The names and surnames in this story are real. My friend Voldemar Dauwalter told me about it. Now he is 47 years old, and he lives in Germany in the city of Kassel. And at the time in question, he lived in the USSR and his name was not Voldemar, but simply Vova. I pass the story from his words, as it is.
Sangar hermit
I was twelve years old when my sister married a pilot. Her husband was assigned to the Yakut village of Sangar. Before that, I had never been to those places, and therefore in the summer I decided to go there. Of course, I really liked it there: the northern nature, glorious fishing, hunting.
For the first years my sister and her husband lived in an airport hostel. In the same place, in room 8, lived Georgy Ivanovich Sofroneev, an aerodrome electrician who was responsible for lighting the runway. He was a little peasant about five feet tall, lean. His room was striking in its emptiness: only a bed and a lot of books. Georgy Ivanovich had neither relatives nor friends. He was distinguished by isolation, communicated with people only when necessary. Those who knocked on his room were not even allowed on the threshold - they talked through the slightly open door.
Sofroneev had a reputation as an experienced hunter and fisherman. And no wonder: he lived in Sangar almost all his life and was in charge of all the fishing places. Many tried to make friends with him in order to find out his secrets, but only he always hunted and fished alone.
Little friend
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I don’t know why he liked me, but one day Georgy Ivanovich suddenly came up to me and offered to go fishing with him. When I told my sister about this, she was frightened: you never know what this loner could think of? And yet she let me go fishing. Subsequently, seeing that nothing bad happened, but on the contrary, Georgy Ivanovich and I became very friendly, my sister calmed down altogether.
What was said about the hermit turned out to be true. He really knew all the best places for fishing and hunting around, he was well versed in the habits of fish and animals, he knew many signs. Nature was a home for him. Georgy Ivanovich himself once admitted that, apart from nature, he does not need anything in life. He did not believe in God, but he believed in some extraordinary hidden from people higher forces of nature - in the spirits of the taiga, fire, water, in the patron saint of hunting. He had a number of principles that he strictly followed.
“If you want to eat a duck, you killed it, if you don't want it, don't,” he instructed me. - Do you want to take a duck home? So we'll slap only one, not two! Nothing extra!
The hermit turned out to be a very brave man. For example, once he told about how he went down the Lena River from Yakutsk to Sangar alone in a light kayak, how he turned over in a boat, froze without matches.
“Everything was very good,” he said. - It's a pity that I didn't have a partner. If you were older, we would have built a second kayak for you.
However, he would hardly have taken me on such a dangerous route. After all, Georgy Ivanovich usually cared very much about me. During our boat trips, he always put on a life jacket on me, made sure that there was a lifebuoy next to me, and if I got up in the boat in full growth, he scolded me strongly: "This is dangerous!"
Diligent student
Since then, every year I went to Sangar for summer vacations. There I made many friends (we still communicate with some). And one of my best friends was, of course, Georgy Ivanovich Sofroneev. “He was waiting for me very much, he always met me at the plane's ladder. And the first thing he did was offer me to go fishing with him the next day.
We usually left for three or four days. Georgy Ivanovich, on the one hand, gave me complete freedom of action, treated me like an adult, and at the same time constantly instructed me like an inexperienced student. Gradually, he passed on to me the store of knowledge that he had comprehended over the years of his life in the taiga. For example, he showed how to recognize a fishing spot on a lake or river: by the purity of the water, by the air temperature … I found out what time of day the best catch would be, could determine what the weather would be like by the color of the sunset, and much more. It got to the point that I began to amaze the village boys with my knowledge.
Sometimes we would come with them to the river.
- There are no fish here! - I say.
- How do you know? they laugh. - Came from the city and points!
Then they throw in the fishing rods, and the fish really doesn't bite!
I propose to show you exactly where to fish. They don't believe. You almost have to persuade. Finally, we get into the boat, circling the river for a while, and then I declare: "Here!"
Casting fishing rods: fish - the sea!
And this despite the fact that my knowledge in this matter is a trifle compared to what Georgy Ivanovich knew. To be honest, many were really jealous of my friendship with him.
Secret place
I was sixteen or seventeen years old when Georgy Ivanovich suddenly suggested:
- Listen, Bobka (that's how Vovka sounded in the Yakut manner), let's go to one place. I haven't been there for two years, I want to show you something.
We raced along the river for a long time in a motor boat "Oka-4". Then we approached a rather steep bank, and I saw: in that place on the ground, logs were laid in a row. It turned out that Georgy Ivanovich himself had prepared such a flooring a long time ago. We dragged the boat along these logs for four hundred meters, and then lowered it into the forest lake. Then we crossed the lake and entered a river channel.
- Here! - Georgy Ivanovich finally announced.
To be honest, that place turned out to be a real paradise for fishing! However, as it turned out, we did not come there to fish. We settled down on the shore of a forested peninsula. We set up a tent, made a fire. While I was peeling potatoes, Georgy Ivanovich caught fish for fish soup, gutted it and put it in a pot. When all the preparations for dinner were over, my friend took a large piece of meat with a bone from his backpack and went into the forest, nodding to me, they say, follow me. We walked three hundred meters from the tent to the edge of the forest. Then the hermit went up to a huge old stump and, putting meat on it, said:
- This is chuchune!
- To whom? - I did not understand.
And Georgy Ivanovich told the following story.
Wounded Yeti
In 1971, Georgy Ivanovich found this fertile place in the taiga. Then he pitched his tent in the same way, went fishing, hunted, ate and went to bed in the evening. And suddenly he hears in the middle of the night - someone is wandering around the tent. Georgy Ivanovich carefully raised himself, took the gun, looked out of the tent and was dumbfounded.
- I look - a man is walking: huge and hairy, like an animal! Precisely, I think, chuchuna (as the Yakuts call a creature, something like a Bigfoot), - Georgy Ivanovich told me.
Looking closer, he noticed that the intruder was limping badly and even dragging his leg behind him. Looks like he got hurt somewhere in the taiga. Georgy Ivanovich had the habit of putting all the leftovers of food on the shore in one place - for seagulls and other animals. Do not waste the good! So, this same chuchuna grabbed all these leftovers, then shook out the contents of the pots and bowls standing by the fire, ate from the ground with his hands and left.
“Of course, I was very scared,” Georgy Ivanovich admitted. - When the "guest" left, I got out of the tent, examined the territory and noticed blood on the ground. "Apparently, this chuchuna got hurt badly!" - I thought. And I felt so sorry for him …
The next day, before leaving, Georgy Ivanovich collected all the edibles that he had: an open can of stew, bread, sugar, put it in a large cup and put it on the same old stump.
Forest buddy
Returning home, the hermit could not find a place for himself, he kept thinking about the wounded "forest man": "How is he there?" I thought, thought, and then took a lighter boat - a rubber one - and went to where I met a Yakut Yeti. The cup he had left remained on the stump, but all its contents disappeared. Georgy Ivanovich noticed blood near the stump, but only slightly. Then he laid out on a stump everything that he brought: raw meat, bread, fish, and then got into the boat and set sail. I turned around - a chuchuna appeared from the forest. He went to the stump, took food and hid among the trees.
Over the next month, Georgy Ivanovich fed his new acquaintance. He got food for him on the way on the river and in the forest. Once, because of the chuchuna, Georgy Ivanovich even missed work - he did not have time to return in time.
According to Georgy Ivanovich, this creature is quite intelligent. He himself believed that chuchuna comes from somewhere “from the spirit world”. The Yeti was very wary of a man and left the forest only after he sailed two hundred meters in a boat. However, each time he trusted the person more and more, and the distance between them gradually decreased. It even got to the point that the chuchuna began to thank Georgy Ivanovich: he would come out of the forest, pick up the food left behind, press it to his chest with one hand, and wave his free hand to the hunter. Such a snow-human "thank you"! By the way, the chuchuna never took the cup, he always left it on the stump.
Georgy Ivanovich noted that the chuchuna was on the mend: he was limping less and less, he was recovering. When the hunter saw the chuchuna for the last time, he fully recovered from the wound. That day, before taking the food, the yeti waved both hands at his friend. They have not seen each other since then.
Alas, our friendship with Georgy Ivanovich was also interrupted. First I was drafted into the army. When I returned and arrived in Sangar, I did not find the hermit there - he was visiting some relatives. Then I left to study, and then I learned that Georgy Ivanovich had died. They say that no one came to his funeral, not a single relative. He was buried by the airport, in which he worked all his life. The funeral was attended by about ten people.
Andrey EFREMOV, Yakutsk