keep from falling asleep I try all kinds of tricks which take a lot of time
doing and are of little use. I try, for instance, to light the primus-stove,
while I order Luri to light the blowlamp. A difficult task! It's hard to
light a primus-stove when every minute you feel your own skin from
head to foot, when you suddenly feel yourself going cold somewhere
deep inside your ears, as if у our eardrums were freezing and when the
snow immediately plasters your face, turning it into an icy mask. Luri
tries to crack jokes, but the jokes freeze in mid-air, in a fifty-degree (C.)
frost and there is nothing left for him but to joke about his ability to joke
under any circumstances and at any time.
So ended our first night and the night after that. A little more sleepy
still. And the snow kept rushing past us until it seemed as if all the
world's snow was flying past us... The thing was not to let the mechanic
fall asleep. He looked the strongest of us, but turned out to be the
weakest. The doctor from time to time slapped him and shook him.
Then the doctor himself began to doze and I had to shake him from time
to time, politely but persistently.
"Nothing of the sort, Sanya. I wasn't sleeping at all," he muttered,
opening his eyes with an effort. I no longer felt sleepy. Some years later I
read Stefansson's The Friendly Arctic and realised that it was a mistake
to go without sleep for such a long time. But at that time I was
inexperienced in the ways of the Arctic and believed that to fall asleep in
such a situation was courting certain death.
All the same I must have fallen asleep or else I was daydreaming,
seeing myself boxed up deep in the earth, because overhead I could
distinctly hear a street noise and the clanging and rattling of tramcars. It
wasn't very terrifying, only somewhat distressing to find myself lying in
that little box all alone, unable to stir hand or foot, and I having to fly
somewhere without a minute to spare. Then suddenly I found myself in
a street standing before the lighted window of a shop, while inside the
shop was Katya, walking calmly up and down without looking at me. It
was she without a doubt, though I was a little afraid that it would
afterward turn out to be someone else or that something would prevent
me from speaking to her. The next moment I rushed to the door of the
shop, but it was already empty and dark inside, and on the glass door
hung a notice: "Closed."
I opened my eyes, then shut them again, overjoyed at the sight that
met them! The blizzard had died down. The snow no longer blinded us,
172
but lay on the ground. Above it were the sun and sky, the immeasurably
vast sky that one can only find at sea or in the tundra. Against this
background of snow and sky, within two hundred paces of the plane,
stood a man. He held a reindeer guiding pole in his hands and behind
him stood reindeer harnessed to a sledge. Farther out, as though faintly
etched, rose two little snow hills—without a doubt Nenets chooms - skin
dwellings. This was the dark mass which I had shied away from when
landing. They were now snowed up and only the conical open tops
showed black. Around the chooms stood people, adults and children.
They stood perfectly motionless, gazing at our aeroplane.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHAТ IS A PRIMUS-STOVE?
I never thought that thrushing one's feet into a fire could be such a
joy. But it is sheer, unalloyed bliss! You feel the warmth flowing into
your body, rising higher and higher, and at last, slowly, softly, warming
the heart.
I felt nothing else, thought of nothing else. The doctor was muttering
something behind me, but I was not listening to him, and did not care a
hang about the spirits he was having rubbed into my feet.
The smoke of the tundra shrub they were burning, which is like the
smoke of damp pinewood, hung over the hearth, but I did not care a
hang for this smoke either—all I cared for was the warmth. I was
warm—it was almost unbelievable!
The Nentsi were squatting round the fire and looking at us. Their
faces were grave. The doctor was trying to tell them something in
Nenets. They listened attentively and nodded understandingly. And
then it transpired that they had understood nothing, and the doctor,
with a gesture of annoyance, began to act the scene of a wounded man
and an aeroplane flying to his aid. It would have been very funny had I
been able to keep awake for as long as a minute at a stretch. He lay
down, clutching his belly, then jumped up and rushed forward with
raised arms. Suddenly he turned to me, saying in amazement:
"Would you believe it! They know all about it. They even know where
Ledkov was wounded. It was attempted murder. Somebody shot at
him."
He began speaking in Nenets again, and I guessed, through my
drowsiness, that he was asking them whether they knew who had fired
the shot.
"They say the man who fired the shot went home. Went home to
think. He will think a day, two days. But he will come back."
I couldn't fight off sleep any longer. Everything began to swim before
me, and I could have laughed through sheer joy at the thought of being
able to go to sleep at last.
173
When I woke up it was quite light. A skin flap had been drawn aside
and I saw the doctor standing in a dazzling triangle of light with the
Nentsi sitting on their haunches around him. Some way off I could see
the plane, and all this was so strongly reminiscent of a familiar film
scene that I was afraid it would soon flash past and disappear. But it
wasn't a film shot. It was the doctor asking the Nentsi where Vanokan
was.
"There?" he shouted irritably, pointing south. "There, there!" the Nentsi
cried. "There?" he asked, pointing east. "There."
Then the Nentsi all began pointing to the southeast and the doctor
drew a huge map of the Arctic coastline in the snow. But that did not
help matters, because the Nentsi regarded the map as a work of art, and
one of them, quite a young fellow, drew a figure of a reindeer beside the
map to show that he, too, could draw.
The first thing to do was to dig the aeroplane out of the snow. And we
should never have been able to cope with this task if the Nentsi had not
helped us. I had never seen snow which looked so little like snow. We
hacked it with axes and spades and cut it with knives. When the last
snow block had been cut out and thrown aside, we untied the fastenings,
which I had recommended to the notice of Arctic pilots. Water to warm
up the engine was being heated in all available pots and kettles. The
young Nenets, who had drawn the reindeer in the snow and now
volunteered to act as our navigator to show us the way to Vanokan, had
said goodbye to his weeping wife, and this was very amusing, as his wife
was wearing trousers of reindeer-skin and only the bits of coloured cloth
in her hair distinguished her from the men. The sun came out from
behind the high fleecy clouds-a sign of good weather-and I told the
doctor, who was putting eye drops into somebody's eyes, that it was
time to "get going". At that moment Luri came up to me and said that