If there were a higher power that could bring back
everyone related to the gold of the Territory:
who died on the route,
or lost their way on the continent,
they would've done it all over again.
Not for the sake of money,
they'd learned the true worth of it in the Territory.
And not in the name of duty,
one's true duty lies within, rather than in words.
And not for glory.
But for the sake of the unknown,
which is the beginning and the drive of any person's life.
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, MAIN OFFICE
Over the past three years, gold production on the River
has suffered a drastic fall.
In 1958 we reduced production by five hundred kilograms.
Last year we lost a ton and a half.
MEETING OF CHIEF ENGINEERS
There are no new mine fields,
the increase in gold reserves is negligible.
If nothing changes, many heads will roll, mine first of all,
and all of you are looking at a dreary joyless retirement.
The plan is to cut all costs, except for those for gold.
For example, the Territory, comrade Chinkov.
Tell us why do we need the Territory's tin?
Just in case.
Comrade Sergushova will write about gold search.
She's a journalist from Leningrad.
Well…
Where was I?
Why do we need the Territory's tin?
Yes. Why do we need the Territory's tin?
It's been proposed to close the geological survey there.
I don't care about Buddha.
The Territory is just one of seven surveys.
It can be shut down.
Especially since it's a tin-bearing province.
Nobody here believes it has gold.
You can believe or not believe in ideas,
but gold is quite a tangible thing.
You can know or not know about it. Unfortunately we do not know
whether there is any gold in the Territory.
Chinkov stopped listening.
He remembered the smell of cedar scrub,
the smoke of forgotten campfires and confidence in his own success.
They think Chinkov is finished, but he hasn't even started yet.
Now. It's time to act.
I won't give you the Territory.
Ilya Nikolaevich!
I want to write about the Territory's gold.
I am glad. But you've just heard that there isn't and can't be any!
I will write about the Territory's gold!
THERE IS NO RECORD OF ANY GOLD
KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN MINED IN THE TERRITORY
HEADQUARTERS OF THE TERRITORY GEOLOGICAL SURVEY TEAM
This is what summer looks like this year.
In the mountains in the south the larch has already blossomed.
Genrikh Furdetsky has been appointed
the Head of the Territory Survey only a month ago.
The management believed that, even if Furdetsky was a loser,
Chinkov would still manage the Survey,
and if he was to be reckoned with
it he might be used as a counterbalance to Chinkov.
What can I do for you, Ilya Nikolaevich?
I'm staying here.
They've called you, haven't they?
I'm staying on at the Survey, so we'll have to work together.
I am always happy to.
Get in my way and I'll destroy you.
It's in your interest to join my team.
What exactly do you want?
Very little. Don't act behind my back.
No messages to the town without approval.
I implement production tasks, you provide support,
plus accommodation, equipment, logistics.
Everything according to regulations.
I suggest you don't waste time, just agree.
A complete muddle.
What constitutes this… phenomenon?
I've seen the barracks. The boys left for tundra months ago,
and there's still ice in the corners.
They're not boys, they're geologists.
Household is Survey Head Furdetsky's business.
Of course, you have greater concerns!
Projects!
Prize-winners and banquets.
Come autumn, and the boys are back,
I'll elect myself to the trade union committee
and declare war on you padishahs.
Here I thought, old fool, I can't be surprised anymore.
Tell Kutsenko - tomorrow we'll set out to Mongolov.
They'll hardly be glad to see you.
Ilya Nikolaevich Chinkov, nicknamed Buddha,
came to the River as a young engineer.
There he laid the foundation of a future legend,
based on ruthlessness towards himself and others, and luck.
He discovered one of the biggest goldfields of the country.
But half a year ago he unexpectedly applied to be transferred
to the Territory, a remote Geological Survey
on the shore of the Arctic Ocean.
THOUGH…
THE WEAK WON'T SURVIVE
THE ELGAI RIVER VALLEY, EASTERN MINES
Pull!
Greetings, Comrade Chief!
How is it going?
There's nothing in this pit except my salary.
How far have you gone?
We've reached eight meters. Kid is panning out the samples.
Comrade Mongolov, two intruders are approaching the base.
Barreling boldly. There's liquor in their backpacks.
I don't see them.
Chief, give us some, please?
I'll drink and do an Indian dance called "Ganges".
How are you doing, Kid?
Get the samples to the base by noon.
Will do, Chief. Will be there on the dot.
Sir!
I'll bring it all.
-Ilya Nikolaevich! -Vladimir Mikhailovich!
This is Klim Alekseevich Kutsenko,
the best sluicer of Severstroi.
If you would be so kind as to whip up some tea and soup.
Vladimir Mikhailovich,
could you ever believe in the industrial gold in the Territory?
I think there's no industrial gold here.
That's all guff and crude hullabaloo.
No need for trousers?
Sorry, there's only one bottle, so
I'm counting on your profound moderation in the use of alcohol.
The samples are coming. I'll have a look!
Well, Vladimir Mikhailovich!
Are you planning to dig in the upper riches?
Check for gold,
pass both tributaries?
No. We have an approved the project for tin.
There is no gold here.
The traces we get here are the same as in Moscow.
This is a tin-bearing province.
Gold and tin don't mix. Everyone knows that.
Well, I'm not everyone. I'm Chinkov.
You shouldn't use a painted pan.
Doesn't hold the sample well.
Yeah, it's painted, how did you…
When you pan, don't drain from the corner.
Use the plane surface and swirl.
Yes, exactly, I pour from the corner. I like to do it like that.
No gold bits here,
but I fancy there ought to be in this soil.
Three years ago
my old friend Mikhail Katinsky led a party to a river here.
The tundra devil tossed him three test pits
with samples of weighable gold.
Katinsky wrote a report to retarget his party for gold.
After that, he didn't find a single sample.
They badgered him…
Delicious!
So, where are your people?
Baklakov should return today.
Foreman Salakhov's group left on a multi-day route.
They're going back through Katinsky's ground
if you're interested.
I need to know where the cassiterite ends.
The Vatap River basin is to the east. We don't know anything about it.
In that regard, do you want to try beyond the Vatap River?
Send your Baklakov out to check it for about twenty days.
We need boats to get across. That's a route a group should take.
I was living well then:
I had a machine gun - border patrol gave it to me.
And I had a horse called Galya.
It was a good horse,
didn't wash clothes, that's all.
Are you Baklakov?
Yes.
What do you think of a solitary route for fifteen or twenty days?
It can be done. That's fine.
It's impossible to carry it out "fine".
It's through granite massifs. You'd have to take a lot of samples.
To the Vatap River and further into the Ketung Plateau.
Five or six hundred kilometers.
I'll do it.
And how do you intend to cross the Vatap River?
Don't know. I need to take a look.
Yes, yes. Apparently, this route is just what you need.
Go to sleep.
Comrade Mongolov and I will decide.
Vladimir Mikhailovich!
We need to talk.
Let's go.
Vladimir Mikhailovich! I agree with your decision
to send Baklakov on multi-day reconnaissance survey.
It's the right decision.
Sergey! Bring the Dahmer Map.
In the pack box, under the table, the red one!
What is this show for?
I was afraid you'd object. Decided to pin you down.
You could simply give an order.
Then I'd be taking responsibility,
and the Survey doesn't need emergencies connected with my name.
-Are you afraid to be accountable? -Heaven forbid.
Look around you. Severstroi is all around us,
people like me aren't put on trial here. I'm Buddha!
Why do you need this trip, Ilya?
Have a look!
Where's that from?
Panned it in the upper reaches of that river. Kutsenko has a rare gift.
I have a feeling, Vladimir Mikhailovich,
that in your pits there should be weighable gold.
I vouch for my sluicers.
You have the right to investigate.
Salakhov worked two seasons for Katinsky.
It was Katinsky who made him a sluicer.
THE SERAYA RIVER, OLD BASE
Three years ago he panned the those nuggets for Katinsky
in this place.
The nuggets ruined Katinsky's life.
Salakhov felt guilty.
Why are we stuck on this rusty old spot, when it's barren after all?
These are the last samples.
Finish them and we'll leave.
Be patient, God of Fire!
It's fine. I am patient.
I've caught a little cold. I'm sorry.
UPSTREAM THE ELGAI RIVER
I took a note of this place
back when we headed for the base.
This is my personal request, Klim Alekseevich.
I understand.
Sluice to the last open water, to the ice buildup.
Then leave for Mongolov's base. They'll wait for you there.
I'll pick you up myself.
Just don't tell anyone about this.
His heart gave exactly sixty beats per minute,
his blood ran smooth and powerful through his veins.
He was enjoying that special kind of comfort
that a wanderer creates wherever he goes.
Perfect is the country of colorful tundra, dark mountains, and pallid sky.
Perfect is the solitude of the surveyor
amid unknown mountains and valleys.
It's perfect to never die,
and Baklakov didn't doubt for a minute that he was immortal.
There are no limits and no borders. It's just normal eternal life.
THE SERAYA RIVER
For the first time Kutsenko was fulfilling Chinkov's request,
and not an order.
He was zealous.
Fate had brought them together after the war.
Three years Chinkov spent drilling him,
making him guess even before panning
whether there was gold there or not.
And Kutsenko was carried away by it all
the pan became part of him. He dreamed of tails, sandbars,
shoals and slate druses.
His luck found him when he made a checking tour of Nadezhda Stream.
Other panners had declared that stream to be empty.
Kutsenko spent twice the allotted time there and found gold.
Then, following Chinkov's example,
they started calling him Klim Alekseevich.
All I need is a mug of liquor
and a hunk of venison.
I ruined myself with alcohol.
Now I've sworn off it.
Did they treat it?
No. Treated myself.
When my wife died, I stopped.
You won't start again?
No.
I have children to care for.
I've got two,
Mishka and Tosya.
I got them out of the orphanage.
They live with my sister.
I send her all my wages.
They write: "Daddy, come home."
Ilya Nikolaevich is right - this is a country of great opportunities.
I won't give you the Territory!
THE VATAP RIVER
THE INFLUX OF THE SERAYA RIVER TO THE ELGAI RIVER
The God of Fire was tortured by the imperfection of his own life.
He had neither a son Mishka nor a daughter Tosya
and he had never been married.
But his dream of a life all normal people live was so great
that he confused it with reality.
Why are there so many people
who tried to live,
but failed?
CAMP OF HERDSMAN KYAYE
Many people had come Kyaye's way in the course of his long life.
He liked to think about them, about the words they had spoken.
Some of them had smelled of sweat.
Even their thoughts, Kyaye felt, smelled of work.
He respected them.
Others smelled of money. Kyaye was sorry for them.
It made him angry when people said that life was good or bad.
It was simply varied.
It was absurd to think that money could improve it.
Kyaye's memory retained the smells of herbs, ice, spring snow,
a flight of a frost-coated raven and its hoarse caw across the snows,
a fall of a wolf shot down,
and taste of deer meat.
Every day and every hour his memory also held the sad recognition
of the inevitable succession of snows, rains, and human lives.
What struck Kyaye most of all was the inevitability of change.
It could not be halted.
Mikhailovich.
How are the samples?
The Chief Engineer was here.
He showed me gold panned in the upper reaches.
Katinsky had the same.
We spent five days on Katinsky's old base.
There's nothing… Neither gold, nor tin.
Chinkov thinks we should have weighable gold here.
What's going on?
What's going on? Speak!
On the day Chinkov arrived,
three flakes were found in a sample…
I don't know why I took them.
I thought I'd put them in a letter and send them to Sonya.
We went to school together.
I got into circus training. I thought I'd impress her.
And she said: "Why not a waiter?"
She liked Jack London's heroes.
That's why I'm here…
I immediately wrote to her about gold, and that I work panning.
She began to send me long letters…
I took the gold right before you came, of all times,
I couldn't give it back…
Gray called me an asshole. Because of you.
Threw the flakes into the water.
I'm ashamed.
You little merchants!
They throw nuggets away.
Sons of bitches…
Is it your gold?
It belongs to the state!
Criminals.
I'm ready to face my punishment.
What? Do you want to be tried?
To ruin your life?
Well.
No one else needs to know.
Don't do it, Vladimir Mikhailovich.
This'll make you an accessory.
Get out!
Redeem it through work.
Tamara,
did you hear a gunshot?
I don't know.
Probably the gunshot came from beyond the distant hills of Time.
Maybe it rang out many years ago
and has now returned.
Or it came from the future…
That's probably it.
Next morning, Mongolov left for the lower reaches of Elgai.
It was confirmation of an old adage known to all prospectors:
when a district is barren,
you must work three times harder to prove it's barren.
He discovered cinnabar by chance:
no one in the Territory expected to find it there.
Mongolov discovered a deposit of mercury of global importance.
Stick to a different road.
Go the other way.
Don't harm the light-faced ones. Have mercy. Take care of them.
Hey!
Anybody there?
I'm a geologist. I'm ill.
A geologist - that is good.
I'm a herdsman. I know you're ill.
I heard a gunshot.
So I look, and there's a tent.
No one gets out in the morning, no one in the evening.
Sure he must be ill.
Is your herd far away?
It will take you an hour and a half.
I suppose you should go.
If you stay alone, you die. For sure.
My name is Kyaye.
THE LOSINAYA RIVER, REMOTE SURVEY TEAM
Don't you have you any icons here?
Is there nothing for us to pray to?
I'm tired out.
Perhaps I'd better take a bath.
Coffee and a cigar wouldn't hurt either.
What do you think, Apryatin?
It'd be nice to know with whom Jeanne Bose sleeps as well.
And what's the news on flying saucers.
Here.
Human remains and these things.
It must have been the second Soyuz-zoloto tour.
Don't forget to radio.
-Do you think we have to report? -We're obliged to.
Though I could do the rites myself.
The grave of an unknown martyr.
A mystery of the tundra.
From clay we come, to clay we shall return.
Such is the sad finale.
Tamara was sitting half naked
as per the ancient custom of the women of the tribe.
The naked body was a norm to their way of life.
It was rational and healthy.
Kyaye was pleased his granddaughter observed the custom
and allowed her body to breathe.
Eat, eat.
In the morning you eat,
in the afternoon you eat, in the evening and at night you eat.
And when you feel you're strong again, you go.
My granddaughter will take you to the trail.
A deer walks,
a bear walks,
a geologist will make it.
Zhora Apryatin, Chief of the Far Reconnaissance Survey
in public tried to keep up with the ideal created by his imagination -
the strong silent man, ready with his gun.
Zhora Apryatin, the Polar wolf.
Nature had certainly begun Zhora on the Viking model.
But stepped aside somewhere along the way
and left his grandfather to do the job.
A geographer, explorer of Central Asia.
-Report. -The remains are found--
Report that to him. Tell me your results.
What results?!
-Can a helicopter reach that place? -Not without refueling.
-What about on foot? -Two days.
Major, have you decided?
Let them bury him and write it down, it's a clear case.
And please check how explosives are stored on the base.
Does your area have a gold-bearing potential?
Otto Yanovich chose our area--
I'm not interested in what he thought.
This isn't a testing ground for experiments.
Here's the order, Apryatin.
By autumn you will report to me
on the gold-bearing potential.
We have an approved task.
I don't care. Consider it canceled, right now, by me.
Why the argument?
We are working mainly in the mountains.
We should pan the upper reaches of the basic water flows.
Wash the samples rough.
Stop the trenching. Send the diggers to the pits.
Just two or three survey lines at the main streams.
There's nothing to argue about!
That's reasonable.
I ask you not to raise your voice at me.
And give me precise instructions on the gold.
And I ask for a notice in writing.
I can't change the plan without that.
Geologists are not just engineers.
We must have a code of honor.
Your colleague died while searching for gold here.
His work's results are unknown.
But to do a simple duty to him,
you ask for a bit of paper!
Empty rhetoric.
Your demands are empty rhetoric!
You know the order. Gurin will tell you how to carry it out.
Your grandfather would be ashamed of you, Apryatin.
How well he played you, Georgy.
That's a boss! He has a goal. He has brains.
And no qualms known as ethics.
He is a bad man.
He flogged you. Take it like a man.
And remember - you'll see who wins only in the end.
I'll bury the martyr.
What to choose, a cross or a pillar?
Decide for yourself. You're a cynic, Andrey. It's disgusting.
I'm not a cynic. I'm an individualist philosopher.
THE KETUNG PLATEAU
The Territory Survey was famous for one thing:
its geologists were regarded as the Old Believers.
Legs were their means of transport, the hammer was their tool of knowledge,
all else was from the Evil One.
The Severstroi principles were hold sacred.
The main one being formulated
by Joseph Conrad, long before Severstroi existed.
It was summed up in a brief maxim.
Do or die.
THE TERRITORY
Half of them have two or three valuable professions.
Half of them are pure gems in their fields.
When they're sober.
Take the ones that I offer.
And remember that you can never
make a person be a human being under the threat of beating.
I've handed over the materials. Fix me up somewhere.
Sergey! Ragged muzzle.
Barrack 25, but only in a week. It's not quite finished yet.
I'll live at the construction site.
Write out the voucher. I'll bring my things.
Come along to my mine, engineer.
I'll give you a place to live. A salary.
You can bring along a wife.
I bet you're dreaming of them, eh?
Many roads lead to the capital of the Soviet Lithuania
and are directed from the city to its suburbs.
From the East and the West, from the North and the South
we see the characteristic Vilnius landscape everywhere.
And going down to the valley from the mountains surrounding Vilnius
we always admire the beautiful city and its suburbs.
Chief! Digging pits in autumn?!
When the permafrost is thawing?
I'd shove you into this mess of clay and water
and keep there for a day.
Phoenix!
Only plebs believe happiness is
about lying backside up and doing nothing.
Isn't that what I am? I am a pleb.
You're working in the Arctic. There are no plebs here.
Who digs the trenches then?
Princes? Crouched in those trenches?
No, Chief. We don't understand idiotic orders.
Tomorrow's the last day. In the vicinities of Vilnius.
Enough. It's an ultimatum.
Finish your dinner, chaps. Break.
Yes?
What is it, what do you need?
Well… We're the only occupants of this unfinished house…
I would like…
Did you dump the compote?
I needed a can. I make tea in a can. It has a different taste.
Who are you?
Sergey Baklakov. Geologist. Just back from the field.
Every night all sorts barge in here with cognac…
We'll fend them off.
I want to eat like a stray cat. Or a dog.
Like a stray cat-dog.
-What's your name? -What's my name?
The honorable Comrade Sergushova, that's what.
Go bring some compote.
Hey, joker, either climb in or close it!
Konstantin Vasilchikov. Tank tester. In the past.
Ilya Chinkov. Gold prospector.
What, you're feeling sick out there too?
No, no.
The bomb is rumbling
Like a heavy bass
When we liberated Austria from the Nazis,
I served a year there in a special team - we gathered technology…
My landlady, Frau Louisa,
would bring coffee to my room every morning.
And cream. In separate chinaware.
Real Chinese porcelain, by the way…
Well, women are always women.
They brew good coffee in Vienna…
Yeah…
My son would have turned twenty today.
The war began, and I was here looking for gold.
I didn't make it to him, to Leningrad…
The twists of life…
How can you guess where it, life that is, has a hidden crack.
Just a small load and that's it…
It should be fried without oil,
never close the cover, and remove it as soon as the venison turns white.
You do it all so deftly, whereas I can't do anything.
This is called pasteurized venison.
Geology is a culinary profession.
Why're you staring at me? Yes, I'm hungry.
It's embarrassing to watch a person eat.
I've never been a breadwinner.
It's nice. When things are simple, I enjoy being with people.
Tell me something heroic instead.
Have you ever stood inspired beside a mound or a river
and thought: there'll be a city here!
What am I, an emperor?
Best case, we dream like this:
here there'll be three drilling rigs, ten tents,
and fifty men.
Good evening.
Why are you so uptight?
Have you brought me a medal? Or an eviction notice?
-Will you fly? -Yes.
I'll try to draw up a leave of absence and everything.
See me in the morning. It'll take five days at least.
Goodbye.
THE LOSINAYA RIVER
Zhora Apryatin's team was rafting the river in rubber boats.
In late winter, on the cusp of spring
when the ragged topography of the tundra is blown by snow
prospecting parties get to the mountains by planes.
In autumn when it's impossible to land a plane on the rocks,
there are only two ways:
they are either picked up by tractor trains, if possible,
or go on foot to the river, then raft to the ocean,
where they are picked up by any available means.
The latter is the most dangerous.
Many geologists were lost finishing the season in such a way.
When he finished panning, Kutsenko went to Mongolov's base.
If Ilya Nikolaevich said they would be waiting for him,
then they were waiting for him.
The frosts had begun. The rivers froze over night.
Apryatin suffered from cold and the knowledge
that the work had been done badly.
There was no model survey, not a beautiful map sheet.
Idiotic orders had been carried out. But they found nothing.
Zhora knew Severstroi did not believe in objective difficulties.
So he would be responsible for the gaps on the map.
The project had been virtually ruined, and there was nothing to replace it.
Attention! The chiefs are coming!
I'm a tin man my job is to deal with cassiterite.
The issue of the mine has been approved.
It won't be, Vladimir Mikhailovich.
I won't give you a leave, nor the tin-mines.
I need you here.
I offer you to take charge of the prospecting for placer gold.
That's irresponsible, Ilya Nikolaevich.
I'm not going to take part in this wild gamble.
And if it's an order?
For the first time in my life
I shall answer it with a medical note.
Don't force me to do that.
I have chest pains. I'm flying to Moscow tomorrow.
I'll go to a doctor.
I ask you not to report to Furdetsky until my return.
Thanks for the cinnabar.
Fine, I will wait until you're back.
Vladimir Semenovich,
thank you.
Onward, Jupiter's favorites.
Hold on, guys. If the samples fall overboard,
the chief hasn't got enough cartridges to shoot us all.
Gurin wasn't with Apryatin.
He was doing a common friendly duty.
Burying the geologist's remains.
Then he was going solo to the ocean, to Whaler Cape,
where Eskimo boats were to pick everybody up.
Hello, people!
All of the party are assembled.
Finished the route without a single corpse.
Who said we couldn't do it?
We can! By God, we can!
Let's drink to the end of the season.
Chief! We'd drown for you, if needed.
Drink with us, Doctor. You're strong.
And your Chinkov is strong too.
But where would you be without us workers?
With your permission, Chief, I'll drink later. In solitude.
In Central Asia, I climbed three days to that one almost inaccessible pass.
Why? To drink fifty grams of cognac,
to look down upon the world, and think about the transience of life.
Why did I do it?
The answer is simple.
The folly of the ages.
The desire to prove at all costs my singularity:
I'm not like everyone else!
You'll perish.
What are you talking about?
Nothing. It's marked on your face.
Nonsense. The main thing is to keep your distance.
The main rule of navigation in crowded places.
That's the secret…
The boats are coming.
According to an unwritten law of Severstroi
a geologist returning from the field was entitled to three days.
By the same unwritten law, he was expected to report
to the Survey building at 9 a.m.
clean-shaven, decently dressed, and perfectly sober.
How do you do, woman.
Come in.
Are you going to live here? Where's Baklakov?
Baklakov.
Baklakov…
departed for his family estate in the village.
Is he your friend?
I don't have friends. I have buddies, like everyone in our time.
I'm rooming with Baklakov because it's convenient.
He's a simple soul. Occupied with body building and geology.
He doesn't talk about the divine. Or women.
He's probably very good.
Charming. Our simple Soviet fanatic.
And you?
A penultimate adventurer.
Why penultimate?
It'd be a pity if I were the last. Cognac?
Cognac.
Cognac requires gold-plated glasses.
Only then there is color.
-Where do you get this cognac from? -Acquaintances.
They send books, drinks, and records.
They do their best to keep me up with the times.
I smoke cigars like Churchill.
I'd like to live to a ripe old age. To see how it all ends.
What exactly? Excuse me, if this sounds like an interview.
What exactly?
You're a journalist? My respects.
How what ends?
The universal hysteria for apartments, clothes, and cars.
Consumers are taking over the world. And to hell with them!
I propose a toast to your career.
Let's.
I can draw up a template for any correspondence on this.
Go on.
Leather torbasa boots, blizzard,
enthusiasm, snowy expanses,
youthful fervor, the old nomad.
You don't need to ham it up. That's my job.
I respect that. I respect work.
And my neighbor and colleague Baklakov respects it.
We all respect work.
What a type you are…
I'm not a type. I'm singular. A wanderer - that's who I am.
How do you manage to be a wanderer?
I have a PhD,
but I know my field on the level of an average professor.
I speak two languages. It makes me a welcome guest everywhere.
When I get tired,
I'll choose a spot on the map and move there.
Moving allows me to not own things.
It's easier.
-You don't find it an empty life? -Sad.
Previously Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Alexander conquered the world.
Now it's inexorably being taken over by consumers.
Everywhere.
From Lake Titicaca to Mozhaisk. The most ruthless conquest.
So I love adventurers.
Consumers have outlawed them. So I have adapted.
I try to maintain myself in this universal craze.
To have nothing, except myself.
What an amazing guy!
Amazing guys sit in cafes, sip port wine through straws
and pretend to be playboys.
No, I'm the penultimate adventurer…
I am on par with these Arctic supermen.
-By the way, do you want to see them? -I do. And how?
The Field Workers' Night.
Just the heroes of tundra and a bottle of wine, no outsiders allowed.
A treasure.
-So, are you going to invite me? -To the Field Workers' Night?
I'm a complicated man, but accessible.
You're not so complicated.
You know, Ivan Egorovich,
it's a deposit of global impact.
MOSCOW, MINISTRY OF THE GEOLOGY
Mongolov insists that the entire mountain is made of cinnabar.
We took a ton of it.
Just walked over, picked it up, and transported it.
Is this the reason you flew to Moscow?
Robykin has called twice.
So you don't believe it?
What's this?
Take a look.
It's the gold that's not there.
Did you pan it? Coarse fraction…
What do you want, Ilya?
Money. Lots of money. And more money.
Are you here in secret?
Yes. And I mined the gold in secret.
This isn't easy, as it was on the river.
There is a sinking alluvial deposit. We need a major survey.
With money we will provide a new deposit.
You want another State Prize, do you?
One more prize is quite good of course.
But you know, Ivan,
I want to tell myself I'm not ashamed of my life
before I die of the third heart attack.
To say I did almost everything what I was intended for.
Or at least that I tried to do it. Yes?
Why did you take cognac out? For show, or what?
Where has Chinkov disappeared to?
It's the second day I can't reach him. Over.
The ATVs you've sent have proved perfect for the Arctic terrain.
The workers asked to thank you, Comrade Robykin. Over.
Where's Chinkov? Over.
He flew to a hospital due to a heart condition.
All the field parties returned safely, Comrade Robykin. Over.
What do you think, you don't answer to anyone? Over.
How can we, Comrade Robykin.
I'll send a preliminary report to you personally in a week. Over.
I wish the Survey team every success. Over and out.
Baklakov was late. His father died three days before his arrival.
He gave out all of father's good things.
He took only a big album with family photos.
Baklakov realized with irrefutable clarity that from now on
the only thing he had
was a room on the Arctic Ocean shore, and that the Territory was his home.
So long. Read Ramberg. It will be good for you.
Andrey, let's talk.
Problems with the report?
Almost.
The logic is simple.
Your position isn't lamentable, but delightful,
because you have the option to write a custom report.
I'll be serious.
Have you ever read the classic reports?
Mushketov? Obruchev?
Bogdanovich? No?
So much for years of study.
The old classics wrote geological novels,
they wrote essays about the individual variants of their hypotheses.
They put time into describing the landscape so
that you shared their frame of mind, their way of thinking.
And what about the Mineral Deposits section?
You're nothing if not stubborn.
I suggest you write a geological sketch. Uninhibited mind play.
Your personal perspective on the structure the earth
based on our area.
The mineral deposits will take care of themselves.
Try to understand why Buddha is eager for gold.
Bear in mind that Buddha doesn't take a step without a reason.
He is the only intelligent person among you supermen.
Stop teasing.
If I see the sacred fire of a thought process in your eyes,
I'll work on petrography section.
OK.
By the way,
I lost a bet for a dozen bottles of champagne.
So do drop by our lovely friend tonight.
No, I'll be working.
-Well as you wish. -Maybe I'll drop by after nine.
Baklakov spent the entire week in the Survey working on the report.
The flat colored sheet of paper
contained a four-dimensional world of
correlations of bed dislocations,
fractures in the earth's crust, deep-down explosions of magma,
the violent madness of volcanic eruptions.
The violet field of the Triassic.
A presumed Paleozoic massif in the east.
To the south, a green line
showed the effusives of the Ketung Plateau.
He must first get a historical picture.
Faults. For some reason his thoughts kept returning to the faults.
The mountain passes followed them, the river valleys,
the fault escarpments.
It was here that the magma broke through, they formed the relief.
Why pay so much attention to faults?
Suddenly he thought it was
no use burying himself in all those facts.
Or hiding behind small details.
A prophet's power lies in moral certainty.
He had to lay a foundation. The details could come later.
There was gold here - the ubiquitous traces proved that for a fact.
The granites brought it. That was also a fact.
But in these massifs no one had ever seen lore gold.
That was the third fact.
Baklakov took a sheet of paper and a pen
and suddenly, instead of all the questions,
he started writing a letter.
It was a silly one about a friend of his who had tried
to get a light from the Aurora Borealis with a magnifying glass,
about a cockroach called Syoma that lived in a crack over his bed.
While he was writing, he understood absolutely clearly
that there was a special type of granite, as of yet unknown.
In such a case, gold deposits should be expected
in all rivers of the Territory.
That night he got the main thing.
Intuition and confidence.
He knew he was right.
-Good morning. -Morning!
You disappeared. Why don't you stop by anymore?
Gurin wrote some notes, asked me to give them to you.
He's been living with me, working on his report.
You're rather cheerful and shiny,
full of color.
Who is Tamara?
Tamara!
Today I had a good night.
I was suddenly filled with the joy of the coming summer.
Mongolov says I reduced the amount of evil on earth.
My God. Under the influence of Gurin, you'll soon become a philosopher.
You don't have to be one. You're just a simple superman.
They should write about you.
Go to the tundra, meet the people.
Mongolov has such people, more like screws.
They can be neither hammered in, nor pulled out.
Write about them.
These people of yours, these screws,
we can't write about them.
We need those who come here for the romance of it, and have clean pasts…
I'm a bad journalist, I can't write any other way.
Yes, they're not smooth, or clean.
They're the first here, where others will flock to for romance.
Maybe there will be a city here. Maybe more than one.
But a city needs a foundation.
You need a hard worker nicknamed Kefir.
He isn't holy.
But hard work goes hand in hand with Kefir, they are one.
Maybe this is his holiness.
You know, your duty is to be a very good person.
Why?
Some people have it harder than others.
Others get away with things, but they can't.
They have an obligation to be better.
If they decide to chase their dreams, they are doubly obligated.
Why?
Most of us are scared to chase our dreams.
MOUTH OF THE ELGAI RIVER, EASTERN SURVEY AREA
Bosses think that a worker just took his up-front wages,
found himself some rotgut, well, they call it port wine,
and sleeps it off somewhere.
But the management spends sleepless nights,
takes pills and drops for this and that.
If they go to sleep, the whole project will collapse.
But what is production, Gray?
Right!
It's a tree!
And the workers grow it.
When the bosses fall asleep, the workers take a rest.
We can do it, lads!
We can do it!
-Is there any more? -You've got a lucky eye, come down.
Toilers!
Salute with your right hand.
When you hear "March," begin with your right foot.
Anti-aircraft guns shoot up.
The boys did not beat the air. Worked really hard.
Here you are, Vladimir Mikhailovich!
Where?
Line four hundred thirty, pit eight.
At ten meters.
Want some liquor?
Can't have that.
It'll scare luck away. It's the law of prospectors.
Kefir!
Start the boiler. We need to sluice. Winter sluicing.
Now we can't wait until summer…
Sluicing at the lower line was empty.
The sands turned out to be barren.
Mongolov ordered the boiler be taken to the next line.
The second line was also barren.
The painful spirit of failure overcame the party.
Where's the logic, Mongolov thought,
A nugget the size of an egg was not just a trace.
It couldn't be an accident.
But the gold industry didn't live off nuggets.
What kept it going was gold grains and dust.
Grains and dust would have to be panned.
Mongolov was getting excited.
He understood that the Chief Engineer's plans
must extend much further than Elgai.
I read your report, Sergey Aleksandrovich.
Your reasoning makes perfect sense.
I propose you plan the route
and plan a circumferential party.
You will head it.
You'll follow the boundaries of the Survey grounds
and write a report estimating the
the Territory's gold-bearing potential. I will be co-author.
I'll give you Kutsenko as a sluicer. Take Gurin as your instrument man.
I don't want Gurin. Personal reasons.
In the Elgai Valley traps for deposits should be
as you described in your report.
You guessed it. I believe you guessed it for the entire Territory.
This is the most complicated and important party.
I need the plan in a week.
Remember, no matter how complicated and long the route you plan,
it still won't be enough.
As soon as you're clear about the route,
take an airplane and drop food stores.
Only you will be responsible for the party's results.
I don't care what you need to do to carry it out.
That's my concern.
Your concern is to keep your brain hot, to develop ideas
and then adjust them according to the reality.
In common parlance, it's called wisdom.
I oblige you to be relentless and wise
in everything that's about the gold here.
Your future depends entirely on this summer.
I wish you luck.
And don't disappoint me. I believe in your strength.
Salakhov, find me a good place for the camp.
Food stuffs on a second flight. Let's load the detonators.
Chief! There's still space. We can take grub.
It'll go on the second flight.
It's strictly forbidden to transport explosives
and detonators in the same transport. I'm accountable.
Let me fly!
Are you new here, Chief? Take an airplane for a donkey?
Load whatever on a donkey.
Enough. Finish loading.
Finishing.
-What's that? -Grub.
Stuff happens. Last year I spent two weeks waiting for a plane…
You're not going to eat, but to work.
The plane took off, came back as scheduled, but that was it.
A blizzard set in.
Stop!
The first fine day with a good forecast happened to be seven days later.
At the airfield Apryatin learned
that Baklakov had grabbed the only available "Annushka".
The only thing Apryatin could do was to pray
for Baklakov not to smash the plane on his idiotic tour
and for those two to endure the waiting.
Salakhov and the God of Fire had no food.
Apryatin told nobody about it,
though he knew that if Salakhov and the God of Fire died
he would have to shoot himself.
Six drums with food and one containing rubber boats
to drop along Baklakov's forthcoming heroic route
were filled, wired and delivered to the plane.
Baklakov had transferred all the drop
points to the pilot's navigating map.
A week before that Kutsenko flew away by post plane.
He had either to rent or buy a whaleboat,
deliver it by tractor to the mouth of the Grey River
and to preserve a base there.
So we land,
pick up your Kutsenko, and immediately take off. Nuts.
On this damn cape you never know if there's wind or not.
Hello! Cape Banners!
Ground control! Senya! Lazy bum!
At least put long johns on the pole.
Do it the old way. Light a fire I'll circle once more.
Engineer,
The craft with your colleague had an accident on Cape Banners.
Everyone's alive. They don't know when it can be fixed.
You can stop hanging out here.
Patient!
You have a visitor.
Come in.
We have lights out at eleven. I'll bring you an oil lamp then.
Well, go on, chat.
How did you know?
Tamara, when you turn eighteen, will you marry me?
Next year. I will.
You're kind and strong, although completely ugly right now.
What are you waiting for?
There was bad weather. Now there's no airplane.
I've thought a lot about you, Apryatin.
Your grandfather asked.
But if your people died - I'll put you on trial.
Go to the radio and send a message in my name to the city
that we urgently need an AN-2 ambulance on skis.
Do you believe in God, Apryatin?
I'm a Komsomol member!
I've been praying for days.
Pray, Apryatin, pray.
Salakhov, you won't swallow me, will you?
What took you so long, Chief?
…those were our granddads!
-Well? -Katinsky died. Mikhail Arkadievich.
Hush!
Katinsky died.
Mikhail Katinsky
saw the world from the wondrous heights of high moral truths.
And we?
We live and die. It's a shame.
There is much evil in the world.
So, our main and common task
and our personal quest is to get rid of it.
During the war it was clear - take up a sword or gun.
But in peacetime,
honest work should be the elimination of our universal evil.
That's the higher purpose.
What's the probability that Vasya the Cat
poking his paw wherever he likes,
will be able to type "The tale about Tzar Saltan"?
One in three billion.
The possibility of your going with me to the field
is within this probability.
And no editorial tasks will help.
There's cold there which isn't possible to escape, dirt, obscene lexicon.
Finally, sometimes there's no food.
I can't.
Enough moping. Look at the world in a different way.
Do something useful.
Write a novel. About us. About supermen.
Here's the first line.
"Two beach mariners stand by the Arctic Ocean,
watching the sunset and the melting ice."
Enough. Go.
Loving you is so exciting,
Just as diving amidst ice.
Loving you is just as pointless
As trying to stop the flow of time.
Loving you is just as useless
As attempts to catch the wind
Loving you is just as hopeless
As to count on cliffs' will
Loving you means there's no other.
There's no fate that can be better…
To ache in secret, ache forever,
To howl with wolves in desperation
Loving you is gulping water
In the desert without relief,
To be cast aside one day
In submission to your whim.
Loving you is to swim the ocean
Where waves deliver backhand blows
Loving you is truly precious
A luxury I can't afford.
Loving you holds as much perils
As slipping on a cliff's rough edge
But oh my God, you are so perfect
That this love I can't escape.
THE NGANAI HILLS, SURVEY PARTY
Welcome, Chief!
Wow, mountain skis!
Sure thing.
King of the Kavgolov Hills, that's me.
Have you been to the south?
Certainly, Chief. There's a rock intrusion over there.
Maybe just the tip of non-discharged magma.
Wonderful contact. A ready-made laboratory.
But… It needs stripping.
Chief, I'm awaiting wise, guiding words.
Study all the details.
Take Gray, he's trained in mining.
And drop these. You'll be worn out.
THE VALLEY OF THREE GLACIERS
Mongolov took away his new wife
to the camp in the same plane.
In a few days she would be taken back by Uncle Kostya.
Good morning.
Are you cold?
Nope.
See, nothing to be afraid of!
Coffee?
Well, certainly not like that in Vienna.
But coffee…
My God, I grew up in Sokolniki in Moscow.
By the age of ten I knew everything about mankind.
And I saw happy people.
If for every stray there can't be found
a strong clever person, then mankind is not worth a pin.
But mankind is worth something.
Fishes. Where do they swim?
It's dark in the water, and they do not know where to swim.
We should light up fires for them, so they would know where to go.
Because nobody should live in darkness!
Light up the fires in the ocean!
Uncle Kostya was wounded in February of 1945
in the battle for Budapest.
Missile wounds.
Fine splinters stuck the ribs,
a bigger one broke the rib and stopped near the heart.
It didn't disturb him.
It only moved slightly during moments of excitement.
Listen to me! Don't be afraid.
They'll look for us. They will find you.
Survive, will you?
Tractor drivers are forbidden
to leave without a tent, a kerosene stove, a sleeping bag
and a week's supply of food.
Geologists-surveyors must not do…
I have finished.
Sergey Aleksandrovich!
Gurin broke his legs.
-How?! -On those contraptions of his.
The skis broke to smithereens,
both legs are broken. His spine seems intact. We need to go.
Arctic foxes, they'll eat him.
-And the gun? -I took the gun.
Gurin is bad. Yelling, crying.
I've sent Gray to sleep. We have to leave in two hours.
At that moment Baklakov hated Gurin.
He decided: he must go to the radio station himself.
He'd make 170 kilometers in two days.
He'll save his roommate's legs.
THE VALLEY OF THE SMALL KITAM RIVER
As always, after making the decision Baklakov felt better
and now he began to be sorry for Gurin.
If Gurin lost his legs, it'd be the end of him.
He was not the kind of person to live as a cripple.
Kyaye!
-God sent you to me again! -Have you forgotten?
When you went to the airplane, we made an agreement.
I brought everything.
Left at the base.
-My engineer broke his legs. -I know.
They told me at your base.
There is a weather station
170 kilometers from here.
They can call for a plane.
I'll take him.
THE VALLEY OF THE SMALL KITAM RIVER
Gurin saw himself clearly from the side
as a mass of actions, words, accidents and objective facts.
His own and other people's aphorisms, his proud aloofness.
Andrey Gurin, top-grade expert and individualist philosopher.
And now he was now lying helpless
in a stupid valley of a stupid river,
and an illiterate herdsman was driving his reindeer to death to save him.
Now, Baklakov needed to
coordinate the borders with Zhora Apryatin's route
and to work methodically, steadily,
to work every minute without rest,
but to get through this double summer.
THE MARAU HILLS
I go for two days. Wait for Apryatin.
We are all doomed here. We are all doomed to our work.
Saints in the wilderness and faithful wives,
beautiful women and millionaires, all are doomed to their role in life.
We are doomed to work,
and this is the best and highest kind of doom in the world.
Gray!
The plans have changed. We've found gold.
Let's wait for Apryatin, and get back to the base.
Hey! Where are you going to?
Sergey!
Welcome!
Well, Vladimir Mikhailovich, you'll get money and additional workers.
But Robykin keeps fighting to closing the Survey.
They want to set up an expanded search party for tin instead of us.
They want you to head it.
Tangled knots must be cut immediately.
I will continue searching for gold.
Use my experience as a mining engineer.
I know the Territory has gold. And I know that we will find it.
Good morning, comrade Chief!
Ah! Profound moderation of alcohol.
He was the one who found the 350-gram nugget.
Is it really such a feat, Sir?
I gave up the booze to keep our luck!
And maintain the strength of the national currency.
Gigolov heroically refused the alcohol he was offered.
-Wasn't that the case? -Yes.
That's a lush fur-coat you have. Just right for walking down Broadway.
-All the chicks'll be yours!
The first human flight in space!
Our soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin in space!
Hurrah, comrades! Hurrah!
Hurrah!
We are now transmitting the message about the first human
into space!
It's April 12th, 1961.
A Soviet astronaut reached
the orbit of the earth
for the first time in history.
Chinkov's prevision was fulfilled.
They discovered the Territory's gold-bearing node.
All this happened in another century and in another world.
If there were a higher power
that could bring back everyone related to this story
who died on the route or lost their way on the continent,
they would've done it all over again.
Not for the sake of money,
they'd learned the true worth of it in the Territory.
And not in the name of duty,
one's true duty lies within, rather than in words.
And not for glory.
But for the sake of the unknown,
which is the beginning and the drive of any person's life
Maybe it's all about being supported by the thought of those past years,
when you didn't choose the easy way,
when you saw the hard and beautiful reality,
and lived as a man, a human, should live.
Today is the consequence of yesterday.
And all of our tomorrows are born of our todays.
Then why weren't you on those tractor sledges?
And why wasn't your face seared by that frosty February wind?
Where were you? What have you been doing?
Are you proud of your life?
TO OUR PARENTS, WHO DREAMED OF A PEACEFUL AND HAPPY LIFE