A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

  Armol’ was the commander of one hide boat, and Orvo of the other. The old man put John on his team, telling him that he was to stand at the prow as the gunner.

  “After what happened, I couldn’t touch a weapon,” John made to refuse.

  “That’s nonsense you’re speaking,” Orvo calmly told him. “How are you going to feed Pyl’mau and little Yako? Or do you intend to beg from others, and live off someone else? Sure, you can manage like that, but for a man it’s a shameful thing.”

  In answer, John only sighed: There really was no other way. At first, after Toko’s death, the yaranga’s inhabitants had lived off the reserves. Neither Pyl’mau nor John had yet recovered from the trauma they’d experienced, and they barely spoke to one another.

  John spent most of the time in his tiny room. When he couldn’t lie still anymore, he would go off into the springtime tundra and wander aimlessly over springy tussocks, spooking flocks of sandpipers and molting partridges. Before, from aboard the ship, the tundra had seemed to him a wasteland. In reality it was filled with life, and some of the small valleys were so picturesque that they touched even John’s frozen heart. During these walks, he was surprised to note the beginnings of new ideas in his mind. He would get to thinking that the yaranga should be rebuilt, made more spacious, so that it was more comfortable for both Pyl’mau and himself, John, who had kept many of the habits of his former life. There were moments when he recalled the past. With time John became used to treating those memories with a firm hand, and willed his melancholy back to his subconscious . . . He knew now that his only concern was to build himself a life here, a life among people he’d not too long ago held in contempt, hated and feared.

  The day came when Orvo announced the appearance of the first walruses on the ice. Now they could go to the hunt.

  Early in the morning, Orvo knocked on the door of John’s room. John rose, dressed himself and came out into the chottagin. A fire was already blazing inside, hung with a cauldron. A sooty black kettle leaned sideways on the hot coals, snorting steam clouds over the flame. Pyl’mau was busy over a wooden dish, neatly slicing up a cold snack with her pekul’.20 A washbasin had been prepared for John. Old Orvo sat on the headrest log, and observed them silently.

  John washed his face, dried it with a clean rag, and looked at Pyl’mau. Something was different about her face today, but it wasn’t the look in her eyes, and it wasn’t a new hairdo. When it came to John in a flash, he had to suppress a smile – Pyl’mau had washed her face today!

  “We’ll be hunting around Irvytgyr,” Orvo was businesslike. “Walruses go there in waves. We’ll set up on the slope in a tent. Aivanalin21 live down in Irvytgyr, a cheerful people. Good singers. If we’re lucky, we’ll hear them and see their dancing.”

  Pyl’mau had made new kemyget22 for John, with the skin of that same lakhtak that John had used to bring home her dead husband. She put all the necessaries into a capacious leather satchel – an extra set of nerpa-skin mittens, chizhi, a rattling cape of walrus intestines that had dried out over the winter . . . Many of the items had belonged to Toko.

  John took the Winchester off the wall, and inspected the barrel – the metal shone . . . Pyl’mau turned her back, and pointedly busied herself with packing dry-grass torbass insoles into the leather satchel.

  “It’s time,” Orvo said, touching John’s shoulder.

  John shouldered the bag, put the Winchester in its case, and stopped uncertainly by the threshold. He should say good-bye to Pyl’mau: After all, he’d be gone for many days, possibly even a month. But how is it done among Chukchi? And anyway, do they make farewells at all, and what would be the correct procedure? When the late Toko used to go hunting, he didn’t even look back at his wife. But Toko would have been leaving the yaranga for a few hours, and now . . . He should say something to her.

  “I’ll be right there,” John told Orvo, and went inside his room. For some strange reason, he picked up a pocket watch, long stopped, his notepad, and a pencil.

  Orvo was still hanging around the chottagin. John quickly walked up to Pyl’mau, took her right hand between his stumps, pressed it, and quietly said: “Wait for me.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Orvo said, and walked out of the yaranga.

  The hunters were already assembled by the hide boats. Joining them, John’s appearance matched theirs exactly. The same kamleika, the same nerpa-skin trousers, tucked into kemyget.

  On Orvo’s signal, the hunters picked up the hide boats by their sides and started to drag them over the icy band that separated them from seawater. Carefully they lowered the vessels onto the green water and got inside, each by his own oar. John didn’t know where to put himself, until Orvo pointed to a seat next to him, by the stern oar.

  The helmsman pushed off from the ice-bound shore, the long oars in their leathern rowlocks leapt up over the hide boat and then disappeared underwater. A crowd of people were standing by the shore to see them off: women, old people, children. John hadn’t noticed any particular leave-taking ceremony, as though the hunters were only going to the other shore of the lagoon for firewood, back in half an hour. John picked out Pyl’mau, standing in the crowd. Little Yako was beside her, holding on to his mother’s skirts.

  As they came out into the open sea, they raised sails and the hide boat sailed forth with speed, noisily parting the waves.

  On their portside ranged the craggy shore of Chukotka, patched here and there with the remnants of winter snow. The sea had moved right up to the shoreline, utterly swallowing up the fast-ice shelf that had seemed indestructible.

  The hunters talked quietly among themselves.

  Orvo was telling John about walruses:

  “Walrus is everything to our people. He gives us food and grease for lamps, feeds the dogs all winter. We use walrus hides to cover our yarangas, stretch them over the hide boats. Here, these thick leather lashings are walrus skin too. We make capes from their intestines, and in the old days, when the Chukchi didn’t know metal, we made arrow and spear points from walrus tusk. Used to stretch dried walrus stomach over a drum, the skin, stretched nice and tight, rattles enough to move the air – and a person’s voice that beats against the drum gets stronger and carries far...

  “This is how we hunt. When the walruses are sleeping on the ice, you have to be very quiet, so as not to startle them. It’s best when there’s a small wind, then you can use the sail to get near them. They’re light sleepers, walruses, they can hear a single oar splashing from afar. We get in close, close enough to kill the beast for certain. Otherwise he’ll get away, dive underwater. You’ve got to shoot under the left shoulderblade, right in the heart. Because a walrus’s head is hard, a bullet doesn’t always crack it . . . This is how we go at one that’s in the water. The helmsman is the lookout, or I am. As soon as we see a herd, or a lone one, we go after him with full sail and oars. Walrus is a fleet sort of beast, sometimes he’s very hard to catch. The marksmen stand up and try to get him in their sights. Then you can’t really choose, it’s only his head above the water. A wounded one can’t slip away as quick. Then the hide boat comes closer, and a hunter throws his harpoon. And that’s how it’s done.”

  “I won’t be able to harpoon – that means I’ll have to be a shot,” John concluded.

  “That’s right,” Orvo gave him a smile.

  At the close of the first day, they made camp on a sandy beach. They boiled a nerpa picked up on the way and, having eaten their fill, went to sleep in a cramped tent.

  John awoke early, and while his companion slept, walked up and down the beach. He was astonished at the amount of flotsam. There were shards of wooden planks, enormous logs, pieces of ships’ panels with traces of metal rivets.

  Returning to the tent, John cheerfully announced to Orvo: “There’s enough wood here to build a real house, a big one!”

  “When we’re done with the walrus hunt, we’ll bring down as many logs as you need,” Orvo replied. “Make yourself the kind of house you l
ike.”

  “Great idea!” John enthused.

  A favorable wind drove the hide boat east. Time and again, round black nerpa heads popped out of the water, but no one was shooting: They were saving the bullets for their real prey, the walrus. Orvo asked John for a piece of paper and a pencil, then made a fairly precise outline of the coast from Enmyn to the Bering Strait.

  “We’ve come past these promontories here,” Orvo was explaining with the air of a geography teacher. “By evening we’ll be in Inchovin, and then it’s a stone’s throw to Irvytgyr . . .”

  “A ship!” the helmsman was shouting.

  A large ship was slowly appearing from behind a craggy cape. It had no sails. The smokestack spewed black fumes. Orvo grabbed the binoculars and scanned the ship for a long while. John, too, was anxious to have a look but unwilling to show his impatience.

  “It doesn’t look like an American ship to me,” Orvo said, handing John the binoculars.

  It was a steamship with a special icebreaking frame around the waterline. Its name was discernable on the prow, but John couldn’t make it out until it occurred to him that the letters were Russian, Cyrillic. Immediately below was the Latinate inscription: Vaigach.23

  “She’s a Russian ship,” said John, returning the binoculars.

  Now he felt very calm, and even wondered at his own indifference. He thought coolly that had this happened a while ago, his joy would have known no bounds, as the ship’s appearance would have heralded his return to the familiar, so-called civilized world.

  They could discern small figures on the bridge, people pressing binoculars and spy glasses to their eyes. They were looking over at the hide boat with no less curiosity than the Chukchi did the vessel. The Vaigach lay adrift. The Russians were waving their hands, motioning the hide boat to come closer. Orvo turned the wheel. A rope ladder was lowered from the steamship. Orvo caught the end deftly, and started to climb, with a nod to John: “Follow me.”

  Struggling up the slippery, iced-over rope ladder, John stepped on deck and made greeting.

  “Yettyk!” 24

  “Yetti,” smiled a Chukcha on board; evidently he was employed as interpreter and guide.

  The ship’s senior officer peered intently at John, and then remarked to the warrant officer who stood beside him:

  “Seems a bit pale for a Chukcha.”

  “That’s what I think,” the officer agreed. He added:

  “The shore Chukchi and the Eskimos, they’ve got pale faces. What with all the ships that put in at Chukotka’s coastal settlements! A blond one isn’t so amazing. They say there’s a place by the Gulf of St. Lawrence where all the villagers are the descendants of Negroes!”

  “The commander of the Russian geographical expedition wants to know the ice conditions from here to Cape Billings,” the interpreter turned to Orvo.

  “I can show it to you on a map,” was Orvo’s courteous reply.

  A large hydrographical map of the northeast coast of Asia hung in the captain’s wheelhouse. Orvo, handed a pointer, not only marked out ice fields but gave a forecast of their movements.

  The captain, well pleased, ordered some vodka to be brought for him.

  “Why is your comrade so light-skinned?” the interpreter asked.

  “He’s white,” Orvo replied curtly, gingerly clasping a small glass filled to the brim with the fiery liquid.

  “You don’t say!” the interpreter was stunned, and translated Orvo’s words for the captain.

  The latter then addressed John in good English, asking him who he was and where he came from.

  “My name is John MacLennan. I live in the Enmyn settlement. That’s also where my family is. Myself, I’m from Port Hope, in Ontario, Canada.”

  “I am sorry that we didn’t receive you properly. We’ll remedy that right away,” the captain said, with some embarrassment, and immediately gave a string of orders in Russian.

  “I thank you,” John inclined his head. “We were not expecting a different welcome. When I sailed on board a Canadian ship, our treatment of the indigenous people was in no way better. A cupful of vodka in exchange for invaluable information – fit reward for a native, isn’t that so?”

  John bowed once more and, head held high, went back out on deck.

  Orvo hung back, but John didn’t wait for him; with the help of his comrades in the hide boat, he descended the rope ladder.

  The old man reappeared, laden with gifts. A bottle of the bad joy-water stuck out from the roomy outer pocket of his kamleika. He tossed a share of the parcels overboard into the hide boat, so as not to drop them on his way down, and only then climbed down himself.

  The Russians gathered at starboard. They were shouting something, waving their hands.

  The captain appeared on the bridge, megaphone in hand. Pointing the funnel’s black maw into the hide boat, he shouted in English:

  “Mister MacLennan, I wish you a safe journey and good hunting! If we stop by Enmyn, we’ll look in on your family. Until we meet again, when we sail back from Wrangel Island!”

  In answer, John waved his right stump.

  The hunters pushed off and raised their sail.

  In addition to the bottle of vodka, the Russians had given Orvo three packets of tobacco leaves, five bricks of tea, a splendid Sheffield-steel knife and a set of beveled sewing needles. Orvo rifled through his kukhlianka pocket and dug out a bottle of aged Scottish whisky.

  “The captain told me to give this to you,” said Orvo, passing the bottle to John.

  “Thanks,” John replied, “but this prize belongs to all of us. Isn’t that right?”

  “You speak as a luoravetlan!”25 Orvo smiled, adding the Scotch to the pile of gifts.

  The Inchovins greeted their Enmyn visitors heartily. They were about to lead the hunters to their yarangas, but Orvo declared that his troop would be bedding down inside their own tent that night.

  “It’s just that all your men are already there – the place we’re traveling to,” he mirthfully explained. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to your women.”

  True enough, only the women and old people had stayed behind in Inchovin. Late that evening, a blaze lit up the shore while guests and hosts alike clustered around the fire. They drank tea, strong and black, the Scotch whisky and vodka. Unused to it, everyone was quickly inebriated. The tobacco pipes, generously filled by the Russians, did not go cold. Some were trying to sing, others conducted endless conversations, muddled in both word and thought.

  John felt light-headed, everyone around him seemed delightful. He was clasping Orvo, and prodding him:

  “Now tell me honestly, when you talked to Toko, when he was dead, you made up the answers yourself? Right?”

  Orvo gave him a somber look and said, crossly:

  “You shouldn’t doubt what happened!”

  John had not expected such an answer. He’d been sure that Orvo would confess, in a friendly manner: “Well, yes, I did make it all up. Sorry about that, but that’s what happened.” Yet the old man’s solemn face knocked John back. He couldn’t say anything, except propose a toast to good fortune in the coming hunt.

  “Still, I just have to know,” John dived in again, after a sizeable gulp of alcohol burned the wind out of him. “You were unsure of me, right? You thought like this: A white man can never really appreciate the worth of our kindness and magnanimity. He ought to be punished. And so you still think that you’ve punished me, by making me responsible for feeding Pyl’mau and Yako . . . But I don’t want you to think that! You should know that I’d resolved to do it even before you asked me. That decision eased my suffering, made me feel like a human being again. And I’ll tell you frankly, I was afraid of meeting up with the whites on that ship. But see, I’ve passed that test, I’ve even surprised myself . . .”

  “People who live in cold climes must keep warm by kindness,” Orvo spoke softly in reply. “I think that is how every person should be. Kindness – it’s the same as having a head, a nose, a
pair of feet . . . There are many nations living on the earth. Each of their people carries a seed of suspicion toward those not of their own tribe. Oftentimes, they won’t even see the people of another tribe as real human beings. You think that the Chukchi people don’t do this? It happens. I don’t know whether its good or bad, but each Chukcha is sure, deep down, that it’s he who is living the right way, that there is no language better than the Chukchi, and that nowhere in the world is there such a person as him. We call ourselves luoravetlan; our speech is luoravetlan – the true language; even our shoes are lygiplekyt – true footwear . . . Some people, back at Enmyn, they had only contempt for you – until you proved that even without hands, you could feed yourself. We believed in you . . . But your own tribesmen are still very far from deserving to be called luoravetlan. I lived a long time among white people, and I know that even between themselves they can’t come to agreement; as for us, they don’t see us as people at all. Your folk are well-known for being like that. True, true, it’s easier for the whites not to consider us as people. You have power: guns, big ships, the many strange devices you’re so canny at making. But your arrogance – that’s the evil that can destroy you in the end.”

  “Why tell me all this, Orvo? Or have you forgotten that I’m a white man, too? It would be far too simple, if everything hinged merely on the color of a person’s skin,” John said, and walked away from the fire.

  14

  The sun-bright nights in the Bering Strait left the hunters utterly exhausted. John had lost all count of days spent afloat. He became accustomed to bedding down for the night atop a drifting ice floe, he butchered walrus, knocked the tusks out of walrus heads, ate raw liver, drank bitter brew and fought to stay awake. His eyes grew inflamed from staring at the glinting seawater, his skin became as hard and brown as that of his hide boat-mates. Only his hair remained as fair as ever, and the strands of gray he’d earned that winter were barely visible. The Enmyn hunters had made a store of walrus meat on a large ice sheet that sloped into the sea. They buried the walrus hides, with their layers of blubber, the nerpa carcasses, and the leather bladders with rendered fat in the snow.