Chapter 2

Front 1

What could you do?

Back 1

You could spend your whole life there and never discover whether you were ugly or beautiful, never seek out the secrets of the mosaic of the human face or the mystery of the sensual topography of the human body.

Front 2

What had love for love's sake simply been forgotten?

Back 2

Love for love's sake had, I think, simply been forgotten - had atrophied in the bloodbath of the war, been garrotted by the barbed-wire entanglements of the nearby camp, frozen by the breath of the Arctic.

Front 3

What brightened up the routine of harsh winter days?

Back 3

And if love survived, it took only one form, that of love-as-sin.

Front 4

Why was it impossible to imagining the headmistress?

Back 4

It was impossible to imagine the headmistress, a curt woman of an improbable age, who wore a whole carapace of flannelette-lined garments, romping in the arms of a truck driver who smelled of cedar resin, tobacco, and gasoline.

Front 5

Why did the stir arouse by this latest piece of tittle-tattle quickly faded away, as if congealed under the icy wind of endless nights?

Back 5

People almost resented the headmistress for not being seen scrambling up into every truck carrying trunks of huge pine trees through the taiga. . . .

Front 6

What would everyone know her headmistress as?

Back 6

A woman irremediably alone and resigned to her misery.

Front 7

Why were the czar's cossacks overwhelmed with fatigue?

Back 7

The czar's cossacks were a handful of men overwhelmed with fatigue from their crazy trek into the depths of the endless taiga.

Front 8

What happens if you closed your eyes for a moment?

Back 8

If you closed your eyes for a moment, your lashes would not come unstuck.

Front 9

How did the cossacks make love to women?

Back 9

The cossacks made love to women on bearskins in the smoky darkness of yurts, beside the glowing embers.

Front 10

How did cossacks hold on to women?

Back 10

You had to twist their long glistening tresses, as black and coarse as a horse's mane, around your fist.

Front 11

Describe women's breasts and hips.

Back 11

Women's breasts were flat and round, like the domes of the oldest churches in Kiev, and their hips were firm and resistant.

Front 12

What happened to the scent of the women's skin?

Back 12

The scent of the women's skin, tanned by the fire and the cold, became more and more pungent, intoxicating.

Front 13

What happened after the cossack would wind the tresses around his fist a second time?

Back 13

In the narrow eyes of the woman there flashed a spark of mischief.

Front 14

What happened to the misty void in the west?

Back 14

In the west, when the great misty void had conclusively driven back barbarian Muscovy, Europe had established a line that could not be crossed.

Front 15

While cossacks were venturers into the misty void, what were they doing?

Back 15

To stop at the land's end in the warm spring dusk and to let their gaze soar up from that ultimate brink toward the shy pallor of the first stars . . .

Front 16

Where was a smoke-filled yurt and what happened inside?

Back 16

A smoke-filled yurt, in the heart of the taiga, where winter still reigned, a woman, whose snake body was distorted, writhed as she expelled an extraordinarily large infant onto a bearskin.

Front 17

What happened to a young Yakut girl?

Back 17

A young Yakut girl, clad in a short sable coat, was forever rummaging in the tangle of sterns and branches in search of the famous Kharg root. . . .

Front 18

What was the famous Kharg root?

Back 18

It was surely no coincidence if the power that dreams, songs, and legends had over our barbarian hearts was irresistible.

Front 19

What very vague memory did the old people of the village retain?

Back 19

Sometimes it was the Whites who had brutally executed a group of partisans by having hanged from these nails; sometimes it was the Reds who had meted out revolutionary justice. . . .

Front 20

What happened to the nails, and the bits of rotted rope?

Back 20

The nails, and the bits of rotted rope, had risen, over long years, to twice a man's height, in accordance with the slow and stately growth of the cedars.

Front 21

What happened to the men that went away?

Back 21

The men went away, now crossing the twelve thousand leagues of the empire to fill the trenches in the west, now disappearing into the misty void of the ocean to the east.

Front 22

What happened when the pendulum swung westward?

Back 22

The Whites drove the Reds back beyond the Urals, beyond the Volga.

Front 23

One day, what happened to the mighty swing?

Back 23

One day the mighty swing even catapulted men from our own village toward that fabled Western World that had long since marked itself off from barbaric Muscovy.

Front 24

Describe how the pendulum seemed to have stuck.

Back 24

The pendulum was as if its immense weight had become entangled in the innumerable lines of barbed-wire fencing stretched across its path.

Front 25

Describe the place far away from the village.

Back 25

There was a place on the road leading to the town where the taiga opened up and in the cold glitter of the fog you could see the silhouettes of the watchtowers.

Front 26

What does a child need?

Back 26

A child needs very little in order to construct its personal universe: a few natural landmarks whose harmony it can readily uncover and which it arranges into a coherent world.

Front 27

Describe how the stream appeared.

Back 27

In a deep thicket in the taiga where a stream arose, emerging from the dark mirror of an underground wellspring.

Front 28

What is the direction of stream Brook?

Back 28

Brook circled the village and flowed into the river near the abandoned bathhouse: a river that wound its way between two dark walls of the taiga, wide and deep.

Front 29

Provide an example of very motley population of the village.

Back 29

Among us there was a former "kulak," exiled here during the collectivisation of the Ukraine in the thirties; a family of old believers, the Klestovs, who lived in fierce isolation, hardly talking to anyone else.

Front 30

Who was Verbin? What special thing can be said about him?

Back 30

A ferryman, who had only one arm and who always told the same story to his passengers. He was one of the first to have inscribed his name on the walls of the conquered Reichstag; and it was at that ecstatic moment of victory that a stray shell splinter had severed his right arm - when he was only halfway through his name.

Front 31

What would Utkin's mother say to Utkin as long as he was a child?

Back 31

As long as Utkin was a child and could not understand, Utkin's mother would tell him that his father had been a pilot in the war and that he had perished in a kamikaze attack, hurling his blazing plane at a column of German tanks.

Front 32

What happened to the pendulum in its flight?

Back 32

The pendulum in its flight must have scraped the frozen soil of our land and uncovered rivers with golden sand. Or perhaps some of the gilding on its heavy disk had rubbed off on the rough earth.

Front 33

What must Utkin's father secretly have hoped to do?

Back 33

Utkin's father must secretly have hoped to discover some new gold-bearing terrain for the day of my birth.

Front 34

What did Samurai, Utkin and Andrei Makine all have in common?

Back 34

As for Samurai, who was fifteen at this time, neither Utkin nor Andrei Makine could ever properly understand who the hook-nosed old woman was in whose ibza he lived.

Front 35

What was beyond them to imagine?

Back 35

The life of the village was beyond them to imagine our futures unfolding outside the three essential matters: timber, gold, and the chill shadow of the camp.

Front 36

What type of gold prospectors were found in the workers' canteen?

Back 36

Huge fox-fur shapkas; short fur coats, held in with broad belts; gigantic boots lined with smooth, glistening fur.

Front 37

As a children, what were they certainly much tempted by?

Back 37

Among gold prospectors, there were some who "stole gold from the state." Yes, they washed sand on unknown terrains and disposed of their nuggets on a mysterious "black market."

Front 38

What would they learn?

Back 38

They would learn that once again a gang of loggers had disturbed a bear in its lair and escaped by piling, all six of them, into the cabin of their tractor.

Front 39

What was the talk of strictly local news?

Back 39

An electric cable that had snapped, traces of wolves found near the barn.

Front 40

Describe the strange silence reigning around their izbas.

Back 40

No crunch of footsteps in the snow, no wind whistling around the roof edges, no dogs barking.

Front 41

What could you hear?

Back 41

You could hear the sighing of a kettle on the stove, the slight, regular hiss of a lightbulb.

Front 42

Where did Andrei Makine's aunt and him rush? What did they expect?

Back 42

Andrei Makine's aunt and him rushed to the entrance hall and, already anticipating the unimaginable, which recurred almost every winter, they opened the door. . . .

Front 43

Inside the entrance hall, what happened to Andrei Makine?

Back 43

Andrei Makine was climbing up slowly, compelled at times to proceed almost horizontally.

Front 44

Inside the entrance hall, describe what happened to Andrei Makine's body?

Back 44

Andrei Makine was beginning to be short of breath, I experienced a strange giddiness, my bare hands were burning, my pulse was throbbing heavily in my temples.

Front 45

Inside the entrance hall, describe what happened to Andrei Makine's brain?

Back 45

Andrei Makine's brain, dulled by the lack of air, feebly suggested to me that it might have been sensible to go back down into the izba to recover my breath. . . .

Front 46

What happened to taiga?

Back 46

Now the blue distances of the taiga were clearly revealed: it seemed to be asleep in the sweet air.

Front 47

What happened above the glittering expanse?

Back 47

White columns of smoke arose from the invisible chimneys.

Front 48

When the first men appeared from the emerging snow, what happened to them with dazed looks?

Back 48

They took in the glittering desert now spread out where the village had been.

Front 49

What happened to a dog?

Back 49

A dog bounded out of the tunnel and seemed to be equally bemused by the unaccustomed spectacle. . . .

Front 50

What happened to the few men of Svetlaya?

Back 50

The few men of Svetlaya, helped by all the rest of us, began to dig corridors linking the izbas with one another and opened up the path to the well.

Front 51

What interacted with the snow? What was the result?

Back 51

The sunlight of spring's mild spell would soon beat down the snow, would reduce it to heavy piles below our windows.

Front 52

What happened to the cold weather?

Back 52

The cold weather would begin again, even more extreme, as if to take revenge on this brief interval of light abandon.

Front 53

How did the progress of vast acres of ice grew faster?

Back 53

The village broke its moorings. The village's river began to move.

Front 54

Describe Svetlaya.

Back 54

It was the village of Andrei Makine's aunt and him, with its izbas, its worm-eaten fences, its sails of multicoloured linen on the lines, embarking on a joyful cruise.

Front 55

What happened a few weeks later?

Back 55

A few weeks later the river returned to its bed and the village landed on the shores of a fleeting Siberian summer.

Front 56

What happened during the brief interlude?

Back 56

During this brief interlude the sun spilled out the warm scent of cedar resin.

Front 57

Who discovered the Kharg root?

Back 57

Utkin.

Front 58

How did Utkin discovered the Kharg root?

Back 58

Maybe thanks to Utkin's leg. His left foot, which he dragged along like a rake, dug up extraordinary things, often without his being aware of it. . . .

Front 59

What was feminine about the Kharg root's shape?

Back 59

Kharg root, in fact, a kind of plump, dark-hued pear, with a skin like suede, slightly cracked, the underside was covered in purplish down.

Front 60

Describe the bulb of the Kharg.

Back 60

The bulb of the Kharg with its sensual contours hinted at a strange life that animated its mysterious interior.

Front 61

What happened to the Kharg after Andrei Makine made a scratch on its chubby surface with his thumbnail?

Back 61

A blood-red liquid poured into the scratch mark.

Front 62

What happened to the Kharg after Samurai thrusted his thumbs into the down at the base of the fleshy oval?

Back 62

Andrei Makine, Samurai & Utkin heard a kind of brief creak - like the sound of a door frozen fast with ice when it finally yields under pressure.

Front 63

What did the pale leaf of the Kharg inspire?

Back 63

The pale leaf of the Kharg inspired mixed feelings into Andrei Makine, Samurai & Utkin: to destroy, to smash this useless harmony, or . . . We really did not know what should be done with it.

Front 64

What did Samurai do with a brisk movement?

Back 64

Finally, with a brisk movement, Samurai stuck the two halves of the Kharg together and thrust the root into a pocket of his knapsack.