Jezero Bajkal

Polly se probudila petog jutra i svijet je postao voda.

Polly woke up on the fifth morning and the world had become water.

Vlak je jurio uz južnu obalu jezera Bajkal. Jezero je ispunjavalo cijeli prozor: nije izgledalo kao jezero, već kao more, osim što je bilo savršeno mirno i nevjerojatno bistro, plave boje koja je izgledala kao da dolazi iz dubine ispod površine.

The train was running along the southern shore of Lake Baikal. The lake filled the entire window: not a lake so much as a sea, except for the perfect stillness and the impossible clarity of the colour, which was a blue that seemed to start somewhere deep below the surface and rise up.

Igor, ribar, bio je budan već dva sata. Stajao je uz prozor s malom bilježnicom.

Igor, the fisherman, had been awake for two hours. He was at the window with a small notebook.

"Bajkal," rekao je. "To je najdublje jezero na svijetu. Tisuću šest stotina četrdeset i dva metra na najdubljoj točki. Također je i najstarije jezero. Dvadeset pet milijuna godina staro. Većina jezera se s vremenom ispuni sedimentom. Bajkal je u rascjepnoj dolini koja još raste. Dno tone brže nego što ga sediment može ispuniti."

"Baikal," he said. "It is the deepest lake in the world. One thousand six hundred and forty-two metres at its deepest point. It is also the oldest lake. Twenty-five million years old. Most lakes fill in with sediment over time. Baikal is in a rift valley that is still growing. The bottom drops faster than the sediment can fill it."

Voda vani bila je toliko bistra da je Polly mogla vidjeti stijene na dnu jezera u plitkim dijelovima. Bistrina doseže do četrdeset metara u pravim uvjetima.

The water outside was so clear that Polly could see boulders on the lake floor in the shallow areas. The clarity is up to forty metres in the right conditions.

"Također sadrži," rekao je Igor, "dvadeset tri posto sve nezamrznute slatke vode na Zemlji. Više nego sva Velika jezera Sjeverne Amerike zajedno."

"It also holds," Igor said, "twenty-three percent of all the unfrozen fresh water on Earth. More than all the North American Great Lakes combined."

Polly je gledala jezero. Nije izgledalo kao dvadeset tri posto nečega. Izgledalo je kao jedna mirna plava stvar.

Polly looked at the lake. It did not look like twenty-three percent of anything. It looked like a single still blue thing.

Vlak je stao na stanici Slyudyanka. Igor je izašao. Ozbiljno je protresao Pollyin vrh krila s dva prsta. "Tri dana ribolova. Onda kući." Mahnuo je kroz prozor i nestao.

The train stopped at Slyudyanka station. Igor got off. He shook Polly's wing tip with two fingers, gravely. "Three days fishing. Then home." He waved through the window and was gone.

Još tri sata vlak je vozio uz obalu. Skupina bajkalskih tuljana izronila je glave kilometar od obale. Oni su jedina isključivo slatkovodna vrsta tuljana na svijetu.

For three more hours, the train ran the shore. A group of Baikal seals popped their heads above the surface a kilometre offshore. They are the world's only purely freshwater seal species.

Polly je razmišljala o razmjerima. Ispod nje bila je voda starija od njezine vrste. U toj vodi bio je mali ružičasti račić zvan Epischura koji nije postojao nigdje drugdje na Zemlji. Održavao je jezero bistrim. Održavao ga je bistrim dvadeset milijuna godina.

Polly thought about scale. Below her was water older than her species. Inside that water was a tiny pink shrimp called Epischura that did not exist anywhere else on Earth. It kept the lake clear. It had been keeping it clear for twenty million years.