The Ice Road by Stefan Waydenfeld

Author:Stefan Waydenfeld
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aquila Polonica
Published: 2014-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

A model of the log raft we built to leave Kvasha

The Uftyuga River from Kvasha to Krasnoborsk

* In fact, the author was born in a clinic in the city of Warsaw. However, his parents’ home at the time was in Otwock, a suburb of Warsaw. Editor’s note.

CHAPTER 12

On the Raft

SIBERIAN RIVERS and rafts made of Siberian timber belong to each other, like lovers, and, like lovers, they have their quarrels.

We were lucky. We learned later that of the twenty-two rafts that had left Kvasha only nine reached Krasnoborsk. The remainder were abandoned along the way for various reasons, though their passengers eventually did reach Krasnoborsk, one way or another. Our trip was also far from straightforward. Instead of the planned five days, it lasted eight, and we arrived in the mouth of the Uftyuga cold and tired. There, we abandoned the raft tied to a tree at the riverbank. Without regrets.

As we were leaving Kvasha the weather was good, the morning air crisp, while the sky, speckled with white clouds, resembled a boy’s bedroom after a frantic pillow fight. With no wind the river surface was mirror smooth but, nonetheless, within hours of leaving Kvasha, our little armada dispersed and we had no choice but to let the river carry us on our solitary way.

‘The speed of current changes from one part of the river to another,’ explained Mr Wasserman in, for him, an unusually laconic statement of fact.

Mietek, Olek, Helena, her two sisters, Henryk and I manned the oars in two-hour shifts. Not that we had much to do. The river meandered gently through the still, peaceful forest. The oars were heavy, but only an occasional movement was needed to keep the raft in the midstream. As the river curved, on low, flat promontories, the forest receded giving way to meadows, silent and sleepy under a carpet of the last of the summer grass.

Towards the end of our first day on the raft, the summer ended abruptly. Dusk came quickly and with it a cold wind. I had just come off oar duty. I was hungry. We’d had our last meal of bread washed down with ice-cold river water about noon, hours ago. I was also getting chilly. We had a clay fireplace on the raft and a small supply of firewood on board, but on that first day our elders were reluctant to light a fire. ‘It might set the raft alight,’ they said. What nonsense. In the middle of a river? But now we were all shivering. It was time to stop for the night.

No sooner did we manoeuvre the raft to the riverbank when the first snow, a harbinger of winter, came down. The snowfall was light and short-lived. The flakes were moist, sticky, clamped together and melted quickly. It was 12 September, an early winter, even for Siberia.

Using several old belts—there was no rope available—we secured the raft to a couple of thick roots protruding bracket-like from the bank of the river. In minutes we had a fire going.

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