A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

  John opened his eyes and saw that Toko had let go of him and was now sitting beside him, studying his face.

  “He’s come back!” Kelena pronounced it with joy. “He’s moving his eyes.”

  “What have you done to me?” John asked quietly, addressing Orvo.

  “Saved your life,” came the old man’s exhausted reply.

  “What have you done with my hands?”

  “It had to be done,” Orvo answered. “Your flesh went black. Death stood close beside you, and you would have shut your eyes forever. There was only one way out – to take away the black flesh and black blood. And that’s what she has done.” Orvo nodded toward the shaman-woman, who was wearily packing a tobacco pipe with a huge convex mouthpiece.

  “Oh, my Lord,” John sobbed, and burst into tears, mindless of the others. “Who’s going to need me without hands?”

  Kelena wiped her bloody fingers with a wet cloth, smoothed her hair and looked at John with a smile.

  “What’s he wailing about?” she inquired of Orvo.

  “Crying over his hands,” said the old man.

  “Understandable,” the shaman-woman nodded.

  She walked closer to John and softly stroked his head.

  At the touch, John turned sharply and saw the old woman’s hideous face. Her skin was like something baked in a roaring fire. Her burning eyes held untold tenderness. It was awful – compassion and ugliness intertwined!

  He made a move to push the old woman away, but lost consciousness again, sinking back into the furs.

  Kelena tucked him in, saying, “He’ll sleep a long while.”

  Gathering her instruments neatly into a special leather bag, she began collecting what was left of the puppy and what she’d cut off with her knife, wrapping the stuff in a square of deerskin.

  She looked around, hummed approvingly and called out to Orvo, “You’ll help me.”

  There were dogs in the chottagin, curled up asleep. A fine powdery snow drifted in through the smoke-hole, and the blizzard shone down with a faint, mysterious light.

  Kelena lifted the stone that held down the pelt hanging over the entrance, and instantly, the wind rushed into the yaranga, tousling the dogs’ rough coats. The pelt flapped and buckled in her hands.

  Orvo rushed to help the old woman.

  As soon as they were outside, Orvo and Kelena were caught up in the whirlwind. Orvo followed the old woman, who had steamed forward into the wind at a clip. He was beginning to worry about going too far from the yarangas when, all of a sudden, the shaman-woman stopped dead in her tracks. She stood there like a broken-off fragment of a mountain crag, set in the face of the gale. And the blizzard’s gusts passed around her, quickly raising a snow funnel around this living, motionless idol. She stood still for some time, whispering prayers and incantations, then reached down and dug a deep hole in the snow. Into the hole she lowered the puppy’s remains and the severed hands of the white man.

  “Hands and bones . . .” Kelena was chanting. “Only hands and bones. The white man will go back to his land. Maybe they will make new hands for him there, but these that stay here, let them be no trouble for our people. We are tundra people, and our life is different to his, whose hands remain here. They will lie in peace under the snow, and in the spring, when the sun digs them out again, the crows will come and do with them as is their custom. They are a wise folk, they know what to do . . .”

  Kelena turned to Orvo:

  “Say it after me! You who do not see, but can hear us! Let the white man’s anger blow past us like a springtime storm. We saved his life. Teach him this, and make him understand what we did.”

  Orvo repeated the words after the old woman, wind bursting into his mouth, cutting off the air, stuffing his throat with snow. He spat, but obediently echoed the shaman-woman’s every word.

  Strange that most of the charms Orvo had heard before had been assortments of unrecognizable words, resembling those of the Koryaks, or Eskimos, or even of the Evven people . . . A regular person couldn’t understand them, even if they were his own and had been handed over to him by a shaman. Yet here, the shaman-woman was speaking in ordinary language, despite the gravity of what they were doing, burying a white man’s hands.

  Finished with the ritual, the old woman tamped down the little snow mound and started back, into the wind. She walked, slicing through the taut, thick air with her long skinny body, walked straight and stubborn, without slowing. Orvo followed behind, amazed by the old woman’s strength.

  Brushing snow off her clothes, once inside the chottagin, Kelena asked Orvo:

  “What did the white people promise you?”

  Orvo listed the agreed-upon items and added:

  “I fear, though, that we’ll have nothing. We didn’t get him to Anadyr’.”

  “True enough,” Kelena drawled sympathetically. “The white man will never understand us.”

  7

  The blizzard died down in the night. On waking, John heard neither the wind’s howl nor the rustle of snow on the roof. Behind the hide walls, beyond the deerskin polog where the sleepers snored, stillness had spread like a mantle.

  It was with a sense of pleasure that John gave himself to the silence, to his own tranquillity of soul, to the gradual rebuilding of his strength. He could tell that he was better: His postoperative fever had gone, thanks to the ministrations of old Kelena.

  The shaman-woman often came to look in on the patient, bringing different kinds of potions and infusions. Convinced now that these people meant him no harm, John entrusted himself to their care and was surprised at himself to have thought so badly of them. True, as for his questions about what the shaman-woman had done with his hands, Orvo answered evasively, pointing to his small knowledge of English. John tried to draw Toko into a conversation, but the latter would turn away as soon as he guessed what the white man was asking.

  The polog awoke all at once. A woman approached the brazier, made a few energetic passes with the lighting-stick, and the steady light of the moss floating in deer fat lit up the sleeping chamber.

  “We’ll have some food – and then, back on the road!” Orvo informed John cheerfully. “Got to hurry back to shore, before the ice locks in again. In such a wind, the sea could be clear all the way to the American shore . . . Shame about your insulting Kelena yesterday . . . She did all that she could. And even more than that. You’ve still got two fingers on your left hand, and on the right – half the little finger, and a bit of the middle one. You’re not a total cripple . . .”

  Getting dressed with Toko’s help, John walked out of the polog. His breath caught in the frost, and he had to squint against the blinding whiteness – despite there being no sun, but rather only a milky-white stripe spilling over the jagged horizon, the sign of a polar day in winter.

  The herd’s owner had already corralled the deer. The horned beasts shied back in terror at a human’s approach. The Chukcha deer were not domesticated. Lassoing a well-fed buck, their host pulled him close. Two young lads fell upon the stag, wrestled it down to the snow and plunged their knives in his neck. A woman set a leather vessel to catch the crimson stream.

  The stag was quickly skinned. John watched the herders’ movements avidly, and although the scene was not a pleasant one, he consoled himself with the thought that this was their way of life, their means of existence.

  Some boys brought a quantity of transparent river ice on their sleds, the women hung an enormous cauldron over the blazing fire and started another fire nearby. Orvo, who had been helping to skin the deer, carefully punctured the stomach and poured its contents into the cauldron. A woman diluted the mixture with blood, and began mixing it with her bare hands, up to her elbows in the bloody mash.

  Despite the solid frost, all the men were walking around bare-headed, and the women shrugged off the sleeves of their kerkers for greater mobility, leaving almost half of their torsos open to the elements.

  A few more deer were slaughtered for the dogs. Ha
ving finished their labors, everyone went inside the chottagin and settled close to the fire, waiting for the food to arrive.

  As usual, John’s small trunk and linen sack of provisions had been placed in front of him. John asked Toko to spread their contents over a low wooden table. The yaranga’s inhabitants were clearly intrigued by the mysterious and unfamiliar items: sugar cubes, hard biscuits that looked like white wood chips, and tins of canned food.

  John asked for Kelena to be called in.

  The old woman arrived, and sat herself down across from John.

  “Let her choose what she likes best,” John said.

  Orvo translated. Kelena looked at the white man intently, and reached out to stroke the fair hair.

  “You’ll give me what you think fit,” said Kelena. “I’m not paid for my efforts, since a human life isn’t to be bought or paid for. It’s there, or else it’s not. There is no other way about it. Each person has got to save the life of another. Though, what kind of person are you! You won’t be able to live with us, since you won’t be able to get food for yourself or for your progeny. And yet, I’m thinking that you’re not last among your own people, because just look at your eyes – proud and intelligent. Yes, you’ve lost your hands, but you haven’t lost your wits. If they help you to survive among your own kind, then I must have done a good thing . . . And that is how we are, us shamans. We are called to do good for people – to heal, to forecast weather, to tame evil spirits. Ours is a hard life. Not much joy in it, except when we see a person getting well, or when Narginen grants us kind weather, warm spring, and quiet winter. Be happy, young white one. You ended up here with us, true people of the tundra, like a brown bear among the polar white.”

  Orvo managed to render most of the old shaman’s speech in English.

  John listened to the woman and the old man attentively and then pointed to a packet of tea, needles, sugar – and bending his head ceremoniously, asked the shaman-woman to accept all this.

  Kelena accepted the gifts with dignity.

  Then Orvo filled some cups from a bottle of vodka.

  “Bad joy-making water,” he explained, and opening his mouth wide, quickly downed a cup. The others followed his example.

  Toko handed John his cup.

  Then the boiled meat and fresh deer’s blood soup were served.

  John, cheered by the vodka, resolved to follow his companions’ example in everything. Their host brought in a bone spoon, and fixed it to John’s stump with a deer-tendon cord.

  The soup tasted a bit burnt, but was quite edible. Each spoonful brought on a feeling of satiation and strength. When came the turn of the meat and fresh bone marrow, John’s stomach was over-full. His fellow-travelers, however, not only ate several enormous chunks of deer meat, but also managed to empty a gigantic teapot full of strong tea. Yet as to sugar, everyone was quite frugal. John’s jaw dropped when he saw Kelena, after five or six cups of tea, signal the end of her tea-drinking by removing from her mouth the same tiny piece of sugar she had bitten off at the beginning – and neatly pack it away in a bit of rag.

  “Would you look at that!” John couldn’t help exclaiming, and he gave the shaman-woman two more pieces of sugar from his stores.

  The dogs, well-rested over the days of blizzard, pulled well, and soon the sled caravan left the grazing camp and its welcoming valley by the foot of the mountain range far behind. John looked back for a long while, seeing the yarangas’ smoke in the blue twilight. A kind of new, unfamiliar feeling trembled in his breast; it might have been gratitude toward the people he was leaving behind, people that had treated him with such warmth and compassion; or perhaps the happy expectation of seeing Hugh Grover, who waited for him at the Enmyn cape; or perhaps it was the understanding that he’d escaped the bony hand of death that had been cast over him . . .

  Toko sat sideways on his dogsled, also glad to be going home. Even if the captain doesn’t put up the reward, to hell with the Winchester, it could have been worse. What if Sson had died on the road, or after his fingers had been cut off? Then they would have had to forget the way back home and find another place; probably, they’d have to hide out in the tundra. It goes without saying, tundra folk live well, especially if their herd is as big as Il’motch’s. The food is right outside the yaranga, and all you have to do is keep an eye on the deer in a blizzard and keep the wolves off. But the wandering! As soon as you’re used to a spot, you’ve got to roll up your yaranga and go find another . . . Toko considered the deer-herding life compared to the life of a sea hunter and concluded decisively that, although the shore dweller hasn’t got a four-legged food supply waiting by the yaranga walls, still his life was far better. You can leave the yaranga on an early morning and look out onto the same unbroken line of the horizon.

  There’s nothing better than running the dogsleds in such weather, right after a long hard snowstorm, when spent nature seems to be resting after the last days’ work. Silence hangs over everything, horizon to horizon, and the sound of gliding runners, the dogs’ uneven breath or human voices, travels far and wanders the air, bouncing off icy crags and snowbound hummocks.

  There’s barely any frost. Spit – and the spittle lands on the snow, without having been frozen to an icy white lump in midflight. You can ride on top of the sled for long stretches, without having to jog alongside it for warmth.

  Making nearly half the distance between the mountains and Enmyn, Orvo signaled a rest stop – to give themselves and, more importantly, the dogs a breather.

  They made camp on the ice-bound river shore, putting up the tarpaulin tent. It was cramped, and only by bunching together could all four adults fit inside. Really, the tent had been meant for John, but he’d insisted strenuously on all the drivers piling in.

  By some miracle, Orvo had managed to find a few dry twigs and make a fire. For a nightcap, each man received a mug of hot tea, strongly laced with vodka.

  Dragging in all the deerskins he could find on the three sleds, Toko made a fluffy bed for John.

  “I’m as healthy now as any of you,” John declared. “I shouldn’t have any special treatment.”

  Everyone bedded down helter-skelter.

  Wriggling from side to side, John asked Orvo:

  “Do you like this sort of life?”

  “What sort?” At first Orvo didn’t understand.

  “The life that you lead out here, in the snows, in the frost?” John clarified. “There are other lands, you know, where life is more comfortable. It’s warmer there, and there aren’t such terrible snowstorms, like the one we’ve just lived through. You can weather one blizzard, at most two or three, but all your life! It’s impossible! Take you, Orvo – you’ve seen other countries and other lands. Didn’t you like them? Eh?”

  “I liked them,” Orvo said, uncertainly.

  “You see. That means your homeland must be less comfortable,” John concluded.

  “Maybe so,” Orvo agreed, and turned on his side with the intention of falling asleep, but John was evidently determined to make up for all the days of his silence.

  “So what’s the matter?” he asked. “Look here, the entire American continent is peopled with men who came over from other places. These men crossed enormous distances in search of a better life, in search of a better land.”

  “It’s no good to us,” Orvo answered. “We believe that we live on the best land in the world. That’s the beauty, that no one wants it except for us . . . I’ve seen our neighboring Eskimos forced to leave the coastline, because gold was found there.”

  John was quiet for a moment, then uttered thoughtfully:

  “Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s only because the Chukchi and the Eskimos settled in the worst lands that they’ve escaped annihilation.”

  Such talk chased away Orvo’s desire for sleep, and no matter how he twisted and turned, on his side, on his back, still he couldn’t fall asleep.

  Growing sure that neither John nor Toko nor Armol’ was asleep, Orvo dec
ided to broach a worrying and important question whose gravity bore no comparison with any of John’s deep and meaningful queries.

  “What do you think,” Orvo asked, “will the captain give us the promised reward?”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” John was surprised.

  “Because we didn’t get you to Anadyr’. And the work that the Russian doctor ought to have done, was done by the shaman-woman Kelena.”

  “That’s no matter,” John shrugged. “I only have to say the word, and Hugh will give you not only what he promised, but more besides. Have no doubt – your reward awaits you.”

  “Do you hear that?” Orvo couldn’t hold his tongue. “He says we’ll be paid in full!”

  “That means I’ll have a new Winchester!” exclaimed Toko.

  John looked at his excited companions with a patronizing smile. How little these savages needed to be happy! No more than an old Winchester, one that’s only good for the garbage heap in another world.

  The reassurance that their reward would be paid in full, so agitated John’s fellow travelers that for a long while there was nonstop talk inside the small tent, and Orvo himself promised John that they would do everything in their power to get him back to the ship at top speed.

  John barely closed his eyes that night.

  No sooner had his eyelids begun to inch down, than he could see before him the ship’s silhouette against the black crags of Enmyn, Hugh’s kind manly face, could hear the voices of his comrades, and good old English speech instead of this barbaric babble, where you can’t tell where one word ends and another starts.

  Morning came in the shape of a light crimson stripe over the eastern horizon. After a hurried snack, the travelers were under way and heading for the shore.

  The drivers ran alongside their sleds, so as not to exhaust the dogs and conserve strength for the long unbroken journey ahead.

  By the time the Northern Lights blazed across the sky, the dogsleds had reached the south side of the lagoon. If you listened carefully, you could already hear voices rising from the settlement, dogs’ muted barking, a child’s cry.