Ivan Dunkai, it is fair to say, was a latter-day Dersu Uzala—a last link
to a time when the native inhabitants of this region saw the tiger as the
true lord of the forest. Dunkai died in 2006. In life he was a twinkly-eyed,
elfin man who evoked a gentleness and wisdom that seemed from another
age. He was a gifted woodsman of the old school, known and respected
throughout the middle Bikin. He had a nickname that translates to “In the
World of the Animals.” For Ivan Dunkai, the taiga was the source of all
things, in which the tiger occupied a place of honor. In 2004, when
Dunkai was about seventy-five years old, he was interviewed by a British
documentary filmmaker named Sasha Snow. “The tiger is a sly but
merciful creature,” Dunkai explained to Snow. “You know that he is
there, but you cannot see him. He hides so well that one starts thinking he
is invisible, like a god. Russians say, ‘Trust in God, but keep your eyes
open.’ We [Nanai] rely on ourselves, but pray for Tiger to help us. We
worship his strength.”
As a senior hunter in Krasny Yar, Dunkai oversaw a large hunting
territory, which overlapped with an area known as the Panchelaza. The
name is a holdover from the days of Chinese possession, and it refers to a
tract of choice game habitat about one hundred miles square. Almost box-
shaped, the Panchelaza is framed by three rivers—the Amba to the east,
the Takhalo to the west, and the Bikin to the south. According to an
Udeghe scholar named Alexander Konchuga, one of only two men to
author books in the Udeghe language, the names of these rivers translate,
respectively, to Devil, Fire, and Joy. The first two are tributaries of the
latter. Well before Markov arrived, this beautiful and dangerous
sanctuary had been identified, at least in name, as a kind of empyrean
frontier, a threshold between Heaven and Hell. The concept of Amba—
the same word Dersu uses to indicate “tiger”—refers both to the animal
and to a malevolent spirit—a devil—and not simply because the tiger can
be dangerous as hell.
The spirit worlds of the Nanai, the Udeghe, and their northern
neighbors, the Orochi, are hierarchal (like those of most cultures), and the
Amba inhabits one of the lower, earthier tiers. Should one have the
misfortune to attract an Amba’s attention, it will tend to manifest itself at
ron
(Ron)
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