The Chukchi Bible (15 page)

When the Watcher rose to his full height and raised over his head a white ermine pelt, easily visible from afar, the men pushed six skin boats – all of Uelen's hunting vessels, each of which belonged to a different hunter – into the water. The biggest boat was that of lucky, well-to-do Kotylyn. Originally one of the Tapkaran Luoravetlan, he now lived at the edge of the village farthest from the Crag. But it was the Enmyralin, the “Crag men” who lived closer to the Crag and Uelen's stream, were considered to be the best whale hunters.

As the boats softly hit the water and silently floated into the open sea, noise in the village ceased, too. Infants who might have wailed loudly were carried deep inside the pologs, and dogs were driven inside the chottagins
so their barking would not spook the whale herd moving toward Uelen's shingled spit.

Mlatangin took his place at the prow, planting his feet securely on the boat's wooden cross-plank. His long whale harpoon, its shaft slightly rough to prevent slippage, lay before him, its metal spearhead glinting in the sun. His heart beat faster and harder than usual, and his palms were slightly damp.

From afar, the hunting boats under their white sails looked like enormous birds, silently floating toward the whale pod.

One large whale swam slightly ahead of the rest, and was likely the pod's leader. It didn't dive deep, preferring to stay close to the surface of the water. Greenland whales – whom the Luoravetlan called lygireu – have a distinct way of spouting, in two streams, from both blowholes. Mlatangin instinctively understood that his father was steering a course for that very whale. His aim was to place the boat directly before the whale, between its wide-set eyes: whales saw better sideways than straight ahead. The gigantic animals sensed no danger. Soon you could see them not just when they broke the surface, but diving into the deep to inhale clouds of krill and plankton and then sieve the catch like steam through their whalebone whiskers.

Apart from anxiety, Mlatangin also felt a kind of sacred fear: he was about to kill his remote ancestor, a creature that was – according to ancient lore – the progenitor of the sea hunters themselves.

The whale came on fast. They had to get close enough to be certain of a kill.

Mlatangin picked up the heavy harpoon shaft and slowly raised it above his head. The silence was broken only by the water slapping the bottom of the boat and the hiss of the whale spouts.

He saw the astonishingly long, enormous body of the marine giant shoot up from the green watery depths. A moment more and the whale would lift the fragile boat on its mighty back and break it in two, upending his pursuers into the sea. Not one of them could swim. Once in the water, if there was no blown up pyh-pyh close to hand, Chukchi hunters quickly drowned. They didn't struggle; according to their beliefs a man overboard was given up to the Master of Cold Seawater.

The helmsman watched the approaching whale closely from his small wooden platform, which was level with the side of the boat. His job was to get close enough to the prey that the harpoon-man would be able to spear the whale, yet far enough away that the whale couldn't dive underneath the boat.

In a kind of transport of instinct, Mlatangin chose the perfect moment to launch his weapon. He put all his considerable strength into the throw, and barely avoided hurling himself atop the emerging giant together with his harpoon. The other hunters' harpoons followed his. The neatly coiled straps came alive, pulling the blown-up pyh-pyhs aloft. As it felt the harpoons strike, the whale dove down with great speed, trailing the air bags behind. Sharply swinging the tiller and turning the sail, Mlatangin's father steered their boat away from the pod, giving the other boats their place.

Mlatangin's boat was now at the end of the line. But the whale, marked by the cargo of his pyh-pyh, could no longer dive deep, and the other harpooners had an easier job of it. Tynemlen ordered the sail to be lowered and the boat left the general file. The hunters were pleased: the whale would be counted as the kill of that boat whose harpoons had hit it first.

Now that the whale couldn't dive, they finished him off with sharp spears
mounted on long wooden shafts. You had to try to jab the heart, underneath the short front fin. The water grew red with blood. Now the hunters could shout across to one another.

Mlatangin was slowly reeling in the pyh-pyhs on their straps, raw nerves giving way to release, satisfaction, and joy. The whale's motionless body floated over the bloodstained water. The hunters rowed up to it. Mlatangin's father leaned over the side of the boat, hooked a tail fin and pulled the carcass closer. He carved a large hole for the anchoring hooks and handed the big chunk of itgil' gyn to Mlatangin, who sliced off a piece and put it in his mouth. This was a ritual gesture; having tasted the whale he himself had killed, the youth became an adult, and an equal among men. Mlatangin passed the rest of the itgil'gyn to his fellows in the boat. Soon the other boats rowed up, and between them, they formed a tugboat caravan. The wind was with them, so the hunters were spared the exhausting task of rowing to shore, though even under sail hauling the carcass back took the rest of the pale night, and dawn was just breaking when the boats finally neared Uelen's shore.

The people in the village had not slept. Children's voices now rang out once more, the released dogs ran barking down the only street, copper pots and kettles clanged.

Kalyantagrau was preparing for the ceremony. He brought out the big yarar drums, his ceremonial robes, the sacrificial vessels, and the carved figurines of marine animals, among which pride of place was held by a whale calf, expertly carved from dark wood.

The klegran, where ceremonies were held, looked like a typical yaranga from the outside, but was bigger and had no sleeping polog. Meanwhile, its fire was made right in the center, underneath the smokehole. Whale
vertebrae scattered along the walls served as stools. A mysterious gloom reigned inside, and the animal figurines that hung from thin leather thongs floated on the waves of blue smoke. Among them hung the glinting whale calf, Ancestor of the Uelen people.

 

Mlatangin spotted young Korginau in the crowd of those who had come out to meet the hunters. The daughter of an old family friend, the shaman Kalyantagrau, Korginau was his betrothed. She stood close to the water's edge, her feet, in their tall summer torbasses of bleached nerpa skin, almost touching the surf, atop a scattering of krill and looped, darkened strands of sun-dried seaweed.

The last moments of the approach to shore are always the longest, stretching out ahead like an uncured hide thong.

Now, finally, the nose of the boat touched the beach, its bottom hissing against the shingle. Mlatangin leaped ashore, splashing his high hunting torbasses. Although none of the greeters had been present at the hunt, all understood that he, Mlatangin, son of Tynemlen, had been the first to harpoon the sea giant. This was implied by the boat's place at the head of the line and in the fact that Mlatangin was the first ashore.

They needed the aid of neighbors to pull the kill out of the sea. These were the inhabitants of Keniskun, a small settlement on the southern side of the peninsula, and the Inchoun people who lived to the northwest. The Aivanalin of Nuvuken also hurried to help.

The trussed-up whale was rolled to shore by pulling on the hide thongs that girded it around. Then they set to butchering the carcass with long, wood-handled knives. It had been a long time since any of those present had tasted such delicacies, so both the villagers and their guests were slicing the
itgil'gyn into neat squares to gobble on the spot. They chewed slowly, savoring the taste and texture of the life-giving, refreshing whale blubber that slid down their throats and into their bellies. The children, faces smeared with blood and blubber, capered along the shore, scaring the dogs and the seagulls, which were also circling for their share of the kill.

The bloody, bony carcass was slowly coming into sight, along with the giant animal's organs – intestines, stomach, the dark brown liver, the heart, all of which were crisscrossed with blood vessels and ribbons of fat. Three of the men climbed onto the tongue and hacked it off with difficulty, then hauled it away from the head. Carefully they peeled the dark baleen plates from the jaws. These immediately went to the children, as there was a special kind of blubber that glistened from between the whiskers, sweetish and tasty. Whalebone was highly prized on the Chukotka Peninsula. It was used to make thin fishing lines that never became hoary with frost, sled runners, ladles, the netting that was wrapped around snowshoes, and also for precision tools.

Mlatangin labored alongside his comrades, cutting out neat squares of blubber and stacking them with the rest, peeling off whalebone. He did not feel fatigued; on the contrary, his excitement at making his first kill perfectly seemed to grow as more and more people learned about it. From time to time he caught a warm, keen glance from Korginau and his heart melted with tenderness.

By the time the sun had climbed over the Inchoun promontory and was preparing to sink beneath the cold ocean waters, all that was left of the whale was a bony carcass with ragged bits of flesh and blubber. Now it belonged to the birds and the dogs.

Mlatangin changed his clothes. His mother handed him a new summer
kukhlianka, meant to be worn against the skin, a pair of nerpa-skin pants, and low torbasses with wide, bleached nerpa-skin laces.

He and his father headed for the klegran, which was already ringing with song and the rhythmical jangling of tambourines. The people of Uelen crowded around the yaranga. Not everyone was allowed inside the sacred building before the ritual had come to an end.

The shaman Kalyantagrau rose from a whale vertebra to greet them. In his left hand he held an astonishingly black wooden vessel. Dipping his right index finger into the coagulated whale blood, Kalyantagrau drew a few lines on the young hunter's face. One lay across his brow, two marked each cheek, and three his chin. Then the shaman cut a strand of the young man's hair and dropped it into the whale blood. He upended the contents of the vessel over the stoked-up fire and the yaranga filled with an acrid smoke, making the men inside cough and choke and their eyes water.

Accenting each word by beating a springy whalebone baton against a tambourine, Kalyantagrau began to sing:

Mlatangin had heard the song before. This time it was addressed to him.

Only when the ritual was over was everyone allowed inside the klegran yaranga, and then the joyous dances in honor of the summer's first whale began.

 

The whales were migrating, swimming ever farther away from the shores of the Chukchi Peninsula. And Mlatangin, in his new role as Steersman, directed the skin boats ever farther out from their native shingled beach. Sometimes they spent several days on the open ocean. The herds of the marine giants were heading northwest, curving around the eastern banks of Rochgyn, the Other Land. It was as though the Aivanalin, who lived in small villages scattered along the low islands along the shore, were taking up the whale hunt in relay.

Now the men of Uelen hunted young walrus, whose tender ruddy flesh was considered a rare delicacy. The nomadic chauchu liked it well, and were willing to trade for it with deer meat, soft fawn skins, and thin deer hides best suited for winter clothes.

 

The light of day caught up with Mlatangin's hunting boat in the Irvytgyr Strait, between the islands of Imeklin and Inetlin. In the bow of the boat was a special contraption to hold a brazier, over which a kettle was always kept
warm. The hunters breakfasted on cold walrus meat, boiled the previous night on the beach.

Every now and again a whale herd would pass by, but the hunters did not give chase; even if they had managed to harpoon one, they could never have finished it off without more boats and men, nor towed it back to the Uelen beach.

“Look ahead! What is that thing?” And the hunter sitting at the boat's fore gestured toward the dark stripe that separated sea from sky.

He was pointing to what seemed like a floating island, swathed around with a multitude of white wings.

“It's a hairmouths' ship!” Mlatangin guessed, and was right.

The wing sails took up the whole upper portion of the vessel. The hairmouths appeared to be hunting whale.

Mlatangin hesitated. Should they hasten away from the strangers' ship, or approach to get a look at how they went after the ocean giants? Curiosity prevailed, and he gave an order for the men to row quietly toward the ship.

There came a loud bang, like a walrus stomach inflated to bursting as it hung to dry, and then a little white cloud that dissipated in an instant. Now they could see three babies separate from the much larger ship.

Mlatangin's boat came to a halt. He had decided it was too dangerous to get too close to the strangers.

The hairmouths proceeded to harpoon their whale, then dispatched him with some sort of deathly contraption and drew a long hose of intestine up to the carcass, which then remained afloat. It wasn't hard to guess that they were forcing air down the intestine and filling up the whale like a gigantic pyh-pyh.