From Book 1. THE RINGING CEDAR

In spring 1994 I took my ships on a four-month commercial expedition down Siberia’s Ob River, from Novosibirsk to Salekhard, a town above the Arctic Circle. The expedition’s purpose was to establish economic ties with the regions of the Far North.

The expedition was called the Merchant Caravan. Our large triple-decker ship held the caravan’s headquarters, an exhibit of what Siberia’s entrepreneurs were producing, and a store. And my quarters, quite stylish for those times. We had combined two first-class cabins and furnished them with modern pieces in order to impress when we were conducting negotiations.

My caravan was to travel three and a half thousand kilometers to the north and stop at both relatively large settlements-Tomsk, Nizhnevartovsk, Khanty-Mansiisk, and Salekhard-as well as ones so small they could only be reached with freight during the brief navigable period.

In the winter, the Ob River ices over. Communication between the towns and the residents of Siberian settlements comes to a halt.
Afternoons, the caravan’s ships docked at points of settlement. The crew blew the ship’s whistles and then pumped loud music through powerful speakers on the upper deck, attracting the inhabitants.
We traded, bought valuable fish from the local population and the gifts of the Siberian taiga-whortleberries, dried mushrooms, and furs-and discussed establishing permanent economic ties with local hunters and fishermen.

The ships traveled at night, as a rule. If bad weather prevented us from continuing along the river, the headquarters ship would moor at the nearest point of settlement and we would hold a party for the local youth. Events like that were a rarity there. The clubs and houses of culture had become quite ramshackle over the previous years, and almost no cultural events were being held.

You can only imagine the response.

Inhabitants of a Siberian village thousands of kilometers from civilization see a beauty of a white ship sailing along the river and suddenly it turns and moors at their shore.
The ship has a restaurant, a bar, and a dance hall with columns.
Not only all the young people but all the adults as well would rush to go on board, take a three-hour cruise, and then see the white beauty off, waving from shore.

The farther the caravan got from the big towns and the closer to the Arctic Circle, the broader the Ob got, and through binoculars you could observe wild animals on its shores.

Sometimes we did not encounter a single even tiny point of settlement in twenty-four hours of sailing. Nothing but taiga along the banks of the river, which was the sole transportation artery for many kilometers.
At the time, I did not yet know that at one of these kilometers a meeting awaited me that would change my entire life.

One day on our way back to Novosibirsk, I had our floating headquarters moor at a tiny village consisting of just a few small houses, tens of kilometers from any large points of settlement. We planned to stop for three hours so that the ship’s crew could walk on land, the local residents could buy various goods and foods, and we could buy their wild taiga plants and fish cheaply.
I decided to take a walk on land as well. As I was going down the gangway, I couldn’t help but notice two old men standing in silence off to one side of the group of local inhabitants planning to climb the gangway onto the ship.

The older man had a gray beard and was wearing a canvas cape that went down to his heels and a hood that covered his head and looked especially odd. As I walked past the old men I said hello. The elder said nothing to me in reply, merely bowed his head slightly, but his companion greeted me.

«Hello. May your good intentions come to pass. I sense you’re in charge here. Right? Can you give orders?»

«Yes, if they’re sensible," I replied, and I was about to proceed on my way.

But the old man continued.

He tried to talk me into giving him fifty or so men (the ship’s crew totaled sixty-five in all) for him to take into the taiga, twenty-five kilometers from where the ship was moored. Take them deep into the taiga to cut down a ringing cedar, as they put it. A cedar that, according to him, reached forty meters high. He proposed cutting it up into pieces that could be carried to the ship. We had to collect all of it without fail. The old man advised cutting each part into even smaller pieces, each taking one for ourselves, and giving the rest out to our families, acquaintances, and anyone who wanted one as a gift. The old man said this was a special cedar. The piece of it had to be worn on the chest, on a string. Moreover, you had to put it on while standing barefoot in the grass and with your left hand pressed to your bared chest. A minute later you would feel a pleasant warmth emanating from the cedar, and then a light shudder would pass through your body.

From time to time, when the desire arose, you would need to use your fingertips to polish the side of the piece of cedar that did not touch the body, holding it with your thumbs on the other side. The old man confidently asserted that three months later the person possessing the piece of ringing cedar would feel a significant improvement in his well-being and would be healed of many diseases.

«Even AIDS?» I asked, after telling them briefly what I knew from the press about this disease.

The old man answered confidently, «Any disease!»
In his opinion, however, this was an easy task. The main thing was that the person possessing this piece would become better, luckier, and abler.

I knew a little about the healing properties of our Siberian taiga cedar, but for it to affect our emotions and abilities-at the time that seemed highly improbable. I thought, «Maybe the old men want to get some money from me for this, what they consider an unusual cedar." I began explaining to them that in the «outside world," in order to be liked, women wear jewelry made of gold and silver, and they wouldn’t pay for a piece of wood, so I was not going to agree to any costs.
«They wear it not knowing," the answer followed. «Gold is dust compared with one little piece of this cedar, but we don’t need any money for it, we can give you mushrooms, dried ones, too, but we don’t need anything.»

Deciding not to argue, out of respect for their age, I said, «Well, maybe someone would wear a piece of your cedar if a master carver put his hand to it and created something unusually beautiful.»
To this the old man replied, «You can carve it, but it’s better to polish it. And much better if you polish it yourself, with your own fingers, when that person’s soul wants to, and then the cedar will be beautiful on the outside, too.»

At this, the slightly younger old man quickly unbuttoned first his old jacket and then his shirt and showed me what he had on his chest. I saw a convex circle or oval. The colors in it were variegated-violet, crimson, a rust color-and comprised a puzzling drawing, and the veins of the tree looked like rivulets.

I’m no connoisseur of works of art, although I have had occasion to visit a few art galleries. World masterpieces have never summoned up any special emotion in me, but what was hanging on this old man’s chest called up significantly greater feelings and emotions than a visit to the Tretyakov Gallery. I asked the old man, «How many years have you been polishing your piece of cedar?»

«Ninety-three," the old man replied.

«And how old are you?»

«One hundred nineteen.»

At the time I did not believe his answer. The old man looked about seventy-five. Oblivious to my doubts, or not paying them any mind, the old man, who was a little excited, began trying to convince me that a piece of cedar polished only by the person himself would be beautiful to others, too, in three years. Then it would get better and better, especially for women. A pleasant, beneficial fragrance would come from its possessor’s body incomparable to anything created artificially by man!

A very pleasant fragrance was indeed coming from the old men. I smelled it, even though I smoke and, like all smokers, my sense of smell has probably dulled.

There was one other oddity about the old men.

I suddenly began noticing in these strangers' speech phrases uncharacteristic of inhabitants of the North’s remotest areas. I remember specific ones even today, even with their intonations.
The old man said, «God created the cedar as a reservoir for the energy of the Cosmos.

«A man in the state of love gives off an emission. In a fraction of a second it reflects off the planets sailing above the person and once more reaches Earth, giving life to everything alive.
«The Sun is one of the planets that reflects far from the full spectrum of this emission.

«Only emissions of the forces of light go from the person into the Cosmos. And only a beneficial emission returns from the Cosmos to Earth.

«A dark emission comes from someone abiding under the influence of pernicious feelings. A dark emission cannot ascend but rather falls deep into the Earth. After it is reflected off the bowels of the Earth it returns to the surface in the form of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and wars.

«The highest achievement of a reflected dark emission is the effect on man of its rays, which strengthen the pernicious feelings directly inside him.

«The cedar lives for five hundred and fifty years. Its millions of needles catch and accumulate light energy, its entire spectrum, day and night. During the cedar’s lifetime, all the bodies that reflect the energy of the forces of light pass over it.

«Even a small cedar has more energy that is beneficial to man than all the manmade energy installations on Earth put together.

«The cedar takes in the energy that comes from man and through the Cosmos, stores it, and, at the right moment, gives it back. Gives it back when there is not enough of it in the Cosmos, which means in man and everything living and growing on Earth.

«One encounters cedars-but very rarely-that store the accumulated energy but do not give it back. After five hundred years of life they begin to ring. That is how they speak, with their quiet ringing. That is how they signal for people to take them, to cut them down so that the accumulated energy can be used on Earth. And so this cedar has been asking with its ringing. It’s been asking for three years. If it doesn’t make physical contact with living people, then in three years it loses its chance to give up what it has accumulated through the Cosmos, loses its chance to give it back to man directly. Then it starts burning the energy inside itself. This tortuous burning and dying takes twenty-seven years.

«Not long ago we discovered a cedar like that. We determined it had already been ringing for two years — ringing softly, very softly. It might be trying to stretch its request out for a longer time, but it has only one year left. It has to be cut down and distributed to people.»

The old man spoke for a long time, and for some reason I listened. The odd old Siberian’s voice first was calmly confident, then very agitated, and when he was agitated, he would polish his piece of cedar with his fingertips quickly, as if fingering some musical instrument.

It was cold on shore and an autumn wind was blowing off the river. The cold wind raked the gray hair on the old man’s uncovered head in bursts, but his old jacket and shirt remained unbuttoned. His fingertips kept polishing his piece of cedar, which hung on his chest open to the wind. He was trying to explain its full significance.

Lidia Petrovna, an employee in my firm, came off the ship and onto shore. She said everyone had already gathered on board, they were ready to sail, and they were waiting for me to finish my conversation. I said goodbye to the old men and quickly boarded. I could not satisfy their request for two reasons: delaying the ship, and for three full days, would have meant a huge loss; and at the time I ascribed everything the old men said to excessive superstition.
The next morning, during our planning meeting, I suddenly saw Lidia Petrovna fingering a piece of cedar on her chest. Later she told me that when I had gone on board she had hung back a little. As I began to walk away, she saw the old man look, distraught, first at me as I left and then at his older companion.

He repeated agitatedly, «How can that be? Why didn’t they realize? I don’t know how to speak their language at all. I couldn’t convince him. I couldn’t! Nothing I said worked! Nothing worked. Why? Tell me, father.»

The elder of the two old men placed his hand on his son’s shoulder and replied calmly, «You were not convincing, my son. That is why they did not realize.»

«When I was already going up the gangway," Lidia Petrovna continued, «the old man who’d been talking to you suddenly ran up to me, grabbed me by the arm, and led me down the gangway onto the grass.
«He hastily took the string to which this piece of cedar wood was attached out of his pocket, put it around my neck, and pressed it with my own hand to my chest. I even felt a shudder in my body. He did it all so very quickly, I never had a chance to say anything to him. As I was walking away he repeated after me, 'Safe travels! Be happy! Please, come here next year! All the best, people. We’ll be waiting for you! Safe travels!'

«When the ship cast off, the old man waved for a long time and then suddenly sat down on the grass. I watched them through my binoculars. I saw the old man you’d been talking to, who had later given me the piece of cedar, sitting on the grass and his shoulders quaking. The older one, with the long beard, was leaning over him and stroking his head.

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