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polar bear. Here were the carriages, furniture, firearms of every description.
Here were houses, huts, and tents, offering food and every kind of
entertainment. And it was here, walking meekly along a kind of midway with
Natalya's gently guiding hand on his furry neck, that Sherwood in bear-form
had his first chance to see himself in a large mirror.
After a moment of shock, he realized that he was looking into a distorting
mirror, in front of a large tent, evidently some kind of carnival fun house.
The moment had produced a kind of vertigo, a fear of returning too suddenly to
humanity.
Over the next two days, the couple put on three more performances, with
considerable success. Napoleon's reputation was spreading quickly.
At the fair Natalya had no difficulty in obtaining a man's belt that made a
suitable collar for Napoleon, and a leash, intended for a large dog. When
attached to the collar, the leash looked as if meant to go with it.
Sherwood had occasional moments of near panic, wondering how he was ever
going to get a moment of privacy in which to change back to human form. After
giving three performances he was more than ready to enjoy the powers conferred
by fingers and clear thought.
In fact, his first good chance to resume his human form without discovery did
not come until dusk, when they reached the river. A bear went plunging into
the muddy stream, and when no one else had a good view of the necessary
transformation, a man emerged, shaking off a spray of droplets like any human
bather. Here among the heterogeneous masses, men and women alike went into the
water naked. Sherwood had already observed that in Russia there was much less
concern over casual nudity than there would have been anywhere in the Western
world.
No one really noted the fact that the bathing bear had suddenly
disappeared everyone assumed that it had come ashore somewhere else and there
was now one extra man in the water.
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Of course, at such an immense gathering as this fair, there were other
performing bears, as many as ten or a dozen of them, along with a hundred
other entertainers. The real bears had gypsy owners, who tended to be jealous
of the new arrival, so superbly talented. These animals and their masters
stayed in their own encampments, a little apart from the fair itself.
"That was a good idea, taking up a collection. We don't need money, and I
wouldn't have thought of it."
"It's what the people with bears always do. Would have seemed strange if I
didn't. Any anyway, we may need money tomorrow."
Throughout her first full day with Sherwood in Nizhni Novgorod, Natalya kept
waiting and hoping to confirm the contact with the important revolutionaries.
Sherwood realized that he and Natalya could easily have searched the town and
the fair for days, and never have got a hint of the presence of these canny
intriguers, had not those they wanted been trying to locate them as well.
Late in the day, a message was brought to the couple by someone they had
never seen before, a dark-haired gypsy-looking girl of ten or so, barefoot and
in a ragged dress.
"Yes, child. What message have you for Madam Sarban?"
In a singsong voice the girl recited Russian words obviously memorized:
"Madam, I am to tell you that your horse can now be shod at Bolkov's Smithy.
The special shoes that were needed have come in."
"Thank you."
After Natalya had translated this exchange for Sherwood, and he had nodded,
the couple followed their now-voiceless guide on foot along the long, climbing
path.
Ten minutes later, in the almost-deserted upper town, the girl brought her
silent followers to another building, two stories high and nondescript,
several blocks from Bolkov's Smithy. There with a small fist the child rapped
on a street door badly in need of paint.
Immediately the knob turned, and an invisible hand inside the house pulled
the door open into dimness.
Nineteen
At about the same time that the fugitive couple were abandoning their boat on
the bank of the Volga thousands of versts away, Maxim Ivanovich Lohmatski,
gnashing his teeth over his unhappy fate, stalked about his ministry office in
St. Petersburg with a cane the crutches he had been using until last week, and
for which he soon hoped to celebrate a suitable ceremony of destruction, still
stood in a corner of the large room. His human body was healing, and gave
every sign of eventually being as good as new.
But the damage to his nonhuman self the ursine nature he now considered the
most important component of his being was quite another story.
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During the past few weeks, Maxim had spent considerable time planning one
scenario after another of elaborate vengeance on his sister, and above all on
the damned American. Burning alive the man who had done this to him would be
much more enjoyable than burning crutches.
One reason, perhaps the most important, for Maxim's journey to the capital,
had been to consult the best doctors in the country.
The doctors he sometimes thought that the more famous and high-priced the
scoundrels were, the more dull-witted had been telling Maxim for weeks that
under their expert treatment he would soon be completely recovered from his
wounds. At each consultation they looked approvingly at the newly healed scars
(not knowing they had been engraved in his flesh by precious silver), and
tested with satisfaction the strength and range of motion of his human limbs.
But of course the would-be healers never dreamed that he was anything more
than a man they didn't know the half of it! and he was not about to enlighten
them.
It had been a surprise to realize that none of these medical men knew enough,
or were going to discover enough, even in the course of close examination, to
bring his real problem into their view. In this, as in so much else, they
simply did not know what they were doing.
In his imagination he could hear himself explaining: "You see, doctor, my
real trouble is that, whenever I turn into a bear, my left arm and leg remain
discouragingly human. This, as you may imagine, interferes terribly with my
activity in that other shape."
In his imagination he could see the graybeards nodding, polishing their
pince-nez thoughtfully. Oh, that explains it, sir. Now we understand your
situation. Yes. Of course.
Bah!
The more he contemplated his own situation, the more his thoughts turned to
his grandfather, whom he had never seen, but who had evidently enjoyed the
same powers that were now his own. Agafon had testified to as much, and so,
toward the end of his life, had Maxim's own father.
And the more Maxim thought about Grandfather, the more the question obsessed
him: was it possible that the old man could be still alive, out there at the
frozen northern edge of the world? As far as Maxim knew, no one in the family
in his lifetime had even communicated with the Siberian estate. Father had
been out there once, but he had undertaken his only expedition before any of
his children were born, and had never been willing to say much about it
afterward.
But now he, Maxim Ivanovich, was going to do it.
Padarok Sivera. Gift of the North, and what an ambiguous gift! Land no one [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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