1
My name is Polycarp Olientiev. The story I want to tell you begins in 1902, when I was 26 years old. I was a man of medium height, well-built. I had fair hair, prominent facial features and a small moustache. I served in the army as a gunner, and without boasting I was one of the best. I was stationed in Vladivostok, known as the ‘Pearl of the East’, unlike any Siberian city. In the picturesque harbour amidst warships and merchant ships, graceful Chinese junks were spinning. Here one met Japanese merchants, Chinese and Korean fishermen, Norwegian whale catchers, American traders and vagabonds from all over the world feeling perfectly at home in any latitude. The smell of the distant seas mingled in this unusual town with the scent of the primeval taiga, which pressed in at all pores. Herds of wild boar grazed just a stone’s throw from the town, and there were times when a hungry tiger would venture right between the houses. Tiger Street got its name from the fact that it was here, among a company of soldiers, that the tiger kidnapped a soldier.
So it is no surprise that as soon as they were looking for volunteers to take part in a military expedition deep into the taiga, I volunteered. Strange and unique is the Ussurian country. The glaciers that once flowed down into Siberia did not cover its areas, so the vegetation and animal world here have preserved traces of the ancient heyday of the warm climate. Siberia’s general cooling could not, however, remain unaffected by its fauna and flora. Full of hustle and bustle, the cheerful deciduous forests were slowly displaced by the dark taiga. And hence a strange mixture of plant and animal worlds emerged in this area, not found elsewhere. Northern firs wrap around vines here, and nuts grow alongside spruce and cedar. Bear and sable live alongside tiger and panther. Spotted deer, wild boar, Japanese ibis and cranes, Chinese ducks and Australian curlews were plentiful here. Unfortunately, with increasing population, this original multitude was being lost. Only five years later, the gold rush broke out here and so-called ‘gold prospectors’ – people of the worst of the worst, capable of unscrupulous killing out of a lust for profit – started arriving from all but the surrounding areas. However, when I was there, the forests along the Ussuri River still resembled the original paradise land. Their original inhabitants still lived there. And I had heard that they were an extraordinary people.
The Siberian natives of the Tunguz (Orochon, Menegrins, Lamut), Yakut and others were said to be among the most honest and orderly people to exist anywhere. They owed this to their innate gentle nature, the ennobling influence of the nature in which they lived and, of course, their remoteness from the corruption spread by pseudo-European culture. Many tribes did not understand at all what stealing meant, and in the languages of some tribes there was, for example, no word for ‘liar’ at all, because such transgressions were incomprehensible to them.
So that year I set off with an expedition towards the Sichote-Aliń – the ‘Dark Mountains’, resembling from afar a rough and rapidly petrifying sea. We were six Siberian riflemen and four horses. Our detachment was to explore the pass from the military point of view of the Shkotovsky district and to get to know the pass and the Da-diań-shan mountain chain. We were also to explore all the paths around Lake Khanka and in the area of the Ussuri railway. I might add that this is one of the two extreme sections of the Trassiberian Railway – the world’s longest rail route, connecting Vladivostok to far Europe at the time, to Warsaw.
It was from the unit stationed in Warsaw that our commander, Captain Vladimir K. Arseniev, arrived here. When I was posted under his command I was initially full of bad thoughts. Usually, those who particularly offended the command were sent to the Far East. No one voluntarily gave up a career and comfortable service in civilised Europe. Captain Arseniev, however, was an uncommon man. Many times, during our late-night fireside chats, he told me that since childhood he had dreamt of travelling far. This desire to explore the world was instilled in him by his father, the cashier of the Nikolaev Iron Road, Claudius Arseniev. It was in the family home, in a poor flat on the outskirts of St Petersburg, that the young Arseniev read adventure novels. The boyish interest in adventure did not pass with age, as it does for many people. In grammar school, geography became his favourite subject. Even awake at night, he could draw the route of Columbus’ voyage to America, Vasco da Gama’s journey to India or Yermak’s Siberian route. However, he was happiest drawing himself and his adventures on imaginary distant journeys.
Over time, scientific works by geographers, travellers and naturalists took the place of childish adventure novels. The boy voraciously swallowed knowledge, reports of scientific expeditions. Dreaming in his boyish way of accomplishing great things, he sometimes worried that he had been born too late, that great discoveries had already been made in the world without his participation, and that by the time he grew up, everything had already been discovered and explored.
Over time, I became fascinated by this extraordinary man – an inquisitive, meticulous researcher on the one hand, and a dreamer, even a poet, on the other. And he must have seen positive qualities in me, such as hunting experience and optimism, because we became friends. When he needed a company he always chose me from among the other shooters. It was no different until that memorable night.
2
That evening we had to set up camp in a very hostile area, among deep, carpel-collapsed clefts, hollows and moss-covered rocks.
– It reminds me vividly of Walpurgisnacht,’ said the Captain. – It is hard to imagine a more wild and unpleasant place.
We talked about how the forest and the mountains are sometimes cheerful and attractive, so that one would like to stay there forever. Sometimes, on the other hand, the mountains seem wild and dreary.
– And the strange thing,’ mused the Captain, ’this feeling is never individual, subjective, but always collective, involving a whole group of people.
Indeed, just as he had said, everyone here felt a sadness and a horror that made an overwhelming impression on us.
– ‘It’s nothing,’ I said, trying to comfort him, ‘we’ll get through the night somehow. We won’t be spending the winter here after all. Tomorrow we will find a more cheerful place.
After setting up camp and fetching wood, we saddled the horses and set about cooking the evening meal. Later, everyone went about their business: one cleaned his rifle, another repaired his saddle or mended his torn clothes. The captain took out his journal and began to write down the events of the last leg of the journey. As I mended my shoes, I also recalled what had happened the day before.
*
The previous evening, while the gunners were setting up their tents, the Captain had taken advantage of his free time to view the area. Of course, he had taken me with him. We crossed a low ridge and found ourselves in a neighbouring valley covered with thick forest. It was crossed by the wide, dry bed of a mountain stream. Here our paths diverged. The captain went left along the gravel-covered shoal, and I went right, through the forest. Suddenly, I noticed an animal sitting in a tree. I quickly but calmly aimed and fired. When the animal ran away, I wanted to load again immediately, but, as luck would have it, one cartridge jammed in the magazine and the lock would not engage.
The Captain jumped up to me.
– Who were you shooting at?
– I think I was shooting at a tiger,’ I replied, ’I was aiming well and I definitely hit it.
Now I slowly cocked the rifle again and we both moved carefully towards where the animal was hiding. The blood on the dry grass showed that I had indeed wounded it. We stopped and I strained my hearing. There was a snarling sound coming from the front right. Nothing could be seen through the thicket of ferns. A large fallen tree was blocking our path. I wanted to overtake it with a leap, but the wounded animal overtook me and dashed violently to meet us. Without putting my flask to my shoulder, in a hurry, I fired at close range. I succeeded. The bullet hit the very head of the animal – it fell on a fallen tree and hung on it with its head and front paws on one side and its rump on the other. The wounded animal, after a few convulsive movements, began to bite the ground and, sliding slowly down the tree trunk, collapsed heavily at my feet. It was a Manchurian panther, called ‘bara’ by the local people.
*
Before we knew it, everyone was exhausted and had fallen asleep. The horses, having found no food in the forest, approached the bivouac and, hanging their heads, fell asleep. Finally, around ten o’clock, the Captain closed his notebook and lay down by the fire. We began to talk. Suddenly the horses lifted their heads and tuned their ears, but after a while they calmed down and fell asleep again. We did not pay much attention at first and continued talking. A few minutes passed. Finally, I heard a noise coming from the forest. I sprang to my feet and, shielding myself from the glare of the bonfire with my hand, stared ahead, slightly to one side.
– What happened? – asked the Captain.
– Someone is coming down from above,’ I replied in a whisper. We both started to listen, but it was quiet all around, as quiet as it can be in the forest on a cool autumn night. Suddenly, small pebbles came tumbling down from above.
– ‘It’s probably a bear,’ I said, and began to recap the rifle.
– Shoot no need. My people… – a voice could be heard from the darkness and after a few minutes a man approached our campfire.
He was dressed in a jacket and trousers made of leather deerskin. He wore a sling of some sort on his head, unts on his feet, a large bundle on his back, and in his hands were a wooden buckskin and a long berdanka.
– ‘Hello, Captain,’ said the newcomer, turning to Vladimir Klavdiyevich, and then he leaned his rifle against a tree, took the bundle off his back and, wiping his sweaty face with his shirt sleeve, sat down by the fire. I could now get a good look at him. He looked to be about forty-five years old. He was not very tall, stocky and probably physically strong. His breasts were bulging, his arms muscular and strong, his legs slightly crooked. His tanned face was typical of the natives: prominent cheekbones, a tiny nose, Mongolian eyes with a crease on the eyelids and a wide mouth with strong teeth. A small, dark mustache framed his upper lip and a small reddish beard adorned his chin. What attracted the most attention, however, were his eyes. They were dark grey, gazing calmly and somewhat naively. They expressed determination, integrity of character and good-naturedness.
The stranger did not watch over us as curiously as we watched him. He extracted a tobacco slipper from behind his breastplate, scooped up his pipe and began to smoke in silence. Without asking who he was or where he was coming from, the Captain gave him a meal. This is the custom of the taiga.
– Thank you, Captain,’ he said. – My very much wants to eat, my did not eat today.
While he was eating, I looked at him further, There was a hunting knife hanging from his belt, so he was probably a hunter. His hands were gnarled and scratched; he had similar, only deeper scars on his face: one on his forehead, the other on his cheek near his ear. When he took the veil off his head, I noticed that he had thick, fawn-coloured hair; it grew disorderly and hung down the side in long strands.
Our guest was not talkative. Finally, I couldn’t stand it and asked him directly:
– Who are you? Chinese or Korean?
– My Gold – he answered briefly.
– You must be a hunter? – asked the Captain in turn.
– Yes – he said. – My still goes hunting, no other job, fish catching too, only one hunting understood.
– And where do you live? – I asked him further.
– My has no home. My still sopka lives. Smokes the fire, puts up the tent, sleeps. Always goes hunting, how do you live in a house?
He then told me that today he was hunting maralas and wounded one mother, but lightly. Following the shot, he came across our tracks. These led him to a ravine. When it got dark, he saw the fire and headed straight towards it.
– My is walking quietly,’ he said. – Thinks, what people far sopka walks? He looks – there is a captain, soldiers. Mine then walks straight.
– Here’s the hunter who lost the deer! – it broke out.
– And yours always hit? – he turned to me.
– A soldier never misses! – I boasted.
– Your a great hunter! Yours to kill everything and ours to eat nothing – he replied good-naturedly.
The captain and the guest laughed. They laughed for a long time, and I felt offended. At the time I didn’t understand it, but now I know that it was then that I first felt jealous of the Captain. I saw how interested he was in this man. I don’t deny it, you could immediately see something special, original in him. He spoke simply, quietly, behaved modestly, without adulation, but at the time I still couldn’t appreciate that. On the contrary. I was a young, boisterous soldier. Offended, I went to bed.
– What is your name? – The captain asked the stranger when they had finished laughing.
– Dersu Uzala,’ he replied.
*
The next morning I found out that the Captain and Dersu had talked until dawn. As we set about yoking the horses after tea, Dersu also began to prepare for the journey. He threw a bundle on his back and took a wooden trestle and a berdanca in his hand. After a few minutes, our troop set off. It turned out that Dersu was coming with us.
The ravine through which we were walking was long and winding. Water flowed out of its many branches with a noise. The crevice became wider and wider and gradually turned into a valley. Old notches in the trees showed us the path. Gold walked in front and looked carefully underfoot all the time. Occasionally he would lean towards the ground and rake up the foliage with his hands.
– What happened? – asked the Captain.
Dersu said that this path is not for horses, but for pedestrians; it leads along sable traps and a few days ago a man walked along it – probably a Chinese.
We were amazed by Gold’s words. Noticing our disbelief he exclaimed:
– How can you not understand! Look for yourself!
He directed my attention to the details, which dispelled all doubts at once. It was so clear and simple. I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed it myself before. Firstly, there were no horse tracks anywhere on the path, and secondly, it had not been cleared of branches; our horses had trudged through with difficulty and kept snagging their jukes on the trees. Then the turns became so sharp that the horses found it difficult to walk and had to go around the path. Across the streams, the tracks led over logs and the path went nowhere down to the water; the path was blocked by fallen logs that no one tried to remove. People were not bothered by them, and horses had to be guided around. So everything indicated that the path was not intended for travellers with saddlebags.
– Long time one people walk – said Dersu, as if to himself.
– People finish walking. – And he began to calculate when the last rain fell.
We walked along this path for about two hours. The coniferous forest gradually turned into mixed forest. Poplars, maples, aspens, birches and lime trees became more frequent. The captain already wanted to make a long stop, but Dersu advised him that we should walk some more.
– Our soon-to-be-found hut,’ he said and pointed to the trees stripped of their bark.
I understood him at once. So somewhere nearby there must have been what we needed the bark for. We hastened our steps and after ten minutes we saw a small hut with a monopitch roof, built by hunters or ginseng seekers, on the bank of a stream. On inspecting it all around, our new acquaintance confirmed that a Chinese man had walked along the path a few days ago and had spent the night in this hut. This was evidenced by rain-washed ash, a single grass bed and abandoned old daba kneepads.
It was then that we realised that Dersu was not a common man. We had a seasoned tracker in front of us and, despite myself, the characters of Cooper and Mayne Read came to mind. Dersu was a primal hunter who had spent his entire life in the taiga. He earned his livelihood with a rifle he inherited from his father; he exchanged his hunting prey with the Chinese for tobacco, gunpowder and lead. As it turned out, Dersu was fifty-three years old and had never had a home; he always lived in the open air and only in winter did he build himself a temporary yurt out of oak or birch bark.
While stopping to feed the horses, the Captain took the opportunity to lie down in the shade of a cedar tree to sleep. I woke him up after an hour had passed. I said that Dersu had chopped wood, gathered birch bark and put it all in the hut.
– He probably wants to burn the hut – I concluded.
We approached him and tried to dissuade him from this intention. Instead of an answer, Dersu only asked for a pinch of salt and a handful of rice. Clearly curious as to why he needed it, the captain told him to give him everything he wanted. Gold carefully wrapped the matches in birch bark, separately cobbled the rice and salt into the bark and began to cook for the journey.
– ‘You’re probably going to come back here? – The captain asked Gold.
He shook his head negatively. He then asked him for whom he had left the rice, salt and matches.
– Some other people are walking,’ Dersu replied. – A hut he finds, dry wood he finds, matches he finds, not an abyss.
This made a strong impression on us. Gold cared for a man he did not know, whom he would never see and who would never know who had prepared his wood and food. I remembered how often we used to burn bark on the fire when we left. We did it simply for fun, not through any malice, and I never stopped my colleagues from doing it. Concern for the traveller… Why have these good feelings, this concern for others, been so suppressed in people who live in cities? And yet these feelings used to undoubtedly exist.
3
And we learned a great deal more about the high ethics of the forest dwellers, about the plaques placed by the Chinese, ginseng seekers and hunters, on lonely paths or passes with inscriptions such as ‘passer-by, at such and such a distance from here is my cottage. You are hungry, go there and take what you need’ and how hospitality was supposedly never abused.
This is how Dersu became our guide and soon our teacher. He taught us things unheard of in our world. Once, Dersu and I went to watch at night near a clearing where a herd was to come out. The deer failed, but not far away a powerful tiger roar sounded, which even the bravest hunter is cold. Arseniev, expecting an onslaught, pointed the barrel in the direction from where the roar began to repeat itself more and more furiously, but Dersu put the rifle on the ground, fell to his knees and turned to the tiger with a speech. He apologised to him that they had come here, for they did not know that this was the place where the tiger hunts, he explained to the tiger that the wilderness was great, there was enough room for everyone, so they too would go to look for another. Arseniev had a great desire to confront the tiger (he later killed two more), but for Dersu’s sake he abandoned his intention and they left there without being harassed by the tiger. The Golds never hunted the tiger, as it was of common origin with them.
In time Dersu took my place at the Captain’s side, which I resented. I was young so it was no wonder that I felt jealousy. However, Dersu’s advantages were invaluable, for he had saved the Captain’s life many times.
At the end of our expedition, and it was late autumn, we camped near the mouth of the river Lifu into Lake Khanka. Arseniev suggested to the old man that they go duck hunting together. Dersu advised against it, as it was quite windy, and pointed to some distant clouds, but since Arseniev told him he would go himself, he went with him. The hunt lasted a couple of hours, with them getting quite far from the encampment, frequently jumping over small streams flowing into the Lif or its minor branches. Meanwhile, towards evening, just when they needed to think about returning, the wind began to pick up, dragging the black snow cloud closer and closer. They took to the retreat, but it was already too late. The tiny streams they had previously jumped over had now turned into wide rivers, as the wind blowing off the lake spilled their waters more and more. Soon it began to get cold and dark and snow began to fall thicker and thicker. They were both lightly clad and understood well that the terrible purga, which had just begun and could last for three days or more, might not let them out of here alive again. Dersu turned: ‘if you don’t listen to me now, we will die’ and set about vigorously cutting down bundles of rushes and reeds, ordering Arseniev to do the same. They hurriedly began to cut and rake into a pile in the increasing snow and increasing darkness. Arseniev soon lost his knife, Dersu told him to rip up the rushes with his hands, but a drenched and cold Arseniev could not do this for long. Anyway, he was already beginning to lose hope of this being of any use and soon fell to the ground half-frozen. Only now did he realise what the cane was needed for. Dersu began to throw this reed and rush at him, and when he had collapsed a large pile, he crawled under it himself and lay down beside him. The snow swamped them more and more, but lying side by side under the pile of reeds and rushes, they were saved from being covered in snow and began to warm up slowly. They lay like this under the snow for a whole day and it was only on the second day in the afternoon that the purgah stopped, a strong frost took hold and they returned to the encampment across the frozen streams and lakes.
Soon we returned to Vladivostok and Dersu remained in the taiga. A few years after this expedition, Arseniev, this time from Khabarovsk, set off on another expedition and again met Dersu in the taiga. I was unfortunately no longer on that expedition. They experienced numerous adventures familiar to me from Arseniev’s wonderful books. Their unique friendship sadly came to an end.
After a couple of years of wandering with Arseniev, it happened to Dersu that he once missed an animal, frowned at the old man and began to ponder in a half-hearted voice that it was old age going, and he alone in the world and soon there would be no one to hunt game for him or catch fish. Arseniev shrugged and, reminding the old man how many times he had saved his life, said that for this he would not let him go anymore. Dersu answered nothing, but when they happened to be after some time near the mouth of the Lif, he led Arseniev to the taiga and, pointing to a tiny clearing, said: ‘to this place for years I have borne the ginseng I found, take them all for it, something he told me at the time’ and recalled his missed shot. Dersu came with Arseniev to the city, but he could not endure in it for a long time, already after a few weeks he went for a hunt to the Chichcyr range, not far from Khabarovsk. Unfortunately, he himself fell a victim there, killed by some suburban vagabond or colonist Muscovite, who was able to make a fortune with just a few rubles and a double-barrelled shotgun.
***
The micro-adaptation is mainly a compilation of text fragments from the following books. I have only added single sentences and made the necessary changes in these texts to create a coherent whole story. The fact that the narrator is a third person, the shooter Olientiev is my original idea.
1. Almost the entire first part of the micro-adaptation is a text entitled ‘Po Ussuryjskim Kraju’ taken from the preface to ‘Na bezdrożach tajgi’, 2nd edition, 1960, MON.
The third paragraph of the first part of the micro-adaptation – Kazimierz Grochowski’s remarks on the Siberian natives – comes from the book ‘Fort Grochowski’ by Edward Kajdański, from Chapter II entitled ‘Śladami Dersu Uzały’. Grochowski was a professional gold prospector working in the place and time of our heroes’ adventures. Literally… he walked in their footsteps.
2. The entire part two of the micro-adaptation is excerpts from ‘Na bezdrożach tajgi’ by V. Arseniev (Chapter I titled ‘The Glass Gorge’, Chapter II titled ‘Meeting with Dersu’, Chapter III titled ‘Wild Boar Hunting’).
3. The whole of the third part of the micro-adaptation comes from the manuscript by Stanislaw Poniatowski entitled ‘Dziennik wyprawy do kraju Goldów i Oroczonów w 1914 roku’. This manuscript is in the collection of the Scientific Archive of the Main Board of the Polish Folklore Society in Wrocław. I have quoted it after Antoni Kuczyński’s book entitled ‘Ludy dalekie a bliskie’.
Poniatowski’s account begins as follows: „Around 5 Arseniev comes in, we chat, he tells me some of the adventures of his expeditions, I absorb them with great interest. He tells me about the old Gold Dersu Uznal, who came hungry to his camp in the taiga one night and from then on accompanied him on expeditions for several years, sharing adventures together and sometimes saving lives. He tells the story of him with real emotion.”