A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

  With an effort, Toko began to comprehend what John was talking about. By the standards of that world, Sson has probably accomplished much. But for Toko, the most important thing was that the white man had learned to shoot, which meant that now he wouldn’t starve to death.

  John felt himself coming back to life and was pleased; and yet more and more often he returned to the fleeting thought of remaining here forever, becoming like Toko, Orvo, forgetting the troubles and complexity of his old world. Sometimes John could picture himself in his new friends’ shoes, look at himself and his ilk with their eyes, and it was then that doubt assailed him. Yes, perhaps this is it, a true and meaningful life, a life worthy of man.

  One afternoon, Orvo came to mend a broken holder for the gun trigger. They sat in John’s little room, and the old man began to sew a leather loop right onto John’s leather-encased stump.

  “Listen, Orvo,” John said quietly, “what would you say if I decided to stay here forever?”

  “We’d be glad of such a brother,” Orvo answered without hesitation.

  From the ease of his reply, John understood that the other had taken his words lightly.

  “This is a serious talk, Orvo,” John said. “I want to hear what you have to say, what advice you have for me.”

  Orvo bent down to John’s wrist, and bit off the thread.

  “What can I tell you?” he uttered thoughtfully. “Seagulls live with other seagulls, crows with crows, walruses with walruses. That is how it’s meant to be. Although, man is not a beast . . . But it won’t be easy for you. You’d have to become just like us, after all. Not just shoot, fish, dress and speak like us . . . But why are you asking me about this?”

  “I admire the way you live,” John answered. “It seems to me that your way of life is the kind of existence worthy of a man. And that’s why I’d like to remain among you. But what will you say to that, what will your tribesmen say?”

  Orvo was silent. But it was plain from his face that he was wrestling with opposing feelings.

  “It is good that you praise our people. But I tell you again: It will be hard for you . . . We are glad to welcome you into our family, but you’re not alone in the world. You have loved ones. They still wait for you. And another thing I’ll say, Sson. Now you see our life as more or less tranquil, because we had good fortune with the autumn hunt, and in the summer we bagged plenty of walrus and even harpooned a whale. For a few years now, illness has not visited us. People are hale, fed, cheerful, and so it seems to you that ours is a good life. Even the weather brightens what you see: I can’t remember such a warm and calm winter as this one. But now, think about our life when the autumn hunt is meager, and it’s hard to put away a reserve of food. And then the winter will come bitter and snowy, and the sea will be sealed in ice – not a crack or patch of water . . . Then comes famine. And with famine, illness. People die like flies on a cold night. You’ll be eating the scrapings off the meat pits, the rotted meat, and boiling lakhtak harnesses to fill your empty belly. I say to you again, Sson, we’ve grown fond of you, but you could not bear this life of ours . . .”

  John thought about these last words for a long while: If even Orvo sees him as only partially a man, then how would it go for him over in Port Hope?

  Yet, another time, almost as if in passing, Orvo said to him:

  “Well, if you like it here with us – there’s no hurry. Stay as long as you want.”

  10

  Events came, whose meaning John could not fathom. There were times in the middle of the night, or early in the morning, when Toko would spring up from his deerskin and go outside, where the snow was creaking under his friends’ torbasses. Careful footsteps receded further and further, toward the coast. As the days lengthened, so did Toko’s absences. Sometimes he disappeared until evening, returning only when the long sun sank behind the dark crags of the western cape.

  “Where does he go off to?” John got up the courage to ask Pyl’mau.

  “To talk with the gods,” Pyl’mau said simply, as though the gods were their nearest neighbors and could be approached without any formalities.

  “So what do they talk about?”

  “A woman isn’t meant to know such things,” said Pyl’mau, and having considered for a moment, added: “But I think they are talking about seals, walruses, and the weather.”

  “Important talks, then,” John remarked.

  But he asked no questions of Toko, who was worried and withdrawn.

  On those days that Toko had not gone out, they would set off hunting. The sun rose early. The long shadows of ice hummocks and crags quickly grew smaller and smaller. The snow was dazzling. So as not to get sunblind, Toko and John fashioned sunglasses out of thin strips of leather with narrow slits to see through. These eyepieces severely limited one’s field of vision, but then again, you didn’t have to worry about the sun’s sly rays.

  Within a few days, all of John’s exposed flesh became so tanned that in color it was hardly different from Toko’s skin.

  “I’ve become almost like you,” John would say, displaying the darkened patches of skin.

  “Truly,” Toko would agree, with inward satisfaction. Sson, this helpless, pathetic person who had not had the slightest inkling of how a real man ought to live, was gradually becoming an actual human being. He’s even changed his walk, and now goes with a slight spring in his step, putting his foot just so, so that it won’t slip. And doesn’t stuff his mouth with snow, as he used to in those early days. He’s learned that it’s better to wait until they get home. The snow only intensifies your thirst . . . Not long from now, Sson won’t be any different from real people. He’ll be able to go along, not just hunting, but to the ceremonial sacrifices, which Toko attended most mornings. Soon, they will perform the most important of the sacrifices. They will take the winter-weathered hide boats off their high supports, carry them to the sea and bury them in snow so that the meltwater wets the boats’ walrus-hide shells, dried out over the winter. That morning all the gods will receive gifts, they will be addressed with solemn words, and the men themselves will gain new strength, for the time is nearing when the walruses return to the sea, and hunting walrus requires great strength. Sometimes they will have to drift on the sea for several days on end, only rarely clambering onto an iceberg in order to butcher the kill and cook a repast over a walrus-fat flame . . . Even now they might take John along to the sacrificial gathering, it’s only that Orvo has said it wasn’t yet time . . .

  Toko was teaching him the hunter’s art, while Pyl’mau corrected his speech. Each time, before pointing out an error, she would burst into ringing peals of laughter, and the laughter transformed her face. She would turn into an enchanting woman, and it was by force of will that John pushed away his masculine stirrings. Besides, inside the polog, Pyl’mau habitually wore only a narrow loincloth. Her darkly glowing body seemed as though carved of teak, her full breasts were still firm. He avoided being left alone with Pyl’mau . . . And then, those nightly sighs and deep breathing . . . It was all happening an arm’s length away.

  He called up a vision of Jeannie in his imagination, tried to remember everything, even the most insignificant details; yet each time, instead of a pale little face surrounded by flaxen curls, it was Pyl’mau’s smiling face that appeared, her full lips and white teeth. This despite the fact that John had never seen her brush her teeth in his presence.

  The morning of the most sacred ceremony arrived. The day before, John and Toko had been late in returning from the sea. They were dragging three nerpa apiece. Both were exhausted – their way had been long and arduous; they kept having to walk around puddles of meltwater on the ice, their feet sinking into the softened and porous snow, cold water sloshing inside their low sealskin torbasses.

  Early in the morning, John opened his eyes and heard Toko tell him:

  “Sleep, rest some more. I won’t be back for a while.”

  A bleary-eyed Pyl’mau was bustling around the oil brazier, warmin
g up yesterday’s meat. John turned on the other side and fell back asleep. When he awoke, Pyl’mau was kneading a deerskin. Three lamps burned brightly. Pyl’mau sat completely naked, bracing her feet against the softened inner side of the hide. John studied her through half-closed eyes. By the lamplight, her skin, despite its swarthiness, took on a rosy glow. When Jeannie had a suntan her breasts remained white, and even glowed palely in the night when she walked toward him, nude . . . But here, the woman’s skin color was even, matte and warm. It was all he could do not to run his palm over it, feeling that warmth. The impulse was so insistent and torturous that John couldn’t conceal a moan of physical pain.

  Pyl’mau stopped her work and peered at him intently. John pretended to be asleep and screwed his eyes shut tight. Suddenly he felt the touch of Pyl’mau’s hand, and opened his eyes.

  Pyl’mau was sitting next to him on the deerskin bed.

  “Is it bad with you?” she asked compassionately.

  Unable to utter a syllable, John only blinked.

  “I know that it’s bad,” Pyl’mau said with feeling. “You rarely sleep well. Talking in your own tongue, calling out for someone. I understand you. When Toko took me for a wife and brought me here, oh, I felt so bad! As though they tore out my heart and left it back home . . .”

  “You weren’t born here, then?” John asked.

  “No, I’m from far off,” Pyl’mau answered. “From another coast. One day the Enmyn people drove into our settlement, and among them was Toko. I took a look a him, and he looked at me. We went to the tundra, to the places where the grass is soft. And when the time came for them to leave, I told my parents that I’d be setting off with Toko. And I’ve lived here ever since. The first year, I was so sorry, I cried so much!”

  “So you . . . do you . . .” John stumbled. He had wanted to ask Pyl’mau whether she loved Toko, but didn’t know how to say love in the Chukchi language, and so phrased it this way: “Is it good, your living with Toko?”

  “Very good!” Pyl’mau said without hesitation. “He is such a man! Kind, tender, strong! Even in the black winter nights, when all around is frost and darkness, with him I feel happiness and light. And our son, Yako, he’s like a little round moon.” Pyl’mau threw a tender glance at the corner, where the little boy was sweetly snoozing.

  She still held her warm palm pressed to John’s forehead. Her body gave off a faint odor of perspiration. Speaking of Toko, she had closed her eyes and softly nodded her head.

  John felt that in a few more seconds something terrible, irredeemable, was bound to happen. Throwing off Pyl’mau’s hand, he sat up sharply, pulled on his clothes and bolted out to the chottagin.

  Pyl’mau looked quizzically in his wake and even called softly:

  “Sson!”

  The outer door slammed shut in answer.

  It’s hard for the fellow to get used to the strangers’ life, strangers’ speech, strangers’ food . . . And that it should happen, he turns out to be a good man, though white. At first, Pyl’mau just couldn’t get used to his pale skin and the auburn beard that covered half his face. Amazing – John’s beard even grew on his chest, and what’s more, was curly!

  More than once, in the dawn hours, Pyl’mau watched the men savor those last slumbering moments and grew still, as though entranced, looking deeply at one man and then the other. Sometimes, from some depth of consciousness, a stray thought surfaced: Why not be the wife of two men? Aren’t there men with two wives? How many years now has Orvo been living with both Cheivuneh and Ve’emneut? It’s hard to even think of his two wives as separate people. They’re always together, and after the long years of sharing their lives, their voices and even their looks have grown similar . . . In the village where Pyl’mau herself was born, there were plenty of men with two wives. Her father’s friend Teki, one of the deer people, he had three wives!

  Pyl’mau let out a heavy sigh and, in a fury, frenziedly set to kneading the uncured deerskin with her rough and calloused heels.

  Human voices rang out sharply between the clear sky and the snowy earth of the early-morning calm. A crowd was discernible at the edge of the settlement, where the row of yarangas came to an end, and the Sacred Whale Jaws were set into the ground. John slowly started making his way toward it. The icy crust that came with the nocturnal frost was crunching underfoot. He could feel a soft and pliant layer of snow underneath, already too soft to support a laden dogsled.

  The hide boats had been lowered from their high trestles and lay keel up on the snow. These unusual boats – wood, walrus hide and lakhtak bindings – were a revelation to John. Not a single metal part, not a nail or screw in them. Three people could easily pick up and carry a vessel that stayed afloat carrying fifteen men or two to three walruses. Still, with all respect for these astonishing boats, John felt a tremor imagining the fragile wood and leather construction weaving a path among the ice floes, each of which were easily capable of holing a ship’s side.

  John came closer. Armol’ was holding up something resembling a large wooden dish. Then John saw that many other men held the same kind of dish. Except that some men had larger ones, more like trays, and others had tiny wooden bowls. Dogs loped about underfoot. They were amazingly quiet, neither barking nor growling, as though they understood the meaning of the sacred ritual.

  Orvo was barely recognizable. The old man wore a long robe of a light brown chamois hung with colored ribbons, with tassels of white deerskin, with thin leather threads ending in beads, with bells, with silver and copper coins. A snow-white, black-tailed ermine dangled from his back.

  Orvo was speaking, his face turned to the sea. The speech was evidently intended for the gods only, since the rest of the people were not listening to the old man, but rather talking amongst themselves. Intoning a few words, Orvo would take the nearest man’s tray or bowl, scoop up a handful of sacred food and throw it to Dawn and to Dusk, to North and South. The dogs were carefully picking up the sacrifices and silently following the old man about.

  Three hide boats lay on the snow. Orvo slowly walked around each one. By the front end, he would stop and take a long while muttering, touching his hands to the dried-out walrus skin. Sometimes he would raise his voice, but no matter how hard John listened, he couldn’t make out a single word. It seemed to him that Orvo was speaking in some other tongue, not Chukchi.

  There were also boys among the crowd of men. They were full of dignity, and primly followed the procession around the hide boats. The vaulting sky, the dark distant crags touched with blue, the quietude that seemed almost to be listening to their prayers; all this affected John to a surprising degree, and with a pang he remembered the Sunday service at the church in Port Hope, the dressed-up parishioners and the organ’s song, reaching down into the most sacred depths of his soul.

  John did not acknowledge a God and did not go to church. His father believed that each man had the right to live as he saw fit and should not prevent others from doing the same. John’s parents were regular churchgoers, but he suspected that his father did not believe in God, and only went to Sunday services because it was the expected thing.

  But here, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, John suddenly yearned to enter the cool cathedral twilight and, instead of this endless sky, see a tall dome and rainbow dust motes dancing in the multicolored sunbeams that pour through stained-glass windows.

  The talk with the gods came to an end. Orvo addressed the people. The boys, holding their shirt-ends like baskets, were making the rounds of those with sacrificial food dishes. Having filled up, the kids raced each other for the yarangas to cheer their mothers and sisters with the remains of the divine feast.

  Toko noticed John and, with a nod in his direction, said something to Orvo. The old man motioned John closer.

  “Soon we’ll put the hide boats to water,” Orvo said, joy suffusing his voice. “Look there,” he pointed to the sea, covered with ice hummocks and snow. “Look higher, at the sky. See a dark stripe? That’s the reflection
of clear water. It’s still far-off, but soon the south wind will start blowing and the sea will come nearer to Enmyn . . .”

  “And a ship will come for you,” Toko added.

  “Well, before that ship gets here, I’ll have plenty of time to go hunting with you, maybe even bag myself a walrus,” John said cheerfully.

  People had crowded in all around them. Curious, John peered at one of the dishes. To his surprise, the gods’ food was no different from that of the people. It consisted of small pieces of cured deer and seal meat, neatly chopped lard cubes, some kind of herby grasses. Orvo scooped up a bit of the sacrificial feast with his calloused palm and held it out to John.

  “Now we’ll carry the hide boats to the shore and pack them in snow,” he explained, chewing loudly and with relish. “Little by little, sun will melt snow, and water dampen leather. The leather will become softened and taut. And by the time the hide boats are ready, the ice will have gone from our shores . . .”

  “Got it,” John said confidently, unwilling to look like an ignoramus in front of the other Chukchi, despite not having understood a word of the explanation.

  Walking back to the yarangas with Toko, he was thinking that these people are far from being as ignorant as he had first taken them to be. They’ve got their own calendar, their own idea of the movement of heavenly bodies . . . and as for medicine, you can only bow down in admiration. John remembered his own lack of trust in the shaman-woman who’d saved him from certain death, and smiled inwardly; he remembered too, how he once used to confuse Toko and Armol’, and how all the Enmyn Chukchi seemed to him to have the same face. Yes, they do have their own culture, one that adapts to the harsh existence that falls to their lot. These people have managed to preserve all the best features of humanity in an environment that would be the death of many a wild beast . . .

  John glanced at Toko and tried to imagine him in a different set of clothes, different surroundings. He transported Toko to the middle of the Port Hope Catholic cathedral, dressed in a velveteen jacket, trousers, shoes, and a starched white collar. But the picture turned out so incongruous and alarming that he couldn’t repress a smile.