Peggy Herring: Anna, Like Thunder

I push myself out of bed and shudder when my feet touch the cold planks. I reach for my shoes.

As I emerge on deck, Zhuchka charges over. I stroke her head and look around. Just as I might have predicted from below, the sky is grey and seamless. The sea is smooth and glassy, though not at rest. A gentle swell rocks the brig. The sails sag, and the crew is idle.

I rub the soft place on Zhuchka’s forehead, and when she seems satisfied, she runs back to where the American, John Williams, and the straggly-haired Kozma Ovchinnikov are teasing her with a dried fish head. They toss it to one another, letting her come close enough to smell it, but not to sink her teeth into it.

The American is pale and has carrot-coloured hair and freckles such as I’ve never seen before. He is the only man beside the Aleuts with no beard and his cheeks are so smooth, I don’t think he could even grow one. His Russian is good, but his accent is flat, and he drawls out every word.

Ovchinnikov is a brooding beast of a man. His hair hangs to his shoulders and, unlike John Williams, almost his entire face is hidden behind a beard, which he keeps long and untrimmed. Only his small, dark eyes are exposed and it’s unnerving the way he watches everyone and everything, keeping most of his thoughts to himself. I think he’s best avoided; though he seems no different from the other promyshlenniki, there’s something rough in his manner, and I think he could be a cruel man if provoked.

He’s latched himself onto our prikashchik—the supercargo who oversees the company goods we trade and purchase—who seems pleased to order him around night and day.

Ovchinnikov throws the fish head underhand so it sails high up toward the top of the mast and then plummets down to the waiting hands of the American.

Zhuchka barks and leaps. She has much hope. Her white-tipped tail steadily wags, and her claws clatter as she runs and lunges at John Williams. She’s drawing her own maps on the deck, lines stretching from man to man.

Encouraging her torment is Timofei Osipovich Tarakanov, the prikashchik who controls the dark Ovchinnikov. Timofei Osipovich is the most experienced man on the crew. He seems to know everything and doesn’t hesitate to tell us that he does. His coat, trousers, and boots are all so new I wonder if he’s helping himself to the cargo he’s in charge of. And it’s not just Ovchinnikov he’s put under his spell. The Aleuts also attend to him and perform his bidding. I think my husband should pay more heed to these allegiances, but he’s already told me he has it under control.

Timofei Osipovich cackles as Ovchinnikov pretends to throw the fish head overboard. He taunts, “Go swim for your supper, little Tsarina!” Zhuchka charges after the fish head. At the last moment, she catches sight of it still in Ovchinnikov’s hand and reins herself in. They all laugh as she skids and hits the bulwark.

“Good morning, Madame Bulygina! Did you sleep well?” Timofei Osipovich says, leaving the dog alone.

When I know she’s all right, I force my attention away from poor Zhuchka. “I did, thank you.” Timofei Osipovich is jovial—as he always is before he makes an inappropriate comment or a joke at my expense. “And you?” I’m annoyed about the part he’s played teasing poor Zhuchka, and don’t care how he slept, but I can’t bring myself to behave rudely.

“I slept delightfully,” he says. “Thank you for asking. From the moment my head touched the pillow, I was asleep. I didn’t lie awake for one single minute. I didn’t toss and turn. I didn’t groan and moan.” He looks down and clears his throat. Then he narrows his eyes and looks directly at me with a wicked smile dancing at the corner of his lips.

My face floods with colour. He can’t possibly have heard. Could he? Did everyone? Did Maria say something? She wouldn’t have.

“And you? Did you sleep as restfully as I did?” he asks.

Before I can respond, a gull breaks through the grey with a screech, dips to the brig, and seizes the fish head in mid-air. John Williams screams. “Stop!” he cries, then explodes with laughter. Zhuchka barks and jumps, her body twisting in the air. Even brooding Ovchinnikov laughs, a deep, rolling rumble that transforms into a coughing fit as though he’s not used to laughing and it’s strained his system. He bends, his hands on his stomach. He can barely breathe.

The gull disappears with its prize.

“I guess your game is over,” I say to Timofei Osipovich, and, though I would like a cup of tea, I go back to our quarters.

I sit at my husband’s desk. It’s an indulgence—an ornate secretaire from our house in Novo-Arkhangelsk, a thing far too fine for our plain cabin. He had its elegant feet screwed into the floor before our departure. Atop the desk are a few charts. The paper is as thick as serge. Smooth stones hold them down at the corners. His neat writing is on them everywhere—columns of numbers, symbols that I don’t understand, and scattered place names—there’s Novo-Arkhangelsk. Nootka.

I open his sharkskin case of tools. They’re packed in precisely, a little slot for each. I slide them from the case, one by one. There are two wooden rulers, worn at the corners. A protractor, compass, and dividers, all made of brass. I know their names because my father told me. Russian girls are not normally taught such things, but my father saw no harm in it. He always spoke to me as if I were capable of a level of understanding no less than an adult’s.

My husband is highly educated and accomplished. In Novo-Arkhangelsk, he’s considered wealthy and cultured. He’s already caught the eye of the chief manager, and he’s known even to the Tsar. He works so fastidiously every day, studying the sky and the water. He calculates our movement with the navigation instruments he keeps near the wheel—his compass and quadrant, the log board and the knotted rope, and the leadline. Nikolai Isaakovich deduces and then tells everyone on board what must be done to keep us afloat and heading in the right direction. With extraordinary certainty, he records everything in his log book and on these charts. He is thoroughly enlightened.

I open the dividers and place one pointed end on Novo-Arkhangelsk. We departed from there September 29th, a clear day with a favourable breeze. I open the arms wider and extend them, placing the other sharp end somewhere on the coast of California. Our destination. What lies between is a faint, wandering line. The coast. Our path. But that’s not what it’s like. This coast is thick and certain. Like the barren north of Russia, it continues, unrelenting. Unlike Russia, it’s fecund, rich with visceral odour and bands of dark blue water, pale sand, the black forest with its jagged top and, blanketing it all, the pervasive grey sky. The dark bands are broken up by the headlands of ocean-worn grey rock that sometimes take on rusty highlights on the rare occasions when the sun shines on them. The trees that rise beyond stone-strewn beaches loom unimaginably dense and dark, impossibly vertical.

Our watery path is dotted with stacks and stumps of rock, towering islands, some so small even Zhuchka couldn’t stand on them, others big enough for a house. Nikolai Isaakovich has told me they pose grave danger for our brig. Beneath the surface of the sea, at the base of these stacks and stumps, there are many more rocks, jagged, barnacle-encrusted, and just waiting for a vessel to venture too close. He keeps the ship well back when they come into sight, though he allows us close enough so that he can measure the location and height of each one and mark them on his charts. As dusk gathers, he always moves the ship far out to sea, to a place many versts from shore, to where the coast is invisible, so there’s no danger of running aground in the night.