Notes from My Captivity(13)

We get out of the SUV. Small wooden houses huddle around the shore. A dog bounds out of one, sees us, and slinks back. The air has warmed up; my breath no longer makes mist in the air. The mountains are smooth and bald. Raindrops dimple the surface of the water. Some power lines have fallen down in the road. Trees spread out in the distance. From my reading, I know that these are larch and pine.

I say into my Dictaphone: Smooth mountains, larch and pine.

No one’s around, except for an old man walking down the street. Water from the gutter splashes on his shoes and the cuffs of his pants, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s got a knit cap on and wears a long beard and looks very Russian. I take out my camera and snap a photo of him. This seems to make him angry. He comes toward me, shouting in Russian, and I lower my camera, confused. Now he’s just a few feet from me, still screaming, and I stumble backward, afraid. His frosty-blue eyes blaze, and the Russian that pours out of him never pauses for a response.

Sergei rushes up and steps between us. They speak back and forth, rapid fire, then Sergei turns to me. “He doesn’t want his photo taken. He wants you to take out the film and burn it.”

“Burn the film?” I ask, bewildered. “This is a digital camera!”

“Give it to me,” Sergei orders. He holds it up to the old man, showing the image in the screen while I look on from a few feet away. The old man peers at it a moment and then snarls something in Russian. Sergei responds—something gentle and calm—and presses the Delete button, and the old man’s photo disappears. The old man looks confused for a moment, then throws up his hands, shoots me a final look of disgust, and ambles away, his back stooped and the cuffs of his pants wet.

Sergei hands back the camera to me and gives me a wink. “Lucky I came along and am young and brave, or that old man would have beaten you to a pulp.”

Dan rushes up. “What’s going on here?”

“Old man got mad at me for taking his photo,” I explain.

Dan looks annoyed. “Stop taking everyone’s picture. Not everybody likes it. Put the camera away.” He walks back to the others. I shoot him a resentful look and take out my recorder.

Just met an old man who didn’t want his picture taken. The Sean Penn of Siberia.

Sergei stands with his arms crossed, smiling at me. “You are a rebel.” He leans on the word. “Just like James Dean.”

“James Dean?”

“Yes. I like his movies.”

“I remind you of James Dean?” I ask. My voice sounds irritated and clear in the mountain air. Already I feel like the one making all the mistakes, and I renew my determination not to be the weak, dumb, drunken, flirting, camera-happy link. I put the Nikon in my knapsack and throw myself into the task of helping to load the boat, although I can’t even pretend to lift the heavy fuel tanks that go in the back.

“These have got to last for eight days,” Dan says. “Four days down, four days back.”

“That’s if there are no unexpected problems,” Sergei says. I don’t know why Sergei keeps bringing up the dangers—whether he’s trying to be a good guide or just has a flair for the dramatic or for making himself sound important. “You just never know which way the river will turn, and with the rains—”

“We’ve been up this river twice before,” Dan interrupts.

“How many years has it been?” Sergei asks.

“Four.”

“Well, it’s different now. Stronger. Last month, we lost two fishermen on this river. Their boat hit a fallen tree branch and overturned. They drowned.”

Dan makes a face. Sergei is just a wealth of good news, and this is good news for my story. The more drama, the better. Sergei is a gold mine.

A family comes out of their house and silently watches us pack the boat. A little boy runs past his father’s grasping arms toward us.

“He wants to go with us!” Sergei announces.

“Come with us!” Viktor shouts. “We need strong men like you! Come help us find the Osinovs!”

The boy stops dead, staring at Viktor. His eyes widen. He turns and runs back to his father to loud laughter from the Russians.

“Ha! That stopped him!” Lyubov whoops.

Sergei nods and says to me, “When I was a little boy, my relatives used to scare me, too, with stories of the Osinovs.”

Sergei watches as the father picks up the little boy and says something in Russian that makes the crew break into loud, quick laughter. Dan’s fellow travelers seem to be getting along well. I guess Sergei has forgiven Lyubov for grabbing his arm in her meaty paw the night before.

I have to admit, Sergei is an attractive man, with that smooth-skinned face and blue eyes and high cheekbones, and after all, a boy’s swagger has a way of attracting a girl in the hallways of a high school or among the mountains of a savage land. I smile at Sergei. He smiles at me. It feels like just the right amount of danger.

Five hours in the boat. Water swifter here but fine. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining. I’ve got my camera and my Dictaphone out, mumbling my observances into it.

Siberia. It’s still unbelievable that I am here. It’s an intimidating place. I’ve been on rivers, and I’ve camped in forests. The elements are the same: a river of water, mountains of rock, clouds in the sky, trees, a gravel bank. But it’s all arranged in a way that I can only call bigger than life. Among the bird cries there is one that sounds so much like a baby I want to put my hands over my ears. I don’t know if the cry is for hunger or companionship or just to hear its own echo among the craggy mountains. . . .