Beasts, Men and Gods | Page 8

by the
guardian naida. In that snow- covered den I spent two months like
summer without seeing any other human being and without touch with
the outer world where such important events were transpiring. In that
grave under the roots of the fallen tree I lived before the face of nature
with my trials and my anxiety about my family as my constant
companions, and in the hard struggle for my life. Ivan went off the
second day, leaving for me a bag of dry bread and a little sugar. I never
saw him again.
CHAPTER III
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE
Then I was alone. Around me only the wood of eternally green cedars
covered with snow, the bare bushes, the frozen river and, as far as I
could see out through the branches and the trunks of the trees, only the
great ocean of cedars and snow. Siberian taiga! How long shall I be
forced to live here? Will the Bolsheviki find me here or not? Will my
friends know where I am? What is happening to my family? These
questions were constantly as burning fires in my brain. Soon I
understood why Ivan guided me so long. We passed many secluded

places on the journey, far away from all people, where Ivan could have
safely left me but he always said that 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 wood and in the mountains covered with these
forests which stretched to every horizon. The cedar is a splendid,
powerful tree with wide- spreading branches, an eternally green tent,
attracting to its shelter every living being. Among the cedars was
always effervescent life. There the squirrels were continually kicking
up a row, jumping from tree to tree; the nut-jobbers cried shrilly; a
flock of bullfinches with carmine breasts swept through the trees like a
flame; or a small army of goldfinches broke in and filled the
amphitheatre of trees with their whistling; a hare scooted from one tree
trunk to another and behind him stole up the hardly visible shadow of a
white ermine, crawling on the snow, and I watched for a long time the
black spot which I knew to be the tip of his tail; carefully treading the
hard crusted snow approached a noble deer; at last there visited me
from the top of the mountain the king of the Siberian forest, the brown
bear. All this distracted me and carried away the black thoughts from
my brain, encouraging me to persevere. It was good for me also, though
difficult, to climb to the top of my mountain, which reached up out of
the forest and from which I could look away to the range of red on the
horizon. It was the red cliff on the farther bank of the Yenisei. There
lay the country, the towns, the enemies and the friends; and there was
even the point which I located as the place of my family. It was the
reason why Ivan had guided me here. And as the days in this solitude
slipped by I began to miss sorely this companion who, though the
murderer of Gavronsky, had taken care of me like a father, always
saddling my horse for me, cutting the wood and doing everything to
make me comfortable. He had spent many winters alone with nothing
except his thoughts, face to face with nature--I should say, before the
face of God. He had tried the horrors of solitude and had acquired
facility in bearing them. I thought sometimes, if I had to meet my end
in this place, that I would spend my last strength to drag myself to the
top of the mountain to die there, looking away over the infinite sea of
mountains and forest toward the point where my loved ones were.
However, the same life gave me much matter for reflection and yet

more occupation for the physical side. It was a continuous struggle for
existence, hard and severe. The hardest work was the preparation of the
big logs for the naida. The fallen trunks of the trees were covered with
snow and frozen to the ground. I was forced to dig them out and
afterwards, with the help of a long stick as a lever, to move them from
their place. For facilitating this work I chose the mountain for my
supplies, where, although difficult to climb, it was easy to roll the logs
down. Soon I made a splendid discovery. I found near my den a great
quantity of larch, this beautiful yet sad forest giant, fallen during a big
storm. The trunks were covered with snow but remained attached to
their stumps, where they