A yellow flame would race up the trunk of a larch, gather strength, roar, and shake the trunk. The trees’ convulsions, death convulsions, were always the same. I have often seen the hippocratic death mask of a tree.
It had been raining for three days at the hospital, and I couldn’t help but remember the fire. Rain would have saved the town, the geologists’ storehouse, the burning taiga. Water is stronger than fire.
All recuperating patients were sent out to gather mushrooms and berries across the river, where blueberries and cowberries grew in unbelievable quantities and where there were veritable thickets of colorful mushrooms with slippery cold caps. The mushrooms seemed cold – like live cold-blooded animals, like snakes. They seemed like anything but mushrooms.
Mushrooms appear late. Sometimes they come after the rains, but not every year. But when they do appear, they surround every tent, fill every forest, pack the underbrush.
We were to gather them in baskets, sort them for drying or marinating by Uncle Sasha, the camp cook who, on this occasion at least, recalled his glorious past as a cook in Moscow’s fashionable Prague Restaurant and his culinary education in Geneva. Uncle Sasha had been a chef at government dinners, and had even once been entrusted with preparing a meal in honor of the arrival of William Bullitt, the first American ambassador to the Soviet Union. The dinner was in the Russian style, the Russian genre. There was bortsch, Russian cabbage soup, suckling pig with kasha. Uncle Sasha’s assistants brought five hundred miniature ceramic pots from Kostroma. Each held a single serving of kasha. The creation was a success.
Bullitt praised the kasha. But the suckling pig! Bullitt pushed the pig away, ate the kasha, and asked for a second portion. Uncle Sasha was awarded the Order of Lenin.
Soon after that, Uncle Sasha was arrested. It was recorded in his file that Filippov, the director of the Moscow restaurant, The Prague, had invited Uncle Sasha to become head chef, promised him an apartment, an enormous salary, and trips abroad. ‘Soon after I switched to The Prague, Filippov asked me to poison the government. And I agreed.’
Uncle Sasha directed our labors. Gathering wild mushrooms and berries is one of the Kolyma psychoses. We did it every day.
Today it was cold. There was a chilling wind, but it had stopped raining, and the pale autumn sky could be seen through the torn clouds, clearly indicating that it wasn’t going to rain.
We had to go. A patient in the convict hospital couldn’t feel secure if he wasn’t doing something for the doctor, for the hospital. The women would crochet, a carpenter would make a table, an engineer would use a ruler to make up a supply of blank forms, a laborer would bring a basket of mushrooms or a bucket of berries.
We didn’t choose to go for mushrooms; we had to go. There was a rich harvest after the rain, and three of us set out across the river in a small boat – just as we did every morning. The water was rising slightly, the current was swifter than usual, and the waves were darker.
Safonov pointed his finger at the water and then upriver, and we all understood what he meant.
‘We’ve got enough time. There are a lot of mushrooms,’ Verigin said.
‘We can’t go back,’ I said.
‘Let’s do it this way,’ Safonov said. ‘The sun will be right opposite that mountain at four o’clock. Let’s return to the shore at four. We’ll tie the boat upstream.’
We split up in various directions – each of us had his favorite spot.
But as soon as I had entered the forest, I realized there was no need to hurry. A mushroom kingdom lay right here at my feet. The mushroom caps were as big as a man’s cap or the palm of his hand. It didn’t take long to fill two big baskets. I carried the baskets out to the meadow, near the tractor road, so I could find them right away and set off to at least take a look at the spots that I had selected long before.
I entered the forest, and my mushroom-gatherer’s soul was shaken. Everywhere were enormous mushrooms standing separately – higher than the grass, higher than the cowberry bushes. The firm, resilient, fresh mushrooms were incredible.
Beaten by the Kolyma rains, these mushrooms had grown into monsters with caps a half-yard in diameter. They grew everywhere the eye could see – so fresh, so firm, so healthy that it was impossible to make any decision other than to go back, throw away everything I had gathered earlier, and return to the hospital with these magical mushrooms in my hands.
And that was exactly what I did.
It was all a question of time, but I calculated I would need half an hour to get back down the path.
I descended the hill and pulled the bushes aside. Cold water covered the path for yards. The path had disappeared under water while I had been gathering mushrooms.
The forest rustled, and the cold water rose higher. An ever-increasing roar could be heard. I walked back up the hill and around the mountain to the right, to the place where we were to meet. I didn’t abandon the mushrooms; the two heavy baskets hung from my shoulders, tied together with a towel.
From higher up on the hillside, I approached the grove where our boat was supposed to be. The water had already reached the spot and was rising.
I climbed a hill on the shore.
The river was roaring, ripping up trees and flinging them into the current. Not a single shrub remained of the grove where we had beached that morning. The soil holding the trees had been washed away and the trees had been ripped up and carried off. The terrible muscular strength of the water was like that of a wrestler. The far shore was rocky, and the river was forced to vent its rage upon the wooded bank where I stood. The stream that we had crossed in the morning had long since been transformed into a monster.
It was getting dark, and I realized I had to retreat to the mountain and wait there for dawn – as far as possible from the raging, icy waters. Soaked to the skin, constantly slipping in the water, jumping from one hummock to another, I dragged the baskets to the foot of the mountain. The autumn night was black, starless, and cold, and the dull growl of the river drowned out any voices that I might have been able to hear.
Suddenly a light gleamed from a narrow valley, and I didn’t even realize at first that it was not an evening star, but a bonfire. Could it be escaped convicts? Geologists? Fishermen? Hay-mowers? I set out in the direction of the fire, leaving two baskets near a large tree so I could pick them up at dawn. The small basket I took with me.
Distances in the taiga are deceptive. A hut, a boulder, a forest, a river, a sea can be much nearer or farther away than they seem. The decision ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was a simple one. There was a fire, and I had to go there; that was all there was to it. The fire was another important power in the night. A saving power. I was prepared to walk as long as might be necessary – even if I had to feel my way. After all, the nocturnal fire meant people, life, salvation.
I walked along the valley, careful not to lose sight of the fire. After a half-hour I circled an enormous boulder and suddenly saw a camp-fire before me – higher up, on a stone outcropping. The fire was burning before a tent that was as low as a rock. People were sitting round the fire. They paid no attention to me. I didn’t ask what they were doing here but walked up to the fire to get warm. I wanted to eat, but it is not the custom to ask strangers for bread in Kolyma. They were convict hay-mowers from the hospital – the same hospital for which I had been gathering mushrooms.