Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  “I’m sure they do,” says Botkin. “They’re dogs!”

  But now there is a Gilyak man approaching. His face is intelligent, inquiring. He sees the man’s eyes go to the major’s belt and notices, with this Gilyak, that the major is carrying a pistol. The Gilyak man is nodding and speaking in gentle tones and Botkin is following and suddenly he realizes that the Gilyak is speaking Russian.

  “Ask him what you want,” says Botkin. “Go into any house. This is the summer yurt, on the stilts. In the winter, they dig pits, like shallow graves, and build low roofs, to keep out of the wind. They wear no sleeping garments, just these same rough pants. And the women too. Go on. Ask him. Ask him anything.”

  “What do you eat?” he says.

  “They eat,” says Botkin, “anything they can. They eat blubber that to smell it would make you ill. They eat all kinds of fat, but are still thin because of the cold and because that is all they eat.”

  He looks to the Gilyak man, who nods his head slantwise—like a Russian—in agreement.

  “What do they do for employment?”

  “Some trapping,” says Botkin. “They have long traded with the Japs. Sometimes they carry the mail for us. And now they will, on occasion, work as overseer in the mines. Sometimes a prisoner escapes and we need a tracker. Across the taiga they go with their dogs.”

  He looks to the man, who offers no protest.

  “Look,” says Botkin. “Walk around, no one minds.” The major gives the Gilyak man a few coins. “No one minds,” the major repeats. Botkin takes a swig from his flask, extends it.

  Against his better judgment, he drinks, stops, drinks more, hands it back. Botkin is wandering off. Perhaps he is meant to be alone with this Gilyak. It is probably better, without the major answering questions that might have different answers if a Gilyak were given a chance to respond.

  The major gave coins. He too produces a handful of small pieces and gives them to the Gilyak. “Can I see your house?” he says.

  There is a moment of understanding that he feels his simple request has not merited. “Wait here short time,” says the man.

  He waits. He wonders if some sort of sweeping and tidying is happening—or if some tea is being prepared—and looks across the camp, where Gilyak tribe members in stiff wind, having escaped the billowing smoke of their yurts, are smoking pipes. Yes, they could be waiting for a train. A child—he thinks it’s a girl—stands before him and stares into his face. This is a game. He will not look away first. He will not smile. They look and look and look until the Gilyak man returns.

  “The house is now ready,” the man says. Together the two look at a house at the edge of the camp.

  He is unsteady—as unsteady as the major—and he realizes this as he makes the last rungs of the ladder. His feet still know where to place themselves, but what to do with one’s hands? He grabs the doorframe, bracing himself, and places one clumsy foot carefully on the poorly spaced floorboards, and then the other. His boots are dusty except for a series of droplet marks showing cleaner leather on the left one, and he wonders if he has urinated on it.

  “Everything good?” the Gilyak man calls up.

  “Yes,” he responds, happy not to have fallen backward. But he is looking at the mattress—straw covered with rags—and the girl sitting there. She meets his gaze frankly. He realizes the meaning of the coins. Her hair is neatly arranged, and she is wearing an elaborate embroidered coat that is faded and much repaired, but tells the story of an earlier Gilyak era where such attire was created and required. She is calm under his scrutiny. He hears her expel some air through her nose—cautious disdain—and wonders how old she is. There is something about those large, dark eyes that challenges him.

  “Do you speak Russian?” he asks her.

  She continues to look at him, untucks her legs from beneath her, and extends them forward, crossing her legs at the ankle.

  “Is this your home?”

  More silence. If she is apprehensive, she does not show it. He thinks she might be fifteen, but he has trouble figuring out these Asiatics who stay youthful for years, turn skeletal overnight, and live in that animated, fleshless state until they die.

  “I didn’t mean to purchase you,” he says. He doubts she understands. He takes some steps around the yurt, sees a cooking pot and picks it up—there is some strong animal smell that he thinks is blubber—and sets it down. “Do you live here?” he asks.

  And then she speaks, something short, polite, not gentle.

  On an old packing crate, there are a few folded garments. These are of no interest, but he’s still keeping up some pretense of seeing this genuine Gilyak dwelling. He doesn’t know what else to do. “I am a doctor,” he says, to banish silence from the room. She moves her position on the mattress, shifting back to sitting on her feet. “I am here to conduct a census.” He picks up a mirror, tarnished, and, to his eye, Russian. He wonders how old it is. She watches him fixedly while he handles this precious object, and he sets it back down. “Is that man your father?” he asks. He’s really not interested in the answer, but he thinks the girl might understand this word. “Your father,” he repeats. “Is he your father? Father? Father.”

  The girl watches.

  “Father,” he says. He stands with his shoulders squared, and brings his hands to his hips in fists. This is a manly stance. “Fa-ther,” he says. He will teach her. “Faa-theer.”

  And then she barks. She barks like a dog, barks at him. She’s barking, now on all fours. Bark. Bark. Bark. And shaking her head at him. Bark. Bark. Bark. She barks and barks and barks as he escapes the yurt, backward, quickly down the ladder. And when his feet are on the ground, she is silent. He looks up the road and sees the major, a small, unsteady, diminishing figure. The Gilyak man is approaching him, concern on his face. He manages a big, false smile for this Gilyak man. All is well. He shows his teeth, his head bobbing. He smiles and nods.

  He imagines this man talking to his daughter, asking her, “Do they bite?”

  There is to be a flogging, and he has been invited. He wonders in what capacity he has earned this invitation, and wonders who else has been included. What is his response? The man says no. The doctor says yes. And the writer? Well, yes, of course. The man has been outvoted and he will attend.

  He has been told to present himself at the overseer’s lodge, which he knows is somewhere up the street from the governor’s house. He has given himself twenty minutes to get there. The sky is dark, promising rain, and the wind unusually still. He stops a girl rushing in the opposite direction, carrying a bundle of laundry, and asks her where the overseer’s lodge is.

  “There, your honor, there!” she says, and points—indicating north and everything northward—with her chin, her arms embracing the sheets and clothing. “It’s right there,” she says. “It’s where everyone is headed.”

  This additional information awakens him to the fact that most people are walking in the same direction as he, and several, as he watches, enter the darkened doorway of a building he’d assumed was a barracks. He follows at the same pace as the others, perhaps a little slower, and enters the lodge with a feeling of trepidation. Major Botkin is there, but not in charge. The major is attending as a spectator. He wonders who would choose to be at such a thing, and realizes that he has made such a choice. He steps back to remove himself from Botkin’s line of vision but is too late. He nods in acknowledgment. This is enough. He does not need to stand by the major to think of how easily he becomes that man, how little separates their two ways of being.

  “Seeing all the sights, your honor,” comes a voice. It’s Sobolev.

  “Sometimes,” he says, having forgotten now why he’s come, “we see things to make sense of them.”

  “Well,” says Sobolev, “good luck to you with that.”

  “What brings you here?” he asks.

  “You, always making it sound as though I have a choice in these matters.” Sobolev waves a sheaf of pages at him. “This is some mi
nor task of paperwork, for which they think I am well suited, because of the elegance and precision of my handwriting.” Sobolev raises his eyebrows ironically to drive home the joke.

  He would like a drink now, to reach into his coat pocket and produce a flask, to share a jolt with his friend the forger, but he has not allowed himself the luxury of traveling with such a thing. He would be drunk all the time. One month on Sakhalin has taught him that; two months to go keeps him in check.

  “Father Vasiliev is here,” says Sobolev. “Would you like to meet him?”

  “Do you think I need a priest?”

  Sobolev smiles. “Maybe not just yet, but some day,” he says nodding, “some day you will call for the priest, and I will too, but right now it is only because he is an interesting man, a bit like you, educated. Kind. But not as much fun.”

  Father Vasiliev stands by the door. This Vasiliev reaches into his pocket and produces a watch, which is consulted before returning it. Vasiliev’s hand returns to the same pocket and produces a handkerchief to mop his brow. The handkerchief goes back into the pocket. Again the priest reaches into the same pocket. Will the priest produce a rabbit, he wonders? But the priest has merely brought out some beads, which are squeezed anxiously, then returned.

  He approaches the priest, unsure of what to say, but the priest sees him and nods in acknowledgment, and it is as though they have known each other before. “You are the doctor with the census,” says the priest. “I am Fedor Alexevich Vasiliev. Call me Fedor. There is no room for titles here. Most people will say, ‘no room for titles in this godforsaken place,’ but I won’t willingly admit that. Not yet. But ask me again after we witness this flogging.”

  A few comments are exchanged about the weather, the status of the census, the duties of the priest. He likes this man who is probably about thirty, the same age as he, but carries himself as someone older. “Are floggings always well attended?” he asks.

  “Yes. This is what happens when there are no plays, no music. We have a very high birthrate, and everyone shows up for a flogging. Of course, I would like to reduce this cohort by one—me—but sometimes these poor chaps look for a priest, want my blessing. And other times they spit at me.” The priest lifts his hands. “Either way, I feel I’m helping.”

  “What is this man’s crime?” he asks.

  The priest moves his head from side to side, thinking. “Well, I suppose they would call it escape. He did escape. But he and his companions came upon an Ainu village. You might think they’d not want to linger, but they found time to murder the men and rape the women. And then murder the women. The children they strung up from the beams of the main dwelling. The sight of this still burns in my memory, and I have seen much and live with the thought that if I have not yet seen all, then some horror might be waiting for me. They killed one of the soldiers sent to bring them in. This man who you will see flogged today was meant to be hanged with the others, but he says he didn’t kill anyone. Maybe it would have been better for him to be hanged, because now he is sentenced to ninety lashings as well as being chained to the wheelbarrow.”

  “Wouldn’t he choose to be alive?” he says.

  “Probably,” says the priest. “But now that he will be lashed in this way and chained to a barrow, he will kill someone. He will. The moment they remove his fetters, he will earn them back. And then he will be unfit for God. But now, if he were—as he’s said—innocent of murder, and hanged, he would be guilty only of escape. God would take him in.”

  “Isn’t there repentance and forgiveness?”

  “I have witnessed that a few times,” says the priest. “But genuine repentance—the real agony of one coming to terms with the wrongs one has committed—seems the stuff of novels on Sakhalin. God may be everywhere, but here he seems to be wearing a disguise and is hard to recognize.”

  A rattle of chains at the far end of the room draws everyone’s attention. The prisoner enters—a smallish man with a straggling beard and small black eyes. He is clearly terrified and looks with plain horror at the sloping board—attendants are checking manacles and ankle straps—that is there to accommodate him. “Come on, then,” says a guard. “We haven’t got all day.” The prisoner’s shirt is removed, and he is told to lie facedown on the board. A guard tugs the prisoner’s trousers down to his knees. His wrists and ankles are fixed in place. The guard with the whip, a single strap that terminates in three sharp-looking thongs, says, “Brace up!” and the man does. The whip is flung with precision. The prisoner emits some sort of panicked cry, more of a squeal. The overseer says, “O-one!” in a controlled way, as though he is saving his energy in order to make it all the way to ninety. After the first five lashes, the guard needs a break. The prisoner is already seized by uncontrolled tremors.

  “How long will this take?” he asks the priest.

  “Hours,” says the priest.

  He thinks he will leave, but then forces himself to stay, as if witnessing this display and assigning it the appropriate degree of horror will somehow restore a small measure of humanity.

  The last two months of his time on Sakhalin, he will rise at five in the morning and not sleep until late into the night. He will record the lives of as many of the people as he can manage in this short, arctic summer, as though preserving some facts on paper recognizes their devalued existence. He will look at the questionnaires filled out by Russians, Tatars, Chinese, Mongols, Gypsies and wonder at the falsehood of paper: he feels as if he is a conjurer attempting to steal souls. As he’s sailing to Hong Kong, he’ll imagine what it would be like to dump the forms overboard, to see them buoyed up by the waves, sucked down to the bottom. The urge to do this, to cleanse his mind of Sakhalin, will be so strong that he will have to struggle not to succumb to it.

  Twelve years later, in Badenweiler, Germany, he is completing the last movement of his long involvement with tuberculosis. He thinks, “I am not indigenous,” although he also felt alien in Yalta. His thoughts will return to Sakhalin. He will remember the ship that brought him there and the one that carried him away. In his memory, he sees 10,000 sheets of paper—his census—floating on the waves, and feels the satisfaction of having tossed them all, although he knows them to be locked up in a trunk in his Yalta home. His wife, an actress, is fussing, talking to doctors, rushing here and there with a creased brow. This is a different room in a new hotel—they had to leave the last one, as his coughing was keeping up the other guests—and Olga has yet to figure out the staff. She catches him watching her and comes to sit beside him, looking very composed, but no one ever looks that calm, and he knows she’s playing the part: the wife who holds together in the face of adversity.

  “I told the maid she had to stop that child from banging on the piano,” she says.

  He’d found the inexpert “banging” a kind of comfort, the tortured nocturnes in the glare of day a sort of insane serenade for the nearly dead, but clearly it has been working on Olga’s nerves.

  “What will you write next?” she asks. She’s pretending he has a future. She bends to hear, as his voice is soft.

  “A play,” he says.

  The characters are led by an explorer into the Arctic. He sees these hoary men, beards dripping with icicles, on the prow of a ship. They don’t know where they’re going, because explorers never do.

  “What is the subject of this play?” she asks, the picture of a person with rapt curiosity. He prefers the face of exaggerated calm.

  “Explorers,” he says. He sees the thoughts play across her face. First, concern. If the play is about explorers, then there will not be a part for her. Second, she remembers he is dying.

  He will never write this play. Even in his mind, the explorers are stuck in the ice, incapable of movement.

  “Like Przhevalsky?”

  He nods. He thinks of his explorers, looking out across the ice, with the glacial corridors creating a music of buffeting winds and hissing snow. He thinks of the winds of Sakhalin: he was there, although in the summe
r, all those years ago. But it is easy to imagine that place in winter. He sees the Gilyak standing in a group, waiting for the Russians to wipe them out, and the Ainu women with their tattooed faces—clown smiles, to keep them looking cheerful. And there are the men chained to wheelbarrows. He thinks of the priest who, he heard later, took a Gilyak woman as his common-law wife and disappeared into the margins of Siberia. Or Japan. His explorers are going somewhere cold, because consumptives love the winter and most often die in the spring. His explorers are looking for the eternal winter, and they will find it and bring him there.

  He whispers, “Sakhalin.”

  Olga adjusts her mask. The initial concern (are disconnected words a prelude to the death rattle?) is replaced with a cavalier, conversational expression and posture. “Sakhalin,” she says, “how grim. What will you have your characters do? Steal things? Murder people? Flog people? Be flogged? Hanged? Escape? Be apprehended? Be flogged again?”

  She has read his book on Sakhalin.

  “I suppose a lot could happen on Sakhalin. There’s a lot of action. But what would the people talk about?” She shrugs. She’s forgetting to act. For the first time in days, Olga is actually being Olga. “Honestly, Antoshka. Sakhalin? What kind of play would this be?”

  He takes a moment to respond. He remembers the buzz of flies lifting off the drying fish at the Gilyak compound, Botkin’s weaving march, the “O-one” of the man’s flogging, the priest lifting his hands. He remembers how he found it difficult to sleep with the knowledge that when he exited his room, there would be no city, and he could walk into a seemingly conjured blankness if he strayed from the main road. There is a soft knock at the door. He remembers Sobolev the forger’s large hands. The doctor stands casting his shadow. He remembers the smiling dogs. Olga politely waves the doctor away. He remembers the nailed picture of Pishchikov’s wife. Olga looks at him, her aggravation its own kind of beauty. “This play—”