Ivory and Paper

by Ray Hudson

  “At the dock,” Booker repeated.

  “It belongs to my father,” the boy said. “He has more books than anyone, and he’s always looking for more. As you can see.” He nodded at the table. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to show us the one we wanted.

  “Am I supposed to know you?” he asked.

  We introduced ourselves.

  “I’m Vasilii,” he said, “Vasilii Shaiashnikoff. Call me Bill.”

  “Bill,” Booker said.

  “Vasilii is Russian for William,” I explained to Booker who asked, “You’re a Russian?”

  Vasilii smiled. “I’m Aleut,” he said. He looked it. We have tons of Shaiashnikoffs in town. He looked like any of them and like none of them. I mean, his dark hair was just a little curly and his dark eyes—I’m getting carried away. His dark eyes weren’t any darker than mine. He was just a normal guy.

  “I know a Hansen,” he said. “Maybe you’re related.”

  “My gram’s family came from Makushin Village,” I said.

  Booker gave me a look. “Booker here is from King Cove,” I said, trying to remember if King Cove even existed back whenever. Exactly what year was it? “Where all those white folks are moving to,” I continued. “He was on the ship with me.”

  “I was on the ship.” The kid was turning into a parrot.

  Vasilii walked to the table and brought back a book. “This is it. Are you interested in antiquities?”

  Booker walked over. I could tell he was thinking about slipping his bookmark in and bringing the visit to an abrupt end. I shook my head. He returned to his seat.

  “I found something,” I said, keeping the book firmly closed, “that I think is important.”

  I poured the small fox onto my palm. Vasilii knelt down to examine it.

  When he took it in his hand, I expected him to feel what Booker and I had felt when we first touched it. Maybe he did, but all he said was, “It’s certainly beautifully made.” He turned it from side to side. “And heavy for its size! Those old-time people had amazing skill. Where did you get it?”

  I couldn’t very well say that I’d looted it from a twenty-first-century pirate.

  “It’s been in her family for a long time.” Booker finally said something original.

  “And you think it might be in there?” He handed back the fox and pointed at the book. “It’s by William Healy Dall, by the way. I call him Vasilii Healy, and he calls me ‘deacon.’”

  “Are you a deacon?” I asked opening it up.

  “It’s only a nickname. Maybe later,” he said. “Dall was just here. You’ll notice that he inscribed it to my father.”

  We had seen the inscription on Hennig’s boat.

  I thumbed through the first pages. “We were reading this story when we, ah . . .”

  Booker cut in, “When we got interrupted.”

  My fingers froze when I saw a small torn fragment of Booker’s weird bookmark wedged between the next two pages. I quickly turned the page.

  “We got as far as the boy and his boat.”

  Had Vasilii seen the slip of paper? He wouldn’t have known what it was, where it had come from, what it had done.

  I started reading aloud where I had left off. “The boy saw on the sea a diving bird (diver), followed it, and shot at it with his arrow. The diver retreated further and further from the shore. The father saw him (the boy) getting farther away, and shouted to him.”

  “That’s a really sad story,” interrupted Vasilii. “Old Man Rostokovich told my father that story. He’s told my father a lot of those old-time stories. I sometimes think this one must be about his own family.”

  “His own family?” Booker echoed again. What was going on with him?

  “Well, you know,” Vasilii said. “Unlucky. They’re all unlucky, those Rostokoviches. They get lost. They are not good hunters. They have accidents. Sometimes, they have even caught on fire for no reason whatsoever. And in that story, if you don’t mind me giving away the ending . . .” —and both of us nodded okay— “. . . the boy’s baidarka overturned and he drowned. Then his sister fell during the funeral and died, and consequently, her unborn baby died.”

  “Jeez,” I interjected.

  “Baidarka?” Booker asked.

  “Kayak,” I said.

  “Iqya,” added Vasilii.

  “Finally, the chief himself died of a broken heart,” he concluded. “My father got that story for Captain Hennig when he came back from Kagamil—”

  “Captain Hennig?” Booker and I interrupted him at the same moment.

  “—on the Eider,” Vasilii continued. “He brought back the mummies Dall has written about in here.”

  Then I started to understand. “His grandfather,” I said to Booker, “or his great-grandfather. The Hennigs have been in the islands for a long time.”

  Vasilii looked puzzled. “Whose grandfather?” he asked.

  Instead of answering, I asked, “Have you been to the Islands of Four Mountains?”

  “No, but I’d like to,” he answered. “Tough water out there. There are just one or two good anchorages, but in a baidarka it wouldn’t be that dangerous. It took Hennig a dozen tries before he got his mummies. He said there were all kinds of old-time stuff in the burial caves.”

  “Didn’t anybody object?” I asked.

  “To what? Taking the mummies? Not that I know of.” Vasilii continued, “Anyway, those people weren’t Christians, so what does it matter?”

  I was about to tell him why it mattered when he added, “He’s offered to take me out west on his next trip, but I’m not sure I want to because, like I said, those long-ago people weren’t Christians, and some people, well, they treat those mummies like they still have power over us.”

  Now Booker seemed really interested.

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I shouldn’t,” he said. “Not if I’m going to be a priest.”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “It’s what my father wants,” he said, “but who knows?”

  He stood up. “Old Man Rostokovich might be able to tell you about that carving.”

  “He’s still around?” I asked. I imagined he must have been really ancient to know all that stuff.

  “He’s very much around,” Vasilii said. “Peter’s pretty amazing. How about tomorrow morning,” he said. I handed him the book as an answer. I knew Booker wanted me to keep it, but learning about the fox seemed more important than us getting back immediately. The moment I gave him the book, I remembered the torn end of the bookmark was still inside. Oh, well, I thought, it’s safe there. I can get it if we need it.

  “Anything else?” Vasilii asked.

  “It turns out we’re orphans,” Booker said.

  Total schizo.

  “Not exactly orphans,” he stumbled along. “We’re waiting.”

  “For your parents to die?” Vasilii seemed interested.

  “I mean, we got here ahead of them. Of our parents.”

  Now I knew where he was headed.

  “He means that we’re stranded. Until they arrive. Their ship was expected to get here before ours.”

  “So why did you travel on different ships?”

  This was getting ridiculous. I wondered if Vasilii believed any of it. “I was staying with my aunt.”

  “In San Francisco,” Booker added. He lied like an expert.

  “So, anyway,” I continued, but Booker cut in with, “We need a place to stay.”

  And that’s how Vasilii came to introduce us to Ivan Zhen. He was a young Asian—I guessed Chinese—who worked for the company that owned the large white building that turned out to be the office and hotel of the Alaska Commercial Company. It was clear that Vasilii and Ivan were good friends.

  “You Aleut?” he asked after Vasilii had made the introductions and explained that we needed a place for a night or two.

  “Aang! Aang!” I answered.

  “Orthodox,” he said proudly and touched his forehead, chest, a
nd shoulders from right to left. His eyes twinkled. “I am Huang Zhen. My baptized name is Ivan.”

  He was dressed in Western clothing except for a dark-blue skullcap with a red circle at the crown.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Vasilii said. “Thanks, Ivan.”

  We were standing just inside the door. A hall extended into the back of the building where laughter and the clatter of silverware and dishes reminded me I was hungry. A carpeted staircase rose on the right.

  “This way,” Ivan said and took hold of the graceful handrail.

  We followed him up to the second floor landing where there were doors on each side of a wide hall and a window looking out at the end. He turned a corner, opened a door behind the stairwell, and started up a flight of uncarpeted stairs. These were steeper and made a faint rocking squeak as we climbed.

  Ivan tapped on the nearest door and said, “Where I stay.”

  He skipped the next door and opened the third. Inside there were two beds, separated from each other by an assortment of crates and boxes.

  “This room is used for storage,” he said. “But I think it will do.”

  I went to the window that looked down and out toward the flagpole surrounded by cannons.

  “This is perfect, Ivan,” I said. “Are you sure people won’t mind?” I remembered the woman in the store. Maybe I hadn’t seen her at all.

  “The general manager is visiting the villages,” he said, “to collect furs and to check their books. If anybody asks, just tell them Mr. Neumann arranged for you to stay.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Which he would have if he had been here,” he added. “He is a very nice man. If you need anything, you ask me.”

  “What day is it?”

  “Saturday,” he said. “August 15.”

  “Eighteen—?” I started.

  “Eighty. Of course. All year!”

  “Unreal,” I muttered and sank onto one of the beds. I half expected the room to fold up on itself like a fan and shoot us into some other weird time and place. Vasilii left and before Booker and I had explored the room, he returned with a tray with two bowls of delicious stew and several thick slices of bread.

  We found a couple of patched down comforters, and, before long, wondering if the world would float back to normal by morning, I fell asleep.

  8. Anna

  I knew it was morning, but I kept my eyes shut, hoping for any sounds that might suggest I was back home. I sniffed the air for any familiar scents. I inched my fingers to the edge of the mattress. Finally, I opened my eyes to a metal-embossed ceiling straight out of an old western.

  Rats.

  I threw off the comforter and sat on the side of the bed. I had to see if I really was where I thought I was. I got up, straightened the wrinkles in the cotton dress as best I could, and went out the door. I closed it quietly so as not to wake Booker, and tiptoed down the hall. The heavy front door opened easily, and there I was: looking out on the same beach, the same hills. I was home. But everything had changed. The road that followed the beach had shrunk into a trail. The scarf of grass above the beach was thicker than I’d ever seen it. I pushed my way through and found a wide rock. I just sat there, totally confused and more than a little curious. I picked up a small stone and half expected it to dissolve in my hand.

  Further down the beach, a woman was poking the water with a stick. Every now and then she bent over, lifted something from the sea, and dropped it into a basket that hung from her shoulder. As she worked her way closer, I saw she was a girl not much older than myself. I sat real still, not wanting to interrupt, but also not wanting her to walk away. Her dress was worn and mended and had obviously once belonged to a larger woman. She was barefooted and stepped from stones to sand and back again with practiced balance.

  When she got closer, I said, “Aang, aang.” Good morning, good morning. This was a very handy word. How it was pronounced changed the meaning from hello to yes to absolutely! But it also could mean, How are you doing? I hope things are good with you.

  She looked up. I dropped the stone and touched the wide rock. She sat down beside me. For a few minutes all we did was watch the sea. I asked if I could hold her basket.

  “It’s not much,” she said as she handed it over. “Maybe tomorrow.” Inside were some half-dozen chitons, their black leathery backs curled down. The underneath foot of the bidarki was sliced and eaten raw. My science teacher had said chitons were a good source for calcium and vitamin A. I should tell Booker that. If he’s still around when I get back. But I was interested in the container itself. I knew we had made workbaskets from woven grass, but these had long been abandoned for tin and plastic. This was the real thing: a grass fish basket. I turned it in my hands. Woven from the blades of strong wild rye or beach grass—the very stuff that was all around me—it was golden brown. The straight open weave allowed any water to drop away. The rim was topped with a tightly braided cord that rode the circumference on braided posts about a half-inch tall.

  Had Gram actually woven baskets? Why had she stopped? What else had she done? Was she really keeping secrets, like Mrs. Skagit had said? What secrets?

  I handed it back, smiled, and the girl got up. “See you,” she said and returned to the water’s edge and her search for food.

  I realized I would never be what she was. More than a century of deep changes had made me something else. I picked up another smooth stone. People talked about subsistence and practiced living off the sea because there was nothing tastier than real Unanga food. But most of the food we ate came from the store. Nobody, not even the oldest woman at home, could weave a basket like that one.

  Then I saw a circle of women and girls holding hands—me, Gram, this girl, some others, any others—would any one of us see anything of ourselves in the others? I looked at her and she looked at Gram and both of them looked back at me and at each other. And then before I could stop it, that woman from Gram’s kitchen stepped into the circle and stared across at me.

  Your dad and me, we have an understanding.

  I looked away.

  Straight into the puckering mug of Mrs. Skagit. Secrets. Lots of secrets.

  I hurled the stone at the water.

  Think about something positive, I told myself, and pictured her fury in the King Eider just before we vanished.

  Ataqan, aalax, qaankun. I tried counting on my fingers. Siching, chaang.

  All the Unanga kids I know speak English. Very few can say much of anything in Aleut, Unangam tunuu. Over a hundred years of English clear-cutting every language within sight or hearing in schools and businesses, kids getting their mouths washed out with soap if they used our language, parents and grandparents “doing us a favor” by trying to use only English. But it wasn’t very good English. Gram had struggled to make sense of the world with strange words. With her own language marginalized all around her and her English substandard, she had been a linguistic pauper and this poverty had spread to every corner of her life.

  English had even embedded itself into my fingers. I could type and text without thinking. I felt like a fraud. I was just another slightly brown-skinned Amirkaanchi.

  Gloria Nguyen still spoke Vietnamese to her parents.

  Damned wind. I wiped my eyes. I needed to get back to Booker before he did something stupid.

  It would do me more good if I learned Filipino or Yup’ik or Vietnamese. The most the native corporation did was to decorate a column or two in their annual reports with Unangam tunuu. Nothing substantial. Nothing that made learning the language a real benefit over those who didn’t bother. They should pay me to learn Aleut. A buck for every two words. Five bucks a sentence.

  I looked at my hands. They were incredibly dirty, grimy and discolored with blueberries. That dark irregular patch I had noticed on my right palm still lingered there. It disappeared a little when I rubbed it with my thumb. I hadn’t looked in a mirror. My face was probably a mess.

  When I stepped inside the hotel, t
he smell of bacon drew me down the hall. What did Ivan say? “Tell them a Mr. Neumann had let us stay?”

  I walked into a room where two men were sitting at a long table reading newspapers and drinking coffee. One of them looked up and nodded as I went to a sideboard where I poured two cups of tea. I found a serving tray, added two soft rolls on a plate, and carried it all upstairs.

  Booker was on his bed looking at that bookmark. I almost felt sorry for the kid.

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Good,” he said. “Until the storm.”

  I tried not to smile. I’d heard the wind, but it wasn’t much more than a healthy breeze. I gave him the tea and a roll. He took both, but he looked at the tea like it was vinegar.

  “Try it,” I said.

  “You should have let me try the bookmark with that old book about mummies.”

  “From what you told me,” I said, “it’s not a revolving door.”

  He mumbled something with his mouth full, swallowed, and started over. “What do you mean?”

  “If we left, how would we get back? I think the reason we ended up here has to do with this as much as with your bookmark.”

  I picked up the leather pouch from the nightstand, removed the carving and handed it to him. I could tell he was again surprised at how heavy it felt.

  “I mean, it didn’t disappear,” I went on. “It stayed with me. Besides, I was going to turn it over to the cops before your crazy bookmark did a time flip. Now, well, I think we need to do more. If we can find out what it really is, we’ll know what to do with it.”

  What was all that we stuff? This was my business, not his.

  “I said I would help, Anna,” Booker said. “So count me in.”

  He handed the fox back, jerked a little, and looked like he’d changed his mind.

  “After you tell me where you got this roll.”

  I led the way. The men were gone and the long table had been cleared. We helped ourselves to scrambled eggs and bacon from covered serving dishes and sat down just as Ivan came in with a pot of tea.

  “Good,” he said. “You found breakfast.”

  Voices in the hall sent him slipping from the room just before a tall woman strode in. Our eyes met. Different eyes. She wasn’t Mrs. Skagit or Mrs. Skagit’s ghost or ancestor or whatever. She was somebody else. She was followed by a man who deferred to her with practiced grace. A small girl in a frilly white dress stayed at the door, stuck out her tongue, and ducked down the hall.