Four Quarters of Light (33 page)

I thought, as I scanned the sky for him, perhaps he was magic after all, and he had flown off into the invisible world. The rudeness of his disappearance reminded me how the natives believe that to hear the raven call in the dark of night is a sure token of death. I had been listening to this utterly undignified jester for quite some time and the sun was still shining even though it was
late in the night, so I was safe from the raven's malign intentions. Besides, I could not believe my raven had any such designs. In the distant-time stories of the indigenous people, the raven was the creator of the earth; they believed that, like God, he had the power to grant wishes. Part of me wasn't sure I could trust wishes granted by a bird-god who contemplates the world with cynical scrutiny.

I had to admit I liked the complicated nature of this big black raven. He was, for me, the quintessential enigma. Once you thought you had penetrated the spirit of this bird it immediately transformed itself, but that was what made it so intriguing. It stripped you of your self-delusions, just as it had done for me as I sat watching it.

I remembered how the Norse god Odin had kept two ravens, which represented thought and memory. Each day they would circle the world and return to report to their master. I liked to think of my raven like that. In its own clownishly curious way, it had made me question a lot of things about my trip. So I made my wish to the empty sky that the spirit of the raven would visit me again. It was late in the evening and the raven's departure had informed me that it was time to sleep. I had some people to visit before I moved on. A gold miner, a Siberian émigré artist and the most northerly composer in the world. It really was a raggletaggle assortment that you could only find living within a few miles of each other at the edge of the wilderness. I went to sleep half believing that the trickster raven had conjured them up especially for me.

During my first visit years ago I'd tried to meet John Reese, a gold miner, at his mine several miles outside the city. I hadn't found him, but the remnants of the mine remained; the extreme temperatures of Alaska have a way of embalming things. All I'd gleaned from that first attempt to meet the man was that he owned a few more gold mines somewhere further out from the city and that he proposed at some time to develop the gold mine into a quirky holiday venue. It seemed then a feasible if absurd notion. The gigantic earth dredge was still there, a monstrous machine that had created much of the moon landscape in the hills outside Fairbanks. Then there were the miners' bunk houses, the store, pens and dog shelters, a big parts shed for equipment, communal latrines, and a ‘doc' shop where injured miners could be quickly attended to, though with what degree of efficiency or care I could not imagine. There was even a small theatre at the entrance to the mine that amounted to a stage, rows of stools and an entrance hall where the hardworking miners shelled out their money for some dubious but well-received relief. Although the theatre was only just outside the mine complex, at least the workers had a sense of getting away from their eternal labour. Laughingly, Pat
Walsh informed me that the theatre still operated even though the mine was long deceased. They put on ‘shows' for tourists, who I supposed wanted to be indulged in the same way the working miners had. It was very Alaskan kitsch, but the locals enjoyed the garish amateur dramatics, Pat explained. But that was then, and now I was going to meet the man himself.

We met in his machine shop located near the railway lines. It was a clapboard and corrugated-iron structure which from the outside looked abandoned and hopeless. I shuffled through the door, expecting to find the same kind of obsolete clutter that dominated the back yards of every homestead in Fairbanks. Instead, I found myself in a gleaming labyrinth. Here was a machine shop dating back to the 1920s – lathes and machine presses, heavy-duty stamps, a forge and industrial machine cutters, and not a cobweb in sight. The place was a small factory, but everything was spotless. Shiny black contrasted against the burr of dull silver, and everywhere the gorgeous shine of olivegreen casing. Everything was in perfect order, and everything was still running. The lamps to light the place clung to long slender lines with cheap cupcake-like shades. They, too, were working. They shone with an ochre-yellow light. I was amazed at my reaction. This place was an art gallery! The muscular curve of wheels, spindles, knobs and machine hoods was everywhere. This was muscle turned into magic, latent power that was pristine in its silence.

When gold mining was at its height, parts of the great Goliathlike earth dredgers had to be manufactured on the spot. Steel was fired and turned here to precise dimensions every day. Huge locking bolts and nuts were manufactured and threads turned on them. Trying to pile iron and steel into the permafrost was a titanic struggle. The earth always won, for Alaska's low temperatures snapped pig iron and machine steel like chicken bones.

John Reese was a giant of a man, not only in stature but also in his thinking and in his heart. ‘Jesus,' I thought as I looked up at him the way a child looks up at an adult. ‘I've climbed up the beanstalk of the world. If he says “Fee fi fo fum” to me, he can
keep his golden eggs. I'm out of here, pronto.' My friend Pat had told me that John was rather wealthy with a few gold mines, some property and even a coffee plantation in Colombia. I was to learn later that this was a gross underestimation. But the man in front of me looked nothing like an Alaskan millionaire. He wore an old battered baseball cap whose peak had collapsed so that it fell over his face instead of jutting out above his eyes. His baggy sports trousers looked as if they hadn't been washed in weeks. They hung off him as though they were two sizes too big, which, given the size of the man, would have been impossible – unless the trousers had been made by a sailmaker. To complete the ensemble he wore a washed-out T-shirt under a very worn fleece jacket, which dragged down in the front due to the amount of junk he had shoved into the pockets.

John's face was as dissolute as his appearance. It was obvious that razor blades were not high on his hygiene agenda. He sported a huge walrus-like moustache that would have made Nietzsche look Chaplinesque. His eyes were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses that reflected a garish greeny blue, which created the illusion of his having the grossly protuberant eyes of a huge insect.

Surprisingly, our conversation was laboured. All Mr Reese's wealth and stature had given him no advantage in conversation. At first he seemed brusque and uninterested, as if I had entered into his world like an annoying mosquito. But as I persisted, asking him about the machine shop's history and his own life in Fairbanks, he slowly began to open up. I soon realized that it was reticence and shyness that had made him seem so dismissive.

As we walked through the workshop I asked why he had acquired such a redundant piece of industrial history. He told me he had bought it as part of the package in the portfolio of an old mining corporation that had long ago ceased operations in Alaska. ‘Thought I was just buying up property and mining rights,' he explained, ‘but a whole big parcel of other stuff came with it, including this here workshop and a load of warehouses with more machinery in Pennsylvania.' I asked him what he intended doing with it all. ‘Don't know,' he said. ‘When I
realized this came with the deal I had a notion to knock it down and maybe sell on the land. But I like it in here. It's peaceful, and even pretty. Keep all the machines clean and in running order, though most of them have never been worked in twenty years or more. It's like having your own private museum.' But the way he spoke told me that this shabby, retiring millionaire was no museum caretaker. His manner could not hide the affection he had for the place. It was more like a private chapel than a museum, and I could imagine this giant of a man quietly polishing and tending the sacramental lathes and turning machines with loving adoration.

As we walked around I stared out through a cobweb- and grime-encrusted window. Wrecks of old cars and trucks dating back to the forties and fifties littered the grounds. The colossal bric-a-brac of the gold-rush era sprawled all over the place. It was a graveyard of rusting iron and inert man-made machine parts that in their day had busted open the spleen of this hard country.

Tucked away in one corner of the workshop I discovered real fossils. A pile of oddly shaped bones stood alone, and beside them three huge, arching curves of tusk. Then more tusks appeared as my eyes adjusted to the light. Some of them were wrapped with heavy-duty tape and others had clamped to them what looked like massive chrome jubilee clips. John explained that the bones and tusks were from the remains of a woolly mammoth he had unearthed in one of his mines. The tape and chrome clips served to pull the cracked and ruptured curve together once he had glued and sealed them. Some of them were more than fifteen feet long and impossible to lift. Even John's huge frame had difficulty with them. Why he had a collection of mammoth bones and tusks was beyond me. I couldn't resist asking him. He explained that mammoth remains could make big money in Japan; the larger and more complete the piece the more they would pay. Apparently, Japanese businessmen like to carry one piece of mammoth ivory carved with their own personal business stamp.

‘Is it hard to find?' I queried.

He explained that there was a lot of fossilized bone being dug
up. But it was unusual to find whole tusks now. Probably in the past the miners would have discarded these finds without another thought, but today mammoth ivory was worth lots more than gold. He fumbled in his coat pocket and produced a piece of tusk that he had sanded and polished on one of the machines. It glowed with a deep earthy brown and ox-blood colouring. It was neither cold nor hot in the hand but its shiny surface had a deeply sensuous feel. It was curious to think that here I was, holding a piece of a gigantic animal that was millions of years old, and now it had been transformed into the personal talisman of some wealthy business samurai. As I rubbed my fingers on it I felt as if I was rubbing away millions of years of history and touching something elemental that centuries and centuries of evolution had not eroded.

Big John gave me a rough fragment of tusk as a keepsake and we arranged to meet up in a few days' time to drive up into the hills and visit a few of his gold mines and the men who worked them.

‘How many mines do you own anyway?' I asked as I was about to drive off.

‘Don't rightly know, maybe three dozen or so,' he said as he walked back into his magical museum.

Over the next few days I visited a few other citizens who had settled in this town at the edge of nowhere. I had already noticed that Fairbanks had more than its share of creative people. I thought I could understand why. The wilderness made you challenge yourself and your perceptions, and I wondered how others who lived here felt about this.

Vladimir was a Russian emigrant who had lately arrived from Provedentia in Siberia. He lived in a studio above a very nondescript pub in the worst part of downtown. It would take a strong character with lots of determination to live there. My first impression of Vladimir was that he did not seem the type to survive in this dreadful part of town. That was before I learned he had been a prison guard back in Siberia for much of his working adult life before coming to Alaska. I looked at his tight-cropped hair
and beard and his lean muscular stature. Only for a brief moment could I see him as a prison officer. There was something very open and uncomplicated about his face, which was the perfect mirror for his personality. He felt more like a young monk to me. He was immediately talkative and friendly. Even though I had only been in his home a few minutes he spoke to me with the easy-going assurance of someone who had known me for many years.

Vladimir insisted I share his meagre lunch of bread, cheese, tinned ham and pickles, which we washed down with raw vodka flavoured with horseradish and garlic. This in turn was washed down with refreshingly sweet water, which was made from sugary resin drawn off the silver birch trees that were in abundance.

Though Vladimir lived on the edge of penury he seemed untroubled and content. He had acquired quite a reputation as an ice sculptor and I was impressed as he leafed through a photo album of his work. Vladimir was unbothered by the temporary nature of his work. He felt that it was appropriate that these images in ice melted away and were lost for ever. It added a dynamic to his art. It prevented complacency. Ice was so fluid; you could do things with ice that you could not with other mediums. You had to work fast, and that kept your thinking sharp. I remembered watching an ice sculptor at work during my visit years ago. The essential tool was like a broad wood chisel attached to a short spade handle. The speed and precision with which an expert can evolve the most fantastical images was truly amazing.

We drank more of the horseradish-flavoured vodka, then Vladimir walked me to his studio and displayed his ice-carving implements. They were like a cross between a blacksmith's tool kit and a medieval surgeon's operating instruments. Vladimir poured more vodka as he laughed at my description. ‘Yes, yes,' he said through his guffaws. ‘Only it is much colder and there is less blood!'