She-bear

© Alexandr Keldyushov, 2017

© International Union of writers, 2017

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Alexandr KELDYUSHOV

Keldyushov Alexandr Gennadievich was born on July 3, 1972, in the village of Klyuevka, the Republic of Buryatia. From 1979 to 1989, he has been studied at the secondary school of Klyuevka. At school, Alexandr was fond of literature, drawing, and sports. In 1994, he became a full-time student at the Moscow State Academy of Physical Culture, at the faculty of physical health-improving technology, and graduated it in 1998. Since 2001, Alexandr is working in the Moscow State Academy of Physical Culture in the position of chief of security service. At the Academy, he showed interest in psychology, which he began to use later in the storyline of his works. In 1996, he published the first book ‘Ghost Hunters’. In 2008, the second book came out – the collection ‘I Bring You Peace». In 2010 – the novel ‘She-bear’, in 2011 – novels ‘Alienation» and ‘Z.L.O.’, in 2013 – the collection of aphorisms ‘The Wisdom of the Fool’. The author’s website: www.keldushov.ru.

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Siberia is the heart of Russia, where the soul of the Russian person resides. If we compare Russia with the tree, then the roots – the Far East, and the crown – its European part. But the stem itself, which is the foundation of the cultural heritage, – Siberia and the Urals. This is something permanent. In autumn, the leaves of the crown fall and the new shoots emerge in the ground, but the stem remains – solid and permanent. It keeps the connection between the earth and the sun. Those, who have never been to Siberia, will never see the charming perfection of its nature, its grandeur and beauty, will never enjoy its native Russian spirit.

Taiga is the unconquered virgin world, full of secrets and mysteries. Extraordinary beauty. The mesmerising picture, created by some talented artist, combines the strength, courage, and inspiration. Impenetrable swamps, the bottom of which lurks in the heart of the earth. Dizzying mountain cliffs ringed with snowy peaks. Established hills, reminiscent of the twin-brothers, among which it is so easy to get lost. Mountain rivers and streams, transparent like glass. And the endless green ocean of coniferous giants and tall birches, vanishing on the horizon. Taiga… This consonant word is full of limitless charm and outspoken immediacy, which is childishly naive and manly harsh at the same time. Some bypass it, others fall in love and cannot live without it. The green-eyed taiga – the way of escaping for those, who are tired of civilisation. The shelter from the hustle and bustle. The mother and the wet nurse. Taiga is the mysterious world, hidden behind the soothing whisper of leaves and the caressing touch of grass, the singing of the forest birds and the shrill chirping of insects, the cautious rustle of the stepping animal pads and the sharp flapping of the wings of the soaring birds, the murmur of the pure spring water, running through the stones, and the splashes of the jumping river fish. And only those, who merge with nature with their bodies and souls, will gain something invaluable – themselves. People realise that there is nothing sweeter than the woven, like by the touch of magic, fabulous place, that this is everything they have ever dreamed of. They will understand that everything is intertwined in nature and that the destruction of one evil species will disturb the balance. There are no good and bad animals. Nature is the totality of the animal and plant worlds, the vicious circle. Each death boosts the continuation of life for another inhabitant of the forest. Taiga is not only the herd of slender noble deer, timidly grazing on the wetland meadows barely warmed by the spring sunshine. There are also mighty careful moose, whose proud heads are crowned with regal crowns. It is more than just the stark grey silhouettes of wolves, sadly singing their moon song. It is more than just clumsy brown bears, slowly wandering among the blueberry bushes bursting with juicy berries. Taiga is about the carefully constructed of pine needles and dead branches, mysterious castles of the hard-working ants, as well as their secret inner life, vaguely resembling the human one. It is about the burning, painful bites of the forest mosquitoes and the annoying song of the little blood-sucking midges, winding like a cloud. It is about the light freshness, intoxicating the mind, and the tempting aroma of the air, making one’s head go round with every breath. Taiga is about the rugged windbreaks, reminiscent of some baptised battlefield, where, like the formidable army, the shaggy firs arrayed the watch, bound up with powerful, seasoned veterans – cedars. Taiga is about the flooded, like with bitter tears, glistening drops of pine resin, peacefully rocking the rambunctious breeze in their unshakable crowns. There are kinky mountain ashes, glittering in the predawn haze with bunches of scarlet berries, slender willows, whose branches gently touch the rough waters of the crystal clear mountain rivers. And in the deep waters of these rivers, the rainbow grayling lazily splashes, and the powerful predators – grey lenok – purposefully moves against the tide. Taiga is a state within a state, with its own sets of laws and rules, and only people do not fit into its peaceful life. People have lost their connection with nature, have destroyed the idyll. People only take without giving anything in return. And there is no limit to their appetite. They have lost their sense of measure. They always feel the lack of something. Once emerged from the womb of nature, they selfishly believe now that they have the right to dispose of everything. After all, a human being is a Creation of God, the supreme intelligence, and the animals and plants are something secondary, without souls. So, one can do anything with them: kill, poison, drive. However, people are sadly mistaken. Both animals and plants experience pain and suffering, just like we. Even a small grain of sand has its own forest soul, which suffers the pangs of death.

And as long as the destructive shots thunder from the trapdoors, the fishing nets overlap the floodplains in the season of spawning fish, the artful snares and loops overlay animal tracks to the watering place, there will be no peace on earth for neither the defenceless animals nor the true lovers of nature. For the poachers have no mercy. They only worship profits. Greed is the meaning of their lives. They look at the world through the sighting bar of the black barrel, greedily searching for the profitable catch, for which they are ready to do anything. After all, they see animals as a commodity with its own price, a cherished goal, a way of enrichment. And God forbid you to be on their way for they will deal with you immediately. When there is no conscience, there is no compassion. They will not hesitate to shoot you in the back. Yes, the law is harsh in taiga – only the ‘strongest ones’ will survive: the fittest, quick, and resourceful ones. In any case, the animals in the human form, to whom nothing is sacred, will not be among them. But you reap what you sow. And the animals, protecting themselves, pay back in their own coin for the death of their cubs with merciless revenge.

Although, we are the ones, who are to pay for the actions of some scoundrels for only being in a certain specific relationship to them. And if we do not stop this lawlessness, in the future, our children will be getting acquainted with the animal world with the help of documentary films or images in books, where there will be an inscription in red letters under each image – extinct species.

She-bear

Through the dense wall of bushes, the eyes, burning with the fierce hatred and being reflected in the flickering light of the campfire with the amber-ruby flame that corroded the soul with unbridled fury, angrily watched the kneeling man. The man muttered something and stood up abruptly, suddenly heading in her direction but, having not reached ten metres to the target, stopped near the tree, cut off a straight branch, and returned to the campfire. She-bear jerked tensely and predatory grinned, exposing rows of tightly compressed fangs. The fur on her neck stood on end. She sat down on the hind pads, preparing to jump. But the danger passed. Nervously shaking her upper lip and listening to the retreating footsteps, she cautiously sniffed the wind, catching the bitter suffocating smoke and the repulsive pungent smell of the human body. Before this, she paid no attention to it, carefully avoiding people, but everything changed today. Now she was looking for the meeting with them. The presence of people meant the accomplishment of revenge for her. Once again, she remembered that sorrowful picture in the smallest details: the blood-stained clearing and the motionless brown nubble. The past overwhelmed her with new sharp spasms of unbearable heartache. And people were guilty of all this. People… The hated two-legged creatures. They were weak, like worms, but guileful and resourceful, like wolverines. They had ruthlessly killed her five-month-old baby… Her son. They took him away. They deprived him of life. For a brief moment, the look, burning with the fierce hatred, got warmer when she imagined him rubbing against her leg, wheezing happily, clinging to the mother’s breast. But then the pain came back again, forcing her to moan of anguish in the realisation of a terrible truth. It was not going to happen again. Her baby was dead and quietly buried under a pile of fallen leaves. His motionless eyes, filled with pain and the silent reproach, were fixed on her. She did not save him. She did not protect him. She-bear began to shake her head desperately, banishing the painful delusion, and when she raised her head, her unblinking eyes reflected only wild rage. Having uttered a dull roar, she rushed forward. She did not see anything around, having focused only on the target, as if this man was responsible for the death of her bear-cub. She did not even notice how she ran the distance separating her from the killer. She thought that she only blinked and he was already in front of her. The fisherman did not even have time to turn around and realise what was behind his back. His death materialised like some ghost. The flash-like stroke of the pad was followed by the sweeping blow. One could hear the piercing crunch of the cervical vertebrae. And the man, like a rag doll, fell to the ground, motionless, with his face buried in the grass. But she had to give vent to her rage. The heart, tormented by pain, demanded retribution. And she began to tear the man, writhing in agony, furiously to pieces. Sharp claws tore up his flesh, leaving deep, bleeding wounds. Fangs easily crushed the bones, ripping the tendons. She was obsessively rolling the man on the grass, turning him with her pads. She was tearing and biting him. And she calmed down only when the man stopped showing signs of life. Looking intently into the pale blood-stained face and sniffing cautiously the motionless, lifeless body, she made sure that the enemy was not pretending. He was dead. Therefore, her revenge was accomplished, and another enemy was defeated. She began to grumble angrily, showing bloody fangs, and slowly went deep into the cedar forest, warily looking back. She won, but for some reason, it did not bring her peace, only short-term relief. It was a momentary unconsciousness and excitement of a duel. But it was all over, and memories of loss returned. And it brought her severe heartache. And then she decided: she would not leave the path of revenge and would pay back people for the caused sufferings in full until her last breath.

Introduction

The opening gate creaked plaintively and fell forward, being barely held by the rusty hinges. The old man carefully held it back and leant it gently against the lopsided fence. Hardly moving the legs stiff from rheumatism, he got to the bench, which was made of a single rotten plank. He shook his head annoyingly and sat down on the edge of the bench wearily.

– Holy Jesus. – He sighed heavily, pulling a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his shabby jacket. – Complete devastation.

Like everything around. It was late in the evening, and the smoke did not rise from the chimneys of all the houses. About thirty years ago, it was not like this. People happily stoked the ovens, preparing dinner and heating the house overnight. Children’s laughter and cheerful voices of adults could be heard in the rooms. These voices were full of joy. There was confidence in the future. The air was filled with the resinous scent of the wood burning in the furnaces, sending blazing sparks of fireworks through the chimneys. But today.

He got a light from a match and took a deep puff. He gloomily raised his weathered face and somewhat blindly squinted. Today, the blank windows were greedily staring at him. It looked as if the houses swallowed their owners, but killed themselves too. There were broken windows, removed doors and window frames, grey cluttered rooms, and sooty walls. He could not even remember the last time there was some holiday in the village. Or rather, he remembered that it was long time ago. Very long time ago. The world seemed simple and people seemed kind. It was in that stagnant time.

– ‘Stagnant time’. – The old man angrily grunted. – How did they dare call it?! And it turned out that now we have peace and grace in our country. So, when everything was building and working, it was stagnation, and when the plants were closing, pension and salary were not being paid for months, it was progress. Democracy distorted everything. It replaced the concepts of good and bad. In fact, it was pretty simple: the authorities were the enemies of the people, who were robbing the country. They were stuffing their pockets. They were dancing to someone else’s tune – American. – And he angrily spat. – Stalin would quickly bring order to the country.

Nothing could convince him that considering the USSR the period of stagnation was not a deliberate invention of the democrats, who tried to justify the ruin of the country and to hide their involvement in the theft. No matter how hard they tried. He had no doubt that now was the notorious ‘stagnation time’, and long ago everything was different – the life was in full swing. Lips involuntarily stretched in a smile and, plunging into the memories, the old man’s face smoothed, brightened. Wan look filled with the brilliance of the youth again, and naughty lights of happiness and serenity began to dance in his grey eyes. He felt like he got into the past and saw his house at the end of construction. It looked like it was ready for people to come in and live, but there were still some flaws to be fixed. Having straightened his shoulders and pumped air into lungs, he instinctively rubbed his dry palms; his hands seemed to be filled with former strength and to remember every hammered nail, every cut made by an axe and a plane. Chips flew happily, it smelled paint and a freshly felled tree. Work was progressing well, and happiness was on every face. Pyotr, Mishka, Seryoga, Volodya. They helped to build the house, fending off fatigue with jokes and rhymes. They were friends from the bygone times. Now they only look at him from the photographs on the gravestones. All of them left him along the bitter trail, disappearing in a dark mist of nothingness. There were shadows that retained their former earthly appearance only in his heart and memories. They were alive there. Nobody shied away from work. They helped as much as they could. And they never refused. They were so young and were not afraid of difficulties. The past was like a breath of fresh air, a breath of light breeze. It would soothe and caress, gently relieving of the burden of years, poverty, and hopelessness. It would take away sorrow and wash away the pain.

Tears flowed from the eyes of the old man, but he sort of ignored them, motionlessly contemplating the distance of the past days.

Sturdy cedar walls, carved freshly painted shutters, well-tended garden, in which the wife planted flowers every spring. Crowds of children going to school, joined by his son and daughter. Favourite work in forestry. He was a senior forester, a chief, who never pulled rank. And all the former friends were his subordinates. They worked and spent vacations together. And then…

Wet optically challenged eyes of the old man were covered with pain and anguish.

There was darkness. And he, as if for real, went back to the past. The years turned into a second. A moment. A deep groan. He and his wife, discussing his work day, usually sat on the couch and turned on the TV to see breaking news. He carefully covered her with a blanket and absently turned around… He was listening to the speaker. The news about the conflict between the Parliament and the President struck like thunder. Reports showed crowds of angry people, frozen tanks, strained faces of the soldiers, and ‘the White House’ blackened by soot. Back then, he did not realise that this was only the beginning of the bloody show. The Soviet Union was hit by the hammer, splitting a united, strong state into independent republics, and the greedy little hands of foreign speculators were reaching out for the wrecks of a great empire in anticipation of winning a big jackpot. And they were naive, ordinary workers and anxiously worried about the fate of the Motherland. These were the days of tension. They were full of rumours and speculation. At work, they were arguing until they got hoarse. Young people sided with the new government, taking for granted the colourful speeches on the indispensable coming of the Golden Age. And politicians, who had sold themselves, were happy to try ‘to sing like a nightingale’ to butter up the path to the hearts of the people with illusory freedom, cheap vouchers, and American chewing gum. The elderly people, having learned from bitter experience, did not want to change anything, arguing that the western innovations would lead to no good. They were proving that there was no such thing as a free lunch. And they were right. And time proved it… The puppeteers became obsessed. People were explained that they lived in a wrong way. Unworthily. Communism was the same fascism, only of red colour. It turned out that people needed freedom. Democracy. And only this could help them live a wealthy and happy life. And restructuring rattled around the country with forged boots, maiming human destinies, exasperating hearts, and making souls stale. It was quietly pressing people into the small suffocating enclosure, leaving behind abandoned country sides, impoverished villages, robbed state-owned enterprises, and empty wallets.

The old man smiled bitterly blowing out a puff of smoke. And he took a puff again. His thoughts were twisted like a disturbed swarm. For so many years, he had never found a clear answer to the main question: who should be punished for all this mess? And he sighed heavily again, having dully waved his hand.

– God will understand himself, who is guilty of thousands of ruined souls… He will identify and punish the villain. I will mind my own business. – But the belief in just punishment did not find the proper relief. He limply lowered his head, which became very heavy in one moment, and turned in upon himself, unable to soothe pain, gripping his soul.

He felt sorry that their cosy little world faced the same fate. The trouble did not pass by. The once densely populated village was dying out today. His fingers involuntarily clenched of the feeling of despair. He knew that he was deceiving himself, hiding behind the words: ‘everything was going to be alright’, a terrible reality. Klyuevka was not dying out. The truth was worse. It was already dead. It was remaining only as the name of the settlement marked on the map of Russia with an inanimate point. A settlement without inhabitants. A haven of abandoned houses and fallen fences. Another ghost station on the railway atlas of Russia, with an empty platform. And regardless of one’s emotional experiences and attempts to turn back the clock, the past was gone. One could not breathe life into a dead decomposed body. But even if one could, it was unlikely worth doing. It was possible that one’s efforts would resurrect a new Frankenstein. And its fate would be more disastrous. It’s all in God’s hands. ‘What must be, will be’. One needed to accept the terrible reality. People were surrounded by the frightening reality, and there was no way to break free. And a single voice had no value. All posts in the world were allotted long time ago. The position of ‘the saviour of the world’ was already taken by those, who had destroyed this world by themselves.

– One can accept many things, but not outright injustice, – he said sadly. He wearily bowed down and, hiding his face in his palms, ruffled his thick grey hair with naughty fingers. – People have become too callous and aggressive, not like our generation. They are ready to rip each other’s throats. And they have bags of envy. They smile in the face, and when one turns around they spit on the back. But the worst thing is that the death of a person today is measured by dry figures. Today, twenty people died in a car accident, three of them were children of preschool age. Yesterday, the explosion of domestic gas in a residential building claimed the lives of one hundred people. The day before yesterday, the ship sank and took the lives of another hundred people. And here the ink writes out the soulless statistics: weekly, monthly, annual… ‘So much’ departed. But last year, this figure was better – it was smaller. For whom was it a better figure? For the family? For friends? For relatives of the deceased? Unlikely. It was better only for the report. And that’s it. We do not know what will happen tomorrow, but something will certainly happen and someone will die. There is no doubt. Hundreds of thousands are put in the coffins, and their entire course of life, the way of life and the lifestyle are reflected at the impersonal tags. Hundreds of thousands… but few of them are known by the names, and even fewer – by the surnames. And one could write off all the deaths on the concourse of circumstances or the evil will of fate if most of the tragedies were marked by the trace of alcohol. Some reckless deadly demon, trapped in a vodka bottle for hundreds of years, broke free. It was his time… The time of confusion and despair. And he began his mad dance, smiting hopes, trampling the will, smearing conscience and shame, destroying what was formerly a person, showing a raging monster.

– And its vicious influence reached us too, – the old man hopelessly forced himself to speak, helplessly listening to the melancholy howl of the neighbour’s dog.

Out of eight thousand residents of Klyuevka, only less than one thousand remained. And almost all of them were the elderly ones. Young people, who did not run away to the cities, went on the bottle, trying to cope with sorrow. The demon of drunkenness firmly held the lost souls, injecting doses of poison into the minds fogged with alcohol, creating the illusion of universal prosperity. And in the morning, the hangover came. Sharp and painful. And there was the realisation that the world was not ‘pink’, not even with black and white stripes, but solid grey. The power in this world belonged to the gloomy cardinal named hopelessness. He ruled with an iron fist, brutally suppressing any attempt to escape from captivity. It was dissolving the remnants of the human mind in tonnes of cheap surrogate alcohol.

Unscrupulous businessmen. Bandits. Police. Officials of all sorts and ranks. Like ticks, they stuck to the extremely profitable ‘feeding through’, and no force could tear them away. Yes, there was no such power in the state that was able to keep order. All the ‘politically unreliable’, going against the decrees of the oligarchic elite, honest and decent police chiefs and business leaders were put out to pasture. They were replacing with obedient servants. And corruption began to thrive. One only needed to reap benefits on time. Dollars. Marks. Pounds. They flowed, like the river, settling in the pockets of thieving dealers. Shadow bigwigs came out of their holes, beginning to build their own world order. Under the motto: ‘scratch my back and I will scratch yours’. The article about speculation was seized from the Criminal Code. There was no speculation in Russia, but there were free market relations. There began the wave of legal democratic relations between the seller and the buyer. And nobody cared that the product was not created with their own hands and was just resold at exorbitant prices. Coupons for alcohol were out of use, and vodka itself disappeared from the shelves of the shops as well. The notorious ‘dry law’ was gaining momentum. The state rushed to fight alcoholism at breakneck speed, uprooting vineyards and closing liquor factories, depriving people of high-quality alcohol. Meanwhile, hundreds of cisterns of denatured alcohol ‘Royal’, ‘made in China’, flooded the railway siding of Transbaikalia. Dealers launched a brisk trade of real poison in the country sides and villages. Excitedly rubbing their sweaty palms from anticipating the profits, they fell into the greedy trance. They were enriching the offices of funeral services, which they owned at times. These were the market relations. The double income was obvious: kill and then bury. The business on blood was profitable. People were dying like flies, dozens a day. During the year, the local cemetery grew to immense size, turning into a horrible and sad sight. Any new grave belonged to a man or a woman, younger than forty years old. And there was not a single initiated case, not a single conviction. Everybody knew the perpetrators of the crimes, but nobody was imprisoned. And it was impossible to put someone into prison as government officials were controlling everything. Everybody was in the mix: prosecutors, regional chiefs of police, investigators, and chiefs of local departments. Therefore, everybody knew and said nothing. And there was nothing else to do. One could write to Moscow and there would be no result, if not worse. Or one could be put in prison for ‘slander’. Or a more serious article could be fabricated. Or one could be simply killed by some criminals, who would be set at a certain person. In those troubled 90s, it seemed that all the atrocities took place under the connivance of the higher management from the capital. The country was ruled by oligarchs, who were happy with drunken people, as they required less, were satisfied with the crumbs, did not interfere their enrichment, their ‘cutting’ of the budget. And if someone died, it would be even better, as the number of people dissatisfied with social injustice would be smaller.

– When one remembers the past, one begins to tremble. All this was so disgusting, – the old man signed bitterly, – low and meanly. We defeated the Nazis, won a victory over the hunger, rebuilt the cities. Over time, we began to feel that life was getting back to normal. And it turned out that there was some internal enemy in the country, hiding and waiting for the right time to destroy everything. And the consequences of his attack were even more catastrophic than those caused by all the previous wars together. What for did our fathers and grandfathers die during the Great Patriotic War, clearing the land from the ‘brown evil spirits’? Well, certainly, it was not for the fact that their children would die from counterfeit vodka, gangster and police lawlessness, bureaucratic indifference. It was unlikely for the descendants to put up their medals for sale, to glorify traitors and executioners, to consider true heroes to be the occupants, destroying their monuments with the frenzied hatred. Despising the Soviet symbols, they would raise their hands in a Nazi salute, tattooing the bodies with the Nazi symbols and the swastika. What made them betray the memory of their fathers and follow the doctrines of the Nazi ideology? Most young men were not the descendants of the traitors but the usual Russian teenagers. Many families preserved the photographs of smiling soldiers and officers, together with the tearful death notices. And the great-grandfather died not from old age but from the bullets of the Nazis. Those, whom they fanatically imitated these days, killed him.

If the ancestors were able to see all this, they would turn over in their graves, being ashamed of the crazy things of their careless children.

‘Everything was better before than now’. These were only excuses. When before? During the war? During the hunger? During the devastation? There were always difficulties. Only in the past, there was no such epidemic moral decline. False idols were not worshiped. One could understand a simple truth: if you were with us you were a friend, if you were against us you were an enemy.

Young people perished in the vague era of changes. They could not be brought back to life, and making their children orphans, they unwittingly pushed them to the edge of the abyss too. Raving about some imaginary freedom, they mixed the sacred meaning of the expression with permissiveness and promiscuity. The generation of the seventies, who failed to adapt to the new realities, gone nowhere, crashing into the wall of the nineties. The youth of Klyuevka, who ‘escaped from the swamp of stagnation’, as the USSR was called by the democrats, suddenly discovered that they did not get out but only sunk deeper into hopelessness. It turned out that the surrounding swamp had no end and no edge, and the bloomy bank was only inspired by the phantom, masking the bottomless quagmire. The eyes faded on sad faces. The ability to enjoy life dissipated, leaving a faint trail of children’s dreams. And a black deep longing took its place. There was no work. The timber industry enterprise, once thundering throughout the Soviet Union, was closed and looted. The workers were fired and aimlessly roamed around the streets. Only sellers of denatured alcohol thrived. After a year of life in the fast lane, young healthy men and women turned into swollen weak-willed ‘pests’ with the only purpose to find funds for the next bottle. They took the last thing from the house that had at least some value, including tools and window frames. They did not think how they would spend the winter, how they would dig up a vegetable garden. But ‘hunt’ was worse than captivity. They resigned to many things: poverty, hunger, and, most importantly, daily alcohol consumption.