A DANGEROUS NEIGHBOR
The hunt became more and more profitable and enjoyable, as spring
animated everything. In the morning at the break of day the forest was
full of voices, strange and undiscernible to the inhabitant of the town.
There the heathcock clucked and sang his song of love, as he sat on the
top branches of the cedar and admired the grey hen scratching in the
fallen leaves below. It was very easy to approach this full-feathered
Caruso and with a shot to bring him down from his more poetic to his
more utilitarian duties. His going out was an euthanasia, for he was in
love and heard nothing. Out in the clearing the blackcocks with their
wide-spread spotted tails were fighting, while the hens strutting
near, craning and chattering, probably some gossip about their fighting
swains, watched and were delighted with them. From the distance flowed
in a stern and deep roar, yet full of tenderness and love, the mating
call of the deer; while from the crags above came down the short and
broken voice of the mountain buck. Among the bushes frolicked the hares
and often near them a red fox lay flattened to the ground watching his
chance. I never heard any wolves and they are usually not found in the
Siberian regions covered with mountains and forest.
But there was another beast, who was my neighbor, and one of us had
to go away. One day, coming back from the hunt with a big heathcock, I
suddenly noticed among the trees a black, moving mass. I stopped and,
looking very attentively, saw a bear, digging away at an ant-hill.
Smelling me, he snorted violently, and very quickly shuffled away,
astonishing me with the speed of his clumsy gait. The following morning,
while still lying under my overcoat, I was attracted by a noise behind
my den. I peered out very carefully and discovered the bear. He stood on
his hind legs and was noisily sniffing, investigating the question as
to what living creature had adopted the custom of the bears of housing
during the winter under the trunks of fallen trees. I shouted and struck
my kettle with the ax. My early visitor made off with all his energy;
but his visit did not please me. It was very early in the spring that
this occurred and the bear should not yet have left his hibernating
place. He was the so-called “ant-eater,” an abnormal type of bear
lacking in all the etiquette of the first families of the bear clan.
I knew that the “ant-eaters” were very irritable and audacious and
quickly I prepared myself for both the defence and the charge. My
preparations were short. I rubbed off the ends of five of my cartridges,
thus making dum-dums out of them, a sufficiently intelligible argument
for so unwelcome a guest. Putting on my coat I went to the place where
I had first met the bear and where there were many ant-hills. I made
a detour of the whole mountain, looked in all the ravines but nowhere
found my caller. Disappointed and tired, I was approaching my shelter
quite off my guard when I suddenly discovered the king of the forest
himself just coming out of my lowly dwelling and sniffing all around the
entrance to it. I shot. The bullet pierced his side. He roared with pain
and anger and stood up on his hind legs. As the second bullet broke
one of these, he squatted down but immediately, dragging the leg and
endeavoring to stand upright, moved to attack me. Only the third bullet
in his breast stopped him. He weighed about two hundred to two hundred
fifty pounds, as near as I could guess, and was very tasty. He appeared
at his best in cutlets but only a little less wonderful in the Hamburg
steaks which I rolled and roasted on hot stones, watching them swell out
into great balls that were as light as the finest souffle omelettes we
used to have at the “Medved” in Petrograd. On this welcome addition to
my larder I lived from then until the ground dried out and the stream
ran down enough so that I could travel down along the river to the
country whither Ivan had directed me.
Ever traveling with the greatest precautions I made the journey down
along the river on foot, carrying from my winter quarters all my
household furniture and goods, wrapped up in the deerskin bag which I
formed by tying the legs together in an awkward knot; and thus laden
fording the small streams and wading through the swamps that lay across
my path. After fifty odd miles of this I came to the country called
Sifkova, where I found the cabin of a peasant named Tropoff, located
closest to the forest that came to be my natural environment. With him I
lived for a time.
* * * * *
Now in these unimaginable surroundings of safety and peace, summing up
the total of my experience in the Siberian taiga, I make the following
deductions. In every healthy spiritual individual of our times,
occasions of necessity resurrect the traits of primitive man, hunter and
warrior, and help him in the struggle with nature. It is the prerogative
of the man with the trained mind and spirit over the untrained, who does
not possess sufficient science and will power to carry him through. But
the price that the cultured man must pay is that for him there exists
nothing more awful than absolute solitude and the knowledge of complete
isolation from human society and the life of moral and aesthetic
culture. One step, one moment of weakness and dark madness will seize
a man and carry him to inevitable destruction. I spent awful days of
struggle with the cold and hunger but I passed more terrible days in
the struggle of the will to kill weakening destructive thoughts. The
memories of these days freeze my heart and mind and even now, as I
revive them so clearly by writing of my experiences, they throw me
back into a state of fear and apprehension. Moreover, I am compelled
to observe that the people in highly civilized states give too little
regard to the training that is useful to man in primitive conditions, in
conditions incident to the struggle against nature for existence. It is
the single normal way to develop a new generation of strong, healthy,
iron men, with at the same time sensitive souls.
Nature destroys the weak but helps the strong, awakening in the soul
emotions which remain dormant under the urban conditions of modern life.