by Yuri Rytkheu
The dancing flames flickered over two bustling women, both naked to the waist. They resembled mermaids, with their glossy sloping shoulders, bare breasts, and long matted black locks of hair that fell over their faces. The lower halves of their bodies were imprisoned in ungainly fur cocoons, with ballooning trouser-legs and fur-lined footwear, ornamented with embroidery.
The women gave John frightened glances and switched to whispering. It was not hard to guess that they were talking about the strange guest.
Next to the wall, down the entire perimeter of the yaranga, there were leather sacks, evidently the food stores, wooden vessels, bales of deer hides. One corner was piled with freshly skinned deer legs, the tendons hanging down. A scalped deer head, likely readied for cooking, stared ahead with cloudy, lifeless eyes.
John made an effort to pull his eyes away. Above him, deer carcasses hung from the wooden rafters and were awash in the thin smoke from the fire.
Behind him was the fur polog, its rectangular walls sewn from reindeer hides. The front wall was raised and the polog’s inside clearly visible, but it was empty, save for a dead grease lamp.
The curious were peeking through the low door. First to appear were the children. Swathed in furs, hoods trimmed with dense pelt, they looked like little balls, and only the button noses and shiny olive-black eyes suggested they were human beings. Pushing aside the children and sticking their hands inside the dwelling, the women percolated with questions while their eyes took in John.
There was the sound of male voices. Orvo, Toko, and Armol’ entered the yaranga. Strangers followed behind them, evidently the camp’s inhabitants. Toko was dragging John’s food pouch on his back, and Orvo carried his little trunk.
“We’ll sleep here,” Orvo told John. “Wind coming down from the mountains, it’s to no good.”
“I’d like to go outside for a minute,” John muttered shyly.
At first Orvo didn’t understand him. John had to repeat his request a few times. Toko was watching him carefully, and suddenly, though he hadn’t understood a word, said to Orvo:
“No need to translate here! It’s clear enough.”
And he motioned for John to follow him.
They stood within the silence of the invisible and boundless dome of the sky, thickly scattered with large stars. John had never imagined before that stars could be so bright. They flickered on high, marking the lines of constellations he’d known from childhood. He was looking at the sky and trying not to think of the cold touch of Toko’s fingers. He was thinking that he’d have to steel himself in order to survive this, to steel himself and learn to mentally leave this place for far reaches, inaccessible to this simpleton who can’t even deal with something as simple as an ordinary button.
Toko was saying something quietly, probably uttering his Chukchi curses, but what difference did any of it make if you couldn’t grasp the words!
Still, how majestic was the silence! The taut wind, blowing steadily, without gusts, resembled a cold stream born of a glacier. The moon was rising over faraway ridges, and the mountain peaks glittered mysteriously and strangely . . . What a pity that man, when he is young, looks to God so rarely, sure as he is of his own strength! Perhaps this was it, that moment when your soul converses with It, the one and only . . .
Toko had finally managed the buttons. Why, why have so many buttons in a place where it’s so easy to do with one? Truly the whites are miserly where it is easy to be generous, and yet wasteful in ways beyond understanding. Rearranging the folds of the kukhlianka, Toko looked up into John’s face. The other was standing, head thrown back, and the vaulting sky was reflected in his icy eyes. A strange kind of sadness marked his face, as though while Toko was grappling with the buttons, a new person had appeared in John’s stead, a person with a strange, shaman-like expression. Alarmed, Toko gave John a little push.
The white man roused, his eyes filled with a live warmth again, and he said something short, tender, probably a word of thanks for Toko.
Inside the hut, Orvo invited John to come inside the polog, whose front curtain was now closed. He had to crawl inside on his belly. The rectangular room was lit by a grease lamp. Its flame was steady and bright. A woman was crouching in front of the brazier, directing its blaze with a little stick like a conductor’s baton. Toko helped John find a comfortable position and pulled off his outer clothing. It was warm and light inside the polog. John’s shattered wrists barely hurt at all. The pain was somewhere bone-deep, and if you paid no attention to it, it was almost as though it didn’t even exist.
He could hear voices behind the fur-lined wall, the footfall of soft torbasses on the earthen floor. The edge of the curtain moved, and a head came through. It was with difficulty that John recognized old Orvo. Next to Orvo, Armol’s head emerged, and then appeared the man who had been the first to greet the travelers. Soon, a row of shaggy heads ranged from corner to corner before John and Toko. They chatted to Toko all at once, sometimes addressing John himself through Orvo.
John was curt in answering their questions about his health, and observed the profusion of heads that stared at him, like some sort of a nine-headed monster, with some annoyance.
John’s irritation was stoked by a sharply rising feeling of hunger. Finally, unable to bear it a moment longer, he addressed Orvo, asking him to take the food out of his sack.
“Don’t hurry so,” Orvo answered calmly. “We’ll have some real food in a moment.”
His head disappeared and was immediately replaced by a long wooden trough, filled to the brim with steaming boiled meat. The smell was so strong and savory that John, unable to help himself, swallowed convulsively.
Orvo, who had popped up again behind the dish, gave a triumphant shout and passed an order to Toko, explaining, it seemed, how the white man should be fed.
Toko grabbed an enormous meaty bone off the dish and pushed it in front of John’s face. The warm meat touched his lips, and John drew back, appalled by such rough manners.
But instead of an expression of shame, Toko’s face clouded with surprise and questioning. After a moment’s thought, an idea transformed his face. He called out:
“Sson!” and, clasping the meat in his teeth, cut off a slice close to his mouth, almost nicking his own nose with the blade.
He purposely exaggerated his chewing and slurping to show how tasty the meat was.
But Orvo, who may have known that the white man takes his food in a different manner, or who may have simply guessed it, cut the meat into small pieces on the wooden platter, speared one piece with his knife and raised it to John’s lips. So feeding began.
The meat was delicious, tender and juicy, but completely bland. After two or three slices, John attempted to explain to Orvo that the mistress of the house had evidently forgotten to salt it, but Orvo said decisively:
“Salt no!”
Then Toko unceremoniously opened John’s clothes sack and discovered a small linen bag of the precious white granules.
Orvo neatly salted John’s share of the meat, and even added some to the meat broth that finished off the plentiful feast.
After the food, everyone began preparing for sleep. The master’s wife carried in some rolled-up deer hides. John’s allotted sleeping place was by the back wall, next to the grease lamp. Toko settled down close to him. The brazier and the steaming meat had made it warm, almost hot, in the polog. Toko divested himself of his fawn-skin under-kukhlianka with one smooth move, and was left bare to the waist. But after a while even this seemed too much, and he pulled off his undergarments too, completely naked now, except for a piece of deer hide thoughtfully provided by the yaranga’s mistress, which he draped between his legs.
When all the other men followed his example, John asked Orvo to help him get rid of at least his warm fur-lined shirt and trousers.
Orvo folded the removed garments under John’s head, making something of a pillow. John sank back on it and lowered his eyelids. A blessed peace was stealing over his b
ody. The journey was turning out to be less frightening than he’d thought.
John lay on his back. All around him was the buzz of incomprehensible conversation. It acted as a soporific, like a quiet ocean tide or a gurgling stream. Before he fell into a deep sleep, the kind face of Captain Hugh flickered across John’s consciousness. Only, for some reason, his hair and close shave were that of a Chukcha deer herder. But John had no time to be surprised at this – he was asleep.
5
Orvo slowly packed the tiny pipe bowl with tobacco and, drawing deeply, passed it on to Il’motch, the yaranga’s owner.
Il’motch took the pipe and carefully tucked the stem into a narrow gap between his sparse teeth, making sure not to open his mouth too wide, lest he lose even a small part of the precious tobacco.
Armol’ was following the elders’ movements, but didn’t dare ask for even one drag for himself.
“Three days, you’ll be climbing toward the pass,” Il’motch was saying, almost without moving his lips. “Three days and three nights out in the freezing wind, without shelters, without firewood, without deep snow. You won’t be able to take much provisions, so you’ll have to starve a bit, and the dogs will, too.”
Licking tobacco juice off the pipe stem, Il’motch finally passed it to Armol’. The young man gripped it convulsively, and drew in deeply.
When it was Toko’s turn, Il’motch was continuing in a normal tone:
“The white man needs to be taken to Anadyr’, there’s nothing you can do about that. Go back, and you’ll anger the captain, but if he dies – who can tell what trouble you’ll get for that . . . I’ll say, it’s a hard yoke you’ve roped yourselves into.”
Orvo glanced over at the sleeping John, and, with a sigh, admitted:
“Got greedy, I did. But you could work five years and still not have enough for three guns. There’s little demand for whalebone now, they pay badly, and the whites only want white fox nowadays. And you well know, on our shore it’s better to hunt the white fox out on the sea, when he follows the white bear, scavenging for leavings. You can’t leave traps on the ice – they just get swept away.”
“A gun is a very good thing,” Il’motch agreed, and looked longingly at Orvo’s cooling pipe.
Catching his glance, Orvo started reaching over for his tobacco pouch.
Toko looked down at John. Eyes closed, the white man did not seem so alien. Just a sleeping person with very light hair and tightly shut eyelids, irises trembling behind them, watching a nameless dream.
“Give you some foodstuffs,” said Il’motch, attentively watching Orvo pack tobacco into the pipe bowl. “In the fall, we had a good many deer downed in the first blizzard. There’ll be plenty of meat . . . If the road is good, then sure, you’ll manage the pass, too. And then it’s down and down – into the valleys. The Kereks will be roaming there, and the bowlegged Karamkyt.13
“The ones that ride stags?” asked Armol’.
“The very ones,” Il’motch nodded. “They’re a hard-up people. Big eaters, though.”
“Going through their camps, it’s nothing but grief,” Il’motch continued. “They’re not big on sharing food, and their yarangas are cold.”
For some time, there was silence in the room. The wind, having gained strength toward nightfall, beat at the yaranga’s deerskin sides.
“Comes from the mountains,” said Il’motch, softly. “We’ll be snowed in by morning.”
They all held their breath, listening to the wind.
The flame in the grease lamp was dying out. The women, done with their household duties, were bedding down for the night, stripping off their clothing and climbing under deerskin covers.
Il’motch sucked on the empty pipe, and handed it to Orvo.
“Time to sleep.”
In the middle of the night, John awoke with a vague feeling of anxiety. At first he couldn’t make sense of where he was. Just now he had dreamt of splitting logs in the cellar of his parents’ house in Port Hope, while looking forward to the pleasant hours he’d spend in front of a crackling fire. He kept on chopping, and the pile of wood grew higher around him. The logs fell on top of each other, forming a tall stack about to topple over. His arms ached, his shoulders were shot through with pain. John glanced at the swaying stacks from time to time but, strangely, carried on chopping until a river of logs flooded over him. He made an effort to climb out from underneath it – and woke up.
At first he thought that he must be in his own cabin on board the Belinda, but in the very next instant a mounting throbbing in his hands brought him back to reality.
Outside the yaranga’s walls, a gale thundered – battering at the deerskins, threatening to tear the fragile-seeming dwelling from its moorings and carry it off into the measureless breadth of the tundra. But the dwelling clung tightly to earth. It shook, it moaned, but stayed put. It must have been one of those terrible blizzards that John had read about in the accounts of polar explorers, and then heard told of in the port saloon at Vancouver, and later in the Alaskan capital, Nome.
There were times when the gusts were so fierce that John could feel the dwelling lift up from the ground, as though ready to fly after the storm.
And yet both the yaranga’s inhabitants and guests slept soundly, in spite of the wind’s roar, which threatened to overwhelm their mighty snoring.
John squirmed around on his bedding. It was stifling and he felt thirsty. The moans and groans of the wind outside tolled in his ears. His wrists, which he’d managed to forget for a moment, were making themselves known with a sharp pain that rose higher and higher, moving from elbow to shoulder, and from there, pounding at his head in time with his heartbeat.
The air inside the yaranga was so close that he could almost feel it, liquid, against his cheek. It adhered to the body, making it difficult to breathe.
John remembered that nearby, three steps away from him, was a fur curtain that could be lifted. Navigating in the dark, he started to crawl quietly toward the front partition of the room. He kept bumping into naked bodies before he could feel the loosely hanging curtain with his forehead. Using both elbows and head, he stuck his face into the chilly front section of the yaranga and breathed in the cold air, awash with the reek of damp skins, with pleasure.
The storm’s howling was louder here than inside the fur-lined polog. Tiny snowflakes drifted in, falling on his face. Stumbling about in the dark had cost John a great deal of effort, and he felt shattered. A strange fever gripped his body, flooding him with hot blood, and the only thing that dulled the pain and agonizing thirst was the cold air. Half-in and half-out of the inner chamber, John drifted off again, to the sound of the wind. He slept fitfully – not real sleep, but rather a doze punctuated with short periods of wakefulness. He was constantly jarred awake by the dogs, who licked his face with their rough tongues, and the pain racking his limbs.
Toward morning his thirst became unbearable, and John decided to try and reach a thin layer of snow that had drifted in to cover the floor of the outer yaranga. He inched forward slowly, crawling over a wooden headrest, and felt cold air coming closer in the darkness, even imagining that he could see the white snow – although this was only the distant reflection of the blizzard in the yaranga’s smoke hole.
John lost his balance, landing on top of his crushed hands, and gave a loud moan as the pain overwhelmed him.
Toko, awakened by the moan, rushed to John’s side and helped him back to his bed.
The sleepers began shifting around. A woman slid out from underneath a deerskin coverlet and, miraculously finding a space among the tangled multitude of bare limbs and bodies, began to make a fire.
Lying still had lessened the pain somewhat, and John stared curiously at this savage daughter of Prometheus, who, in the murk of the inner chamber, was twirling a stick with remarkable dexterity. The end of the little stick was slotted into an indentation in the middle of a wide board. Soon there were sparks flying out from under the stick, and within a fe
w moments a blue tongue of flame appeared; it was immediately carried over to the lamp, to skitter cheerfully over a small mossy knob that floated in the grease.
The dwelling’s inhabitants were climbing out of their fur blankets, plastered with adhering deerskin hairs. Rubbing their faces perfunctorily, they made quick work of getting dressed. Old Il’motch disappeared from the room, followed by Orvo, Toko, and a woman.
John was left all alone with the flickering light of the lamp. Unable to stop himself, he called out for Orvo.
The old man stuck his face inside the fur curtains and looked inquiringly at John.
“Bring some water,” the other asked.
Instead of Orvo, it was Toko who brought water. Carefully supporting the wooden vessel, formerly an ordinary ladle that had lost its handle, Toko poured water into John’s wide-open mouth, and looked at the sick man tenderly, with unabashed regret.
John lay back and thanked Toko. The man gave a wide smile, and nodded his head with a show of sympathy, motioning toward John’s bandaged hands.
John put on a martyr’s face, to indicate his being in pain. Toko wanted to say something else, but there were no words, and he was far from confident with gestures – so he simply came over to John and gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder.
All that day John lay inside the inner chamber. After a plentiful breakfast, the fur curtain-wall was raised and he could observe the goings-on of the yaranga’s life.
The deer herders would often come in from the cold, covered in sticky snow, bringing with them a bit of the snowstorm and making the constantly stoked fire splutter and waver. John’s fellow travelers went off somewhere and came back worried. They took a long time brushing every snowflake off their clothes and threw compassionate glances at the white man.
By evening the storm had reached its peak. Once, the yaranga shifted as though some binding had been torn off. The men ran outside with loud shouts, and their agitated voices could be heard through the crashing wind.