DRAWING LOTS WITH DEATH: CHAPTER V
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.