Sibir by Farley Mowat

Author:Farley Mowat [Mowat, Farley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-392-8
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1990-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

ONE MORNING Ivan Danielov and I were walking beside the banks of the Lena near Yakutsk. Scattered across its gleaming surface were dozens of river boats, and as I watched them I began feeling homesick. Ships and seamen are a major part of my life and I am most at home when I can look out to a limitless horizon of open ocean. In Yakutia I was beginning to feel land-locked.

Ivan listened sympathetically as I explained my feelings.

“But Farley, you are mistaken about Yakutia. In the north we have 2,000 miles of ocean front. And connecting to the ocean we have an inland sea reaching into almost every corner of our country. It is narrow, but with its major arms is more than 8,000 miles in length. You are looking at it now – Elueneh – mother Lena. She is our inland sea.”

“A river is a river is a river,” I replied. “The trouble with all you poets is you get carried away by your own imagery.”

“And the trouble with you is you can’t see beyond your beard.” Ivan said with a smile. “Tomorrow we’ll open your eyes for you.”

He was as good as his word. Next morning, in company with several friends, we drove out of town in brittle, crystalline weather under a low, cold sun which was proclaiming the near approach of winter.

We passed through a guarded gate on the river plain and abruptly found ourselves in what appeared to be a major seaport. Ahead of us a forest of gantry cranes swung their jibs against the sky. Lift trucks and straddle trucks crowded the road we were following, heaving and hoisting mountains of freight that partially obscured the view of nearly two miles of docks lined with ships. The illusion of having been miraculously transported to a busy ocean terminal was so strong I thought I could smell the salt tang of sea air. Perhaps I really could, for the whole of the terminal area (about twenty-five square kilometres) sits on a plain heavily impregnated with brine oozing up from deposits left by a primordial sea.

I had only a confused glimpse of the place before we stopped at the Yakutsk port authority offices, where we were greeted by a big blonde Viking with a chin like a dredge bucket who wore the uniform of a captain in the Soviet merchant marine.

At forty-four, Victor Rukavishnikov had the weathered look of a man who had spent a lifetime on the water. Born of Old Russian immigrant stock in a small Yakutian village, he had spent twenty-four years on the Lena, as deckhand, mate, pilot and finally skipper. At forty he “swallowed the anchor” to become Chief of Port for Yakutsk harbour.

He had, however, avoided becoming a bureaucrat. When I started to sit down at the conference table in his office, prepared for the usual briefing, he stopped me.

“What’s the use of talking in here? Let’s go out on the docks. But, wait a minute. What time is it? After ten o’clock.

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