The Chukchi Bible (4 page)

In early spring, when the snow was still packed densely enough to hold a heavily laden sled, Mlerynnyn and several well-armed comrades set off on a long journey to acquire deer.

At first they traveled along the coast, and only gradually veered deeper into the continental tundra, climbing over unfamiliar ridges, crossing mountain valleys and endless tundra plains fringed by distant blue mountains.

Mlerynnyn led his tribesmen armed with only a scanty knowledge of the valley-dwelling karamkyt, also called Kaaramkyn
⁶
– the folk with the curious deer-herding lifestyle. They were not especially tall, nor stout.
They did not even deign to walk, preferring to ride astride their antlered animals.

The lands Mlerynnyn's small party crossed were notable chiefly for their emptiness and lack of inhabitants, though the landscape varied slightly; some of the valleys, shielded from wind, were home to tall gorse bushes and even real birches, which were good for light, flexible sled runners.

Along the way they fished and hunted fowl; still, the winter-weakened dogs barely had strength enough to pull the whalebone-shod sleds over the wet tundra.

Winter had ended long ago, the snows had melted and the earth was covered in grasses and flowers. Of the Kaaramkyn there was no trace – until one day Mlerynnyn caught a barely perceptible whiff of smoke amid the heady scent of the burgeoning tundra. The smell was as fragile as an autumn spiderweb, appearing and disappearing; it was a long while before Mlerynnyn could be certain of the smoke's southeasterly provenance.

This was the smell of the hearth, of long habitation. And now it also carried the aroma of boiled deer meat.

As they crested the hill, the hunters saw the camping ground of the Kaaramkyn – conical, pointy-roofed dwellings with a slim plume of delicate blue smoke rising above each one. Children at play, women rushing to and fro, calling to one another in a throaty, strange-sounding language. But there were no reindeer to be seen, not a single “four-legged food.”

It was later that they discovered the deer herd.

At first Mlerynnyn thought he was looking at gorse. But this gorse was moving, and the roiling, living mass emitted a sound that vaguely resembled the grunts of walrus. The sound was punctuated by the muffled knocking of the deers' antlers, which stirred Mlerynnyn's heart with the expectation
of a huge feast, akin to the feeling he normally experienced while bearing down on a large animal.

Finally the Kaaramkyn themselves, the deer herders, came into view. Slightly bowlegged, they loped about, gathering the animals into a tight knot.

Mlerynnyn divided his force: the larger part he sent to capture the herders and the deer, while he and two other warriors attacked the Kaaramkyn camp.

The threesome barged into a darkened, smoke-filled, pointy-roofed dwelling. The smell here was very different from that of a sea hunter's yaranga: a pitchy, wood smell, mingled with the sweetish scents of smoked deer meat, soured blood, and uncured hides.

The frightened women cowered in the far corner. Looking at one in particular, Mlerynnyn was overcome with desire. He took the Kaaramkyn girl by the hand, led her outside, behind some disassembled winter sleds, and took her, upon a soft green tussock. He was astonished by the pallor and softness of the girl's cheek and also by the almost total lack of hair on her feminine parts, which gave them the appearance of a child's soft, smooth knee.

The girl did not cry or resist very forcefully. She was pliant and soft under the man's weight and for Mlerynnyn, deep in the sweetness of release, it almost felt as though he had escaped, for a time, from the harshness of everyday life.

The Luoravetlan, though they had dreamed of owning “four-legged food,” did not know how to herd or tend them, and were even a little afraid of the deer at first. So from now on, the Kaaramkyn must be made captives as surely as their deer.

Mlerynnyn was in a hurry to leave enemy territory as soon as possible, lest the Kaaramkyn attack and win back their tribesmen. On the third day, the eldest of the captives attempted to escape on a deer, but he did not make it far. Catching up to him, Mlerynnyn drew his long hunting knife and stabbed the Kaaramkyn through the heart. Had Mlerynnyn been taken by the Kaaramkyn, they would have acted exactly the same. He was doing his duty. Besides, a man from another tribe was not even really a person in the eyes of the Luoravetlan. He was a stranger, an enemy, deserving at best an instantaneous death.

As the girl watched her father's execution, her eyes were very wide, yet not a muscle of her flat face moved, as though she had turned to stone. The other Kaaramkyn, convinced of the Luoravetlan leader's strength of purpose, made no further attempts to escape.

They made their way back to Uelen by paths that were now familiar, under the warm sun that heated the depths of the tundra so well that one could have walked naked, had it not been for the mosquitoes. The Kaaramkyn seemed not to mind the bites of the bloodthirsty insects, lazily swatting them away from their faces as they continued to stride alongside the deer, unflappable.

Mlerynnyn slept in the deer people's dwelling and took the gentle, docile captive many times each night; with each passing day she grew dearer to him. With some difficulty, he discovered her name – Dil'ma, or perhaps Til'ma or Tul'ma. As he struggled to pronounce it rightly the young woman would give him a shy smile; then her flat face, which resembled the carved-wood visage of a protective spirit, would grow suffused with human intelligence, and Mlerynnyn's heart would melt in a rush of sweetness and heat.

This was an ancient custom, from the time when the Luoravetlan did
not have constructed dwellings but lived, like beasts of the wild, in stone caverns, and warred incessantly with their neighbors. Aside from the ancient custom of killing enemies, there was another – the taking of women from other tribes and the begetting of new Luoravetlan with new, fresh blood. In fact, the people of Uelen owed their strength, health, height, and sturdiness of spirit to the time-rooted habit of taking wives from among the neighboring Aivanalin.

So, none of Mlerynnyn's comrades could fault his doings, though it was a shame that the young girl turned out to be the only one in the camp; all the other women seemed to be ancient crones, only good for keeping the place in order, cooking, and mending clothes.

Every so often the Kaaramkyn declared it time to make a stop and allow the antlered animals an opportunity to rest and feed on lichen. Then Mlerynnyn would leave his beloved and go among the deer. He would walk a little apace from them, the animals slanting their enormous, silently accusing eyes at him, shaking their sharp, branching antlers. The Luoravetlan's heart would overflow with a feeling of duty fulfilled: no more would his tribesmen die of hunger during the winter bridge of the seasons, as there truly would be “four-legged food” walking around the yarangas. True, the deer meat, tender and sweet to taste, turned out to be less filling than that of seal and walrus . . . But just look at how many there were, too many to count!

Mlerynnyn ordered his people to watch the Kaaramkyn in action carefully, to learn their ways of handling the deer so that in the future they could tend the animals on their own. Riding turned out to be the hardest skill to master. Astride the antlered animals, the Kaaramkyn seemed to fuse with them into a single being. But then they were a lot smaller, and therefore
lighter, than the Luoravetlan, and a good riding deer could easily carry the weight of a Kaaramkyn rider.

The Kaaramkyn hooted with jolly laughter as they observed the fruitless attempts of the Luoravetlan to climb aboard their deer. The former did not seem at all disconsolate about their loss of freedom. They continued in their customary way of life. The only difference was that they could no longer wander according to their own whims, as it was Mlerynnyn who set the direction each morning.

They traveled slowly, waiting for the coming of winter and the stilling of rivers. Mlerynnyn's troop was capable of crossing water in its lightweight traveling skin boats, but the enormous deer herd required solid river crossings, despite the relative ease with which the deer could swim across narrower bodies of water.

More and more, Mlerynnyn grew to believe that the deer were still relatively untamed animals, wary of people. Even the riding deer had to be carefully selected from a vast number of seemingly identical animals.

The Kaaramkyn people's dexterity in dealing with the deer was awe-inspiring. They could throw a lasso over a running stag, bring it down to the ground with a single blow, and kill it instantly. The butchering of the dead animal was achieved in scant moments; yet they managed not to spill a single drop of the precious blood, which would be collected in the deer's own first stomach and hung up in a warm corner of the dwelling. This was filling and nutritious food, but took some getting used to. Every last part of the deer was used, down to its black, nutlike excrement, which was employed in tanning the inner sides of deer hides, softening and smoothing every last stretch. The hide on the animal's legs was carefully removed and used for
footwear and winter mittens, the remaining film scraped off with a knife and eaten. The biggest treat was the marrow encased in the leg bones; pink, sweetish, and greasy, it left a clinging gloss on your lips.

It was hard to name a part of the deer that was not delicious to eat. Even the hooves, after a spell over hot coals, became soft and tender, and sucking on them was a delight. Children would crowd in and wait eagerly to be handed the deer's hide as soon as one went down. Beneath the skin, just under the hairy pelt, were the thick white horsefly larvae that were the children's favorite treat.

The “four-legged food that walks about the yaranga” turned out to require ceaseless attention. First of all, you could not leave the deer on their own: they wanted to scatter into the tundra and when that happened, it could take days to find the renegades and gather up the herd once again. That is why two herders always had to be on guard beside the herd. The animals had to be kept in places where there was enough lichen, a very unremarkable bluish moss that was nevertheless their main source of food. Proximity to water was important, and it was also desirable to have a breeze, even a weak one, to circulate among the animals and drive away mosquitoes and horseflies. Other deer hunters included tundra wolves – strong, ravenous animals. The men went at them with arrows, set traps, or drove them away with the help of specially trained dogs.

In the second half of summer, when the calves had grown, the Kaaramkyn declared it was time for the slaughtering, as this was the time when the deer hides were still pliant and perfect for making into winter clothing.

The Kaaramkyn requested that while they made the ceremonial sacrifice to the Deer Spirit, the Luoravetlan stand aside and not interfere. Mlerynnyn
promised this: he had a strangely intense respect for the mysterious forces that guided the lives of men. Who knew how they might influence a man? Their invisibility, their anonymity, inspired a suppressed terror, and it was better not to offend forces unknown and inaccessible to a mortal man.

Having returned with a large, empty wooden dish, the Kaaramkyn joined hands and began to shuffle around the killed stag, all the while producing heartrending guttural sounds that seemed to be their way of singing. Moving to a fixed rhythm, they would halt suddenly, thrust their clasped hands high and open their mouths wide, offering up monosyllabic exclamations. Their children, dressed up for the occasion, also took part in the round dance. Tul'ma threw coy glances Mlerynnyn's way and made inviting gestures, as though calling him to join in the jubilation. But Mlerynnyn was in no hurry to answer her call; it all seemed strange and savage, mysterious, and filled him with a secret, half-buried fear.

In the days that followed, the Kaaramkyn women were kept busy with the fresh hides. Just then, the tundra berries became ripe for the picking, and mushroom caps – to which the deer proved rather partial – popped up over the blue moss in their multitudes. The freshly picked berries were tightly packed into vessels made of tree bark and left to sit in the darkest corners of the Kaaramkyn pointy-topped tents.

By now, the captives and victors were making some progress in communicating with one another. The Kaaramkyn seemed resigned to their fate. They had grown to accept that the strangers needed their deer, and their own skills in handling those deer. The captives started to look happier, and even the sound of laughter was heard emanating from their shelter. Sometimes they would sing their soul-rending songs, or do their round dance with
its throwing up of hands. Watching them, Mlerynnyn would often think that these were not bad people, on the whole, and could be considered equals, if it were not for their lack of human language, the jarring noises they took for singing, and also their physical puniness, their flat faces and incredibly narrow eyes. When they squinted into the sun, it was anyone's guess how they could see at all.

Yet strangely, when it came to Tul'ma, those failings that separated the Kaaramkyn from the Luoravetlan seemed to be the very cause of Mlerynnyn's arousal. It was exactly that exotic lack of resemblance to Luoravetlan or Aivanalin women that drew him in so strongly.

The young woman was already with child, and Mlerynnyn kept her from hard work, especially when making new camp, when the women had to carry the long, smoke-cured, greasy poles and stretch the huge covering of many sewn-together hides over the structure to make the tent.

When the first snowflakes fluttered in the air and, in the morning, the deer began breaking through newly iced puddles with a crunch, Tul'ma gave birth to a daughter.

The baby girl squalled loudly in the smoky dwelling and refused to open her eyes for a long while, as though not wishing to look at the world.