A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

  Before the evening meal, the host picked out a few skinned deer legs from a pile and tossed them to his guests. Greeting this bounty with approving exclamations, the guests took out their hunting knives and set speedily to work, stripping the bones of their meat and tendons. All this went straight into their mouths, accompanied by the loud lip-smacking of unconcealed pleasure.

  Having scoured the bones, the eaters started tapping on them carefully, so that the bones would crack. The first to accomplish this was Toko. He drew some pinkish marrow out from the splintered bone, and biting off half, offered the rest to John. Or rather, just pushed it into John’s mouth, so quickly that its recipient hadn’t the chance to refuse the offering. There was nothing for it but to chew and swallow the marrow. It turned out to be not merely edible, but delicious.

  After Toko, everyone clamored to treat John, offering him the fattest and pinkest bits of marrow. Orvo moved closer and struck up a conversation about the weather: The wind being so strong had likely broken the ice shelf around the coast of Enmyn.

  John was dumbfounded by this news. If Orvo’s assessment was right, it meant that the Belinda had open waters into the Bering Strait. Now the only thing that could hold Hugh Grover back was John’s absence. What a pity! Maybe it was better to turn back? Especially as it seemed that they had barely made a fifth of the journey? If they went back, the Belinda, at a good clip, could gain Nome in three days. And there was a hospital there.

  “Orvo, we have to go back immediately!” said John, agitated.

  He had to repeat the words a few times before Orvo could make sense of them. His face lengthened, and John assumed that the old man was worried about his reward.

  “Everything that Hugh promised, you’ll receive,” John assured him fervently. “Even more. I swear it will be more.”

  John was so overwrought that he was suddenly aware of a thick fiery wave rising up in his chest, cutting off the air and bringing tears to his eyes.

  “We’ll think about it,” said Orvo evasively. “There’s time. We won’t go anywhere until the wind dies down.”

  Orvo had answered John in the Chukchi language. Remembering himself, he switched to English. He explained to John that, of course, they would turn back, as soon as it was certain that the ice rim had broken. Studying the expression in John’s eyes, Orvo could see clearly that the young man was in a bad way. And not because of the news of broken ice, but because of what they had all feared most.

  It is called the blackening of the blood. This often happens to people with frostbitten limbs. After a few days the skin of the affected area blackens, as though singed by an invisible fire. A mysterious flame devours the person, eating him from the inside. Death comes quickly.

  The only way to save him is to amputate the stricken organ. In his day, Orvo had seen many people with severed fingers and toes – a common thing in the North. The majority had performed the operation themselves, and saved their own lives thus. And yet only a real enenyl’yn14 would dare attempt cutting off whole hands and feet, one with the vast experience passed down from generation to generation.

  Orvo called Il’motch over and showed him John’s fevered eyes.

  “His blood is beginning to go black,” he said quietly, as though the Canadian could have understood Chukchi speech.

  Il’motch pressed his wide rough palm to John’s forehead and confirmed, “Like a kettle on the boil.”

  John was growing angry: Did they think him gone mad, just because he wants to return to the ship? Couldn’t they understand that he’d be better off sailing to Nome in three days than bouncing around on a dogsled, for God knows how long, in search of some mythical Anadyr’, which may not even exist!

  He started to explain this to Orvo, quickly and angrily, but it seemed that the old man just let it go over his head, busy with his own thoughts.

  The blizzard would last no less than three days. More than enough time for the black blood to rise to the heart and consume the man. A white man, entrusted to Orvo and his comrades. And when John died, it would be better for them not to return to the shore since the whites are capable of destroying a whole settlement to avenge one of their own. So it was a few years back, when the Neshkan people killed a sailor, a rapist who had dishonored a very young girl. The whites brought their ships nearer to shore, and opened gunfire on the yarangas. Those who were not fast enough fleeing into the lagoon perished from the bullets. Then the sailors came ashore, plundered the empty yarangas and set them on fire. And that for a single dead man.

  Orvo raised his eyes again and shot John a look almost of hatred. John shuddered; no one had ever looked at him that way before.

  “The guns will be yours,” he repeated, and felt how dry his mouth was and the fog that was filling his head, bringing unconsciousness. Gathering the last of his strength, he tried to look Orvo in the eyes. “You’ll get a big reward,” he rasped, slumping onto his side.

  “Trouble,” said Orvo, returning to the chottagin. “The burning has begun.”

  “What are we going to do?” Armol’ asked, frightened.

  “Don’t know,” said Orvo in a hollow voice. “Wait – until he dies. Then wait for the ship to leave.”

  Toko rose silently from his place and went up to the patient. John lay on his side. His eyes were half-closed, and he was mumbling something in his own language, over and over repeating: “Mam, Mam” – calling his mother, likely.

  Toko settled him more comfortably. The sick man opened his eyes for a moment but failed to recognize him.

  John was breathing heavily, the air escaping his gaping mouth with a whistle, and even from a distance the heat of it was palpable.

  Toko returned to the men, sitting at a remove. Orvo was stuffing his tiny pipe bowl with trembling fingers.

  “We have to save him,” Toko said.

  “It can be done, if the black flesh is cut off,” Orvo answered.

  “Even so,” Toko said slowly. “He’ll live. Better to bring him back without hands, than dead.”

  Orvo furiously sucked the pipe and then uttered with great irritation: “And what will you tell the whites when they say there was no need to take off the black flesh? How will you be able to convince them that it had to be done? You know nothing of these people; they’re born convinced that they are always right, and that the opinion of someone whose skin is a different color can’t be of any worth.”

  “So what are we to do, then?” Armol’ spoke up.

  “Maybe, do it like this,” Il’motch cautiously suggested. “Not think about who he is, but as though it was one of ours in trouble.”

  “But we have to bring him back!” Orvo was almost shouting. “How will I face the captain when I bring him a stump of a person? He won’t even be able to feed himself, much less go hunting!”

  “The white man lives by many means, not just hunting,” Toko countered.

  “We could call for Kelena,” mused Il’motch. “She will be able to sever the black flesh. She has done it before. Do you know Mynnor?” He was addressing Orvo.

  “I know him,” Orvo nodded. “Walks on his knees.”

  “That was Kelena’s work, taking off his feet,” declared Il’motch, with a touch of pride. “So she can help here, too.”

  “She still has the power to speak with those?” Orvo shifted his eyes in the direction of the smoke-hole.

  “Even better than before,” Il’motch confirmed. “Especially when she tells the future with a deer shoulder blade. As though the naked truth lies before her. She is a powerful person.”

  Orvo looked around at his fellows, as though searching for support. His eyes were fearful and uncertain. Neither Toko nor Armol’ had ever seen the old man like this.

  “All will be well,” said Toko, reassuring himself. “The main thing is to get him back alive. Alive is better than dead. They can ask him what happened, and then they won’t blame us.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Orvo said, still uncertain, and nodded to Il’motch: “Call
for Kelena.”

  6

  Kelena threw back the sleeve of her kerker15 and bared one stringy, dried-out breast, which drooped like an empty leather bag. She ordered an extra pair of braziers, so that there was enough light. The men obeyed her without question, spreading out a well-scrubbed leather rug, while Orvo sharpened the shaman-woman’s knives with great concentration.

  Kelena went up to the patient. Her face was long and thin. Tattoo lines disappeared into deep wrinkles like footpaths in the tundra hills. Bristly hairs sprouted from her wide nostrils. But her hands and her eyes were astonishing. Toko couldn’t tear his eyes away from her fingers, marveling that a woman could have such powerful hands. Kelena’s eyes burned with yellow light, as though each eye housed a blazing grease lamp. It seemed, whenever the shaman-woman cast her eyes into a shadowy corner, that she shone a torch into the darkness.

  Despite her unattractive appearance, Kelena aroused neither fear nor revulsion. Perhaps it was due to the huge strength and confidence emanating from her tall, withered frame, that people inevitably felt reassured and trusting toward the big and kindly woman who could not fail to help them.

  “To save this man, we must slaughter a dog,” said she to Il’motch, quietly, but with authority.

  “Get one from Orvo,” Il’motch replied.

  “But we have still got a long way to go,” Orvo objected.

  “Armol’, go and bring a puppy from my yaranga,” said Kelena, taking charge.

  While Armol’ was off on his errand, the sick man was moved closer to the center, and the braziers were raised high on supports, so that their light could fall from above. Kelena laid out her instruments on a clean bleached piece of sealskin: sharpened knives, needles and bones, tightly wound thread made of deer tendons, pieces of fur and long strips of clean, soft deerskin.

  Armol’ carried the struggling puppy into the room.

  “Il’motch, Orvo, you’re to help me,” instructed Kelena. “The dog must be killed.”

  Il’motch took the puppy, and Orvo bent down to help the shaman-woman unbind John’s tightly bandaged hands.

  “You, young ones, don’t go far off,” ordered Kelena, “you may be needed. If he starts to scream and struggle, get on top of him and hold him down.”

  “All right,” Toko nodded, feeling his mouth dry up.

  Kelena shrugged off her kerker, now clad only in a narrow loincloth. As though out of nowhere, a little bottle appeared in her hands. She took out the plug with her teeth, tested the contents on the tip of her tongue and, forcing John’s clenched teeth open, poured the liquid into his mouth. John thrashed and flailed his arms, but Kelena held him down with a knee.

  Some time passed, and John lay still. Even his breath seemed to steady.

  Then the shaman-woman carefully inspected her blades, spat down on each one, rubbing the spittle into the knife with her palm, and looked satisfied. Raising her face upwards, she was motionless for a while, eyes shut, whispering charms. A strange thing, but it seemed to Toko that she was speaking in the white people’s language. Was it because it was a white man she was about to heal?

  Finished with her preparations, Kelena cautiously peeled back the bandages from John’s broken hands. Where they were stuck to the skin and hard to lift, the shaman-woman wet them with fresh dog’s blood. As the blackened skin appeared, a sweetish suppurating smell filled the room, making everyone breathe faster and harder.

  The sight that awaited them could not even be called the remains of human hands. Everything was mixed together in a bloody mess – clumps of fur from the mittens, smashed finger bones, shreds of flesh and skin. Unable to stand it, Toko turned away.

  “More blood, more blood,” called Kelena. “Let the puppy blood wash your wounds and give you a dog’s endurance.”

  With effort, Toko turned back to where Kelena was doing her work. She moved quickly and purposefully, as though she were handling walrus flippers or deer legs, not human hands. The blade slid over joints, separating the bones and leaving large, hanging folds of skin. Tossing aside a severed hand, Kelena picked up a needle threaded with deer tendons. A straight, beautiful seam began to stretch across the stump, and little droplets of blood marked the needle’s wake.

  The shaman-woman’s face was covered in perspiration. Sometimes she would wipe the sweat from her forehead with an elbow and sniff impatiently. Having finished with one hand, she moved on to the other.

  And then what everyone was dreading happened: John became conscious. At first he looked up, surprised, at the shaman-woman who was bent over him with her knife. Then, his face twisted in a grimace of horror and revulsion, he let out an awful scream and thrashed under her hand.

  “Hold him,” Kelena shouted. “Hold him tight!”

  Toko and Armol’ threw themselves over poor John, tried to weigh him down. But the white man was still strong and quick. More than once he managed to throw off their combined weight. But, ultimately, what can a cripple do? Orvo and Il’motch came to help.

  “He mustn’t move his hand!” were Kelena’s orders. “You, Armol’, hold his arm, and the rest of you, don’t let him move.”

  Finally, they were able to bear down so that John couldn’t move a muscle. Toko was almost lying on top of him, face to face, feeling John’s hot breath on his skin.

  John’s large blue eyes were frozen with terror. Big tears rolled out from an overflowing blue lake, quickly running down his cheek and somewhere behind an ear into a thicket of light hair, wet with perspiration.

  He was muttering something. Quickly, hurriedly. His tone conveyed pleading, horror, promises, pain, rage . . .

  Without having understood a single word, Toko answered him.

  “Just bear it for a little while longer. All will be well. This woman is saving your life, don’t fear her . . . Your pain is hurting me too, but it must be borne. To go on living, it must be borne. You want to see your land, your mother, your loved ones, don’t you? Maybe you have a wife? You’ll come back to them alive. Without hands, but so what? White people have many jobs that don’t require hands. So you’ll do that kind of job. Besides, you folk are clever with gadgets and contraptions, you’ll manage to fix something in place of hands. You’ve figured out many things; big fire-breathing boats like mountains roaming the seas, you’ve forced flame into a little jar, and it burns there with a noisy blue heat. Came up with guns, food in tins . . . All will be well, Sson.”

  “Grab him tighter,” Toko heard the shaman-woman’s voice, “I’m going to start sewing.”

  Toko leaned over John again and continued over his muttering.

  “Kelena can sew. She’ll make you a seam you’ll be proud of – brag to all your friends. Deer-tendon threads are strong, they won’t tear . . . Don’t twitch, there’s only a little left now. The blizzard will end, we’ll drive back. It won’t take two days to get to Enmyn, and you’ll see your friends again. The ice has gone, it’s a clear way. You’ll sail off . . . Just a little more, now. It’s hard for me too, looking into your eyes . . .”

  John lost consciousness again, or else decided that resisting was useless, and Toko realized that it was easier to hold the white man down.

  Through half-closed eyelashes, heavy with tears, John watched his torturers. When the terrible hag swam into view, sharp knife in hand, he had thought that they were intending to eat him. And right away he recalled tales of cannibals, devourers of human flesh, of savages who roast their prey over dying coals. He could smell his own burned flesh, the singed hairs of his beard.

  He writhed and screamed, trying to reach Toko’s dark, sweaty face with his teeth, trying to reach the treacherous and bloodthirsty brute that fed him from his own hands, cared for him, only to pin him down later, until each of the others had cut off a tasty morsel.

  But it was an unequal battle. Toko lay on top of him like a boulder, and there was an incredible amount of weight in the young man. It was useless to fight. And it was then that John was seized by such self-pity that he couldn’t res
train his tears. They rolled down his feverish cheek, calling up an overwhelming feeling of bitterness and irreparable damage. He had never been so helpless. Perhaps only somewhere in the foggy deep of childhood, in a life lost forever. Still, it was not the life he’d already lived that he grieved for, but that he’d never go home, never appear on the doorstep as the conqueror of polar seas. All the joys of the world will be for those who, at that moment, haven’t an inkling of death. They will belong to Hugh Grover, his friend, the only one, maybe, who is hoping for his return. Poor, dear Hugh! Freezing in an ice-bound little ship that seemed so strong and secure, waiting for his friend.

  It was as though a stone slab were weighing him down, and not a human being. A slab reeking revoltingly of sweat, rancid seal fat, and something else, filthy and unbearable.

  Nausea assailed him. The pain had grown numb and, oddly, moved to his heart. But maybe he was dead, and all that was happening didn’t matter. And the heavy weight – it was only the weight of the gravestone, laid over his final resting place. John closed his eyes and willed himself not to open them again, to shut out the hateful features, shiny with grease and sweat. He sensed some kind of commotion. They were doing something with his hands! But what?

  John opened his eyes again. Strange – he had always been certain that the Chukchi had narrow slits for eyes, yet this one had enormous black irises, with intense sorrow and pity in their depths.

  “What are you doing to me?” John shouted. “Let me go! You’ll pay for this!”

  “Just stick it out a little longer,” he heard the voice of Orvo answer back. “Only a little while left.”

  “What are you doing to me?” John was howling.

  “Taking care of your hands!” Orvo shouted back at him. “Taking off black flesh, saving your life!”

  “Dear God,” John moaned. “My hands! My hands!”

  He did not feel the shaman-woman Kelena carefully tying soft deerskin strips over his stumps. But suddenly he understood that these primitives had cut off his fingers, barring the way for gangrene. What barbarism! A good surgeon could surely have rescued at least two, three fingers on each hand . . . And they . . . What if that horrible witch had chopped off both his hands?