by Yuri Rytkheu
The snow crunched loudly underfoot, and this single sound within the frosty silence spread far around, filling the white space with a nasty creaking. It followed the hunter the entire way. And the way was long, through tall ice hummocks, through conglomerations of broken ice. It had been a long time since they used harness teams in Enmyn: The half-starved dogs had gone wild, having to fend for themselves, and wouldn’t allow themselves to be caught.
Frost bound the polynyas. No sooner did a melthole appear, than it was drawn over with new, translucent ice.
John moved from one frozen water hole to another. Gradually, the ends of his toes would freeze, and so, from time to time he had to knock one foot against the other, to restore feeling. It was a good thing that he had no fingers – there was no need to worry about mittens, and he could load and unload his Winchester with his holders in any weather.
It was hard to distinguish the boundary between the fast ice and the moving ice, which had so few breakages that the nerpa themselves had to blow out vents in order to get a breath of air.
John hurried on.
Slowly the stars faded and the brief winter day began. It would last for two or three hours, and only in that window of time would you be able to distinguish a nerpa’s dark head on the surface of an ice-free patch. Quickly, it grew dark, and John returned to Enmyn by starlight and the glow of the shooting Northern Lights.
He would walk past the yarangas with his head low, ashamed of his failure. Then he grew used to it. The worst was meeting little Yako’s hungry eyes. But Pyl’mau, unshakeably calm, acted as though everything was as it should have been. It was a wonder how she managed to produce food at all and, eating his fill, John would collapse onto the cool deerskins, to venture out once again in search of animals the next day.
Once, he frightened off a polar bear. The beast rushed away over the ice hummocks and disappeared into the snowy whiteness. His kill was left behind on the ice – an almost whole nerpa carcass, with an opened belly and a skinned head.
The bear had lain in watch for the nerpa, waiting for it to surface through the blowhole. You need incredible quickness to catch and extract such a cautious and dextrous animal through a narrow hole. John was jealous of the polar bear’s luck.
He inspected the carcass and saw that it was only a little damaged, and hadn’t even had a chance to freeze. The pink liver was covered with a thin layer of ice. John took out his hunting knife and cut off a few slices. After having a snack, he threaded a leather strip through the animal’s muzzle and and started dragging the nerpa back to shore.
Ascending from the shore to the yarangas, he had a moment of doubt: Can it be a good thing, taking the marine animals’ food away from them? But remembering Yako’s hungry eyes and Pyl’mau’s visibly thinner body, he strode decisively toward his dwelling, trying to pass the other yarangas as quickly as possible.
Pyl’mau was already standing by the door with a ladle. Silently, she poured some water over the nerpa’s head and gave the rest of the water to John. The small ladle shook slightly in her hand, and a lonely piece of ice rang out against the tin.
When they had dragged the nerpa inside the polog, John made a perturbed confession:
“I took the nerpa away from a bear. Not sure whether it was a good or bad thing to do . . .”
“I remember, sometimes Toko did that,” Pyl’mau answered calmly. “You took what was yours according to the right of the strongest. The gods will be pleased.”
Taking off his hunting gear, John crawled inside the polog. Yako sat by the nerpa’s head and stared greedily at the animal’s half-closed eye. John gouged the eye out with his hunting knife, pierced it and handed it to the boy.
For little Tynevirineu-Mary he sliced off a piece of liver.
Pyl’mau lit a second oil lamp, and the polog brightened. Today she was lively, joyful at the provider’s success. She spoke animatedly, frequently throwing her husband tender, slightly worried glances.
By the light of the second oil lamp, John scanned the polog. He had a vague sense that some change had taken place inside the dwelling, something taken away, or else something added. John slowly moved his eyes across the interior, until they stopped at the corner post, where instead of the copper washbasin, hung a wooden idol!
“You see, he sent us luck,” Pyl’mau said with a sheepish smile. “As soon as you left for the sea, I took him in from the cold, warmed him up and pleaded with him for a long time to be kind to you.”
“And where’s the washbasin?”
“I’ve hung it up in the chottagin, where it was before.” Pyl’mau was nervously crumpling the edge of a deer hide. “I was thinking, you almost don’t wash at all anymore . . . And the god ought to hang in his own place ...”
And in truth, John had lately ceased to practice personal hygiene. One morning, approaching the washstand, he remembered the bitter frost outside the yaranga’s walls, he could feel how instantly the cold would pull on his washed face, stripped of a protective layer of grease, and he didn’t wash it . . . Afterwards he didn’t touch the washstand at all, and it hadn’t done his health any harm.
“And here’s another reason the god should be right here,” Pyl’mau continued, in an ingratiating tone. “I want a son. Yako needs a companion, with whom life will be less hard . . . Why don’t we just let the god stay with us.”
“All right,” John waved his hand tiredly, “butcher the nerpa, I want to eat.”
No sooner had Pyl’mau hung a little cauldron over the fire, than guests began to arrive at the yaranga. No one asked for anything. They came by for no reason, or for some trivial reason, but not a single person left empty-handed.
John saw there was less and less of the nerpa, and a few times he almost shouted to his wife: “Enough!”
Late that night, Orvo’s dry coughing came from the chottagin and then his gray head popped inside the polog.
The old man had a look at the recently returned god and hummed with satisfaction.
“We should set nerpa nets,” he said. “We’re running out of cartridges, and there’s less and less open water. Got to drill holes and set up the nets.”
This was the first time John had heard of nerpa being caught in nets.
“We’ll spread the nets, and you can go see your friend Il’motch,” Orvo went on. “Ask him for three or so tens of deer carcasses. We’ll settle with him later. He shouldn’t refuse you – seeing as you’re his coastal friend. Don’t worry about your people, we’ll take care of them.”
A few days later, having pulled together a pack of Enmyn’s strongest and most resilient dogs, John set out for the tundra. It was his first trip on his own, but deep inside, he wasn’t worried: He was certain he’d reach the camp. Orvo’s hand-drawn map was tucked behind his belt, and on the sled, under some deerskins, there was a spirit compass – one of the few things left from the whaleboat that had been paid for with his whale-bone.
His path stretched ahead to the Big Pass of the Anadyr River watershed.
22
John wandered the tundra for a long time. The meager food supplies he’d taken for the journey ran out. Each evening, camping for the night, he would lead the weakest dog aside and kill it. If there happened to be any shrubs nearby, he would make a fire and boil the meat. The leftovers he would feed to the dogs.
John inspected every valley that Orvo had specified, roved over the low shrubs, crossed watersheds and even ascended the northern face of the Big Pass. Now and again, there were traces of a deer herd – spoor, like a spill of black olives. At those moments, hope sparked in his breast and John would drive the weakened dogs down the trail, until he lost it again somewhere – in a spill of ice or in some clinging shrub that splintered in the frost.
Soon the traces disappeared completely. And no matter where John directed his sled, on every side there lay snow – virginal, a little blue as it reflected the dark sunless sky. The cold altered it. The sled could only move on well-iced runners, and John often stopped, t
urned the sled over and iced them.
When there were only eight dogs left in the team, John turned back to the sea.
From afar, Enmyn seemed almost dead. During the two hours it took the weakened dogs to drag the sled through the narrow lagoon, not a single human figure could be seen between the yarangas, and not a single column of smoke flew over the tents.
John fell inside his yaranga’s chottagin and, groping for the fur-lined curtain, climbed into the polog.
Attracted by the yellow-flame tongue, he heard his wife’s weak voice:
“Is that you, Sson?”
“It’s me, Mau.”
“Did you bring anything?”
“I didn’t find the deer camp. Only spoor. . .Where are the children?”
“Here,” Pyl’mau answered. “They’re very thin . . . Asking for food all the time ... I’m already down to boiling old torbasses. I’ve scraped out the meat pit. That’s what we manage on.”
“Anyone going out to sea?”
“They go, but there’s little good. It’s been rare for someone to come back with a kill, from the day you left. No cartridges.”
Pyl’mau stoked the fire in the grease lamp with a stick, and hung a little pot over it.
Yako crawled out from underneath a heap of skins and stared at John. The boy’s ribs stuck out sharply, while between his shoulderblades and his neck there were clearly visible hollows, like pits in the swarthy, hunger-roughened skin.
Tynevirineu-Mary lay quietly. For a minute she opened her blue eyes and then shut them again, as though the brazier’s glow were unbearably bright for her.
“What’s wrong with Mary?” John said, alarmed.
“She’s hungry,” came Pyl’mau’s despondent reply. “I give her the breast to suck, but there’s nothing there.”
A foul-smelling soup had boiled in the pot. Fighting revulsion, John swallowed it.
“Have you been eating the dogs?”
“What are you saying! How could we eat dogs?”
“It’s better than boiling lakhtak strips that were cured in human urine,” countered John.
Regaining a little strength, he decided to pay Orvo a visit.
Beside the yaranga, the dogs were rumbling as they chewed on the remains of the sled’s leather holding straps. Seeing the human, they ran off. It was only now that John noticed that the walrus-hide covers of each yaranga were chewed up to the height within reach of the dogs.
Orvo lay inside a darkened polog, with his two wives.
“The thing I was most afraid of has happened: Il’motch has moved his camp to the Forest Boundary . . . He could feel it, the old man, that we’d come to him for help . . .”
Orvo’s breathing was short and broken, something whistled and gurgled in his chest.
“We have to do something,” John said, after a pause. “We can’t just meekly wait for the end.”
“So what do you suggest?” Orvo asked apathetically. “There isn’t any strength to hunt. It gets dark by the time you find a melthole, and there’s barely any open water anymore as it is.”
“We can eat some of the dogs. I don’t understand it: People are starving to death, while there are animals who can save our lives, just running about. It’s not as though they don’t eat horseflesh in some parts, and in some Eastern countries, they even consider dog meat to be a delicacy . . .”
“Maybe we will come to that, eating dogs,” Orvo answered tiredly, “but that’s the last resort. After the dogs, it’s usually the turn of the dead. Then they kill and eat the weak ones . . . Until a person has eaten dog, he can still consider himself a human being . . .”
“Well, I did eat dog meat!” John declared, with a challenge. “So then, I’ve stopped being human?”
“Don’t speak that way, Sson,” Orvo pleaded. “Check my nets. Maybe something has been caught.”
In the morning, forcing himself to swallow the stinky leather-strap brew, John went out looking for Orvo’s nets. There had been no snow for a month, and on a hardened early-snow cover there was no need for snowshoes. The even white surface blinded his eyes. And really, the Long Days, the pre-springtime season had arrived long ago, but the people in their famished stupor hadn’t noticed it come.
The old man had spread his nets far afield, and only by the late dusky twilight did John reach them. It took another hour to hack them from the ice. The first net had some worm-eaten seal bones, but in the other was a nerpa, nearly whole. John, cheered by this, cleaned out the nets and spread them again, with the intention of returning the next day.
With a load of seal bones and the nerpa carcass, John returned to Enmyn.
Despite her weakness, Pyl’mau came out to greet him with the usual ladle and its floating chip of ice.
It was hard to divide the spoils into twelve equal shares.
“We should put more into Orvo’s pile,” John said.
“No, let each family get the same amount,” Pyl’mau disagreed.
“Why should I feed Armol’, who is stronger than me and could have gone to check the nets a long time ago?” John said, annoyed.
“Don’t be angry,” Pyl’mau lowered her voice, “there’s no room for anger when food is being doled out. Let everyone get his share. The sun doesn’t decide which person to give the most light and heat, it’s the same for everybody.”
“I’m not competing in generosity with the sun! First of all, I want to feed my children, and only then all the rest!”
Almost forcibly, he took a hunk of meat from each share and threw them in the pot that hung over the grease lamp.
Afraid that John wouldn’t give the other inhabitants of Enmyn anything at all, Pyl’mau gathered together some pitiful bits of meat and bone, and went to make the rounds of the yarangas.
Alone with the children inside the polog, John tried to stoke up the flame in the grease lamp. He took the little black baton, made out of some unknown material, and started to scrape the fat-soaked moss to the edge of the stone vessel. The flame did grow bigger, but so did the soot. Trying to manage it, John only put the flame out altogether. Darkness came over the polog. In the quiet, he suddenly heard Tynevirineu-Mary’s wail. Feeling for the child’s thin, trembling body, John drew her out from underneath the pile of deerskins and held her close. The little body burned him, as though on fire. The baby girl was semi-conscious, crying quietly. Incredible, that there can be so much heat in such a tiny creature!
John rocked the crying girl and pleaded with her:
“Mary, dear, don’t cry, just wait a little longer. Mother will come soon, she’ll light the lamp, and we’ll all eat fresh hot meat. Don’t cry, my baby girl.”
John crooned to the little girl, and it seemed to him that she was beginning to breathe more evenly, her fever leaving. His eyes slowly got accustomed to the dark: A little light seeped into the polog through numerous bald spots in the hide covers.
“My little bird, little trouble ...” John whispered in English. “Why was it you who drew the lot of being born here? . . . Somewhere else, thousands of lucky children smile at the warm sun, smelling of milk, but you, my blood, are burning up in this accursed ice-bound land! My darling! My little polar flower! . . . Why are you so quiet? You’ve stopped crying? Yes, sleep for a bit . . .”
John talked to the little girl, and his heart grew more and more heavy, as though a black cloud were moving over his soul. Dread of something terrifying and inevitable filled the cramped polog to the brim, rising up like dark shadows in the corners. Trying to push away his worry, John would raise his voice:
“My darling! Winter won’t be forever, spring will come after, and we’ll see the green grass again, and eat our fill! . . .”
A weak ray of light stretched from the smoke-hole to the corner pole that supported the polog. The god was hanging there. This time, his face did not seem emotionless to John. Some sort of vengeful and malicious expression had appeared on the god’s face.
John broke off his talk with his daughter. The god’s l
ook pierced his heart like an icy needle, and cold viscous sweat ran down between his shoulderblades, raising fear and fever.
“Hey, you, idol!” John shouted, beside himself with terror. “Stop it! I still don’t believe in you, and I don’t accept you!”
He lay the child on the bed and rushed to the god. Ripping it off the post so savagely that the entire polog shook, John threw it out into the chottagin.
“Vyne vai!” he heard Pyl’mau’s voice. “What have you done? Oh, it will be nothing but trouble for us! Oh, the misfortune!”
John peered into the chottagin and saw his wife kneeling before the cast-down god.
“Get up!” he screamed in a terrible voice. “Don’t you dare abase yourself before him! No god – not yours, not ours – is worth that. They are liars, all of them! Get up, Mau!”
“A terrible misfortune is waiting for us, Sson,” Pyl’mau said in a voice that was quieted by the depth of her emotion. “How could you do that?”
Pyl’mau stretched her arms out to the god, who lay on the frost-covered earthen floor, and in that instant, a dreadful wave shook the yaranga, knocking the frost from the wooden struts. A steady blue light filled the room.
John ran to the outer door. A large round lightning bolt was rolling toward the sea, giving off little flickering balls of flame. When it collided with the first ice hummock, it fell apart into a multitude of sparks and expired. Where the sea joined the shore, there was a black crack – the source of the thundering noise. John went back inside the chottagin and found Pyl’mau unconscious, clutching the wooden idol to her breast.
John barely managed to drag his wife inside the polog.
Having come to, Pyl’mau made some fire, lit the grease lamp, put the god back in his place.
“Sson was fighting with the god!” Yako informed them weakly from underneath the deerskins.
“Oh, the trouble! The punishment! Look Sson, she’s fading, our Tynevirineu-Mary!” Pyl’mau picked up the baby and clutched her to her frail chest. “Descended from the Dawn is dying!”
The blazing lamp shone onto the pale almost lifeless little face. Tynevirineu-Mary silently pulled open her eyelashes and sweetly, plaintively, looked at her father. A long, drawn-out sigh escaped her tiny chest together with a barely audible moan.