakes, transmission, clutch. Hours of fiddling in the deep freeze. He would need a heater, too.

It was dark outside now, and he reversed out and drove back along the tributary. He drove slowly with only side lights until he came to the made track and Anyuysk, and then put on speed. The plan called for him to go home now.

Anna Antonovna heard him enter the apartment, and shortly afterwards was tapping on the door herself. He had given the old lady her own key but she was discreet in using it.

‘Well, I tidied you in here,’ she said. ‘But what happened this weekend? You said you wouldn’t be working.’

‘No, I was with friends.’

‘Here, or in Tchersky?’

‘Neither. At Novokolymsk.’ This was the story they had agreed. ‘I’ve got a week off so I thought I’d pay them a visit – with a bobik I borrowed. I’ll be running out there again,’ he told her, grinning.

‘Ah, you found the natives at the collective, did you?’

‘Sure. And they can sleep me. I only looked in to pick up a few clothes.’

‘What, you’re going back now?’

‘For a few days.’

‘Well, I know who won’t be pleased at that,’ Anna Antonovna said; but the old cat face was smiling as she left.

She would be passing on this interesting item to the young lady in the supermarket. All as planned. Everybody had to know. He took a shower and sat in one of Ponomarenko’s bathrobes, with a vodka.

There was no phone in the apartment, and he didn’t want to use the public one below. He waited until he could hear no traffic and then dressed and packed a bag and left. At Tchersky the lights were on behind her curtains, and he turned into the driveway. She had given him a set of keys and he parked the bobik with hers in the shed and locked it again. Then he let himself into the house.

The house of Dr Komarov had stood a hundred years – a long time for a simple one of wood, but the wood was good. It had seen out Tsar Alexander III and Tsar Nicolas II, and also the entire communist régime. Though tilted sharply in two directions, it still looked good for many years to come, for now it was rooted firmly in the permafrost.

Now but not always. In 1893 when the cellar had held prisoners of Alexander III they had lit a fire in it to try to stay alive. This had thawed the permafrost, and occasioned the first tilt. The second was Dr Komarov’s. In an onslaught on the bugs and lice that infested the place he had treated every centimetre of it with a chemical solution; and to make sure of remaining larvae had boiled them with a steam hose. He had steamed out the cellar too, and in the summer of 1959 the house had lurched slowly forward.

The timbers had stood up well to this and the house would not now lurch any more. His daughter Tatiana had seen to that. Her first act had been to drive piles into the permafrost, pinning the structure in its present position, and then to isolate the cellar with half a metre of insulating material – floor, walls and roof. A trapdoor enabled it still to be used as a storeroom, and it provided quite a capacious one. Here Porter found the kerosene stove and the generator – the latter a neat job from Japan, not much needed in the past few years as Tchersky’s power supply had improved.

He tried them both. The stove needed a new wick but was otherwise quite serviceable, and the generator started at once.

For the time being he left them there.

In the next three days he ran parts down to the cave. With Vassili’s agreement he picked them up at eight in the morning, using the back door of the storeroom to avoid going through the garage, and returned at lunch time for the second load. He went back to the house right away then, for Komarova had told him not to absent himself for long. The plan for getting him to the herds depended on the weather, and for this he had to be ready at short notice.

Now he knew far more about her.

She had been divorced six years and had not looked for other relationships. Had there been any? Of course – brief ones, she was human, what did he think? But just hospital people: doctors who came on two-or three-year contracts and then left, for Moscow, Petersburg, God knew where.
She
couldn’t leave, at least not yet. Her mother was a trial, but still her mother. Later maybe. But where else would she find such wide responsibilities and such work?

She loved the work, and she loved the country – the native people better than the Europeans. So she kept her distance, and was considered aloof; yes, she knew it. But better that than join a white elite and patronise the natives. Her father had never patronised them, and neither had Rogachev, and she had loved them for it. They were not treated equally – he must have seen it for himself. Plenty of extras for Europeans in these northern parts, but natives excluded, even in such matters as drink. She got them drink, and why not? It was a hard country. Yes, she was in some ways detached here, in some ways out of place. But she would be out of place in a town.

So what
would
do for her?

She didn’t know what would do. Her work would do!

She had scrupulously avoided asking him anything further about himself; so on the second night, trusting her suddenly, he told her.

She sat up in bed and looked at him.

‘An American Indian!’

‘Canadian.’

‘Not
the
Porter – Dr Johnny Porter?’

‘Well, that’s my name.’

She stared at him in amazement. Then she got out of bed and ran into the next room and returned with his
Comparisons
in a Russian translation.

‘This is yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘You mean, you’re not a – not just an agent? So what are you doing here?’

‘Well.’ He hesitated. But then he told the lot. The meeting with Rogachev in Oxford. The strangeness of his own life at the time – a widower, at twenty-three.

‘She’d only been nineteen herself – a little thing, very pretty – long black hair, pony tail down to here.’

‘An Indian girl?’

‘Oh, sure. Minnehaha, Laughing Water – doe-eyed Bride of Hiawatha. Name was Trisha, actually. She didn’t have doe eyes.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘She skipped out to catch a bus at lunch time. The bus caught her. Somebody said she probably hadn’t heard it.’

‘She hadn’t
seen
it?’

‘Being blind, no.’

‘Oh.’

‘She could hear a
pin
drop – in the next room!’

‘You mean-’

‘Ah, hell, who knows what I mean? I was seeing plots everywhere. Politics. All a long time ago … I guess she missed the kerb and slipped. Anyway, Rogachev told me to quit brooding. An amazing guy – I’d never met anyone like him. A polymath, interested in everything. In blindness too … We were discussing congenital things – turned out
his
wife had molecular degeneration, both eyes. He was depressed as hell really, under all the cheerfulness. But he said brooding was no good for me. There was something for me to do in this
world, and he’d help me any way he could. Which he did actually.’

He was silent a moment.

‘See, earlier on I’d been trying to get to Chukotka, a security part you couldn’t get to. It was to research the Inuit there, Eskimos. And he got me permission, and I went. I didn’t use the stuff at the time, and I heard nothing from him directly. And later on I discovered why. He’d been in an accident, lost his wife, was in all sorts of trouble. Yet he’d done that for me – he’d meant what he said. So when they showed up with these messages … ’

‘But to disrupt your life in this way! To take on such dangers –’

‘I’ve disrupted it before, and lived rough before – he knew that. He knew I
could
do it – that I was the only one with any
chance
of doing it. And that I
would
if only I saw what he’d −’

He decided to skip what Rogachev had written.

No more sit in darkness nor like the blind stumble at
…

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I did.’

‘Good God!’ She was still clutching the book she’d brought in. ‘Well,
you
’d do,’ she said. She lay on top of him. ‘My God, you’d do!’

On the Thursday he took the engine.

There were now only three days left of his week off. It meant taking the block and tackle, too, and also the lighting.

‘Lighting wire? What do you want with lighting wire? Vassili asked.

‘I might need some. Give me twenty metres. Also eight sockets and light bulbs.’

‘This is a lot of favours,’ Vassili said. He measured off the flex. ‘When are you going to do some for me?’

‘What do you want?’

‘She is talking stroganina again.’

‘Okay. I’ll get a run to Ambarchik next week.’

Vassili took a careful look out of the back door of the
storeroom, and together they manhandled the engine in its harness out to the bobik. ‘You’re coming back lunch time?’

‘No. This is a lot of engine,’ he said, rubbing his back; he had carried the greater part of it.

‘I told you. See the block is secure before you lift it. Don’t skip any screws. There’ll be no other engine.’

‘I’ll be careful.’

He went back to the house and picked up the generator and set off on the river to Anyuysk. By half past ten he was at the cave and he drove straight in, with his headlights on. He had already had a trial on the roof of the bobik and the position gave him enough room. Now he knelt on it and got to work.

There were eight holes in the securing bracket. He held it against the roof and lightly bored the eight placer marks with the battery drill. Then he laid the bracket aside and drilled the full depth. He went seven centimetres into the granite, and got through three drills and two sets of batteries. Then he plugged the holes and screwed the bracket home and swung hard on the tackle. All secure.

He took a rest then, and had some coffee, while figuring out the lighting. This was a finicky job, but child’s play after the heavy overhead boring. Only shallow holes needed, and short plugs for the hooks. He spaced out two on the roof and two along each of the three walls. Then he paid out the wire and draped it loosely from the hooks. The twenty metres didn’t give anything to spare, and he still had to cut it to connect the light sockets.

His fingers were numb and he fiddled with this job in the bobik with the heater on. He spliced in the sockets, attached the terminal plugs for the generator, and got out and hung the circuit. Then he went round screwing in the bulbs, got back in the bobik and gave himself a vodka. It was after two o’clock and he was very tired. He was tiring too easily, too much running about. He lit a cigarette and read through the scrappy leaflet that came with the generator. It had worked in the
house but here, only twelve volts needed, he could blow the whole damn array.

He got out and checked the controls again. Then he made sure the output switch was off, and started up. The thing coughed into life and chugged solidly away. He let it run for a minute, then switched the output on. The bulbs lit up like a Christmas tree, and stayed lit. Okay. The engine now.

He switched the bobik’s lights off, reversed out, turned on the frozen river and backed in again. The light was well spread. He opened the rear of the car and hooked up the engine. They had bedded it on a felt pad in its lifting harness, and he hauled on the tackle chains and saw the pad begin to shift as the engine moved. The pad slid out and fell to the ground and the engine swung loose. He kept it hanging and guided it clear of the car and lowered it slowly to the ground.

Done.

He took the bobik outside and went back in for a final look. There was a lot of stuff now; almost everything. Tomorrow he’d pick up the remainder, take it to the house, sleep all day. At night back to the cave and start the assembly. He would work the whole night through.

He switched the generator off and drove back. He felt unsure of himself suddenly.

Something had changed. He didn’t know what. But all his life he had respected these feelings. He went over in his mind what it might be. Nothing. Yet something had changed.

He drove slowly, and it was six o’clock before he reached the house. There he learned something had changed. Tomorrow there would be no cave, but the herds. For now the time had come. Tomorrow
night
, if everything worked, he would be with Innokenty, the man who sent people to the research station.

He was unsure about this, too. The story they had concocted seemed now utterly childish. Earlier it had not seemed childish. Now it seemed childish. It was too late to think of another though, so they worked over it, far into the night; all the time his lowering feeling persisting.

He had no idea, still, what was expected of him at Tcherny Vodi, what activities went on there.

In China at this time they had no idea even of Tcherny Vodi’s existence. But they were aware of some activities. A very strange one had come to light.