The Chukchi Bible

by Yuri Rytkheu

  The yaranga’s inhabitants greedily fell on the meat. Having eaten their fill, they each had yet another large slice of meat before going to bed.

  Tynemlen lay awake for a long time, tossing and turning on his worn deer-hide pallet, sinking into sleep, then starting awake again. In the middle of the night he suddenly awoke to a smacking, slurping sound, and at first thought that one of the dogs had gotten inside and into the vat of boiled bear meat. In the weak light that seeped through the balding, patchy fur polog, Tynemlen made out the figures of his hosts. Clustered around the vat, they were devouring the remains of the cold meat, greedily, noisily.

  After that Tynemlen did not manage to sleep at all, but simply lay with his eyes tightly shut. Only toward morning did he finally drift off, awakening to the joyful face of a sated young girl, who gazed at him with tenderness and affection.

  Tynemlen often recalled that face later in life: the look of a person who was utterly happy, despite her name: Iyo-o, Stormy Weather.

  The path itself dictated the journey’s pace. They normally set off at dawn, and if they had not managed to reach a camp or a shoreside village before nightfall, they would sleep on the sleds, ringed by their dogs. The main thing was not to lose your nose to frostbite during the night; if the frost was especially hard, they would get up during the night and walk about, to get the blood pumping into their numbed toes. Once every day, without fail, they would have a hot meal, making camp on the shore amid piles of driftwood. Fire was obtained by drilling a fire-hole into a special wooden plank: they would light a large circle of flame and sit inside the blazing ring, drying out, warming up, melting snow in the cauldron and boiling fresh nerpa meat. Every so often they had the gift of a deer carcass. Deer meat was not as filling or fortifying as kopal’khen, but it did make for a wonderfully tasty broth.

  The people in every camp along the length and breadth of the stretch between Uelen and the Kolyma River spoke the native, familiar language of the Luoravetlan. All that changed were the intonation and cadence. The farther they went, the more musical the language sounded, and at times Tynemlen imagined he was hearing not regular, everyday speech, but a wondrous song.

  Despite the travelers’ efforts to take good care of the dogs, ensuring they always had enough food and rest, toward the end of the journey the animals were visibly tired. It was harder and harder to get them going each morning, especially after a blizzard, when they would awaken buried in snow. From time to time, digging out a pack, the men would find frozen carcasses.

  “At this rate we won’t have any dogs to bring us home,” opined Tynemlen.

  “The best sled dogs are bred on the Kolyma,” his father said. “I want to buy a few pairs there.”

  Sometimes they traveled by night. If the ground was level, Tynemlen would lie face up on his sled and peer at the night sky, remembering his father’s stories about the lives of the celestial bodies. Connecting the constellations with imaginary lines, he took real pleasure in recognizing the Constellation of Sadness near the star Unpener, where fabled heroes and those fallen in battle dwell in eternal peace. Mlemekym, Mlakoran, Kunleliu, and others, Tynemlen’s own ancestors, also resided there. There were deer grazing by the shore of the Sandy River. And just there, the Fleeing Maidens

  . . . Tynemlen thought of Iyo-o. The farther back they left the famished camp, the more often that joyful girlish face came to mind, and the thought of seeing her again on the way back to Uelen warmed his heart.

  Before they reached the mouth of the Kolyma, they veered from the seashore and into the tundra.

  There they spent several nights among their nomadic kinsmen. It was the first time Tynemlen had seen such wealthy and powerful chauchu. Some of the tents, sewn together from sheared deerskin, had three or four hanging pologs, such as in the yaranga of Kymykei, who owned several large deer herds, and who long had dealings with the Russians and knew their customs well. The travelers had their fill of deer meat and reveled in their hosts’ largesse. The arrival of a sudden blizzard forced them to extend their stay with their hospitable Kolyma brethren.

  Inside a warm, fur-lined polog that still smelled of fresh snow (during the day the pologs were carried outside, spread out on the clean snow, and beaten with special antler implements to banish the damp of night), they would listen to ancient tales of war against the Tangitans and the Yakuts, stretching out in a sated semi-doze. The brave Luoravetlan were always the victors in these tales, and they excelled at torturing their Tangitan captives. It was here, within the fur-lined polog, that Tynemlen heard a new version of the exploits of his tribesman and ancestor Kunleliu.

  When good weather returned, they continued on their way. The chauchu joined up with the men of Uelen, harnessing their deer into the long caravan.

  The travelers’ sensitive nostrils picked up the scent of an unusual smoke a long while before the Tangitan camp came into view with tall blue pillars of smoke that seemed to prop up the clear, congealing light of the evening sky. The smoke was coming from strange dwellings, ringed by a high, densely packed, wooden palisade.

  Luoravetlan from all parts of Chukotka, marine hunters and deer herders, were already gathered around the fortress. The groups camped at a distance from one another, so the dogs would not attack the deer.

  Kymykei announced that they would make offerings to the Russian god before the market fair could begin.

  The Russian shaman’s ritual was going to take place inside a specially-built wooden prayer-yaranga, topped by a little tower with a cross, which was visible from beyond the palisade. Beneath the cross hung a bell larger than any deer could wear.

  Kymykei explained to Tynemlen that the Russian shaman used the bell to wake up the sleeping Russian god, and to call people to this ceremony.

  If it had not been for Kymykei, Tynemlen and his father could hardly have managed to attend the Russian worship, so great was the number of those assembled. Arrivals included not only Luoravetlan from near and far camps, but also wide-faced Yakuts, spindly-legged, elegant Lamut-Kaaramkyn, the Chuvans, and even the Koryaks – who were always warring with the Luoravetlan, despite being closest to them on account of shared ancient bloodlines. The wars between the Chukchi and the Koryaks and other neighbors had only ceased by the order of the Russian Empress Catherine; in exchange, the Luoravetlan were excused from the compulsory tribute – the yasak – and allowed to live on their own lands according to their customs and only convert to the Russian faith of their own free will.

  “I was baptized three times!” Kymykei boasted. “And each time the Russian shaman gave me a cloth louse trap which they call a shirt, and a metal cross-amulet, which I used to make hooks for my fishing rods, the ones for grayling.”

  “Did anything change within your soul after you accepted the Russian faith?” Mlerintyn inquired tentatively.

  “Not at all!” came the cheery reply. “My belief in our own spirits has not weakened a bit, even though I’d put the image of the Russian god, whose name is Nikolai, alongside our own idols.”

  “So it’s possible to convert to the Russian faith many times?” asked Tynemlen.

  “Well, according to their custom you should only do it once,” Kymykei replied, “but when there are lots of people, and it’s murky inside the Russian shaman’s yaranga, all Luoravetlan look the same to him. I have a feeling he can’t even distinguish between a Koryak and a Kaaramkyn. He might be able to recognize a Yakut, but only by his wide face.”

  As part of the group selected to participate in the Russian shaman’s ceremony and be baptized, Mlerintyn and his son, accompanied by Kymykei, went through a special gate in the wall and into the fortress.

  The Tangitan camp was very different from a Luoravetlan one. All the dwellings here were made of wood. There was a smoking pipe sticking up from each roof, and some roofs had two or three. There were openings set into the wooden walls to admit daylight, covered with an icy sort of material, which glinted in the sun.

  The Tangitans as well as some of the
natives would stare at the cross atop the prayer-yaranga, then draw their right hand down their chest and then from shoulder to shoulder as they approached the building. The expression on their faces would change, as though they were nearing something unearthly and uplifting. Tynemlen thought he saw their lips move in a soundless whisper.

  The sight made the young man recall how he and his father made dawn sacrifice to their own gods, bribing them with choice morsels of deer flesh and asking for good fortune in trading with the Tangitans.

  The crowd slowly seeped through the outflung doors of the shaman’s house, whose depths seemed to be flickering with the yellow candle light. It glimmered dully in the gilded ornaments and the ceremonial vestments of the priest and his assistant.

  Kymykei and his companions were led forward as honored guests. Tynemlen and his father found themselves directly before a gilt-framed picture of a long-haired, bearded man, rather thin, with enormous eyes that bulged like a flounder’s.

  “This is the chief God of the Tangitans,” Kymykei whispered, with a nod at the picture, “Jesus Christ.”

  “But why is he so thin?” Tynemlen asked quietly.

  “Because he suffered,” Kymykei answered, before the Russian shaman cast a stern glance their way.

  Tynemlen found Kymykei’s explanation confusing in the extreme: how could an all-powerful god suffer? If you looked closely at his image you could perceive traces of bitter suffering and pain in his big, round eyes. Such an expression was appropriate for a human, not for a mighty god.

  Compared to the usual Tangitan talk, the Russian shaman’s speech was drawn out and plaintive, like a dog’s sad whine. Tynemlen caught a Russian word he knew – “bread,” a kind of food they made from white dust – in the stream of unfamiliar language.

  Meanwhile, the Chuvan interpreter translated into barely recognizable Luoravetlan: “Our Father-God lives high in the sky. Let his name be widely known and let his kingdom come. Let him give us food, kavkav (a flatbread fried in fat) every day, and if we owe something, let him forgive us these debts . . .”

  Every so often, the Russian shaman glanced at a thing speckled with marks and propped open on a special stand. Tynemlen realized that this was the Holy Book where the Russian shaman got the necessary incantations. There were several Holy Books of a similar sort lying atop a table covered with a colorful cloth.

  The close air, monotone droning, and unfamiliar language made Tynemlen sleepy, and he struggled to repress a yawn. He perked up when a small choir began to sing. The singing was pleasant.

  The Russian shaman kept yowling and peering at the Holy Book, while also sending forth smoke by swinging a smallish metal vessel to and fro on a long chain.

  After all this, the Russian shaman finally addressed the crowd.

  Tynemlen suspected that the Chuvan was not translating so much as relating to his kinsmen what he himself had learned not so long ago.

  “The Russians also have shamans and gods!” he began. “First, God made only one man, and only one woman from the man’s rib. They lived in a warm, verdant tundra where they had large bushes with huge berries called apples. God forbade the man and woman to taste these apples, just like we are forbidden to drink the nasty fire-water at the market. The first people were happy and had no clothes, but were as warm as if they lived in a warm, fur-lined polog. The man was named Adam, and the woman Eve. But then a big worm crawled by and convinced the first people to taste the apple-berry. God was enraged that they had disobeyed, and he banished the first people from the green tundra into a cold one, which sounds like our own native parts here. He ordered them to find food by dint of hard labor. And meanwhile the people became worse and worse – stealing, killing one another like the Koryaks and the Chukchi do, taking other men’s wives without asking. Eventually God decided to rescue the people. He went about invisibly and slept with the wife of this one man, a wood-carver named Joseph. And the Son of God was born in the likeness of man. But many evil men did not make obeisance, even though he performed miracles. He fed a crowd of people with a single fish, healed the sick, walked on water as though it were ice. And the bad people decided to destroy him, to kill him and dry his body out on a wooden cross, the way we stretch a nerpa skin to dry. But the Son of God came back to life and ascended to the sky, and now he watches us from above and teaches us how to live rightly!”

  At that, almost despite himself, Tynemlen looked up toward the ceiling of the wooden yaranga, which was wreathed in smoke.

  The baptism now began for those who wished to participate. It was a lively affair, the newly baptized joking with one another and comparing their new shirts and metal crosses with pride, blatantly showing off. Some went up more than once.

  Almost all the visitors from Uelen were baptized and received Russian names. Ony Mlerintyn and Tynemlen refrained, despite Kymykei’s attempts to persuade them; he insisted that there was nothing to it, and it was worth getting the top of your head wet in exchange for a white shirt and a cross.

  “It’ll dry in no time!” he cajoled.

  But something held the father and son back from participating in the Russian ceremony. Perhaps the reason had something to do with their belonging to the family from which Uelen’s hereditary shamans were drawn.

  The main event of the fair was to begin at dawn on the following day.

  They had made a wide semicircle of sleds, both deer- and dog-drawn, though the animals themselves had been removed to the other bank of the river. The pelts for sale – bunches of red fox and white sable furs – had been laid out upon the sleds, sorted by grade; ermine-tail garlands, tied to tall poles, fluttered and flapped in the breeze. Deer-hide bedding and strung walrus tusk had been spread on the bare snow. The goods’ owners stood back a little, near their sleds, their expressions for the most part impassive. Only Tynemlen, it seemed, was anticipating something special, something he had never seen before.

  “If you want to get a bottle of the bad water, do like this,” Kymykei explained to Mlerintyn in a voice of experience. And he flicked his pointing finger against his throat.

  “But it’s been strictly forbidden! Remember what the chief of this fortress said, and the Russian shaman, too,” Mlerintyn, who was loath to break rules, reminded him.

  “Lots of things are forbidden,” Kymykei chuckled. “However, the most forbidden things are also the sweetest. Think, what did the first people on earth do? Break God’s rule and eat the big apple-berry. And we just happen to be their descendants . . .”

  “But the people of Uelen are descended from whales,” Mlerintyn countered, even as he felt his throat constrict with the desire to sample the Tangitans’ magical brew.

  A bell pealed loudly and the fortress gate opened, disgorging a crowd of Russian merchants, who groaned under the weight of various goods they wanted to trade. They rushed forward, racing to reach the indigenous traders first.

  As they came closer, the Russians slowed. When they found something they wanted, such as a good clump of pelts, they would halt and lay on the bare snow their own offerings of black tobacco, copper pots, knives, axes, and lengths of cloth bristling with needles.

  Keeping an eye on Kymykei, Mlerintyn would either nod assent or emphatically shake his head no if the goods offered for exchange were not sufficient in number, or not useful. Then the merchant would step aside and another would appear in his place.

  The variety of the Tangitans’ goods was astonishing. They often offered items whose purpose was entirely unfathomable. One merchant kept trying to trade a bunch of wax candles for a clutch of pelts, with no success. For the most part, the Luoravetlan only accepted truly useful things.

  The trading, at first chaotic, eventually took on a more orderly tone. Once he’d satisfied his need for the absolute necessities, Mlerintyn acquired a sack of flour, from which his family would make delicious fried pancakes, and also a lump of the hard, sweet, ice-like substance called sugar. Although tea drinking had not yet become a part of Uelen’s daily life, on Kymyk
ei’s advice Mlerintyn swapped for a few bricks of black China tea.

  The trading continued until deep twilight. Some had made fires, as there was plenty of firewood in the sparse little forest nearby.

  By nightfall, a number of the natives were looking and acting strangely, as though they’d lost some of their mental faculties. Some talked loudly, laughed to themselves, and even broke into song. Others ambled up and down the marked rows on unsteady legs, swaying from side to side.

  “They’ve had a taste of the fire-water!” Mlerintyn looked at Kymykei as he made his guess.

  The other gave a meaningful little smile and flicked his eyes to an approaching trader who was stretching his mittenless hands out to them even from a distance. The Russians’ greeting normally consisted of grasping each other’s palms firmly, smiling and saying “Zdravstvui,” which was a wish that the other would regain health after an illness.

  And yet this Russian exclaimed in Luoravetlan:

  “Amyn etti, Kamakai!”*

  “Zdravstvui, Kolyai!” Kymykei shouted back, flicking a finger at his throat meaningfully.

  “Varkyn, varkyn!” 11 Kolyai nodded, and, looking around furtively, quickly slipped something into the wide neckhole of Kymykei’s kukhlianka.

  In return, Kymykei pulled a dozen choice red fox pelts, carefully wrapped in a napped deerskin, from his baggage.

  Now it was Mlerintyn’s turn. On Kymykei’s signal, the Russian merchant slipped a vessel, as cold as if it were really made from river ice, into Mlerintyn’s coat, receiving a string of walrus tusks in exchange. A set of twelve fiery red Kamchatka fox pelts produced a second bottle, which clinked happily against the first between the Luoravetlan’s kukhlianka and his bare belly.

  When Tynemlen recognized an approaching stranger, clad in black from head to foot, as the Russian shaman, he was afraid: what if he had noticed the bottles’ migration into his father’s fur-lined clothes? What if he was coming to punish them? Tynemlen had heard that, according to the Tan- * “Greetings!” gitan faith, those who had sinned were sent to the hottest corner of Hell, although there seemed little enough to fear in that. What Chukcha, having spent his life freezing, wouldn’t dream of an eternity of heat . . . The Russian shaman was accompanied by the Chuvan interpreter, who dragged a large sack behind him.