many Old Believers sought refuge following the Russian Revolution.
Shortly after Stalin’s death, Zaitsev’s family had moved to Kazakhstan,
and later he had moved on to the Far East—first to Chukotka and then
south to Primorye, a path similar to Yuri Trush’s. Zaitsev was a rarity in
Sobolonye, having stayed sober and kept the same job maintaining the
village’s diesel generator for twenty years. Whatever his other failings,
Zaitsev was a calm and sturdy soul whose presence alone was a bulwark
against the crushing circumstances of both the era and the moment. And
this was what Alexander Pochepnya needed now, more than anything.
The day they were given was crystalline, brittle, and bitterly cold. The
taiga was at its winter finest and seemed made for the eyes alone: the
sunshine was so brilliant, the snow so pristine, the sky so depthless, the
stillness of the forest so profound that speech or motion of any kind felt
like an intrusion. Here, even the softest sounds carried an echo, and the
search party’s presence, announced by the irksome, eightfold squeaking
of their boots, seemed out of place—an affront to the exalted silence all
around them. Burdened as they were by their dark concerns, these men
were strangers here.
They did not travel in any kind of formation, or with any particular
plan, but they all knew how to decipher winter sign—how, as Russian
hunters say, to “read the White Book.” The frozen river was a wind-
stripped tabula rasa bearing just enough snow to record a track. A steep
escarpment rose up from the right bank, guiding the river and pushing the
men, first onto the ice and then over to the other side—Burukhin’s side,
where only his traps were set. The lower ground there carried more snow
but was confused by a tangle of grass, shrubs, and fallen trees that soon
gave way to full-blown forest. Even with the leaves down, it would be
nearly impossible to find anything that didn’t want to be found. But the
snow missed nothing: a meticulous record keeper, it captured the story
and held it fast. Andrei Pochepnya’s was a meandering narrative of one