by Yuri Rytkheu
When they gained the final promontory that hid Enmyn from the eye, and they could make out the yarangas, a joyful agitation seized the hunters.
Now the hide boats were spotted from the settlement. Little figures rushed about the yarangas. People and dogs were drawn to the shore. The boys raced around as though possessed, their screams carrying as far as the hide boats that were quietly approaching at full sail.
“There’s my son! How he’s grown!” shouted Tiarat, the harpooner, pointing to the shore. How it was that he managed to pick out a three-year-old at such a distance remained a mystery to all but himself.
“Take a look at Enmyn,” Orvo said, offering John the binoculars. “What is it, if not pure joy, coming home?”
John nodded silently, took up the binoculars and leveled them at the crowd. He didn’t recognize Pyl’mau right away. She was clad in a new kamleika, her thick black hair was neatly gathered into two heavy braids that fell over her shoulders. Yako stood beside her, and chattered to her about something, pointing at the hide boat.
The boats touched shore, and dozens of hands clapped down on the prows. The hunters jumped out onto the shore. To John’s surprise, there were no kisses or embraces. The most that they allowed themselves to do was pat the little ones’ shoulders and exchange a few words with their wives and the old people.
John stepped off the hide boat and, feeling awkward under Pyl’mau’s gaze, walked over to her, stroked little Yako’s cheek and asked:
“Are you in good health?”
“I am,” answered Pyl’mau, and giggled.
John became flustered and hurried to join the hunters, who were busy dragging the walrus hides and meat out onto the shore. And before that, they gave it a good rinse in the seawater.
The main part of their kill had been left on the shore of the Bering Strait, in a natural icebox. In the summer, they’d gradually bring it all back to Enmyn. But for now, the hunters had brought only the choicest parts, plus the walrus hides; those needed to be dried out, while the sun was strong and there was no rain.
Orvo stood by the boats and gave orders, deciding on where the meat should be laid. The growing mounds numbered the same as the hunters in the hide boat. All the shares were equal, except that two walrus hides and ten or so tusks lay by the side of one of the piles. John decided that this was Orvo’s share, as it had been his hide boat they had sailed in.
Orvo took John by the elbow and walked him right up to that very pile. Then he nodded to the others, and each hunter stood beside the mound that looked best to him.
“But I hardly need so much,” John objected. “And I worked least of all.”
“Take it and don’t argue,” Orvo cut him off. “That’s the custom. Today you were given a large share because you are only starting out in life. It’s a sort of helping hand from us all, and we wish you to be a good friend to us. Instead of getting angry, you could say thank you.”
John reddened and mumbled indistinctly:
“Velynkykun!”
Pyl’mau was already busy with John’s share. She was cutting the meat into slabs and loading an enormous leather satchel that resembled a gigantic backpack.
Orvo called out to the men:
“Help Sson with the repal’gyt!”26
The hunters rolled up the gray walrus skins like rugs, and shouldered them. After laying them down by the yaranga’s outer walls, they covered them with moss and stones to keep the dogs from getting at them.
Pyl’mau was lugging the meat from the shore to the meat pit in the leather sack. When John made to help her, Pyl’mau emphatically shook her head.
“People will laugh,” she explained. “Look – only women carry the meat.”
“Let them laugh,” John waved his hand carelessly. “It’s not right for a man to make a woman haul such heavy bags.”
“It’s not right for a man to carry the leather bags,” Pyl’mau was patiently reiterating. There were tears in her voice. “It’s a woman’s bag.”
“Just help me hoist it onto my back,” John said.
The bag weighed no less than two hundred pounds. It was heavy going over the blood and blubber-slick shingle. His feet kept sliding apart, and the bag lurched from one side to the other. Only the thick leather straps prevented it from falling off completely.
John managed to haul it to the pit, dumped out the meat and sank to the ground for a bit of rest. Catching his breath, he returned to shore. Pyl’mau was sitting by the pile of meat and weeping.
“What is it, Mau?” John asked, worried. “Why are you crying? Has someone hurt you?”
“Yes, someone did,” Pyl’mau responded, with a sniffle.
“Who?”
“You,” Pyl’mau raised her tear-streaked face. “You’re humiliating me . . .”
“But it’s too heavy for you! I barely managed it myself!” said John.
“Shame is heavier to bear,” Pyl’mau said, and then asked plaintively: “Go on home. I’ll be there soon. Please, I’m asking you.”
“All right,” John agreed, and called out to the boy: “Yako, let’s go home!”
Once inside the chottagin, even before he had a chance to look around, John could feel that something had changed.
The earthen floor was cleanly swept, the fire pit laid with even, close-fitting stones. Yako ran on ahead, and John heard a coppery ringing. Not far from where the hunting gear usually hung, he saw a copper washstand and basin! This was so unexpected and so wondrous that he couldn’t refrain from exclaiming in Chukchi:
“Kakomei!” 27
“Mam brought it from the white people’s big ship,” Yako explained in an important voice, as he kept on ringing the washstand’s little pull-handle.
John investigated this furnishing, so unusual for a yaranga, further, and discovered a convex set of letters: Vaigach.
He went down to the stream, brought some water and filled the basin. When she acquired the washstand, it did not occur to Pyl’mau to ask the Russian sailors for some soap. But even without it, washing his face gave John real pleasure. Afterwards, he washed Yako’s face with a little cloth; the boy was not unduly thrilled by the procedure, but nevertheless boasted to his mother as soon as she returned:
“Sson and I were washing our faces!”
Inside her own home, Pyl’mau behaved differently than on the shore. Back there, she’d barely glanced at John, but now she bustled around him, going out of her way to make him comfortable. The polog’s front wall was raised, there was a little table beside the headrest log, and a white deerskin spread out in the back.
“You sit yourself there,” Pyl’mau motioned to the deerskin. “Rest. We’ll eat, and have real Russian tea in a minute.”
Pyl’mau flew about the chottagin like a whirlwind. She hung the cauldron over the fire, prepared the wooden dish, took a packet out of a large box that served as a cabinet, and laid two black tea bricks, a pack of smoking tobacco, a few large lumps of sugar, and a bottle of vodka in front of John.
“I traded for all these with the Russian ship. I gave four fawn skins for it, and for that thing,” Pyl’mau pointed at the washstand. “The Russians only wanted two walrus tusks. What do you think, did I pay too much?”
“You’re great, Mau!” John smiled, pulled the woman close and kissed her on the lips. “You couldn’t have thought up a better present for me!”
Pyl’mau, stunned by the kiss, looked at John in astonishment. She pressed her fingers to her lips and said, uncertainly:
“So that’s the white man’s kiss?”
“Yes,” said John. “You don’t like it?”
“Strange . . .” Pyl’mau said softly, “like a child who got lost searching for the breast.”
Pyl’mau was refusing to have a drink, but John insisted. A glassful of vodka gave her brown face a rosy glow, but all of a sudden she became silent and sad.
“Why don’t you say something, Mau?” John asked her.
“What is there to say?” She shrugged, looking s
omewhere off to the side.
“Well, you could tell me about the ship . . .”
“They came, walked about the yarangas, traded the goods . . . Asked the old folks about the ice. They couldn’t understand what I wanted with the washstand. They weren’t here for long, they were in a hurry to get north, to the Invisible Island . . . And that’s it,” Pyl’mau’s voice faded as she ended her story.
“Did the vodka make you sick?” John asked sympathetically.
“No,” Pyl’mau was almost whispering. “It’s just that I really wanted you to kiss me one more time, like a child lost in search of the breast . . .”
John smiled and kissed her firm warm lips.
Melting from the plentiful food and vodka, John fell asleep inside the polog. In the night, he felt Pyl’mau undressing him, and then how, after damping the brazier, trembling, she lay beside him. John embraced her. Pyl’mau was saying something, but each time she spoke he silenced her mouth with a kiss. Afterwards, he lay with his eyes wide open in the darkness, and his heart was was filling with balmy peace. “I’ve found myself, and my place on this earth,” he thought, alive to the warm female body beside him.
When John awoke, neither Pyl’mau nor Yako were inside the polog. He heard Pyl’mau singing outside.
John stuck his head inside the chottagin:
“Mau!”
“Hi!” She bounded into the chottagin.
“Where is my . . .” John didn’t know what to call a watch in the Chukchi tongue. The day before, he’d forgotten to wind it, and was now worried that it might stop. “It was in my pocket. A round thing . . .”
“A thumper-thing, that looks like an eye? With glass on it?” guessed Pyl’mau. She found the watch and handed it to him.
“Will you have some tea, or are you going to wash your face first?” Pyl’mau asked.
“First I’ll wash,” John answered, and then added mischievously: “I know what you were singing about.”
Pyl’mau blushed and covered her eyes with a sleeve.
“I was very worried . . . I was worried that everything about you was as strange as your kiss . . . But it turns out, you’re a man like any other man! So that’s why I was happy.”
This unexpected candor made John blush in turn, and he hurried toward the washbasin.
From that night onwards, John stayed in the polog and assumed the place where Toko had lain before him.
A few days passed, and the hunters began to ferry their kill from the Bering Strait to their own storage pits. Once in a while John would accompany them, but most of the time he stayed behind, busy with the improvements he was making to the yaranga. He had resolved to make the ancient dwelling more comfortable. He’d go to the opposite end of the lagoon in a small hide boat and tug back the water-logged timber. But when an impressive stack of logs and planks accrued by the side of his yaranga, John discovered that he wouldn’t actually be able to build a thing, since he hadn’t a single nail. Orvo confirmed that nails would be essential.
At the end of summer, the Vaigach returned to Enmyn. It had dropped anchor by the time the Enmyn people awoke one morning.
John and Orvo were welcomed on board as old friends. The captain was courteous in thanking Orvo for his ice forecast.
“Your prognosis was absolutely correct, right until Cape Billings,” he said. “I must say that such fortunate conditions as this year’s are few and far between, and so we managed to get to Wrangel Island without any misadventure.”
Inside the captain’s stateroom, paneled with blond woods, a table had been laid for them. Watching John with interest and winking knowingly at one another when Orvo was seen to be familiar with the various implements, the expedition leaders competed to show the most hospitality. Filling their glasses, the captain spoke:
“Sailing along these doleful and lonely shores of the Russian Empire, we learned that God had not withheld his bounty from this far-off land, but peopled it with a tribe that was sturdy and intelligent, capable of surviving in the harshest of climates. Enlightened visitors to this place wonder at the native people, whom only an uneducated fool would call savages. So allow me to also raise a toast to Orvo, a representative of the Chukchi tribe, who is present at this table.”
The interpreter translated the captain’s speech, and Orvo listened attentively. Not a single muscle moved in his impassive face, as though he were accustomed to both the surroundings and hearing high-flown speeches made in his honor. As a token of thanks he inclined his head almost imperceptibly and clinked glasses with the captain.
John MacLennan was toasted, too. The captain, who had proposed the toast, compared him to Miklukho-Maklai, but John didn’t have the foggiest idea who that was. When they enlightened him, John decided to make himself quite clear and declared that he had certainly not settled among the Chukchi in order to study them. He simply wanted to live as they did, having grown convinced that the society of “civilized” people was far from ideal, and did not afford a person the chance to develop his true human virtues. John’s speech puzzled the guests, but the captain lightened the mood by proposing a toast to the Canadian seafarers, who had made a large contribution to Arctic exploration.
“Gentlemen,” John addressed the party, “I am very glad to have become acquainted with you, representatives of the mighty Russian people and Russian government. I must impress upon you that the best show of concern for your northern subjects would be to protect them from the robbery perpetrated upon them by merchants and the various white-fox traders. The less contact the Chukchi and the Eskimos have with white men, the better for them . . . I know that Alaska has been sold to the United States by your government. I lived there for a time, and saw Eskimos digging for garbage scraps, with the dogs, on the outskirts of towns. I shudder to think what would become of the people here, if Chukotka were to share Alaska’s fate.”
“Mr. MacLennan,” said the captain, “we understand your concerns. But they are too pessimistic. It will be no less than a century, before civilization of any kind can reach Chukotka. As for defending the national borders, a battle cruiser patrolling the waters is planned for next year. Some time ago, there was talk of laying a trans-Siberian telegraph line across the Bering Strait and onto the North American continent, but since the success of the transatlantic cable it became needless, and so this part of Asia no longer excites any schemes but the scientific. So set your mind at rest, and live the life you have chosen for yourself . . .”
There was irony in the captain’s last words, one that was completely effaced in the translation made for Orvo’s sake.
The captain asked John whether there was anything he needed.
“Thank you. I have got everything that I require . . . But if you would be so kind, I’d be grateful for some nails . . .”
“We’ll send a launchboat with some,” the captain promised, and made his farewells with John and Orvo.
In the evening, the promised boat touched shore. The sailors carried over three crates of nails, a supply of coffee beans, four twenty-pound bags of flour, a sack of sugar and a variety of other items, the sight of which made John wonder how he’d ever gotten along without them. There was a hammer, a saw, some soap, sailors’ shirts, cuts of bright chintz clearly intended for Pyl’mau, and even a few woolen blankets.
The gifts came with a letter.
Dear Mr. MacLennan!
Please accept these gifs from the Russian hydrographic expedition, and also from me personally. We would have liked to do more for you, but our resources are limited. So we share with you what we have, and hope that the modest items we send you will be of use to you. I thank you for your pleasant company and remain in the hope of meeting you again,
Captain of the steamship Vaigach.
John read the letter, and wrote out a reply in which he praised the captain’s generosity and expressed his readiness to always be of service to Russian seamen if ever they should happen upon the shores of Enmyn.
Pyl’mau was gladdest of all. She skip
ped from the sack of sugar to the brightly colored chintz, trying it on, sniffed the tea bricks, and chattered to John:
“What riches! We’ve never had so many strange new things in our yaranga! Hard to believe that it’s all ours! If we use it little by little, it will last a long time. A whole year, maybe even more!”
John listened to her, smiling. When the first flush of excitement had died down, he said:
“All this isn’t just yours and mine. It belongs to everyone, to all the people of Enmyn.”
Pyl’mau was flabbergasted.
“What, all of that?” Her arm swept a wide arc across the piles of gifts.
“Yes,” John told her firmly. “We will divide all this up, just like we do with a walrus.”
“But tea, sugar, and flour, they’re nothing like a walrus!” Pyl’mau countered. “Our people live well even without those. Only the real necessities of life are shared out.”
“But why should I have all this, and not any of the others?” John asked.
Pyl’mau gave him a tender and pitying look and quietly said:
“All right, then. You can give a little to Orvo, Tiarat, and Armol’. . . But giving everything away is foolish. You’re a white man, and you need these things more.”
John felt a convulsion run through him on hearing those words. He gave Pyl’mau a cross look:
“If you don’t want me to be angry, don’t call me a white man.”
15
Such days happen closer to autumn, when the nights have grown dark, and only the waves shine during the moonless hours.
The sun is sole master of the cloudless sky. It arises from the watery depths, big, clean, and red. By midday, it’s sweltering on the Arctic coast, making even a light summer kukhlianka overheat.
Garlands of translucent walrus intestine (good for making waterproof capes) rustle in the breeze. The women sit in the sun, splitting the walrus skins with wide pekuls. The raw hide adheres to the wooden plank; you need to have a trained sense of the work to get equal thicknesses of hide to lie on either side of the plank.
The sun fell on Orvo and Armol’, who were slicing strips of lakhtak skin. Before cutting, the skin was steeped in concentrated urine for a few days, to make it soft and to get rid of the last of the fat. Armol’ held up a smelly, slippery piece of sealskin in his outstretched hands, while Orvo sliced off an even strip of leather that loops by his feet. The men might exchange a few words, but rarely, and only while they break, as the cutter’s breath needs to be even to keep to a straight line and to make a leather strip of uniform thickness.