hints: the kettlebells in the corner, shiny with use; the tiger-striped blanket on the guest bed; the improvised punching bag filled with wheat germ hanging in the hallway. Stashed in closets and drawers are more obvious clues: a pair of Udeghe-style hunting skis; a tiger’s claw; a Dragunov “Tiger” sniper’s rifle; a mangled bullet, its crevices still packed with matter from a tiger Trush shot in the icy spring of 1996.
4
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?WILLIAM BLAKE, “The Tyger”
THE BADGER AND SHOTGUN INCIDENT WAS THE ONLY TIME TRUSH SAW Markov alive, and he had underestimated him. Then, he had figured Markov for one more unemployed subsistence hunter who wasn’t above taking a lynx or a badger if the opportunity presented itself. When Trush finds himself, as he often does, in that murky place between the letter of the law and the fact of a man’s circumstances, he is reminded that the line between right and wrong can be a crooked one. But how, in the forest there, with that sorry badger in a pot, could Trush have imagined what would happen to Markov, a known poacher with illegal weapons who was fed up with being poor? And how, for that matter, could he have known what would happen to Lev Khomenko?
Lev (“Lion”) Khomenko was a thirty-six-year-old hunter and herbalist from the village of Lesopil’noye, near the confluence of the Ussuri and Bikin rivers. He had a degree in hunting management and was a staff hunter for Alufchanski, the State Forest Management Company, which oversaw the region’s commercial meat and fur industry. But the 1990s were the toughest years many Russians could remember, and the winter of ’96 found Khomenko unemployed with four children to feed. He and his family lived a marginal existence on the edge of the taiga; their house was old and made of logs, and it leaned precariously to one side. There were cracks in the walls big enough to put a hand through. Trush had been making his rounds one day when he came upon Khomenko hunting in the forest; while doing a routine document check, he discovered that Khomenko’s gun was registered not in his own name but in his father’s. Trush was within his rights to confiscate the weapon, but he had sympathy for the man’s obvious poverty and was impressed that all his other papers were in order, so he let him go.
Not long afterward, Khomenko hitched a ride up the Bikin in a logging truck. He wore fleece-lined boots that were much better suited to town use and, over these, he wore a green forester’s uniform. He was hunting, as many in the taiga do, with a double-barreled shotgun. In the backwoods of Primorye, these relatively light firearms tend to be old—sometimes very old—and of dubious quality; their killing range is usually under a hundred yards, and they are accurate only to around seventy yards, which is almost laughable by the standards of modern hunting weapons. Khomenko’s gun was loaded with a single large ball in the right barrel, and with lead shot in the left; this way he would be prepared for any kind of game, be it big or small. Khomenko was traveling alone; there was about ten inches of snow on the ground, and it was forty degrees below zero.
Save for one’s own breaths and footfalls, the forest at this temperature is as silent and still as outer space and, to the barefaced Khomenko, it may have felt almost as cold. Nothing moved. The white trunks of birch trees rose almost seamlessly from the snow. The grays and browns of oak and poplar and smaller shrubs provided contrast and reference points, but they also offered places to hide. Around midday, Khomenko ran across the trail of a tiger; the tracks were recent and he decided to follow them. There was a logging camp nearby, and when the watchman there saw Khomenko coming, he came out to greet him. The two men talked for a while and, when Khomenko expressed interest in the tiger tracks, the watchman said he had heard some kind of a
4
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?WILLIAM BLAKE, “The Tyger”
THE BADGER AND SHOTGUN INCIDENT WAS THE ONLY TIME TRUSH SAW Markov alive, and he had underestimated him. Then, he had figured Markov for one more unemployed subsistence hunter who wasn’t above taking a lynx or a badger if the opportunity presented itself. When Trush finds himself, as he often does, in that murky place between the letter of the law and the fact of a man’s circumstances, he is reminded that the line between right and wrong can be a crooked one. But how, in the forest there, with that sorry badger in a pot, could Trush have imagined what would happen to Markov, a known poacher with illegal weapons who was fed up with being poor? And how, for that matter, could he have known what would happen to Lev Khomenko?
Lev (“Lion”) Khomenko was a thirty-six-year-old hunter and herbalist from the village of Lesopil’noye, near the confluence of the Ussuri and Bikin rivers. He had a degree in hunting management and was a staff hunter for Alufchanski, the State Forest Management Company, which oversaw the region’s commercial meat and fur industry. But the 1990s were the toughest years many Russians could remember, and the winter of ’96 found Khomenko unemployed with four children to feed. He and his family lived a marginal existence on the edge of the taiga; their house was old and made of logs, and it leaned precariously to one side. There were cracks in the walls big enough to put a hand through. Trush had been making his rounds one day when he came upon Khomenko hunting in the forest; while doing a routine document check, he discovered that Khomenko’s gun was registered not in his own name but in his father’s. Trush was within his rights to confiscate the weapon, but he had sympathy for the man’s obvious poverty and was impressed that all his other papers were in order, so he let him go.
Not long afterward, Khomenko hitched a ride up the Bikin in a logging truck. He wore fleece-lined boots that were much better suited to town use and, over these, he wore a green forester’s uniform. He was hunting, as many in the taiga do, with a double-barreled shotgun. In the backwoods of Primorye, these relatively light firearms tend to be old—sometimes very old—and of dubious quality; their killing range is usually under a hundred yards, and they are accurate only to around seventy yards, which is almost laughable by the standards of modern hunting weapons. Khomenko’s gun was loaded with a single large ball in the right barrel, and with lead shot in the left; this way he would be prepared for any kind of game, be it big or small. Khomenko was traveling alone; there was about ten inches of snow on the ground, and it was forty degrees below zero.
Save for one’s own breaths and footfalls, the forest at this temperature is as silent and still as outer space and, to the barefaced Khomenko, it may have felt almost as cold. Nothing moved. The white trunks of birch trees rose almost seamlessly from the snow. The grays and browns of oak and poplar and smaller shrubs provided contrast and reference points, but they also offered places to hide. Around midday, Khomenko ran across the trail of a tiger; the tracks were recent and he decided to follow them. There was a logging camp nearby, and when the watchman there saw Khomenko coming, he came out to greet him. The two men talked for a while and, when Khomenko expressed interest in the tiger tracks, the watchman said he had heard some kind of a
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