Alaska (24 page)

One of the men had a long, sharp knife pointed at Trofim's throat, and Poznikov, fighting off the other two, leaped on him but could not wrest the weapon from him, and the desperate man now plunged the knife deep into the merchant's belly, pulling it upward and to one side, leaving it there to complete its work. Poznikov, realizing from the terrible course of the knife through his vitals that he was mortally wounded, screamed in some old Siberian tongue to his wife, and she stopped flailing about with her stick and dashed to his side.

When she saw what had happened, assessing it, like him, as certain death, she grabbed at the handle of the long knife, ripped it from her husband's belly, and looked frantically about. Seeing the man that her son had fought off, she leaped on him as he lay on the ground and plunged the knife into 154

his throat. Pausing only to jerk it out sideways, she turned toward the man whom her husband had downed, and with a wild yell she bent over him, stabbing him three times about the heart.

The four other guards, watching with horror what this frenzied woman was doing, started to flee, leaving the supposed cache of otter pelts behind, but Innokenti tripped one of them, pinned him when he fell, and shouted for his mother to give him the knife, which she did, and he stabbed the man many times.

Three Siberian scoundrels and Merchant Poznikov lay dead in the canyon, and after Trofim and Innokenti had buried the latter under a pile of stones, Madame in solemn words spoke the truth about the fight: 'Innokenti was very brave, and I'm proud of him. And I knew what to do when I grasped the knife. But we would all have been dead if Zhdanko had not held off those first three ... so long . . . so valiantly.' She nodded before him and told her son to do the same, in respect for his behavior as a true cossack, but the boy refused to do so, for he was lamenting the death of his father.

Maintaining watch against the three runaway guards lest they attempt to return with allies to capture the caravan, the travelers held counsel as to what they had best do to protect themselves and their precious cargo, and since they were well over halfway to the Lena River they agreed that it would be wise to push ahead through the remaining two hundred miles, and in the morning, after paying tearful farewell to the grave of Ivan Poznikov, merchant-warrior, they set forth across some of the loneliest terrain in the world: those barren upland reaches of central Siberia, when days were a forlorn emptiness with nothing visible to the horizon and nights a wind-howling terror.

It was in this testing land that Trofim came to appreciate the-extraordinary family of which he had become a part. Ivan Poznikov had been fearless in life, courageous in death. His widow Marina was a remarkable woman, the equal of any man in judicious trading, an astonishing performer when turned loose with a long knife. Watching her adjust to the loss of her husband and the rigors of the march, he understood why Ivan had been willing to place in her hands the management of his business. Now, in the most dangerous parts of their journey, she offered to stand guard while her men slept. She ate as frugally as they. She tramped the difficult miles without complaint, helped tend the horses, and smiled when Trofim paid her a compliment: 'You're a cossack in dresses.'

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Her son Innokenti was a problem, for although he had behaved astonishingly well during the attack on their caravan, fighting like a man thrice his age, he remained an unpleasant youth, and his killing of a man made him even more arrogant than before. He had a visceral dislike of Trofim, a distaste for his mother's leadership, and an inclination to do all those irritating things which caused elders to distrust him. Able he was, likable he would never be. And Trofim heard him complain: 'Three robbers dead, and the cossack didn't kill one of them. A woman and a boy saved the caravan.'

Madame Poznikova would have none of this: 'We know who protected us that night .

. . who held off three . . . miraculously, I think.' And it was Zhdanko who guided them across these hazardous wastes. He selected the places to halt and then volunteered to stand the night watches. He kept an eye out for bears, went first into the streams that had to be forded, and in every way performed like a true cossack. But despite this constant exhibition of leadership, Innokenti refused to accept him as anything but a serf; he did, however, obey Trofim during the march, intending to be rid of him when it ended.

In this disciplined way, the three travelers completed their fourteen perilous days on the lonely trails and came to that hill from which, exhausted but still prepared to forge ahead, they looked down upon a most beautiful sight, the wide, flowing Lena River. Here they rested, and Zhdanko, gazing

at the river, said: 'When you sell the furs, you'll have rubles instead of pelts.

And then we'll have to worry about getting them safely back to Okhotsk,' but Madame said sternly: 'This time we'll hire honest guards.'

In Yakutsk she faced a different problem: finding honest merchants to barge her bales up the Lena River to the big markets on the Mongolian border; but calling upon old acquaintances of her husband's, she concluded a promising deal. Before dispatching them, she took the merchants aside and revealed the special pelt she was sending to market: 'Sea otter. Nothing else like it in the world. And I can provide an assured supply.' The men studied the exceptional fur and asked why her husband had not come with one so valuable, and she said: 'He came and was killed by our guards,' and she added: 'Help me to find six I can trust not to kill me on the way home.'

After they had provided reliable men from their own ranks, they said: 'Bring us all the sea otter you can catch. Chinese merchants will fight over such fur.' Smiling thinly, she offered them a guarantee: 'You'll see me often in Ya-156

kutsk,' and on the trip home she discussed with Trofim and her son how the Aleutian Islands could be exploited.

When they were back in Okhotsk, a town building itself into a city, she was in her house only one day before she summoned Trofim, to whom she said frankly: 'Cossack, you're a tremendous man. You have both courage and brains. You must stay with me, for I need your help to control the fur islands.'

'I have no mind to marry,' he said.

'Who said marry? I need you in my business.'

'I'm a seaman. We're no good at business.'

'I'll make you good.' Then she added pleadingly: 'Poznikov, rest the good man's soul, he'd been a merchant for years. Accomplished nothing, until I put iron in his backbone.'

'My job is in the islands.'

'Cossack, you and I, we could own those islands and all the furs they contain.' She moved to face him directly: 'But neither of us can do it alone.' Her voice rising to an irritated shriek, she cried: 'Cossack, I need you.'

But he knew what his destiny was: 'I shall go to the islands. And bring you furs.

And you shall sell them,' and from this simple resolve he would not retreat. However, when she said in ill-disguised disgust: 'If you must go, take Innokenti with you.

Teach him wisdom and control, for he has neither,' he assented: 'I don't want him.

He's already ruined, I'm afraid, but I'll take him,' and she grasped his arm: 'To hell with wisdom and control. Teach him to be a reliable man, like his father, like you; otherwise, I am sore afraid he'll never be one.'

ANY SERIOUS SHIPBUILDER LOOKING AT THE PITIFUL craft in which Trofim Zhdanko and the eighteen-year-old Innokenti Poznikov proposed to sail with eleven others from Petropavlovsk across the Bering Sea to Attu Island, westernmost of the Aleutians, would have been appalled. Green timbers had been used for the main structure of the boat, but not for the sides, which were of sealskin, some heavy enough to withstand real shocks, some so thin they could be punctured by any shard of ice that struck them. Since nails were almost nonexistent in Kamchatka, the few that were obtainable were used to bind main pieces of wood; for the other areas thongs of walrus and whale had to suffice, which made one practiced sailor groan: 'That thing wasn't built, it was sewed.' The finished product was little more than a sealskin umiak somewhat strengthened and big enough to hold thirteen fur 157

traders and their gear, particularly their guns. Indeed, there were so many firearms aboard as to make the boat resemble a floating arsenal, and their owners were eager to use them. But the chances that such a flimsy vessel would ever reach the Aleutians seemed improbable, and that it could get back loaded with bales of pelts, even more so. But Zhdanko was eager to test his luck, and on a spring day in 1745 he sailed forth to capture Alaska for the Russian Empire and riches for his motley crew.

They were a brutal lot, prepared to take risks and determined to win their fortunes in the fur trade. Forerunners of Russia's expansion to the east, they would set the pattern for Russia's behavior in the settlement of Alaska.

What kind of men were these? They were divided into three clear-cut groups: true Russians from the rather small tsardom in northwest Europe centering on two great cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow; adventurous men from all the other parts of the empire, especially Siberians from the east; and a curious group called by the difficult name

promyshlenniki,

which was comprised of petty criminals from anywhere who had been sentenced by the court to a choice between death or forced servitude in the Aleutians. Taken as a mass, they were usually all called Russians.

These ugly men were blessed with gentle winds that kept their improvised sail full, and after twenty rather easy days requiring little paddling, Zhdanko said: 'Tomorrow, maybe. Or next day.' They were heartened by the large number of seals they were seeing, and early one morning as Innokenti peered eastward he spotted, bobbing on the waves, their first sea otter.

'Trofim!' he called, for he continued to treat the cossack like a serf. 'Is that one?'

There was little space in the unroofed boat for movement, but Trofim edged his way forward, stared into the morning light, and said: 'I see nothing.' This irritated Innokenti, who shouted impatiently: 'There, there! Floating on its back.'

And now when Trofim looked he saw one of nature's strangest yet most pleasing sights: a female sea otter swimming along on her back with a baby nestled securely on her belly, both looking at ease and enjoying the shifting clouds in the sky. Trofim could not yet be sure they were sea otters, but he knew they were not seals, so he moved to the back, took the tiller, and steered toward the floating pair.

Unaware of what a boat was or a man, the mother otter continued her lazy swim as the hunters drew near, and even when Innokenti raised his gun and took aim, she attempted no evasive action. There was a loud bang, she felt a crushing 158

pain through her chest and sank immediately to the far depths of the Bering Sea, dead and of use to no one. Her baby, left afloat, was clubbed by a heavy paddle, and then it too sank to the bottom. Of all the sea otters that would in the years ahead be killed by careless hunters firing prematurely, seven out often would sink to the bottom before being caught for their fur. With Innokenti's first gun blast, the extermination was under way.

Having lost what Trofim and the others certified as a true sea otter, the young fellow was not in a happy mood when later that morning one of the men shouted 'Land!' and the boy took no pleasure in watching as the lone island of Attu emerged from the mists that enshrouded it.

They had made landfall at the northwest corner of the island, and for an entire day they coasted along its northern face, encountering nothing but forbidding cliffs and the lifeless stare of what appeared to be barren fields, no tree or even a shrub.

They did pass the mouth of one bay, but its flanks were so precipitous that any attempt at landing would have been foolhardy, and that night Innokenti prepared for bed with the whining observation: 'Attu's a rock^'

However, next morning, after breasting a low headland at the eastern tip of the island, they saw facing them a wide bay with inviting sandy shores and spacious meadows.

Gingerly they made a landing, and supposing the island to be uninhabited, started inland. They had progressed only a short distance when they discovered the miracle of Attu. Wherever they moved they were faced with a treasure of bright flowers in the most profuse variety: daisies, red flamers, lupines in many colors, lady slippers, thistles, and two which astonished them: purple iris and gray-green orchids.

'This is a garden!' Trofim cried, but Innokenti had turned away, and suddenly wailed: 'Look!' and from the opposite end of the meadow, coming toward them, was a procession of native men wearing the distinctive hats of their island, long visor in front, straight back, and flowers or feathers stemming from the crown. They had never before seen a white man, nor had any of the invaders except Zhdanko seen islanders, so mutual curiosity ran high.

'They're friendly,' Zhdanko assured his men, 'until something proves different,'

but it was difficult to convince them of this, because each islander had sticking horizontally through his nose a long bone and in his lower lip one or two labrets, which imparted such a fierce appearance that Innokenti shouted: 'Fire at them.'

Trofim, countermanding the order, moved forward, holding in his extended hands a collection of beads, and when the 159

islanders saw their glittering beauty they whispered among themselves, and finally one came toward Zhdanko, offering him a piece of carved ivory. In this way the serious exploitation of the Aleutian Islands began.

The first contacts were congenial. The islanders were an orderly group: smallish men with dark Oriental-looking faces who could have come out of northern Siberia a year ago, they went barefoot, wore sealskin clothing, and tattooed their faces.

Their language bore no resemblance to any that the men from the boat had ever heard, but their wide smiles showed their welcome.

But when Zhdanko and his crew made their way to one of the huts in which the islanders lived two things happened: the Attu men obviously did not want the strangers to approach their women and children; and when the Siberians forced their way inside one, they were repelled by the darkness of the underground cave in which they found themselves, by its confusion and by the awful smell of fish and rotting seal fat. In that moment the tension began, for one of Zhdanko's men growled scornfully: 'They're not human!'