OLIVIER WILLEMSEN ROZA Sample translated by Moshe Gilula In memory of the Dyatlov group Zinaida Kolmogorova Lyudmila Dubinina Alexander Kolevatov Rustem Slobodin Yuri ‘Georgiy’ Krivonischenko Yuri Doroshenko Nikolai Thibeaux-Brignolles Semyon ‘Sasha’ Zolotaryov Igor Dyatlov Dyatlov Pass Ivdel Serov Sverdlovsk Soviet Union 1959 Oblast Sverdlovsk Ural Mountains, Soviet Union February 1, 1959, 5:04 p.m. The sun has just set as nine students settle down on the East Flank of Kholat Syakhl for the last night of their lives. Dark clouds accumulate from all directions and an icy wind is building up to ferocious force; a warning that must be taken seriously high in the mountains. As they spread their tarpaulin over a self-built framework of poles and crossbars the biting snow pelts their faces. There’s no time to lose. The temperature is quickly dropping below zero. The group manages to pitch the tent and one by one the seven men and two women enter it to take shelter. The next morning they are to resume their journey toward their destination, the peak of Otorten. The Ural Mountains, or the Northern Urals to be precise, where the group of Ural Polytechnical Institute students were on expedition, have for centuries been the domain of the Mansi, a nomadic people who subsist mainly on reindeer. These mighty beasts haul sledges, their flesh is consumed, their pelts offer warmth and shelter and their firm bones are used to make tools. The Mansi are also known for the mysterious signs they carve into tree trunks or paint on rocks. The symbols depict forest legends, at least for those able to decipher them, and provide information on the inhospitable taiga. Sometimes they warn about danger. The names of many of the northern mountain peaks come from the Mansi. The ancient word Otorten, for instance, means ‘don’t go there’ in Mansi. Kholat Syakhl means ‘mountain of bodies’. When after two weeks the group still hasn’t returned to the university, alarm is raised. Family, friends, fellow students, police and eventually also the army, replete with helicopters and detection dogs, head from the city of Sverdlovsk, now called Yekaterinburg, for the Northern Urals. When they find the tent there they discover it has been slashed open on one side by a sharp object. Inside they find nine pairs of mountaineering boots neatly lined up in a row. On a small brazier in the middle of the sleeping quarters they find a copper samovar with a frozen lump of water inside and next to it a lidless can of cocoa. Open diaries lie on several of the pillows, a pen between the pages, waiting for a new entry. The tent seems to have been left hastily and the group is assumed to still be nearby. A trail of footprints in the snow leads the rescue party downhill to the taiga forest edge where, under an old cedar, the remnants of a campfire are found. It looks like someone had climbed up the tree: 5 yards up the branches are snapped or broken off. Were they climbing to safety? Or on the lookout for something or someone? In the vicinity of the campfire a gruesome discovery is made. The bodies of Georgiy Krivonischenko and Yuri Doroshenko are lying lifelessly in the snow. They’re as good as naked. Yuri’s ears have been eaten away by the freezing cold and the tip of Georgiy’s nose is missing. There are footprints leading from the forest back to the Kholat Syakhl. Halfway up the mountain a bare knee is jutting upward out of snow. The dogs start digging. The bodies of Zina Kolmogorova, Rustem Slobodin and Igor Dyatlov are then revealed. They too are barely clothed—underpants, a tattered shirt. Igor and Zina are lying close together. Igor is holding her picture. Considering where the three students were found, it is reasonable to assume they were on their way to the tent. More than two months later, when the snow in the north begins to thaw, the last four bodies are found in a ravine. Lyudmila Dubinina is the last victim to be uncovered. She is lying on her knees, her head resting on a boulder next to a mountain stream. Lyudmila’s body is more mutilated than the others’. All her ribs are broken. One rib has pierced her heart like a bayonet. Her nose and jaw are shattered; her eye sockets are hollow and empty. And the rescue party discovers one more thing: her tongue is missing. At the autopsy in Sverdlovsk on Lyudmila, who was known to be the most independent of the group, such a vast amount of swallowed blood is found in her stomach that the coroner puts down in his report that her heart was still pumping blood at the instant she lost her tongue ‘to something or someone’. Albert pressed the seven. His chauffeur, who had driven us to Baycrest Residentials, an old people’s home just outside of Coos Bay city center, stayed to wait in the seating area near the elevator. ‘She has good days but mostly bad days,’ Albert said as the floor beneath my feet started to tremble and the round bulbs above the door lit up from left to right. He was staring straight ahead. I did the same and saw the blotches of our reflections in the metal door. ‘Sometimes she can’t even remember what she had for lunch but she can still recount the past in great detail.’ I didn’t come to America for any more than that. My heart started beating faster. I was nervous about meeting someone who had met the Dyatlov group in person and, besides, I also wasn’t too fond of elevators. On the seventh floor the door slid open and I saw before me a bright hall with a floor of cold vinyl. I wanted to get out of the elevator but Albert stopped me. He put his shoe over the laser that keeps the door from closing. ‘Before we go in,’ he spoke gravely, ‘I just want to tell you that I’ll be taking you somewhere else today. You’ll see why later.’ Albert was a sturdy guy in his forties and more than a head taller than me. He put one hand on my shoulder and held the other one out, inviting me into the hallway. ‘Fine. After you.’ At a door halfway he took a key out of his pocket. ‘She’s resting now,’ he said as we quietly entered the apartment. ‘She does it four times a day now on doctor’s orders.’ As Albert entered his mother’s bedroom I walked through the narrow hallway, a worn Persian carpet on its floor, to her living room. Many elderly people would cover their walls with pictures of family members and dear in-laws but this room was strikingly white and bare. It looked like his mother had no one, or at least no one she wished to be reminded of on a daily basis. There was just one small picture frame on top of the TV holding a portrait of Albert when he was about eighteen, a square academic cap on his head and a rolled-up diploma in his hand. Next to a set dining table stood a leather armchair. The chair faced a grand window stretching the full breadth of the room and offering a view of a lawn that sloped downward and was closed off at the bottom by a row of pine trees. In the middle of the lawn there was a flagpole with the Stars and Stripes. There was no wind, so it hung like a dishrag on a kitchen hook. ‘Come, mother.’ I turned away from the window and saw a thin little old lady in a bathrobe and pajamas shuffling into the living room on Albert’s arm. Next to his bulk she appeared even gaunter. ‘Look,’ said Albert loudly and clearly, ‘this gentleman has come all the way from Europe to meet you. He’d like to hear you tell about the past.’ I held my hand out to her. She sized me up and languidly shook my hand by briefly brushing her small fingers against mine. ‘Let’s sit,’ said Albert and accompanied his mother to the armchair. I had gotten his phone number three weeks previously. It was almost midnight in Holland when an old fellow student called me from Oklahoma City. ‘Is it true what I saw on your Facebook page, that you’re making progress in your research?’ ‘Yes, there are some important developments. But I can’t say anything about it just yet.’ ‘Maybe I have some new information for you.’ The very same night, I contacted a man who called himself Albert Lewis Codd. Apparently, at the hotel bar during an ICT expo he had run off at the mouth to my acquaintance about the Dyatlov Pass mystery and especially about his mother who, it seems, knows more about the tragedy and who (and this made my heart skip a beat) had actually met the group of Russian students in the flesh just before their demise. Over the phone Albert said that his mother was not in the best of health. If I wanted to speak with her I should lose no time. Albert picked me up from Portland International Airport. His chauffeur met me at the gate with a name sign. He took my shoulder bag from me and led me to the main entrance where Albert was waiting for me in a top-trim black Lincoln.