Ivory and Paper

by Ray Hudson

  “Of course, Mrs. Otis,” he said with a slight Russian accent. “They do their best against insurmountable difficulties. Remember that the United States has been here for only about a dozen years.”

  “Nonsense!” she declared like a descending meat cleaver. “It is a matter of old-fashioned gumption. Mr. Gray, you are educated. You must see that.”

  Her maroon dress rose to a collar buttoned so tightly around her neck that I marveled she could squawk out a syllable. She seated herself at the opposite end of the table without so much as a nod. That was fine with me.

  “Is there tea?” she asked. “But of course there is. This is, after all, the outskirts of Russia. The tea is superb. Where is that boy? A cup, please, Mr. Gray, if you would be so kind. And perhaps one of those rolls. Not croissants, but they will do.”

  She unfolded a white cloth napkin and spread it on her lap. “Despite the tea, Mr. Gray, this is a dismal country.”

  He nodded slightly and began pouring.

  “You need to return to civilization,” she said as she added a spoonful of sugar to the tea he brought her. “You have lived too long among the savages.”

  My jolt must have been pretty high on the Richter scale because Booker’s tea sloshed over the rim. I hadn’t noticed that he’d poured himself a cup.

  “Even the birds in California are happier than they are here,” she tinkled the teaspoon against the rim of her cup and charged on. “At home they have a sweeter song. And who could blame them? Am I not correct, Julianna?”

  She glanced beside her, saw no one, and bolted upright, sending her chair toppling over.

  “Julianna!” she shouted and disappeared through the door.

  I saw the slightest smile lift his face as Mr. Gray carried a plate with a roll to the woman’s place. He straightened the fallen chair and only then walked to the door where a small girl, her right hand held straight above her head, was being propelled into the room. “My dear, you must never,” The woman was out of breath, “never, disappear like that! Sit. Mr. Gray will bring you some milk.” She straightened the ruffles of her daughter’s dress.

  “Here you are, Julie,” Mr. Gray said, adding with a twinkle, “fresh from Daisy.” Then he turned to Booker and me. “Good morning,” he said. “I am Nicholas Gray, the company bookkeeper.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Gray,” I said. I could tell Booker was a bit suspicious at my manners. “I’m Anna Hansen. We, . . . I mean, Mr. Neumann—”

  But before I could continue, the woman purred, “Ah,” without introducing herself. “Your father must be Scandinavian. They are a very resourceful people.”

  “Both my parents are Unanga.”

  “Aleut,” explained Mr. Gray.

  She looked at him over the rim of her teacup and then at me. “I suppose it is possible.”

  “And this,” I raised my voice a bit, “is the orphan Booker Johnskii.”

  Booker choked.

  “His father was a Russian sailor.”

  The woman’s eyes did a quick dissection of the kid as she rotated her cup on its saucer.

  “He doesn’t talk much,” I continued. “Spent most of his life in a cave. Living on rats.” His hair looked like rats could have had a nest somewhere in there.

  “My dear!” Her teacup rattled as she lifted it from the saucer.

  Her daughter, however, carried her glass of milk and took the seat next to mine. The woman addressed Mr. Gray.

  “The Otises are nothing,” she said, “if not egalitarian.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Gray replied and winked slightly at me. I spread a thick coat of blueberry jam on a piece of toast. “Mrs. Otis and her daughter are en route to the Islands where her husband is the superintendent of the sealing operations.”

  “Islands?” Booker asked. “I thought we were in the islands!”

  I shook my head at what diet had done to brains and continued slathering the toast with jam. “They’re talking about the Pribilof Islands, B-Johnskii, about two hundred miles north of here.”

  “We shall be almost beneath the North Pole,” exclaimed Mrs. Otis with triumph.

  “A thousand miles beneath,” I muttered under my breath. I cut the toast in half and left it on the plate. “I think we should be going,” I said. “Nice meeting you.”

  I prodded Booker in the arm and stood up. He slipped a couple of rolls and two apples into his backpack as we passed the serving counter. Just outside the door, I pulled him to the side and put a finger over my lips.

  “They seem like nice children,” Mr. Gray was saying. “She mentioned Mr. Neumann. I wonder what they’re doing here?”

  “Nice, but, alas, my dear Mr. Gray,” Mrs. Otis explained, “half-breeds, you know. Half-breeds.” And then, as though on my cue, she screeched again.

  “Julianna! Your dress!”

  I grabbed Booker and made for the outside door. “I figured her brat would want more to eat,” I said. “Good thing I loaded the toast with jam!”

  We took the path along the front beach, the path that would eventually become a road. I stared at the church and tried to place it in the old photographs I had seen. Some time at the end of the nineteenth century, this church had been replaced with the one we had now. The colors surprised me. The sides were light yellow and the onion dome of the cupola was blue. It was topped with a white cross. And there, perched on the cross, was an eagle. One thing that hadn’t changed.

  “Tila,” I said as the great bird shifted its massive shoulders and lifted into the air. I was surprised at how many Unanga words I was remembering.

  “This must be a healthy place,” Booker said and pointed at the churchyard.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Not many graves.” He nodded at the few crosses.

  “Only priests, deacons, and bigwigs get buried there,” I said. “The rest of us—” and I pointed toward a slight rise at the far end of the bay. “We should go have a look. I’d like to see who’s arrived.”

  I stared at the mountain rising above the cemetery. “I wonder what they call it?”

  “Call what, Anna?”

  “Mount Newhall.”

  “Well, they probably call it Mount Newhall.”

  “The Newhalls won’t be arriving here for about twenty years,” I said and waved at Vasilii who was walking toward us.

  Creepy, I thought when a woman opened the rough door and stared out with a clouded and frozen eye. Then she shifted the dark layered clothing that had swallowed her face, and with her good eye recognized the priest’s son.

  “Marva,” Vasilii said as he handed her a package, “Mother sends you this bread.”

  She stepped aside for us to enter.

  I was embarrassed at how quickly unkindness had elbowed itself to the front of my thinking.

  The three of us had wound through the village, past several homes that looked like elevated caves or large grassy mounds lashed with rope. I knew from photographs that they were barabaras, our original homes. I was anxious to go inside one. Odd bits of wood and tin protruded at random places. They had deep-set windows and metal smokestacks and only a few were larger than cabins. We had arrived at a particularly desolate one, and Vasilii had stepped down into the narrow recess that framed the door. He hadn’t knocked but had cracked it slightly and called out, “Peter! You home, Old Man?”

  But it was Marva who opened the door and nodded for us to come inside.

  Booker and I followed into a space that was little more than a wide closet. Uneven planks formed the rough floor. I smiled at the woman who reacted with a hesitant nod, and then I concentrated on breathing. The air was studded with odors that I thought it best not to try identifying. A cold diminutive iron stove crowded one side of the space that was both kitchen and storeroom. Two open wooden crates held dishes and pots. At Marva’s nod, Vasilii opened a second door.

  “He’s resting,” she said. “He needs to get up.”

  This room was even darker, and the air was even denser. My eyes gradually a
djusted, nudged by dim light from a window with six panes of clouded wavy glass. I couldn’t believe I was actually inside a barabara. A small table cowered below the window, ashamed to show its chipped and scarred face. The walls and ceiling were lined with irregular boards from which most of the whitewash had worn off, revealing the raised grain. In one corner, near the ceiling, a triangular shelf held an unframed solitary image of a saint. Vasilii crossed himself in its direction as he stepped forward. I followed his example. Booker gave a courteous nod. Better than nothing, I guess.

  The plank flooring in this room had been laid with greater care so as to create a smoother surface. As Vasilii approached a narrow bed built into the wall, congested breathing erupted into broken snoring. And then the room drifted back into silence. Marva wedged herself between Booker and me, walked to the bed, and slammed her hand down on the wooden frame.

  “Old Man! Wake up! You’ve got company.”

  She left the room as the snoring catapulted into choking snorts and a pile of bedding gathered itself upright. A thin gray blanket fell away, and there was Peter Rostokovich, rubbing his eyes and coughing.

  “Agh! Who’s there now?”

  “Vasilii, Old Man. It’s Vasilii. I brought people to see you.” Then he asked, somewhat after the fact it seemed to me, “Can we come in?”

  “Make yourselves at home,” Peter replied as he groped the edge of the bed and swung his legs over the wooden platform. Humpty Dumpty came to mind as the old man rocked back and forth. I braced myself to leap out of the way if he started to topple toward the floor. But Peter Rostokovich slowed his rocking and sat still. I could see his chest vibrating as he took a series of shallow breaths. He must have stored air inside his lungs because in a moment he burst out with, “CHAI! MOTHER, CHAI!”

  But Marva was already coming back through the door with two metal cups overflowing with steam under which was presumably a brew of tea. How had she heated the water? I wondered, recalling the cold stove and the cold room we had walked through. She placed them on the table and went out. She returned with two more cups of tea, this time in heavy, chipped white mugs. Booker found a wooden bench against the wall. I think he was trying to disappear. He did his best to ignore the scalding liquid she placed beside him.

  “This girl,” and Vasilii paused to allow Peter to focus his eyes, “she has something to show you.”

  I withdrew the small leather pouch, poured the fox onto my palm, and closed my fingers over it. I wondered if Peter could see even my hand through eyes that were little more than crusted slits. I stepped forward, extended my arm, and opened my fingers.

  “Guuspuda!” the old man cried as he made the sign of the cross and scooted back, drawing his covers around him. “Lord!”

  “You recognize it?” Vasilii asked.

  “It’s from those long-ago people,” he said, inching forward. His eyes widened as he extended his hands toward the carving. He hesitated before forming a broken dome above it. “Four Mountains. Before my time even. They could turn themselves into foxes, those people. It’s strong, that thing,” and he separated his hands. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Ah,” and I was glad I remembered the story Booker had made up. “It’s from my family.”

  “Four Mountain family?” The old man eyed me suspiciously.

  “No,” I said, retreating from the lie. “I don’t know where they got it.”

  “I am Four Mountain people,” he said and tapped his chest with the fingers of his right hand. And then he asked as though the question followed logically from everything that had been said, “When you gonna take it back?”

  “Back?”

  “That boy needs it,” the old man said. “My sister can tell you. She knows all about that thing. It has lucky powers.”

  “Who is your sister?” asked Vasilii.

  “She’s Fevronia. At Nikolski. Everybody knows that woman, they do,” he said. “I think she was the last one who knew how.”

  “Knew how what?” I asked.

  “I told you,” he said as he lay back down. “Those people could turn themselves into foxes.” He covered himself with the ragged blanket. I saw him keep one unobstructed eye on me as I slipped the ivory fox into its pouch, hung it back around my neck, and tucked it out of sight. The fingers of his right hand opened and closed as though they were groping for something, until he stilled them at the edge of his bed. Vasilii and I moved to the table where we sat on the two chairs. We looked at each other in the dim light.

  How much did Peter Rostokovich suspect? I wondered and stared at the bundle on the bed.

  “Your tea will get cold, Old Man,” Vasilii said gently. “She’s put it away.”

  Marva returned with a plate on which there were four generous slices of the bread she had been given. She placed this on the table and took a jar of crushed berries or jam from somewhere out of the folds of her clothing. A spoon appeared next. She studied it, wiped it on her dress, and set it beside the jar. As she turned to leave, she delivered a terrific wallop to her husband’s backside.

  “UP!” she shouted. “Where’s your manners?”

  Peter growled, but knew better than to object. Once he was upright again, Marva left the room. Vasilii handed him a cup of tea and a slice of bread. He studied me. He ignored Booker entirely.

  “How you treat it is how you will be,” he said.

  Looking at Vasilii, he continued, “The people of the Four Mountains were starving because they had no good-luck charms. They came here, to Ounalashka, in three skin boats. They could turn themselves into foxes, those people, and they stole the charms from the chief and his second chief.”

  “That made things better for them,” Vasilii said. He smiled when he saw Booker enjoying both tea and bread.

  “Those Unalaska people, long time ago, they could turn themselves into eagles, and they got those Four Mountain people when they were sleeping.” Peter paused and nodded at the jar of jam. I handed him a spoonful that he spread over what remained of his bread. “They cut the skins off the baidarkas of the Four Mountain people, their skin boats, you know, and broke the frames and took back the charms. That’s what they did. Those old-time people said that.”

  “Do you believe it, Old Man?” I was surprised Vasilii would be so blunt. “I mean, turning into eagles and changing into animals is a little bit strange.”

  Peter shrugged. “Before they were Christians,” he said and looked at me, “those old-time people could do a lot of things.” A smile untangled itself from his wrinkled features. “A lot of things.” His eyes ebbed back into silence. “Not anymore.”

  “The Russians brought Christianity here,” Vasilii said, looking over at Booker, “maybe a hundred years ago. All the Aleuts became Christians except a few Outside men. That’s when we got Russian names. My father is the first Unanga priest from this area. His teacher from Atka village out west was the very first. That’s partly why he wants me to become a priest.”

  “But the people on those islands—” I started to ask.

  “Gone,” Vasilii replied.

  Peter had not taken his eyes off me.

  “You talk to my sister,” he repeated. “She can tell you how to do it, where to find that boy.” He nodded toward my chest and tapped his own. “She knows all about that stuff.”

  9. Anna

  The old man had been petrified of the carved fox. Well, I thought, he had seemed totally unhinged if the truth were told. He had said, “That boy needs it,” as though the boy was still alive. But hadn’t Vasilii told us that the story said he had drowned? The carved fox had come from a burial cave. You don’t bury people unless they’re dead.

  When the old man mentioned turning into foxes and eagles, Vasilii had started fidgeting. I wanted to ask him why he’d been so nervous, but he was anxious to leave. On the way back to his house, he invited us to go blueberry picking with him and his mother that afternoon.

  “I could use the help,” he said. “Mother will probably just read and boss me ar
ound if it’s just she and I!”

  “Her and me,” Booker said in a voice soft enough that Vasilii didn’t hear and soft enough that I didn’t have to slug him. What a creep.

  Vasilii told us where they were going after berries. It wasn’t far, and Booker and I could hike there. We returned to our room and gulped down the rolls and apples he had brilliantly taken at breakfast, and then we headed to the creek.

  Scarred and muscled salmon whipped themselves up the shallow stream as ravens and seagulls dove at them, croaking and squeaking in rapture. A photographer had positioned a very old-fashioned wooden camera on a tripod and aimed it toward the church.

  “Hold still, Christopher!” he shouted at a man who stood next to a deep-throated skiff and was throwing his broad-brimmed hat into the air and catching it. “You’ll be nothing but a damned blur.”

  “That’s Pyramid,” I said, pointing to a high triangular peak in the distance.

  “Reminds me of Ireland,” he said.

  “You’ve been to Ireland?”

  “No.”

  “That low hill,” I gestured immediately across the creek, “is another place you’ve never been. Haystack.”

  “Big haystack,” he said.

  “It’s covered with roads and houses now,” I said.

  “I like it this way,” he said. I had to agree.

  There were things that hadn’t changed: the wild geraniums and lupine, the fireweed, and the only things that passed for trees, the shrubby low-growing willows. The stunted trunks of old ones were twisted after decades of wrestling the wind.

  A little further up the creek, Vasilii was helping a woman I took to be his mother into a skiff. She stepped with familiar ease and seated herself at the bow where she adjusted her black-laced bonnet and arranged a blanket across her lap. He saw us and waved.

  We went over and I untied their skiff. Mrs. Shaiashnikoff was about to say something when the man who was being photographed bounded up. Vasilii slipped in past his mother and seated himself at the oars. The man directed the boat into the current, and Vasilii rowed his mother and himself into the center of the creek.