by Yuri Rytkheu
Mariinsky Post, the trading center founded in Anadyr during the previous century, turned out to be no more than a small clump of turfy huts with tiny, cockeyed windows. Between the last of the huts and the mouth of the little tundra river Kazachka there stood a long, low barracks, a Russian Imperial flag flying above. This was the headquarters of the Russian envoy, from which the enormous surrounding territory that covered millions of square kilometers was ruled; that land was sparsely populated, yet desperately attractive to enterprising Tangitans. In the summer, the bulk of the population was composed of Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese who came for the salmon fishing season. The shore was swamped with enormous camping tents and with new yellow wooden barrels, girdled in metal bands and waiting for the catch. Swarthy men chattered to one another in high, birdlike voices as they flitted to and fro in little flocks.
But Mletkin’s thoughts were far away now, in the tundra near Poueten, where Rentyrgin camped for the summer with his herds, where his beloved Givivneu spent the warm nights making love with a Kurupkan man. Again and again, Mletkin pictured their bodies, entwined in passionate abandon – in his obsession, he couldn’t think of anything else. His leave-taking of Bogoraz passed as in a dream, the other saying:
“I have the feeling we shall meet again in this life.”
“Could be,” Mletkin said distractedly, his blank gaze directed at the busy crowds of Chinese on the beach. “The world is growing smaller.”
With the money they had earned, Mletkin and his two remaining companions went to the local general store and bought gifts to bring home. Then, one bright, clear night, they set sail to the northwest, leaving the capital of the Russian Empire’s Chukotka District behind them.
They sailed through Kytryn Bay without looking in on Pakaika, rounded Nuniamo Cape, and entered the still waters of Poueten.
Having made it across the string of hills along the beach, Mletkin forded a small river and walked uphill to get a good view of Fish River valley, and of the river itself as it flowed into sacred Lake Ko’olen. On the left bank of the river was the clutch of yarangas, glinting white, and farther off, beside a tall, snowy mountain slope, in the cool, mosquitoless air, was the grazing herd.
Mletkin ran down the slope and raced across the tussocks like a tyrkylyn, or stag – literally one who carries balls.
He saw the small shape of a woman from afar, holding a small child by the hand. It was she, Givivneu, whom he would have recognized among a thousand women. His heart clenched in agony, his breath caught. He slowed as he neared the camp, feeling his legs turn to lead. Each step now cost him great effort.
Givivneu stood motionless beside the whitewashed side of the tundra yaranga. She had briefly raised a palm to her eyes to shield them from the sun, but he knew that she too had recognized him from afar. As he neared, Mletkin saw ever more clearly that she was no longer a young girl but a grown woman, a woman in the full bloom of her beauty. She did not smile, and did not look frightened, but seemed merely to be waiting in a state of heightened anticipation. There was a strange light in her eyes. A dog began to bark and Rentyrgin emerged from the yaranga.
“Kakomei! Mletkin!” the master of the camp exclaimed.
Mletkin paid him no heed and ignored the greeting. He walked up to Givivneu and said:
“Did you not wait for me?”
“I did wait.”
“But not long enough, it seems.”
“People don’t come back from over there,” said Givivneu.
Mletkin’s half-smile was bitter: “As you can see yourself, people do.”
Rentyrgin came to his daughter’s aid: “We had heard that you burned to death with a Tangitan ship. There were witnesses who told the story.”
“Would you rather I had burned? You don’t seem pleased that I’m still alive.”
There was an excruciating silence.
“We’re glad,” Givivneu said at last. “But we could not have expected such a miracle.”
“You are always a welcome guest in our yaranga,” Rentyrgin added. “Come!” And he drew aside the napped deer hide that served as a door.
As usual, the chottagin was shrouded in gloom. Coals blazed in the corner, daylight fell through the smokehole. The singed black kettle huffed over the fire, belching white steam. The dwelling smelled of deer meat and the fermented blood that hung under the roof inside inflated, greenish deer bladders.
Givivneu was silent, aside from the occasional whisper to the little boy, who was hardly more than a year old. Every so often she would glance at Mletkin, her expression calm and composed, betraying no feeling.
Tundra tea drinking is usually accompanied by the sharing of news from both sides. Mletkin tongued a sugar lump into one cheek and slurped the contents of his dish of tea through it. Then he told them of his wanderings in America and of the big fire in Port Clarence in which he had lost his friend Nelson. He did not mention his cohabitation with Sally.
“Is it true then that in America people ride over metal strips?” his host inquired politely.
Mletkin described the railroad, the modes of city transport, the big dogs called horses, cows and other exotic domestic animals of the Tangitans.
“In the way they live, the Tangitans, they really are a different species,” he concluded when his tale was done.
As Mletkin spoke, Rentyrgin and his wife had interjected the occasional question or exclamation, but Givivneu had not said a word. Perhaps she was thinking of her husband, out with the herds? The little boy stayed close by her side, as though sensing hostility from their unexpected guest.
At last the tension grew unbearable. Mletkin turned to Givivneu:
“You’re unhappy that I came?”
“I am happy that you are alive,” she answered.
“It isn’t her fault,” her mother dove in. “We all thought you were dead.”
“But here I am alive, and everything must change,” Mletkin told them.
“What do you mean?” This, from Rentyrgin.
“I mean that Givivneu must return to the man she was destined for.”
“She already has a husband,” Rentyrgin’s wife butted in again. “And they have a child. How can you take a wife from her living husband?”
“You thought me dead, and married off your daughter,” Mletkin’s next words came slowly. “So, for her to belong to me, the one whom you now consider to be her husband has to die.”
“I want no blood spilled!” Rentyrgin spoke up adamantly.
According to ancient custom, such a situation must be decided by force of strength. Mletkin would have preferred a peaceable agreement. He recalled how meekly Yanko had given up his bride, acknowledging Mletkin’s prior claim. But everything had changed. Givivneu was the Kurupkin man’s wife, they had a child. It was doubtful that he would give her up willingly now.
Yanko came home that evening, when the sun had disappeared behind the distant mountains and long shadows lay upon the earth. Entering the chottagin, he stopped dead in his tracks and could not stifle an exclamation of astonishment:
“Kakomei! Etti!”
“Ee-ee. Tyetyk,” Mletkin replied. “I’ve come for the woman who was meant for me.”
“I had guessed,” Yanko said with dignity, working hard to conceal his agitation. “But before we talk, I’d like to eat something. Wife, serve your husband some meat.”
He settled down by a low table and stretched his wet torbasses toward the fire. The little boy came to sit by him.
Yanko took out a long sharp knife and set to his meal. He ate slowly and with relish, stripping the meat cleanly from the bones, noisily sucking the marrow, smacking his lips, burping. The memory of Sally teaching him to eat quietly, politely, to not slurp or burp at the table, or pick his teeth for all to see, looking for leftover bits of food, came to Mletkin forcefully. Yanko also had fed the child tidbits from the tip of his knife. Only after he had finished his meal and sipped his tea from a saucer, and after he had smoked his pipe, did he rise:
/> “I am ready!”
The men headed for a hillock, on which the low summer sun still shone.
There they halted to look one another in the eye.
“I have no spear,” Yanko said.
“Neither have I,” said Mletkin.
In this kind of dispute, where the physical removal of a rival was the aim, the traditional weapon of choice would have been a warrior’s spear. But as the internecine conflicts of the Chukotka Peninsula and the bloody skirmishes with the Russians ceased, these gradually went out of use, except perhaps along the coast where they might be employed to finish off walrus on the ice.
“We’ll fight with knives,” said Yanko, and unsheathed his long knife.
“Wait,” Mletkin told him. “You can still live, if you’ll leave the camp before the next day dawns and never again think of Givivneu and your son.”
“My son’s name is Kmol’,” Yanko’s voice rang with pride. “Why are you so certain it will be you left standing?”
“I am certain,” Mletkin said calmly.
“Because you’re a shaman?”
“Because Givivneu is my woman.”
“Let’s fight, then,” said Yanko, taking up a fighting stance, his right arm outstretched, the long knife held high.
“Let’s fight!” echoed Mletkin, drawing his own knife in turn. It was shorter than that of his opponent, but the blade was wide and well-honed. The men shrugged off their overclothes and faced one another in nerpa-skin trousers and torbasses. Mletkin held himself tightly in check, mindful of using only his physical strength against the other man. He must not take advantage of his shamanic powers, which would easily ensure his victory. Lost in thought, he missed the Kurupkin man’s opening thrust, and suddenly there was a blade slicing down his naked arm. Though it bled profusely, it was a shallow wound. Again, Mletkin gave himself a mental order to stay calm, not to allow blind rage to take over his actions. He must win cleanly and fairly, otherwise the fight would be worthless. Yanko danced about like a puppy, emboldened by having been the first to inflict a wound. Unlike Mletkin, who fought in silence, he let out the occasional hoarse cry of encouragement, like a raven’s caw. He tripped over a root and stumbled, nearly falling. This was the moment when Mletkin might have plunged his knife in the young man’s unprotected neck, ending the fight with a single blow. Instead he took a step back and, while the other was raising himself into a fighting position once more, glanced backward. There wasn’t a soul outside the camp yarangas, as though it had emptied of people in a single instant. No sound came from the camp.
Yanko began another attack. He aimed for Mletkin’s naked breast, with the clear intent of finishing off his enemy once and for all. He managed to land a few sharp pricks under Mletkin’s left nipple, and blood dripped onto the older man’s torbasses.
Mletkin was in no hurry. He knew that he was capable of landing a deadly blow whenever he chose. Taking a step back, he said:
“You can still save your life, if you renounce Givivneu.”
“I never will. Givivneu is my wife and the mother of Kmol’, my son,” Yanko grunted hoarsely as he lunged. In the same moment Mletkin’s knife slid easily between his opponent’s ribs, as it might have into a deer, and pierced the fluttering heart within. Yanko looked at Mletkin, his expression one of surprise more than anything else, and slowly sank to the ground. He pitched forward onto his face, twitched several times, and then was still, his eyes wide open.
Mletkin withdrew his knife and wiped it thoroughly with a clump of bluish deer moss.
Givivneu awaited him in the yaranga. Her belongings lay beside her in a chamois sack.
“Are you ready?” Mletkin asked her.
“I’ve been ready for a long time,” she answered.
“Then let us go.”
The three of them walked out into the tundra and headed for the shore.
Mletkin’s New Family
Mletkin spent the summer and fall of 1901 in ceaseless activity as he went about making his yaranga into a home again, fixing what was broken, acquiring what was missing. Everything seemed to be going well: despite her youthfulness and her chauchu background, Givivneu quickly grew accustomed to Ankalin ways, made friends among Uelen’s women and accompanied them when they went to pick berries or collect roots or seaweed. Every now and then Mletkin would take his family to the other lagoon, where the land was overgrown with cloudberries, and where you could cast for fat, tender-fleshed loach.
Yes, everything seemed to be going well. Uelen was slowly recovering from the terrible plague. The people were not accustomed to visiting the graves of their relations, and if they did speak of their dead, it was in prayers and offerings to the gods. The hunting was also good. Mletkin’s boat rarely returned without a kill and once he even managed to harpoon a small gray whale. The uverans gradually filled with kymgyts, frozen rolls of walrus meat, the barrels with blubber and pickled seaweed. Givivneu worked a new fur polog for the coming winter and insulated it with bundles of dried grass.
There was one thing that lay like a dark shadow on Mletkin’s happiness: the killing of Kmol”s father, the Kurupkan man Yanko. He knew that his guilty feelings toward the boy would not easily be assuaged, and resolved to care for him with special tenderness. He gave the child a puppy from Lilikey’s litter, made him toys, spent evenings in playing and talking to him. Yet, each night as he drifted off to sleep, Mletkin saw Yanko’s startled, wide-open eyes as he fell onto the deep moss.
Meanwhile, the villagers’ daily lives had come to include all manner of new things and devices, new kinds of weapons and clothing, new delicacies like sweetened tea, molasses, griddle cakes called kavkapat, made with white flour and fried in nerpa blubber. It was rare for Uelen’s lagoon to be empty; there was usually at least one ship anchored near shore. The sailors traded briskly, mostly offering contraband spirits, and seduced maidens and young wives. Some of the villagers, especially those belonging to the poorer families of the lazy and the unlucky, made their living by procuring women for the sailors in exchange for drink and merchandise, and a few of Mletkin’s compatriots did very well off this kind of trade. Chotgytky, father of four daughters, roofed his ill-made yaranga with canvas and gadded about the village showing off his captain’s peaked cap, a black pipe with an amber bowl clenched between his teeth. He was drunk all summer long and boasted that soon he would be the owner of a real schooner.
Tynesken’s family did not boast or trade in women, but nonetheless managed to acquire a wooden whaleboat. This did not come cheap. Whalebone was still in demand, but more and more frequently the Tangitans asked after the yellow money-metal, gold. Prospectors had streamed in from Alaska, pumping the locals for any information about gold veins among the shingled coastline beaches and the shallows of tundra rivers. They were eager to share the (allegedly Chukchi) ancient legend of the Golden Giant who had lived in these parts, and who, in dying, had fallen into Irvytgyr, which the Tangitans called the Bering Strait – in such a way that while his feet landed on Alaska, his head and body dispersed over the Chukotka Peninsula. Though the story was most probably made up by some unlucky prospector, it did echo the authentic tale of an epochal flood which had destroyed forever the land bridge over Irvytgyr.
Mletkin visited the family shrine atop the high Crag, beyond the place called Eppyn, where the Watcher would have scanned the sea during whale and walrus hunting season.
There was a small niche just below the lip of the crag, which held a shallow stone cup, not unlike a grease lamp. You would only see it if you were looking carefully. From this spot you could see the entire watery expanse from the Eastern Cape to Inchoun Cape in the west. You might see the blowhole jets of whales, walrus, and seals. Flocks of birds hung low over the still waters, heading south – winter beckoned, touching the traverse of Cape Enurmin with the first of the ice fields.
A raven perched nearby cawed loudly.
Even as he walked up the Crag, Mletkin found himself assailed by self-doubt: in all his trav
els, might he not have lost the ability to feel that he was an inextricable part of all this space and matter, the ability to sense it, and above all to hear with his inner ear the magical music and the Voice from Above, when words fall into ringing lines, and resolve into Holy Songs:The Wanderer has returned to his native land
And the Raven has met him with cawing
The prophetic bird, the only one
Not to leave the tundra in winter.
Let all that is around me
Fill my soul again
As a part of me, as the core of me
As a boon from the Outer Forces.
Mletkin’s vision blurred with emotional, exultant tears as he was overcome by oneness with nature, the mysterious power which allowed him to range across vast tracts of his homeland in his mind’s eye entered him once more.
The walrus breeding ground at Inchoun teemed that fall and by another stroke of luck, the autumnal storms had flung an enormous shoal of saika, a small but nicely fatty fish, up and down Uelen’s shingled beach. The shining rows of the sea’s bountiful gift stretched out like a silvery ribbon from the foot of the Crag to Pil’khyn Bay itself. They scooped the fish up with buckets, hide sacks, whatever was at hand.
Each morning, before dawn, Mletkin would go to the beach in the hopes of finding a good washed-up log, or a piece of calcified, blackened walrus tusk for carving. Occasionally what he found instead were headless walrus corpses – the Americans tossed these overboard, having killed the animals purely for their tusks, teeth, and whiskers, the last of these used to make toothpicks for fine restaurants. The waterlogged, rotting remains were not fit for human consumption, so Mletkin had hauled several skinned carcasses into the tundra, to teach his winter prey to come and feed at the sites of his traps.