This is a small story, inhumanly cruel, and it ends with a terrible howl.
It takes place in a dark forest on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, a place where parents in St. Petersburg threaten to send children if they misbehave, an inhospitable place known for exploding volcanoes, mosquitoes that swarm like hornets, and, most fearsomely, its bears. The story itself contains a cosmonaut, more grizzlies than anywhere else on earth, a criminally amused wife, and the unimaginable horror that befell its narrator, a hapless, pitiable soul named Poor me.
So. Let’s get it over with.
I would make two long trips to Kamchatka to connect with the Russian mafia, who had, in their ever-inspiring entrepreneurial spirit, begun stealing entire rivers, netting runs of wild salmon, shipping tons of illegal caviar back to their associates in Moscow. Anyway, I took my wife along on the first trip though not the second. She was obsessed with catching one of Kamchatka’s legendary monster rainbow trouts, something in the twenty-two-pound range. Which she did, a bona fide Grade Two worst-case scenario, which is why she was forbidden to go along with me on the second trip. Too much bragging.
She and I and Rinat, our local fixer, had an idle day before our expedition launched into the distant wild, so we decided to pile into Rinat’s pickup truck for a day trip about an hour’s ride north of Petropavlovsk, the capital city, to a national park at the base of the Mount Fuji–like volcano that towered above the city. We had read about this park in a government-produced tourist brochure I had been given at the airport.
The road ended at a small cluster of clapboard dachas along the banks of a frothing river. The park headquarters, clearly marked on the brochure’s map, did not exist, and the park itself, on the far side of the river, was what it had always been—a vast, dense spruce and birch forest, accessed by a shabby cable-and-plank footbridge or a shallow crossing for four-wheel-drive vehicles. Across the river we could see a few mushroom hunters prowling among the trees.
“Let’s cross over and go for a hike,” I suggested and my wife said sure and Rinat said absolutely not.
“We will absolutely be eaten by bears,” Rinat declared, and settled into the truck to await the eventual recovery of our chewed-upon corpses.
Because this story also contains a six-ounce can of pepper spray stuffed into the left-front pocket of my jeans, I felt it was not irrational to be respectfully nonchalant about the bears.
My wife and I clambered across the rickety bridge and followed a path past a group of picnickers until we came to a primitive road leading deep into the sun-dappled forest. We hiked ahead, alone in the woods, enjoying the pristine solitude, until suddenly a rusty blue Soviet-era van appeared on the track behind us and stopped as it came alongside. The driver, a lean, blond-haired man, wagged his head at us, frowning, and said something in Russian that had the tone of an admonition. His wife and teenage son nodded their heads gravely, confirming the seriousness of whatever the man was saying.
We don’t speak Russian, I said, shrugging, and the man switched to English.
Go back, he said. What are you doing here? Are you crazy? The bears will absolutely eat you. You cannot walk here without big gun, eh?
It’s okay, I said. I have pepper spray.
You have pepper spray? he snorted. What for? To make bear cry before he absolutely eat you? Turn back now.
Thanks for the advice, I said, waving good-bye as they drove out of sight, shaking their heads in disbelief at our stupidity. Ten minutes later we came upon them again, parked in a glade off the side of the track, each with a carbine strapped on their shoulders, each carrying a bucket. The family stared at us as if we were the most foolish people they had ever had the misfortune to behold. Again, a lecture from the driver about our recklessness. Then he sighed and said, Okay, as long as you are here, come with us. They were cutting through the woods, crossing a river, then climbing up a short rise to a meadow where they were going to pick berries.
From this place, the driver said, you have excellent nice good view of volcano. I asked him where he learned English and he revealed he was a cosmonaut on vacation with his family.
We followed them through the forest for a few minutes until we came to a raging river spanned by a fallen tree, its wet trunk just wide enough to walk across, slowly, carefully, single-file. My wife looked at the white-water rapids below the log and said she wasn’t doing it. The cosmonaut said, Come on, just up the top of bank you can see volcano. I said to my wife that I’d be right back.
On the opposite shore, I scrambled fifteen feet up the bank to a treeless plateau overgrown with brush so high it was impossible to see anything at all. Just ten more minutes, said the cosmonaut, but I knew I couldn’t abandon my defenseless wife back on the other side of the river. I thanked the cosmonaut and his family for their hospitality and started back down the steep bank, checking my speed to keep from tumbling into the water. When I took a couple of steps out onto the log, I felt off balance and instinctively crouched to use my hands to steady myself. I have a permanent visual image branded into my memory that accompanies what happened next—my wife waiting for me on the far bank, her quizzical expression turning to wide-eyed, jaw-dropping astonishment as she watched me, poised above the river, rear up from my crouch in a roar, digging frantically into my pants pocket, pulling out an object that resembled a smoke grenade, and hurling it into the rapids.
Bending down to gain my balance as I had stepped onto the log, I had triggered the can of pepper spray in my pocket, its aerosol blast locked into an open position aimed direct at my crotch. Imagine a tiny jet engine in your boxer shorts. Imagine that engine throttled up to its white-hot after-burn. How to minister to such a grievous, potentially life-altering injury, how to relieve the suffering? Only the kindest, most generous and selfless nurse would have a clue.
When I finally stopped howling, my wife had trouble keeping a straight face, eyeing my wincing, bow-legged gait back through the forest. Perhaps something about watching a guy self-immolate his nuts brings out the mirth in women. I felt like I had just ridden a rhino bare-assed for thirty miles. My wife kept reminding me that the after-scent of pepper spray, once its stinging properties have faded, is a bear attractant, smelling much like an order from Taco Bell.
That would be one overcooked burrito with a side of huevos fritos.
(2010)