A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

  “You, too, have common sense, once in a while,” Tiarat said with surprise.

  When the hide boat was rocking in the water, Yako jumped in first, and John after him. Last to climb aboard was Guvat, who pushed off the light craft and neatly folded the docking rope.

  They decided to row from shore, so that the motor’s roar did not reach the breeding ground and frighten off the animals. Steadily, the oars dipped into the heavy, viscous water, and thickly the drops plunked down, rolling down the long oar blades. Only the creaking of the oarlocks broke the silence. The people did not speak amongst themselves, and not just because each one was busy with a task of his own, but such was the old custom – hunters don’t open their mouths when there is no need. Noiselessly, with a light splash, the nerpa came up to the surface, but the hunters had no weapons with them – the crash of gunshots was also unwanted in the virgin silence that protected the great walrus gathering.

  The low, pebbled sandbank was now in view. Truth be told, there was no sandbank anymore – it was completely blanketed with gray-brown bodies. If you let your eye slide up the steep rocky side, on the very top you would see the observers. Today it was Armol’and Orvo who stood there.

  John thought about the old man. Lately, Orvo had become reclusive and only rarely looked in on John. And when he did, more and more often he’d speak about his ailments, about some kind of small creature that had taken residence in his chest and whose hungry squeaking woke Orvo up some nights. “He’s gnawing at my innards,” Orvo would say and start to cough. The coughing racked his whole body, now grown thin and old, that had once seemed to John to be carved from an incredibly durable species of wood. According to Orvo it would seem that he was not much more than fifty, and yet he looked closer to seventy. Yes, life here was not easy, and one year spent on the shore of the Arctic Ocean was worth two, even three, years lived, say, on the shores of Lake Ontario.

  “Ateh, look, lakhktak,” Yako diverted John away from his somber thoughts.

  A shiny round head was swimming silently in front of the hide boat. From afar it seemed human, especially the eyes – large, black, expressive, filled with such deep wisdom that you couldn’t look into them for long. Time heals everything, even wounds that seem to be inscribed upon the heart and soul for life. It was a long while since the mention of lakhtak stirred the terrible memories of the horrors John had lived through, dragging the dying Toko, wrapped in lakhtak skin, down the fast ice.

  Now Toko had come again. He came in the guise of a new person whom Pyl’mau had carried under her kind heart in the harshest and gloomiest days of the hard winter. And the winter itself no longer seemed so dark from the vantage point of today, a day that promised well-fed winter evenings, the Northern Lights frolicking in the skies. And even the raging blizzard that shook the walrus-hide covers of the yarangas seemed a pleasant music, a music that acquits the man who is sitting inside a warm polog surrounded by his loved ones or lost in listening to distant and misty legends. Satiety, the certainty of tomorrow, and long slumber when the penetrating winter fog begins to steal in. You go off into that dream at the edge of fog, and when you wake, a new day has dawned, and you can even see a sliver of sun creeping behind the horizon in its long chase of the escaping winter.

  John’s musings were interrupted only by short commands from Tiarat, who was directing John where to point the steering oar. But the commands were few and far between, and there was only the ringing of water drops rolling from the oars’ blades stretching out over the vast expanse and the creaking of the leather oarlocks on the ancient vessel that carried on its stern the latest invention built by man to replace the labor of his hands – the gas-driven outboard motor from General Motors.

  “I see a sail!”

  The oars hung motionless over the water, the creaking of the lashings stilled. “A ship coming to our shore,” added Tiarat, clapping a big flat nerpa-skin mitten above his eyes as a visor.

  “Have we come far out enough to start the motor?” John inquired, as he pulled the steering oar out of the water and prepared to replace it with the propeller and wheel of the outboard motor.

  Tiarat glanced at the shore, at the far-off breeding ground that seemed, from here, merely an unremarkable narrow strip, much the same as all the other shingled sandbanks on the Arctic coast. The hide boat had come far out to sea (evidently there was a seaward current here helping the oarsmen); the walrus were no longer distinguishable.

  “Now, the loudest sound for them is the noise of the surf, and they’re not silent themselves,” said Tiarat, lowering the mitten from his eyes. “They won’t hear us.”

  He moved from the bow to the stern, to help John with starting up the engine.

  The cooled-down motor took a long time to start. It just spluttered in a disgusted manner.

  And meanwhile, inexorably, the ship continued to come closer. Already you could see the water-stained rigging, and the ship’s body, marred by the ice. The people on the hide boat threw themselves desperately into awakening the motor. The pull cord went from John back to Tiarat, from Tiarat to Guvat, who pulled with such zeal that the whole hide boat shuddered. But, to everyone’s surprise and delight, the motor roared, and Guvat, miraculously leaping over Tiarat and John in the packed boat, found himself back in his place.

  The hide boat raced toward the ship like a bird on the wing. The keel shook a little, as clinging water rolled smoothly underneath. Under the translucent walrus hide, green water rushed by.

  The ship grew larger with each passing moment. Only a few minutes passed before Tiarat began to brake. The ship heaved to, and lay adrift.

  This was the schooner Bear of the Canadian Naval Department, coming back from Wrangel Island with the surviving crew members of the Karluk, that had been crushed by the ice in January of 1914.

  On the bridge, John sighted Captain Bartlett, who recognized him:

  “Hello, Mr. MacLennan! I’m very glad to see you in good health! Please, come aboard.”

  The schooner sat low in the water, and the men from the hide boat climbed aboard the wooden vessel without difficulty, eschewing the aid of the gangway. Setting foot on deck and greeting the captain once more, John looked around and, not seeing Yako next to him, turned back.

  The boy was standing in the hide boat looking at the whites, at their immense wooden ship that could probably hold all the people of Enmyn and their dogs, too, eyes wide with both curiosity and fear. And another, surprising, discovery immediately set him apart from his stepfather: Standing next to the captain, ateh, Sson, suddenly became just as distant and unreachable as all of those white people crowding on deck and curiously peering at the natives that had arrived by motor hide boat, Sson in his Chukchi clothing, and the little boy who was clinging fearfully to the side of the hide-bound vessel.

  “Come here, Yako!” John called.

  “I’m scared, Sson,” Yako confessed in a quavering voice.

  “Come here, son, I’ll help you up,” John said calmly and firmly, and stretched his leather-wrapped wrists out to the boy.

  Fighting his fear, trying to control the revolting tickling somewhere behind his knees, Yako obeyed, and having climbed up on deck, stood beside his stepfather.

  “My son,” John said. “His name is Yako.”

  “I’m pleased to see you again,” Bartlett smiled, offering his hand.

  Yako had never before had to make greeting according to the white people’s custom, not outside gameplay, when he was pretending to be a white man, but now he had to do it for real. The captain’s palm was hard as a spear handle.

  Captain Bartlett invited everyone to the cramped wardroom.

  The steward set the table with tea and rum, and sweets for Yako. The captain entertained them cordially, telling them all about the hazardous journey to Wrangel Island.

  “We’d lost hope and had resigned ourselves to our unfortunate comrades’ having to spend another winter ashore. But one day, the ice that had amassed by the coast broke, and we were abl
e to come ashore in a launch and bring back our friends. The Karluk’s epic adventure ended relatively well, but our boss, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, is already considering a plan for a new expedition, with the intent of colonizing the island, setting up a permanent settlement there . . .”

  “Wrangel Island belongs to Canada, then?” John inquired, taking a sip of his rum-laced coffee.

  “It’s hard for me to say anything conclusive about the matter,” Captain Bartlett replied. “Ancient custom tells us that land belongs to those who live on it. And as far as we could discern, at present Wrangel Island is uninhabited, and will be owned by the country that colonizes it.”

  “I doubt that the Russian government will take this lightly,” John objected.

  “Right now, the Russian government is busy with the war in Europe. These northern territories are nothing but a burden. Recall the sale of Alaska.”

  The Chukchi respectfully listened to the white people’s strange conversation, and it was strange for the men of Enmyn to see their own fellow-countryman Sson as someone in a position to discuss this unknown but evidently important business. Perhaps they were talking about how the current ice conditions were favorable to seafaring: The tops of far-off mountains had long been covered by snow and yet there was still no sign of sea ice near the shore, and only when the wind blew from the north did a white stripe appear on the horizon and quickly disappear again.

  At the end of the discussion, Captain Bartlett expressed a wish to come closer to shore and replenish their water supply from a waterfall that dropped into the sea two miles or so east of the Enmyn Cape.

  “Take as much water as you need,” John answered, “but my friends and I would ask you not to use your engines and not to make too much noise. I’d like to especially ask you not to shoot: We’re protecting a walrus breeding ground. It’s our only hope for an untroubled winter. If someone frightens off the animals, we’ll be left without food or fuel.”

  “We will respect your wishes,” was Captain Bartlett’s courteous reply, as he ordered the raising of the sails.

  Tugging the hide boat, the Bear moved slowly, catching barely perceptible air currents within the enormous cloths of its sails, currents that couldn’t even raise a speckle over the smooth surface of the sea, heavy from the cold.

  In sight of the village, John and his people went back to the hide boat and returned home. The Bear went a little farther east, and the sailors set to ferrying the fresh water, using the freshly scrubbed launch boats to collect it.

  The schooner required a great deal of water, and the vessel was there all night. In the morning, sparse ice clumps floated closer to Enmyn’s shore. It was time to hunt the walrus.

  Before the ship departed, Captain Bartlett paid John MacLennan a farewell visit. A heavily laden launch bumped up against the shore, where almost all of Enmyn’s inhabitants were already assembled. Not far from the men, the women stood in a separate group, among them Pyl’mau with a fur-swaddled infant.

  With a firm handshake, Captain Bartlett told John:

  “I thank you most sincerely for your help, and please believe me, I stand in awe of your character. Allow me to present your son Yako with this sailing atlas of the northern seas, published by the Canadian Naval Department,” and he handed a heavy, lavishly printed tome to Yako, who was standing beside his father.

  Then he gave gifts to the people of Enmyn in the name of the Canadian Naval Department. Noticing the baby in Pyl’mau’s arms, he said to John:

  “Oh, I see you’ve an addition to the family?”

  “Yes,” John answered.

  “And what is this new citizen of the Arctic called?”

  “Bill-Toko MacLennan,” John replied.

  “I wish you all prosperity and happiness,” and with that, Captain Bartlett climbed aboard the launch. The sailors picked up their oars and moved off toward the schooner.

  John set off in the direction of the Far Cape, to have another look at the breeding ground. Despite the late autumn, the sky was clear and high. The sun had long gone, but it was still light from the glowing sparse new ice, thinly covering the earth and the seashore crags.

  And John MacLennan’s soul was just as clear and light.

  Tomorrow all the men and boys of Enmyn would be going after the walrus.

  25

  They’d sharpened their spears well in advance. The spearheads were so sharp that you could have used them to shave. This was demonstrated by Tiarat, who scraped a little growth that resembled the head of a calligraphy brush, off his chin.

  Long before dawn, the settlement had come alive. At John’s urging, they made the Great Sacrifice a little to the side of the Far Cape, rather than directly underneath it to avoid making unnecessary noise. All the dogs were locked up inside the chottagins, or else chained up at the eastern end of the village, where enormous snow and water-bleached whale skulls had been dug into the pebbled beach.

  The thin fiery stripe of the approaching dawn was growing with remarkable speed. But it only seemed that way – time was moving at its usual pace, and it was the impatient hearts of the hunters that pulled forward the moments too quickly.

  Orvo stood with his face to the dawn, whispering the sacred words. It struck him that if the prayers of all nations and religions were translated – the big ones and the small ones, ancient and new – their import could be reduced to three words only: peace, bread, health. Peace, understood to be not merely the friendly relations between governments and peoples, but also the wish to respect the inner life of another and not befuddle him with useless and unusual temptations, to cherish the peace and life of another human being without trying to measure him with one’s own stick. And as for bread and health, well, that was self-explanatory. Except that here, bread is the enormous assembly of blubbery beings wiggling to and fro on the pebbled sandbar under the Far Cape.

  In his hands, Orvo held the now-familiar sacrificial vessel. A plain wooden dish, shiny with long use and the grease of foods allotted to the gods.

  Half-closing his eyes to narrow slits so as not to miss the first ray of sunlight, Orvo waited for the great heavenly body to appear. The Enmyn hunters hung back behind him, silent shadows. Somewhere in the distance, the chained dogs were whining softly. Frozen moisture poured from a cloudless sky in the shape of snowflakes.

  Finally! The first ray sparkled through. It burst from the icy, whitewashed horizon and hit Orvo, standing motionless, in the eyes. The old man’s voice rang out, and, uttering the last of the incantations, he began to scatter the sacrificial offering, each wave of his hand accompanied by new words.

  John’s spear had been adapted so that the handle would not slip off the leather clamps on his wrists even when they became slick with blood. Although, by rights, the ceremonial sacrifice should have had a calming effect on the hunters, it was difficult to fight the agitation that was part and parcel of the approaching hunt.

  They walked past the yarangas via the beach. Like stone carvings, the women and children stood by the dwellings. They were seeing off their breadwinners.

  The shingle was hardened with frost. The usual creaking of torbasses went unheard. And, despite thick and springy tundra-grass insoles, every so often a toe would be painfully stubbed against an upright piece of rock.

  They were twelve going to the walrus hunt. Only ten of these could have been considered real hunters, and as for the other two – Tiarat’s sons Chupliu and Ergynto – this would be their first hunt of this kind.

  The seascape stretched out before them from the top of the Far Cape. They could clearly distinguish the white stripe of ice on the horizon, the ice floes appearing as so many pieces of white cloth scattered over the smooth plane of the sea.

  The packed gray mass of walruses lay in the usual spot, on a narrow sandbar. From here, from the top of the Far Cape, you could already hear their deep, heavy grunting and intermittent exhalations, as though sighing with terrible foreknowledge.

  With great care, the hunters descended the
rocky slope, cautious not to let a single pebble roll down to disturb the animals. Before the descent, Orvo warned the hunters: They must start killing the walruses from the beach, to cut off a means of escape for the wounded ones.

  “You’ve got to hit him quickly and to the death,” these were Orvo’s parting words, his voice trembling with agitation. “A wounded walrus will run away and tell the others what a terrible place this is – the sandbank under the Far Cape. And he’ll show them his wounds. Don’t let any that are not whole and untouched leave. Go mostly for the old ones, don’t touch the cows. That’s all. Let’s get moving.”

  Carefully leaning on the handle of his spear, John was third in the descending column of hunters. The shingled sandbar was looming closer, and he could distinguish individual animals. His nostrils took in the pungent smell of excrement, malodorous breath, mixing with the fresh scent of encroaching ice.

  Already, some of the walruses were anxious, raising their heads and swinging their blunt pointy-whiskered and tusked muzzles from side to side. A displeased snorting issued from the pink jaws with their rows of strong white teeth.

  Orvo made a sign with his eyes, and the young hunters leaped from the hillside straight into the gentle incoming surf.

  John rushed to follow the others. Remembering Orvo’s instructions, he speared the animals under the left shoulder blade, as he’d been shown. Despite its thick layer of blubber, walrus skin turned out not to be especially thick, and the well-sharpened blade entered the animal’s body with comparative ease. Moaning hoarsely, the walruses would raise their heads and collapse onto the shingle, slippery with blood and urine, meekly, with resignation, as though each had come to this sandbank precisely to end his life’s journey in just such a manner. John speared one walrus after another, in bitter, hardened silence, trying not to think about the fact of his killing a living creature, a body that might even be feeling the heartache of its impending doom.