When the Whales Leave

by Yuri Rytkheu

  When Armagirgin set off to hunt on fresh sea ice for the very first time, Givu handed his grandson a staff of jointed wood with solemn words: “Our ancestor Enu carried this staff through many faraway lands as he searched for truth.”

  “He find it?” said Armagirgin distractedly. He was in a hurry to be on his way.

  “When he returned from his long journey, he said there is only one truth: no land is better than our homeland.”

  “Is that all he came back with?” Armagirgin smirked.

  “He also brought back this staff, which in our family is passed down to the most able,” said Givu.

  Unimpressed and unmoved, Armagirgin took the staff. It was amazingly light in his hand.

  “Let it bring you happiness and good fortune.” Givu’s voice trembled with the sense of occasion, and his over-spilling love for his grandson.

  “Well, what I need first of all is to bag a kill for myself,” Armagirgin replied, and he joined the other youths, who were all going sea hunting.

  They returned with a rich haul; Armagirgin himself dragged back three nerpa. His companions later described how cleverly he had hunted them. Catching hold of one, he would drag it away from the ice hole, then sit astride it and ride the poor thing back to the water, hooting with laughter, before dragging it away again—and so on, and so on—until the exhausted creature laid down its head for the last time.

  Everyone thought this exceedingly funny, with the exception of old Nau. She shook her head reproachfully and muttered her whale charms and spells.

  As soon as Givu sensed death at the threshold of his yaranga, he called for Armagirgin. His grandson was bright-eyed with his exciting life and clearly impatient to be gone from his grandfather’s badly aired and gloomy polog, already rank with corruption and death.

  “My grandson,” said Givu solemnly. He took Armagirgin by the hand, worried that the young man would escape back to his noisy friends, leaving Givu’s words unheard. “I want to tell you this before I die: you will accomplish much in your life, more even than I have. I can feel it. But I want to warn you, too—you are no one until you have solved the mystery of that old woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “Nau.”

  “Oh, her!” Armagirgin dismissed her with a flick of his hand. “She’s just crazy. And everything she says is boring, and always has been, because none of it is true!”

  “Armagirgin …”

  Givu tried to squeeze his grandson’s hand, but his strength deserted him. The old man’s spirit went up and away, straight through the smoke hole and into the clouds.

  2

  Oh yes, here was a real man, on whom all the coastal people and deer people could look upon with pride—and did.

  Strong, handsome, tall, with a hearty voice that could dimple calm waters, was Armagirgin. He liked to say that true happiness lay in having skill and strength, so that a man could do anything he wished, and nothing was forbidden.

  As a child he had mocked the women who left a bit of sweet pelkumren root behind when scavenging from mouse holes, or even gave the mice a piece of dried meat in recompense. “Those feeble little nobodies don’t deserve to keep a thing!” He’d use a stick to excavate and break open the hidey-holes, digging out every crumb. Everything was for the pot when he fished in the lagoon; not a single small fry went back in the water.

  All his actions were accompanied by bellowing words and booming laughter. People liked to be near him, because with Armagirgin everyone felt free to say whatever they wished, do whatever they felt like, and satisfy any of their desires as unceremoniously as eating or sleeping.

  Little by little, people began to forget to thank the whales for helping with the hunt. Armagirgin was sure that it only looked like the whales were driving sea life toward the shore. Really the animals all came of their own volition.

  Autumn came, and so did the walruses, returning to their customary breeding grounds on the shingled beach beyond the cape, foamy with frosty waves. It was decided that the men would hunt early in the morning, as soon as the sun rose.

  The hunters crept up on them from the crags above and fell to killing the peacefully resting animals. They butchered everything they saw, young and old. The walruses’ thick moans and the stench of killing rose up over the sea, twining with the sharp scent of the cold surf.

  When the last of the walruses was dead, Armagirgin raised his bloody knife and shouted his triumph, so loudly that it startled the thousands-strong flocks of birds from their cliffside nests.

  “Only we!” he yelled. “Only men are the true masters of the world! And we will take whatever we need, giving no thanks and asking no one’s permission!”

  In the distance, the pod of whales raised their spouts.

  The villagers spent the winter lying about in a sated stupor. The underground meat pits were full to overflowing. Men only went to hunt out of a yen for nerpa meat. Each evening there was tambourine drumming within the Great Yaranga, and praiseful songs about the good luck of mankind, about the way that strong men were allowed anything they could take and hold, and how the true glory of a real man was being able to grab today’s good fortune like he’d grab a beauty by her streaming, long hair.

  Armagirgin took another wife, since the plentiful food gave him much potency and one woman was no longer enough. A year after the despoliation of the walrus colony he took a third.

  Singers composed songs about his exploits; dancers portrayed him as a great man who had given people a true happiness. These were not songs that promised future plenty, nor vague consolation, like a desperate man tossing crumbs of dried meat to unknown gods. No, this was the kind of sated gladness that made people belch loudly and look down their noses as though they were flying suddenly above the ground.

  The next autumn, the walruses did not return to their customary beach. They swam a wide berth around the Shingled Spit, and the hunters had to go far into the open sea to catch one.

  This only provoked and stoked the hunters, drunk with the unspent might they’d stored through the winter’s good eating. They rowed so fiercely that they could sometimes match the whales, still swimming unafraid alongside their hide boats, for speed.

  “Hey you, ancestors!” Armagirgin liked to taunt them. “Show us, brothers, how fast you can swim!”

  The women and old people awaited the hunters’ return, to do the work of pulling walrus carcasses up onto the beach. Old Nau would stand among them. In recent years she had grown almost silent. And although she never complained about her ailments, she seemed to have grown even older.

  Still living in each yaranga by turn, she always avoided Armagirgin’s—while he would only say, with a crooked grimace, that the old woman’s presence and deadly dull tales would only put him in a bad mood. But he liked to give his opinion, nevertheless.

  “How can anyone really believe that these fat, silent, dumb beasts, these mountains of meat and blubber, are our brothers? You’d have to have a sick imagination to come up with that, or else a senile mind. Who else would question the great dominion of the strong man over all other creatures?”

  People listened to Armagirgin’s words, and while at first they only agreed secretly, in their hearts, eventually they grew accustomed to saying as much out loud. What he said was simpler and easier to understand than old Nau’s strange and disquieting statements about their kinship with whales.

  The villagers were proud of their Armagirgin and keen to spread his fame far and wide. Armagirgin, meanwhile, cast about for a way to spend his boundless energies.

  Once he took his single-man kayak out into Irvytgyr, the narrowing gulf separated from the sea by a long sandspit with two tall mountains. Working a small double-paddled oar, he looked into the rising sun and sang a strident song:

  I am the greatest of all creatures!

  There is nothing to overcome me!

  In the deeps of the sea, in the heights of the sky

  There is nothing I cannot have,

  If it is m
y desire!

  His kayak flew over the golden path marked out by the sun. The water burbled under the hull, as if singing with the hunter, and the kayak bounced along, ringing like a drum.

  When the shoreline disappeared in mist, Armagirgin paused to look around. He loved going out alone, testing his strength, loved feeling the promise of all that a strong man armed with a sharp spear could do.

  A nerpa’s head bobbed up nearby. In a moment, Armagirgin had it harpooned, its dead body lashed to the side of his kayak. A few minutes more, and a second nerpa was lashed to the other side. But Armagirgin yearned to do something unusual, something special, to show off his prowess.

  He would have liked a stiff wind, the better to battle the waves and feel the power of nature and best it. Such contests made a man stronger, his vision keener. Yet the cloudless sky and silence promised serenity and good weather.

  Armagirgin flipped the double-paddled oar to and fro in his hands; he made the kayak spin. But there was no one to see and admire his power and skill, except for a whale pod playing nearby. Armagirgin, filled with the familiar loathing, spent some time shouting insults in their direction.

  The sun began to dip to the horizon. Armagirgin, too, headed home, leisurely parting the water with his oar.

  As the yarangas started to hive into view, Armagirgin saw a whiskery lakhtak face just ahead. The big bearded seal had popped almost entirely above the water—only its flippers were hidden—and observed the boat with undisguised curiosity.

  Armagirgin felt his blood beginning to boil. He unhooked the two nerpa, which sank immediately, and paddled over to the lakhtak, who responded by diving. Only ripples remained.

  Armagirgin spat, furious, and paddled slowly to the place he thought the lakhtak would surface.

  The creature came up so close that Armagirgin jumped. It gave Armagirgin a cheeky look and, just as mockingly, with exaggerated languor, disappeared into the deep. Armagirgin had time to clearly see the gray body undulating down and away.

  Now he was really in a rage. He was almost prepared to jump into the water, in pursuit of this seal who dared laugh at him.

  Once again he made his way to the place the seal would likely emerge. As soon as the whiskery head appeared, Armagirgin reached down and grabbed it with both hands … only for the seal to slide easily from his grasp and make a swift, forceful dive.

  Armagirgin cursed and readied his harpoon.

  This time, the seal surfaced a good deal farther from the kayak. But when the hunter threw, all of his malice went into it. The blade punctured the seal’s skin. Gingerly, Armagirgin pulled on the harpoon line, careful not to damage the wounded animal further. The seal’s eyes were huge and pleading, but Armagirgin only smirked nastily and sang the louder as he rowed for home. The kayak was moving so fast it raised foam in its wake.

  As usual, there were people waiting on the beach to meet the hunter. They cried out encouragement, praising his skill and luck. Armagirgin hauled the lakhtak to shore and, as the villagers dragged it out of the water, instructed: “Don’t finish him yet!”

  With these words, he sprang from the boat and fell on the seal, wielding his sharp knife. He skinned the creature, along with a layer of blubber, alive. The people had never seen such a thing before, and no matter how much they respected and feared Armagirgin, now they stood speechless and horrified.

  The poor lakhtak was a bleeding wound all over. Laughing maliciously, Armagirgin raised the seal over his head and tossed him, flayed, back into the sea.

  “Go on and tell your sea gods how strong and great is Armagirgin!” the hunter shouted. “Pass along the stupid tale that our old crazy Nau loves to tell!”

  He stopped and looked about.

  “Where is she? Why did she not come to the beach?”

  “She’s ill,” someone replied.

  “Ill?” Armagirgin furrowed his brow. “She’s supposed to be immortal, isn’t she? She’s never ill!”

  It was true. No one could recall seeing old Nau ill. But today she really was; she would not leave her yaranga.

  The flayed lakhtak floated away from the shore, leaving a bloody trail in the clear, bright water.

  The sun was fast disappearing beyond the horizon. From the untroubled sky there suddenly came fierce winds and heavy clouds. The calm surface of the water grew pockmarked, and no sooner had the people climbed up to their yarangas than the first big wave crashed thunderously onto the beach.

  Coastal weather can be changeable, breaking unexpectedly, but this was unprecedented. A gust of wind tore several yaranga roofs clean away. A large skin bucket hurtled past a row of kayaks lashed to their struts. Garlands of drying walrus intestines took wing, flying far out into the lagoon. It was as though the mild summer’s day had never been: the air itself darkened, and a soaking downpour cascaded from the low, bulging clouds.

  People shouted as they tried to tie down flapping yaranga coverings; children wailed and dogs howled; these sounds mingled with the baying wind and rumbling waves. For good measure, bolts of lighting cleaved the gloom.

  “Ilkei! Ilkei!” the villagers screamed, terrified.

  Fiery arrows crackled through the sky, briefly illuminating the yarangas’ smoke holes.

  Armagirgin, huddled inside his home, sat clutching the handle of a ceremonial tambourine, willed to him by his grandfather Givu. He tried to dredge up some of his new songs, but instead there came unbidden the old, familiar words he had grown up with, words for addressing the sea, the animals, and his kinsmen. What were they, these words of kindness and love?

  Leaving behind the tambourine, Armagirgin crawled out of his yaranga and, crouching low against the wind, clutching at the ground to steady himself, went to the yaranga where old Nau lay sick.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said weakly.

  “What’s happening?” said Armagirgin. He was truly frightened. “Is this all because of what I did to that lakhtak?”

  “This is only a warning.” Nau’s voice was faint and frail. “The storm will pass; it can’t go on forever. But you must look at yourself and see your actions with a different set of eyes.”

  “What kind of eyes?”

  “The eyes of Great Love.”

  Armagirgin fell silent: from infancy he had heard these words, yet even now, in the midst of lightning flashes and the storm’s roar, he doubted.

  “What should I do, then?” he asked.

  “Live according to your conscience,” Nau told him. But Armagirgin didn’t understand her words.

  “How’s that?” he said.

  Old Nau just raised herself up on one elbow and looked at him in disbelief.

  When he left Nau, Armagirgin found himself in a strange and unfamiliar state of uncertainty. On the one hand, he could see that his actions had called down the wrath of nature, and therefore the storm. But on the other hand, it wasn’t the first storm they’d ever seen …

  Giant waves rolled over the narrowest and flattest parts of the spit. The people from the sea-facing side had gathered up their belongings and, bending low under the weight of these possessions, were running for the relative safety of the lagoon side, where the waves had not yet reached.

  Armagirgin barely made it back to his own yaranga. The sea had pulled down the outermost side already, and foamy brine sloshed about his chottagin. The hearth was flooded, starfish and shreds of seaweed jumbled with ash. Another wave rolled in, and with it came a little walrus pup, his tusks only beginning to grow in. He paddled his flippers comically, trying to find purchase, and plaintively blinked his eyes, nearly hidden in thick folds of skin. An ordinary walrus pup—except for his bright-red hide, which seemed to burn from within. The next wave washed the pup back into the sea.

  The wind began to die down toward morning, and Armagirgin ventured outside. The wind was still wild enough to make the sea look as if it were boiling. Vast waves glowed as they rose high above, reflections from their crests casting an eerie gleam that seemed to reach all the way back to the ho
rizon. Silent and chastened, Armagirgin went back to his yaranga.

  3

  After the great storm, when the yarangas were almost washed away, old Nau took a turn for the worse. It was a change everyone could see. She had always been old, but she had also been strong. Now she seemed deeply ancient. Her vision seemed to be going, too; she couldn’t tell people apart and often gave confused answers. The only thing she remembered clearly and was always happy to tell was the well-worn fable of the coastal people’s whale ancestry.

  Whenever she began, in her reedy voice, the story of how once she was young and living a strange existence all alone, of how joyfully she wandered barefoot over the soft grass of the tundra, ready for Great Love, which then appeared to her in the guise of a whale, people struggled to conceal their derision. No one stopped the children from teasing the old lady openly. There were more important things to think about.

  Life had grown harder. Nowadays, as often as not, the first frosts found meat pits only half-full. In the cracking cold of winter, people were forced to range far and wide in search of seals or polar bears. In the evenings, by scant firelight, they thought back on the good times when the shores teemed with life, and the hunt was more of an entertainment, a way for young men to test their mettle, than hard labor.

  Rekken came several more times to the Shingled Spit, bringing disease. There was no one now to find them wandering and help them get clear of the village, so many people died, and the path to Funerary Hill never stayed snowed in for long.

  Armagirgin did not spare himself. He went out on the ice at the first glimmers of sunlight and stayed out far into the night. But usually he came back empty-handed. The sea was crusted in impenetrable ice, with no wind to break it up.