Jazero Bajkal

Polly sa prebudila na piaty deň a svet sa premenil na vodu.

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

Vlak sa pohyboval pozdĺž južného pobrežia jazera Bajkal. Pobrežie bolo úzkym pásom pláže a lesa medzi koľajami a vodou. Voda sama vyplnila celé okno od okraja po okraj: nebolo to ani tak jazero, ako skôr more, okrem dokonalej nehybnosti a nemožnej jasnosti farby, ktorá bola modrá, akoby začínala niekde hlboko pod povrchom a stúpala nahor.

The train was running along the southern shore of Lake Baikal. The shore was a thin band of beach and forest between the tracks and the water. The water itself filled the entire window from edge to edge: 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 from somewhere deep below the surface and rise up.

Rybár, ktorého meno sa ukázalo byť Igor, bol hore už dve hodiny. Stál pri okne s malým zápisníkom, písal niečo, čo Polly nemohla vidieť. Otočil sa, keď sa posadila na zábradlie vedľa neho.

The fisherman, whose name turned out to be Igor, had been awake for two hours. He was at the window with a small notebook, writing something Polly could not see. He turned when she perched on the rail beside him.

"Bajkal," povedal. "Čítala si o ňom?"

"Baikal," he said. "Have you read about it?"

Polly naklonila hlavu.

Polly tilted her head.

"Je to najhlbšie jazero na svete," povedal. "V najhlbšom bode má tisíc šesťsto štyridsaťdva metrov. Najhlbšia sladká voda na Zemi. Je to tiež najstaršie jazero. Dvadsaťpäť miliónov rokov staré. Väčšina jazier sa časom zaplní sedimentom. Bajkal je v riftovom údolí, ktoré stále rastie. Každý rok sa prehlbuje o niekoľko centimetrov. Dno klesá rýchlejšie, než ho sediment dokáže zaplniť."

"It is the deepest lake in the world," he said. "One thousand six hundred and forty-two metres at its deepest point. The deepest freshwater on Earth. 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. It gets a few centimetres deeper every year. The bottom drops faster than the sediment can fill it."

Jazero za oknom bolo tak jasné, že keď sa Polly pozerala z pohybujúceho sa vlaku, videla balvany na dne jazera, ako sa pobrežie plytké. Jasnosť je za správnych podmienok až štyridsať metrov, povedal Igor. V hlbokom strede jazera je voda najčistejšou sladkou vodou na planéte.

The lake outside the window was so clear that, looking down from the moving train, Polly could see boulders on the lake floor as the shoreline shallowed. The clarity is up to forty metres in the right conditions, Igor said. In the deep middle of the lake, the water is the cleanest fresh water on the planet.

"Tiež obsahuje," povedal Igor, takmer ako keby recitoval, "dvadsaťtri percent všetkej nezamrznutej sladkej vody na Zemi. Viac ako všetky Veľké jazerá Severnej Ameriky dohromady. Voda v Bajkale sama, keby sa vypustila, by zabezpečila každému človeku na Zemi päťdesiat rokov pitnej vody."

"It also holds," Igor said, almost as if reciting, "twenty-three percent of all the unfrozen fresh water on Earth. More than all the North American Great Lakes combined. The water in Baikal alone, if it were to be drained, would supply every human on Earth with fifty years of drinking water."

Polly sa pozrela na jazero. Nevyzeralo ako dvadsaťtri percent niečoho. Vyzeralo ako jedno nehybné modré niečo.

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

Vlak zastavil na stanici zvané Sľudjanka. Z platformy bola viditeľná malá ruská pravoslávna cerkev. Igor vystúpil. Vážne potriasol Polly krídlom dvoma prstami. "Tri dni rybolovu," povedal. "Potom domov." Zamával cez okno raz a bol preč.

The train stopped at a station called Slyudyanka. A small Russian Orthodox church was visible from the platform. Igor got off. He shook Polly's wing tip with two fingers, gravely. "Three days fishing," he said. "Then home." He waved through the window once and was gone.

Vlak sa pohol pozdĺž jazera. Ešte tri hodiny bežal po pobreží. Polly zostala pri okne celú dobu. Stromy na svahu nad koľajami boli sibírske borovice a smrekovce. Prešla malá drevená kaplnka. Osamelý rybár brodil v plytčinách v zelených gumákoch. Skupina tuleňov, bajkalských tuleňov, vystrčila hlavy nad hladinu kilometer od pobrežia. Sú to jediné čisto sladkovodné tulene na svete. Nenachádzajú sa nikde inde.

The train pulled out along the lake. For three more hours, it ran the shore. Polly stayed at the window the whole time. The trees on the slope above the tracks were Siberian pine and larch. A small wooden chapel passed. A solitary fisherman waded in the shallows in green rubber boots. A group of seals, Baikal seals, popped their heads above the surface a kilometre offshore. They are the world's only purely freshwater seal species. They are found nowhere else.

Polly premýšľala o mierke. Pol kilometra pod ňou, v tomto presnom momente, bola voda staršia ako jej druh. Pod tým, viac vody, a pod tým, ešte viac vody, až do hĺbky, ktorá by nebola osvetlená ani na poludnie. V tej vode bol malý ružový kreveta zvaný Epischura, ktorý neexistoval nikde inde na Zemi, a ktorý fungoval, kolektívne, ako filtračný systém jazera. Udržiavali vodu čistú. Udržiavali ju čistú dvadsať miliónov rokov.

Polly thought about scale. Half a kilometre below her, at this exact moment, was water older than her species. Below that, more water, and below that, more water, all the way down to a depth that would not be illuminated even at full noon. Inside that water was a tiny pink shrimp called Epischura that did not exist anywhere else on Earth, and which functioned, collectively, as the lake's filtration system. They kept the water clear. They had been keeping it clear for twenty million years.

Vlak bežal. Voda zostala nehybná. Deň plynul.

The train ran. The water held still. The day passed.