We trudged on. Maybe 15 km each day. Only for four or five minutes of those did I stop, breathe and see the white light flickering through the firs. The rest of the time I was looking where to put my feet, following the hunters' tracks, snapping off branches blocking the way. Hearing again and again, "I am tired, I am thirsty, I am tired."

When you walk alone for that long you go into a sort of trance. You hear the white noise at the back of your head. More paw prints. Then again nothing. The men were angry. Roman snarled at me. "This is your fault. You need to go . . . silently. He can hear you." 

There was a familiar sight from the highest ridge. White plane trails — dozens and dozens of them. Their noise reverberated through the Taiga like the approach to Heathrow. I found it comforting. We were 1,000 km from the nearest international airport but the valley is directly under the flight path from Beijing. 

I tried to count the sounds of Boeings and Airbuses flying overhead, maybe 50, but lost count every day. The hunters stared at them too; Chinese 747s over the Russian Middle Ages. "They started in these numbers maybe 15 years ago." The planes seemed distant, like spaceships.

It was night again. The cracks in the window let the cold into the hutch. The spit and cackle of the wood stove went on as the boys fell asleep. Now we were only men. Roman reached for an old plastic bottle, took a gulp, and passed it round. The old man sighed after his. It was samogon — moonshine vodka. 

"I will kill the lynx." Roman was looking at me but I could not make out his face. "I will kill it." He pushed himself close to me and tugged my fleece as he muttered. "I will skin it . . ." 

Roman was running out of time. Three weeks ago a Chinese peddler had come to the village. By the big cowshed he handed out boxes of Guonjing tea and promised $700 to whoever could deliver him a lynx pelt that month. "I need that money."

Samogon does strange things to you. The old man began talking about Belovode again but Roman was not listening. "That's in the north somewhere." He passed him the bottle and murmured more about the lynx. How powerful, how beautiful it was. 

We finished the bottle. The hunters swapped stories about the Chinese: how they grind up the teeth of lynx for tea and stick needles into their foreheads as they sip it. How they sleep clutching lynx fur cuddlies between their legs at night for fertility. How there are whole cities where people live in glass buildings and eat hamburgers three times a day.