Student of the Port School

This story is about a real person. Nikolai Matveev was a famous person. The main events of his life, his birth in Japan, running away from home, wandering through the taiga with a Chinese, life in the family of a unit commander on Lake Khanka, and, finally, studying at the Port School in the city of Vladivostok are real and well-known facts, all other events, that are described in the book could be, but could ... not be.

MEETING WITH A CHINESE

The fire was like a guiding star. Kolya walked towards him and counted the steps. It was easier that way. In fact, the boy was already on the chapel of strength. His goal was a place where the ice smoothly passed into the frozen ground, but literally five steps from this piece of frozen ground, the legs stopped holding their master, and the boy fell. When Kolya woke up, he saw that he was lying near the fire. Raising his head, he saw a Chinese man who was fussily running from the fire to a huge box, probably replacing a travel bag, and back to the fire. On the fire, in a large cauldron, something gurgled and stank disgustingly.

Seeing that the boy came to his senses, the Chinese made a guttural sound. Approaching the boy, he bent down and pulled the eyelid over Nikolenka's eye. Kolya twitched in fright, and the Chinese nodded in satisfaction.

Stroking the boy's head, he pressed the eyelid of Kolya's left eye with one hand, and with the other hand smeared this eyelid with an ointment, the smell of which was as disgusting as that which was cooked in a cauldron over a fire. Then he did the same manipulation over the eyelid of the boy's right eye. Nikolenka tried to open his eyes, but the Chinaman held his eyelids tightly so that the boy would not harm himself. After a few seconds, the Chinese eased the pressure, and then let go of his eyelids altogether.

Tears flowed from the boy's eyes, and the Chinese spread a rug for himself and sat down next to the boy. He said something to himself under his breath and dabbed the boy's eyes with a surprisingly white and clean towel.

He sat next to the boy for at least an hour. When Kolya fell asleep, the Chinese covered him with another blanket, and then opened the lid of the box. The surroundings were quiet and deserted. The Chinese camped near the bank of the river. He did not want to go into the forest.

The man knew that there was no one around, but he looked around anyway, taking out of the box something that was valued in this taiga region more than gold. The Chinese took out a ginseng root. With a sharp knife resembling a scalpel, he cut off a piece from the root, equal in thickness to a sheet of paper, and looking around again, lowered the cut piece into the cauldron with broth. Before putting the root back in the box, he made sure the boy was asleep.

Nikolenka burned with a fever for three days. Walking in a twenty-degree frost almost naked did not go in vain for the boy. But time passed, and one day Kolya realized that there was no more chills. During these few days, the Chinese built something like a hut over the place where Kolya lay.

Fortunately, things were moving towards a real spring and no more snow fell during these three days. Squatting down, Nikolenka rested against the low vault of the hut, and then crawled out into the light of day. The light hurt his eyes and made him dizzy.

Fortunately, the Chinese was not far away, he picked up Nikolenka, who was almost unconscious from weakness, and took him to the fire.

Having put the boy on a log, he collected what was boiled in the cauldron in a bowl, and gave the boy a drink. The brew tasted good. It was something between compote and soup. All shades of taste were present in the liquid, there was a little bit of bitterness, a little bit of salt, but sweet and sour taste prevailed. Having tried what the Chinese gave him, the boy suddenly felt a brutal hunger. He twice asked the Chinese to give him supplements. When once again Nikolenka held out an empty bowl to the man, he smiled approvingly, but did not give more.

The day was rapidly drawing to a close. I did not feel like sleeping, and Kolya remained sitting on the log. It's time to think about how to live on. Fortunately, the Chinese himself decided everything for the boy. One of the long sweaters of the Chinese fit Kolya. Having dressed the boy, the Chinese decided that Kolya did not need to sit around anymore. The boy was quite capable of doing not difficult work. The box in which the Chinese carried all his things with him was leaky. Having pulled thin strips of bark from some tree, the Chinese showed Nikolenka how to renew the bottom and sides of the box with the help of clay and strips of bark.

Two days later they set off.

Kolya did not know where the path of the Chinese lay, but he did not care. He completely trusted this small and swarthy man who saved him. The only thing that caused inconvenience was that it was not possible to talk to the Chinese. The boy missed human speech. He tried to understand something from the verbal flow that rushed to him from the mouth of the Chinese, but he did not succeed.

It took at least two months before Kolya began to understand Chinese and even began to briefly answer something to his savior.

The Chinese was a hunter and trader. From February to November, he wandered around the taiga, and then returned home to China for two or three months. A month and a half before meeting Nikolenka, the Chinese sold the cattle to the Russian businessman, which he had previously bought from the Koreans at a fair in a town that stood on the Tumen River. The city was called Bian-Liang-Dzinchen.

A year later, when the Chinese again went to this fair, Nikolenka was already with him. On the day when Kolya turned thirteen, no one gave him gifts, and there was no birthday cake with candles either. The fact that he had a birthday, Kolya remembered only two weeks later. Remembered and immediately forgot, n it was before. Just somewhere on the periphery of consciousness the boy put a tick. He tried not to forget that he was 13 years old.

And then another year flew by, and another year.

Time flew by at an incredible speed. Kolya matured and got stronger. The days when the Chinese returned to their homeland, to China, were also rest for Kolya. Usually the Chinese and the boy agreed on the place where their next meeting would be. Most often, Kolya found abandoned dilapidated buildings in the taiga. These temporary huts were left behind by hunters and ginseng seekers. If there was none, Kolya built such a temporary hut himself.

Kolya turned fifteen this year. This time, Kolya did not forget that his birthday was coming and was waiting for this day with trepidation, without knowing why. Birthday has come and gone. And Kolya was sad. He remembered the last birthday he spent with his mother.

This year, the Chinese decided to change the time of his so-called vacation. The trade was going so well that there was no time for vacation. They mined, sold, resold sea cabbage, sea worm, that is, trepang. For seaweed they gave sixty to seventy silver kopecks per pood. And this year, mushrooms that grow on oak trunks were also profitably sold. In general, the year turned out to be fruitful in every sense.

With all the proceeds, the Chinese bought ginseng root and some gifts for the household, Kolya had no cash. That's what we agreed from the very beginning. The Chinese fed, watered, clothed Kolya, and this, as the Chinese himself believed, was worth a lot.

As the Chinese thought, so did Kolya.

There were almost no contradictions between the old man and the young man.

The Chinese had only two drawbacks. The Chinese was very distrustful, and the Chinese was also a shaman. Shamanism in itself, of course, could not be a disadvantage. Kolya's annoyance was the way in which the Chinese used his abilities.

Twice a year there came a time when the Chinese drank a strange drug and ate the drug with the same strange mushrooms. This usually happened on the days of the winter and summer solstices. These days, Kolya simply hid or went away from the place where the Chinese shamanized. It was simply dangerous to be near the Chinese at that time.

Sometimes, at his call, animals came to the temporary hut, and sometimes he himself turned into an animal, into a bear or a tiger. In both cases, these days, being near a shaman was simply dangerous. Kolya was still willing to endure horror twice a year, but last year the shamanic trance was not limited to two times.

At the call of the soul, so to speak, the Chinese arranged the days of revelations for themselves four times last year. So the Chinese called the days when he was under the influence of shamanic hallucinations. There were five days of revelations this year.

Several times the Chinese tried to join Kolya, even forced him to memorize magic words, but the boy's Russian soul opposed everything supernatural.

After the days of revelations, the Chinese began to have a real hangover. Yes, yes, hangovers can also be from strange mushrooms. The Chinese didn't rage, no. However, mushrooms and strange water had a negative effect on the shaman's memory.

Before the days of revelations, he usually hid his box so that no one, including Kolya, would find it. After days of revelations, he could not come to his senses for a long time. Not finding the box in place, he usually accused Kolya of the fact that the boy had treacherously taken advantage of his gullibility and stole the box.

This happened more than once or twice.

Then the memory returned to the shaman, but it happened very slowly. Kolya was offended by these suspicions, but he had no way out, he was afraid to leave the Chinese and be left to live alone. And Kolya was a very grateful person. He considered the Chinese to be his benefactor, which he was to some extent, and in no way wanted to return good with evil.

However, the suspicion of the Chinese was already taking on painful forms. The last day of revelation was in December, and Kolya barely survived it.

This, the last time, Kolya went deep into the taiga as soon as he saw the Chinese take out a bottle of pink-green water and a box of mushrooms from a box. For three days Kolya sat in the nest for the dead, in such places the taiga people usually buried their dead.

The nest for the dead was an ordinary platform, erected high above the ground, on a tree. Kolya calmly spent his days on this platform, fortunately for him the platform was just empty. At the end of the third day, when, according to Nikolenka’s calculations, the day of revelation should have already ended, and the boy was about to descend to the ground, a kite attacked him.

The boy was frightened at first, and then he realized that there was a Chinese in the guise of a kite. Before the boy could figure out what to do, the kite tore out a decent tuft of hair from Nikolenka.

Having descended to the ground, Nikolenka began to cry, he was in pain, and felt sorry for the Chinese, who was moving along the path of self-destruction. This was probably the case. Having come to his senses after mushrooms and intoxicating water, the shaman began to look for the box. Having not found either the box or Kolya, the Chinese, probably for the umpteenth time, decided that he had been robbed and made the fatal decision to hangover mushrooms. After that, he again fell into a trance.
The result of the trance was the vicious kite.

This was the first time this had happened to a Chinese. Usually three days were enough, and the shamanic affairs were finished until the next time. So far, there have been no returns, for the second time, in one session, to the animal state. But everything happens for the first time.

The Chinese man's name was Chen, but the boy silently called him the shaman Amba. The taiga people called the tiger Amba. And since during shamanic trances the Chinese most often called the tiger or turned into a tiger himself, Kolya called the old Chinese with this particular nickname.

Now Kolya was alone in the taiga. Chen went home.

Usually a shaman, an amba never apologized to Kolya after his antics during a trance, but this, the last time, left depressing memories in Nikolenka's soul. Kolya even began to shun old Chen.

Probably, the Chinese understood something, because before leaving he stroked Kolya on the head and presented one of his ginseng roots. The root was very small and looked like a yellow-brown man.

The Chinaman had long since left, but Kolya still felt the touch of a sinewy hand on his hair. The last time his mother touched his hair like that.

By the way, while wandering around the region, Kolya, together with the Chinese, wandered into the city where his mother remained. Nikolenka walked with trepidation and anxiety to his native house, but in vain he hid, instead of the house there was ashes, and the neighboring houses also burned down. Nearly the entire block burned down. And so it turned out that there was no one to ask about the fate of Nikolenka's mother.

One of the houses on the next street was almost renovated, but the owner of the renovated house did not know anything about Kolya's mother, he bought this plot under the ground recently. Chen was full of sympathy and did not rush Kolya while the boy was trying to find traces of his mother.

In the end, Nikolenka himself decided to leave the city, which never became his home after moving from Japan.

This time, Kolya prepared for his vacation in advance. Chen left food for Kolya, the boy got something in the taiga himself. Nikolenka built a temporary building so that the river was close, but so that dashing people could not see his dwelling. Speaking of dashing people, of course, hunghuzi, red-bearded soldiers are mentioned.

Of course, a tramp boy could not be prey or a serious enemy for a gang of Chinese men. But, the hatred of any European was so strong among the Honghuzi that they killed just like that, without even pursuing profit.

Until 1840-50 there were no Russians in this region. The whole area around was a wild land owned by the Chinese. After the Aigun Treaty, the territory from the Amur went further to the Russians.



But, the official contract for the Chinese bandits meant nothing. During his wanderings with Chen, Kolya saw the Honghuzi from afar several times, but Chen was no less afraid of dashing people than Kolya. The Honghuzi robbed everyone who got in their way. The Khunhuzi tribesmen were robbed with no less pleasure than the Russians. Therefore, when he heard his native speech from afar, Chen's first impulse was always to hide. In general, Kolya and Chen always tried to walk along wild, untrodden paths. Chen reasoned like this, it is better to lose half a day, making his way through windbreaks, than to lose goods when meeting with bandits, or even life. Nikolenka became a little wild during the three years of wandering, sometimes he was afraid that he would forget his native language. He spent most of the year in the taiga. And now Kolya happily settled down by the fire, which he lit so that no one else could see him. Chen also taught him this art. Chen even taught Kolya what kind of wood should be placed on the fire so that the smell of the fire does not spread far and uninvited guests do not come to this smell. Kolya was looking forward to several months of rest before Chen returned and life rolled along the well-worn rut. Kolya did not know that he would never see the old Chinese again.

Until the end of his life, Nicholas was tormented by questions about what happened to his mentor. It seemed to him that the old Chinese simply abandoned his negligent student, and then he was thrown into a sweat from fear that the Honghuzi had killed Chen and taken away everything that was in the box. Kolya waited for Chen not two months as agreed, but all four.

The provisions were running out, but Kolya did not want to budge, he stubbornly believed that the Chinese had been detained by urgent matters and that he would be back any minute. For another two months, Kolya ate what he found in the taiga. Kolya fished, set snares for birds, and looked for edible roots. He was afraid to hunt, although Chen left him a gun. When six months had passed, the boy realized that his friend and mentor would not return. One morning, Kolya collected a knapsack and set off along the path that his older friend, the Chinese Chen, had left the taiga earlier, six