And spring did come: one fine day the village broke its moorings. Our river began to move. Vast acres of ice began their stately procession. Their progress grew faster; the glittering layers of water dazzled us. The raw smell of the ice mingled with the wind from the steppes. And the earth slipped away under our feet. And it was our village, with its izbas, its worm-eaten fences, its sails of multicolored linen on the lines, it was Svetlaya that was embarking on a joyful cruise.

The eternity of winter was coming to an end.

The voyage did not last long. A few weeks later the river returned to its bed and the village landed on the shores of a fleeting Siberian summer. And during this brief interlude the sun spilled out the warm scent of cedar resin. We talked of nothing now but the taiga.

It was in the course of one of our expeditions into the heart of the taiga that Utkin discovered the Kharg root…

With his lame leg, he always lagged behind us. From time to time he would call out to Samurai and me: "Hey, wait up!" Understandingly we would slacken our pace.

This time instead of his usual "Wait up!" he gave a long whistle of surprise. We turned back.

How could he have unearthed it, this root that only the expert eyes of the Yakut women could manage to detect in the soft layer of the humus? Maybe thanks to his leg. His left foot, which he dragged along like a rake, dug up extraordinary things, often without his being aware of it…

We looked closely at the Kharg root. Without admitting it to ourselves, we sensed that there was something feminine about its shape. It was, in fact, a kind of plump, dark-hued pear, with a skin like suede, slightly cracked, the underside was covered in purplish down. From top to bottom the root was divided by a groove that resembled the line of a vertebral column.