seen-Kolchak, Maxim Tippelskirch, Heinz Krausser-and the dream of gold.
The snow stopped falling before dawn but it had dropped heavily on the hills and we had to use the chains; it took a long time to wrestle them onto the tires and we were still west of our destination when the light came.
The dawn sky had a bruised coloration and it promised to be another oppressive grey day; the trees were limp and heavy, the crumpled folds of the hills were blue with dull shadows. The truck’s window crank, designed by some sinister idiot, hammered the side bone of my knee.
A small stone farmhouse on the left: Pudovkin swung the wheel and we angled across into its yard. I stiffened.
“We’ll lay over here.”
He drove it right into the barn and a man came down from the house, a big man with his face glowing in the chill wind. We dismounted from the truck and Pudovkin smiled but the farmer did not. Pudovkin had begun to utter a greeting but now suddenly his voice stopped, as if someone had shot it.
I said, “What is it?”
The farmer only shook his head and closed the barn behind us and took us to the house. He was reaching for a wide rake when I went inside with Pudovkin.
The woman was stout and I heard the cry of an infant somewhere in the house. Pudovkin and I stood in the kitchen stamping and blowing through our cheeks. Pudovkin pulled off his gloves and blew on his hands. “Hello, Raiza.”
“You’re still too thin,” she said.
“Boris has a long face.”
“He heard something. I don’t know.”
Through a steamy window I saw the farmer raking the yard, obliterating the tracks our truck had made.
Pudovkin said, “We haven’t eaten all night.” He took me through the house and showed me the bathroom. I heard his footsteps recede; the farmer banged into the house and they talked in the kitchen. I could hear the voices, not the words.
I let the water run until the rust cleared out of it. The trickle spiraled down an icicle that hung from the spout. When I turned it off the waterpipes banged. I found a towel and scrubbed my face warm.
I found Pudovkin at the kitchen table, his jaws ruminating bread. “We’ve had a little trouble. The man I was to turn you over to-he was to take you across to the mainland and drive you down the Caucasus. He’s been arrested.”
I sat down very slowly as if the chair might break under me. “Then they know.”
“No. The man’s a Jew, they arrest them for sport. It doesn’t mean this has anything to do with you.”
The farmer stood at the stove, brooding, his nose tucked inside the upturned collar of his coat: “Perhaps you’d better change your plans, Mikhail.”
Pudovkin said, “The car is ready on the other side?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll have to go as planned. Our papers go with that car, not with any other.”
“Suppose Leonid gives them the plate number?”
“Will he?”
The farmer turned. “He won’t volunteer it. But if they put pressure on him.… You can’t hold that against a man. Anyone would break.”
Pudovkin said, “But they’d have to know what to ask him.”
“They may know that he arranged for a boat. I don’t altogether trust the man he got the boat from. The man’s a gentile.”
“So am I,” Pudovkin said.
“I trust you, Mikhail, I do not trust this man who has the boats.”
“Then why use him?”
“In the winter our usual man takes his fishing boats to the yards at Yalta for refinish.”
They excluded me. I was apart but not aloof. I couldn’t interfere; in any case the only thing I could do to change things would be to walk out. I considered it: at least it would take the burden off these people. It was none of their blame.
Pudovkin said, “Suppose we tried to get a different boat tonight. From someone else.”
“We might try. I doubt it would throw them off.”
“It might keep us out of a trap. If the man’s informed they’ll be watching to see who comes to use his boat.”
The farmer left the house almost immediately and without any further talk; it was settled.
Pudovkin took me into a bedroom. “You’d better try to sleep. We’ll be leaving at night fall. I’m afraid you’ll be burdened with my company for another few days. I’ll have to take Leonid’s place with you. It will be all right.”
I said, “You were planning to turn back here-do it. Just tell me where to find the car on the other side. I can drive myself.”
“You wouldn’t get fifty kilometers. Put it out of your mind. And don’t be gallant-don’t run away to save the rest of us. If you’re caught we’re all caught. You need my help and I need yours. You see?”
He was right; I had to give that one up.
I slept through a snowfall and at dusk we had to shovel the barn doors clear before we could bring out the truck. A surly wintry evening; we ate quickly and washed down the food with strong local wine. I shook hands gravely with the farmer’s wife and then the three of us set off in the truck. I rode in the middle and tried to keep my knees out of the way of the shift lever. Boris, the farmer, was driving: he would drop us and take the truck back to his farm to await Pudovkin’s return.
I said, “What about the load of coats?”
“I delivered them this afternoon,” Pudovkin said.
“You’ve had no sleep at all then.”
“There’s plenty of time to rest when we’re dead.” He seemed pleased with himself.
We reached the coast several miles south of the city of Kerch. A man stood on the stony beach holding the bow rope of a dinghy. The farmer introduced him and Pudovkin shook his hand; I saw money change hands and then Boris was bear-hugging all around and walking back up to the road. I felt lucky to be still wearing Vassily Bukov’s knee-high rubbers; we shoved the dinghy into the surf and clambered into it and the boatman picked up the oars. Above us the truck began to move back up the road and the weather swallowed its lights quickly. We pitched out through a crashing froth that soaked us with freezing spray but the boatman was superb with his oars-we never shipped a wave.
The fishing boat lay at anchor without lights; we climbed over the low transom and the boatman fixed the dinghy to its davits and went forward to start his engine. Pudovkin and I went below. The crew cabin was tiny; there were four hammocks and it stank of fish. The engine came alive with a guttural growl and we heard the anchor cable scrape; a few moments later the cabin floor tipped underfoot as the stern went down with the screw’s bite.
“It’s twenty-four kilometers by the route we’ll take,” Pudovkin said. “We’ll be about four hours.”
“You’d better sleep, then.”
“I intend to.”
I left him cocooned in a hammock; I went up to the wheelhouse. I’ve never been a good sailor and I knew I couldn’t take the confinement of that stinking closed crew cabin; on deck in the air I might make it without losing my stomach.
We ran without lights and the boatman kept her throttle at something like half speed because he didn’t want excessive noise and he didn’t want to throw too much of a visible wake. We were quartering across the current that flowed through the strait from the Sea of Azov into the Black Sea; it was a rough ride and I clung to handholds.
For two hours we rode the bucking deck together and never learned each other’s names; I think we both felt it was better not to know. We exchanged meaningless small talk, neither of us giving anything away. He told me a little about fishing and a little about the waters hereabouts.
In mid-channel we hit a crosschop of conflicting currents that was too much for me and I had to hang over the stern rail at one side of the dinghy and cat up my dinner. The rest of the ride was agony.
