Alaska (23 page)

THE EXPLORATION OF ALASKA WAS CONDUCTED BY TWO

contrasting kinds of men: either purposeful explorers of established reputation like Vitus Bering and the other historic 148

figures we shall be meeting briefly, or tough, nameless commercial adventurers who often achieved more constructive results than the professionals who preceded them.

In the early development this second wave of men in motion was made up of rascals, thieves, murderers and ordinary toughs who had been born in Siberia or served there, and their guiding motto as they began to probe the Aleutian Islands was brief and accurate: 'The tsar is far away in St. Petersburg and God is so high in heaven He can't see us. But here we are on the island, so let's do whatever's necessary.'

Trofim Zhdanko, miraculously alive after his winter of near-starvation on Bering Island, became through an odd combination of circumstances one of these commercial adventurers. Having made his way to Russia's eastern terminus at the seaport of Okhotsk, from which he supposed he would be sent home, he gradually realized, during a six-month waiting period, that he had no desire to go back: I'm forty-one. My tsar's dead, so what's in St. Petersburg? And my family's dead, so what's in Ukraine? The more he examined his limited prospects the more he was attracted to remaining in the east, and he started asking what his chances were of landing a government job of some kind, but he had made only a few inquiries when he learned a basic fact about Russian life: 'When there's a good job in any of the alien provinces like Siberia, it's always some official born in homeland Russia who gets it. Others need not apply.”

The best government job he could hope for as a Ukrainian in Okhotsk was as a laborer on the new harbor that was being built to accommodate trade with Japan, China and the Aleutians, if such trade ever developed, which seemed unlikely, since the ports of the first two nations were closed to Russian ships while the Aleutians contained no harbors. Despondent, and perplexed as to what ugly things might happen to him if he did return to St. Petersburg, now that new officials were in power, he was lazing in the sun one June morning in 1743, when a man, obviously a Siberian, with dark skin, Mongolian features and no neck, accosted him: 'The name's Poznikov, gentleman merchant. You look like a strong one.'

'I've met men who could best me.'

'Have you ever sailed?'

'I've been to the other shore,' and when he pointed toward America the merchant gasped, took him by the arm, and spun him around for closer examination.

'You were with Bering?'

'Buried him. A great man.'

'You must come with me. You must meet my wife.'

The merchant led him to a well-appointed house overlook-149

ing the harbor, and there Zhdanko met Madame Poznikova, an imperious woman obviously not Siberian. 'Why do you bring this workman to see me?' she asked her husband rather sternly, and he said with obvious meekness: 'He's not a workman, dearest, he's a sailor.'

'Where has he sailed?' she demanded.

'To America . . . with Bering.'

When this name was spoken, she moved closer to Trofim and, as her husband did in the street, swung him around to inspect him more closely, turning his big head this way and that as if she had perhaps seen him before. Then, shrugging, she asked with just a touch of scorn: 'You? You were with Bering?'

'Twice. I was his aide.'

'And you saw the islands out there?'

'I was ashore, twice, and as you know, we spent one whole winter there.'

'I didn't know,' she said, taking command of the conversation and asking Trofim to sit while she fetched a drink made from the cranberries which abounded in these parts.

Before resuming her interrogation, she cleared her throat: 'Now tell me, Cossack.

Were there really furs on those islands?'

'Wherever we went.'

'But I was told by the first ship that returned, Captain Chirikov's, that they saw no furs.'

'They didn't land, we did.'

Abruptly, she rose and stalked about the room, then sat down beside her husband, and with her hand on his knee as if seeking either his counsel or his silence, she asked very slowly: 'Cossack, would you be willing to go back to the islands? For my husband, that is? To bring us furs?'

Zhdanko breathed deeply, endeavoring to suppress the excitement he felt at being offered an escape from a dead life in western Russia: 'Well, if it could be done ...”

'What do you mean?' she said sharply. 'You've already done it.' She waved her hand, brushing aside any questions: 'Crews, ships, that's what Okhotsk is for.' Suddenly she was standing before him: 'Would you go?' and he saw no purpose in delaying his enthusiastic acceptance: 'Yes!'

During subsequent discussions of how such an expedition could be organized, it was she who laid down the principles: 'You'll sail to the new harbor at Petropavlovsk, a thousand easy miles in a stout Okhotsk ship belonging to the government. There you'll be only six or seven hundred miles from the first island, so you'll build your own ship and sail forth in early spring. Fish and hunt all summer, come back in

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autumn, and when you reach here Poznikov will take your furs to Irkutsk ...”

'Why so far?' Zhdanko asked, and she snapped: 'It's the capital of Siberia. All good things in this part of Siberia come from Irkutsk.' Then, with a show of modesty: 'I come from Irkutsk. My father was voivode there.' And as she uttered this word, she and Trofim pointed at each other and broke into laughter.

When Poznikov asked: 'What's so funny?' she choked, took Trofim by the wrist, and shook it vigorously: 'He was

with Bering! I saw him with Bering!' and she drew back to study him: 'How many years ago could that have been?' and Trofim said: 'Seventeen. You brought us tea and your father told us of the fur trading in Mongolia.' After a moment's pause, he asked: 'Did you ever return to that trading post on the border?'

'I did,' she said. 'That's where I met him,' and she pointed to her stolid husband, showing no affection but great respect. Then she clapped her hands: 'Ivan, I hire this cossack here and now. He's to be our captain.'

IVAN POZNIKOV WAS IN HIS FIFTIES, HARDENED BY THE cruel winters of Siberia and even more by the harsh practices he had been forced to employ in his dealings with Chukchis, Kalmucks and Chinese. He was a big man, not so tall as Zhdanko but broader in the shoulders and just as powerful in the arms; his hands were immense, and on several occasions when facing ultimate danger his long fingers had clamped around an adversary's neck and remained there, tightening until the man fell limp in his hands and died.

In trading he was equally brutal, but because through the years of their unequal marriage his wife had hammered at him, he allowed her to run their family and its business.

When Trofim met the Poznikovs that first morning he had wondered how this dynamic woman, daughter of a voivode sent out from the capital, had consented to marry a mere Siberian tradesman, but in the following weeks when he saw how this pair dominated the eastern fur trade he remembered the interest she had shown in it as a girl in Irkutsk. Apparently she had seen Poznikov as her main chance to learn the mysteries of eastern Siberia, so she had stifled her social ambitions, accepted him as her husband, and expanded his business sixfold. It was she who supervised the trading, making most of the major decisions, for as Poznikov confided: 'I do better when I listen to her.'

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One day while the two men were working on plans for establishing a chain of trading posts in the Aleutians, Poznikov made a casual remark which indicated that perhaps the Madame, as both men called her, had done the proposing which resulted in their marriage: 'We were on the Mongolian border, and I was astonished at how thoroughly she knew fur prices, and I said: ”You're wonderful!” and to my surprise, she said right back: ”You're wonderful, Poznikov. Together we would make a powerful team.”'

Neither man commented further.

When it became clear that it was going to require much longer to arrange the first trip to the Aleutians than planned, it was Madame Poznikova who suggested: 'Time's come for us to get our furs to Kyakhta on the Mongolian border,' and she proposed that Zhdanko hire six armed guards to escort them through the first five hundred miles of forbidding bandit country between Okhotsk and the Lena. But when details were completed, Trofim learned that he would be protecting not only the merchant and his wife but also their sixteen-year-old son, a brash, ill-mannered young man who bore the highly inappropriate name of Innokenti.

During their first hours together Trofim learned that the son was arrogant, opinionated, brutal in his treatment of inferiors, and miserably spoiled by his mother. Innokenti knew the answer to everything and volunteered to make all decisions. Because he was a large lad, his firm opinions carried more weight than they might have otherwise, and he took especial delight in telling Zhdanko, whom he considered little better than a serf, what to do. Since the distance to Yakutsk was about eight hundred miles, it was obvious that the journey with the pelts was not going to be a pleasant one.

To ease the tension as they plodded through the wastelands of Siberia, Trofim devised a nonsense rhyme like the ones his mother had sung in the Ukraine: 'Irkutsk to Ilimsk to Yakutsk to Okhotsk! No one can handle such difficult names.

Okhotsk to Yakutsk to Ilimsk to Irkutsk! When you're a cossack they're easy as games.'

'That's a stupid song,' Innokenti said. 'Stop it!' But the six guards were so attracted by the difficult names and broken rhythms that soon the entire column except the boy chanted 'Okhotsk to Yakutsk to Irkutsk,' and the tedious miles became more bearable.

When they were more than halfway to Yakutsk, Trofim was so pleased with the progress they were making and with

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the congeniality of the two older Poznikovs that one night as they camped on the barren side of a Siberian mountain, he beckoned the big merchant with the drooping mustaches and no neck, and in the moonlight whispered: 'I brought with me a special fur. I think it's valuable. Will you sell it for me when you get yours to Mongolia?'

'Glad to. Where is it?' and from his voluminous blouse Trofim produced the remarkable pelt he had acquired on Lapak Island. As soon as Poznikov felt its extraordinary quality, and even before taking it to a light, he said: 'This must be sea otter.'

'It is,' Trofim said, and the merchant whistled: 'I didn't know they grew so big!'

and Trofim said: 'The seas out there are full of them.'

In the next moments Zhdanko learned why the bullnecked Siberian had been so successful even before he acquired his capable wife, for Poznikov adjusted the flickering light so that it illuminated the fur without revealing its presence to the six guards, who might be spying. Then, he lifted one tip after another, satisfying himself as to its quality by rubbing it between his fingers, tugging at it gently at first, to be sure it had not been glued onto the pelt, and when Zhdanko was not looking, giving it a tremendous yank. Satisfied that the fur was real, even though of a type with which he was not familiar, he pressed it against his face, then blew upon it to separate the hairs so that he might see the subtle variation of color along the length. Then suddenly, in a gesture which startled Trofim, he pressed both hands heavily upon the fur and pulled the hairs roughly apart so that the animal skin was revealed for him to judge of its health, and when all this was done, he stood up, walked away from the lamp so that no watcher but Zhdanko could see him, and holding his right hand high above his head, he allowed the full length of this gorgeous pelt to reveal itself.

When he returned to the light, he masked the fur, sat down beside Trofim, pressed the pelt into his hands, and whispered: 'Madame must see this,' and when he and Trofim slipped quietly into her tent, he told her: 'We've found a treasure,' and he indicated that Trofim was to show her and Innokenti the pelt. As soon as she saw it she tried to assess its value with a set of tricks totally different from the ones her husband had used. Standing erect and adopting the poses of a princess, this imposing thirty-four-year-old woman draped the pelt about her shoulders, took a few steps, wheeled, took some more steps, bowed before her son as if he had invited her to dance.

Only then did she give her opinion: 'This is a fine fur, worth a fortune,' and when Trofim asked hesitantly: 'How much?'

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she offered a figure in rubles that amounted to more than seven hundred dollars.

He gasped and said: 'There are hundreds out there,' and she restudied the pelt, hefted it in her hands, then held it against her face: 'Maybe nine hundred.'

It was unfortunate that Innokenti had heard this, for he could not keep from boasting to one of the Siberian guards the next morning: 'We have a new kind of pelt. Worth more than a thousand rubles,' and as the days passed, this man told the other guards: 'In those bales they never open they have hundreds of pelts worth fifteen hundred rubles each,' and the Siberians began to hatch a plot.

As the little caravan entered a canyon girt by low hills, one of the Siberians whistled, whereupon all six turned on the Poznikovs and their personal protector, Zhdanko.

Knowing that he was the one they must dispose of first, the three biggest guards fell upon Trofim with clubs and knives, expecting to kill him instantly, but with an instinct gained from many such encounters, he anticipated their thrusts, and calling upon his extreme strength, he held them off.

And to the amazement of the guards who had attacked the three Poznikovs, expecting an easy victory, the family turned out to be Siberian tigers, or worse. Madame Poznikova started screaming and beating about her with a walking stick, which she wielded with fury and direction. Her son did not run for cover, like an ordinary frightened sixteen-year-old; grabbing at one of the men, he caught him by an arm and swung him into a tree, and when the rogue stumbled, Innokenti jumped upon him and with his fists beat him senseless.

But it was Poznikov himself who proved the most valorous, for after manhandling his own assailant, choking him with his huge hands, he sprang to help Zhdanko, who was still fending off his three attackers.