by Yuri Rytkheu
“What about his things? The bags and the little guns?”
“You know we never touch dead ones’ things,” Il’motch replied. “It’s all still there.”
Agitated by what he’d just heard, John sat up in his bed.
“Listen, Il’motch,” he said. “You can’t even imagine the kind of trouble that has passed your people by! If even one of them had reached home and told them that you could pan for the yellow crap in your streams, that would be the end of you and your homeland. Crowds of white people, for whom the yellow sand is more precious than anything in the world, would flockhere. They would have trampled and set fire to your pastures, annihilated the deer, taken your women and dug up the ground until they couldn’t find even a tiny piece, a single yellow grain of sand, anymore. Then they would have shot each other, fought, and maybe even started a big fight – a war . . .”
“I’ve heard that right now the Russian land is running with rivers of blood,” Il’motch answered him. “But what you’re saying now, how horrible! Can it really be true?”
“It’s true,” John said. “And I beg you not to tell anyone about what happened. And if another searcher of gold sand wanders into your lands, drive him out, and make him run faster than a hare.”
The pleasant, wine-induced mellowness that had taken hold of Il’motch turned into alarm.
“If that’s how it is, I’ll cut out the tongues of everybody in this camp!” he said with fright. “No one will dare even think about it.”
Early in the morning, John was departing Il’motch’s camp. His dogsled was overflowing with the gifts of his tundra friend.
Still not completely recovered from last night’s shock, Il’motch made a mysterious face, took John to the side and whispered:
“I remember well our nighttime talk.”
It was not a long way back, and about two hours later John was at home, where his whole family greeted him outside his yaranga.
Yako was overjoyed at the presents, but although Pyl’mau was smiling too, there was something unusual and unfamiliar in her smile. She was uncharacteristically inhibited in her manner toward him. Over the evening tea, John finally determined to ask her what had happened.
“When a husband goes to hunt, or sets off on a journey,” Pyl’mau’s voice was solemn, “his wife always fears for him, and holds his image in her heart, and silently remembers his name . . .” All of a sudden, she sniffled: “But this time, it was hard for me to do . . .”
“Why?” John was perplexed.
“Remember what you said about your name at the walrus breeding-ground?”
John recalled it and was about to say that it was all nonsense and nothing to worry about, but managed to bite his tongue just in time. Evidently, the matter was not as simple as it had seemed to him – here, a person’s name was synonomous with their very existence, and altogether this was both logical and fair.
“You have to teach us how to say your name right,” Pyl’mau demanded, “even if it’s hard for us. But we can’t do without it. And then, when you go out hunting or on a long journey, it will be your name that rings in my soul, your real name, and not some nickname.”
“Very well,” John replied, looking serious. “I’ll teach you to say my name right.”
It took a few evenings for not just Pyl’mau, but Yako too, to be able to pronounce it clearly and correctly, ringingly: John!
And, at first, it was strange for John to hear the clear and sonorous John instead of the now-familiar Sson from Pyl’mau’s and Yako’s lips.
Winter had descended all at once. The ice had come near the shore one dawn and pressed its weight over the flimsy pebbled beach, threatening to push it into the lagoon. John was awakened by the crashing sounds of the fast ice. He was about to go outside, when a strong wind and big snowflakes, akin to buckshot in consistency, hit him in the face; a real winter blizzard with a frosty edge that burned.
John let out the dogs that had been allowed to roam free inside the chottagin, shut the front door tightly, stopped the cracks in the walrus-hide coverings with some thin wood planks and returned to the warm polog, where three grease lamps gave off a bright blaze, where he could hear the cooing of baby Bill-Toko as he played with Yako, where Pyl’mau – Polar Fog – moved about noiselessly and gracefully, wearing only a thin loincloth, her large breasts swollen and both their dark tips capped by snow-white droplets of milk.
27
The sun vanished. For one last time, it had glinted a sharp red edge over the ragged line of the mountain range, and these days all they had of it was a steadily brightening dawn that every day melted into an evening twilight and slowly died away, relinquishing the sky to the stars, the moon, and the tireless swathes of the Northern Lights.
There were times when John came back from the shore late in the day. On quiet days, they would light a bit of moss that floated in seal fat inside the chottagin, close to the entrance, and its flickering reflection danced on the hardened snow. A multitude of these little lanterns drew the hunters homeward from the sea, and each of them knew their own beckoning light without fail.
Every so often, John and his cohorts went out to the sea. Sometimes they drove into the tundra to check on the traps they’d set, and then, instead of nerpa carcasses, their dogsleds brought back snow-white and fiery-red foxes or smoky wolverines.
On stormy evenings, Orvo, Tiarat, and the other inhabitants of Enmyn would gather in John’s yaranga.
Sometimes the tea drinking carried on long into the night: They related ancient legends or prodded John to talk about the white people’s customs and lifestyle in exhaustive detail.
John often marveled at how easily the Chukchi navigated in the tundra and on the open sea. Most of the hunters could sketch the shoreline between Enmyn and the Bering Strait with a good degree of accuracy. Orvo, who’s been farther south, could recreate the promontories and lagoons from Uelen to Anadyr from memory, but had only the haziest conception of the outside world beyond.
During one of these long evenings, John was telling them about the exploration and colonization of Canada, about the endless wars between the English and the French over possession of this part of the New World. That happened to be the day that his tundra friend, Il’motch, was in for a visit. This time, he was in no hurry to move camp to the forest borders, and even tried to convince John to go to Carpenter in Keniskun, to “buy-some-sell-some.”
“And this, too,” John told his quietened listeners. “Those people warred among themselves and never once asked the native people for permission to run riot in their hunting grounds, burn their forests and sail enormous paddle-steamer ships down their rivers – ships that caused all the fish to die and rise belly-up to the surface.”
When everyone had gone home, and only Il’motch remained in the polog, he said to John:
“I know who that story was meant for. I’m keeping quiet, and I’ve ordered everyone else to forget everything about those two whites.”
Il’motch did finally manage to get John to go to Keniskun: They were running low on supplies of cartridges, tobacco, and tea. Genuine merchants had passed Enmyn by that year – perhaps they were wary of John’s presence there, or possibly they felt that the gifts supplied by the Canadian Naval Board were plenty for such a tiny settlement. Meanwhile, the people of Enmyn had stored up considerable quantities of white fox and wolverine. There was walrus tusk, the women had crafted fur-lined house slippers that were always happily bought up by the Keniskun trader. John asked Orvo to come along, but the other had refused, for some reason, bidding Armol’ to take care of his business.
In mid-February, when the sun had appeared once again, a four-dogsled caravan moved off toward the Bering Strait.
They made stops in small settlements, sometimes pitching camp right under the blue crags where they would steep tea and shave off bits of frozen deer meat. It was a pleasant journey – there was not a single blizzard for the duration of it, except that somewhere around the Koliushinskaya pro
montory they had some flurries. But Tiarat said that it was never quiet inside this particular pass.
As befitted a tundra friend, Il’motch considered it his duty always to be beside John and share his tiny canvas tent. Over the course of an evening, he’d take a long while wheezing and groaning, turn from side to side and hold forth on how it would be best to buy the bad joy-making water from Carpenter first, and only then all the rest of the supplies.
“We’ve done without all that before,” Il’motch reasoned. “And we can live without it now. But the bad joy-making water! Your heart dries up and your stomach shrinks out of longing for it.”
“Why is it that you love the joy-making water so much?” John asked him once. “Isn’t just living enough?”
“A mouse in his hole is just living,” Il’motch observed sensibly. “I don’t want to just live, I want to feel something, too. And that’s what the bad joy-making water gives me.”
“A typical alcoholic,” John thought to himself. If Il’motch had had a limitless supply of the bad joy-making water, he’d have drowned his thousand-strong herd in it long ago.
“So, do you know why Orvo didn’t want to come with us?” Il’motch asked, and there was a sly edge to his voice.
“Why?”
“He’s taken offense, and he’s upset with you.”
“But what for?” John was surprised. Lately, Orvo had seemed somehow different, but John had ascribed this to his ill health.
“Because before, I was his tundra friend, and a close one, too, but now I’m yours . . . we were good friends, friends for real,” Il’motch was off down memory lane. “I used to come to see him, young and vigorous then, and he’d go and ask me before bed: Which one do you want to sleep with tonight, Cheivuneh or Ve’emneut? And I’d do the same, of course, when he came to visit me in my camp. One of my sons that you saw, that was Orvo’s doing!” Il’motch informed him with a tinge of pride.
“But that’s not a nice thing, changing coastal friends like that,” John said reproachfully.
“Well, even a friend isn’t just for no reason, but to be useful for something,” was Il’motch’s artless reply. “When you decided to stay in Enmyn, I knew right away that I’d be your tundra friend. Who are the people coming to for advice these days? You. Before, it was Orvo. And anyway, it’s cheerier in your yaranga – children, music, always tea on hand, and sometimes even a drop of the bad joy-making water . . . Yes, sir,” Il’motch drawled with conviction, “it’s a good thing to be friends with you.”
“You know what, friend of mine,” John said decisively, “go and move yourself to Armol’s tent! I’ve suspected for a while that your friendship for me is far from being disinterested, but I didn’t think that you’d confess it so openly. Some friend!”
Il’motch realized that he’d spoiled everything with his foolish chatter, but it was too late.
“You’re throwing me out?”
“No, I just want you to vacate the space,” John dryly replied.
“What is going on here?” asked Tiarat as he crawled inside the tent. “Il’motch shows up in our tent, shouting at me: Go sleep with Sson! Can’t stay in the same tent with him any more! He smells bad!”
“Well, if that’s all he said, so much the better,” John said mysteriously, and shut his eyes, intending to fall asleep. Il’motch’s behavior, his words, they had lifted the curtain on something that John had not noticed before. The relationships between people around here are far from simple . . . Turning to and fro for a while, he called to Tiarat.
“You asleep?”
“How can I sleep, with you creaking on the snow like that?” Tiarat answered him testily.
“Tell me, what’s going on with Orvo? I’d thought that it was ill health that changed him, but I get the feeling now there’s something else amiss.”
“He’s getting weaker, the old man,” Tiarat replied, “getting sick. Bad luck for him, of course, not having any sons of his own, but there’s nothing for it now. He’s already standing on the threshold of old age, he’s looked ahead and has not seen anything good there, so it makes him a little worried. And so now he’s become solitary, irritable. The old friends are walking away from him, no new friends in sight. It’s bitter cold for a lonely man, in the face of one of our winds,” Tiarat concluded and, after a moment’s silence, added: “And he’s a very good man, too, he’s done a lot of good for people, held them back from much foolishness.”
They spent the night in Uelen, in the large lively settlement. They had intended to set off for Keniskun on the following morning, but it turned out that Carpenter himself had just arrived.
“Keniskun can wait!” Carpenter declared to John. “We’ll spend a couple of days here. The best singers and dancers on the coast from Enurmin to the Cross Bay have gathered here. Big celebration! A real Christmas! You’ll be glad you stayed to see it!”
Despite John’s protestations, Carpenter moved him into his own place. The trader was occupying a separate polog inside the yaranga of the well-to-do Uelen Chukcha, Gemal’kot, to whom Carpenter was both a friend and a distant relation by marriage.
The yaranga was a substantial one, and built if not for centuries of use, then at least for many decades. It boasted a spacious chottagin, divided into three sections: the actual chottagin, where the dogs came to warm up and where barrels of blubber and pickled greens lined the walls, with a hearth paved in large flat stones. The second chottagin was next to the pologs. There, the inhabitants ate, worked animal hides and skins and ground frozen seal blubber in stone mortars. And the third chottagin bore the clear marks of the owner’s association with Carpenter. The walls were hung with firearms, equipment for winter hunting, and even a copper whaling harpoon that looked more like a tiny cannon. Carpenter’s polog was set up right in the middle of this “living room,” and the yaranga’s owner would give the small “gate” a polite tap, before entering it.
Gemal’kot turned out to be a tall man, his hair streaked with bright gray. He was closely shaven, with the exception of a mustache. His entire form, body and face, exuded self-assurance and strength. He spoke English adequately and, according to Carpenter, had been to the United States more than once, going as far as San Francisco.
Gemal’kot was unfailingly courteous – not once had he allowed himself to enter Carpenter’s dwelling without warning, or break into a conversation. But behind all this lurked power of a kind to make John note, and not without a certain malice, that Carpenter’s glances at their host were far from haughty.
On the very first evening Carpenter launched into the conversation that John had feared most.
“I haven’t got certain intelligence, not yet,” said he in a lowered tone, “but there are rumors that finally, gold has been found on Chukotka. Some experienced Alaskan prospectors were here. Their prognoses are rather encouraging. And if it’s true, can you imagine what’s going to happen here! And us, John, we’ll be the first! Right now, the Russian government is too busy to give thought to the north. There’s war, and if I’m not mistaken, they are losing it. The Russian csar’s wife is a relation of the German Emperor – so what victory of Russian arms could there possibly be? Most likely, these northern regions will go to America or Canada. In the end, there’s not a big difference between the two. What do you say to that, my dear friend John?”
Carpenter’s voice had a wheedling ring to it that smacked of Il’motch.
“Why don’t you, Mr. Carpenter, ask Gemal’kot, or even Il’motch? It’s their decision, their land, after all.”
“Oh, do stop it, John, we’re not children, and neither are we delegates of a charity convention!”
“Mr. Carpenter, I tell you again that I’ve decided to stay among these people, willingly and forever. I will not only live among them, but will use all my power to protect their land with all its riches above and below ground from the encroachment of strangers.”
“No one intends to encroach upon either their land or their way of life,” Carpente
r said patiently. “For God’s sake, let them herd their deer, hunt walruses, trap white fox. But we’d have to be utter fools to let the gold, d’you hear me, John MacLennan, gold, go to some third party. To be completely straight, it’s us, the pioneers of the north, those who have weathered its harsh climate and managed to make friends with its people, gain their trust, it’s us who have a certain right to being rewarded.”
“Mr. Carpenter, we are speaking two different languages,” John attempted to forestall him, but the trader waved his hand dismissively and went on:
“I know of your intentions, and I’ve met a good many unusual people in my life. But all these unusual people became quite common, at the sight of gold. Would you like me to show it to you?”
Carpenter reached into his belt and brought out a small bag, resembling a tobacco pouch. With a cautious look from side to side, he poured a small pile of yellow sand, the one Il’motch had dismissively described as dried infant’s excrement, into the palm of his hand. The trader moved his hand closer to the fire and asked John, triumphantly:
“How do you like that?”
John found it curious. The contemplation of the gold sand had not aroused any extraordinary sensation within him. It only reminded him of how, a long time ago, getting ready for his travels he’d secretly dreamed of returning to Port Hope a wealthy man, and how chief among the many ways of achieving this was the very method proposed by Carpenter now – to find gold and pan for it in a tundra stream.
“I know where you got this gold from,” John surprised himself by saying. “This is gold from the streams that empty into Lake Eeonee.
Carpenter recoiled as if he’d beed burned.
“How do you know that? The man swore that no one except himself, no one, knew about the treasures of Lake Eeonee,” he said, with alarm.
“Every secret comes to light, in the end,” John said tiredly. “I’ll keep silent for now, but if it comes into your head to organize a big gold mine or something in that vein, you’ll have only yourself to blame. The Chukchi will throw you off their lands.”