Nastassja Martin - In the Eye of the Wild

T he bear left some hours ago now, and I am waiting, waiting for the mist to lift. The steppe is red, my hands are red, face swollen and gashed, unrecognizable. As in the time of myths, obscurity reigns; I am this blurred figure, features subsumed beneath the open gulfs in my face, slicked over with internal tissue, fluid, and blood: it is a birth, for it is manifestly not a death. Around me, wads of brown hair stiffened by dried blood litter the ground, proof of the recent combat. For eight hours, perhaps more, Ive been hoping a Russian army helicopter will break through the fog to come and find me. I made a tourniquet for my leg with my rucksack strap when the bear took off, and Nikolai helped bandage my face when he reached me. He emptied our precious supply of spirt over my head, and it ran down my cheeks along with the tears and blood. Then he left me; he took my little fieldwork Alcatel to call the emergency services from the spur of an outcrop, thinking, inevitably, of the patchy network, the ancient phone, the far-off cell towers, praying they would all hold up, because all around rise the volcanoes that only a few moments earlier feted our freedom but now mark out our prison.

I am cold. I feel for my sleeping bag, wrap myself in it as best I can. My thoughts go out to the bear, then back to myself, building connections, analyzing and dissecting, fashioning a survivors castles in the air. Inside my mind must look like a wild proliferation of synapses sending and receiving data more rapidly than ever, that is the pace of it: dazzling, lightning fast, unchecked, and ungovernablethe pace of dreaming, yet nothing has ever been more real or more immediate. The sounds I hear are enhanced, I hear like an animal, I am that wild animal. I wonder for a moment whether the bear will come back to finish me off, or to be killed by me, or indeed for us both to die in a final embrace. But already I know, I sense, that this will not happen; he is far away now, he is stumbling through the high steppe, blood dripping down his pelt. As he grows farther away and I look deeper into myself, we each regain our self-possession. He without me, I without him; how to survive despite what I have lost in the others body, how to live with what has been left behind there.

I hear it long before it arrives. To Nikolai and Lanna who rejoined me a moment ago, its inaudible. Its coming, I say, no nothing there, they reply, just us in the vast space with the mist that rises and falls. Yet a few minutes later an orange metal monster, a refugee from the Soviet era, comes to pluck us from this place.

Its night in Klyuchi, the solid depths of the night. Klyuchikey village, the training center, the Russian armys secret base in the Kamchatka region. I am not meant to know that its at this poor strip of earth that Moscow is firing weekly missiles in order to measure their range and be ready to hit the Bering Straits American coastline in the event of war. I am also not meant to know that all the indigenous peoples in the area, the Evens, Koryaks, and Itelmens, whats left of them, are recruited here, because without reindeer and without forest, absurdity is now the norm and it has come down to fighting on behalf of their tormentors. Except I do know it, and have known from the start; I know it because its my profession to know these things. The Evens, whose lives in the forest Ive been sharing for several months, have told me about the bombs that explode near their barracks in the evenings. They laughed at my questions, studied my face, often called me a spy, lightly, teasingly, ironically; they tried me out in every possible role but they never held anything back. The village; the drinking; the fights; the forest that is retreating, and with it their native tongue forgotten little by little; the lack of work; the homeland, their savior, which offers them the base at Klyuchi in return.

The irony of fate. The clinic is in this key villagethis is where we land, behind the barbed wire and fences, behind the watchtowers, plumb into the lions den. I who used to enjoy a private giggle at knowing all these top-secret things about this top-secret place now find myself actually inside the medical facility for the soldiers and wounded of the almost-war that quietly goes on here.

An old lady stitches up my wounds. I watch her handle the needle and thread with infinite care. I have passed through the pain stage, I feel nothing now, but Im still awake, I dont miss a stitch, I am lucid beyond my human senses, detached from my body while still within it. Vs'o budet khorosho, everything will be fine. Her voice, her hands, thats all. I see my long blond and red hair fall in clumps at my feet as she cuts it off so she can sew up the slashes on my head, which by some miracle has not been crushed. I struggle to discern a light but theres nothing to be done, the nights depths are opaque, filled with pain, endless, theres no relief that way. Then I see him. The fat, sweaty man who has just come into the room is waving his phone at me, he is taking a photo, he means to immortalize this moment. So horror does have a face, and its not mine but his. I am enraged. I want to throw myself at him, tear his paunch open, rip out his guts, and nail his damn phone to his hand so he can take the sweetest selfie of his life while taking his leave of itbut I cant. I can only mumble at him to stop, and awkwardly try to hide my face; I am broken, shattered. The old lady understands; she pushes him outside and locks the door. People, she says, you know how they are.