by Yuri Rytkheu
“A shaman doesn’t work magic,” Mletkin asserted strongly, as if to say he did not like this turn of conversation.
“But I have heard so much about miracles, about men changing into animals and swapping bodies. Is it not true that shamans can do these things?”
Mletkin felt his chest constrict. In those long-ago days of his testing, he had turned himself into a bird, into a walrus and a nerpa, even into a fly crawling over a hunk of walrus meat that had been set out in the sun. But to talk about those experiences, just like that, would be no different than to turn himself inside out before Dr. Hutchinson, to pull out his own hot and bloody beating heart and hand it over to the other man.
“A shaman doesn’t work magic,” Mletkin repeated. “A miracle comes from the Outer Forces, if they will it. Or they can ask me to make one happen.”
Mletkin couln’t tell whether the doctor was a man of faith or an atheist like the captain of the unfortunate Belvedere.
“So what does the shaman do, then?” asked the doctor.
“First and foremost he heals, as you do, doctor. He heals with medicinal herbs and roots, which he must collect in the tundra. My grandfather Kalyantagrau, the famed great shaman of Uelen, taught me this. I can heal frostbite with a special salve of herbs in a whale-blubber suspension, or work the knife when black flesh needs paring off. That’s what we call it when the flesh dies and poisons the blood black . . . The patient himself does the rest. I try to awaken his own inner strength, and that strength is what can work the true miracles.”
One day a steamship sailed into Nome. The chimney stack protruding from between the vessel’s two masts belched dense black smoke, whose acrid smell was apparent to Mletkin from the moment the Bear entered the head of Norton Bay. He picked a tall man out from among the disembarking crowd; the man was appraisingly scanning the natives who milled about the dock. This was the renowned anthropologist and ethnographer Aleš Hrdlička, a fellow of the American Museum of Natural History. He was collecting exhibits for the ethnography section of the forthcoming World’s Fair in Chicago, tasked with presenting to the public members of the world’s yet uncivilized tribes in a setting as realistic as possible. Hrdlička was in charge of gathering up the living artifacts of the Arctic.
To entice Mletkin, the anthropologist sketched out the global village that was already being built by the side of a lake and promised a good deal of money just for sitting on the grass in front of visitors.
Mletkin was quick to agree, with the thought of making his way from Chicago to San Francisco, to carry out Nelson’s last wishes. There he would see Sally, tell her about her brother’s last days, and hand over the money Nelson had left her.
He stood by the railcar window and watched the villages, grazing camps, and herds of domesticated deer and horses blinking by. Every so often, the train stopped and the passengers had a chance to stretch their legs. The cars would be surrounded by hawkers with trays strapped to their necks, who offered sweets, cooling drinks, and cigarettes. Mletkin usually bought sugared water. His traveling companions – a man named Galyargyrgyn from St. Lawrence Island and an Eskimo family – preferred beer, which both assuaged thirst and gave a pleasant feeling of light-headedness. Three times a day Aleš Hrdlička would shepherd his charges to the dining car for a good meal. He paid special attention to Mletkin, always quizzing him about Chukchi ways. The learned anthropologist always reeked of alcohol, but the fire-water only seemed to enhance his boundless energy.
As they neared Chicago they saw the city lights fire the horizon, as though a nighttime sun had been ignited and raised by men to replace the vanishing sun of day.
For the time being, the living exhibits of the World’s Fair were quartered in an old army barracks. At the fairgrounds, inside a gigantic square walled in with timber, workmen were raising huts, yurts, yarangas, and wigwams. No sooner was a dwelling finished than its corresponding occupant was moved in. The sun-loving denizens of Africa were the first to leave the barracks. Then the Asians went, and then the aboriginal dwellers of the Kuril Islands. The Japanese were most comfortably housed of all: their homes were exceptionally neat, cozy, and elegant. The little Japanese gardens featured gurgling streams and goldfish flickering in ornamental ponds.
Mletkin was the last man left in the barracks.
Ales Hrdlicka told him, rather guiltily, that they had not managed to find him a wife.
Mletkin was bemused:
“What wife?”
“You see, in order to make it more natural, more real, it would be nice to have family life going on in the yaranga. One kind on the one side of the velvet rope that will separate the exhibits from the public, and the other on the other, so to say . . . So the public can compare, and think about it, and have their curiosity stoked.”
Evidently, the yaranga had been purchased, or else raided, from some shore village. Maybe its inhabitants had been treated the same way as the poor villagers of Guvrel, in Emma Bay. The sailors would have rolled a cask of rum or whiskey ashore, gone away for a short while, and then, when they were sure that the natives were senseless with drink or asleep, would have rowed back to shore and dismantled a yaranga, whose inhabitants would then have woken up homeless. No Chukcha would part with his home willingly; it was inconceivable, tantamount to giving away your very life. Or perhaps they had taken the yaranga from some village destroyed by famine?
Mletkin had a look around the yaranga from the outside. Everything was genuine, down to the walrus hides and the thongs that were wound around the roof, to tether it to the tent poles. Even the large stones that held the straps firmly to the ground seemed authentic, and smooth from long use. The entrance was concealed by a flap of hardened walrus hide, and the chottagin was brightly lit, warm sunlight streaming through its central smokehole. The inside was achingly familiar: wooden casks of stores ranged by the walls, proper hunting gear hanging on the walls, whale vertebra stools set upon the earthen floor, along with a low table bearing a long wooden dish and woman’s knife, called a pekul. But when Mletkin raised the fur-lined curtain of the polog, he suddenly perceived death, like an exhalation from within, despite the sleeping chamber having been immaculately swept and the new, freshly laid deer-hide bedding.
“Someone died here,” Mletkin told Hrdlička.
“But how could you know that?” asked the astonished scientist.
“I can sense the presence of death at a distance, and can even forsee it,” Mletkin replied.
This gave Hrdlička some food for thought. Frankly, this was exactly what he’d been hoping for from this exhibit – a real, live, practicing shaman of Uelen!
“Well, and even so! You needn’t worry. We’ve disinfected the dwelling so thoroughly there can’t be a trace of disease left, you can be sure of it.”
From his experience working at the hospital in Nome, Mletkin knew that the Tangitans did indeed have ways and means of getting rid of bacteria. He imagined the bacteria as a sort of minuscule people, not unlike the rekken, the tiny manikins, invisible to the naked eye, who carried diseases around on sleds drawn by equally minuscule dogs. The yaranga reeked of disinfectant.
They had already erected a sign by the yaranga’s door flap. It announced: “The Chukcha Mletkin, also called Frank. Thirty years of age. A Siberian shaman from the Eastern promontory of the Bering Strait. Posessor of Magic Powers, Master of the Spirits. Shamanic séances from 15:00 daily, except weekends. Entry fee applies (not included in fair ticket).”
Mletkin read the notice carefully, then turned to Hrdlicka:
“I can’t trance-walk here.”
“You’ll be paid an additional sum. A fair amount.”
“Where will I get my shaman’s robes? Not to mention the drum.”
“You’ll have everything you need!” Hrdlicka was smiling cheerfully. “My Russian friend Vladimir Bogoraz is bringing everything over tomorrow.”
“You mean Veyip?” Mletkin said incredulously.
“What did you call him?”
> “That’s what we called him,” Mletkin explained. “He knows our language, our customs. He was the one that taught me the Russian speech and writing. I first read the Bible with his help.”
“Truly, O Lord, you work in mysterious ways!” Hrdlicka jokingly raised his arms to the sky, though Mletkin reckoned the scientist probably belonged to the atheist tribe, whose men denied the existence of God. “A shaman of Chukotka who reads the Bible! That will cause a real sensation! I think you’ll be the most popular exhibit at the fair.”
But there were a great many wonders besides Mletkin to be seen at the Chicago World’s Fair. He spent the day before the official opening wandering around the huge grassy field that stretched along the lakeside, getting to know the other inhabitants of the world village. Astonishing, that the artificial village showed every sign of being a permanent settlement – at any rate, life was in full flow within the wigwams and yurts, the huts of mud and bamboo. The two men who sat beside a conical, chamois-draped dwelling, clad in bright garments, pointy caps with long tassels (despite the heat), and equally pointy footwear, watching several grazing deer, might have walked straight off a playing card. “A Lapland family from the North of Norway,” heralded the sign that hung on the customary rope enclosing the exhibit. The fair’s organizers had settled their wards on geographic principles. The Laplanders had the Nene people of Russia for neighbors, and next door to the latter an Aleutian family from the Commodores, then some Kamchatkan Koryaks . . . More exotic peoples followed. Judging from the number of children darting to and fro, most of the living exhibits had been brought over with their families. Among the children’s cries and the shrilling of the women, several dwellings rang with song, often accompanied by strange and unfamiliar musical instruments. Mletkin stood awhile beside a hut roofed with palm leaves. From one of the ubiquitous signs he learned that its inhabitant was a Stone Age Indian from the island of Borneo. And in truth, the man – his skin as black as a Greenland whale’s, naked but for a grass loincloth, bone shards piercing his lips and cheeks, and enormous ornaments dangling from his distended earlobes – was an imposing sight. Not long ago Mletkin’s own ancestors wore similar ornaments, but of walrus tusk rather than bone. Peering intently at the Borneo aboriginal, Mletkin suddenly met the other man’s stare – and the savage gave him a wink with a huge, soulful black eye!
Mletkin marveled at the variety of the human tribes. On the other hand, it was evident that on the whole those represented here were materially the same as the Tangitans who wandered around putting the finishing touches on the village, and the hundreds of thousands, even millions, who lived outside the fair’s periphery. Why then among the cane and bamboo huts, among dwellings covered by palm leaves, the wigwams and yurts, the yarangas and nynliu, were there no white men’s houses? Clearly, they held themselves apart from the rest of humanity, or at least from the part that was inhabiting the village, emphasizing their superiority to the Chukchi, the Eskimos, the Indians, Malaysians, Africans, Aleutians, and all those who tomorrow would be the subject of wonder, curiosity, or perhaps disdain, on the part of the fair’s visitors. If only it wasn’t for the need of money! Those colorful bits of paper and metallic chips had a limitless power among the Tangitans. All those who came to the Bering and the Chukchi Seas to exterminate whales did their bloody trade for money, froze and perished among the ice floes for the love of those papers and chips, for greed to possess ever more of them. As Mletkin understood it, in the Tangitans’ world a man’s worth was not measured by his physical strength or mental agility, his knowledge, wisdom, or skill, but by how many of the papers and chips he owned.
Veyip arrived on the day before the grand opening. He was visibly pleased to see his Chukchi friend.
Although he looked much the same as all the other Tangitans in a crowd, there was something in him that was unique to himself. That, and the plain, unaffected way he treated Mletkin and the other living exhibits. He was hungry for news from the shores of the Bering Strait, and spoke Mletkin’s native tongue with undisguised delight. Hrdlička looked on with an envious smirk.
“You know, Vladimir, when you speak Chukchi you start to look like a Siberian aboriginal. Maybe we should stand you next to Mletkin as a fellow exhibit!”
“Why not?” Bogoraz said cheerily, not rising to the bait. “We’ll do some trance-walking together yet!”
The shaman’s garb which he’d brought turned out to be ancient and fragile. Gingerly, Mletkin shook it out and hung it inside the yaranga, whose inner room housed three stone braziers. The tambourine was in great shape, though, large and taut where the walrus stomach stretched over the frame. Mletkin wetted the dry skin thoroughly in preparation.
Very early the following morning, about an hour before the opening ceremony, they brought meat on a long wooden dish.
“Don’t eat it now,” warned Hrdlička. “You can start when the visitors begin to go past. Try to keep to the raw stuff.”
The opening ceremony, which was attended by some very important personages – the state governor and President Theodore Roosevelt himself – took place at the fair’s main square, which was home to the wigwams of America’s own indigenous peoples, the Indians. Bedecked in feathers and armed with spears and tall staffs, whose long ribbons flapped about in the breeze, these Native Americans stood out sharply from the multitudinous crowd bubbling within the confines of the square. First there were speeches, and their garbled, undecipherable echoes reached Mletkin in his enclosure. The speeches were often interrupted by approving shouts, and earsplitting whistles from the spectators, as well as the thundering drums and screeching war cries from the Indians.
Finally the speeches were finished and the crowd streamed down and into the vast campgrounds. The hum of it was now approaching Mletkin, photographers’ lightbulbs flashing here and there like lightning. The drums started up again, somewhere off to the side.
On the instructions of Bogoraz, Mletkin had been dressed in his shamanic garments since morning. But the clothing that was quite comfortable in the perennially cool sea breeze off Uelen’s coastline was woefully inappropriate here in Chicago. Mletkin was sweating buckets, his wet cloth undershirt glued to his streaming back on the one side, and to the chamois underside of his kukhlianka on the other. Runnels of sweat poured down his legs into his fur-lined torbasses, which were now as wet as if he’d been walking through flooded tundra. Sweat ran down into his eyes and every so often Mletkin had to wipe his brow with a small towel he’d been allotted for that purpose. The bone handle of his shaman’s tambourine felt slippery in his moist grip.
The photographers got to him first, momentarily blinding him with their magnesium flash flares. Then Bogoraz and Hrdlicka came to stand beside him.
“Mr. President, Mr. Governor!” Aleš Hrdlička addressed the important guests ceremonially. “Before you stands our closest neighbor across the Bering Strait, a practicing shaman from the Eastern seaboard of Chukotka, or more specifically from the village of Uelen. I give you Mletkin!”
The president walked up to Mletkin and surprised everyone by extending his hand and saying:
“How do you do, Mr. Mletkin.”
“How do you do, Mr. President,” Mletkin replied in kind.
“So you speak English?” The president glanced over his shoulder for an explanation. “But how can that be? I was told that you were a savage!”
Bogoraz jumped in:
“Mletkin is an unusual person, back where he comes from. He’s a sort of repository of wisdom for his tribe . . . He’s their scientific center, their weather bureau . . . their, mmm, National Geographic Society, so to say, and a host of other things . . .”
“But can he do this shaman business?” asked the governor. “That’s the key thing in his line of work, is it not?”
Never in all his long life had Mletkin felt so humiliated. Even Bogoraz, who was a good friend, stood firmly beyond that invisible rope that separated the living exhibits of the World’s Fair from the rest of their fellow
humanity. Bogoraz was a white man, a Tangitan, and the way he treated Mletkin, even the extent of his friendliness, was predicated on his being of a fundamentally different race of people.
“The shamanic séances,” Hrdlička elucidated, “are scheduled to begin at midday.”
“Perhaps Mletkin might perform a little preview for the president?” asked the governor.
“Go on, Mletkin,” Bogoraz put in.
“I only work according to my contract,” Mletkin’s English words rang out clearly. “My séances begin after midday, every day except weekends. And today is a Saturday!”
The president laughed wholeheartedly and exclaimed:
“I like this shaman!”
The crowd moved on. Mletkin retreated into the yaranga and tore off his shaman’s garb, furious. Perching on a log, he was soon deep in thought. It was possible that after such a brazen refusal to perform for the most important man in America, the fair’s organizers might try to get rid of him. Let them! It would be for the best. To hell with the money. There were many ways of making money, better than being paid for humiliation and loss of face. And he, the chief shaman of Uelen! These were his thoughts as he gazed, with an almost unconscious pleasure, at the bright fireworks that concluded the first day of the Chicago World’s Fair, and the cascading falls of rainbow light bursting into starlike, blazing shards seemed to him a man-made echo of the aurora borealis.
To his surprise, Mletkin’s rude behavior brought no negative repercussions. On the contrary, Bogoraz – who came by after the fair had closed for the day – invited him to dinner at one of Chicago’s restaurants. Aleš Hrdlička joined them. Both Tangitans praised Mletkin to the skies, and predicted that the incident would be especially marked out in the forthcoming first-day reviews.
The next morning Mletkin bought some newspapers.
One article doubted Mletkin’s provenance, deeming him to be “visibly spoiled by civilization.” It went on to conjecture that some of the other exhibits might also be falsified. Mletkin smiled as he read on.