The Chukchi Bible

by Yuri Rytkheu

  Mlakoran took his spear off the wall of his yaranga and spent a long while sharpening the volcanic glass spearhead.

  All the people of Uelen already knew about the Order from Above and about the shamans’ confirming the wishes of the gods by their terrible suffering.

  The people of Uelen were silent as they watched the preparations for the holy ritual of human sacrifice.

  The shamans had chosen the place of the sacrifice. They cleared the snow from the icy center of the frozen lagoon and lit a sacred fire. Its pale flame, interspersed with the sun’s bright rays, rose toward the sky.

  But no one came down from the yarangas.

  The people of Uelen had shut themselves inside their dwellings, and only Keu, who could barely walk, and Keleu, with huge black bruises under his eyes, stood beside the sacred fire, clad in their long ceremonial robes.

  Mlakoran appeared, wearing a white deer kukhlianka, white kamuss (deer leg hide) trousers, and white kamuss torbasses. His hair, so black just yesterday, had turned the color of his death garments. He carried his spear in one hand; the other led his daughter, who was similarly dressed in ceremonial clothes – a light kerkher of white fawn skin, trimmed with wolverine fur.

  Silently they walked into the center of the icy circle. Mlakoran planted the spear deep into the ice and placed his daughter’s hand onto the spear shaft, so she could hold it at an angle.

  All this happened in complete silence, in blinding sunlight.

  Setting his daughter down and checking that the spear was firmly held upright, Mlakoran drew back a little and then threw himself onto the spear, hard enough to pierce both his white kukhlianka and his breast. Blood spurted down the spear’s shaft and Mlakoran toppled, taking the spear with him.

  A child’s wail rang out amid the thick, tense silence, and then the howling cry of Mlakoran’s first wife as, loosened hair streaming, she came running toward the brightly bloodstained circle of ice.

  They buried Mlakoran at the foot of the Hill of Hearts’ Peace.

  That very evening Keleu went to see the rekken – but they had vanished. All that was left, if you looked carefully, were the barely visible, level tracks of their tiny sleds on the snow.

  From that day on, there were no more deaths in Uelen and the sick began to get better.

  Yet the death of Mlakoran did not mean the end of our line, whose thread continued in the deeds of Mlakoran’s eldest son, Tynemlen, named so because he had been born at the apex of dawn, almost at that very moment when the first ray of sunshine pours through to crown the far horizon with a smooth crimson stripe.

  The Safekeeping of Names

  The shaman Kalyach, wrapped in his ukkenchin, a cloak made of walrus intestines, made his way along the shore. He was heading for the Great Crag, which overhung the narrow shingled beach. Gigantic waves battered the shoreline, as if striving to capture the lonely wanderer, but only the flaccid, foamy tongues of the waves actually reached his high waterproof torbasses. Sometimes a clutch of seaweed, spat out onto the shore by the sea, twined itself around his feet; Kalyach would bend down, tear into the taut, slippery, wet loops, put some in his mouth and chew, squeezing the sour-sweet juice from the nutritious strands. Every now and then he came across little crabs, and the contents of their thin claws also went into the traveler’s belly. Starfish were similarly dispatched. Holding the prickly arms to his face, the shaman would slurp the liquid from their central hole and, flinging wide his arm, toss these gifts of the sea back into the waves.

  Still, he was mindful of his main goal: he was searching for a good piece of sea-polished walrus tusk, blackened from its time in the water. It was precisely the item he needed in order to divine the name of a male infant newly born to the yaranga of Tynemlen, one of the descendants of the legendary Mlemekym.

  Such was the old custom: after a certain number of generations, in order that the memory of the past did not dissipate in the mist of times long gone, a new arrival into this world was given an ancestral name, as though marking him out as a beacon link in the chain which future generations could use to peer back at the past.

  A few more days and the winter ice, whose approach was already visible on the horizon, would draw close to shore and imprison the watery expanse, stilling the sea’s tempestuous disposition for a long stretch of winter. The short summer was over and dark times of trials, snowstorms, and piercing frost loomed ahead.

  The sun had come up over the horizon, its light burrowing through the low clouds, but gloom still reigned underneath the overhang of the Great Crag. The wet shingle gave off a dim shine, and it was no easy task to find a piece of black walrus tusk among the stones. Kalyach had already made a few false starts, bending down only to toss away a glossy pebble, disappointed.

  Ah, there it is – a shard of an old walrus tusk!

  Kalyach carefully wiped the find with his sleeve, flicked his tongue against it to be sure it had the requisite smoothness and hardness, and then turned for home. Walking out from underneath the Great Crag’s shadows, he began to climb. This was the place where the shore became tundra, carpeted with dying yellowing grass, the lone place on the beach where vegetation was abundant: it was here, according to legend, that the ancient Sanctuary had once stood, where sacrifices had taken place and the skulls of killed whales and walrus were kept. The bones sank ever deeper into the blood-soaked shingle until the mass became earth. Eventually the ancient site fell out of use and the ritual ground was moved far to the west of the beach, after the fiery rock came down from the sky, the same that now lay half-buried in the shingle.

  The vast rock shone wetly in the autumn twilight and the morning haze, like the back of a huge Greenland whale, the kind that the people of Uelen called lygireu, a “true whale.”

  The wind from the sea sliced right through Kalyach, creeping underneath his ukkenchin and sweeping over his limbs and torso. The tribe of winds was very mixed; each of the northeasterly keral’gin, for example, was a thing of hidden cunning. It would creep up imperceptibly, beginning as a tender breeze, caressing, whispering sweet words, gently smoothing the sea and the snows with a wide, cool hand; then, gradually gaining strength, it would swell with power, implacable malice, and bitter frost. Even in the warmest time of year, at the height of summer, a keral’gin could bring a snowstorm or a bone-piercing frost. The amnon – a southerly wind that came from the tundra hills behind the lagoon – would swoop down all at once, with no warning, sweeping away anything and everything that wasn’t secured fast. It could pluck entire yarangas up into the air, though they were weighed down with large rocks, and could carry boats off to sea even though they were securely strapped to their tall supports. It usually came in summer, and was liable to barrel in even in clear, sunny weather. Uelen had barely any wind from the east, and if any came – the enmynyrgin – it was not strong. Another of Uelen’s chief winds, the northerly nike’yen, was especially capricious. It could be quiet or tender, long lasting or transient, nasty and powerful. This wind blew especially furious toward autumn, when it pushed the ice-floe fields from beyond the horizon fast up to Uelen’s beach.

  Kalyach had a distinct way of talking to each of the winds, different sacred words and different ways of conducting sacrifices. Keral’gin was fond of long plaints, deep conversations, and the curdled, congealed blood of sea animals. Nike’yen preferred dried walrus meat, and there had better be white maggots squirming on the frost-blackened offering. The southerly wind was given chopped deer meat, perhaps because it came from the vast tundra pastures. The easterly wind was usually satisfied with a pinch of pickled greens.

  The immensity that surrounded man, so empty at first glance, teemed with an assembly of beings, spirits and unknown powers that, though invisible to the naked eye, had to be recognized and placated. Man’s place in this world was a specific one, predetermined by Enantomgyn. If man did not clash with the Higher Powers, and lived in accord and friendship with them, no harm would come to him. Most human misfortunes came from knowing or un
knowing clashes with these others. It was Kalyach’s job to protect his clansmen and return to their rightful positions those who had left their predestined place in life.

  The wind parted the cloud cover and, for a moment, a troubled sun lit up the wet hide roofs of the yarangas, the boat keels, the people struggling to walk against the wind.

  Kalyach entered his chottagin and took off his wet ukkenchin. To the left of the entrance, a smoky fire slowly stirred to life. Some walrus meat was being warmed in a stone ladle, filling the room with its smell. Kalyach rolled a whale vertebra close to the fire, sat down and peered at the dark shard of walrus tusk in his hands. Stroking its smooth surface he could see Outstretched Wings – the magical object he was going to carve from the tusk. This would take a good deal of time. In his mind’s eye Kalyach already saw Outstretched Wings carved and decorated with circles and arcs; what now remained was the long, meticulous process of making them.

  He did not like to delay, and began work immediately after a snack of warm walrus meat and a piece of sweet unev in clarified nerpa blubber.

  In the meantime, in another yaranga, a nameless newborn boy who waited for his naming ritual happily suckled his mother’s breast. Bent over her infant, the overjoyed mother softly crooned an ancient lullaby:Grow, grow, my son!

  Grow and grow up fast!

  Grow to hunt the beasts at sea,

  Grow to feed your family . . .

  Grow, grow, my son!

  You shall be the strongest hunter,

  You shall be the fastest runner,

  You shall be the longest leaper . . .

  The boy was her first child, and as she cradled the tiny, warm body, the woman reveled in the deep, tender new feeling of motherhood. Her song rose and fell, mingling with the howling of the wind that raged outside the walls of the yaranga. What a pity that a person’s fate could not be determined from birth! Who will he be, this child who snores so sweetly, and only seldom opens his little eyes, black and shiny like wet shingle? Doubtless he will become a hunter and live out his life in this ancient yaranga; but whom he would caress during the long winter nights and how many children he would have – well, that even Kalyach could not foretell. And maybe there was no need. That’s the beauty of life, not knowing what even the next day may bring. Of course much would depend on himself, but much also on weather, luck, and the abundance of sea life by Uelen’s shores. And more than likely the boy would marry someone from neighboring Nuvuken, his mother’s birthplace.

  Kalyach settled down by the unsteady, flickering firelight and set to work. First he roughly chiseled the walrus tusk shard with a bone-handled stone adze. Slowly the contours of a winged, headless bird appeared from inside the shapeless bone. It was not to have a head, because destiny does not have sight or smell. Destiny is driven by different powers entirely, powers beyond human comprehension – powers whose presence can only be guessed at, because they never act in a straightforward way but only through portents and signs. Kalyach had spent half his life attempting to understand their unseen influence on man’s destiny. Even as a child, he’d often been pulled away from childish games and reminded of his special purpose, subjected to trials and even to pain. Little Kalyach ate the worst of the food, was not allowed to fully quench his thirst or wear warm and waterproof clothing. Uelen’s chief shaman, a direct descendant of Keu and Keleu, used to stand the child on the edge of the Great Crag and teach him to suppress vertigo and fear. As a boy, Kalyach would use a walrus-hide strap to drag a walrus head over the hard shingled beach; then it was a whale head, and finally a heavy rock, all to develop muscle. He would sprint to Keniskun and back in snowfall and in cold summer rain, and run up Pegyk mountain with a leather sack full of stones on his back. He took part in the rituals for the elders who wished to leave life, looking into faces disfigured by suffering and pain. This was called “looking death in the face,” sensing its breath. On dark nights he was made to sit alone over the graves of those just buried on the Hill of Hearts’ Peace and listen to the conversing dead, whose souls came to mingle under the cover of darkness. Not many could have withstood such testing, and indeed many of Kalyach’s fellows broke under the strain, some losing their minds forever. But he had survived.

  Now Kalyach ate the most choice foods, offerings brought by his tribesmen, and wore warm, waterproof, sturdy clothing. Hunger and cold were as nothing to him and he could walk long distances without once stopping to rest.

  The only thing he had not yet achieved was direct contact with the Outer Forces. Sometimes you needed clever tools to ascertain their wishes. Outstretched Wings was going to be such a tool.

  When Kalyach finished his work, what he gazed upon was a strange-looking object that indeed resembled a headless bird. Its short wings were ornamented with a design that came from Kalyach’s innermost intuition, which was guided by a passionate desire to unravel the mystery of communicating with the Outer Forces. The tiny, barely discernible lines and circles were heavily significant, their meanings going back to ancient times, offering not just words but a complete phrase. Passed down through the generations of those Inspired from Above, these special symbols seemed to connect the thoughts and words of the ancestor-shamans with the shamans of the present, like silent messengers from the deep ancient past.

  So that the ornaments and symbols would stand out even more from the bone wings, Kalyach mixed blubber and congealed walrus blood in a stone mortar to make a special, indelible paint, which he traced over the markings. Now each line was sharp and clear.

  But this was not all.

  He still needed to make a thin, unbroken lace with not a single knot in it, the kind you cut from a tanned nerpa skin that had been removed whole like a stocking.

  Finally, all was ready for the important ritual.

  Come morning, the people began to arrive at the klegran yaranga, the yaranga set aside for rituals, which had been placed in the middle of the village. This yaranga was uninhabited throughout the year, and served as the place of public meetings, shamans’ ceremonies and rituals, men’s councils on matters of communal life, and song-and-dance festivities.

  A bright fire now burned inside the spacious chottagin, and a walrus-meat brew bubbled in the stone cauldron.

  Outstretched Wings already soared amid the blue smoke and the autumnal daylight that filtered down through the smokehole. Slowly, it turned side to side, displaying one and then the other wing, painted with ornaments and symbols mysterious to the uninitiated eye.

  The people did not like to look at the talisman. Although this was an object made by a man, still, there was something in it that was other, unearthly, belonging to a different world.

  Settling down by a long dish carved from a single tree trunk, people helped themselves to hot chunks of walrus meat, passing each from hand to hand to cool it a bit.

  The young mother sat upon a large whale vertebra, on the spot where a normal yaranga would have had its fur-lined sleeping polog. She stood out from the rest because of her all-white outfit, fashioned from choice deer hides from the autumn culling, and the large walrus tusk slivers plaited into her hair. The child goggled his little black eyes, clearly fascinated by the large and unfamiliar gathering.

  The name that had been earmarked for him, so that he could carry on and even multiply his ancestor’s deeds, was Mlemekym. If he added even just a bit to what previous bearers of the name had garnered, he would serve as a connecting link and a bright beacon in the rank and file of departing years. A shame, to let what had been acquired by dint of long and arduous resistance to stern Narginen8 pass away with time. “So spoke Mlemekym!” “So did Mlemekym!” Like prayers, these words must serve as a reminder of the unbroken cord of time, a reminder that the person of today has another dimension – that the depth of ages past has given him knowledge and experience.

  Kalyach sprinkled the motley surface of his shaman’s yarar with water and brushed it lightly with his hand. The tautly stretched walrus stomach answered with a quiet ringing that re
sembled a faint human moan. The most senior elders of Uelen gathered in a circle underneath Outstretched Wings, the artifact soaring through waves of light and smoke. Here was Gaimo, who lived in the westernmost yaranga and was a great hunter of white bear. Here, Alyanto, one of the highly skilled boat builders who lived on the lagoon side of the settlement, and Kultyn from the eastern part of Uelen, a quarter famed for rearing whale and walrus hunters. The newborn belonged to Kultyn’s clan, and more specifically to the family whose yaranga stood in the central part of the village, whose people descended from Mlemekym in an unbroken line.

  Kalyach picked up his yarar and, before he began on the sacred songs, briefly narrowed his eyes. He was becoming imbued with ages past: times beyond the boundary of his own life filled him with the weight of complete knowledge.

  Winds of time, winds of the past

  I am bathed in your invisible streams

  They suffuse me, resurrecting what has passed

  They enter me and lift me up

  And I ascend through the smokehole

  And so it was: those sitting around Outstretched Wings suddenly saw Kalyach’s feet, shod in nerpa-skin torbasses, in the smokehole opening as he sped away into the unknown, leaving behind only the stone water ladle used for moistening the surface of his yarar. A surprised, terrified sigh flew up over the heads of those seated upon whale vertebrae. Even the gurgling infant fell silent, his frightened mother staring at the empty place where the singing shaman had so recently stood.

  Only Outstretched Wings remained steady, hanging from a thin ribbon of nerpa skin, revolving slowly and with great dignity on its own axis. There was a noise and a momentary darkness – and then Kalyach was back in his place, alive and well, holding his yarar. He continued to chant, as though there had been no mysterious disappearance that had so awed the assembly:So from all those long-gone years