by Yuri Rytkheu
At that time, Port Clarence was a rather busy place, where several dozen whaling ships might winter during any given year. It was situated on a bight, one that cut deep into the continent and afforded shelter from the winds; not even the fiercest of gales could whip up its calm waters. The ice here was homegrown, so to say: the bay water froze evenly, without the inescapable ice hummocks raised by the shifting waters of the open sea. It was only by the shoreline that a ridge of icy humps marked the surf’s comings and goings. They proofed the ship against the winter, casing it in heavy tarpaulins from bow to stern, and when the first snow fell, they did not clear it off the deck but rather let it pile up a foot or so. The orlop and the captain’s cabin alike were furnished with cast-iron stoves on fireproof brick pediments.
In addition to the captain’s lessons, Mletkin now began to take banjo instruction from Nelson. Familiarizing himself with the instrument, he would sit and test the melodies of his land on the strings, humming and murmuring to himself. Nelson, a man of no mean musical abilities, often sang along, and then the orlop would fall silent, entranced by the strange and ancient melodies of the Bering Sea.
Even though there was no polar night at that latitude, leisure and laziness ruled the day in the assemblage of men and ships. Each man entertained himself as best he could. The captain spent his days listening to the Victrola and reading. Mindful of his health, he did morning callisthenics and sluiced himself down with cold seawater from a hole in the ice they always kept open in case of fire.
The sailors’ main responsibility lay in chipping ice off the hulls of the steamships, keeping the underwater propeller and the steering column from the hazards of the ice floes that shifted with the tides.
Mornings on the Belvedere began with a wake-up call – a piercing scream from the first mate’s whistle. They breakfasted in a stateroom next to the galley. As the rendering vats were in storage, Nelson took charge of cooking the meals, and held his own admirably. Instead of the hardtack everyone had come to loathe, he fried up thick, greasy pancakes. True, they reeked of rendered blubber, but everyone was so used to the smell that had it disappeared, the inhabitants of Port Clarence would have been uneasy. When Mletkin went to shore to restock their supply of ice for drinking water, he could orient himself unerringly by following the stench of blubber that emanated from the ship. In his new role as ship’s cook, Nelson treated the crewmen to delicious powdered omelettes made with egg and milk, and supplemented their diets with raw frozen seal meat purchased from the local Eskimos. Nerpa liver was considered a delicacy, and although not everyone felt this way, all of the experienced whalers and polar explorers were well aware that such food provided a good defense against scurvy. And they all drank a vast quantity of coffee.
Each day, after his tasks on deck were done, Mletkin would visit the captain’s cabin for another lesson. He had noticed that John Forster took a great pleasure in these meetings. Eventually, the captain made a confession: in his youth, he had been a schoolteacher in Bethesda, a small town on the outskirts of Washington, the American capital.
“My whole family were teachers: both my parents, and my grandfather too.” There was pride in his voice, and he glanced with unconcealed tenderness at a yellowing group photograph, glassed and framed, that hung on the cabin wall.
Mletkin experienced a strange, contrary effect as he delved further into his studies: the more he learned, the more he questioned.
This was especially true where religion was concerned. The captain professed himself an atheist, a man free of religious convictions and a proponent of scientific, rational facts. He would often launch into merciless critiques of the Bible, which always made his pupil very uncomfortable, while shamanism he mocked outright as evidence of a dark and sordid instinct in an uncivilized people.
At this last Mletkin took offense:
“So you consider me a savage?”
“You personally – not anymore.” John Forster grinned. “But the rest of your tribesmen have not moved far beyond living like the animals that surround them. They dwell in filthy hovels and never wash themselves, both home and hide stinking of the devil knows what, clothes swarming with legions of bugs. Once I saw an old woman plucking lice from the fur lining of her overalls and popping them into her mouth by the handful! It was revolting!”
Mletkin listened in silence, thinking to himself that the small Chukchi lice were by far less offensive than the gigantic lice and cockroaches that teemed in the hairmouths’ cabins. And what about the rivers of shit that ran underfoot in every city? But he did not argue with his tutor. The contradictions in the very lifestyle of this pale-skinned society were far more material, a prime example being their absolute certainty of their own superiority. The things they had done in the Chukchi village of Guvrel did not cause them any moral qualms. On the contrary, as they streamed back aboard they boasted openly of trading only a bottle of cheap whiskey for a fabulous polar bear pelt, or a brace of walrus tusks. One of the men gulped and spluttered excitedly through the story of how, having had a woman for the price of a swig of cheap whiskey, he discovered her young daughter, who gave herself to him as her parents commanded, in exchange for the dregs of the bottle. And yet these same sailors dealt scrupulously with one another, and never locked their trunks.
Twice a week, weather permitting, they played basketball down on the ice, on a court cleared of snow, with two baskets stuck fast into the ice. Nelson, who was the Belvedere’s forward, soon had Mletkin playing with gusto.
Despite the seeming monotony, the days passed by quickly.
The Tangitans’ chief festival arrived, the day of the birth of their god, Jesus Christ. Almost every ship turned out to have stowed a tree in its hold, its green needles preserved by the cold weather. The devout Nelson managed to decorate the tree as he prepared the Christmas feast. The delicious aromas emanating from his cook’s galley masked even the habitual stink of the whale blubber, for a time.
There was a priest among the wintering company, who conducted the holiday mass on the Victoria, the largest of the ships in port. They had erected an altar on the tarpaulin-covered deck, and fluffy white gusts billowed up from the mouths of the caroling choir.
Those present at the service often joined in with the singers, praising God and his relatives, especially his mother, who was the wife of the carpenter Joseph.
When the service was over each of the participants returned to his vessel for the Christmas dinner.
Now Nelson lit the candles that dotted their Christmas tree. Despite the rising wind, he contrived to keep the little flames steady.
The ships’ merrymaking went on through the night. The Victoria even had a string of electric lights. The ships fired their cannons, and the sailors fired their revolvers and guns into the air.
Mletkin helped Nelson clear the table in the officers’ wardroom and in the sailors’ galley, and washed the dishes. He got to his bed in the dead of night, but had barely closed his eyes when he was awakened by shrill screams of “Fire!”
He could see neither flame nor smoke in the sailors’ berths. The screams had come from above, from the top deck. Half-naked, half-drunk men clustered around an open hatch, getting in each other’s way, shouting curses. Mletkin was one of the last to climb up from the orlop. Instantly, he felt the heat singeing his hair and the tops of his ears; he jumped down onto the ice and ran from the ship. The Belvedere was roaring with flames like a giant Christmas tree, illuminating the icebound ships in the port, the stars themselves dimmed by the raging firelight.
The entire wintering company gathered by the burning ship. John Forster gazed at his ship, not blinking, tears coursing down his cheeks. Someone was attempting to lower the fire hose into a melthole, but it was already covered with a crust of new ice. It took a long while to find the ice picks, and besides, it was clear to everyone that no amount of water would save the flame-engulfed vessel. It creaked and groaned, something in the hold – probably the harpoon cannons’ dynamite charges – banged
explosively, fiery blisters erupting high over the deck, showering sparks everywhere. The fat, greasy flames were shot through with dark red stripes of burning blubber, which saturated the ship from mast to keel. Stumbling farther back, Mletkin wiped his streaming eyes just in time to see a flaming figure of a man leap from the deck onto the ice.
“That’s Nelson!”
And so it was. Astonishingly, he was the only man to be seriously hurt in the blaze. His clothes fell from him, smoking and guttering as they hit the ice. Nelson rolled in the snow, moaning, not letting anyone near. Sometimes he howled like a wounded wolf.
A man pushed his way through the crowd, saying he was a doctor.
He bent over Nelson, asking something, but received only a groan in response.
“Help me!” shouted the doctor.
Mletkin was by his side in an instant.
“Bring a stretcher!” the doctor ordered.
Very carefully and gently, they rolled Nelson onto the stretcher and carried him away.
As he was about to board the Victoria, Mletkin looked back. The Belvedere was slowly sinking into the melthole its fiery hull had made in the ice. Burning fragments of the ship were winking out as they floated on the surface of the melthole’s vast mirror. Soon the whaling camp was shrouded in darkness once more, and the moon, stars, and Christmas tree candles aboard the ships returned to undimmed luminosity.
Nelson was carried into the ship’s infirmary with great care. He was unconscious and raving, with the names of his God and of Sally on his lips. The doctor asked Mletkin to wash his hands thoroughly. They had to get Nelson free of his charred clothing, which had stuck fast to his skin. Mletkin lifted a small leather pouch of papers and money from Nelson’s breast. His body was a horrific sight, its entirety an open wound, raw and seeping. They covered the injured man with a thick layer of creamy whale blubber, strained pure, and wrapped him in clean white linen.
Because Nelson’s skin was black, it was hard to tell where it ended and the charred fabric of his clothes began. A few times Mletkin had lifted a piece of his friend’s skin together with cloth, and so made the grim discovery that a black man’s flesh was as pink as the flesh of Tangitans, as pink as his own.
The doctor jammed Nelson’s clenched teeth open and poured a bit of liquid inside. Nelson swallowed convulsively, but did not open his eyes.
“I’ve given him some opium,” the doctor explained. “It will lessen his suffering. That’s all I can do for him now.”
He walked to the sink and began washing his hands.
“But he’ll die,” said Mletkin.
“That is more than likely. We can only alleviate his pain, though we would have to take him to the hospital in Nome to do even that.”
The sailors of the wintering whaling flotilla made a collection among themselves and gathered together enough money to buy a sled and a team of huskies in a neighboring Eskimo village. Piu, a local Eskimo who knew the way, was hired as a guide, and Mletkin set off with his wounded friend on a sad, strange journey.
The blizzard crashed down even before the ships’ lights had ceased to twinkle at their backs. The already short winter day swiftly thickened and grew dark, so dark that they were forced to stop. Nelson came to, moaning. Piu hastily erected a snow shelter and they bedded the dogs in a circle around the shelter, with Nelson on the sled at its center, wrapped in warm clothes and heavy blankets.
Mletkin’s large flask of warm, sweet coffee lay against his stomach, tucked inside his shirt. This was how the Chukchi kept their drinking water and the water used to spray and defrost the sled runners from freezing on long winter journeys. The gusting wind made it impossible even to attempt a fire.
“I want to live!” Nelson groaned.
“You will,” Mletkin’s voice rang with conviction. “I’ll do everything I can to save you.”
“I have this feeling,” gasped the other man, “that I’m right inside this hideous pain, in the heart of it.”
“I hear you, Nelson.”
After feeding him a few sips of coffee, Mletkin walked out of the shelter. He took a few steps forward, into the phosphorescent maelstrom of the raging storm, and shouted against the wind: You, Outer Forces, who have chosen me
To stand between Men and the Heavens!
I plead with You to help me!
To ease the sufferings of the unfortunate,
The one whose name is Nelson Crawford Jackson!
Mletkin was shaking, not from cold but from a superhuman intensity, an incredible concentration of his spirit and will. It almost seemed to him that the wind itself was blowing around the emanation of this force, around his convulsively tight, snow-spattered face.
I beg of You a miracle,
The kind only You can deliver,
Ease the suffering of Man.
There were only the sounds of Piu snoring peacefully in the snow-hide, the dogs whining quietly in their sleep, and Nelson’s labored breath.
“Don’t leave me, Frank, all right?” His voice was barely audible. After a while, he said: “You know, I think it’s hurting less . . .”
“You’ll feel better soon,” Mletkin told him. Then he surprised himself with a confession: “I was asking my gods to help you.”
“Thanks . . . It hurts less when I’m talking to you . . . I should have doused the candles myself, and then that drunken MacPherson wouldn’t have toppled the Christmas tree. And the deck wooden, soaked in rendered blubber. A dropped match would have been enough . . .”
As the blizzard raged all through that uneasy night, Nelson told Mletkin the story of his people, his family. His ancestors had been forcibly brought over to America from a faraway, sweltering African land. The sun there burned so brightly that it charred your skin, which was why Nelson’s kinfolk were all so black. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of black-skinned slaves toiled from dusk until dawn under the watchful eyes of their white overseers, who were armed with whips and guns, or else dogs, on the great cotton plantations. Runaways would be shot mercilessly, or torn apart by dogs. The white plantation owners bought and sold people like cattle, tearing children from their parents, wives from their husbands. The black slaves rebelled, but each revolt was brutally suppressed. And yet the day came when the black people united with those whites who were opposed to slavery. There was a war, which ended with slavery being abolished by law, though the whites’ haughty and superior attitude to blacks – even among those opposed to slavery – prevailed to this day.
“Even now we, the citizens of the mighty United States, are treated as second-class people. We don’t even have our own names. We were christened with the names of our owners; my name belongs to the man whose fields my ancestors once worked. We have to take the most badly paid, backbreaking labor . . . But we work as hard as we can, to show the white man that God loves us, too . . . And now I’m begging the Lord to be merciful and spare my life . . . What would Sally do without me? My poor little sister, she’s always relied on my help.”
Cloudy tears rolled down from between his singed eyelashes; then he lost consciousness once more.
Nelson came to on the third and last day of their voyage when the scent of coal smoke already hung upon the air, and Mletkin was able to give him the good news:
“I can see the rooftops of Nome from here. We are very near our goal. Be strong, my friend!”
“Promise me you’ll deliver this money to Sally . . .”
“You can do that yourself,” Mletkin told him, but his voice no longer carried hope.
The Nome hospital turned out to be nothing more than a long wooden barracks, subdivided into smallish sickrooms. The doctor on duty looked over the ill man and gave him a sleeping draft. Taking Mletkin aside he said:
“I’m amazed, frankly, that he’s lasted this long. According to every law of medicine he should have died long ago.”
Nelson died the following morning. He regained consciousness, briefly, and gave Mletkin’s hand a weak squeeze.
“I�
��m so glad you are here with me . . . I am going now . . . I am going to God.”
Mletkin could not hold back his own tears. He closed his friend’s eyes before walking out of the room.
Mletkin buried his friend in full accord with the Tangitan tradition. He made a wooden box, into which he pressed the dead man’s body, and carried it by sled to the dour cemetery on the opposite bank of the frozen river. It took half a day’s work to hack a cavity large enough in the rock-hard, permafrost soil. He used the heated point of a nail to singe a legend into the plain wooden cross: “Nelson Crawford Jackson 1870 – 1898.”
The Exhibit
After the funeral of his friend, Mletkin found it hard to know what to do with himself. Until the start of the sailing season there would be no question of fording the Bering Strait and getting over to Chukotka. He was saved by Dr. Hutchinson’s offer of a spell of work at his hospital, in exchange for a small salary, his meals, and a bed on one of the wards.
Mletkin stoked the ovens and carried blocks of freshwater ice from the river to melt in the huge iron cauldron embedded in the stove of the hospital’s kitchen; he also cooked meals for the hospital’s few patients, having handily picked up a few things from Nelson. At times he was called upon to change bandages, apply compresses, smear frostbitten body parts with whale blubber, and even assist Dr. Hutchinson with the more complex surgeries – removing the appendix, for example, or treating gunshot wounds. One time he had to help perform an autopsy on an Eskimo who had died for no apparent reason. On the whole, a man’s innards were very much like those found inside nerpas, lakhtak, and walrus. Mletkin was rather taken aback to find that the differences were so slight.
In the evenings, Dr. Hutchinson liked to invite Mletkin to sit with him over coffee. He was curious to hear about Chukchi ways, about shamans. Like John Forster, the captain of the perished Belvedere, the doctor was most interested in the magic shamans were alleged to perform.