The Chukchi Bible (32 page)

As they neared Chicago they saw the city lights fire the horizon, as though a nighttime sun had been ignited and raised by men to replace the vanishing sun of day.

For the time being, the living exhibits of the World's Fair were quartered in an old army barracks. At the fairgrounds, inside a gigantic square walled in with timber, workmen were raising huts, yurts, yarangas, and wigwams. No sooner was a dwelling finished than its corresponding occupant was moved in. The sun-loving denizens of Africa were the first to leave the barracks. Then the Asians went, and then the aboriginal dwellers of the Kuril Islands. The Japanese were most comfortably housed of all: their homes were exceptionally neat, cozy, and elegant. The little Japanese gardens featured gurgling streams and goldfish flickering in ornamental ponds.

Mletkin was the last man left in the barracks.

Ales Hrdlicka told him, rather guiltily, that they had not managed to find him a wife.

Mletkin was bemused:

“What wife?”

“You see, in order to make it more natural, more real, it would be nice to have family life going on in the yaranga. One kind on the one side of the velvet rope that will separate the exhibits from the public, and the other on the other, so to say . . . So the public can compare, and think about it, and have their curiosity stoked.”

Evidently, the yaranga had been purchased, or else raided, from some shore village. Maybe its inhabitants had been treated the same way as the poor villagers of Guvrel, in Emma Bay. The sailors would have rolled a cask of rum or whiskey ashore, gone away for a short while, and then, when they were sure that the natives were senseless with drink or asleep, would have rowed back to shore and dismantled a yaranga, whose inhabitants would then have woken up homeless. No Chukcha would part with his home willingly; it was inconceivable, tantamount to giving away your very life. Or perhaps they had taken the yaranga from some village destroyed by famine?

Mletkin had a look around the yaranga from the outside. Everything was genuine, down to the walrus hides and the thongs that were wound around the roof, to tether it to the tent poles. Even the large stones that held the straps firmly to the ground seemed authentic, and smooth from long use. The entrance was concealed by a flap of hardened walrus hide, and the chottagin was brightly lit, warm sunlight streaming through its central smokehole. The inside was achingly familiar: wooden casks of stores ranged by the walls, proper hunting gear hanging on the walls, whale vertebra stools set upon the earthen floor, along with a low table bearing a long wooden dish and woman's knife, called a
pekul
. But when Mletkin raised the fur-lined curtain of the polog, he suddenly perceived death, like an exhalation from within, despite the sleeping chamber having been immaculately swept and the new, freshly laid deer-hide bedding.

“Someone died here,” Mletkin told Hrdlička.

“But how could you know that?” asked the astonished scientist.

“I can sense the presence of death at a distance, and can even forsee it,” Mletkin replied.

This gave Hrdlička some food for thought. Frankly, this was exactly what
he'd been hoping for from this exhibit – a real, live, practicing shaman of Uelen!

“Well, and even so! You needn't worry. We've disinfected the dwelling so thoroughly there can't be a trace of disease left, you can be sure of it.”

From his experience working at the hospital in Nome, Mletkin knew that the Tangitans did indeed have ways and means of getting rid of bacteria. He imagined the bacteria as a sort of minuscule people, not unlike the rekken, the tiny manikins, invisible to the naked eye, who carried diseases around on sleds drawn by equally minuscule dogs. The yaranga reeked of disinfectant.

They had already erected a sign by the yaranga's door flap. It announced: “The Chukcha Mletkin, also called Frank. Thirty years of age. A Siberian shaman from the Eastern promontory of the Bering Strait. Posessor of Magic Powers, Master of the Spirits. Shamanic séances from 15:00 daily, except weekends. Entry fee applies (not included in fair ticket).”

Mletkin read the notice carefully, then turned to Hrdlicka:

“I can't trance-walk here.”

“You'll be paid an additional sum. A fair amount.”

“Where will I get my shaman's robes? Not to mention the drum.”

“You'll have everything you need!” Hrdlicka was smiling cheerfully. “My Russian friend Vladimir Bogoraz is bringing everything over tomorrow.”

“You mean Veyip?” Mletkin said incredulously.

“What did you call him?”

“That's what we called him,” Mletkin explained. “He knows our language, our customs. He was the one that taught me the Russian speech and writing. I first read the Bible with his help.”

“Truly, O Lord, you work in mysterious ways!” Hrdlicka jokingly
raised his arms to the sky, though Mletkin reckoned the scientist probably belonged to the atheist tribe, whose men denied the existence of God. “A shaman of Chukotka who reads the Bible! That will cause a real sensation! I think you'll be the most popular exhibit at the fair.”

But there were a great many wonders besides Mletkin to be seen at the Chicago World's Fair. He spent the day before the official opening wandering around the huge grassy field that stretched along the lakeside, getting to know the other inhabitants of the world village. Astonishing, that the artificial village showed every sign of being a permanent settlement – at any rate, life was in full flow within the wigwams and yurts, the huts of mud and bamboo. The two men who sat beside a conical, chamois-draped dwelling, clad in bright garments, pointy caps with long tassels (despite the heat), and equally pointy footwear, watching several grazing deer, might have walked straight off a playing card. “A Lapland family from the North of Norway,” heralded the sign that hung on the customary rope enclosing the exhibit. The fair's organizers had settled their wards on geographic principles. The Laplanders had the Nene people of Russia for neighbors, and next door to the latter an Aleutian family from the Commodores, then some Kamchatkan Koryaks . . . More exotic peoples followed. Judging from the number of children darting to and fro, most of the living exhibits had been brought over with their families. Among the children's cries and the shrilling of the women, several dwellings rang with song, often accompanied by strange and unfamiliar musical instruments. Mletkin stood awhile beside a hut roofed with palm leaves. From one of the ubiquitous signs he learned that its inhabitant was a Stone Age Indian from the island of Borneo. And in truth, the man – his skin as black as a Greenland whale's, naked but for a grass loincloth, bone shards piercing his lips and cheeks, and enormous
ornaments dangling from his distended earlobes – was an imposing sight. Not long ago Mletkin's own ancestors wore similar ornaments, but of walrus tusk rather than bone. Peering intently at the Borneo aboriginal, Mletkin suddenly met the other man's stare – and the savage gave him a wink with a huge, soulful black eye!

Mletkin marveled at the variety of the human tribes. On the other hand, it was evident that on the whole those represented here were materially the same as the Tangitans who wandered around putting the finishing touches on the village, and the hundreds of thousands, even millions, who lived outside the fair's periphery. Why then among the cane and bamboo huts, among dwellings covered by palm leaves, the wigwams and yurts, the yarangas and
nynliu
, were there no white men's houses? Clearly, they held themselves apart from the rest of humanity, or at least from the part that was inhabiting the village, emphasizing their superiority to the Chukchi, the Eskimos, the Indians, Malaysians, Africans, Aleutians, and all those who tomorrow would be the subject of wonder, curiosity, or perhaps disdain, on the part of the fair's visitors. If only it wasn't for the need of money! Those colorful bits of paper and metallic chips had a limitless power among the Tangitans. All those who came to the Bering and the Chukchi Seas to exterminate whales did their bloody trade for money, froze and perished among the ice floes for the love of those papers and chips, for greed to possess ever more of them. As Mletkin understood it, in the Tangitans' world a man's worth was not measured by his physical strength or mental agility, his knowledge, wisdom, or skill, but by how many of the papers and chips he owned.

Veyip arrived on the day before the grand opening. He was visibly pleased to see his Chukchi friend.

Although he looked much the same as all the other Tangitans in a crowd,
there was something in him that was unique to himself. That, and the plain, unaffected way he treated Mletkin and the other living exhibits. He was hungry for news from the shores of the Bering Strait, and spoke Mletkin's native tongue with undisguised delight. Hrdlička looked on with an envious smirk.

“You know, Vladimir, when you speak Chukchi you start to look like a Siberian aboriginal. Maybe we should stand you next to Mletkin as a fellow exhibit!”

“Why not?” Bogoraz said cheerily, not rising to the bait. “We'll do some trance-walking together yet!”

The shaman's garb which he'd brought turned out to be ancient and fragile. Gingerly, Mletkin shook it out and hung it inside the yaranga, whose inner room housed three stone braziers. The tambourine was in great shape, though, large and taut where the walrus stomach stretched over the frame. Mletkin wetted the dry skin thoroughly in preparation.

Very early the following morning, about an hour before the opening ceremony, they brought meat on a long wooden dish.

“Don't eat it now,” warned Hrdlička. “You can start when the visitors begin to go past. Try to keep to the raw stuff.”

The opening ceremony, which was attended by some very important personages – the state governor and President Theodore Roosevelt himself – took place at the fair's main square, which was home to the wigwams of America's own indigenous peoples, the Indians. Bedecked in feathers and armed with spears and tall staffs, whose long ribbons flapped about in the breeze, these Native Americans stood out sharply from the multitudinous crowd bubbling within the confines of the square. First there were speeches, and their garbled, undecipherable echoes reached Mletkin in his enclosure.
The speeches were often interrupted by approving shouts, and earsplitting whistles from the spectators, as well as the thundering drums and screeching war cries from the Indians.

Finally the speeches were finished and the crowd streamed down and into the vast campgrounds. The hum of it was now approaching Mletkin, photographers' lightbulbs flashing here and there like lightning. The drums started up again, somewhere off to the side.

On the instructions of Bogoraz, Mletkin had been dressed in his shamanic garments since morning. But the clothing that was quite comfortable in the perennially cool sea breeze off Uelen's coastline was woefully inappropriate here in Chicago. Mletkin was sweating buckets, his wet cloth undershirt glued to his streaming back on the one side, and to the chamois underside of his kukhlianka on the other. Runnels of sweat poured down his legs into his fur-lined torbasses, which were now as wet as if he'd been walking through flooded tundra. Sweat ran down into his eyes and every so often Mletkin had to wipe his brow with a small towel he'd been allotted for that purpose. The bone handle of his shaman's tambourine felt slippery in his moist grip.

The photographers got to him first, momentarily blinding him with their magnesium flash flares. Then Bogoraz and Hrdlicka came to stand beside him.

“Mr. President, Mr. Governor!” AleÅ¡ Hrdlička addressed the important guests ceremonially. “Before you stands our closest neighbor across the Bering Strait, a practicing shaman from the Eastern seaboard of Chukotka, or more specifically from the village of Uelen. I give you Mletkin!”

The president walked up to Mletkin and surprised everyone by extending his hand and saying:

“How do you do, Mr. Mletkin.”

“How do you do, Mr. President,” Mletkin replied in kind.

“So you speak English?” The president glanced over his shoulder for an explanation. “But how can that be? I was told that you were a savage!”

Bogoraz jumped in:

“Mletkin is an unusual person, back where he comes from. He's a sort of repository of wisdom for his tribe . . . He's their scientific center, their weather bureau . . . their, mmm, National Geographic Society, so to say, and a host of other things . . .”

“But can he do this shaman business?” asked the governor. “That's the key thing in his line of work, is it not?”

Never in all his long life had Mletkin felt so humiliated. Even Bogoraz, who was a good friend, stood firmly beyond that invisible rope that separated the living exhibits of the World's Fair from the rest of their fellow humanity. Bogoraz was a white man, a Tangitan, and the way he treated Mletkin, even the extent of his friendliness, was predicated on his being of a fundamentally different race of people.