Russian for Beginners
by Dominique Biebau
Translated from the Flemish by Josh Pachter
Sooner or later, each of us reaches a Final Cave; every spelunker knows that. You’re ex-ploring a new system, and then it happens, without warning or preamble. The darkness—which until now has been comforting, protective—suddenly glares at you from a thousand staring eyes. Waiting, looming. You feel fear creep into your bones. For the first time, you become aware of the earth and stone that surrounds you. It wouldn’t take much to disturb the fragile balance between the geologic layers, to turn cave to grave. You run as fast as your legs will carry you. You struggle not to scream.
No one ever sees you again.
It’s happened to several of my friends. They set out on an ordinary morning as courageous helmeted heroes, and by nightfall they were gibbering wrecks, returning home with rescue blankets draped around their shoulders.
Perhaps this is my Final Cave.
* * *
It’s dark. My next-to-last match lies on the ground, three steps behind me. Its flame was weak and trembled, but it kept the shadows and strange sounds at bay.
My high-tech flashlight gave up the ghost hours ago. As did my headset, which since then has offered me nothing but static.
I move on by touch. My hands slide across cool limestone formations. In the distance, I can hear water dripping.
I recall a newspaper story from several years ago: four Frenchmen trapped in a cavern complex for days. There was a photo of them emerging at last into the sunshine, their faces wreathed in grins. Were they grinning only because they knew that the cameras were watching? Will I look cheerful if they find me and lead me back out into the fresh air?
Linda stayed topside, thank God. She’s not a caver. I wonder what she’s up to right now. Has she been told of my disappearance? “Your husband, missus, gone.” The thought of her, alone in this foreign city, tears at my heart.
* * *
The Kungur Ice Cave was my childhood dream. My first acquaintance with its majestic karst formations came from a photograph in a school atlas. “The Ural Mountains are home to dozens of impressive cave systems,” the caption read. “The Kungur complex, with its hundreds of ice caverns and thirty-six underground lakes, is considered by many speleologists to be the Eighth Wonder of the World.”
That phrase—“the Eighth Wonder of the World”—made a lasting impression on me. Any wonder of the world would obviously be something very special.
Later in life, I met Linda. Petite, vibrant, with delightful dimples in her cheeks and a broad, good-hearted smile. Not a classic beauty, but a woman with, for want of a better word, “It.” Charm. Charisma.
There aren’t many caves I haven’t explored. The Postojna Caverns in Slovenia with their astonishing stalactites, the spooky subterranean echo chambers of Malta, the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Grottoes in northern China with their religious wall paintings . . . I’ve seen them all, captured them on film, always astonished by their underground cathedrals and unearthly beauty . . . the stalactites, stalagmites, limestone pillars, rainbows of rock coral, obsidian staircases, and quartz arches. . . .
But I kept putting off a visit to the Kungur Ice Cave.
It sat at the top of my bucket list, but experiencing it would require special preparation. To really see it at its best, I would have to study Russian, the only language the local guides can speak and understand.
* * *
It was Linda who decided we’d take the course together. She came home one evening with a four-color brochure from the “World Famous Adler Language Institute.”
“Mulders gave it to me,” she said.
Mulders was her boss at the travel agency where she worked. He’d been happily married for twenty years—with two kids and a Labrador—but that didn’t stop him from being overly attentive to Linda. I thought he was a bit of an ass.
The brochure was unimpressive. It was the sort of thing that promised “complete mastery” of this or that language or crocheting technique or computer-software package “in ten weeks or less.”
Linda signed us both up. “It’ll give me something to do in my spare time,” she said. Our children were grown and flown, and we’d buried our own Lab beneath the cherry tree in the backyard just a few months previously. She was so enthusiastic, there was nothing I could do but go along with her plan.
There were twelve of us in the class at first, your usual night-school mix: Those Who Have to Take the Course Because of Their Jobs and Those With Nothing Better to Do With Their Time.
Pavel, our instructor, was a stereotypical Russian, with the shoulders of an ox and a wild beard that almost concealed his blood-red lips. And he had one of those practically hypnotic bass voices.
“A Russian is either a philosopher or a madman,” he said, roaring with laughter, his big teeth gleaming in the dim overhead lighting.
Linda and I sat in the front row of the musty second-floor classroom provided by the Adler Institute for our Wednesday-evening sessions. Below us, on the ground floor, the English for Beginners students were living large: Their classrooms were big and brightly illuminated and equipped with all the latest educational gadgets.
Russian for Beginners was clearly not one of Adler’s best sellers.
* * *
I entered the cave system yesterday. Or was it the day before? Here in the dark, I’ve completely lost track of time.
They let the experienced spelunkers go in alone, equipped with a headset like telemarketers use. State-of-the-art technology makes the experience more “authentic,” no intrusive guide to get in your way.
I started at Druzhba, the “Friendship Cave,” the largest cavern in the Kungur system, with its enormous underground lake. Very popular with the tourists, tens of thousands of visitors a year. For the first hour, I was constantly bumping into small groups of day-trippers, panting with exertion, chattering noisily, chomping on Mars bars and Milky Ways.
Barbarians.
A disembodied voice gave me directions via my headset. In Russian, of course. “Go straight. Back up. Turn left. Turn right. The passage slants downward up ahead. Look at the ceiling here. Enjoy the view to your left.” And so on. It was all pretty amateurish, really. Just how amateurish, I wouldn’t realize until later.
Things went wrong after about the second hour. I found myself confronted with rock formations that shouldn’t have been where they were, waded through streams that didn’t appear on my map. And then my headset cut out.
It’s been at least a day and a night since the last time I saw anyone. There were a few moments when I thought I could hear the muffled sound of footsteps far off. I screamed for help, but there was no response.
Who knows what creatures live down here? Spiders, lizards, snakes, bats—surely mutated by their untold generations in the darkness. Eager to swallow anything that crosses their path, given the scarcity of food in this particular circle of hell.
I’m still wearing my headset. Maybe it’ll come back to life, like Lazarus, and a friendly voice will guide me back to civilization.
Copyright © 2022 Russian for Beginners by Dominique Biebau