Читать онлайн «Consolations of the Forest»

Sylvain Tesson

CONSOLATIONS OF THE FOREST

Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga

^{Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale}

To Arnaud Humann

For I belong to the forests and solitude.

KNUT HAMSUNPan

Freedom is always available. One need only pay the price for it.

HENRY DE MONTHERLANTCahiers, 1957

A Sidestep

I’d promised myself that before I turned forty I would live as a hermit deep in the woods.

I went to spend six months in a Siberian cabin on the shores of Lake Baikal, on the tip of North Cedar Cape. Seventy-five miles from the nearest village, no neighbours, no access roads and every now and then, a visit. Wintertime temperatures in the minus twenties Fahrenheit; the summer brought bears out into the open. In short: paradise.

I took along books, cigars and vodka. The rest – space silence and solitude – was already there.

In that desert, I created a beautiful and temperate life for myself, experiencing an existence centred on simple gestures. Between the lake and the forest, I watched the days go by. I cut wood, fished for my dinner, read a lot, hiked in the mountains, and drank vodka, at my window. The cabin was an ideal observation post from which to witness nature’s every move.

I knew winter and spring, happiness, despair, and in the end, peace.

In the depths of the taiga, I changed myself completely. Staying put brought me what I could no longer find on any journey. The genius loci helped me to tame time. My hermitage became the laboratory of these transformations.

Every day I recorded my thoughts in a notebook.

This is the journal of a hermit’s life.

S. T.

^FEBRUARY

The Forest

The Heinz company sells around fifteen kinds of tomato sauce.

The supermarket in Irkutsk stocks them all and I don’t know which to choose. I’ve already filled six carts with dried pasta and Tabasco. The blue truck is waiting for me; it’s −26°F outside and Misha, the driver, keeps the engine running. Tomorrow we leave Irkutsk and in three days will reach the cabin, on the western shore of the lake. I must finish my shopping today. I decide on Heinz Super Hot Tapas. I buy eighteen bottles: three per month.

Fifteen kinds of ketchup. That’s the sort of thing that made me want to withdraw from this world.

9 FEBRUARY

I’m stretched out on my bed in Nina’s house on Proletariat Street. I like Russian street names. In the villages you’ll find a Labour Street, an October Revolution Street, a Partisans Street, and sometimes an Enthusiasm Street, along which trudge grey-haired Slav grannies.

Nina is the best landlady in Irkutsk. A former pianist, she used to play in the concert halls of the Soviet Union. Now she runs a guest house. Yesterday she told me: ‘Who’d ever have thought I’d wind up cranking out pancakes?’ Nina’s cat is purring on my stomach. If I were a cat, I know whose tummy I’d snuggle on.

I’m poised on the threshold of a seven-year-old dream. In 2003 I stayed for the first time at Lake Baikal. Walking along the shore, I discovered cabins at regular intervals, inhabited by strangely happy recluses. The idea of going to ground alone in the forest, surrounded by silence, began to intrigue me. Seven years later, here I am.