The Chukchi Bible (42 page)

Carpenter was worried too. He came to see Mletkin, and went on and on interminably about being an honest American trader and loyal to all governments.

“We're outside politics. Our business is supplying people with goods at fair prices.”

“And what if the Bolsheviks come and really do take away all the goods and give them out to the poor?”

“I'm happy to share with the poor,” Carpenter averred. “But you, Mletkin, would you yourself accept something that had been stolen from another?”

Among the Luoravetlan, theft was considered so shameful a crime that anyone convicted of it would have chosen to commit suicide, or at least to move somewhere far away.

Mletkin reassured the trader that Bolshevism would be impossible among the Chukchi. Carpenter calmed down and went back home to Keniskun, to his wife, Elizabeth, and their many children. Mahomet Dobriev, in contrast, grew more and more keen on the idea of confiscating the wealth of the rich and redistributing it among the poor. Whenever he came to visit he'd plot his course between the yarangas as if already mentally calculating what to take: a whaleboat from one family, a surplus skin boat from another.

“But you wouldn't want to give a good whaleboat to the likes of Lonlyh,” he reasoned, as he sucked zestily on duck bones. “He'd only spoil it. Or it would dry up on the beach, since Lonlyh wouldn't actually go and hunt. And who would go after walrus and whale with him anyway, out to sea with a former deer herder who's afraid of the water? No, we have to think this through.”

No matter how hard Mahomet Dobriev thought about it, taking whaleboats and other vessels from their owners only to give them to the poor seemed pointless. The only sensible way of going about it would have been to rob Carpenter and distribute his wares among the people of Uelen and Nuvuken, in equal shares.

“So you'd rob Carpenter, divvy up his goods. He'll leave Chukotka and spread the news that it's dangerous to trade here. And that'll be the end of sugar, tea, tobacco, bullets . . . Where are we to get those? Only the rich Tangitans have them,” said Mletkin.

“I hadn't thought of that,” Mahomet agreed, disappointment palpable in his voice. But then he added brusquely: “But as for Tynesken's schooner, we'll take that away for sure!”

Mletkin listened to all this talk and worried: what if the poor Tangitans really were at war with the rich ones, and taking everything away?

Surely the rich would not give up their things just like that.

Spring of 1919 saw many in Uelen anxious to book passage to Alaska. For the most part, these were the tsar's former administrators of Anadyr, soon to be renamed Novo-Mariinsk, and a smattering of military men who, as rumor had it, had been defeated in the war with the new army of the Bolsheviks, called the Red Army. Tynesken had never had so many passengers to ferry across the Strait. All these people were fleeing the new regime.

Olaf Swenson had been the first of the Americans to arrive. As usual, his schooner first docked at Keniskun, where he saw his agent Carpenter, then sailed to Uelen, picking up Mahomet Dobriev in Nuvuken along the way.

When Mletkin asked him whether he intended to wrap up his business concerns on Chukotka, the American merchant replied:

“We contacted the new government's representatives at Vladivostok and Novo-Mariinsk and explained that, considering the difficulties in getting supplies to the local population, it would be practical to allow our company to continue its activities. They furnished us with the necessary permit and papers. So Olaf Swenson and all his agents shall continue to operate to across Chukotka, legally!”

Never had Swenson or his agents been as generous as that summer. All
the prices were substantially reduced. The schooner's cook was kept busy doling out sweet coffee, generous with the sugar and milk; boatfuls of visitors kept on arriving in a steady stream, the native clients bringing their wives, children, and old folks along. There was a row of large tin boxes of hardtack on deck for guests to eat as many as they liked, or even to take home.

Mletkin cautiously sounded out Olaf Swenson's views on the Bolshevik intention to take away the wealth of the rich and give it to the poor.

The American burst out laughing.

“First of all you'd have to ascertain who was rich and who was poor. You, for example,” he said, turning to Mahomet Dobriev, “where would you place yourself, among the rich or the poor?”

“It depends,” said Mahomet. “Next to you I'd probably be considered poor, but if compared to, say, Yev'yak, I'd be a man of wealth.”

Indeed, in the course of the last few years Mahomet had become one of the most well-off men in Nuvuken. But as Mletkin had long known, a wealthy man always wanted more. So if the Bolshevik idea were to be followed to the letter, those poorer than Mahomet would take from him, and he in turn from those wealthier than himself. Thus his victims could only be Swenson and Carpenter.

“Lenin asserts that people should have everything equally,” Swenson attempted to explain. “To achieve this, all property has to be owned communally. So your whaleboat, Mletkin, would be considered to belong to all of Uelen, and by the same token you would become a co-owner of Tynesken's schooner.”

“Tynesken would never agree,” Mletkin told him. “He'd sooner sink it than share it with anyone else.”

Uelen settled into an anxious sort of waiting.

Amazing rumors out of Russia abounded. For example, that not just whaleboats, weapons, and yarangas were to become communal, but wives, too.

“Could this be true?” Givivneu inquired of her husband.

Mletkin imagined salacious old Ermytagin walking into his yaranga one fine evening and saying: “Tonight I'll sleep with your wife, since, according to the new Bolshevik custom, she is my wife in equal measure. You can go bed down with my old woman!”

“I still believe in people having common sense,” Mletkin reassured her. Then he added, “I'd never give
you
to anyone, and that's for sure!”

They came late one spring evening. The travelers, arriving in two sleds, had made a colossal journey from the Mariinsky Post all the way to Uelen, along the coast, through the tundra, across tall watersheds and deep, snow-covered valleys.

They looked to be of the same age, though the swarthy, dark-haired man was actually the elder. His name was Bychkov, and the other's Rudykh. They camped inside the empty schoolhouse, where they stoked up the stove with the coal supply luckily left over from Khrenov's stay there.

“We're Bolsheviks,” they announced to the villagers, whom they had gathered together in the most spacious room of the schoolhouse.

“We represent the government of the poor and the workers, a government headed by Lenin . . .”

Mletkin translated the speech, all the while marveling at the youth of these representatives of the new powers-that-be.

“Are there any among you who are oppressed by the rich?” Rudykh asked the crowd.

Silence was his only answer. No man in Uelen considered himself to be poor.

“So who are the rich round about here, then?”

More silence.

“But you're still being robbed!” Rudykh expostulated. “The biggest robbers are the American traders, who have leeched onto Chukotka's working masses and are sucking your blood!”

At the fleeting mental image of Carpenter's hairy mouth on his skin, Mletkin shuddered with revulsion.

“You're also being gulled by the shamans,” added Bychkov.

“What, me?” Mletkin turned to the guests in astonishment. “You've only met me for the first time today, but already you accuse me of deceit. How can that be?”

Arrested in midflow, Rudykh looked at his companion for support.

“Are you a shaman?” asked Bychkov.

“Mletkin is the shaman of Uelen and a man respected by all.” This from Gal'mo.

The new Russians had conceived of the shaman as a half-wild creature, painted with soot, with lank, dirty hair hanging in clumps, dressed in a clanging, jingling robe, clutching a tambourine . . . And here was a middle-aged Chukcha man, neatly dressed, his mustache crisply trimmed, wearing a nondescript gray kamleika over his fur-lined kukhlianka, and a pair of nerpa-skin boots.

“But still,” Bychkov drawled after a slight pause, “Lenin teaches us that religion is the opium of the masses. It's a con perpetrated on the poor and the laborers. The shamans drag you down into ignorance and murk.”

“I don't drag anyone anywhere,” Mletkin cut in. “They come to me for help themselves.”

“Because they're all entranced,” Bychkov countered with aplomb, and turned to address the gathering once more: “Is there anybody else that can translate?”

“Only Mletkin knows the Tangitan speech well,” Gal'mo informed him, “both the Russian one and the American.”

And so the new Russians had to deal with Uelen's shaman after all. They were chiefly interested in the activities of the traders. Queries about when the Bolsheviks would send a teacher to begin instruction in reading and writing were met with the following reply from the revolutionaries: “As soon as we conquer the White Russians and destroy the counterrevolutionaries, we'll begin to build the new life.”

The Whites was their name for those who fought against them, the Reds. Mletkin understood this to mean that the Whites were those who fought for the rule of the rich, while the Reds fought for the poor.

“The most important person in history has always been the working man,” Rudykh lectured the shaman. “It was he who built factories, railroads, ships, houses, and bridges, sowed the bread, raised the cattle . . . But the rich appropriated everything the worker created, stole it from him outright. Is that fair?”

“It isn't fair at all,” Mletkin would concur. “But why kill people over this? Can you not agree peacefully?”

“Come on, who's going to peacefully give up what he's stolen?” Rudykh sneered. “And so, Lenin, the wisest of the wise, said to the poor: steal back what's been stolen! It will be just the same here, soon enough.”

“We haven't got so many poor here,” Mletkin was dubious.

“Don't you worry, we'll find them,” Rudykh told him firmly. “And another thing – we'll destroy the rule of the shamans!”

“I don't rule anyone,” said Mletkin.

“We'll just see about that,” Rudykh retorted with undisguised menace.

Having hired two additional sleds, the young Bolsheviks set off up the north coast of the Chukotka Peninsula. Bychkov had managed to find the time to court a young woman, Tynesken's youngest daughter, and there was an emotional leave-taking, with him pressing his mouth hotly against hers and all but licking her face.

Rudykh and Bychkov's task was to collect money from the traders.

They managed to return to port by the time ships were sailing again and, when the unsuspecting American schooners came to dock, the two were the first aboard, collecting customs taxes at gunpoint on behalf of the Soviet republic. Some of the captains resisted, and once, on the merchant schooner
Victoria
, the young Bolsheviks were simply tossed over the side. Had it not been for a skin boat nearby, this would have been the end of Rudykh and Bychkov's revolutionary activities on the Chukotka Peninsula.

There were disturbing rumors from the south. Carpenter had learned that the so-called Whites had captured almost the entirety of the Far East and Kamchatka, and formed a seat of government in Novo-Mariinsk, Chukotka's capital city; armed detachments were even now marching north.

That fall, Rudykh and Bychkov booked passage on Olaf Swenson's merchant schooner, and crossing the Bering Strait to America, made their way to Europe and eventually back to Petrograd, to deliver the money they had collected to support the proletarian revolution. Bychkov's descendants live in Uelen to this day.