then i was alone. around me only the wood of eternally greencedars covered with snow, the bare bushes, the frozen river and, asfar as i could see out through the branches and the trunks of thetrees, only the great ocean of cedars and snow. siberian taiga!
how long shall i be forced to live here? will the bolsheviki findme here or not? will my friends know where i am? what ishappening to my family? these questions were constantly as burningfires in my brain. soon i understood why ivan guided me so long.
we passed many secluded places on the journey, far away from allpeople, where ivan could have safely left me but he always saidthat he would take me to a place where it would be easier to live.
and it was so. the charm of my lone refuge was in the cedar woodand in the mountains covered with these forests which stretched toevery horizon. the cedar is a splendid, powerful tree with wide-spreading branches, an eternally green tent, attracting to itsshelter every living being. among the cedars was alwayseffervescent life. there the squirrels were continually kicking upa row, jumping from tree to tree; the nut-jobbers cried shrilly; aflock of bullfinches with carmine breasts swept through the treeslike a flame; or a small army of goldfinches broke in and filledthe amphitheatre of trees with their whistling; a hare scooted fromone tree trunk to another and behind him stole up the hardlyvisible shadow of a white ermine, crawling on the snow, and iwatched for a long time the black spot which i knew to be the tipof his tail; carefully treading the hard crusted snow approached anoble deer; at last there visited me from the top of the mountainthe king of the siberian forest, the brown bear. all thisdistracted me and carried away the black thoughts from my brain,encouraging me to persevere. it was good for me also, thoughdifficult, to climb to the top of my mountain, which reached up outof the forest and from which i could look away to the range of redon the horizon. it was the red cliff on the farther bank of theyenisei. there lay the country, the towns, the enemies and thefriends; and there was even the point which i located as the placeof my family. it was the reason why ivan had guided me here. andas the days in this solitude slipped by i began to miss sorely thiscompanion who, though the murderer of gavronsky, had taken care ofme like a father, always saddling my horse for me, cutting the woodand doing everything to make me comfortable. he had spent manywinters alone with nothing except his thoughts, face to face withnature--i should say, before the face of god. he had tried thehorrors of solitude and had acquired facility in bearing them. ithought sometimes, if i had to meet my end in this place, that iwould spend my last strength to drag myself to the top of themountain to die there, looking away over the infinite sea ofmountains and forest toward the point where my loved ones were.
however, the same life gave me much matter for reflection and yetmore occupation for the physical side. it was a continuousstruggle for existence, hard and severe. the hardest work was thepreparation of the big logs for the naida. the fallen trunks ofthe trees were covered with snow and frozen to the ground. i wasforced to dig them out and afterwards, with the help of a longstick as a lever, to move them from their place. for facilitatingthis work i chose the mountain for my supplies, where, althoughdifficult to climb, it was easy to roll the logs down. soon i madea splendid discovery. i found near my den a great quantity oflarch, this beautiful yet sad forest giant, fallen during a bigstorm. the trunks were covered with snow but remained attached totheir stumps, where they had broken off. when i cut into thesestumps with the ax, the head buried itself and could withdifficulty be drawn and, investigating the reason, i found themfilled with pitch. chips of this wood needed only a spark to setthem aflame and ever afterward i always had a stock of them tolight up quickly for warming my hands on returning from the hunt orfor boiling my tea.
the greater part of my days was occupied with the hunt. i came tounderstand that i must distribute my work over every day, for itdistracted me from my sad and depressing thoughts. generally,after my morning tea, i went into the forest to seek heathcock orblackcock. after killing one or two i began to prepare my dinner,which never had an extensive menu. it was constantly game soupwith a handful of dried bread and afterwards endless cups of tea,this essential beverage of the woods. once, during my search forbirds, i heard a rustle in the dense shrubs and, carefully peeringabout, i discovered the points of a deer's horns. i crawled alongtoward the spot but the watchful animal heard my approach. with agreat noise he rushed from the bush and i saw him very clearly,after he had run about three hundred steps, stop on the slope ofthe mountain. it was a splendid animal with dark grey coat, withalmost a black spine and as large as a small cow. i laid my rifleacross a branch and fired. the animal made a great leap, ranseveral steps and fell. with all my strength i ran to him but hegot up again and half jumped, half dragged himself up the mountain.
the second shot stopped him. i had won a warm carpet for my denand a large stock of meat. the horns i fastened up among thebranches of my wall, where they made a fine hat rack.
i cannot forget one very interesting but wild picture, which wasstaged for me several kilometres from my den. there was a smallswamp covered with grass and cranberries scattered through it,where the blackcock and sand partridges usually came to feed on theberries. i approached noiselessly behind the bushes and saw awhole flock of blackcock scratching in the snow and picking out theberries. while i was surveying this scene, suddenly one of theblackcock jumped up and the rest of the frightened flockimmediately flew away. to my astonishment the first bird begangoing straight up in a spiral flight and afterwards droppeddirectly down dead. when i approached there sprang from the bodyof the slain cock a rapacious ermine that hid under the trunk of afallen tree. the bird's neck was badly torn. i then understoodthat the ermine had charged the cock, fastened itself on his neckand had been carried by the bird into the air, as he sucked theblood from its throat, and had been the cause of the heavy fallback to the earth. thanks to his aeronautic ability i saved onecartridge.
so i lived fighting for the morrow and more and more poisoned byhard and bitter thoughts. the days and weeks passed and soon ifelt the breath of warmer winds. on the open places the snow beganto thaw. in spots the little rivulets of water appeared. anotherday i saw a fly or a spider awakened after the hard winter. thespring was coming. i realized that in spring it was impossible togo out from the forest. every river overflowed its banks; theswamps became impassable; all the runways of the animals turnedinto beds for streams of running water. i understood that untilsummer i was condemned to a continuation of my solitude. springvery quickly came into her rights and soon my mountain was freefrom snow and was covered only with stones, the trunks of birch andaspen trees and the high cones of ant hills; the river in placesbroke its covering of ice and was coursing full with foam andbubbles.
