A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

The crowd by the side of the yaranga was very close now, but he couldn’t make out the faces, only the wall of mouths that shouted at him:

  “You have killed your brother only because he is not like you! . . .”

  12

  When the small figure of the hunter and his kill appeared among the ice-hummocks, everyone who was standing by Toko’s yaranga was surprised at seeing only one person and wondered where the other had gone.

  Orvo put the binoculars to his face and took a long time studying the hunter’s walk.

  “That’s Sson coming,” he said with certainty, handing the binoculars to Armol’, who stood beside him.

  “Looks like he’s dragging a lakhtak,” Armol’ concluded, passing the binoculars to Tiarat.

  “But why is he alone?”

  “Looking at him from here, you wouldn’t know it was a white man coming,” Armol’ remarked, and it was impossible to tell whether he meant it as compliment or as a jibe.

  “A man, whatever he is, white or dark, gets used to anything,” Orvo replied, and, with a graceful, almost offhand gesture that he’d picked up from the captains of whaling schooners, raised the ancient heavy binocular eyepieces to his face.

  There are times when the vigil for a returning hunter lasts for hours, but it is for his wife that the waiting is longest. She begins to wait from the moment the outer door of the yaranga shuts behind her husband. It’s only at midday that, busy with household chores, she is distracted from the thought of the hunter out on the fickle sea ice; but by evening, when the early winter twilight falls to earth, her waiting becomes tinged with worry, a worry that only waxes to its full strength by the time her eyes alight on a small figure winding its way among the ice hummocks. And regardless of weather – cruel frost, blizzard – the woman stands by the threshold of her home and awaits her husband. In the summer days, when the men take the hide boats out to sea, all the women congregate by the shore, silent and motionless, as though carved of stone, casting their eyes over the ocean’s vast expanse.

  The best part of waiting is when your eyes find the hunter coming home with a kill. Filled with a joyful trepidation, the woman wonders what prize her husband is bringing home, her heart swells with pride, and she catches the admiring glances of her cohorts, admiration laced with envy.

  As soon as Pyl’mau was certain that the man among the ice hummocks was Sson, and that he was coming with booty, she returned to the chottagin and filled a ladle with water – to wet the dead animal’s face, and to assuage the hunter’s thirst.

  Now John was recognizable with the naked eye. Only there was something unusual in his gait. Orvo was scrutinizing him intently, but couldn’t make out what the matter was.

  “Sson is walking strangely,” the old man finally couldn’t keep from saying out loud.

  “Maybe he got sick, and Toko sent him home,” Armol’ replied.

  “Sick people don’t walk that fast,” Orvo countered and, peering at him again, added:

  “Too fast, if anything.”

  “Gone crazy with joy for bagging a lakhtak,” Armol’ conjectured. “When I got my first nerpa, I danced all the way from open water to the settlement.”

  “Sson isn’t such a fool as you,” came the voice of the usually taciturn Tiarat.

  John had already crossed from the ice onto the snow-covered shore and was making for the yarangas. He was without his kamleika, his head bare. At first it was the expression on his face and his disarrayed clothing that caught everyone’s attention, and then their eyes were drawn toward the strange lakhtak . . . In place of the animal’s muzzle was something resembling a human head, and the human head wore Toko’s hood. Pyl’mau noticed it first, and then the others did too. They all froze.

  Maybe John had killed a tery’ky . . .

  And only the moment when John was face to face with the people, only then did everyone see that it was Toko, wrapped in lakhtak hide.

  John dragged him over to where Pyl’mau stood and fell to his knees before her, muttering in a jumble of Chukchi and English:

  “It’s not my fault! As God is my witness, I was trying to save him! . . . The gun went off by accident . . .”

  Pyl’mau listened to this unintelligible speech, and a thin stream of cold clean water poured from the ladle and onto her dead husband’s face.

  “He’ll tell you himself that it wasn’t my fault!” John was screaming, as he crawled at Pyl’mau’s feet. “He promised me he would tell you!”

  Orvo unsheathed a sharp knife, cut the lashings, pried open the sealskin and there was Toko’s dead body, smeared with lakhtak blubber and blood, his chest bound with John’s torn kamleika.

  “He won’t be saying anything anymore,” said Orvo in a strange, alien voice and instructed: “Carry the body inside the yaranga.”

  John was pushed aside, as though he were no longer a person. He sat in the snow, surrounded by the curious dogs, and watched them gently lift Toko from the sealskin, Orvo giving quiet and efficient instructions, Pyl’mau, her face stony with grief, silently throwing wide the door and holding it open until her husband’s body was swallowed up in the murk of the chottagin. And over it all – a deep blue stillness and the boundless space all around, and in the vaulting sky a flock of birds, making for distant islands.

  John dragged his feet back toward the shore. He made a few steps with difficulty: His legs were like cotton wool, and he felt so weary that he was ready to stretch out right in the snow. He sat down on a rock. The cold reached down to his heart. Though there was barely a touch of frost, John was shivering. Each time someone came out of the yaranga, he would hunch his head between his shoulders. He did not doubt that he hadn’t much longer to live. The fear turned to cold, his heart became a piece of ice, his reason wanted to put an end this torturous waiting.

  He could hear muffled voices through the yaranga’s thin walls. There was no crying or wailing, as though nothing unusual had happened. People passed John and avoided looking at him: He had already ceased to exist for them . . . How cruelly life had dealt with him! First the misfortune with his hands, then Hugh Grover’s betrayal, and now this . . . But why him? There are thousands, millions of happy people in the world – wouldn’t it have been more just to apportion the burdens equally to everyone? There would be no one who was unfortunate or portionless, and a little bitterness would not do anyone harm. Overwhelmed by fatigue and self-pity, John wept. He sniffled loudly, smearing the tears all over his face – and the dogs watched him curiously and yawned.

  The sun had gone down. The unmelted snow and the rocks, frozen through during the long winter, radiated cold. Far from abating, his trembling got worse. Some fellow came out of Toko’s yaranga, carrying a walrus-hide basin. He headed for the meat pit, where he moved aside the walrus shoulder that served as a lid and hooked a kymgyt. As the man rammed his axe into the kopal’khen, John’s stomach twisted in hunger. Unable to bear it any longer, he stumbled to the pit and begged a piece. The man silently held out a kopal’khen and, greedily, John sank his teeth into the frozen, slightly bitter fat. He gobbled the kopal’khen and looked at the man hopefully. A look that dogs give their masters.

  “Sson!”

  It was Orvo’s voice. The old man motioned John closer.

  “Now is the time of judgement,” John thought, and wearily followed him inside the yaranga. He halted by the threshold. Orvo took him by the shoulder and led him into the chottagin. His eyes were still adjusting to the semi-darkness. He could hear a muffled conversation and the logs crackling over the fire; his nostrils detected the smell of boiled nerpa meat.

  Once his vision had adjusted, John beheld almost the entire population of Enmyn inside the chottagin. People were sitting on whale spines, on the wooden headrests. Some had simply ranged themselves on the earthen floor, with deer hides spread underneath. The polog’s front wall had been raised, and Toko’s body was visible, laid out inside the sleeping chamber. They had already dressed the deceased in funerary garments: a white kukhlianka, whit
e kamuss torbasses. The kukhlianka was belted, and a hunting knife hung from the belt.

  “Now we’ll be asking questions of the deceased,” Orvo said, addressing John. “White people are unfamiliar with this rite, so I will tell you a little about it . . . Listen now. We believe that there is a world where the living cannot enter. In order to be admitted to that world you have to stop living. And this world is so far away, that those who go there will never return. A regular person can’t go back and forth between the two. Only the great shamans. We have none among us. But Toko is still with us, even though he doesn’t speak or breathe. And he hears us, and is ready to tell us his wishes. Look here.”

  Orvo showed John a smoothly polished stick, not very long and resembling the handle of an old spade.

  “I’ll place the end of this stick under Toko’s head, and will question him. If he says ‘yes,’ the head is easily raised up. If he doesn’t agree, the head becomes heavier, and is almost impossible to lift,” Orvo explained. “There was nobody else with you. The only witness is going to tell us about it himself . . .”

  John and Orvo walked into the polog and sat on each side of the deceased. Toko lay there as though asleep. His face was clear and serene, eyes lightly shut, as if he were about to open them. And from the thought that never again would he open them and look at John in his own inimitable way, nor open his lips to quietly call out: “Sson!,” silent tears began rolling down John’s cheeks, and his heart ached.

  With a grave and serious air, Orvo slid the end of the stick under the dead man’s head, and left the middle of it over his own knee, making a kind of lever.

  “Bear you any ill will toward those you leave behind?” Orvo quietly inquired, and waited. Then he touched the stick, and the head rose easily. “Do you want to take anyone with you? Relatives, friends?” The old man strained to lift, but the head remained rooted to the floor. “Taking the Winchester with you?”

  Toko made clear his assent. He also wished to take along all his hunting gear.

  “Makes sense,” Orvo remarked out loud, “he’s still quite young, and he doesn’t want to sit idle even there. Bear you any ill will toward the man called Sson?” Orvo asked loudly enough for all those gathered inside the chottagin to hear.

  John’s heart stood still. The strange thing was, he believed; believed in everything that Orvo was doing and did not doubt for a moment that Toko was really answering the questions put to him.

  John peered into Toko’s face. What do you say? Will Orvo understand you correctly, will he make no mistake interpreting your answer?

  The stick jerked, and Toko’s head stayed motionless. For a moment John thought that the dead man half-opened his eyes and gave him an encouraging nod.

  John sighed heavily.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he said to Orvo. “Toko fell into the water, and I was trying to help him. The Winchester was what was nearest, I held the barrel out to him. But these” – he motioned to the attachments sewn into his stump – “caught the trigger . . .”

  “I already know everything,” Orvo answered him impatiently. “You can leave the polog. You’re free to go.”

  John returned to the chottagin and looked around. Pyl’mau was tending the fire. Her face seemed to be carved of stone, and noiseless tears rolled down her cheeks like streams over mountainsides. Little Yako, frightened by all that was happening and unable to comprehend any of it, stood by her side. He sniffled from time to time, his whole body quivering, and then his mother would pass her hand over his head, calming and consoling the small boy.

  “Lower the curtain,” Orvo instructed.

  The deerskins, skillfully sewn together by Pyl’mau’s hand, concealed Orvo and the deceased. The old man stayed inside the polog with Toko for a long while. When he came out, his face was serene and his eyes shone with joy – wholly inappropriate, to John’s mind, in such a time of sorrow.

  “Toko lived honorably, and it’s with honor that he leaves us,” Orvo solemnly declared, and his voice was drowned in the women’s wails, as though everyone had been waiting to hear the words. Pyl’mau, too, began to sob. She was saying something, but John couldn’t bear to listen; he went outside.

  Although Orvo’s words had brought relief, the sense of guilt did not leave him.

  The sun was beginning a new circuit around the sky when Orvo found him, and gently told him:

  “Go sleep a bit. We’ll be burying Toko early, as soon as the sun rises over the cape.”

  John made his way through the crowded chottagin to his own little room and collapsed on his bed fully dressed. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, but as soon as he closed his eyes, he fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  Orvo awoke him at the appointed time.

  A sled, loaded for a long journey, was already waiting by the threshold. It held the Winchester without its case, an akyn, leather strips for towing the dead seals, a pipe, a light walking staff and a boat hook. Only the snowshoes were missing.

  Orvo, Armol’, Tiarat, and Gatleh carried the dead man out and laid him on the sled. Then Orvo gestured for John to come, and harnessed him to the sled next to himself. The other men also put on the harness, and the dolorous procession set out across the snow-covered lagoon.

  The snow was blinding, the sun broiled them, the runners quietly rustled over the grainy snow, and no one said a word. Only the loud, heavy breathing of the people bringing the dead man melted into the thick tense silence.

  John tried to fall into step with Orvo. For him, this journey was an echo of yesterday’s, when he was hauling the dying Toko on the lakhtak skin, preparing to die himself. He was looking back on that day, on himself, and a strange emotion seeped into him. John was frightened of the feeling, tried to push it away, but to no avail. The thought even crossed his mind that he might have gone mad with all that had happened. He had the sense that yesterday’s John was a completely different person, so much a stranger to the one of today, that he could regard that person and judge him as he would a stranger. Today John looked at his former self with contempt and pity: the shameful weakness, the cowardice, the animal fear of death – all that belonged to another now. Even yesterday’s fatigue had gone without a trace: He breathed easily, his head was clear, and only his heart bore the sadness of losing a loved one, a sadness that was filled with light, like the inchoate morning.

  The Chukchi burial grounds were on the opposite shore of the lagoon. On a level hilltop, orderly rows of stones marked the dwelling places of those who had departed this world. Of many, only the bleached skulls and bones remained. The graves were strewn with spears, harpoon tips, shards of porcelain teacups . . . The snow had already melted from the cemetery site, and it was difficult to haul the sled over the bare rocky soil. Finally, using markers known only to himself, Orvo chose a place and came to a stop. Quickly, they gathered some stones and built a symbolic barrier around the dead man, whom they had taken off the sled and laid out on the ground, facing east.

  Then something incomprehensible to John took place. Tiarat started to break apart the sled with his hand-ax, while Orvo used a sharp knife to cut the clothes off Toko’s body, leaving him naked, and then gathered the strips in a pile and buried them under some large stones. The fragments of the sled were also neatly gathered together. On the outside of the barrier, Orvo placed the Winchester – having first bent its barrel, the spear with a broken tip, and the boat hook and walking stick that he’d broken in half. Catching John’s mystified glance, Orvo explained:

  “That’s the custom . . . We broke the sled so that he doesn’t decide to use it to come back. But the gun and the sticks we break so that bad people don’t get at them. We didn’t break them before . . . It was when the white men started coming to our shores, they took to robbing even the dead. They’d take the hide boat shells, the spears, the bows and arrows . . . See, there aren’t any arrows left around, or bows – your kind have taken them all . . .”

  Having performed the funeral rites, the men li
ned up next to Orvo. The old man muttered some incantations and then shook his clothing over the dead man, saying:

  “Toko, take away all my future misfortunes, sickness and hardship . . .”

  The others followed his example.

  “Go on, Sson, you do the same,” Orvo called.

  John had no choice but to obey.

  They took a different way back. Orvo was carrying a small plank from the dead man’s wrecked sled in his hands.

  Tiarat, Armol’, and the other men paced ahead. Orvo told John to walk with him, and fell behind a little.

  “I need to say something to you, Sson,” the old man began, looking straight into his eyes. “When I was alone in the polog with Toko, he told me something important, and asked that I tell you . . . Listen, we have this custom: When a woman loses the man who provides for her children, it’s up to his brothers and friends to take care of her. Usually one of her brothers-in-law will marry her. Toko had no one – he was an orphan. You were his closest friend. I’m not pushing you, I’m only telling you the dead man’s wishes. He wanted you to take care of Pyl’mau and little Yako. I’ve said my piece, and you think about it.”

  Orvo quickened his step and caught up with those at the front.

  John walked behind them, and his thoughts were lucid and full of joy. Stay here forever? Forget, and never again recall the past? And why not? These people had been so good to him, and had shown the kind of magnanimity he would not have expected in the world he came from. Certainly, the John of the day before could never have reached such a decision, but today’s . . .

  John caught up with Orvo, touched his shoulder and quietly said:

  “I understand everything. I agree.”

  13

  Right by the shoreline, the ice had broken off. Only a narrow band across the lagoon remained. A stormy south wind had pushed the ice floes far beyond the horizon. In the mornings, Orvo would go off to the high promontory and scan the sea through his binoculars, hoping to spot the first walrus herds. Two hide boats stood by, equipped with stacked oars and folded sails, with sharp harpoons.