A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

  Once in a while, they would camp on the shore among a multitude of tents belonging to all the hunters that had gathered from every part of the Chukotka peninsula.

  Those that didn’t have tents slept underneath their hide boats. There was a single wooden motorboat belonging to some wealthy Eskimo, and it looked strange among the hide-covered vessels.

  On misty and inclement days, dozens of fires puffed smoke into the sky. The hunters paid one another visits, sharing news and tobacco, partaking of tea. The Russians’ gifts quickly disappeared, and now Orvo had to mix tobacco with wood shavings and carefully collect the nicotine remains in his pipe.

  The Aivanalin settlement was laid out on the steep slope of a mountain that veered sharply down to the strait. The dwellings themselves were cut into the cliff face, their doors facing toward the sea and the sunrise. The settlement’s streets were terraced, one underneath the other, and steps hacked out of the mountain served as pedestrian lanes.

  At the edge of the little town, in a little plaza strewn with enormous, table-like flat rocks, the Aivanalin would hold evenings of song. They sang into the wind with slightly hoarse voices, would sound the drums, and the noise of their merrymaking traveled far, mixing with the cry of the birds at their rookeries, the crashing of the waves and the roars of walruses, passing by in the mists.

  John toured the Aivanalin dwellings, learning about their daily lives. Though their hunting devices and hide boats were almost identical to those of the Chukchi, the inner design of Aivanalin homes and the way they were set out, was somewhat different; their pologs were smaller, and some of them contained many items of foreign provenance. John even came across a big alarm clock, ticking loudly, inside one of the dwellings. Excited and pleased, he tried to set his watch by it, but soon realized that the clock hands were indicating a strange sort of time. The alarm clock was an exotic ornament, like one of those Indian totems that were so favored by Toronto intellectuals for decorating their homes.

  The owner of the dwelling turned out to be a man with a certain degree of education. He spoke good English and, to John’s surprise, offered his hand in greeting.

  “How do you find our village?” the Aivanalin asked courteously, introducing himself as Tatmirak.

  “Frankly, I wouldn’t like to find myself on these steep paths in the middle of a snowstorm,” John answered.

  “It’s all right, you get used to it,” Tatmirak smiled condescendingly. “When our children first visit a plains village, they’re uncomfortable and complain that it’s hard to walk . . . Can I offer you some coffee?” Tatmirak asked suddenly. John thought he’d misheard the man.

  “I wouldn’t say no . . . Really . . . I’ve even forgotten the taste of it . . .”

  Tatmirak gave an order in Aivanalin and turned back to his guest with a polite smile.

  “Excuse me.”

  “You’re well versed in the white people’s habits,” John remarked.

  “I attended the missionary school on Crusenstern’s Island,” Tatmirak declared, with a shade of pride. “I can count to twenty and speak English . . . Regrettably, I didn’t learn to read and write.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There was no time. Father Patrick had me living in his house. I was to tidy the rooms, cook, and bring hot water to the metal trough where Father Patrick splashed around like a walrus each evening. There was very little time left for literacy.”

  A woman served them two cups of steaming aromatic coffee.

  John couldn’t restrain himself; he grabbed the cup and took a burning swig.

  “To be honest, I became bored with it, and I came back home,” Tatmirak continued his story, “got married. But I learned a lot on the American island. I realized that first of all you must have dollars. Now I have a little. I have a whaleboat with a motor . . .”

  “So that’s your whaleboat on the beach?” John interrupted.

  “Mine,” Tatmirak confirmed grandly and went on: “If you’ve got a head on your shoulders, an Eskimo can live as well as a white man. You’ve got to make friends! So now we’re friends with Mr. Carpenter. He gives me merchandise, and I trade it to the Eskimos for white fox. I take my dogsled around the deer camps. Mr. Carpenter gives me a share and lets me trade with the whites myself. I can get to Nome in half a day in my whaleboat, and the price for white fox there is twenty times what Carpenter offers.”

  “Mr. Carpenter lives in Nome?” John asked, finishing his coffee.

  “No, in Keniskun,” replied Tatmirak. “Would you like me to take you there in the boat?”

  “Is it far?”

  “Quite close. Two hours’ ride.”

  John told Orvo that he was going to Keniskun, to meet Mr. Carpenter.

  “Get him to give you some Winchester cartridges,” Orvo asked. “You can pay him with these . . .”

  The old man handed him a few beautifully tanned baby reindeer skins.

  Tatmirak’s motorboat sped south with a roar.

  The Aivanalin sat at the stern, hands firmly on the tiller.

  “They told me your story,” he shouted, bending closer to John. “You’re a trooper, a real good lad!”

  Sighting the motorboat’s approach, the Keniskun Chukchi assembled on the shore. John counted fifteen or so yarangas, identical to the ones at Enmyn. A bit further on, a building quite unusual in these parts – a longhouse of galvanized corrugated sheet metal – caught his eye.

  A tall and sturdy man stood out from the Chukchi crowd. He wore a deerskin kukhlianka and the kind of tarpaulin hat worn by Newfoundland fishermen.

  No sooner had John stepped ashore, than the man ran to him, exclaiming in English:

  “Hello! I’m so pleased to see you! I’ve heard a lot about you, and it’s delightful to find you exactly as I’d imagined you to be. Please, come with me!”

  Carpenter drew John along.

  “I heard rumors of you last winter. I wanted to load a dogsled and come see how you were, but business . . . I set the idea aside, ’til spring. And in the spring – well, you’ve seen for yourself: The natives are all at the walrus hunt, and no treasure on earth could tear them away. Even Tatmirak himself, he loses all traces of respectability once he hears that walrus bellow. It’s in their blood. I’ve known them for fifteen years. A good people, kind, caring. It’s not that they haven’t got their superstitions, perhaps even some vices, but compared with what we’ve got in our “civilized” society, it’s all child’s play . . . Overall, the wisest thing is to treat them like children. Take Tatmirak. A fine fellow! He’s grasped the basics of trade and commerce, with time he’ll make a fine businessman, in the Bering Strait region. Speaks English, went to a school, reasons well, although at times he’ll act so irrationally as to make you wring your hands. I remember once, five or so years ago, I came to see him, went into his yaranga. His polog is hung with chintz, big kerosene lamps instead of oil braziers. But on the wall, just imagine, a greasy ancient amulet, some gorgon made from walrus tusk. Next to that, an engraved portrait of Major-General Dix, torn out from Harper’s Weekly. On top of that, there’s a candle burning before the American major-general, and the general’s mug is completely covered in soot. Turned out that Tatmirak set up all this japery for my benefit: he’d seen candles burning before an icon, and some praying Cossacks, in an Anadyr’ church . . . Ah, and here is my humble abode!”

  From the outside it looked like a regular yaranga, only twice as large. Bending his head, John entered a spacious chottagin not unlike a well-furnished living room. A south-facing window was cut into the side of the yaranga, and daylight flooded in. Close to the entrance stood a cast-iron stove, its chimney climbing up to the walrus-hide covered roof. A round table with a set of chairs stood in the middle of the chottagin, and over it hung a kerosene lamp with a glass sleeve. On the right John could see the standard Chukcha polog, and on the left a door with a carved walrus tusk handle.

  “That’s my wife’s bedroom,” said Carpenter, pointing to the polog, “and this
one” he motioned with his head, “is mine.”

  Carpenter dragged a rather weathered armchair out of a dark corner and moved it toward John.

  “Please, do sit down . . .” He clapped his hands. “Mary, Catherine, Elizabeth!”

  Two winsome girls between twelve and fourteen years old poked their faces out of the polog, and then Carpenter’s wife – a pretty, round-faced Aivanalin – appeared.

  “My wife, Elizabeth,” Carpenter said casually, and spoke to her in her language, giving instructions.

  Energy seemed to radiate from Mr. Carpenter. He was a good deal past forty, but had kept a slim and boyish figure. His height, sonorous voice, the remains of fiery red hair on his head, a dense beard and thick mustache gave him the look of a man with enough stature to command respect from the local dwellers.

  “Mr. Carpenter, as I understand it, you’ve lived here for fifteen years?” asked John.

  “Fourteen and a half. I settled here in the last century,” Carpenter answered and suggested in friendly tone: “Let’s not stand on ceremony. In Chukcha transcription your name sounds like Sson, but what is it really?”

  “John MacLennan.”

  “Excellent!” Bob exclaimed. “I’ll call you John, and I’d be glad if you would call me Bob. Okay?”

  “Okay!” John agreed.

  Meanwhile, without a sound the woman was setting the table. On top of a flowered tablecloth, she laid canned sturgeon, caviar, cold seal flippers, condensed milk, marmalade, and ham in containers bearing the logo of the Chicago company Swift. She served some toast on a large plate.

  “The bread, surely that’s not from a can?” John couldn’t refrain from asking.

  “Oh, Elizabeth bakes it,” said Carpenter, nonchalant. “I taught her how. We’ve got plenty of flour, I’ve had the yeast brought from Nome. We can even bake sweet rolls in our oven. If you stay for the night, Elizabeth will do her best to treat you to some.”

  Carpenter rose from his seat, walked over to a wall cabinet that was sealed with a small lock, and took out a bottle of Jamaican rum.

  “I keep the spirits under lock and key,” Bob said, pouring them glassfuls of the aromatic liquor. “The folks around here have a fondness for strong brew. Of course, it’s us, the white traders, who are to blame, but still,” Bob gave him a friendly smile, “now we’ve got to keep the bottles locked away.”

  Carpenter watched John take hold of the glass with his holders, not without interest.

  “Incredible!” he exclaimed. “To look at you, one would never say that you have almost no hands at all! What brilliant surgery! Like the best Melbourne clinics!”

  John didn’t want to talk about his hands.

  “You’ve been to Australia?”

  “I’ve not only been there, I was born there,” Bob declared. “Where haven’t I been! You could say, I’ve crisscrossed the world! For some time I studied in the city, but it grew tedious, and I signed up with a ship going to South America. From there I went to the States and after the States to Hawaii. Hunted fur-seal off the Commodores for a few years. Came back to the States almost a rich man but the traveler’s wind drove me on. When money ran out, I tried panning for gold in Alaska. And here I met Svensson, the United States’s Arctic genius. Now I’m a representative and partner of a trading company that operates on Russia’s Asian coast. Married an Eskimo, got children growing up. In other words, became one of the locals.”

  “And in all these fifteen years, you’ve never gone back to the States, or back home?” John asked.

  “From time to time I go to Alaska,” Bob answered. “But not for long. I’ve grown unused to all that noise. And then – there’s just so much hypocrisy and insincerity down there. I’ve grown unaccustomed to that too. Svensson’s ships bring me all the goods I need. Believe me John, your decision to stay in Chukotka makes me very glad. We’ll exchange letters! Ha-ha! The first postal communications in Russia’s Arctic wilderness! . . .”

  Bob Carpenter was drunk. He ordered his wife around, boasted about his daughters’ good looks, and pontificated at length.

  “Do the Eskimos and the Chukchi actually need Christianity?” he wondered out loud, draining his glass. “To my mind, Christianity is a religion that’s exclusively for whites. And converting the savages is a waste of effort and money. Let them missionize the other whites. It’s them that need the word of God, and being led to the right path . . . Listen, John, how can you drink so slowly? Don’t drink much, do you? Well, give it some time living here – you’ll learn so well that you’ll be going through a year’s supply in three months . . .”

  Discovering that John did not make a good drinking partner, Carpenter called for the soup. For the first time in many long months John was using a spoon and fork. It took him some time to relearn to wield them. Suddenly John heard a clock strike. The clear ringing came from Carpenter’s room. The clock struck seven times, the gongs echoing in their ears for long afterwards.

  Over dessert, which consisted of canned pineapple, Bob moved his chair over to John’s armchair and asked, without preamble:

  “How do you mean to be employed here?”

  “In what sense?” John didn’t quite understand him.

  “Do you intend to do some sort of business? To buy pelts? Sell American goods to the locals?”

  “To be honest I hadn’t thought about it,” John admitted.

  Carpenter gave him an incredulous look.

  “When I started here,” he said, “the Chukchi and the Eskimo produced almost nothing of any interest to a businessman. I spent much time and effort training them to hunt for white and red fox . . . Before, they considered white-fox fur to be good for nothing: not very sturdy or waterproof. Since they got metal, they’ve lost interest in walrus tusk. I managed to reignite that interest, and now the hunters don’t just throw the walrus heads overboard . . .”

  There was a knock at the door, and Tatmirak came into the chottagin. Now he didn’t look half as smug as he had aboard his motorboat. He slunk toward the table and, in an apologetic tone, as though he were guilty of something, said:

  “Weather’s getting worse. We’ll have to spend the night here.”

  “Excellent!” Carpenter exclaimed and poured him a glassful of rum.

  Tatmirak licked his lips, squeezed his eyes shut and knocked back the contents. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he uttered in English:

  “Sank you very mach!”

  “All right,” Carpenter waved his hand. “Go on with you! . . . Dear John,” turning back to his guest, he resumed the conversation, “sooner or later you’ll wish to participate in trade. There’s nothing else for you to do here. There’s no gold. Well, there is some, according to those in the know, but it’s mighty hard to get at. Farming and cattle don’t bear thinking about out here. And you can’t possibly be thinking of going after walrus and seal, alongside the Chukchi and the Eskimos! Therefore, all that’s open to you is commerce. I’m a man of business, and I’m offering you a place in our trade concern. The place where you’re living now has potential, it’s virgin territory. Once in a while it’s visited by ships and their merchants, people that have nothing in common with an honest trading enterprise. They make drunkards out of the natives, then rob them blind. You’d be doing the aborigines a favor by becoming our representative. Think about it. But I warn you: There’s no striking out on your own, don’t forget that you’re treading on Russian Imperial territory. Trading without a license has harsh penalties out here. If you’re caught, you’ll be sent to the bowels of Siberia, to the zinc mines. And you won’t leave there in one piece . . . forgive my being so frank, but I do feel an affinity for you and just want to give you a friendly warning . . . You have until the morning to think it over. There’s no hurry. But I must add that, working with us, you would make a tidy fortune . . . And now I invite you to take a bath . . .”

  “A bath?”

  “That’s right, a bath,” Bob replied with a mysterious smile. “It happens to be about two
kilometers from here, but a jaunt along the shore is nothing if not pleasant.”

  John and Carpenter walked down the shore. Clouds covered the dour gray sky. A strong steady wind had raised some waves, and the salty spray reached as far as the two amblers. Carpenter, sucking on a cigar that had gone out, was daydreaming aloud:

  “Another year or two, and I’ll leave here for good. I’ve got a solid sum tucked away in a San Francisco bank, more than enough to live out the rest of my life in comfort. I’ll buy a house in Florida, open a hotel, and live to my heart’s content.”

  “But what about your family?” asked John. “They would find it hard to get used to a foreign land, a foreign way of life.”

  “Certainly,” Carpenter assented, and then sighed: “A pity, but they’ll have to remain here. It would be cruel, inhumane, to bring them to Florida with me, from the Arctic to the tropics. Needless to say, I’ll make sure that they lack for nothing.”

  Two streams ran into a modest pool that had been dug out of the clean sandy soil. One of them gave off a sulphuric odor.

  Undressing, John and Bob climbed into the warm and bubbling water. Carpenter was moaning with pleasure. John splashed about, washing himself, scraping off many months’ worth of grime, and realizing that the hardest thing to get used to would be the lack of hot water.

  A bed was waiting for him in Carpenter’s sleeping chamber.

  He stripped naked and rapturously stretched himself across the clean cool sheets. Falling asleep, he heard the clock strike twelve, and its last bright peal lasted into his velvety dreams.

  The next day, Tatmirak’s motorboat took John back to the Bering Strait. In exchange for the fawn skins, Carpenter had given him the cartridges, plus a wealth of other goods.

  By midsummer, when the walrus migration had slacked, the hunters began to make their way back to their home camping grounds. The hide boats from Enmyn, too, turned homewards.