The fast-flowing Samarga river takes great skill to navigate. Victor Kaza arranges for a fellow Udege, Shurka the Grouse-Catcher, to guide us upstream. However Shurka is busy drinking up his pay from a previous voyage and a week passes before he’s sober enough to steer a boat again. Eventually we set out in an ulmaga, a long boat made from a hollowed tree-trunk. Its prow is flattened into a shovel-shape so that it glides over submerged rocks. At waterfalls we climb out and walk upriver while Shurka and his son carry the boat on their shoulders.
Shurka the Grouse-Catcher punts the boat from the prow while his wife paddles from the stern. Their son lies on the floor of the boat sucking lump sugar. I fear that at any instant the ulmaga will overturn or be split by a rock. Shurka deploys great skill in keeping it head-on into the current; if he misjudges an angle the boat will swing around and be swept off downstream.
Back in Samarga I watched Shurka sign his contract with us. The sweat stood out on his forehead as he struggled to steer a pencil across the paper. Yet with a boat-pole in his hand he’s a virtuoso, reading the river like a book. Unbothered by midges, he takes advantage of every break to catch fish or shoot grouse.
When we reach our destination Shurka comes to me in a temper because he had some money deducted from his pay ‘as a tax on childlessness.’
“I’ve got eleven children.”
“You have to fill in a form,” I explain.
He stares at me in astonishment.
“Don’t worry, I’ll fill in your forms for you. Here, let’s toast Dalstroi.”[8]
I open a bottle of vodka and Shurka calms down.
Akza is a cluster of 20 huts, an elementary school, a shop and a medical post. The clubhouse burned down the year before. A few dozen Udege and nine Russians live in the village. A man from Leningrad named Kryuchkov has been here since 1924. After graduating from university he contracted TB. The doctors advised him to leave Leningrad’s damp and foggy atmosphere. Every Udege family in Akza has a child who resembles Kryuchkov.
Dr Yablonsky is also from Leningrad. Once he was head of a university department and spoke four languages but he was exiled during the purge of the Leningrad intelligentsia.[9] Now Yablonsky has the shaking hands and watery eyes of an alcoholic. He forgot his European languages long ago and learned Udege in their place.
A third Russian is Pasha Dyachkovsky, a skilled hunter with luxuriant curving moustaches. He’s married to a local Udege woman, Duzga. Kryuchkov warns me that when drunk Pasha wets his bed and then he beats his wife mercilessly.
A few days after my arrival we gather for a drink to celebrate Pasha’s birthday. After a while he feels the urge to urinate. He rises from the table, grabs Duzga and starts pulling out her hair in clumps like carrots. We leap up to restrain him but this offends his soul to the core. He goes home, barricades himself in, climbs up to the attic with his gun and takes aim at anyone who comes within his field of vision. This is serious, as he lives above the shop which Duzga runs. We need to buy food. Fortunately for us, the next day Pasha decides to go hunting in the taiga.
“He usually conquers his hangover this way,” Dr Yablonsky explains.
There is very little to do in Akza apart from hunt and drink. I can’t hunt because of my leg, so I make myself popular by filling in for the observers when they’re out hunting or too drunk to work. Of course I drink too, but I have a good stomach for vodka. Even after two bottles I can tap out: ‘The weather report from Akza is…’
It is evening and we’ve gathered for a drink. I grow excited. Leaping onto a chair I start to declaim some of Yesenin’s poems. “Do any of you understand these lines?” I shout. “Buried out here in the taiga you’ve never known the world he describes — or you’ve already forgotten it.”
The next day it occurs to me that Kryuchkov has seen Yesenin in the flesh. I realise I should apologise to him, but somehow I can never bring myself to do so. After that I keep out of Kryuchkov’s way, hanging back if I see him enter the shop ahead of me.
On my day off I pack a bottle, a book and some food in my rucksack and walk into the taiga. I stop beneath a tree, open my bottle and settle down to read. But my attention wanders, caught by the loveliness of my surroundings. I never imagined that this earth could be so beautiful. I am surrounded by hills clothed in larch and cedar. Where there has been a fire and the trees have not yet grown back the slopes are covered in brilliant red flowers. Now I have no regrets that I’ve left ‘civilisation.’
The other Russians do not share my enthusiasm. When I praise the beauty of the taiga to Pasha he snaps: “Go and play in the dirt you young wipe-snot,” and strides off.
For the first time in my life I have my own room. It contains a stove and a camp bed. A door from the burned-down club serves as a table with blocks of wood for stools. The pile of deerskins I sleep on is as soft as a feather-bed. I mention to Victor Kaza that I need cooking utensils. “Come with me,” he says, and leads me out into the taiga. In a small clearing we come upon a larch which has been festooned like a Christmas tree with aluminium spoons, pans and pieces of cloth.
“In my grandfather’s time we laid the dead person in an ulmaga and hung it from the tree,” says Victor. “We put berries and salted mushrooms in the boat. The dead had everything they needed for their journey into the next world.”
Victor unties a frying pan and gives it to me. I feel a little sorry for him as he is a misfit among the other Udege. His hunchback prevents him from hunting and he tries to compensate for this by flaunting his seven years’ schooling. This is useless as the Udege value hunting far more highly than literacy. Victor has a mentally-retarded Russian wife. I don’t know how she ended up at Akza but it’s obvious she’s been in a labour camp.
“Lyuba you haven’t put your knickers on,” Pasha cries as she passes by.
Lyuba grins and lifts the hem of her skirt over her head to reveal bright crimson bloomers. We all laugh at her until Victor emerges from their hut.
“Lyuba, pull your chemise down,” he pulls her indoors. The watching Udege roar with laughter again, this time at Victor’s pretensions.
February comes round and the entire settlement gives itself up to an orgy of drunkenness. The occasion is the pelt-collector’s annual visit. This man is Tsar, God and high court judge rolled into one. He rides up the frozen Samarga to buy furs, accompanied by horse-sleighs laden with goods for Duzga’s shop.
The pelt-collector brings enough cash to pay three or four hunters. This is the only time of the year that the Udege see money, although they sometimes earn a little by guiding geologists or doing some building work. They go to the pelt-collector one by one, beginning with his relatives and drinking partners. No one dares cross him or he’ll refuse to buy their ‘soft gold,’ which is a state monopoly. After a day or two the collector takes back the money that the hunters have spent in Duzga’s shop. With this cash he pays the next group. This process lasts till all the hunters’ pay is in Duzga’s pocket and from there, of course, it goes back to the state.
The Udege drink for days on end, quietening their babies with rags soaked in vodka. A few women have the foresight to take cash from their husbands’ pockets to buy flour, sugar, salt and dress material. The rest have to spend the year humbling themselves before Duzga, who gives credit because she enjoys having people in her debt. She’s the most powerful person in Akza and you have to take care not to make an enemy of her. When they’ve drunk all their pay the Udege go to sleep. A few days later the men emerge with their guns and head out into the taiga again.