The Chukchi Bible (26 page)

Mletkin watched the Russian shaman with growing fascination. He wanted to join the argument, to explain to his unfortunate countryman that the gods never answer a direct request or give instant gratification. They look down from on high the same way a man looks down on the insects swarming at his feet, and to them he, Ruptyn, is as insignificant as a mosquito, flea, or fly. And if they do come down from the heavens, it is not in any perceivable way. The assertion made in the Russian shaman's book about God creating man in his own image was very suspect. If it were so, God ought to have given man even a small part of His power.

“Does anyone else want to be baptized?” The wretched blind man had subsided into silent weeping, and Dyakov now addressed the others who were present. “Everyone taking the Tangitan faith gets one of these crucifixes and a white shirt.”

Dyakov displayed the gifts, holding the shirt aloft in one outstretched hand and the stringed crucifix in the other.

“If you wore this white shirt over your bare skin, just under the fur-lined kukhlianka,” the clever Gal'mo mused thoughtfully, “you could see a louse as easily as a crow on new snow. And the crucifix would make a nice fishing hook.”

Eventually any cloth shirt became known in common Chukchi parlance as
mychykvyn
, meaning “louse trap.” The crucifix did not take, and although
many Luoravetlan came by several crucifixes apiece, caving in to pressure from the visiting Russian shamans to be baptized, they all ended up as fishing hooks.

But on that day, not one of Uelen's denizens – barring the old blind man – converted to the Orthodox faith.

In the evening they gathered in Gal'mo's yaranga to discuss the Russian shaman's words. First they thoroughly sifted through the Biblical version of the creation of Earth, Sky, the animals, and the first people, Adam and Eve.

“I wouldn't mind eternal heat,” Pananto, a notable seducer of Uelen's women, thoughtfully confided.

“You've already ensured yourself a place in the warmest part of the afterlife,” someone joked.

The talk then moved to the Sermon on the Mount, and there was sincere astonishment that the unbreakable tenets of human life, the rules by which the people of Uelen had always lived, were known to the Tangitan God as well.

Mletkin himself had been taken aback. Naturally, the Tangitan faith had been created for a different race, whose lands, language, and customs were not like those of the Chukchi. But the basics of Tangitan life were not dissimilar from those of the Chukchi. They procreated the same way as the Luoravetlan and their neighboring peoples did, they laughed and cried, ate and drank, suffered from cold and enjoyed melting warmth, they took obvious pleasure in rich food and plenty of it. In their bodily habits, it was thus apparent, they did not differ from the inhabitants of the Chukchi Peninsula. But spiritually and in matters of belief these people were entirely different. They seemed to be totally unaware of the Luoravetlan first principles, the
knowledge that each act of nature, each mountain, river, sea, valley, animal and bird, the creatures of the deep, the fish, the creatures that galloped and flew and crawled over the tundra, and even objects wrought by man, had an invisible, imperceptible dimension – the kel'eht, spirits whose presence only the receptive soul of a shaman, one Inspired from Above, could sense. This other, unseen population of the earth, which had a great impact on mankind, seemed wholly unrecognized and unacknowledged by the Russian shamans.

Not one of Uelen's people converted, and neither the cloth louse traps nor the metallic crucifixes could tempt them.

 

Father Veniamin left at sunrise, just as the red disc of the winter sun rose over the horizon. Mletkin did his best to console the Russian shaman, wishing him better luck in seeding the Russian faith among the other villages, a scattering of which trailed west from Irvytgyr along the coast of the Arctic Ocean.

No sooner had talk of Father Veniamin's visit died down than four dog teams crested the hills from the direction of Keniskun and, transversing the lagoon, climbed up the shingled spit and came to a halt beside the snowed-in yarangas.

The convoy was composed of six sleds harnessed to strong, resilient Anadyr huskies. When the guests had been warmed and fed, they revealed that they had wandered the tundra since autumn, having met the first of the winter snows on the banks of the great Chukchi River. The Americans intended to purchase some deer to send back to their homeland, which did not have domesticated deer, the following summer.

Mletkin thought of the ancient legend of his ancestor Mlakoran, who had
taken the first herds by force and begun keeping deer in the empty tundra plains of the Chukchi Peninsula. The raiding of the Kaaramkyn and the Chukchi's near relations, the Koryaks, continued for so long that most of the tales of Chukchi fighting strength were devoted to these plundering sallies. During the reign of Catherine II the complaints of neighboring tribes finally reached the Sun Sovereign. Once she had ascertained that the warlike deer thieves were not to be subdued by force, the wise empress initiated talks through her representatives. As a result of these talks, a special law recognized the right of the Chukchi to live according to their ancient customs and relieved them from paying the tribute that had been levied on all their neighboring tribes. In return the Chukchi promised to make no more war upon the Koryaks. At any rate, by that time deer husbandry had spread widely across Chukotka, and the herds belonging to the nomadic tundra Luoravetlan far outnumbered those of the Koryaks and the Kaaramkyn. The need for raiding subsided, though the Chukchi held fast to the agreements made with Catherine the Great, and all subsequent attempts to limit their freedoms and saddle them with foreign customs and beliefs were vigorously rejected.

In the Americans, Mletkin discerned a different breed from the Russians. He saw people who were decisive, relentless in the pursuit of their goals. Their voices – loud and ringing – matched their appearance. Their motley garb, made of deerskins from the autumn cull, suggested that these were people who knew the value of things and treated their clothes with care. Gingerly pulling their kukhliankas over their heads, the visitors turned out to be wearing woollen sweaters underneath.

The chief American, distinguishing Mletkin in the gloom of the chottagin, addressed the young shaman.

“Do you speak English?”

“No,” Mletkin replied, “but I know Russian.”

The Americans did not speak Russian, and so they had to speak through the interpreters. One translated into Russian, which Mletkin understood, and the others needed a second translation, from Russian to Chukchi. The two interpreters worked so hard they barely had a chance to partake of the meal.

Normally, in winter food is cooked inside the polog, in a cauldron hung above a stone brazier – but in order to feed so many guests they'd had to make a fire in the chottagin, using a supply of last year's firewood hastily dug out from under the snow.

The idea of starting up deer herding among the Alaskan Eskimos was the brainchild of the famed American preacher and missionary Sheldon Jackson. He had spent several years among the most remote camps and smallest islands of the Alaskan Eskimos, not just preaching God's word but closely observing the aboriginal way of life. As everywhere among Arctic marine hunting communities there were lean, famine years – especially after the native seas had been colonized by whaling armadas, ships that went after whales, yes, but also exterminated any other living thing they came across. In a matter of years the multitudinous whale and walrus herds of the Bering Strait were greatly diminished.

The Americans were driving across Chukotka in order to buy some deer come spring, and transport them to Alaska.

“If we can manage to fulfill Sheldon Jackson's plans, our Eskimos will have a guarantee against famine and the capricious seas,” explained the Americans.

“Deer herding only seems straightforward,” Mletkin demurred. “In
reality it's a hard job. My ancestors, who began deer husbandry, also looked at the Kaaramkyn and the Koryaks with envy, thinking: aren't they lucky, to have the four-legged food circling their yarangas. But if a hunter can't go out in foul weather, for a deer herder that's exactly the time he needs to be out with his deer, to keep them from harm.”

“We've heard all this from the opponents of domesticated deer herding in Alaska,” the chief of the Americans objected. “But we are certain that deer herding will save our Eskimos.”

“Maybe better just to ask the Tangitan whalers to stop hunting in Alaskan waters?” said Mletkin.

“Now there's a hopeless task!” the American gestured dismissively. “Why don't you tell me why the Chukchi refuse to sell us their deer? I'm offering enormous sums for a single animal. They refuse. They're afraid. What are they afraid of? Don't they cull many more reindeer throughout the year? What's the difference between losing a dead animal and losing a living one?”

While living in Rentyrgin's camp, Mletkin had seen how much the deer meant to the tundra chauchu. The killing of reindeer was strictly circumscribed by rituals, which also applied to the animal's remains, the stripped bones, the skull and antlers. There was no question of giving away a live animal, much less of selling one. Every so often they exchanged deer with other tribes, to improve the breed, or even gave them as gifts; but to sell them, and into a foreign land at that . . . This was seen as a great sin with heavy consequences, epidemics among people or deer, or wolf attacks, since wolves were a favorite guise of the
kel'eht
, the evil spirits.

Mletkin had a hard time making the Americans understand his tundra kinsmen's reluctance. But he agreed to accompany the visitors to Rentyrgin's
camp. It was an unexpected opportunity to see Givivneu, to whom his thoughts turned more and more frequently. Eyes glowing like embers in a pure pale face, and a lofty forehead, like the slope of a snowy hill.

 

Reining in his dogs by the side of the yaranga Mletkin saw her, Givivneu, walking out to meet him. The young woman glanced at him, then lowered her eyes. A sleep-rumpled youth clad only in his under-kukhlianka appeared in the doorway behind her. White deer hair glinted in his own black mane.

“Where's your father?” Mletkin asked Givivneu pointedly. The sight of the young man, staring at him as he scratched himself with a surreptitious hand, was producing an unfamiliar, unpleasant sensation. He suddenly imagined the youth pressing close against Givivneu in the thick, impenetrable darkness of the yaranga, running an impatient hand over her body, with her parents barely asleep. Not bothering to conceal his dipleasure, Mletkin addressed the young man brusquely: “So who are you, then?”

“A suitor!” came the obviously pleased reply. The young man grinned widely, revealing rows of white, shiny teeth. “I've got another half-year to go, working out the bride-price. My name is Yanko. My people come from Kurupkan.”

He cast a tender look at Givivneu and Mletkin was swamped by a wave of bestial jealousy. It took all his self-control not to lunge at the young man.

He allowed himself a quiet reproach to Givivneu: “Didn't you promise to wait for me?”

“He came of his own will. But I haven't accepted him yet . . .”

The herders rushed back to camp, and the camp master with them.

The dogs sensed the herd's proximity and strained wildly against their harnesses.

“I'm glad to see you in our camp again,” Rentyrgin told Mletkin. “How you've grown!”

They had left questions and serious talk until after the guests had been fed and warmed up after their journey.

Rentyrgin had much to complain about.

“The wolves are getting to me. I can't remember such a number ever born in one season. Something strange is happening to our land. The hairmouths were hunting whale by Raupelyan all summer. Some of the ships had fire-breathing machines in their bellies, and could give chase to the fastest of the whales. There were days the sea was blood red from shore to horizon. These hairmouths, they'll empty our waters yet.”

“And now they want our deer, too,” Mletkin quietly confided. “Those over there,” he threw a subtle flick of the chin toward the Americans who were busy smashing deer leg bones with their knife-butts and skillfully extracting pinkish-white bone marrow, “have been driving around the camps since autumn, offering a heap of goods in exchange for a single animal.”

“I've heard of this,” admitted Rentyrgin. “All the chauchu I know have refused them. We'll give them as many dead deer as they can take away on their sleds, but not a single live animal, no!”

When he discovered that this camp, too, was refusing to sell, the chief American flew into a red-faced rage. The interpreters could barely keep up with his rapid, angry speech:

“Why don't you want to help your tribesmen across the Bering Strait?
We're not asking for the animals as a gift. No one has ever offered you such prices, never in your lives. Don't you know that?”

Rentyrgin was silent for a time, slowly stoking his pipe, which contained the visitors' gift of aromatic tobacco.

“We know the worth of the goods you offer for the deer. And we know what a deer is worth – a dead deer, whose meat is for the cooking pot and whose hide will go for clothing, tendons for thread, and antler for tools. We've performed the sacred rituals over it, spoken the incantations, anointed the earth with its blood in four directions. We can sell as many of those deer as you like. But a live deer we cannot sell, nor give away. It's impossible.”

“But why?” persisted the American.

“Because each deer is a part of our lives,” the camp's master answered him. “Can a man sell a piece of his motherland? Sell a mountain, or a river, or an island? Can a man sell a piece of his body? An arm or leg, a chunk of his belly? Even for the highest price? No, he cannot! Or he will cease to be a human being. Cease to be a Luoravetlan.” Rentyrgin's concluding words rang grave and clear.