Rally Rodina. Island of Exile

“I want to race Ural motorcycles from Sakhalin to Piter. Are you in?”

Max’s call caught Sasha Nakhmanovich off guard. As usual, Privezentsev had rushed straight into the attack—startle him, stun him with a new idea, set his interest alight at once, and only then begin laying out the details unhurriedly, savoring every word, knowing perfectly well that his listener was already hooked and wouldn’t dare hang up.

“What... where... what do you mean, Urals, Max?” Nakhmanovich mumbled. “Those things are ancient relics!”

“Remember I told you once about that rally my grandfather took part in? The Rodina Rally, for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution?”

“I vaguely remember something, yes.”

“Well, I found his film reel. Here, on Sakhalin,” Max went on. “I read his diaries and... well, the idea’s got hold of me. I want to recreate it. Follow that rally, ride through the same places. But I need companions, so it’s just like it was in ’67.”

“Let me guess: you’ve already called Lama, Sashka Nikiforov, and now you’ve got round to me...”

“Actually, you’re wrong. You were the first person I called.”

“My, what an honor!” Sasha snorted. “Flattering the old man...”

“Spare me the cynicism, Rebbe,” Privezentsev laughed. “Just tell me—are you in or not?”

“Yes... I think so,” Nakhmanovich said after a pause. “It should be... interesting, at the very least. But this is only preliminary, mind you. We’ll still have to discuss dates, the route, all that sort of thing...”

“We absolutely will!” Max assured him. “First I need to know there’s someone to discuss it with. So, in principle—you’re up for it? Then I’ll call Borya and Sashka...”

“I’m in, I’m in!”

“Right. Talk soon...”

“Talk soon,” Nakhmanovich echoed.

The mobile gave a few short beeps. Sasha put it on the nightstand, turned toward the window, and squinted into the sun, its light spilling over the trees and shrubs still bare from winter. Soon everything would be green; the snow had melted, and the long-awaited spring was gradually making its way in. The meteorologists insisted that after March 8 it was safe to put warm clothes away for good—which, in Sasha’s case, meant retiring his down jacket to the wardrobe and getting back into his beloved denim coat.

Sasha watched nature come back to life with a faint smile. The landscape pleased the eye, but the Rebbe’s thoughts were already far away—somewhere on Sakhalin, astride an ancient Ural motorcycle, alongside loyal friends led by Maxim.

Anyone who didn’t know Privezentsev well might have thought such thoughts premature. But Sasha had been friends with Max for many years and had long since learned one thing: if Max set himself a goal, he invariably reached it.

“So I might as well start packing now,” Nakhmanovich thought. “So I’m not tearing around later... Should I tell Alla... or wait until there are concrete plans, then present it properly, in full color, with exact dates and everything?..”

Outside, the wind began to howl. Its wail sounded like the roar of an old Soviet motorcycle.

Chekhov had never before set foot in a katorga. When he set out for Sakhalin in late April, he had, of course, braced himself for certain shocks; even so, he found himself deeply shaken. Every bleak landscape, every person he met on the island—desperate, broken—left an indelible mark on him. When withered, downtrodden men twice his age removed their caps before him, Anton Pavlovich could not help feeling a pang of shame, as if these poor wretches had been exiled here and crushed under the heavy vault of the law not by order of the state, but by some whim of his own, some Chekhovian caprice.

“And how, I wonder, do they differ from serfs?” Chekhov mused, watching yet another convict bend nearly double at the sight of a visitor. “They toil for the master from dawn till dusk just the same, they bow and scrape just the same... They are said to live somewhat better, but even that is far from certain...”

The day before yesterday, Sakhalin had greeted the steamship *Baikal*—which carried the man of letters, three hundred soldiers, and a handful of prisoners—with the bright glare of fires. The captain decided not to put in until the flames had been extinguished, so they spent another night on the water and reached Alexandrovsk Port only in the morning. Fortunately, Anton Pavlovich had already grown used to the hardships of travel and received the news without the slightest inward tremor. The soldiers, naturally, grumbled a little—they were land men, after all, not sailors; how long was one supposed to bob about on the water?—but nobody, of course, asked the prisoners. As they had sat in the hold, clanking their shackles under the watchful eyes of the military guards, so they remained: sullen, filthy, and, judging by their faded eyes, utterly without hope.

“And when, did you say, will Vladimir Osipovich receive me?” Chekhov asked his companion, a young fair-haired officer named Rakitin, who had been assigned by special order of the island governor to serve as Anton Pavlovich’s guide.

The aforementioned Vladimir Osipovich Kononovich was, in fact, that very governor.

“He said tomorrow morning,” Rakitin replied, adjusting the cap that had slipped down over his forehead. “He is terribly busy today: the barracks caught fire again yesterday, and some fifteen souls perished. For now, he has ordered me to escort you and answer any questions you may have, and tomorrow, once you have been issued the necessary papers, you may begin your... survey.”

Chekhov could see that his companion was making an effort to speak properly, lest the esteemed guest from the civilized world take him for an ignoramus; but his vocabulary was limited, and so he kept having to pause, stumbling over his words.

“Why are so many people so eager to seem other than they are?” Anton Pavlovich thought with an inward smile. “Is it really necessary, when speaking to a writer, to become one oneself?”

Still, having no wish to offend his guide, either in thought or, still less, in word, Chekhov pretended not to notice the awkwardness and, as though nothing were amiss, asked another question:

“Do your barracks burn down often?”

“You had better ask Vladimir Osipovich about that,” Rakitin answered after a pause. “He keeps the logs, sends off reports from time to time...”

Anton Pavlovich frowned briefly, but soon understood why his guide had hesitated.

“Those are the orders: answer Chekhov, but don’t run on; if anything comes up, send him to me, and I’ll decide what can be said and what can’t… Typical approach from the higher-ups.”

Now Anton Pavlovich was doubly curious to know what sort of man this Kononovich was—whether he was a local tyrant under whom an ordinary soldier ranked scarcely higher than a penal convict, or merely an old, seasoned officer too anxious about his own reputation.

“Well, since he is in charge, I suppose I’ll speak with him,” Chekhov said aloud.

At this, the guide gave a faint, relieved smile and, emboldened, ventured a question of his own:

“And what brings you to our parts, sir?”

“To carry out an inspection, naturally,” Anton Pavlovich replied. “You said so yourself just now.”

“Well, there are inspections and inspections,” Rakitin observed. “You’re a doctor and a man of letters… Who knows what, precisely, interests you? They say you’ll mostly be filling in forms, writing down illnesses…”

“Who says that?”

“Oh… people…” the guide answered evasively, and for some reason grew flustered.

Something clattered behind them. Chekhov turned: the soldier walking with them had dropped his travelling bag, and it had sprung open, spilling its contents—a spare shirt, a notebook, a packet of pen nibs, and an inkwell wrapped for safety in a well-worn rag.

“Watch yourself!” Rakitin barked at his companion.

The man hurriedly snapped the bag shut and snatched it up, muttering apologies. Chekhov watched him with a fixed smile: the poor fellow looked every bit as downtrodden as the convicts here. A troubling feeling had taken hold of the writer the moment he stepped onto the deck of the steamship *Baikal*. Now, at the end of his journey, Anton Pavlovich was only more certain that his time on Sakhalin would be hard.

“Not as hard as theirs, of course,” Chekhov thought, looking after the soldiers. “And certainly nothing like the penal convicts’… But everything here is different, unlike anything on the mainland; it is plain to the naked eye, and it hurts like hell to look at.”

Turning away, Anton Pavlovich let his gaze come to rest on the charred skeleton of a burned-out barrack. Convicts were milling around it. They wore prison clothing, but they were not in chains, unlike those who had been brought here in the hold of the *Baikal*. This struck Chekhov as rather odd.

“Then again, where could they run? Water on every side. Perhaps steal aboard a steamer—but if you were caught, you would come back in an entirely new status, and chains would certainly follow…”

Among the grim prisoners stood a very thin woman with a beautiful face, spoiled only by traces of soot and eyes red from crying. Against the background of those sullen men, most of them solid and strong, she looked like a lamb that had strayed by mistake into a pack of wolves.

“There’s a woman there.” Chekhov gestured toward the convicts, then at once lowered his hand, not wishing to draw their attention. “Who is she?”

“The wife of one of the men who died in the fire,” Rakitin replied. “What was her name…” He frowned. “No, I can’t recall.”

“And where did she live? Why is she covered in soot too?”

“She lived with him—the barracks were for families. Their daughter is missing; they’ve been searching since early morning. There don’t seem to be any children under the ruins, but they haven’t cleared all the debris yet…”

Rakitin spoke of the tragedy so matter-of-factly that Chekhov felt a chill run through him—as if such horrors happened on Sakhalin almost every day.

“How many deaths must a man see before he can speak of them with such detachment, as though they were nothing more than routine?”

“And how do they live… families, I mean? Do they have separate rooms… or what?”

“What rooms, Anton Pavlovich?” Rakitin asked, glancing at him sidelong. “One big barracks, with broad plank beds. They sleep two or three to a bed… however they can.”

Chekhov imagined little girls sleeping alongside hardened criminals on the neighboring bunks and shuddered. It seemed profoundly wrong.

“I thought married couples were given separate huts,” he admitted.

“Some are, yes. But there are many people and few huts…”

“Then on what principle do they decide who gets one and who doesn’t?”

Rakitin opened his mouth to answer, then checked himself and said again, as if reciting a line:

“You had better discuss that with Vladimir Osipovich as well.”

“But not until tomorrow?”

“Precisely, Anton Pavlovich.”

They walked on in silence for a long time, until they came to a small izba standing at a respectful distance from the barracks. The whole yard was thick with burdock—burdock of such monstrous size that Chekhov had never seen the like in his life. Strictly speaking, he had not even suspected such a thing existed. But one glance back at the blackened remains of the barracks was enough to make the writer forget those botanical curiosities at once.

“Everything here is so neglected…”

Rakitin went up to the door and knocked timidly. For a while nothing happened; then a woman in a rumpled dress and apron looked out. She was about fifty, but she looked brisk and spry.

“So this must be Kononovich’s housekeeper,” Chekhov guessed.

“Anton Pavlovich has arrived,” Rakitin announced briefly.

The woman started and threw up her hands.

“Oh, Anton Pavlovich!… How do you do! How was your journey? What on earth possessed you to come all this way? Well, come in, come in…”

“In a moment…” Chekhov replied.

He let the soldier carrying his valise go ahead to the door, while he himself lingered outside. The sight of the burned-out barracks would not leave him. Rakitin, after watching the soldier and the housekeeper go inside with a searching look, stepped up to the writer and asked quietly:

“All the same, what brought you to Sakhalin, Anton Pavlovich?”

“I want to understand how people live here, and by what means,” Chekhov answered simply.

Rakitin shook his head and, leaning close to the writer’s ear, whispered:

“People don’t live here, Anton Pavlovich. They survive. By whatever means they can. Only I never told you that. Agreed?”

“As you say,” Chekhov murmured.

He was somewhat taken aback by his guide’s candor, but at once ordered himself to pull together and not betray, by word or gesture, the faint shock that what he had seen and heard had stirred in him.

“If I were to believe everything said about these parts, there would have been no need to come here at all: Suvorin of *Novoye Vremya* told me plenty about the island, and others did the same. But since I am here, I must speak with everyone, ask what each person thinks, and only then draw my conclusions… and yet it seems a first impression has already taken shape. So, the beginning of my ‘survey’ has been made.”

At that moment Anton Pavlovich heard the clatter of hooves and the snorting of horses. Turning toward the sound, he saw a covered cart drawn by two bay horses coming down the street. On the box sat a red-haired lad of twelve or thirteen in a neat shirt worn loose over gray, baggy trousers. The boy was whipping the nags with all his might; they whinnied piteously, but galloped on obediently at full tilt.

“And here comes Karl Khristoforovich, tearing along,” the housekeeper announced, reappearing on the porch.

Chekhov caught in her voice a faint, barely perceptible hostility—as though the woman had little love for the man riding in the covered cart.

“And this Karl Khristoforovich would be…”

“Landsberg,” Rakitin said, rather sharply.

He gave Chekhov a searching look.

“You’ve heard of him already?”

“The officer exiled for a double murder?” the writer asked, remembering Suvorin’s account.

Rakitin nodded.

“The very same.”

Chekhov turned back to the cart, which had now drawn up near the burned barracks. The red-haired boy on the box was helping the passenger climb down.

“Why is he limping?” Chekhov asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Twisted his leg hunting,” Rakitin said.

“They give a murderer a gun?” the writer asked in surprise.

“This one, they do,” the officer replied, nodding without taking his eyes off Landsberg.

Karl Khristoforovich proved to be a stately, handsome man of about thirty-five, with curled black mustaches and a head of dark hair shaped like the crown of an elm in midsummer. Landsberg looked tired, yet somehow it did not seem to be his usual condition. On the contrary, in the movement of his hands, his head, and everything not connected with the unfortunate leg he had twisted while hunting, one sensed an energetic man who simply needed a little rest.

Limping over to the prisoners, Landsberg stopped some distance from the penal convicts, his right hand on his hip, his left waving to someone among the fire victims. The crowd stirred and soon produced a battered man with a bandage over his left eye. Stepping forward to meet Landsberg, the convict gave the newcomer a barely perceptible bow and asked him something—what exactly, Chekhov could not make out across the considerable distance between them. Karl Khristoforovich answered him, whereupon the man turned toward the crowd, craned his neck, and swept his gaze over the people.

“Tamara!” Chekhov heard his guttural cry.

The man of letters was inclined to think his ears had deceived him, but then a woman emerged from the throng—the very one whose husband and daughter had died in the fire. Landsberg nodded to her gravely, then glanced sideways at the red-haired boy and jerked his head toward the wagon. The driver ran over to it. The harnessed nags stood quietly; blinkers covered their eyes, and so the bay horses made no attempt to bolt.

Running up to the wagon, the boy peered inside and held out his hand. Anton Pavlovich watched with interest as a dark-haired girl of about ten slowly, cautiously appeared from beneath the canopy, like a frightened little animal. Her hands and face were very pale, in sharp contrast to her dress, which was little better than rags, much like those worn by most of the fire victims. The boy helped the girl jump down to the ground and led her toward the crowd of convicts and Karl Khristoforovich.

“Lyuba!” cried the woman called Tamara, rushing toward the child.

The girl ran to her too, and they met in an embrace, clinging to each other as if they were two halves of one whole, split apart by someone’s absurd, cruel whim.

“So the lost daughter has been found,” Rakitin muttered.

Karl Khristoforovich exchanged a few more words with the one-eyed convict and, leaning on his red-haired assistant’s shoulder, made his way to the wagon.

“But how did she end up with Landsberg?” Chekhov asked.

“Perhaps the girl’s father worked in his shop,” Rakitin said with a shrug. “You’d be better off...”

“Asking Vladimir Osipovich,” Anton Pavlovich finished for him. “I remember, I remember... But tell me, how can one convict work for another? Does he pay them anything?”

“The price of a penal convict’s labor is his time on the island,” Rakitin said portentously. “While in exile, he must do whatever work is assigned to him. That is his punishment for crimes committed on the mainland.”

“But why are they working for Landsberg in particular?” the writer persisted, still bewildered.

“Because for the past two years he has been in charge of building the barracks and other structures here,” the officer replied reluctantly. “A born engineer, as Vladimir Osipovich says...”

Meanwhile Karl Khristoforovich had already settled into the cart, and the lad had climbed onto the driver’s bench, ready to crack the whip and pull the reins tight, when he saw Tamara hurrying toward them. The driver froze and stared fixedly at the woman. Reaching the cart, she seized the side rail with both hands and began speaking quickly, her lips moving in a frantic blur. At last Tamara fell silent, stepped slowly back, and stood there, awkwardly rubbing her right elbow with her left hand. Once the red-haired boy had made sure she had withdrawn to a proper distance, he finally drew back the reins and lashed the horses with the whip. The bays whinnied and, wheeling in a wide arc, carried the cart away from the charred skeleton of the ruined barracks. As Landsberg’s “carriage” rolled past Chekhov and Rakitin, the red-haired lad cast a curious glance at the traveler, then gave a mischievous cry of “Giddyap!” and cheerfully cracked his whip once more.

“A most singular fellow, this Karl Khristoforovich, by all accounts,” the man of letters mused, watching the cart recede with keen interest. “If time permits, I really must pay him a visit and talk with him about the state of affairs here. Since he is the one putting everything up on this island, it stands to reason he sees more than most and has much to tell...”

“Do come inside, sir, the tea is getting cold,” the housekeeper reminded him gently.

She was still standing on the porch, though now a wretched-looking soldier stood beside her, burdened with Chekhov’s traveling bag.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the writer replied, coming to himself. “Let us go in.”

“You rest for now,” said Rakitin. “I shall call on you tomorrow morning, as Vladimir Osipovich instructed me to do. I shall send your telegram today, as promised.”

“Very well,” Chekhov nodded. “My thanks.”

Rakitin nodded in return and, beckoning the soldier with a curt gesture, strode briskly away from the island commandant’s residence. Anton Pavlovich, having climbed the steps, lingered in the doorway and turned back once more to look at the penal convicts. Catching sight of mother and daughter reunited at last, the writer gave a satisfied grunt and stepped over the threshold.

The corridors of the South Sakhalin House of Culture were stifling. The June sun poured over the pale green walls, the old parquet floor, and the man standing by the entrance to the assembly hall. Dark-haired, in a checked shirt and gray trousers, he stared grimly at the door. He had no wish to go in. Even when they had summoned him and told him the day and hour, a heaviness had settled in his stomach.

“They’re up to something again,” he had thought then.

Refusing was, of course, out of the question. When the City Executive Committee calls, “no” is not an answer.

“The Party has said, ‘It is necessary.’ So there’s no getting out of it.”

Once before they had told him it was necessary—right after the war, from which he had come back an invalid. The order then had been brief: “Go to Sakhalin.” They issued him a travel voucher, and he went. At first he had not been pleased, but then he met a wonderful girl, Sofya, who had also been sent here by the Party, and it seemed like fate. When Ira was born, it became clear that the island really had become their home—a proper one, a real one.

“If only they would stop dragging us this way and that…”

He understood perfectly well that no one would let a man of his profession spend his days idly contemplating the transience of existence and other matters considered useless from the Union’s point of view. But did that understanding give him any more enthusiasm? Did it make the pen move more readily over the squared pages of the notebooks where he jotted down his thoughts and ideas for future reports, broadcasts, and films?

“If only…”

Voices came from the assembly hall—quick speech, people talking over one another, laughter. The official part clearly had not begun.

“Perhaps it’s still too early…” he thought, glancing at the clock.

It was only a quarter to nine—a full fifteen minutes before the start. Comrade Timofeyev, secretary of the Central Council of the Union of Sports Societies and Organizations, a bureaucrat from the capital, would hardly allow himself to be late; that was a luxury no such “big shot” could afford.

“What business does he have in our backwater? Evidently, it really is serious…”

Hearing footsteps approaching somewhere down the corridor, the man wiped the sweat from his forehead and pushed open the door to the assembly hall. The voices, muffled before, became clear—and almost at the same instant as the hinges creaked, they fell silent. He stepped over the threshold, lifted his head, and saw a group of men looking at him with interest.

“Every face familiar…”

“Vladimir Andreyevich,” Albert Kosarev nodded to the newcomer. He was head of a department at the *Molodaya Gvardiya* newspaper and, as it happened, an old friend of the man who had just come in. “Why do you look so worn out?”

“It’s hot,” Vladimir replied. “And I can see you lot are sweating too.”

Albert smiled, adjusted his glasses, and, by habit, ran a hand through his disheveled dark hair.

“We are indeed, Vladimir Andreyevich…”

“So Comrade Privezentsev is with us too?” asked Vadim Khlopovskikh, an instructor at the auto-motorcycle club, narrowing his eyes slightly.

“Which means they’re planning something truly grand…” Boris Ulyanov put in. “Though I can’t imagine what they need a fishery driver like me for.”

“And what, is a fishery driver not supposed to take part in the Party’s public life?” snorted Vasily Svetlichnykh, a taxi-fleet driver.

“He should, he should,” Ulyanov did not argue. “But not at the expense of his main profession! Who’s going to haul the fish while I’m away?”

“As if there isn’t another man in the whole city who can do it!” Khlopovskikh scoffed, casting a sidelong glance at Svetlichnykh, who smiled too and observed:

“Well, yes. All Sakhalin has only one Ulyanov—the famous fish-hauler.”

“Here we go again…” Boris grumbled. “Turns out the fishery’s crawling with drivers, thick as stray dogs…”

“Oh, come now, you modest soul!” Khlopovskikh waved him off with a grimace. “Utterly indispensable, aren’t you!”

Vladimir watched the joking exchange with a faint smile. In the course of his work, Privezentsev had already crossed paths, one way or another, with everyone now gathered in the assembly hall. They were honest, hardworking men, each a real master of his trade.

Only their “trades” were another matter altogether.

The forestry mechanic, Nikolai Penkovsky, sat somewhat apart from the others and took no part in the general conversation—he simply gazed out the window with an absent look.

“Hey, up in the gallery!” Khlopovskikh called to him. “Why so quiet?”

“Nothing,” the mechanic muttered. “Didn’t sleep well.”

It was hard to imagine two people more unlike each other than Khlopovskikh and Svetlichnykh. The instructor’s smile and way of speaking gave him away as an open, cheerful fellow—the kind you would gladly sing songs with to an accordion, or take along on a hiking trip, knowing full well the journey would never be dull. Penkovsky, though not without a sense of humor, was much more reserved—and if he ever hummed along to his comrade’s “accordion,” then only inwardly, never aloud.

Work must leave its mark, Vladimir thought. You spend most of your time alone, out in the forest, tinkering with machinery, hearing nothing but the drone of engines and the rustle of leaves… Not everyone would take to such a post; it called for a particular temperament, the right sort of disposition…

At that moment the door to the assembly hall opened, and in walked a heavy, ponderous man with thick lips and small eyes that looked intently at the world from beneath dense, furrowed brows. This, of course, was none other than Timofeyev, Secretary of the Central Council of Sports Societies and Organizations, on whose account the Sakhaliners had been summoned to the Palace of Culture. Close behind the secretary, trailing him like a shadow, came the gaunt Deputy Chairman of the City Executive Committee, Lazarev, a red folder tucked under his arm; bringing up the rear was one more citizen—tall, dark-haired, with large green eyes—a man entirely unknown to Privezentsev.

Perhaps someone called in from the regional center?..

Seeing that the Sakhalin men gathered in the hall were sitting any old way, sprawled about without a thought, Lazarev furtively made several pointed gestures that could only mean: “Take your seats, quickly now—it’s about to begin!..”

Timofeyev skirted the stage but did not mount it; instead he stopped a few meters from the first row of chairs and, after waiting until everyone was seated, boomed out a greeting:

“Good day, comrades!”

“Good day,” the men answered in ragged chorus.

“How are your spirits?” Timofeyev asked with a smile.

“Excellent, Comrade Secretary!” Khlopovskikh answered for everyone.

“Glad to hear it,” Timofeyev smiled still more broadly. “Comrade Lazarev, let us check whether everyone is present.”

The Deputy Chairman of the City Executive Committee nodded briskly and, opening his folder, began reading out the names one by one. Meanwhile, Timofeyev paced along the first row of chairs, his plump hands clasped behind his back.

“All present, Arkady Petrovich!” Lazarev announced when the roll call was finished.

“Thank you, Mikhail Valeryevich,” Timofeyev said with a nod.

He cleared his throat into his fist and once more addressed the men gathered in the hall.

“Comrades! No doubt you are all troubled by the same question: why have you been summoned here, and for what purpose has the Secretary of the Central Sports Council come from the capital, the Hero City of Moscow, all the way to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk? It goes without saying that these two events are directly connected…”

He drew a noisy breath through his nostrils and declared solemnly:

“Allow me to congratulate you, comrades. By a joint decision of the senior officials of the Central Council and the Deputy Chairman of the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City Executive Committee, you have been chosen to take part in the All-Union Auto-Moto Rally ‘Rodina,’ dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of Soviet power!”

Privezentsev and Kosarev exchanged bewildered looks. Lazarev, tucking the folder back under his arm, began to applaud; the stranger standing beside him followed suit.

Privezentsev registered all this only in passing. He simply could not take in the Second Secretary’s announcement.

“A rally? All-Union? What on earth is he talking about?”

“According to the plan drawn up by the Central Council,” Timofeyev continued, “you are to cover fifteen thousand kilometers, starting from Lenin Square in your splendid city and finishing in Leningrad itself…”

Ulyanov, seated to Privezentsev’s right, let out a low whistle.

“Leningrad? Fifteen thousand kilometers?” the cameraman thought. “And a good half of it through the trackless wilderness of the Far East? Is this some kind of joke?”

“And what exactly are we to drive, Comrade Secretary?” Svetlichny asked.

Vasily was the only one who did not look surprised—except, perhaps, for Khlopovskikh: for both of them, such auto-moto runs were their natural element.

To be fair, Privezentsev himself was fond of motorcycle touring. But fifteen thousand kilometers struck him as a truly frightening figure.

“In honor of so significant a date, the Regional DOSAAF Committee and the Regional Komsomol Committee will provide the participants with the finest examples of Soviet industry: one GAZ-21 automobile, two M-63 motorcycles, and two M-72s,” Timofeyev pronounced crisply.

“A Volga and Urals, then…”

Lazarev and the nameless man beside him applauded again, but Svetlichny, Khlopovskikh, and Ulyanov clearly did not share their enthusiasm. None of them, however, dared voice his displeasure to Timofeyev, and so the secretary, with an easy conscience, continued:

“The leader of the run will be a man well known to you all: Vladimir Andreevich Privezentsev—journalist, cameraman, and director…”

“As might have been expected.”

Timofeyev’s eyes met Privezentsev’s. Vladimir also felt the eyes of everyone else in the room on him, including Lazarev and his unnamed companion.

“But perhaps it’s all for the best,” Privezentsev thought, pretending not to be at all disconcerted. “At least I’ll be able to concentrate on filming… That, I’m sure, is what they need most…”

As though reading his thoughts, Timofeyev said:

“We very much hope that Comrade Privezentsev will not only lead the run with distinction, but also record it on film, since the Central Sports Council has resolved to make a motion picture dedicated to the forthcoming rally…”

“No doubt about that!”

“Comrade Kosarev is appointed political officer and first deputy leader for the duration of the motorcycle run. Comrade Penkovsky will serve as mechanic, Comrade Ulyanov as fitter, Comrade Svetlichny as medical orderly, and Comrade Khlopovskikh will be responsible for keeping the travel journal…”

“May I ask a question?” the auto-moto club instructor broke in, frowning.

Timofeyev grimaced, but refrained from reprimanding Khlopovskikh for the interruption and graciously allowed:

“Go ahead.”

“Why is the travel journal being assigned to an auto-moto club instructor rather than to the head of the Molodaya Gvardiya department?”

“Because it is a collective decision, adopted by the Central Sports Council,” Timofeyev replied simply.

Khlopovskikh raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to ask something else, but Svetlichny nudged his comrade in the ribs and made a warning face, as if to say: don’t argue, you won’t get the truth out of them anyway; once a decision is on paper, nobody is going to change it.

“It’ll be easier to settle things with Kosarev later—swap duties off the record. I think Albert will gladly pitch in; he likes playing with words…”

“Shall we continue, Comrade Khlopovskikh?” Timofeyev asked pointedly.

“Yes, of course…” the instructor muttered reluctantly. “My apologies…”

“Splendid,” Timofeyev said with a triumphant smile. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes… Quartermaster for your tourist group will be Comrade Rozhkov.”

The man standing beside Lazarev took a step forward and, smiling timidly, introduced himself:

“Gennady Stepanovich Rozhkov, senior instructor of the Regional Sports Union. Pleased to meet you.”

With that, he stepped back again and froze in his former place beside Lazarev, who was positively glowing.

“You’d think he was drawing a charge from Timofeyev—lit up like a hundred-watt bulb,” Privezentsev thought with a wry grin.

At times it seemed to him that this was the whole meaning of life for any petty official: to press down on those below in order to please those above, thereby distancing oneself as far as possible from the former while edging ever closer to the latter. Privezentsev himself had never sunk to Lazarev’s sort of antics—he relied on talent and organizational skill. That was precisely why he was valued.

“And put in charge of affairs like this one—to clean up, more or less competently, the mess they brew from time to time.”

“Each of you will receive a copy of the directive outlining the tasks to be carried out during the Rodina Rally,” Timofeyev announced, drawing the audience’s attention back to himself. “The primary objective is, naturally, to promote Soviet power among the young people you encounter along the way. It is vital that the rising generation understand the profound significance of this date—the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. In addition to Comrade Privezentsev’s filming of the run, you will take part in a series of television broadcasts in the cities along your route…”

He went on saying something, but Privezentsev was no longer really listening.

“But how am I supposed to tell my wife about all this? How do I explain where I’m going, and for how long? A month? Two? How long does it even take to cover fifteen thousand kilometers? The ferry from Sakhalin to the mainland alone is no small undertaking... and then somehow all the way to Lake Baikal... Nothing but questions, really.”

Privezentsev did not shrink from responsibility, but he could not abide that notorious “must” for the sake of “must.” Fortunately, his companions this time were decent people; otherwise it would have been downright bleak.

“Well, we’ll manage somehow... not the first time... The team seems solid enough. Maybe Rozhkov raises a few doubts, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Very well, you are dismissed,” Timofeyev declared, clapping his hands. “The start date is June tenth, the finish July twenty-fifth... Prepare yourselves, comrades; put your current affairs in order so that you may come to the starting line, so to speak, fully armed. Any questions?”

There were no questions. Or rather, there were, but after the answer the Second Secretary had given Khlopovskikh, the others thought better of asking.

“In that case, you are all free to go, except Comrade Privezentsev,” Timofeyev announced with a smile.

The men began getting up from their chairs. On his way out, Albert touched the cameraman’s shoulder in farewell, and the latter managed a strained smile at his friend out of the corner of his mouth—as if to say, I appreciate the support, thanks.

When only Rozhkov and Privezentsev remained in the hall from among the newly minted rally participants, Timofeyev spoke:

“I know you, Vladimir Andreyevich, as an honest and decent man, a true Communist. You are a Party member, working for its good...”

Behind his back, Lazarev nodded ceaselessly, like a Chinese nodding doll.

“Nevertheless, I consider it not unnecessary to draw your attention to the following...”

He paused—evidently gathering his thoughts—and then continued, lowering his voice slightly, as though afraid those who had left might be listening at the door:

“It is essential to understand that the rally dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution is by no means a pleasure trip. It is a full-fledged undertaking, vital to maintaining patriotic sentiment in society. Simply put, we have absolutely no need of negativity.”

“No need of negativity,” Lazarev confirmed from behind the secretary’s back.

“I shall formulate a personal instruction for you and for Mr. Rozhkov,” Timofeyev pronounced, pretending not to have noticed anything. “Your journey must pass without incident.”

“In what sense—without incident?” Privezentsev asked. “The motorcycles will break down one way or another; surely you understand that yourself—over such a distance...”

“Let them break down. But it is vital that a motorcycle breakdown or, say, some petty household quarrel within the collective not spoil the mood of those who watch your film... or read your team diary,” Timofeyev explained.

As he said this, he looked intently into Privezentsev’s eyes.

“I trust I am making myself clear?” the Second Secretary asked with a sugary smile.

“Couldn’t be clearer,” the director replied after a moment’s hesitation.

Timofeyev smiled even more broadly, then stepped forward and offered his hand to the man before him.

“In that case, I wish you good luck, Vladimir Andreevich. You will receive further instructions from Comrade Lazarev immediately before the start.”

Privezentsev stood and shook the Second Secretary’s hand. It was soft and unpleasant to the touch—which, however, suited the man perfectly.

“Comrades,” Timofeev said in farewell, turning to Rozhkov and Lazarev.

After shaking their hands, the Second Secretary hurried toward the exit.

“You may go, Vladimir Andreevich,” Lazarev said quietly, yet with proper gravity, after allowing a pause. “You will be telephoned tomorrow and told when I expect you. Let us go, Gennady Stepanovich.”

Having taken leave of Privezentsev, the officials followed Timofeev out of the assembly hall.

“What a day...” thought Vladimir Andreevich, watching them leave. “And this rally too...”

The sound of footsteps in the corridor soon died away, and the House of Culture once more sank into the silence so familiar to a summer noon.

“Moscow to Voronezh—you know the rest!” Denis Amursky shouted as he rode past me.

I couldn’t help grinning as I watched the “ginger” motorcycle carry our director on ahead. Under me was a green M-72, above me a clear blue sky, and all around me friends as free as I was. What more does a man need to be happy?

*Well, maybe a good cigar and two fingers of whiskey... but that can wait until Voronezh. It’ll all be there waiting for us...*

According to my plan, before setting off for Sakhalin Island, the six of us were to make a trial run to Voronezh—a kind of rehearsal for the real journey, one far longer and far more difficult. For reasons anyone could understand, we had serious doubts about the quality of modern Ural motorcycles, and so we wanted to be ready for every possible breakdown.

With that same aim, we had already questioned dozens of people online, as well as the top brass at the Irbit factory, which still produces the legendary retro model, the M-72—the very machines on which, back in ’67, my grandfather and his comrades covered the distance from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Leningrad. As might be expected, the results were mixed. People on the specialist forums, if they didn’t actually spit, certainly had no praise to offer, while the factory director, on the contrary, insisted the motorcycle was in fact a good one—at any rate, the latest batch certainly was... Having weighed all the opinions we’d gathered, I decided to prepare for the worst and believe in the best.

That was the mood in which we set off.

And, it must be said, so far the M-72s had behaved with complete dignity—apart from a few punctures, which I put down to the quality of the roads. Those, as everyone knows, are almost the main problem in our country.

*Apart from the fools who build them.*

There weren’t many cars on the highway, so I even had time to admire the scenery. I can’t say it was particularly inspiring, but the approach of summer was already in the air, even though it was only mid-April: a green carpet of grass lay over the sloping hillsides, and the dark-brown trunks of the trees, raising their branching arms to the sky, rustled a welcome with their first leaves. Once I even fancied I saw the silhouettes of hikers flickering among the oaks, maples, and lindens.

*So we’re not the only ones who’ve crawled into this backwater in search of adventure...* I thought with a certain elation, watching the shadows play in the thicket.

We stopped for a cigar almost the moment we had passed the blue sign bearing the town’s name. I knew our team was running badly behind schedule, but a short breather was essential—if only after the frayed nerves of changing tyres.

*Besides, ten or fifteen minutes won’t change anything.*

“Riding them is pretty so-so, of course,” Ivan Kamov remarked through the grey-blue clouds of smoke. “My backside’s one big bruise...”

A bald, stocky biker of twenty-five with a thick black beard, he was the only new face on our team. I’d been friends for years with the two Sashas—Nakhmanovich and Nikiforov—and with Borya Katz; I knew our director, Denis Amursky, a little less well, but I’d ridden with him more than once, and so I trusted him completely. Vanya, though, had appeared only recently, and more or less out of nowhere. He’d heard about me from a mutual acquaintance, a tattoo artist, who during one of his sessions had let slip that a biker named Privezentsev was planning a motorcycle run across Russia. And since Ivan had been into motorcycles for quite some time, he had of course heard that this same Privezentsev had ridden a Harley around the world several years earlier. The chance to take part in a trip like that eventually brought Kamov to me, and after several meetings—with me and with the other members of the team—we decided that Vanya would do.

“Though this morning he certainly pulled something…” I thought, scowling at the bearded fellow from under my brows.

We had agreed to meet at one of the gas stations at eight sharp, top up the tanks, and set off for our destination—Voronezh. Everyone arrived on time… except Ivan, who was a full hour late. To say I was beside myself with rage would be to say nothing at all. Not only do I have no patience in general for people who can’t be punctual, but I also had to blush in front of the others, since it was I who had suggested bringing Kamov onto the team.

When he finally arrived, Vanya naturally began blaming Moscow traffic and an unfamiliar district, but I didn’t believe a word of it. More likely our new comrade had simply overslept and was now lying through his teeth.

“Mistake number one,” I thought then. “Two more and we’ll have a diagnosis.”

To be fair, Kamov had made no further mistakes so far: he rode calmly in the column, didn’t show off, and in general behaved perfectly sensibly. Seeing that, I gradually began to cool down.

“We’ll see how he does later. Maybe it really was just bad luck…”

“Well, yeah, it’s no Harley-Davidson,” the Rebbe smirked. “To put it mildly…”

His namesake, Sasha Nikiforov, broke into a grin as well.

“Supporting the domestic manufacturer, right… Especially the one that makes tires. We’ve supported those guys—like this!” He stuck up his thumb. “The number of tires we’ve already bought, and the number we’re still going to buy…”

“Right, let’s repeat the Rodina Rally, only not on Urals but on Harleys,” I said sarcastically. “And we won’t ride from Sakhalin to Piter, but from Butovo to Balashikha. So we don’t overdo it.”

“And not in an all-male group, but with the ladies,” Denis added.

“Then it would all be over very quickly,” said Nakhmanovich, narrowing his eyes in a sly smile, and, deliberately mangling his voice, added:

“Oh, guys, turn around, I broke a nail…”

Ivan, Sasha Nikiforov, and I burst out laughing; Denis, too, showed his even white teeth. Borya Katz was standing a little apart with a phone to his ear, but hearing the laughter, he turned and smiled uncertainly as well, watching our merriment.

Everyone was in excellent spirits: five hundred kilometers had passed without any particular trouble, apart from the punctures we were already sick of, and the team seemed to have come together quite decently.

“The main thing is to think of everything,” I said when I’d finished laughing. “Bring the spare parts that tend to go first. We’ll need tools so we can fix things on the road. And we should sort out the hotels in advance—write down addresses, phone numbers…”

“The places out there are probably pretty wild,” Denis observed gravely. “So we’ve got to be prepared for the mobile internet to cut out. Which means repair-shop and tow-truck numbers should be in our phones, not in Google.”

“Good point,” I nodded. “We’ll need regular maps too, printed out at a decent scale so we don’t ruin our eyes. We’ll mark the route on them before we even fly out, and everyone gets a copy.”

“I’ll bring spare batteries for the cameras and the laptop,” the director added. “We’ll take some for the phones too. And a backup battery for the bike wouldn’t hurt.”

“Damn, I still can’t believe we’re starting all the way out there, on Sakhalin itself,” Vanya admitted. “I’m from Perm originally, but honestly, I’ve never made it that far.”

The cameraman, who had been shooting the evening landscapes of Voronezh not far from our temporary camp, now turned toward us. I could literally feel his gaze on my back, aimed at me through the little viewfinder. Denis, apparently, had noticed we were being filmed too; squaring his shoulders, he said, with the air of a seasoned “knight of the road”:

“It’s all right, Vanya, we’ll handle it. The main thing is to help each other. We ride as a team.”

“The only thing I’m wondering is whether we’ll make it to the festival in Suzdal or not,” muttered Sasha Nikiforov.

“We will,” I said confidently. “If we plan for everything, we’ll definitely make it.”

“Damn, Max, I’m probably going to get sick of reminding you,” Nakhmanovich snorted. “We’re not riding Harleys. We’re on Urals. Homegrown bikes. When one breaks down, try fixing it. And you can’t plan for that.”

“Oh, come on, Rebbe, enough with the prophecies!” Nikiforov exclaimed, waving his friend off in mock irritation. “What are you, Nostradamus? Tell me this: if we get stuck somewhere with a breakdown, are you fixing it yourself?”

“Myself? Oh, no! We were just told—only helping each other will save us!” Rebbe jerked his head toward Denis.

“What, you don’t agree?” the director narrowed his eyes.

“Wind it up already,” Nikiforov waved a hand.

“We haven’t even started,” Rebbe snorted. “But seriously, Max, don’t take this the wrong way: I’ve got no problem with your plan, it’s just that the timeframe you’ve chosen is brutal. How much do we have to cover each day to make it?”

“Five hundred k,” I answered.

“And in total we need to do twelve thousand?” Vanya recalled.

“Twelve and a half. Roughly.”

“So, twenty-four rides to Voronezh,” Rebbe said with a smile.

“And one back,” Denis added.

I snorted and, leaning back, drew on my cigar again. Blue-gray smoke rose into the dark sky. The moon, fixed high overhead, made me think of the time.

“Time to head to the bar, to Vitya—he’s probably been waiting a while. Evening has slid smoothly into night, and there’s still so much whiskey and so many cigars ahead… Well, let’s call it a reception in honor of the coming start of the revived ‘ .’”

“What are you all laughing about?” Boris asked.

Finishing his phone call, he slipped the phone into his jeans pocket and came over to us.

“Should I start from the very beginning, Lama?” Sasha Nakhmanovich grinned.

I couldn’t help smiling. The Rebbe was one of those people with an astonishing sense of humor: never at a loss for words, able to pull a joke out of thin air. And there wasn’t a trace of malice in him. More than that, I had never met a kinder, more responsive man in my life, and I sincerely envied his gift for staying calm and defusing any conflict in the group. I’m much sharper by nature: I cut off any idiotic suggestion at the root—often along with the person who made it.

Borya Katz, our Lama, liked to say I ought to learn the art of meditation, but I kept putting off the mastery of that science until later.

“Come on, the man only asked,” Nikiforov said, laughing.

Nakhmanovich’s namesake, he looked very much like him: the same kind eyes, the same perfectly healthy sense of humor. The difference was that Nikiforov dealt with business questions more in my style—flatly rejecting any especially harebrained ideas and not wasting time explaining who was wrong and why.

“Oh, to hell with both of you,” Lama grumbled, without malice. “I’ll watch the recording later and see what kind of comedy festival you’ve got going on here.”

“Borya, wake up—what recording?” the Rebbe snorted. “It’s 2015!”

“What a nitpicker you are! The flash drive, then!”

“Will you lend me your pager for a ride?”

Borya made a playful swing at the joker and turned away toward me, while the two Sashas exchanged glances and burst out laughing.

“Like little kids sometimes, aren’t they?” Katz asked with a smile.

“Like all of us,” I said.

“That’s the truth,” Lama chuckled.

I stubbed out my cigar, got to my feet, and said loudly:

“Well then, people? Shall we move on, or are we going to be late for the buffet?”

“The people” answered with an approving rumble. We climbed back onto our bikes and continued on our way. The Urals’ headlights picked out the gray houses on the outskirts of Voronezh, and the night city answered us with lights of its own—windows flaring up and going dark, colored lamps calling attention to gaudy billboards, the moon serving as a kind of bright floodlight that had stepped in for the weary sun for a few hours, letting it rest a little before tomorrow. Breathing in the cool night air and admiring the outlines of the distant high-rises, I thought: How wonderful it is to be alive.

I knew such little pleasures wore thin quickly—that is the nature of any journey. At first you rejoice in the wind against your face; then your streaming eyes begin to irritate you, the cold gnaws at you, and you are ready to send the whole thing to hell... The important thing is to get through those moments, reminding yourself that travelers in the past had it far worse. That those twelve and a half thousand kilometers we would cover by bike in a nominal month would once have taken at least a month and a half, if not two or three.

To ride across all of Russia from east to west... on Urals... What kind of mad scheme is that? All right, us, with our cell phones and the internet. But Grandfather—how did he manage it? Back then, in ’67?

I had been going to bed and waking up with thoughts like that for the past six months—because it was exactly six months before our journey that my grandfather’s diaries had first come into my hands.

I wonder if he ever showed them to anyone besides those closest to him...

A question into the void, with no addressee, and no answer.

At last the sign we’d been looking for appeared ahead: the bar glittered with countless LED lights, loud music spilling through the half-open door. Beside it was a paid parking lot, and we steered our motorcycles in.

“I’ll bet you picked this bar only because there’s a guarded lot next door,” the Rebbe said, squinting slyly.

“Well, not only because of that,” I said. “But of the places near a paid lot, this one’s the best. And the hotel’s right here too — see that three-story building over there?”

“Splendid all around!” Nikiforov said, following my finger. “Now that’s what I call relaxing in comfort!”

“The main thing is to remember that this isn’t the end of the journey, only the very beginning,” Lama said in his instructive tone. “And ahead of us lie God knows how many kilometers of inscrutable Russian roads...”

“We remember, Borya,” the Rebbe laughed. “But what’s the point of thinking about it now? Right now we should be going out on the town, celebrating the start of the rally to come, and then, once we’ve gathered our courage, setting off for Sakhalin... Right, Max?”

“Right, of course,” I nodded. “Don’t fill your head with all that, Borya. We’ve thought it through; now all that’s left is to do it.”

I clapped my friend on the shoulder, and he gave in.

“All right, you’ve talked me into it. Let’s celebrate!”

Vanya walked beside us, smiling as he listened to our friendly bickering. As the new man on the team, he found everything fascinating — the journey itself, and these farewell feasts before departure. And it seemed to us that no discomfort — not a saddle rubbed raw, not the cold Sakhalin wind — would make us turn back from the goal we had set ourselves: to reach St. Petersburg.

“Though traveling across Russia is even harder than going around the world,” I thought as I walked with my friends toward the bar entrance. “Out there everything somehow makes sense — the transport, the roads — but here, who knows what’s waiting for us? Judging by Grandfather’s notes, things weren’t much better in his day either... I wonder if anything has changed?”

At the entrance, a solid-looking guard in black was smoking a thin, pale cigarette.

“And what sort of motorcycles might those be, if I may ask?” he exclaimed as our procession approached.

Inwardly, I marveled at the phrasing, but I gave no sign of it and answered:

“Urals. The seventy-two model.”

“You don’t say,” the guard said, surprised. “They look brand-new.”

“They are. Straight off the assembly line.”

“They still make them?”

“Well, as you can see.”

“You local?” he asked after a moment’s thought.

“No. We came from Moscow.”

The security guard shook his head, took one last drag, flicked the butt into the bin, and said:

“You’re real daredevils, I can see that.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Everyone around us kept insisting that getting behind the handlebars of a Russian-made motorcycle was a huge risk, but I had no intention of trading the Urals for, say, Harleys. It was a matter of principle — to recreate the Rodina Rally as faithfully as we could.

“Otherwise there was no point in starting the whole thing.”

The bar door swung open, and I saw Viktor — our man on the ground, who had kindly volunteered to organize a party in honor of our arrival in Voronezh.

“Well, look who’s here!” my comrade cried joyfully when he spotted us.

Viktor was a curly-haired man of fifty, tall and broad-shouldered. I confess, I had always thought Denis was the larger of the two, but the moment they stood side by side, the notion vanished like cigar smoke: my Voronezh friend gave nothing away to our director in sheer bulk.

“Vitya, hello,” I said with a smile, holding out my hand, but he had no intention of standing on ceremony and swept me straight into a bear hug.

“Max, my dear fellow...” Vitya muttered, releasing me and stepping back. “And you, lads... I’ve been waiting and waiting. What took you so long?”

He smelled distinctly of alcohol, which was hardly surprising: instead of the eight hours we’d planned, the road had taken us thirteen, five more than expected. And Vitya had spent all that time here, in the bar, glancing at his watch and sipping whiskey.

“Kept blowing tires,” I said with a sigh. “And it wouldn’t have been so bad if it had happened just once...”

“Shouldn’t have gone with Urals, then,” Viktor said with a smirk.

“Not you too!..”

“Too late. The bikes are bought, the team’s assembled,” I said, with a hint of irritation. “Besides, we’re after historical authenticity — otherwise what’s the point of going at all?”

“I wonder how many times I’ll repeat that sentence over the course of this trip?” flashed through my mind. “I’ll probably lose count by Khabarovsk...”

“Good toast, by the way,” Viktor observed. “To historical authenticity... Let’s go in and drink to that very thing.”

Nobody objected. We followed Viktor inside and headed to our table, where two waitresses were already standing by, waiting for my Voronezh friend to give them the signal.

And of course he gave it.

“Bring it on, my lovelies!” he boomed, and the girls ran off to the kitchen, smiling.

We sank into our chairs. Fatigue dropped over us at once like a heavy blanket, but Viktor quickly poured everyone a drink, and together we knocked them back to historical authenticity — just as intended.

A few seconds later, a pleasant warmth spread through my body, and my thoughts cleared. Now I could look back and, taking a sober view of our route, admit that the road to Voronezh had not been as difficult as I’d expected. Yes, indisputably, we’d had to fuss with the wheels, but if that turned out to be our only problem during the “ ”, I’d be the first to admit that the Irbit factory made perfectly decent motorcycles.

“So be it... But we’ll still work a little magic on those wheels when we get back to Moscow.”

“Well then, to luck?” the Rebbe proposed, raising his glass. “May it stay with us all the way from Sakhalin to Piter!”

“To luck!” we echoed in a ragged chorus.

In those minutes it seemed that the journey ahead would not be free of hardship or discomfort, but that it would also fill us with the good feeling of having done something worthy, with the knowledge that we had covered this hard route just as our grandfathers had in that far-off year.

Back then, I could not even have guessed that not all of us were fated to reach the finish.

In Kononovich’s study, where Rakitin had shown Chekhov in, the air was dense with the smell of costly tobacco. From the talkative housekeeper, the man of letters had learned that Vladimir Osipovich had long been trying to rid himself of that pernicious habit—smoking—but whenever he became seriously agitated, he was forced to break his vow.

Yet Kononovich did not look in the least distressed; on the contrary, he greeted Anton Pavlovich with a broad smile. Silver-haired and wrinkled, Vladimir Osipovich looked older than his years, but there was a lively sparkle in his green eyes and a briskness in his movements that suggested the island’s chief had enough vigor and passion in him for three Chekhovs.

“Certainly enough for two such as myself.”

“Do sit down, Anton Pavlovich!” the master of the study said, fairly beaming.

Chekhov sat down willingly. The general, by contrast, rose and, coming around the desk, said with a formal bow:

“Vladimir Osipovich Kononovich, head of this island and, consequently, of all the katorga on it.”

“I have heard a great deal about you,” said Chekhov, returning the bow.

“That is gratifying,” the general replied, his smile unchanged. “Though I daresay I have heard far more about you.”

There was a double edge to the words. Anton Pavlovich looked into Kononovich’s eyes, but they gave nothing away—except that the gaze itself was not so much friendly as intent, as though what stood before Vladimir Osipovich was not a living man but a museum specimen.

Still, Chekhov did not presume to judge whether ordinary curiosity lay behind the general’s look or some subtle calculation. Deciding not to rush to conclusions, the writer said:

“I am equally flattered. But let us dispense with formalities. Officer Rakitin, whom you assigned to me…”

“Assigned to assist you.”

“Yes, quite… In any case, he mentioned that you were to issue me certain documents…”

“Ah yes, of course,” Vladimir Osipovich said, bustling at once.

He returned to his armchair and began pulling open one desk drawer after another until he found the right one. Taking out a sheet of paper, Kononovich dipped his pen into the inkwell and began writing something on it. Chekhov waited patiently for Vladimir Osipovich to finish.

“There now, here you are,” said Kononovich, replacing the pen in its stand and sliding the document toward the edge of the desk.

Chekhov took the sheet in silence and ran his eyes over it.

“What is this?” the writer asked, laying the paper back on the desk.

“A temporary certificate confirming that I am aware of your arrival.”

“But what about the credential I was promised? With this alone I won’t be admitted anywhere!”

“It will come, all in good time, Anton Pavlovich,” Kononovich said with a heavy sigh. “Only not this very instant. You must wait a little.”

“May I ask why?” Chekhov ventured cautiously.

“Because Governor-General Korff is arriving on the island. He will be here in a week, and only then will you be able to… ahem… pursue your work to the fullest extent.”

Anton Pavlovich nodded slowly. He had known, long before setting out for Sakhalin, that Baron Korff visited the island once every five years, at the end of July, for an inspection. But how could the writer have imagined that the governor-general’s visit might in any way impede his research?

It was this very perplexity that he expressed—in the mildest possible terms—to the island’s chief, and received the answer:

“Pray understand, this is no whim of mine: Andrei Nikolayevich himself asked both you and me to await his arrival.”

“You puzzle me more and more,” the writer admitted, frowning.

“Then don’t trouble yourself unnecessarily. Evidently, Andrei Nikolayevich wishes first of all to speak with you—to make your acquaintance, as it were—and only then…”

He coughed into his fist.

“How very, very unfortunate…” Chekhov murmured, staring absently through the wall.

“I understand your disappointment,” Kononovich said with a nod. “Spending an extra week or two on Sakhalin is hardly anyone’s idea of pleasure.”

“Well, since I intend to remain here for several months, it is no great tragedy,” the writer observed. “But I confess, I had hoped to make far better use of my time here.”

“Several months!” Kononovich gasped. “Are you serious?”

“Quite.”

“In that case, I must warn you at once: life here is terribly hard, and terribly dull. Whoever can run from this place does run; and although I myself have held out so far, with every passing day the thought of flight visits my own tormented mind more and more often, Anton Pavlovich. There is no end of work here, especially now that they have begun sending everyone to this island indiscriminately, instead of to the other places of exile. Would you believe it, I have six thousand convicts under my charge. Six thousand!”

“I had heard five,” Chekhov admitted.

“Well, in fact there are about five and a half thousand… and another five hundred or so on the way… And now Andrei Nikolayevich is coming… And you yourself… Oh…” Vladimir Osipovich heaved a heavy sigh. “Please don’t take it personally. It is simply a most chaotic time, the list of tasks is endless, and… well, there it is.”

Chekhov nodded. Kononovich’s sincerity was disarming. Looking at this man, thrown into the very inferno of katorga and charged with putting all its ills to rights, the writer thought that he himself could never in his life have shouldered such a burden.

“Six thousand convicts. Each one must be registered, clothed, shod… and then kept until the end of his sentence… Is such a thing even imaginable?”

The mere thought of the effort and human resources such labor required made his head spin. By all accounts, guarding such a mass of prisoners called for almost as many soldiers, all of whom Vladimir Osipovich had to command…

“And the free settlers as well. Who may also… cause trouble.”

Now it seemed to Chekhov that a few months on Sakhalin was a miserably short time for the task he had set himself when he left home and family behind.

“But what boredom can he mean?” the writer wondered, looking at Kononovich with mild bewilderment. “When would a man even find time to be bored?”

They talked for another half hour, perhaps a little more—time passed quickly and imperceptibly in conversation with a man as witty and resourceful as Vladimir Osipovich. At last Kononovich checked himself, announced that he still had a great deal to see to, and said goodbye to Chekhov.

“I hear you have decided to lodge with our ‘enemy’?” Vladimir Osipovich asked, standing with his guest in the doorway.

“If by that witty remark you mean Doctor Tolmachev, then yes—with him,” Chekhov confirmed.

“Well, perhaps that is not so bad in its way—you will learn our weak points,” the general said vaguely.

He smiled at his own joke, shook his guest’s hand firmly, and promised he would be sure to ask Rakitin to call on Anton Pavlovich the moment a single free minute presented itself. Chekhov thanked Kononovich sincerely and stepped out of the office.

…For the next few days, the writer worked over his travel journals and thought about how to arrange his material once he had received the necessary credentials from the island’s chief administrator. It was hard to concentrate amid the local preparations for Baron Korf’s reception: junior officers were not only driving the convicts to exhaustion, repairing this and patching up that, but directly opposite the doctor’s house stood a soldiers’ barracks, where a military band was rehearsing marches for Andrei Nikolayevich’s arrival. Moreover, as Chekhov noted, each musician played his own part without the slightest regard for the others; the resulting cacophony made one want to stop one’s ears and flee to the farthest corner of the island—or back to the mainland altogether.

“It’s nothing…” the writer reassured himself. “Only a week, and after that there will be no time to be bored…”

Having made it a rule to go out for a walk the moment the orchestra struck up, Chekhov one day wandered as far as the place where the blackened remains of the burned-out barracks had stood, and was surprised to find that nothing there now recalled the recent tragedy. Later, Anton Pavlovich asked Rakitin whether Karl Khristoforovich had been the one to see to it, and Rakitin replied that yes, it had been he.

“And what is your opinion of Landsberg?” Chekhov once asked his hospitable host, Dr. Tolmachev.

“I have no particular opinion of him,” the doctor replied after a pause. “He is an able fellow, but unbridled. Like the wind at sea—it blows hard, though not always in the right direction.”

The comparison struck Chekhov as apt, and he entered it in his diary, along with many other phrases he had heard from the doctor. Kononovich’s “adversary” proved to be a wily sort, given to pestering the island’s administrator with all manner of petty complaints, yet he had such a lucid mind that he attracted more than he repelled.

“I am certain, Baron, that as soon as he arrives he will summon you,” the doctor assured Chekhov.

“Nonsense,” the writer objected, waving his hand. “Would that not be too great an honor?”

“Mark my words,” Tolmachev insisted, nodding gravely. “Our wretched orchestra will hardly have fallen silent before Korf asks Kononovich to bring you to him.”

Until the very end, Anton Pavlovich regarded this as utter absurdity, convinced that the Governor-General would have no time for him whatever. Yet his hospitable host proved right: two days after his arrival on the island, the Baron expressed a wish to meet Chekhov.

“Fancy how quickly he has got round to me…” the writer marveled as he rode with Rakitin toward the Governor-General’s temporary residence.

“Boredom is to blame, Anton Pavlovich,” the officer said with a wry smile. “He has already seen everything here, and it all makes him melancholy; and then there is you…”

“And now this one tells me it is boredom…” the writer thought with irritation. “It might do for Kononovich, stuck here without respite. But Korf!… He has only just arrived himself! Can he really have done everything he intended? Why, in two days one could not even hear out a thousand convicts, and there are more than five thousand of them here…”

Chekhov remained perplexed all the way to the residence, perplexed as he climbed the stairs, and perplexed still as he entered the study.

“Ah, Anton Pavlovich!…” Kononovich greeted the writer.

The Head of the Island was there as well, seated in an armchair opposite the desk, beyond which Baron Korff had taken his place. Everything in his appearance spoke of noble birth: his posture, his condescending gaze, his carefully tended beard, and the elegant pince-nez through which he regarded Chekhov with a slight squint.

“Good day to you, Anton Pavlovich,” the Baron rumbled, and the writer realized that Andrei Nikolayevich’s voice suited him perfectly: a rich baritone with a husky rasp. “Please, sit down. You must be tired after your journey?”

“Not in the least. I was driven here, after all,” Chekhov replied, accepting the Baron’s invitation.

“Well, on Sakhalin even the view from a carriage window can be tiring,” Korff observed with a smirk.

He glanced sideways at Kononovich, who smiled broadly and nodded, eager to agree with his distinguished guest.

“You are quite right, Andrei Nikolayevich!”

“I have not been here long enough to tire of the local scenery,” Chekhov said. “Everything interests me—at least for now.”

Kononovich and Korff exchanged another glance, surprised by the writer’s words.

“Allow me to ask, Anton Pavlovich...” The Baron leaned back in his chair and coughed into his fist. “What purpose did you have in mind when you set out for Sakhalin?”

At the question, Chekhov visibly tensed. Judging by how often he was asked what had driven him to sail to the island, one might have thought all the local military men were guarding some terrible secret from outsiders and lived in mortal fear of its exposure.

“I must be imagining it,” the writer thought, looking at Baron Korff. “To them I am simply an uninvited guest—worse than anyone else... Who likes a near-stranger wandering through his house, peering into the darkest corners as if looking for cobwebs?..”

Noticing his unease, the Governor-General clarified:

“At the very least, you do not have some... official commission?”

“In other words, am I sniffing around? Well, obviously.”

“No, I have no commission, official or otherwise,” Anton Pavlovich said aloud. “What is more, no one advised me to come here. I made the decision entirely on my own, out of idle curiosity.”

“So your journey is not connected with the newspapers or, let us say, with learned societies...” Korff murmured, stating a fact rather than asking a question.

Seeing that Chekhov did not correct him, the Baron seemed somewhat reassured and, after a brief pause, said:

“Well then, in that case I permit you to go wherever you like. Vladimir Osipovich and I have nothing to hide from you, and so we shall draw up a credential for you at once, with which you may easily enter any prison or settlement. The only thing I cannot allow, Anton Pavlovich, is contact with political prisoners. Such permission, unfortunately or fortunately, I cannot grant you, even if I wished to... and frankly speaking, I do not wish to.”

Chekhov nodded slowly. His good friend Suvorin had warned him of this as well, so the writer was not in the least surprised.

Korff, clearly satisfied with his guest’s reaction, clapped his hands and said:

“In that case, we shall arrange everything tomorrow.”

“Why not today?” Chekhov ventured cautiously.

“Because today a ceremonial dinner is planned at Vladimir Osipovich’s residence in honor of my arrival. And, taking this opportunity, I should like to invite you.”

“I shall attend with pleasure,” Anton Pavlovich promised.

And indeed he went, though with little desire to do so. The celebration proved rather dull: the guests listened to Korff’s anecdotes and nodded assent to every word. To Chekhov, all the stories seemed quite tedious, except one; that single tale the writer took care to record in his travel diary the moment he returned home.

“Traveling across our country and through Europe,” Andrei Nikolayevich said, glass in hand, surveying the company with a warm smile, “I have more than once caught myself thinking, with pride, that here on Sakhalin the ‘unfortunates’ live far better than anywhere else. This does not mean we should rest on our laurels—the paths of goodness are endless, and we must try to walk them as far as we can!..”

By morning, setting out once more to see the baron, Chekhov found that Korff’s words were still ringing in his ears. And they rang all the louder the more often, along the way, he met penal convicts in chains and ordinary prisoners without irons.

“If this is a good life, what on earth goes on in the rest of the world?” Chekhov wondered, astonished and vexed. “Do they execute lawbreakers outright there?”

“Ah, Anton Pavlovich!” Korff exclaimed cheerfully as Chekhov entered his study. “Do sit down, sit down...”

Were it not for Kononovich’s absence from the room, the writer might have imagined he had somehow been carried back in time, so closely did this visit resemble yesterday’s.

“Do you remember everything I told you about the political prisoners?” the baron asked, fixing Chekhov with a piercing look.

“I do, Andrei Nikolayevich. How could one forget such things?”

“Quite right,” Korff nodded, reaching for his pen. “Better not to forget...”

“And what else might you tell me about the island, Andrei Nikolayevich?” the writer asked, watching as the baron wrote out the certificate in an elegant, calligraphic hand.

“About Sakhalin, you mean?” The governor-general gave a dry chuckle. “Oh, I could tell you enough to fill three of your books...”

“I would gladly write them, if there were material,” Chekhov promised.

“Alas, I haven’t the time to dictate so much to you. Besides, even if I did, I should not allow myself to steal so many of your precious hours for this most tedious of islands!”

“How fond you are of emphasizing how dreadfully dull it is here!...” Anton Pavlovich observed.

“Allow me to explain,” said Andrei Nikolayevich, with a faint smirk. “As a man who has lived a good while, I have long understood that boredom is not necessarily a vice. On the contrary, boredom is a virtue, for it means the absence of any striking events—including disastrous ones. Consequently, when I say that everything on Sakhalin is dull, I mean that affairs proceed in their ordinary course, without particular joys, but also without misfortunes. And when we speak of penal servitude, is that not the finest compliment one could pay?”

Chekhov was obliged to concede that, for a prison, this was perhaps a compliment of sorts.

“Precisely my point,” Korff said, visibly pleased. “Now, what more can we do for those exiled to this island? They are punished already—torn from life on the mainland, severed from civilization! Is it right, then, to worsen their lot with bodily torment?”

And once again Chekhov agreed: no, it was not right.

“Vladimir Osipovich and I don’t care for that sort of thing, to tell the truth,” the Governor-General confided. “Torture is not our way. Only in the most extreme cases! We may lock them up, put them in irons—like that woman… Sofya Blyuvshtein, damn her soul…”

He spoke the last words in a whisper, but Anton Pavlovich caught them; seeing that he had, Korf hurried to add:

“Forgive me, but that individual, better known in criminal circles as Sonka the Golden Hand, has been no end of trouble for me—and for Vladimir Osipovich especially.”

“How has she troubled you?”

“By her insatiable desire to get off the island at any cost. At times I think she wants it even more than I do.”

Anton Pavlovich gave a noncommittal grunt.

The longer the conversation went on, the more certain he became that Baron Korf had only the faintest idea of how hard life truly was for a penal convict—especially compared with the life of a Governor-General who visited Sakhalin once every five years.

“What’s on your mind, Volod?” Kosarev asked.

Privezentsev gave a start, lifted his head, and looked vaguely at his old comrade from the Molodaya Gvardiya editorial office.

They had pulled over about ten kilometers outside the town of Chekhov to change a punctured tire—for the second time that day. The squad’s mechanic, Penkovsky, said it was simple bad luck, but the turn of events was disheartening all the same. Fortunately, summer had already come to the country’s eastern reaches, welcoming the travelers with a sun that was warm but not yet scorching, and a light breeze that stirred their hair and brought a refreshing coolness; beyond the roadside, the treetops rustled their green leaves in friendly fashion, seeing the motorcyclists off on their long journey.

“Let’s leave the spare tire out of the diary,” Rozhkov warned quickly, noticing Khlopovskikh reaching into his rucksack. “And no filming this either. You remember, don’t you, Vladimir Andreevich?”

Khlopovskikh glanced questioningly at the director.

“I agree with Gennady Stepanovich,” Privezentsev said reluctantly. “No sense dwelling on trifles. Would you want to read about a hole in a tire? Or worse, watch someone changing it on television?”

“I suppose not,” Khlopovskikh admitted. “But weren’t we told to write everything down just as it happened…”

“Everything, literally!” Rozhkov snorted. “At that rate we’d use up all the diary pages and all the film stock! Got up in the morning, brushed our teeth, had breakfast… Who needs that besides us? Isn’t that right, Vladimir Andreevich?”

He was looking for reassurance again, and after a moment’s hesitation Privezentsev did nod. Back then, in the assembly hall, he had not immediately understood that Lazarev had brought along a perfect copy of himself, but any doubt about who was standing before him vanished almost at once when the man turned up for the supplementary briefing. Oh, how richly those two functionaries had held forth on the honor and responsibility entrusted by the Motherland and its leaders to the participants in the rally! As if the fate of the entire country depended, no less, on how well Privezentsev and his team performed.

“A matter of state importance,” Lazarev declared weightily.

“That much is clear,” Privezentsev said wearily. “But what exactly is our film supposed to be about?”

“What do you mean, about?” the official asked in surprise. “About the motor rally from Sakhalin to Leningrad. What a strange question, Vladimir Andreevich.”

Privezentsev felt like getting up and walking out, but he had spent too many years working too closely with Lazarevs of this sort—men who were expert at puffing themselves up with importance, nodding to their superiors, and lecturing their juniors, yet were astonishingly slow on the uptake. You see such a man on television and think: a seasoned bureaucrat, wise from experience. But the moment he opens his mouth, a chill goes through you—at the thought that this very man plays some significant part in the fate of your country.

“But I’m asking about the idea—the specific idea, that’s what I’m trying to understand…” the director explained patiently.

“The idea?” Lazarev sniffed with contempt. “The idea is October, naturally. What’s difficult about that? Fifty years since October. Always these odd questions…”

Privezentsev lifted his eyes. It seemed he would never get anything concrete out of the official, when suddenly Rozhkov spoke up:

“I think I’ve got it. You want to understand why your motor rally, specifically, is supposed to inspire people to fresh feats of labor?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want to understand,” Privezentsev nodded, relieved.

For one fleeting instant he imagined that Rozhkov understood it too, but Gennady’s next remark dropped the director back into despondency.

“But it’s perfectly obvious: on motorcycles of the patriotic Ural brand, and in a GAZ-21 automobile, you are crossing the Soviet Union from practically its easternmost frontier all the way to the shores of the Baltic. Is that not a feat of strength and spirit?”

“Riding on our roads is quite a feat, yes,” Privezentsev agreed silently, though of course he kept the thought to himself.

“I should think it’s perfectly obvious,” Lazarov put in, glaring sullenly at the director. “Are you feeling unwell, Vladimir Andreevich? It’s not as though this is your first time making films of this sort. Why the surprise? And you’ve got a book coming out about your journey across Sakhalin, haven’t you…”

“Well, a book and a film are entirely different forms,” the director observed. “A book allows for… breadth, the chance to linger over the beauties of our native island… whereas a film must be far more… concise. It simply isn’t entirely clear to whom, and to what, we ought to give the greatest attention.”

“First and foremost—we do not dwell on the personalities of the travelers,” Lazarov declared, chewing his lip.

“Not at all?” Privezentsev asked, bewildered.

“No, well, at the beginning we shall certainly introduce the participants, and later, naturally, they will appear on screen here and there,” the official corrected himself. “The country must know its heroes, after all—how could it be otherwise? But precisely… precisely dragging you across the screen without need is unnecessary. There is no need to repeat that so-and-so went here, and then there… The crux is this: the viewer must understand that any worthy citizen of the Soviet Union could take the place of any participant in the Rodina Rally and conquer the entire route… with a smile on his face, effortlessly!..”

Lazarov at once broke into a broad grin himself—evidently demonstrating the very expression Privezentsev and his companions were expected to wear in the film about the motorcycle rally.

“It looks as though only editing can save us now,” the director thought, stealing a sidelong glance at the official. “True, we’ll have to shoot a great deal, since much of it will end up on the cutting-room floor… but he’s right—surely I’m used to this by now?”

Lazarov and Rozhkov went on talking at length, and all of it ostensibly to the point, yet halfway through the conversation Privezentsev grew tired of hearing those long-memorized phrases, repeated again and again. The underlying message was crystal clear: you, Vladimir Andreevich, are a Soviet artist, and artists in the Union exist to glorify our Homeland and set the hearts and minds of ordinary working people—of whom we have no shortage—ablaze with the “red” idea.

And now, standing slightly apart from the others, Privezentsev looked up at the sky and thought…

“Home,” said the director, turning to Albert. “Ira and Andrei… Sofya.”

“How are they?” the journalist asked sympathetically.

“Sofya is unwell again,” the director replied after a pause, with a sigh.

“Anything serious?”

“No, migraines. But they’ve been coming too often lately. I worry about her back home… it’s been a long time since I was away this long.”

The director remembered how he and Sofya had shut themselves in the kitchen on the eve of his departure and sat drinking tea. It was nearly half past twelve; the children were asleep, and the two of them sat at the kitchen table, looking out the window.

“I wonder—will it ever end?” his wife had asked. “They run you ragged, as if you were still a young man…”

“I’d like to know that myself,” Privezentsev had answered, taking a sip from his mug. “I’m tired too. Though, on the other hand, if they weren’t dragging me here and there all the time, they might have turned down our request to the orphanage. Of course, there’s no guarantee we’ll find any trace of your parents this way, but even a chance, these days, is a great deal.”

“I know, Volodya,” Sofya had murmured, looking away. “I know… and I’m glad we’re trying…”

She fell silent—plainly embarrassed—and Vladimir, understanding everything, took his wife’s hand. Their fingers intertwined. Sofya glanced at him from beneath her long lashes, then turned away again.

“Don’t,” Privezentsev said gently. “I want to do this myself. I want to help. It matters—to know who your parents were. You, of course, would never have asked…”

“I just know it won’t change anything, Vov,” his wife said with a sigh. “But you’re wonderful all the same. Thank you so much.”

“What’s this ‘thank you’?” Vladimir snorted. “Are we strangers now?”

“But shouldn’t we thank our own when they do something good?” Sofya asked with a shy smile.

She was so sincere, so touching, that he couldn’t resist. Breaking into a broad smile, Privezentsev leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

“You’re right,” he said. “Who else will thank us from the heart, if not our own?”

There was nothing remarkable about that evening: the Privezentsevs often sat like this in the kitchen, talking about everything and nothing, drinking tea and admiring the starry sky. In moments like those, Vladimir understood how good it was simply to be alive, and all the bad things that had happened before seemed contrived and overblown.

That was why the director disliked long absences from home: on the road, far from his wife, daughter, and son, he unwillingly lost the strength to keep working against all odds. His battery slowly ran down, and more and more often Privezentsev wanted to send it all to hell and go home, to recharge on quiet and regain his peace of mind. But Vladimir Andreevich knew only too well what would come of that, and so he endured, gritting his teeth.

“Don’t worry,” Albert said, drawing his friend out of his thoughts. “They’ll be fine. A month and a half will fly by—you won’t even notice.”

“I’d like to believe that,” the director said with a sigh, “but honestly, it’s hard just now. I think of not coming home tonight, not saying goodnight to my wife and children, and my heart sinks at once… Such a simple ritual, Albert, and yet it does so much good. It’s so calming to hear the voices of the people you love answer you…”

“We’re done, Vladimir Andreevich!” Penkovsky shouted. “Let’s get moving while it’s still light; we’ll spend the night peacefully in Kholmsk and then set sail…”

“Coming, coming!” Privezentsev called back.

Then, more quietly, to Albert, he added:

“Anyway, don’t worry about me—I’m just terribly homesick. I’ve got out of the habit of being away from my family.”

“Well, that’s all right, if that’s all it is,” the journalist said with an approving nod.

He was the first to hurry toward the other riders in the motorcycle expedition, and Privezentsev followed. The wind kept tugging at the travelers’ hair and clothes. Adjusting his glasses, Albert settled onto the motorcycle seat and started the engine. Rozhkov, roused at last, came over to the director and his companion.

“What now?” Privezentsev thought.

He climbed into the sidecar and, taking out his camera, removed the lens cap.

“There’ll be a barge in the morning, people seeing us off—we need good footage of all that,” Rozhkov said quickly. “Probably on a separate roll, so it doesn’t get lost. Will you take care of it, Vladimir Andreevich?”

“A separate roll, then,” Privezentsev said with a shrug. “Just remind me in the morning, all right?”

“Of course, of course!” Gennady assured him fervently. “Thank you!”

He turned sharply, strode to his motorcycle, climbed on, and raised a hand, demanding everyone’s attention.

“Showing off,” Albert snorted, peering at the official over his glasses.

“He has every right,” the director said sarcastically. “He’s friends with Lazarev himself! This is no small matter!”

Albert broke into a grin and, adjusting his glasses, pulled his helmet down over his head.

“All the same, it’s good they called him up too,” Vladimir Andreevich thought, glancing toward the journalist. “At least there’s someone to talk to.”

He looked thoughtfully over his team. Decent people, all of them, but their interests lay in different directions; in truth, they had precious little to talk about, and in that sense Albert was simply a godsend. But Rozhkov...

“On the other hand, if not him, Lazarev would have saddled us with someone else. He certainly wouldn’t have let us go without a minder—not his style at all. So perhaps this isn’t the worst possible hand.”

Privezentsev recalled their first motorcycle expedition across Sakhalin. Back then, in 1958, the crew had been made up of entirely different people, and yet both then and now one of Lazarev’s watchful eyes had invariably been planted among them.

“What is it? Cowardice? Or just the desire to keep his finger forever on the pulse?”

The journey across the island had passed without incident worth mentioning—mercifully, the overseer kept a low profile, merely jotting things down in a tiny notebook and now and then asking Privezentsev this or that. Vladimir Andreevich answered with restraint, and in the end everything turned out well: no reprimands followed the motorcycle expedition, and the director himself was even awarded a commendation—for co-authoring a book with two fellow journalists, one of whom—oh, miracle!—just happened to be Lazarev’s own appointee.

“Well, God be with him. Especially since he truly did help, and didn’t merely lend his name to the cover. And as for me, I have no use for ‘glory.’”

And now—a new trial, this one far more arduous: nearly fifteen thousand kilometers alongside the ever-faithful spy of the deputy chairman of the city executive committee. So far, Rozhkov had not interfered much with the journey, conducting himself exactly as a petty bureaucrat should—reveling in whatever scrap of authority had fallen to him. Yet even within the modest bounds of their little band, such a petty tyrant could do real harm.

“I hope I’m wrong,” Privezentsev thought, “because we’ve enough to put up with as it is... Still, if he fusses like a hen over an ordinary wheel change, squealing, ‘don’t take it off, don’t write it down,’ what can one expect from him in a more delicate situation? We shall see, we shall see... In any case, it promises to be interesting, at the very least.”

Rozhkov’s motorcycle lurched forward and crept out onto the road. Privezentsev switched on his camera and began filming. Albert opened the throttle, and the Ural, its engine roaring, trundled on along the cracked, rutted dirt track toward the port town of Kholmsk.

In the morning, the departure and ceremonial send-off were scheduled. “Sofya will come with the children...” At the thought, something warm stirred inside him.

“And this is my home,” I said, unable to keep from smiling. “This is where I lived.”

We were standing beside an old five-story building in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, its façade decorated with a mosaic panel that read “1917–” — a perfect shot for our film.

“Shoot it, shoot it,” Denis murmured to the cameraman, as if he had read my mind.

“It was finished in sixty-seven,” I explained, turning toward the camera. “They timed its completion for the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. That was the same year as the Rodina Rally. A great many things were being finished that year, so this may seem like a small detail... and yet it’s symbolic.”

We walked around the building.

“And there are our apartment windows. That’s my room... yes, so many memories!”

I have to admit, modern Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk delighted me. When I first became interested in my grandfather’s journey and flew here to dig through the local archives, the city was already quite well cared for; now, though, it had truly come into bloom: new paving stones on the sidewalks, fresh asphalt, handsome new façades on the administration buildings and the houses around them. The locals said the prosperity came from the oil fields now being actively developed... They said the oilmen had been allowed to pump their “black gold,” and in return they restored the city center. The explanation sounded plausible enough — judging by the quality of the renovations. Of course, the center is not the whole city, but the important thing is that a start has been made; perhaps, in time, they’ll get to the outskirts as well...

“If the oil doesn’t run out first.”

The mere sight of my building, hardly changed since I left it back in eighty-five, plunged me involuntarily into reminiscence. My personal time machine, the one that had always lived inside my head, carried me back into the past; those were glorious days, when I lived, wandered about, studied, and worried about nothing in particular. Later, as a teenager, I moved with my family to Vladimir, where I entered the local polytechnic institute. Ironically, I enrolled while the USSR still existed, yet graduated in ninety-five as a citizen of Russia. My memories of that time are contradictory, but my childhood on Sakhalin was enchanted: protected by my mother’s care, I was blind to the negativity around us, and so I grew up completely happy and content. Grandfather taught me photography, and though I enjoyed it well enough, my results were, frankly, nothing to boast of — especially compared with the work of my “mentor.” Besides, I was more drawn to all kinds of iron contraptions: first construction sets, later motorcycles. Many people asked me, “Why bikes, Max?” And I always answered: because they give you a sense of freedom.

I glanced back at our Urals, parked in a neat row behind us. It was ironic, but their journey to Sakhalin had taken a month and a half — far longer than I planned to spend on the motorcycle run itself. We had loaded them onto a flatbed in Moscow and sent our machines to the island, where the guys from the local Wolfgang motorcycle club kindly received them and locked them up in a garage until our arrival.

“Nostalgia?” Lama asked.

“That’s it exactly, Borya,” I said with a smile. “And even though I was here fairly recently, when I was working in the archives... still, something stirs in my soul every time I come near this house.”

“Every place where we live long enough leaves a karmic imprint of its own color and depth,” Borya pronounced philosophically. “So there’s nothing surprising about it.”

He was in his element: for every circumstance in life, Lama had a fitting explanation drawn from Eastern wisdom.

“A karmic imprint—that’s exactly it,” I murmured, looking at the house once more.

There had been good times and bad, but on the whole, my memories remained overwhelmingly bright. Maybe it was the surroundings. I was lucky to grow up in an atmosphere of love and mutual support, and I don’t mean only Mom and Grandpa: whenever someone fell on hard times, neighbors, colleagues, and simply decent people would step in to help. The reason lay in our isolation from the mainland; we islanders knew there would be little help from the “big land,” so we stuck together like one huge family.

“Ah, those were the days...”

The door of my apartment building swung open, and a man of about my age came out. His face was painfully familiar.

“Seryoga! Olifirenko—is that you?” I asked, hardly believing my eyes.

“Max?...” he mumbled uncertainly.

Judging by his bewildered expression, he was just as taken aback by the encounter.

“Seryoga!” I exclaimed, now grinning from ear to ear and feeling much more certain, and I walked toward him as he came toward me.

After a brief hesitation, we embraced.

“What are you doing still hanging around here?” I asked, nodding toward our old high-rise.

“Well, where else am I supposed to go?” he chuckled. “Just living my life, taking it easy...”

“And what do you do?”

“Oh, you know, a bit of this and that... But never mind me—what wind blew you back here? Didn’t you settle in Vladimir, then move to Moscow or somewhere?”

“Yeah, I live in Moscow now. Got my own business—cigars and Ural motorcycles. What else... Married, three kids. All good, really.”

“Not bad...” Sergey drawled.

I thought I heard a note of envy in his voice.

“And these your friends? From Moscow?” he asked, gesturing vaguely toward my companions.

“Yes, exactly.”

I introduced each of my traveling companions in turn, and after the last handshake, added:

“I also wanted to drop by Andryukha Yermakov’s place. Any idea if he still lives around here?”

“Oh... I honestly couldn’t tell you,” Sergey replied, frowning. “We sort of... lost touch. Haven’t seen him since school.”

“Unbelievable,” I snorted. “You’d think, in a town this small... and yet here we are, lost to each other.”

“Well, adult life, you know... Everyone’s busy... Everyone’s got their own thing...”

I studied Sergey thoughtfully. He bore only a faint resemblance to the boy I had been close to nearly thirty years ago. Now he was a grown man, a typical Sakhalin local, with a slight beer belly, graying dark hair, and dull, faded gray eyes. He had clearly made peace with his lot long ago and no longer reached for anything beyond it.

“What is there even to talk about?” a treacherous thought flashed through my mind. “Thirty years have passed...”

And yet childhood memories kept me from simply turning on my heel and walking away. The story of catching smelt on the Khomutovka River was worth its weight in gold all by itself: the fisheries inspectors caught us red-handed by the campfire, soaked through and shivering. Luckily, we looked so pathetic that they spared us the humiliation of reporting the “offenders” to our parents. They merely gave us a mild scolding, confiscated Sergey’s backpack full of fish, and went on their way.

Or rather, half the catch.

I had prudently hidden my own satchel among the burdock leaves so the fish wouldn’t dry out in the sun. All in all, luck was truly on our side: we escaped punishment and still kept our haul. In the end, as true friends should, we divided the remaining smelt evenly and went home satisfied, well before the inspectors could return.

“Maybe we can catch up tonight?” I asked Sergey.

“Sure, why not,” he replied, shrugging uncertainly.

“Give me your number—I’ll call,” I said, taking out my mobile phone.

He dictated it, I rang him once to save the contact, and after one last handshake we went our separate ways.

“I’ll call,” I repeated, as if trying to convince myself.

“Listen, maybe we should go back to the hotel for now,” Rebbe said after Serega had left. “Your childhood friends seem a little awkward around us. And we’re a bit worn out from the flight.”

“Whatever you prefer,” I replied. “You’re probably bored here anyway, while I’ve got a whole mountain of memories to sift through.”

After saying goodbye to my friends, I crossed the yard toward the entrance where Andrei Ermakov lived—my old schoolmate. How many stories tied us together! It was with Andrei that, in fourth grade, we put together our first motorcycle out of scrap scavenged from the dump his uncle guarded—and how I took a spill from that “technological marvel” is a separate story; I was scraped raw, literally... And it was Andrei who taught me a vital lesson: you alone have to answer for your words. Back in fifth grade, I got into a war of words with a boy two years older and naively assumed Ermakov would step in for me.

“No, Max,” Andrei said, shaking his head. “If any of his buddies jump in, I’ll jump in too—but otherwise it’s one-on-one, fair and square.”

I got thoroughly thrashed, of course, but the main thing stayed with me: be ready to stand behind what you say, and never shift responsibility onto others. Andrei was a decent, upright guy, and I learned plenty of good things from him.

As, I hope, he did from me.

Walking toward Ermakov’s building, I looked around, trying to make sense of the strange metamorphosis that had come over these places: everything except the overgrown trees now seemed small, almost toy-sized. Here was the lot where we played soccer and hockey—in my childhood memory, a proper sports field, but in reality just a tiny patch of ground… and it was completely unclear how we had all ever fit on it. Over there, in the old chestnut tree, we used to build a hut—yet now it seemed even a small flock of birds would have trouble finding room among those branches…

A dollhouse town… one I appeared to have outgrown.

Now even the distance between my building and Andrei’s looked downright comical: a couple of minutes, and I was already at his doorway. First floor, door on the left. An old doorbell with a melted button—the local hooligans had done their part. Otherwise, the stairwell had barely changed, except perhaps that it was a little tidier.

They didn’t open the door at once. I had to ring three times before I heard footsteps inside. At last the door swung open. On the threshold stood a thin woman of about sixty, holding a child.

“Grandmother and granddaughter?..”

“Good afternoon,” I said, smiling. “I’m looking for Andrei Ermakov. He lived here thirty years ago.”

“My, that’s been quite a while… since you last came by!” the woman exclaimed, surprised.

“I haven’t been here in years,” I admitted. “I was living in another city. On the mainland.”

“Well then, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you: we bought this apartment fifteen years ago, and not from the Ermakovs—from completely different people. So unfortunately, I can’t help you.”

“In that case, I’m sorry to have bothered you,” I said. “Goodbye.”

“Not at all. Good luck finding your friend, young man.”

She nodded in farewell and closed the door, and I walked back toward the stairwell, smiling to myself over her quaint form of address. “Young man”… Wasn’t that a rather generous compliment for someone who, thirty years later, was still looking for a school friend?

I decided to wander around the neighborhood a while longer. Maybe in this tiny city I’d get lucky and run into Andrei on the street. After all, it had happened with Serega… But the longer I walked through a district at once so familiar and so utterly foreign, the more convinced I became that the Ermakovs, like my own family, had moved from this God-forsaken island to somewhere else entirely. At least I wanted to believe Andrei hadn’t let routine swallow him whole…

Unlike Serega.

Remembering Olifirenko, I called him at once and asked whether we were still on for the evening. For some reason he sighed, said yes, we were still on, and we agreed to meet around seven at a small restaurant, to talk over the old days at dinner and a drop of fragrant cognac.

Putting my phone away, I looked around with a melancholy eye. I had one more errand to run—something I had planned long ago and had little wish to do. Or rather, I suppose I did want to do it, but somehow, without quite admitting it to myself, I had been putting it off until the very last moment.

Just as well the boys went back to the hotel, I thought as I approached the cemetery.

Standing by my father’s grave felt utterly strange. I had barely known him—he left the family before I turned three. And yet he was my father, the man without whom I would never have existed. For some time now I had been in touch with my half-sister Tanya, his daughter from his second marriage; we wrote to each other now and then. It was from her that I learned where he was buried, and now, having laid flowers on the slab, I stood studying the gray granite surface with its metal plaque.

His surname, initials, two dates—birth and death.

He died when I had only just turned sixteen. Tanya was even younger.

What did I feel during those strange minutes beside the headstone? It’s hard to say. There was a kind of muted emptiness inside me. This man had done absolutely nothing for me, except perhaps the single most important thing: he had given me life. For that, I was grateful to him. And for that alone.

Leaving the cemetery, I felt an indescribable relief. So far, this journey to Sakhalin had brought more bleakness than joy. The only bright spot had been seeing Seryoga Olifirenko, and I had hoped dearly that an evening with a childhood friend would lift my spirits. That we might grieve a little for the dead, talk over the present, perhaps even touch on the future...

Alas, that evening I realized that Seryoga was as lost to me as Andrey was—only not physically, but emotionally. We had nothing left in common except the weather and the scenery. Seryoga worked away in small business, his wife taught at a school, so they lived modestly, though they seemed to have enough for their daily bread. Olifirenko had no particular desire to talk about his work, and after a couple of glasses of cognac, my stories about cigars and motorcycles began to make him yawn. Even alcohol, in truth, did nothing to help our conversation along: I had barely managed to tell him about the idea for the Rodina Rally and had only just started on the plan for a round-the-world trip on Harleys when his wife called, and he abruptly began to get ready to leave.

“Shall I come and see you off?” he offered, shaking my hand. “What time are you setting out?”

“In the morning. At nine,” I replied dryly.

“And where’s the start?”

“I told you: Lenin Square. Grandfather set off from that very spot in sixty-seven.”

“Oh, splendid, I’ll be nearby,” Olifirenko said, forcing a smile. “See you tomorrow, Max.”

“See you tomorrow.”

He let go of my hand and walked toward the exit. I finished my cognac and signaled to the waitress for the bill.

“Well, how did the reunion go?” Lama asked when I came back to the hotel, looking blacker than a thundercloud.

“It didn’t,” I said with a sigh. “We’ve both changed so much—him and me. You can’t even understand anymore what ever held us together...”

“Well, something held you together then. Now nothing does. It happens.”

“And what about your famous karmic trail?”

“What’s he got to do with it?” Borya shrugged, utterly unruffled. “Seryoga the kid—that’s part of your karmic trail. But this Seryoga is a grown man, and he grew up without you, so you’re meeting him for the first time. Which means there’s no link here at all. It’s like if they tore down your house and put up a shopping mall in its place: the memories may still be there, but the place they were tied to is gone. Get it?”

“Got it,” I muttered. “Bottom line: better not stir up the past. Don’t go looking up old school friends...”

“Or ex-girlfriends,” Lama added. “And even worse—ex-wives... Now those are the ones who always leave behind a huuuge karmic trail...”

Despite my strange mood, I laughed and gave Borya a grateful look. Maybe it really wasn’t worth mourning the friends we’d drifted away from since childhood. What mattered far more was that here and now, in the present, we had friends ready to stand by us, in word and deed, whenever times got hard.