The Chukchi Bible (27 page)

The American muttered something in his own language, likely some strong swear words.

The visitors departed on the following morning, without a single deer. Deep inside, Mletkin felt a kind of sympathy for them, but Rentyrgin was right and there was nothing else to be done.

Having seen the sleds on their way, Mletkin returned to the yaranga. Yanko had gone out to watch the herds, fulfilling his obligations as a suitor. His hard work and diligence was to be the proof of his worthiness to be Givivneu's husband.

Rentyrgin treated Mletkin with respect, welcoming him as was befitting
a famed shaman, word of whom had reached even the farthest corners of the tundra.

“Yanko ought to leave here!” said Mletkin.

“But he's working out his bride-price,” objected his host.

“Givivneu is promised to me.”

“She promised you
herself
, without my approval. You know that the word of a maid means nothing if it is not endorsed by her father,” Rentyrgin said.

“It's my fault, and I should have asked you earlier. But I'd like to rectify that mistake now.”

Mletkin bowed his head. Though a shaman, he was much younger than Rentyrgin, and though he was an honored one, he was still a guest in the older man's camp.

“If I was in no hurry, it's only because I thought she had yet to grow and grow.”

“Women grow up fast,” said Rentyrgin. Then added: “There's been many an eye cast on Givivneu, and Yanko proved the quickest off the mark. He's lived in my yaranga for more than half a year now.”

“And sleeps separately, I hope?”

“He tried to lie with Givivneu once, but my daughter was firm: she told him there'd be nothing of the sort until he'd worked the term in full.”

“Let him leave the camp as soon as possible.”

“Would you like to stay in his place?”

It would have been good to stay in a deer-person's yaranga. But Mletkin could not allow himself that comfort. There was much in life that was mysterious, much he had not yet experienced. Most of all, he had not yet had a chance to see how the Tangitans lived, to learn about their habits and
customs – the way that Bogoraz Tan, the man whom the Luoravetlan called Veyip, the Writing Man, had studied Mletkin's people.

“I can't offer to work for my bride, but I hope you will give her to me all the same,” Mletkin said firmly. “I'll come back for her.”

“So she's to be on her own all this time?” asked Rentyrgin.

“She promised to wait for me. And she will, no matter how long it takes.”

The former suitor spent the night in the guest chottagin, which was still unpacked, while Mletkin took his place near Givivneu. Love between two Luoravetlan has no words. It is silent and beautiful, like falling darkness over a deer herder's camp, a shimmering night of aurora flares, the night of myriad stars that pale beside a dazzling moon.

On the following morning, Yanko harnessed his sled pack and hurried away to the south, and Mletkin headed back toward Uelen.

Givivneu stood beside the yaranga to see him off, her future husband – though perhaps in truth they were married already.

Archaeological findings testify that whaling is an ancient trade on the Chukotka Peninsula. Temples – colonnades of whale jaws and ribs erected on Yttigran Island and dotted along the shores of the peninsula – bear silent testament to the people's memory of the marine giants' crucial role in Luoravetlan and Aivanalin lives. The pyramids of bleached whale skulls piled atop beachheads and promontories served as a kind of beacon for the ancient mariners. Ancient legends tell of the close blood ties between the Ankalin and the whales, and the Luoravetlan marine hunters are directly descended from Reu the Whale and the legendary first woman, Nau.

And how could the Luoravetlan not revere the gargantuan beasts?! The kill of a single lygireu – or “true whale” – as the locals called the Greenland whale, the giant that is known to the world as a blue whale – would provide Uelen with blubber for eating and for warming their fur-lined pologs, as well as nutritious whale meat and itgil'gyn over an entire winter. Quite apart from native legends, scientific data confirm that for the shore dwellers of the Chukotka Peninsula, famine and disease were rare occurrences, the natives of remarkably sound health. This did not escape the notice of the first Europeans to encounter them. A steady food supply allowed time for
creative endeavor. A hungry people, constantly struggling for survival, could not have created either the masterpieces that served as decoration for tools, clothing, and household goods, or the highly artistic oral tradition, characterized by soaring imagination and deep wisdom that was lovingly passed from generation to generation.

The hungry times and the decimating epidemics arrived with the Europeans.

In large part this was due to commercial whaling and the rapacious destruction of the walrus herds and breeding grounds – which began in the second part of the nineteenth century, from 1835 or so, when Barzilay Folger, captain of the whaler
Granges
, sent news of plenteous whale pods in the waters off the Bering Strait. This at a time when whale blubber was in high demand for street lighting in large cities, and whalebone indispensable for fashionable ladies' stays and crinolines.

From 1845 on, there might be 250 whaling ships in the northern part of the Bering Sea in a single season. Even the ice fields did not deter the greedy blubber and whalebone traders. In the decade between 1840 and 1850, New England whalers alone slaughtered thousands of Greenland whales.

It was in 1845 that the first American whaler, the
Superior
, sailed through the Bering Strait and into the Sea of Chukotka itself. Other vessels soon followed.

At the peak of the whaling industry, whalebone fetched up to five dollars a pound, and baleen plates from a single whale could net upward of seventeen thousand dollars. The blubber was rendered on the spot, in gigantic vats that rested on deck in fireproof brick cradles.

The walrus herds of the Bering and Chukotka seas were similarly disposed of. A walrus would be stripped of its tusks and blubber; the rest of the
carcass was simply thrown overboard. The skinned, headless hulks would wash up to rot along the beaches, at times for miles on end. It has been estimated that eighty-five thousand walrus were killed to make fifty thousand barrels of blubber between 1869 and 1874 alone. Altogether, in the last hundred years or so, white hunters have exterminated two to three million of these creatures, helpless as they were against human cruelty.

The natives continued to hunt by traditional means. Silence would descend over a shore village as soon as the first whales were sighted. Uelen's sled dogs would be removed to the southern end of the lagoon, people were careful to speak quietly, and not to let metal implements clink together. They carried squalling infants inside the fur-lined pologs. Open fires were forbidden and people had to make do with cold or dried meat.

Each morning, Mletkin would climb the Crag to observe the horizon from his perch using a pair of binoculars, for which he'd traded ten bundles of whalebone the previous summer. He was itching to dismantle the instrument and learn for himself the magical means of bringing objects closer, but he was also fearful of spoiling the wondrous mechanism inside. Lowering the lenses from his face, he'd gaze at the skin boats beached on the shore in anticipation, their sails and oars at the ready. If there should be no wind, it would take hard rowing to give a whale chase. But today a fresh southerly wind prevailed, just the right strength for a whale hunt.

 

A ship on the horizon suddenly pricked Mletkin's keen gaze. From this distance it looked like a white bird, its many wings stretched low over the water. In the stillness of the sea air Mletkin heard the thunderclaps of harpoon cannon very clearly; the hairmouths were at work. The large ship would be carrying up to six smaller vessels, each about the size of a canoe,
which hung strapped to its sides like the young of this strange species. The hairmouths did not harpoon from the mother ship, but closed in on their prey using these little boats.

The ship, its full sails stretched tight in the wind, made a silent approach. It dropped anchor and the men on deck lowered a dinghy. There were eight men inside, one of them different in appearance from his shipmates. He shouted: “We come in peace! We want to trade!”

The man turned out to be a native of Unyyin, an Aivanalin village situated on a land spit in the southern part of the Chukotka Peninsula. It was also home to the luckiest and most skilled whale hunters.

“This is my second season with this ship,” Panliu informed Mletkin. “Spent last winter on Alaska. That's where I learned to speak American.”

The tambourines inside the klegran yaranga now fell silent and everyone poured out onto the beach. The Tangitan men made an immediate dash for the women, their frank wide gestures a clear indication of their desire for closer acquaintanceship. They must have had the experience before, as many had brought along little bribes: sewing kits, bright ribbons, patterned kerchiefs. Others came ashore carrying bottles of fire-water. They treated the villagers to a sip from the bottle, but for anything more, they demanded compensation: sable and fox pelts, chamois-soft fawn skins, walrus tusk, bone-carved figurines of seal, walrus, lakhtak, polar bears, and deer. The small clearing before the klegran yaranga turned into a market square. Couples would disappear inside yarangas, the women emerging later in high spirits, if unsteady on their feet.

The captain of the
Belvedere
and Panliu the interpreter stayed sober and managed to hold a serious conversation with Mletkin amid the noise and chaos. The subject of their discussion was the whalebone that had been
stripped from a recent kill, which, according to ancient custom, rightfully belonged to the head boatman, the
ytvermechyn
– literally, “boat-boss.”

The captain was offering two Winchesters with cartridges, four rolls of white cloth, a copper set of plate, a trunk of variously sized nails, a carpenter's plane, and a handsaw. The price suited Mletkin, and the trade culminated with copious tea drinking and the breaking open of a large dark bottle of fire-water in Tynemlen's yaranga.

Mletkin listened attentively to Panliu's stories of service on the Tangitan ship, about last year's wintering at Port Clarence among several dozen icebound ships, and what people who suddenly had many hours of leisure on their hands had found to amuse themselves.

“They even tried to teach me to read and write,” Panliu recounted, “but I refused: what use do I have for such learning? We don't have a single book back at home in Unyyin. I did learn to play cards, and I often won. But I spent everything on fire-water. It's very dear when you're in port for the winter, and there were people who gave their last possessions for a sip of it.”

Mletkin was no stranger to the magical brew. The fire ran swiftly down your body and spread its warmth through your very sinews. Then your limbs went numb, and what followed was a strange kind of excitement. It was as though you were suddenly stronger, and your thoughts fluttered about your head, each more fanciful than the one before. Everything seemed possible, effortless. Cherished dreams were achievable and long distances became easy to cross. Under the influence of the fire-water, men sometimes hitched up their sleds and set off on long journeys. There were known cases already of drunk men freezing, stupefied, their hungry dogs bringing home a sled with a stiff, gnawed-on corpse atop it. Mletkin distrusted the artificial clarity of thought that the drink produced, and stopped drinking as soon as he
reached that point. But most of his countrymen would drink until they lost all faculties, and their memory besides. The women imbibed somewhat less than the men, though an unquenchable thirst for the fire-water suppressed all sense of shame, and they would give themselves to any who could offer so much as a mouthful of the magical liquid.

“The captain promised to repay me with one of the whaleboats,” Panliu boasted. “One side's been holed by a walrus, but it's easy enough to fix. I might get to be the first man of these shores with his own wooden whaleboat. I just need to find a man who can replace me.”

The last traces of inebriation vanished from Mletkin's mind. Cautiously, he inquired whether the captain might not take him? He was an unmarried man, strong and hale, a steady hand with a harpoon when it came to whale or walrus, a good shot, too. The only thing was, he didn't know American speech . . .

“Oh, that you can learn! That's the easiest thing! Hardest is getting used to being away from your home . . .”

Apprised of Mletkin's wish, the captain looked him up and down appraisingly, then clapped him on the shoulder: