THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE
Then I was alone. Around me only the wood of eternally green cedars
covered with snow, the bare bushes, the frozen river and, as far as I
could see out through the branches and the trunks of the trees, only
the great ocean of cedars and snow. Siberian taiga! How long shall I be
forced to live here? Will the Bolsheviki find me here or not? Will my
friends know where I am? What is happening to my family? These questions
were constantly as burning fires in my brain. Soon I understood why Ivan
guided me so long. We passed many secluded places on the journey, far
away from all people, where Ivan could have safely left me but he always
said that he would take me to a place where it would be easier to live.
And it was so. The charm of my lone refuge was in the cedar wood and
in the mountains covered with these forests which stretched to every
horizon. The cedar is a splendid, powerful tree with wide-spreading
branches, an eternally green tent, attracting to its shelter every
living being. Among the cedars was always effervescent life. There the
squirrels were continually kicking up a row, jumping from tree to tree;
the nut-jobbers cried shrilly; a flock of bullfinches with carmine
breasts swept through the trees like a flame; or a small army of
goldfinches broke in and filled the amphitheatre of trees with their
whistling; a hare scooted from one tree trunk to another and behind him
stole up the hardly visible shadow of a white ermine, crawling on the
snow, and I watched for a long time the black spot which I knew to be
the tip of his tail; carefully treading the hard crusted snow approached
a noble deer; at last there visited me from the top of the mountain the
king of the Siberian forest, the brown bear. All this distracted me
and carried away the black thoughts from my brain, encouraging me to
persevere. It was good for me also, though difficult, to climb to the
top of my mountain, which reached up out of the forest and from which I
could look away to the range of red on the horizon. It was the red cliff
on the farther bank of the Yenisei. There lay the country, the towns,
the enemies and the friends; and there was even the point which I
located as the place of my family. It was the reason why Ivan had guided
me here. And as the days in this solitude slipped by I began to miss
sorely this companion who, though the murderer of Gavronsky, had taken
care of me like a father, always saddling my horse for me, cutting the
wood and doing everything to make me comfortable. He had spent many
winters alone with nothing except his thoughts, face to face with
nature--I should say, before the face of God. He had tried the horrors
of solitude and had acquired facility in bearing them. I thought
sometimes, if I had to meet my end in this place, that I would spend my
last strength to drag myself to the top of the mountain to die there,
looking away over the infinite sea of mountains and forest toward the
point where my loved ones were.
However, the same life gave me much matter for reflection and yet more
occupation for the physical side. It was a continuous struggle for
existence, hard and severe. The hardest work was the preparation of the
big logs for the naida. The fallen trunks of the trees were covered
with snow and frozen to the ground. I was forced to dig them out and
afterwards, with the help of a long stick as a lever, to move them from
their place. For facilitating this work I chose the mountain for my
supplies, where, although difficult to climb, it was easy to roll the
logs down. Soon I made a splendid discovery. I found near my den a great
quantity of larch, this beautiful yet sad forest giant, fallen during
a big storm. The trunks were covered with snow but remained attached to
their stumps, where they had broken off. When I cut into these stumps
with the ax, the head buried itself and could with difficulty be drawn
and, investigating the reason, I found them filled with pitch. Chips of
this wood needed only a spark to set them aflame and ever afterward I
always had a stock of them to light up quickly for warming my hands on
returning from the hunt or for boiling my tea.
The greater part of my days was occupied with the hunt. I came to
understand that I must distribute my work over every day, for it
distracted me from my sad and depressing thoughts. Generally, after
my morning tea, I went into the forest to seek heathcock or blackcock.
After killing one or two I began to prepare my dinner, which never had
an extensive menu. It was constantly game soup with a handful of dried
bread and afterwards endless cups of tea, this essential beverage of the
woods. Once, during my search for birds, I heard a rustle in the dense
shrubs and, carefully peering about, I discovered the points of a deer’s
horns. I crawled along toward the spot but the watchful animal heard my
approach. With a great noise he rushed from the bush and I saw him very
clearly, after he had run about three hundred steps, stop on the slope
of the mountain. It was a splendid animal with dark grey coat, with
almost a black spine and as large as a small cow. I laid my rifle across
a branch and fired. The animal made a great leap, ran several steps and
fell. With all my strength I ran to him but he got up again and half
jumped, half dragged himself up the mountain. The second shot stopped
him. I had won a warm carpet for my den and a large stock of meat. The
horns I fastened up among the branches of my wall, where they made a
fine hat rack.
I cannot forget one very interesting but wild picture, which was staged
for me several kilometres from my den. There was a small swamp covered
with grass and cranberries scattered through it, where the blackcock
and sand partridges usually came to feed on the berries. I approached
noiselessly behind the bushes and saw a whole flock of blackcock
scratching in the snow and picking out the berries. While I was
surveying this scene, suddenly one of the blackcock jumped up and the
rest of the frightened flock immediately flew away. To my astonishment
the first bird began going straight up in a spiral flight and afterwards
dropped directly down dead. When I approached there sprang from the
body of the slain cock a rapacious ermine that hid under the trunk of a
fallen tree. The bird’s neck was badly torn. I then understood that the
ermine had charged the cock, fastened itself on his neck and had been
carried by the bird into the air, as he sucked the blood from its
throat, and had been the cause of the heavy fall back to the earth.
Thanks to his aeronautic ability I saved one cartridge.
So I lived fighting for the morrow and more and more poisoned by hard
and bitter thoughts. The days and weeks passed and soon I felt the
breath of warmer winds. On the open places the snow began to thaw. In
spots the little rivulets of water appeared. Another day I saw a fly
or a spider awakened after the hard winter. The spring was coming. I
realized that in spring it was impossible to go out from the forest.
Every river overflowed its banks; the swamps became impassable; all the
runways of the animals turned into beds for streams of running water.
I understood that until summer I was condemned to a continuation of my
solitude. Spring very quickly came into her rights and soon my mountain
was free from snow and was covered only with stones, the trunks of birch
and aspen trees and the high cones of ant hills; the river in places
broke its covering of ice and was coursing full with foam and bubbles.