A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

  Armol’ is the one who began the conversation. He hadn’t known how to approach the subject at first, but now he barely paused for breath, and Orvo had to keep halting his work so he wouldn’t ruin the leather.

  “Why don’t we drive him out?” Armol’ was asking. “Let him go back to where he came from, or settle in some other village, where people are used to whites.”

  “But what about Pyl’mau?” Orvo said, setting to sharpening his sun-bright knife.

  “We can always find some man for her,” Armol’ said, casually. “Someone can take her for a second wife.”

  Orvo stopped sharpening the knife and raised a penetrating look at Armol’. The other, unable to meet it, hung his head.

  “Our people may come to grief from having a stranger here,” Armol’ continued stubbornly.

  “What danger is there in a cripple? You’re not afraid of him, are you?” Orvo’s voice rang with disdain.

  Armol’ colored, and threw the piece of hide back into the wooden barrel.

  “I wouldn’t be afraid of him even if he had four arms!” he shouted. “But I don’t want to hide myself when I need to speak with the gods, I don’t want some stranger’s eyes, that don’t understand our life, to laugh at us when we perform our rites. Think, Orvo, how he was looking at us when we made the great sacrifice on the ice, by the Bering Strait.”

  “Every nation has its own customs and habits. Maybe Sson doesn’t approve of our rites, but I haven’t noticed it. Everybody did hear, though, how you laughed loudest of all when you saw Sson clean his teeth with a brush for the first time, and then at how he rinsed his mouth with water, like a hide boat being cleaned after ferrying fresh meat. Did that happen, or no?” Orvo regarded Armol’ with a smile.

  Armol’, paying no heed, ploughed ahead:

  “Maybe so it was, but it’s our people’s welfare that I worry about. I don’t care a whit for Sson and his countrymen. If they exist – fine, if not – we’ll manage very well without them! Done it for ages!”

  “True enough, we’ve managed before,” Orvo agreed. “But today we live differently than we did yesterday, and tomorrow we’ll live differently from today. And it seems to me that, even in the last few years, the days only get shorter . . . Even we, people who live far from big nations and their paths, we too, have to keep up with the times . . . And I’ll tell you something else, Armol’: a man is always a man, however strange his customs and habits seem to another, however unusual his appearance. Don’t look at a man’s outside; look deep into his eyes, feel his heart – that’s where his true self will be found.”

  “You defend him because you also lived among the whites and picked up all sorts of evil from them,” Armol’ said. “I don’t mean to insult you, Orvo. But when a dog runs with a wolf pack for a time and then comes back to people, it will happen once in a while that he can’t help but howl like a wolf . . . I know, you’re hoping that John will become a luoravetlan just like us. But listen to this! The day before yesterday, he got a treasure-trove of gifts from his white countrymen, wealth you and I wouldn’t even dream about, though our yarangas were hung with white fox. Did he share with you even a pinch of his tobacco? Did he treat your grandson to a piece of sugar? Or give your old lady a bit of red cloth? If he doesn’t observe our greatest rule – share all that you have – then he’s not one of ours!”

  “Even a dog needs time to learn how to howl, and Sson is a man, after all,” Orvo countered with conviction. “He came from a world where they don’t like to share with one another. Everything is upside-down there: Men try to take things away from each other, though it be the other’s last. How can you expect him to learn our customs right away? . . . So you say that you don’t like the way he looks at us when we perform our rites. But have you thought about how hard it is for him to break free of his way of thinking, start his whole life over again, and give up what is dear to him? We don’t know yet what it was that Sson sacrificed in order to help Pyl’mau and little Yako.”

  “As if we needed his help,” Armol’ grumbled. “We would do just fine without him.”

  The sharpened blade close to his face, Orvo lovingly appraised his handiwork and signed to Armol’ to get the sealskin out of the barrel. But Armol’ didn’t seem to notice. Open-mouthed, he was looking somewhere behind the old man’s back, watching someone. Orvo turned around and saw John approach.

  “Look at him waddle,” Armol’ gritted through his teeth. “What a fat shiny face; he’s been smoking and drinking plenty of strong sweet tea.”

  “Stop it!” Orvo knitted his brow.

  “Yetti!” John greeted them cheerfully.

  “Yetti,” Armol’ replied, looking away.

  “Yetti, Yetti,” Orvo said kindly, and corrected him:

  “Sson, how many times have I told you this: It’s not the person that just came that says ‘yetti,’ but the one who is greeting him. That is our custom. You can always tell someone is a stranger, by the way he hurries to say ‘yetti.’”

  “Well, he is a stranger,” said Armol’ with a crooked smile.

  John sat down on a boulder and took out some tobacco.

  “Smoke?”

  Orvo readily unpacked his pipe, carved from walrus tusk. Armol’ made a tobacco chew and carefully placed it in one cheek. He watched John strike a match with close interest.

  “These fire-making sticks are a clever thing that the white people thought up,” he said, with some respect, and gingerly took the matchbox in his hands.

  “As you know,” John told them, “I was given many different things. But I live with you, and all that the Russian ship’s captain sent to me belongs to the people of Enmyn.”

  John took out a sheet of paper, both sides densely covered in writing.

  “There are four times twenty, plus seven more people living in the twelve yarangas of Enmyn.” John read out the names of the heads of families. He mispronounced a few of these, and Orvo corrected him. “I’ve divided all the flour, sugar, tea, and tobacco into four twenties and seven portions, and made twelve piles. Now I’m asking you: Does this seem fair?”

  Armol’ couldn’t take his eyes off the paper. He pointed to the sheet and asked, his voice quivering with anxiety:

  “My name is written there too?”

  “Yes,” John replied, scanning it with his eyes and marking the place with a fingernail: “Here’s Armol’. Married, two children, old mother, altogether five shares.”

  “But how did you know all that?”

  “Pyl’mau helped me.”

  “There was no need to take a woman as helper. You might have asked me,” Armol’ said, and spit some thick brown saliva on the ground.

  “Next time, I’ll certainly call you,” John smiled, continuing: “But we didn’t want to cut up the cloth and a few other things – you’d only get little strips. Maybe it would be better if we just decide who needs a new kamleika the most? Then we’ll give him the whole thing, so we don’t have to cut it.”

  “You are right,” Orvo remarked.

  “In that case, let’s go back to my yaranga, we can see what should go to whom,” suggested John.

  “All right,” Orvo agreed, asking: “Would you let us wash our hands in your washbasin? It’s just that they are filthy.”

  “Of course,” said John, “I’ve even got soap now!”

  Pyl’mau had tea ready, and there were cups and mugs all set on the low table next to the headrest-log. A pile of pancakes, freshly baked in nerpa fat, lay on a wooden platter.

  John poured some water into the basin and handed Armol’ a bar of soap. The white, never-before-seen substance was slippery, and Armol’ giggled like someone being tickled:

  “Like he’s alive! He wants to run away! Isn’t used to Chukchi hands. Wild, he is . . .”

  Under Orvo’s tutelage he lathered his hands and rubbed them vigorously.

  The old man advised him to wash his face, while he was at it.

  “The little white animal, he won’t bite?”
Armol’ asked, motioning toward the soap.

  “First make a foam in your hands, then put it on your face, rub it in, and wash off,” Orvo told him.

  Armol’ scrupulously followed the old man’s instructions. Carefully smearing the soapsuds over his face, he suddenly let out a yelp:

  “Eeeek! He bites! He’s got my eyes!”

  Armol’ ran back and forth across the chottagin, knocking down whale vertebrae scattered about, and bumping into the pillars holding up the yaranga’s ceiling.

  “Eeeeee!” he screamed. “He’s eating my eyes!”

  Orvo caught Armol’ and walked him back to the washstand by force.

  “Rinse off the foam, rinse it well – and you’ll be better!” he said. “Wash your eyes out.”

  While Armol’ was stumbling about the yaranga, Pyl’mau was laughing merrily. John and Orvo, too, were unable to hold back their laughter.

  When Armol’ rinsed off the soap, and the stinging in his eyes lessened, he regained his usual self-confidence and looked around him crossly.

  “What are you laughing at?” he grumbled at Pyl’mau. “See how you’d like it.”

  “It was the same for me, until Sson taught me how,” smiled Pyl’mau, in a friendly way.

  The men sat themselves around the short-legged table.

  “Maybe we’ll have some of that bad joy-making water first?” John offered.

  “We could, a little,” Armol’ agreed, nonplussed.

  “Mau, you can have a drink with us,” John handed her a cup.

  “No, I won’t. You drink, and I won’t get in the way of men’s conversation.”

  At the table, John played the host, pouring the tea, asking the guests to try some pancake. The guests, stretching their lips, drank their tea noisily.

  “My friends, I’d like to ask you for some advice . . .”

  “We’re listening, Sson.”

  “I want to marry Pyl’mau . . .”

  Taken aback by this declaration, Orvo and Armol’ simultaneously set down their cups.

  “Yes, I want to marry Pyl’mau and adopt Yako but I don’t know how to go about it . . .”

  Armol’ and Orvo exchanged puzzled glances. Armol’, stuttering with embarrassment, clarified:

  “So, you’re saying you want us to teach you how to do it?”

  “That’s it exactly!” John exclaimed, happy to have made himself understood so quickly and easily.

  “I respect you, Sson,” Orvo said, in dismay, “but I’m no good for these things anymore, maybe Armol’ can teach you how.”

  Armol’ stared at John in total confusion:

  “So whose fault is it, yours or hers?”

  “There’s no fault,” answered John. “Pyl’mau is willing . . . To be honest, we’ve been living as man and wife from the day we all came back from the Bering Strait. We sleep together in the polog, in the same bed . . .”

  “Well!” Armol’ interrupted impatiently. “And then what?”

  “And then this: She tells me that we’re going to have a baby. I’m very glad, of course, but a child needs a father, and Pyl’mau a real husband.”

  “I don’t understand anything,” Armol’ looked to the old man.

  “Neither do I,” Orvo shrugged.

  “The baby that’s coming, it’s yours?”

  “Who else’s? Of course it’s mine. There’s no doubt on that score,” John answered.

  “So what marriage are you talking about, if you’re already married?” Orvo was aghast.

  “It seems you’ve misunderstood me,” John said, blushing. “It’s only that among white people, a man and a woman are only considered married when they go before a priest, and . . .”

  “A priest, that’s the white people’s shaman, the one who can talk to God,” Orvo explained for Armol’s benefit.

  “Or if they sign their names in a special book that the most important man in the village keeps,” John said, “that’s considered the main thing.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t get it,” Armol’ was shaking his head. “To me, the most important thing in marriage is completely different. It’s the thing that makes babies. Sson, if I’ve understood you rightly, to my mind you’ve been married ever since we all came back from the Bering Strait. And if we have no man here that can talk to the white people’s God, well, there’s nothing that can be done about that.”

  “Sson, if you’ve decided to live according to our ways, then you’re married already,” Orvo concluded. “You don’t need to do anything else.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, how else?”

  “So I can call Pyl’mau my wife?”

  “You could have done that long ago,” said Armol’, and poured more vodka into the cups himself.

  John showed them the Russian captain’s gifts. Orvo and Armol’ approved of John’s method of sharing them out. Considering it at length, they decided to give the cloth to the family of Guvat, who’d been ailing for a long time.

  Orvo advised John to keep three flannel sailors’ shirts for himself, but John was unwilling, and offered them to Tiarat, Orvo, and Armol’ instead.

  “All useful things,” Orvo ruefully pronounced, looking over the gifts. “We need all these things, the outboard motor, the new Winchesters, the cartridges. It would be good to get a wooden motorboat. It’s very good for sailing among the ice floes. But it’s pricey. You’d probably have to give three twenties of walrus tusk for it, or a whole whale’s worth of whale-bone . . .” He addressed Armol’: “And here you are saying that we can manage without and live according to the ancient ways and with the ancient weapons. Would you agree to go out on the sea with only a spear, or a bow and arrows?”

  “Let’s hope that we can buy a wooden boat, and an outboard motor for it,” John said, and asked Orvo: “Do the Chukchi pay any tribute to the Russian tsar?”

  “Whoever wants to, pays,” Orvo said matter-of-factly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The ones who are willing, they pay,” Orvo explained. “It’s like a sort of offering to the Sun God – the Russian tsar.”

  “How interesting!”

  “Nonsense,” Orvo said. “They send off all kinds of garbage, things that no one wants to look at.”

  When they made the rounds, laden with presents, each yaranga met Orvo, Armol’, and John with joy, and tried to treat them to whatever was available. People lived differently. There were some who were very poor, with torn walrus hides over their yarangas, and pologs made of half-rotted deerskin rags.

  There were two old people living inside one of the yarangas. Unkempt, half-blind, they crawled about the dirty and stinking chottagin. A wooden trough stood in the middle, and both of the old people and the dogs ate from it.

  “Isn’t there anyone who can help these unfortunates?” asked John.

  “They have no kin. Our people bring them food, clean up the yaranga once in a while.”

  When they were outside and on their way to the next yaranga, Orvo said:

  “They should have departed for the clouds a long time ago. We have this custom: If a person can no longer feed himself, or brings in less than it takes to keep him alive, he goes beyond the clouds of his own free will. But it so happened with Mutchin and Eleneut that their sons, who could have helped them to go to the next world, are dead. So now there’s no one to perform the rite, and the old ones have to suffer like this until their flames are extinguished.”

  “How cruel life is!” John exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Orvo agreed. “They were unlucky, these old ones. If their sons were alive, they would not be suffering now, but living in the next world.”

  The snow fell without warning. A ceaseless drizzle lasted for three days in a row and then, one morning, turned into snowfall. At first the snowflakes melted on the black earth, but there were so many that by noon the ground was covered by a fluffy carpet, and Enmyn – with its snow-capped yarangas and meat mounds – took on a bright holiday as
pect.

  One early morning, Yako broke the ice in the water bucket with his ladle, and commented with surprise:

  “The water’s gone hard!”

  And Pyl’mau, heavy with child, said:

  “Winter is here.”

  16

  With the first snows came time for John to learn to drive the sled. Over the summer, the dogs had grown fat and lazy. Some of them had forgotten the way home completely, and had to be corralled from around the entire village. It helped matters little that John didn’t know one from another, and so Pyl’mau ran around the village alongside him, looking.

  Finally, when the pack was assembled and harnessed, John sat himself down on the sled and bravely shouted:

  “Gu!”

  The sled didn’t budge an inch. The dogs continued to sniff at one another, evincing no desire whatsoever to obey the command. Having repeated “gu” a number of times, John came out with a string of curses. The lead dog turned his head and gave the strange new driver a look of reproach. John had to call for Pyl’mau. She said something to the dogs, and then uttered, calm and businesslike:

  “Gu!”

  John barely had time to leap aboard. Making a round of the lagoon and mastering the commands “kh-kh” and “pot’-pot’” – right and left – he guided the sled in the direction of the yaranga. Braking with a drawn out “G’eeeeh!” John firmly drove the hitching post into the ground and asked Pyl’mau:

  “So what was it you said to the dogs to make them go?”

  “Nothing special,” Pyl’mau answered. “I just told them to obey you, because you’re their master now.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “What else is there to tell them? Now they know what to do.”