The First Native
They've come for us. Our guide is a very tall, muscular black guy. Bare-chested. In striped shorts. Right now you can see his mighty back up ahead of us.
Take a look at the fearsome, unusual weapon in his hand. A long, heavy iron pipe with a broad, powerful, very sharp sickle fixed to the end.
It's possible, of course, that it isn't a weapon but a tool. I've seen things like this among tropical peasants before. They usually cut bananas with them. But I like to think it's a weapon. It's romantic to think so.
Our guide, with his economy of movement, his silence and his imperturbability, is like a sailor off Captain Nemo's ship. I like to imagine that Oleg Batygin is a kind of modern-day Captain Nemo. I like knowing that he's my countryman and, in a way, a colleague. And, of course, I'm absurdly pleased that Oleg Batygin has invited us to visit.
Look at Zhenechka. With what bashful, touching interest she keeps glancing at our guide. She tries very hard not to look at him. But every five or six steps she looks anyway at this huge, muscular, slightly alien man. And each time she blushes a little.
Meanwhile her enormous backpack, as you'd expect, is the one I'm carrying. A good thing she can't hear me.
We've come out onto a broad rocky brow. Behind us, dense bamboo thickets. Everything here is covered in dry bamboo leaves. These leaves smell absolutely astonishing. They smell of youth, of sun and summer. They smell like the hair of the girl you love in a sweet August wind. Like hay in the loft of a seaside village…
But they also smell of lust. They smell of bathhouse debauchery. They smell like the shoulders of a mature, passionate, resolute woman…
From the stone brow, from the huge basalt boulder we're standing on, both beaches are visible. The one where we left our boat, and the other, the one we're apparently heading for.
From here you can make out a large sea launch lying at anchor, and some rooftops are visible. Farther from the sea you can make out something that looks like plantations. The coastline along our course is far more settled than the bay we came from.
The sun is going down toward sunset, and we begin our descent. The rocky brow we're standing on is something like a low pass. The path down is very steep. Natural basalt steps a meter high. I think in places we'll have to clamber, so we switch the camera off again. See you below, in lands settled and promised.