Z )   V - E   D A Y , 1 9 4 5   -   T E N G E R I ,   I N D I G I R K A   R I V E R   D E T L A

“Streaming filaments of fire crisscross the blackness in every direction, oscillating and crackilating wavelets, within the vast field an empty space in the form of a man, a mold, a black doorway in the whirling spirals of dark matter, unravelling dimensions of fractional spin, uncertainties, charmed flavors, many passaged hole-ways, I am blazing, I am fire, towers of melted light flare off me and twist into the vastness, I walk into the dark man-door and leave the flaming city”
Peter looks around; the fading sunlight illuminates the ornate Jügenstill facades of the Stiefelplatz on the eastern edge of the park. Cars and trams flow by, pedestrians shop, eat. Near the bronze statue of the elephant, an oompah band from Ludwigshaven plays in cast iron open air pavilion. To the west, the city spreads out towards the late afternoon sun, its many winding rivers gleaming and fiery in the blue shadows. To Peter, it is the Athens of Pericles, the Alexandria of Ptolemy, the embodiment of a capital city of the spirit; it is an evening of seemingly infinite promise . . .

Within the waterlogged labyrinth that is the Indigirka river delta, lies a tiny thermally heated pond known as Tengeri or the “Navel of the World” - for the Buryat tribe, this is the sole entrance to “Delugen Sagan” [seventh heaven] that lies on our human plane. For all Buryat shamans, it is the most sacred place on earth, the place where the world was born. Many have gone in search of tengeri; the region is littered with the bones of those who have failed. In truth, this is an extremely inhospitable region. The traveller entering it will become instantly lost; the marsh stretches to infinity in every direction, channels open and close, double back, loop and spiral in endless watery filigrees; low clouds produce constant rains, skin begins to whiten and prune, never having the opportunity to dry out; legs stiffen, there being no firm land to stretch out upon; it is truly a purgatory of mud.

The REC epedition discovered Peter Hesselbach’s body several months later, in the winter of 1946. (see plate 55) After it had been dredged up, the trapper known as Valtur smoked and salted the corpse to prevent it from decomposing on the return journey out of the marshes. It took the expedition several weeks to return to the Buryat village they had departed from; the weather was bitterly cold and they were frequently trapped in ice. Was the muddy pool where Brockman and MacRupert found Peter Hesselbach and his diary tengeri? While it is impossible to answer any such question definitively, there can be little doubt that Peter found an ecstatic reverie during his final weeks spent wandering the marshes that few men are ever given to know.