A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

  “Excellent!” John exclaimed, peering at the sheet. “And now we’ll learn the pronunciation of these letters.”

  Yako had wedged himself beside Tiarat. He listened attentively to his father and, noiselessly, moving only his lips, repeated all that the other said.

  “Give the child some paper and a pen,” Pyl’mau intervened on behalf of her son. “Why entertain just yourselves? Maybe it’s even more interesting for the boy.”

  Even through his swarthiness, Tiarat’s face colored with shame. He could feel it himself, that he was engaged in a task not his own, a trifle, that would never be of any use in his life. It’s not as though he were going to talk to his countrymen in English. And as for trading with the merchants, Orvo’s language skills were more than enough, and now they had Sson as an interpreter, besides. What could be better! As for reading and writing, there was no practical use at all. Just a game, as Pyl’mau had pointed out.

  “Let him learn, too, that’s the way,” John said seriously. “Only, Mau, you really shouldn’t say that literacy is a useless, trifling thing. In the world where I’ve come from, one can’t even imagine life without the ability to read and write.”

  “But here?” Pyl’mau objected.

  “What do you think?” John turned to Tiarat. “Don’t you find that the woman talks too much?”

  “You’re right, there,” Tiarat agreed.

  The lesson came to its conclusion without any more interruption. Yako gripped the pencil in his hand and tried his very best. The pupils were almost equal in aptitude, as John noted to himself, but Yako’s reactions were quicker, and he was, on the whole, a little sharper.

  Each free evening, when John and Tiarat were not too late in returning from the day’s hunting, an unlikely school opened session inside the yaranga, with two students and the pedagogue, John MacLennan.

  Spring came, and was followed by a short but task-filled summer. In the autumn they once again went to hunt the walrus breeding ground; they had to ward off incoming schooners, of which there were a surprising number. The sailors talked of a revolution happening in Russia, of a new government. Alarmed, Orvo at once asked John:

  “What do all these rumors mean?”

  But John hardly understood any of it himself. He managed to obtain a two-month-old newspaper from a passing schooner belonging to the Hudson Bay Company. One thing was clear from the article, that the csar in Russia had been replaced by a parliament. But in the same small piece, they spoke of warring political factions within the country, some mysterious Bolsheviks led by a certain Lenin. John was nonetheless surprised to discover that, despite the events that were rocking the enormous country, the war with Germany continued.

  “They’ve deposed the Sun Lord,” John explained.

  “But he was sitting so firmly on his golden seat,” Orvo shook his head doubtfully. “A few years before you, a Russian shaman – a priest – came to our settlement. He said that the Russian csar is the mightiest power on the earth. And he’s sitting so firmly on his golden seat that no one could move him. The Sun Lord had talked to God . . .”

  “Well, he had to leave his golden seat after all,” John said.

  “But why did they have to take him off it?” asked Orvo.

  “Evidently, other people besides him also wanted to govern the land,” John ventured.

  “What odd people. Didn’t they have enough of their own problems to worry about?” Orvo commented with disdain. “The csar did everything well, and besides that, he had great experience. They shouldn’t have taken him off.”

  “How can you be so sure that all the csar did was good?” John asked.

  “How else,” Orvo was agitated. “He didn’t insist on our worshipping his gods. Besides that, unlike our neighbors the Yakuts, we were freed from the mandatory tribute and could pay only as much as we wanted to. Is that so bad?”

  “Yes, that’s true enough, from this standpoint the Russian csar was quite suitable for the Chukchi,” John observed.

  Ignoring the irony, or perhaps not seeing it, Orvo said:

  “After all, who knows what the new government will bring to these parts. Maybe something that will be bad for all of us.”

  John had to agree with this rational conclusion but said with some hope:

  “But how long will it be before the new government even reaches as far as Chukotka!”

  This conversation took place on the eve of winter, while the new ice began to spread over the sea and the light grew less with each passing day, as if every afternoon some giant were slicing off a crescent from the cold winter sun. Another winter was rising before John MacLennan, but he did not fear it and calmly greeted the tidings of coming inclement weather, the frozen rivers, the steadily growing ice shelf that pushed the frontier of drifting ice further and further from the continent.

  By now, Yako and Tiarat were writing English words easily enough, and could address one another and their teacher mock-seriously, using the words they’d learned. One evening, Tiarat was visibly upset as he came to the lesson.

  “What’s wrong?” John asked him.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time now,” Tiarat spoke with embarrassment, “but I was afraid you’d stop teaching me . . . They found out that I’m trying to make and decipher the prints of human talk on paper, and they started to laugh at me. Even my sons are laughing. Today I was talking to Orvo, and he asked if it was true that I’m learning to read and write from you. I told him the truth. He thought about it, the old man, and then declared that nothing will come of it. And when I showed him that I can do it already, he mocked me. Told me how he’d heard you say that reading and writing is totally useless to Chukchi, that it’s just as alien to them as white skin and fair hair. Did you say that?”

  “Yes, I did say it,” John confessed. “But I meant that it’s useless in general, if every Chukcha, say, suddenly became literate.”

  “And you still think so now?” Tiarat asked.

  “I’m sure of it,” John said with feeling.

  “Then why do you teach me and Yako?”

  “If you and Yako know how to read and write, there’s no harm in it to anybody.”

  “The harm’s started already,” Tiarat declared. “I’m a laughingstock. People turn away from me and suspect something evil in my wanting to learn the white man’s language.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you won’t be learning anymore?” asked John.

  “I haven’t said that yet.”

  Tiarat found himself in such a quandary that he pulled his overall off his head and wiped his perspiring face with the furry side, an old habit of his.

  “It would be good if you taught reading and writing to anyone who wanted it,” he finally managed to express.

  John thought about it. He knew his settlement neighbors well enough. From a sense of competition, from a desire not to be left behind the others, every one of them would want to learn. Because Yako was being taught, the other children must follow suit. That would mean having to open a real school and devote all his time to teaching Enmyn’s inhabitants. Then who would go to hunt, travel to Keniskun for goods? And besides, there was neither paper nor writing implements, not to mention textbooks. All this John explained to Tiarat in a patient and businesslike manner:

  “Let’s think this through together, what is it all for? A Chukcha has no need to read and write, not in hunting, not in household work. It would only take up his time and stir up thoughts and desires that would distract him from real life.”

  “You are right!” Tiarat exclaimed almost with joy. “Yes, maybe that’s enough. We’ve had our fun, now it’s time to stop. Ooh,” he pulled on a cord and opened up the collar of his kukhlianka. “Feels better now.”

  John was saddened at how easily Tiarat rejected learning. He sensed that this man, born and raised inside a yaranga, in the perpetual pursuit of food and warmth, was in his own way exceptional, gifted. Everything he touched acquired strength, beauty, and some kind of distincti
veness. For all that, Tiarat was astonishingly selfless and could live only on the bare necessities. He did not have reserves, so precious to Armol’, nor did he have a second dogsled and spare dogs. If he came into possession of something extra, he’d immediately and joyfully give it to his nearest neighbor, usually the feckless and needy Guvat.

  John studied with Yako for another stretch longer, then the first reading and writing lessons in Enmyn quietly ceased, all by themselves. John even neglected his diary for a long time, not returning to it until the fateful day when Carpenter, in a state of panic and confusion, came to pay him a visit.

  29

  Carpenter collapsed into John’s yaranga on one stormy morning that glowed with the falling snow. He took a long while dusting himself off, shaking out his torbasses and fur-lined trousers, prying icicles from his beard.

  “The Bolsheviks have taken power!” he blurted into John MacLennan’s face with a kind of despair.

  John shrugged.

  “Russia is ruled by Lenin and the Bolsheviks!” Carpenter repeated. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “That’s the problem, I don’t understand a thing yet,” John serenely replied. “In the meantime, come inside the polog. Pyl’mau will prepare your room.”

  Pyl’mau was bustling around inside the little room where John once lived, trying to light a tiny iron stove. The strong wind kept on slurping up the flame, occasionally even blowing it into the room. Pyl’mau struggled for a good while, before the fire took, and the stove’s sides flushed with the heat.

  “Dear John!” Carpenter went on. “I felt it my duty to come to you and warn you of the danger. The Bolsheviks have designs on the north, too. The Soviets have already come to the Kamchatka; they are operating in Anadyr’. How can you have so little trust in me, when I dropped everything and raced to warn you before anyone else. I could easily have left on my own and abandoned you to the vagaries of fate. My dear friend, I see in you not only a man of the same blood, but an exceptional human being, who might be destroyed by a Bolshevik bullet.”

  “I don’t understand,” John was supremely calm, “why is it that you’re so frightened of the Bolsheviks? You’ve never even seen them.”

  “But the things they’re doing!” Carpenter clapped his hands to his head. “They’ve executed the entire royal family, they didn’t spare even the small children.”

  “Flip through any history textbook, you’ll find far more horrific crimes,” John reminded him.

  “They take away everything a man has and hand it out to the poor. They don’t look at whether a man’s actually acquired his wealth by his own labors, and not by robbery; for them, a rich man has only one name – bloodsucker, exploiter. No, you must leave immediately! I offer you my help. If you wish, I’ll send over dogsleds, give you money – anything you want. I’ll tell you frankly, my heart bleeds to see the destruction of a lifestyle so hardly won. One of these days, the happiness you’ve achieved by the sweat of your brow, by your sufferings, could be shattered to pieces. I grieve for you, dear John!”

  Carpenter had almost shouted the last words, before covering his head with his hands.

  John was looking at those big hands and thinking: Why would Carpenter suddenly overflow with tender feelings for him, and even come to him at the height of winter? To offer his selfless aid in escaping from the Bolsheviks? There was something suspicious in this unexpected show of devotion on the trader’s part.

  Pyl’mau served the meal, filled the cups with strong tea and left them, so as not to impede the men’s talk.

  Carpenter ate greedily, his fingers were soon greasy and covered with fat. Even while he was chewing, he never ceased to talk, and his speech flowed uncontrollably, as if a dam had burst.

  “You know that I receive the papers regularly,” he was saying. “Obviously, you can’t believe everything they write in our American newspapers. But if even half of what they write about the Bolsheviks is true, it would be better by far to live among cannibals. Their leader, Lenin – he’s a monster! He’s demanding the inception of a communist government not just in Russia, but all over the world, inciting the workers to take over their factories, throw out the owners – in a word, he’s a crazed rebel! A pirate! They’ve proclaimed the motto: ‘He who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat!’”

  “I’ve already heard that motto here, in Enmyn,” John interrupted his guest. “He’s not worthy of living, the man who can’t feed himself. Roughly the same sentiment.”

  With the coming of the tea, Carpenter’s verbal flood had a rest, and John could ask him the question that had been burning on his lips all along.

  “So when are you leaving?”

  “You mean leaving Chukotka?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our firm will have some sort of cooperation with the new government, at least in the early days. The Bolsheviks wouldn’t dare leave this enormous region without any supply lines, and they haven’t yet any merchandise of their own. In all likelihood, we’ll be granted a concession for continuing to trade. In any event, I’ve been ordered to remain at my post. As soon as the Strait opens, we’ll bring out all the white fox, and as for the store of goods at my trading station, it barely exceeds a thousand dollars’ worth. Even if they confiscated everything, it shouldn’t prove a heavy loss.”

  “Me, I don’t even have five dollars’ worth of possessions,” John remarked with a smile.

  And by that smile, Carpenter knew that his trickery had been exposed. John had realized that he was being pushed to leave Chukotka so that Carpenter could remain in complete possession of not only the entire shoreline, but more importantly, of the gold discovered in the streams that flowed into Lake Eeonee.

  “That’s right,” Carpenter said in a chastened tone. “But you have no right to be here, no official leave to live in Russian territory. You’re an alien, settled on foreign soil without authorization!”

  John was smiling wordlessly.

  “What is it, what holds you here?” Carpenter railed, beside himself. “What is it that you’ve found in this deserted land? Why, if you had a yen to go live among the natives, didn’t you choose a better place?... It’s not only in the north that primitive life exists, there are tropical islands, too. You declined trading, you don’t want to take part in the gold-mining project at Lake Eeonee, you don’t need anything and you’re happy with your life! But surely a person must need something. He can’t simply exist, like some sort of vegetation. What is it that binds you to this place?”

  In answer, John held out his stumps, capped with their leather bindings.

  “Everyone here has forgotten that I have no hands,” John said quietly. “I feel like a full-fledged, valuable person. Valuable to my family, to my friends, to the little community that peoples Enmyn. Here, I’m a human being – do you understand? – a human being! I have no fear of the Bolsheviks’ coming. Naturally, I find their doctrine alarming, their denial of any kind of personal property. But, just think Mr. Carpenter, what property does a Chukcha have? What property do I have? And meanwhile, those among whom we live are, with rare exception, a trusting folk. Simply put, it is my duty to stay with them as difficult times loom ahead. I must be with them.”

  John fell silent and his eyes fixed to the bottom of his cup.

  “Dearest John!” Carpenter’s exhortation swelled with pathos. “Now, now I see that you are a truly noble spirit! I am in awe of you . . . It was not just the question of our firm’s prestige and my duty to the Hudson Bay Company, my employer of nearly twenty years, that played a role in my decision to remain. It was also concern for the fate of these small arctic nations – the Chukchi and the Eskimos.”

  Carpenter’s voice shook from an overflow of emotion.

  “And regardless of our personal relationship, it’s for their sake that we should cleave to one another. After all, we are the only whites on the entire stretch of coastline between Enmyn and Keniskun . . . ”

  “And the only sensible men among these ch
ildren of nature?” John had caught Carpenter’s intonation exactly, as he finished the sentence.

  “That’s it exactly!”

  John wanted to say something sharp, but held back, thinking tiredly that Carpenter would never be changed in his own views nor brought around to another’s. He is so certain of his superiority that if you told him, for example, that he was no better than, say, Tiarat – the trader would think the suggestion absurd.

  Carpenter rooted around his nerpa-skin traveling sack, richly ornamented with beading and deer hair, and pulled out an opened bottle of Scotch.

  “Let us drink to solidarity among men!”

  John drank in silence. After a moment, he felt that he would be happy to embrace the entire world, and even Carpenter seemed to be a decent fellow, however misguided. And anyway, what had he done that was so reprehensible? He’d spent all his life far from home, his only goal to save up some money, buy a little house and live for himself, only for himself . . . His life had not been easy, either.

  “I heard that you’ve acquired a gramophone,” said Carpenter, “and though I do have one of my own, it’s possible I haven’t heard some of your records. Allow me to get it going . . .”

  “Yako!” John shouted. “Bring the music box.”

  Carpenter selected a record and put on a yearning melody. The trader listened, eyes half-shut, and seemed to be wholly surrendered to overwhelming emotion.

  “The enchantment of music, it’s inexplicable. No sooner do I wind up the gramophone than I immediately recall my own childhood, despite the fact that there were no gramophones yet. There was an Italian organ-grinder walking the streets and playing tunes . . . Long-gone childhood, irrevocably lost . . . By the way, Mr. MacLennan, where were you born?”

  “Port Hope, on the shores of Lake Ontario.”

  “Beautiful country,” said Carpenter. “Haven’t been there myself, but I’ve heard about the place. Serenity, the splash of warm waters, greenery, quiet streets that lead to the lake ... Yes, it must be hard to give up all that. By the way, are your parents still living?”