The Chukchi Bible (12 page)

The close air, monotone droning, and unfamiliar language made Tynemlen sleepy, and he struggled to repress a yawn. He perked up when a small choir began to sing. The singing was pleasant.

The Russian shaman kept yowling and peering at the Holy Book, while also sending forth smoke by swinging a smallish metal vessel to and fro on a long chain.

After all this, the Russian shaman finally addressed the crowd.

Tynemlen suspected that the Chuvan was not translating so much as relating to his kinsmen what he himself had learned not so long ago.

“The Russians also have shamans and gods!” he began. “First, God made only one man, and only one woman from the man's rib. They lived in a warm, verdant tundra where they had large bushes with huge berries called apples. God forbade the man and woman to taste these apples, just like we are forbidden to drink the nasty fire-water at the market. The first people were happy and had no clothes, but were as warm as if they lived in a warm, fur-lined polog. The man was named Adam, and the woman Eve. But then a big worm crawled by and convinced the first people to taste the apple-berry. God was enraged that they had disobeyed, and he banished the first people
from the green tundra into a cold one, which sounds like our own native parts here. He ordered them to find food by dint of hard labor. And meanwhile the people became worse and worse – stealing, killing one another like the Koryaks and the Chukchi do, taking other men's wives without asking. Eventually God decided to rescue the people. He went about invisibly and slept with the wife of this one man, a wood-carver named Joseph. And the Son of God was born in the likeness of man. But many evil men did not make obeisance, even though he performed miracles. He fed a crowd of people with a single fish, healed the sick, walked on water as though it were ice. And the bad people decided to destroy him, to kill him and dry his body out on a wooden cross, the way we stretch a nerpa skin to dry. But the Son of God came back to life and ascended to the sky, and now he watches us from above and teaches us how to live rightly!”

At that, almost despite himself, Tynemlen looked up toward the ceiling of the wooden yaranga, which was wreathed in smoke.

The baptism now began for those who wished to participate. It was a lively affair, the newly baptized joking with one another and comparing their new shirts and metal crosses with pride, blatantly showing off. Some went up more than once.

Almost all the visitors from Uelen were baptized and received Russian names. Ony Mlerintyn and Tynemlen refrained, despite Kymykei's attempts to persuade them; he insisted that there was nothing to it, and it was worth getting the top of your head wet in exchange for a white shirt and a cross.

“It'll dry in no time!” he cajoled.

But something held the father and son back from participating in the Russian ceremony. Perhaps the reason had something to do with their belonging to the family from which Uelen's hereditary shamans were drawn.

The main event of the fair was to begin at dawn on the following day.

They had made a wide semicircle of sleds, both deer- and dog-drawn, though the animals themselves had been removed to the other bank of the river. The pelts for sale – bunches of red fox and white sable furs – had been laid out upon the sleds, sorted by grade; ermine-tail garlands, tied to tall poles, fluttered and flapped in the breeze. Deer-hide bedding and strung walrus tusk had been spread on the bare snow. The goods' owners stood back a little, near their sleds, their expressions for the most part impassive. Only Tynemlen, it seemed, was anticipating something special, something he had never seen before.

“If you want to get a bottle of the bad water, do like this,” Kymykei explained to Mlerintyn in a voice of experience. And he flicked his pointing finger against his throat.

“But it's been strictly forbidden! Remember what the chief of this fortress said, and the Russian shaman, too,” Mlerintyn, who was loath to break rules, reminded him.

“Lots of things are forbidden,” Kymykei chuckled. “However, the most forbidden things are also the sweetest. Think, what did the first people on earth do? Break God's rule and eat the big apple-berry. And we just happen to be their descendants . . .”

“But the people of Uelen are descended from whales,” Mlerintyn countered, even as he felt his throat constrict with the desire to sample the Tangitans' magical brew.

A bell pealed loudly and the fortress gate opened, disgorging a crowd of Russian merchants, who groaned under the weight of various goods
they wanted to trade. They rushed forward, racing to reach the indigenous traders first.

As they came closer, the Russians slowed. When they found something they wanted, such as a good clump of pelts, they would halt and lay on the bare snow their own offerings of black tobacco, copper pots, knives, axes, and lengths of cloth bristling with needles.

Keeping an eye on Kymykei, Mlerintyn would either nod assent or emphatically shake his head no if the goods offered for exchange were not sufficient in number, or not useful. Then the merchant would step aside and another would appear in his place.

The variety of the Tangitans' goods was astonishing. They often offered items whose purpose was entirely unfathomable. One merchant kept trying to trade a bunch of wax candles for a clutch of pelts, with no success. For the most part, the Luoravetlan only accepted truly useful things.

The trading, at first chaotic, eventually took on a more orderly tone. Once he'd satisfied his need for the absolute necessities, Mlerintyn acquired a sack of flour, from which his family would make delicious fried pancakes, and also a lump of the hard, sweet, ice-like substance called sugar. Although tea drinking had not yet become a part of Uelen's daily life, on Kymykei's advice Mlerintyn swapped for a few bricks of black China tea.

The trading continued until deep twilight. Some had made fires, as there was plenty of firewood in the sparse little forest nearby.

By nightfall, a number of the natives were looking and acting strangely, as though they'd lost some of their mental faculties. Some talked loudly, laughed to themselves, and even broke into song. Others ambled up and down the marked rows on unsteady legs, swaying from side to side.

“They've had a taste of the fire-water!” Mlerintyn looked at Kymykei as he made his guess.

The other gave a meaningful little smile and flicked his eyes to an approaching trader who was stretching his mittenless hands out to them even from a distance. The Russians' greeting normally consisted of grasping each other's palms firmly, smiling and saying “
Zdravstvui
,” which was a wish that the other would regain health after an illness.

And yet this Russian exclaimed in Luoravetlan:

“
Amyn etti
, Kamakai!”*

“
Zdravstvui
, Kolyai!” Kymykei shouted back, flicking a finger at his throat meaningfully.

“
Varkyn, varkyn
!”
¹¹
Kolyai nodded, and, looking around furtively, quickly slipped something into the wide neckhole of Kymykei's kukhlianka.

In return, Kymykei pulled a dozen choice red fox pelts, carefully wrapped in a napped deerskin, from his baggage.

Now it was Mlerintyn's turn. On Kymykei's signal, the Russian merchant slipped a vessel, as cold as if it were really made from river ice, into Mlerintyn's coat, receiving a string of walrus tusks in exchange. A set of twelve fiery red Kamchatka fox pelts produced a second bottle, which clinked happily against the first between the Luoravetlan's kukhlianka and his bare belly.

When Tynemlen recognized an approaching stranger, clad in black from head to foot, as the Russian shaman, he was afraid: what if he had noticed the bottles' migration into his father's fur-lined clothes? What if he was coming to punish them? Tynemlen had heard that, according to the Tan- * “Greetings!”
gitan faith, those who had sinned were sent to the hottest corner of Hell, although there seemed little enough to fear in that. What Chukcha, having spent his life freezing, wouldn't dream of an eternity of heat . . . The Russian shaman was accompanied by the Chuvan interpreter, who dragged a large sack behind him.

The Russian shaman took his time, striding up in a dignified manner, pausing by one sled and then another, until he finally reached Mlerintyn.

“Got any ermine?” the Chuvan asked.

All Mlerintyn had left was the skin of a polar bear they had killed on the way.

The Russian shaman handled it carefully, like a man who knew what he was doing. He shook out the hide, then crumpled it between his fingers, blowing across the hairs to fluff them. It was clear that he knew the fur business well.

“What will you take for this hide?” said the Chuvan, translating the Russian shaman's question.

Tynemlen whispered hotly to his father:

“Ask him for the Holy Book!”

“How can I? It's the same as his asking for my shaman's tambourine,” his father replied.

“He's got many,” Tynemlen persisted. “I've seen them.”

The Chuvan translated and to everyone's surprise, the Russian shaman smiled and nodded his assent. While the Chuvan ran to fetch the book, the Russian shaman continued to smile in a friendly manner and tried to converse, using his few Chukchi words:

“
Nymelkin! Varkyn! Amyn etti! Chaipaurken!
”
¹²

The book was heavy, bound in a tooled case made from a strange animal hide.

“The Russian shaman is not selling you this Holy Book,” the Chuvan translated in solemn tones, “but pressents it to your family in the name of the Russian God. In exchange for the bearskin he offers a bundle of tobacco leaf.”

The traders parted with mutual satisfaction. At first Tynemlen could not think of where to put the holy gift, but then thought to tuck it into the space between his fur-lined kukhlianka and his belly, next to his vessel of meltwater.

 

Before setting off on the long journey back, they spent a few days in Kymykei's hospitable camp. The first evening was spent trying out the Tangitan wares. Smoke from the fire mingled with that of tobacco within the spacious chottagin. Everyone smoked – men, women, and even the children were allowed a pull on the pipe. Tynemlen had never smoked, and now, inhaling the bitter draft, he was racked by a cough so painful he thought he was about to be turned inside out. His eyes filled with cloudy tears, his throat burned, nausea rose up from the pit of his stomach. Then it was time to drink the fire-water. Tynemlen was startled as the hot stream raced into his stomach. He became nauseated again, and passed the cup to his father in disgust.

Tynemlen extracted the Holy Book from inside his clothes. Stroking the leather cover with his palm, he turned it over and peered at the white pages, which were speckled with tiny black marks. He strained to catch a sign, a sound, but in the many-voiced hullabaloo of the pages it was impossible to discern anything recognizable.

In the meantime, those who had sampled the fire-water were changing
before his very eyes. His father, a man of great self-control and few words, became talkative, a braggart. He boasted of being the most powerful shaman in Uelen and neighboring villages, and kept trying to show his powers. Their host, Kymykei, had changed, too, and in the flush of good feeling loaned his new friend Mlerintyn his own middle wife, the pretty and jolly Ainau, for the night. She obediently bedded down in the polog given over to the guests, and Tynemlen barely slept for all the heavy breathing of his bedmates, as they tussled under the covers. Strangely, his mind kept returning to Iyo-o, the girl from the starving camp, and a tender yearning tightened around his heart.

As a sign of special friendship, Kymykei added two young blue-eyed Kolyma huskies to Mlerintyn's sled pack; with two of his father's old dogs Tynemlen's own pack now also numbered eight.

On the way back they stopped at the famine-stricken camp once more. From a long way off, Tynemlen felt a rising surge of excitement at the prospect of meeting Iyo-o again. When the young woman walked out of her yaranga and joined the few of her compatriots waiting to greet the visitors, the young man was overcome with joy and smiled a smile that was meant for her alone. Iyo-o noticed, and lowered her eyes, a sure sign that she shared the young man's feelings.

Everyone slept pell-mell in the packed polog. Iyo-o, naked as the day she was born, pressed up against Tynemlen, and he nearly swooned with desire. In the dark of night, the young people joined in a passionate embrace.

The following morning the travelers were on their way again, trying to stay ahead of the coming spring, the new sun that would make the snow soft and heavy, and wake the tundra rivers from their ice-swaddled sleep, cutting them off from home.

Iyo-o was among the clump of well-wishers who saw them off, but had eyes only for Tynemlen.