return?”
Markov was well disposed toward this brand of humor and, in his own small “listening area,” he functioned as a kind of pirate station, a one-man Sobolonye Radio.
It was due, in part, to his humor and good nature that Markov attracted the attention of the boss of the logging company, a man known to his hundreds of employees as Boris Ivanovich.* Given his combination of talents, Markov would have been good company on long trips through rough country, and this was why Boris Ivanovich hired him as his personal driver, making Markov one of very few people ever to chauffeur a limousine through tiger country. Under the circumstances, Boris had made an odd choice of vehicles: a Volga sedan. Volgas are considered luxury cars and, during Soviet times, they were usually associated with diplomats and high-ranking Party officials. Needless to say, they are a much more plausible sight on the broad boulevards of Moscow and St. Petersburg than in the backwoods of Primorye. It conjures an image that is both poignant and faintly bizarre: Markiz, the short and cheery jokester, dressed in a white shirt and trousers, conveying his well-connected communist boss in high style through the mud, dust, and snow of the Bikin valley. Given the available options, it is hard to imagine a safer occupation. It would have been hard to believe that Markov would earn the tragic distinction of being the only chauffeur in Russia—perhaps anywhere—ever to be eaten by a tiger.
Markov was also registered as a professional hunter with Alufchanski, just as Lev Khomenko had been. Markov, like most hunters and trappers in the region, focused on sable, a large member of the weasel family that is to Russian fur trappers what the beaver was to their North American counterparts (Sobolonye means, literally, “Sable Place”). Alufchanski purchased furs and wild meat from local hunters and trappers at centrally established rates, thereby creating a stable and secure national market that made it possible to earn an honest living from the forest. Until very recently, the fur industry was a mainstay of the Far Eastern economy and a key supplier to the world market. Like early accounts from the United States and Canada, most folktales, histories, travelogues, and biographies from Primorye address the fur trade in one way or another. Its central role offers a graphic illustration of Primorye’s quasi-colonial status as resource-rich and industry-poor: to this day, pelts gathered here are shipped 1,500 miles west to Irkutsk, Siberia, for processing, just as they were three hundred years ago. Irkutsk is located near Lake Baikal, which once marked the western boundary of the Amur tiger’s range. Until about a century ago, the provincial coat of arms featured a tiger bearing a sable in its jaws.
In addition to being a robust singer and life of the party, Markov liked to read, and Tamara Borisova remembers a number of his favorites, including Arseniev’s Dersu the Trapper, but there was one in particular that he couldn’t seem to get enough of. Based on a true story, the book was called The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas. It was first published in 1866 by the best-selling Irish-American author Captain Mayne Reid, a journalist and adventurer who also fought in the Mexican-American War. Reid’s works have been largely forgotten by English readers, but they remained popular in Russia through the Brezhnev era. Theodore Roosevelt and Vladimir Arseniev were both fans, and so was Vladimir Nabokov, who, as a boy, particularly liked The Headless Horseman, going so far as to translate part of it into twelve-syllable alexandrine verses. Reid’s prose is thick, florid, and long-winded by today’s standards and, in Russian, his books run to five and six hundred pages. They combine Victorian romance with red-blooded action and have titles like No Quarter! and Tracked to Death. Another was called The Tiger-Hunter. Borisova couldn’t explain why The Headless
Markov was well disposed toward this brand of humor and, in his own small “listening area,” he functioned as a kind of pirate station, a one-man Sobolonye Radio.
It was due, in part, to his humor and good nature that Markov attracted the attention of the boss of the logging company, a man known to his hundreds of employees as Boris Ivanovich.* Given his combination of talents, Markov would have been good company on long trips through rough country, and this was why Boris Ivanovich hired him as his personal driver, making Markov one of very few people ever to chauffeur a limousine through tiger country. Under the circumstances, Boris had made an odd choice of vehicles: a Volga sedan. Volgas are considered luxury cars and, during Soviet times, they were usually associated with diplomats and high-ranking Party officials. Needless to say, they are a much more plausible sight on the broad boulevards of Moscow and St. Petersburg than in the backwoods of Primorye. It conjures an image that is both poignant and faintly bizarre: Markiz, the short and cheery jokester, dressed in a white shirt and trousers, conveying his well-connected communist boss in high style through the mud, dust, and snow of the Bikin valley. Given the available options, it is hard to imagine a safer occupation. It would have been hard to believe that Markov would earn the tragic distinction of being the only chauffeur in Russia—perhaps anywhere—ever to be eaten by a tiger.
Markov was also registered as a professional hunter with Alufchanski, just as Lev Khomenko had been. Markov, like most hunters and trappers in the region, focused on sable, a large member of the weasel family that is to Russian fur trappers what the beaver was to their North American counterparts (Sobolonye means, literally, “Sable Place”). Alufchanski purchased furs and wild meat from local hunters and trappers at centrally established rates, thereby creating a stable and secure national market that made it possible to earn an honest living from the forest. Until very recently, the fur industry was a mainstay of the Far Eastern economy and a key supplier to the world market. Like early accounts from the United States and Canada, most folktales, histories, travelogues, and biographies from Primorye address the fur trade in one way or another. Its central role offers a graphic illustration of Primorye’s quasi-colonial status as resource-rich and industry-poor: to this day, pelts gathered here are shipped 1,500 miles west to Irkutsk, Siberia, for processing, just as they were three hundred years ago. Irkutsk is located near Lake Baikal, which once marked the western boundary of the Amur tiger’s range. Until about a century ago, the provincial coat of arms featured a tiger bearing a sable in its jaws.
In addition to being a robust singer and life of the party, Markov liked to read, and Tamara Borisova remembers a number of his favorites, including Arseniev’s Dersu the Trapper, but there was one in particular that he couldn’t seem to get enough of. Based on a true story, the book was called The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas. It was first published in 1866 by the best-selling Irish-American author Captain Mayne Reid, a journalist and adventurer who also fought in the Mexican-American War. Reid’s works have been largely forgotten by English readers, but they remained popular in Russia through the Brezhnev era. Theodore Roosevelt and Vladimir Arseniev were both fans, and so was Vladimir Nabokov, who, as a boy, particularly liked The Headless Horseman, going so far as to translate part of it into twelve-syllable alexandrine verses. Reid’s prose is thick, florid, and long-winded by today’s standards and, in Russian, his books run to five and six hundred pages. They combine Victorian romance with red-blooded action and have titles like No Quarter! and Tracked to Death. Another was called The Tiger-Hunter. Borisova couldn’t explain why The Headless
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