The Chukchi Bible (18 page)

His deer-hide bed was now totally worn out, yet his bedding remained
unchanged. And if he happened to wet his pallet during the night, in the morning he was made to run around the yaranga with his bedding on his back until it dried. Two or three of these runs cured Mletkin's bed-wetting for good.

Early each morning he had to dash outside naked to relieve himself and, in the meantime, peer carefully around so as to report to his father the condition of the sky and the direction of the wind. This was not so bad in summer, but winter made it hardly bearable, especially in the hardest frost, when his feet burned with cold and went numb, only to thaw agonizingly within the warm polog. Only during the worst blizzards, when the storm shook the yaranga and the day's weather was thus made very obvious indeed, only then was the boy allowed to remain indoors.

One day Mletkin discovered that his portion of tea, drunk from a little shallow dish, did not have its usual delicious sweetness. When he questioned his mother, it was his father who replied. Mlatangin explained:

“From now on you will not be drinking sweetened tea anymore. This taste is bad for your training for endurance and strength.”

Other trials were gradually added. When the weather was clear, Mletkin spent the entire day outdoors, and was not allowed to enter the warm polog until nightfall. The most he was allowed was to spend a few minutes in the chottagin, among the dogs.

Most of Uelen's boys underwent a similar upbringing. It was the only way to raise a true hunter – tough, indomitable, able to withstand any ordeal.

By the time he was eight Mletkin was put in charge of a small pack of sled dogs, and was responsible for several household tasks, including feeding all of the dogs, his own and the others'. He also accompanied his father on trips to the open sea in their skin boat, during which it was his responsibility
to see that the boat did not get swamped by seawater, but to send it back overboard with the help of a primitive pump.

Early in the spring of 1878, Mletkin's father shook him awake. Pulling himself into alertness with great difficulty, the boy rose from his poor bed and darted outside, stepping across the lounging dogs as he passed through the chottagin.

Outside it was still and clear. The sun was already up above the Great Crag, the icebergs' many facets sparkled blue, and the night-frost crust that laced the snow glimmered under the rays of daylight, casting another blue light as the clear sky was reflected off the white snow. As he urinated, standing on the sharp, cold snow, and sending the warm stream down his bare legs, Mletkin felt uplifted, wonderfully in awe of the glorious beauty of nature. This awe seemed to flow into him from above, filling his heart with a ringing, celestial music.

When he returned to the yaranga he gave his father a quick report on the weather, and joined him for the morning meal.

This was the morning of a special ritual: the Lowering of the Boats. In winter, the skin boats were stored on high struts made of whale jaws, to keep them away from hungry dogs. Over the long winter season the hide dried out and became brittle. To restore its elasticity, the boats were lowered from their struts every spring, carried to the beach and buried in snow. As the snow gradually melted, liquid slowly worked itself into the walrus hide, restoring its springy suppleness.

Each of the larger families which comprised a hunting boat's crew performed the ritual with its own boat.

Tynemlen's boat was stored very near the yaranga, so they didn't have far to walk.

Kalyantagrau was clad in a ceremonial shaman's garb: a long red ochre-dyed kamleika, lined with wolverine fur at the hem, and shot through with napped suede ribbons, each with a colored bead dangling from its end. He smiled at his grandson and motioned for the boy to come stand beside him.

“Today you're going to be my helper,” said the shaman. “Here, hold this.”

He handed Mletkin a round wooden dish, used solely for feeding the spirits and gods. The dish held a conical pile of cubed deer fat, kopal'khen, nerpa blubber, itgil'gyn, green with age, crumbs from American hardtack and even bits of sugar.

“The luck of the coming hunting season depends on how the gods view today's ritual,” Kalyantagrau explained.

In the meantime, the men had freed the skin boat from its wide straps and lowered it slowly to the ground.

Kalyantagrau walked around the vessel, all the while whispering incantations under his breath. From time to time he would pinch a handful of the sacrificial offering from the dish and toss it onto the snow beside the boat. The dogs were quick to bolt the divine food, snarling and nipping at one another. Mletkin, following close behind his shaman grandfather, worried that the gods would hardly get any food and tried to deter the dogs with shouting.

As soon as the ritual was completed, the hunters shouldered their boat and carried it back to the beach. While it was being buried in snow, Kalyantagrau performed the same ritual with Uelen's remaining five boats.

The shaman completed the ceremony out amid the ice hummocks that furrowed the frozen sea beyond Uelen's beach. Only Mletkin, who still
carried the wooden dish and its remnants of divine offering, accompanied him.

Kalyantagrau addressed the sea's expanse, imprisoned by ice, riven with ice hummocks and the detritus of broken icebergs. Quietly, he intoned:

Kalyantagrau tossed the remains of the offering in all directions, and they were immediately seized upon by the dogs, who had tagged along. He then turned to Mletkin, took back the dish, and said cheerfully: “Well, that's it! We've fed all our gods!”

Mletkin's look was doubtful:

“But the dogs ate everything! They gobbled up all the food meant for the gods, no matter how hard I tried to drive them away.”

Kalyantagrau laughed and pressed the boy close.

“I'm glad that you are watchful and take note of everything. And that you think about things . . . But now you are mistaken: all that was due to the gods, they have received, and I dare say were very pleased. They were pleased in particular that you were helping me with the ritual.”

“But how?” Mletkin remained unconvinced. “Didn't you see the dogs catch every piece? They even fought over them.”

“One day you will learn to see beyond what is happening before your eyes,” the shaman mused thoughtfully. “On first glance it did look as if the
dogs had eaten the sacrificial offering. And that is what the regular person thinks. But we, those Inspired from Above, see something else entirely. The gods are omnipresent, they permeate all things in life. They can inhabit any creature, even plants and stones. This time they came into the dogs, and through them were able to receive our offering.”

The dogs continued to follow the shaman and the boy; as he listened to his grandfather's words, Mletkin found it hard to understand fully what he was hearing. He knew that Grandfather Kalyantagrau possessed many skills and attributes that the other men of Uelen, the regular folk, did not. He could converse with Enantomgyn, the omnipresent Creator and Highest Power of the world. He knew much and could do much; this was acknowledged by all the men of Uelen. But how had he come to be that way? He seemed no different than the other men in the village – except, of course, when he donned the special shaman's clothing . . .

“And you, Mletkin, would you like to be like me?” Kalyantagrau's quiet but intensely probing question interrupted the boy's reverie.

“I would like that,” Mletkin answered quietly, and looked at the dogs that loped beside them with a different set of eyes.

 

From that day on, the young boy began to examine the world around him more closely, always looking for signs of forces and even creatures that were invisible to the human eye. He listened hard to the howling wind and there were times he thought he could hear voices, and even distinguish the occasional word. A vast human face might appear among the white crests of the stormy, breaking waves and look back at the boy, causing his soul to ring with an answering peal to the Great Mystery.

It all puzzled Mletkin at first, making him feel like a stranger in his own skin, but eventually the feeling ebbed.

To all appearances he remained the same boy he had been before: gregarious, fun loving, and subject to the same harsh, merciless upbringing as the rest of his young companions. Indeed, the treatment meted out to him was one of the harshest. And if his mother slipped him the occasional, furtively sweetened cup of tea, or a fatter morsel to eat, Mletkin quietly accepted the tokens of her love while continuing to observe all the more stridently the rules and strictures laid upon him.

 

The family council took place one autumn night within Mlatangin's yaranga. The fire was guttering, the women had retired inside the polog, and only the three men remained in the chottagin – Mletkin's grandfather Tynemlen, the shaman Kalyantagrau, and Mlatangin, the boy's father. Mletkin himself was absent, having sailed with his friends to Pil'khyn Bay to go for a bit of fishing.

“I've watched him for a long while now, and I've come to think that he is the very person,” Kalyantagrau's voice was measured, as he took another sip of his tea.

Tynemlen did not speak at once. He knew well the kind of hard future that awaited his grandson should he choose the shaman's path. He would have to forego many of the usual pleasures of life. Never to say the first words on his mind, or to joke, for people would search for deep, hidden meaning behind every carelessly spoken word. All eyes would be on him, his every word would be passed from one man to another, and they would say: “So spoke Mletkin.” The shaman of Uelen would be respected. But
feared, too – the means to hurt or kill, even at a distance, would be his. Not one man would dare criticize, insult, or cheat him, for fear that a swift and merciless retribution might follow.

Naturally, this placed the shaman apart from all the other people of his community.

Would Mletkin be able to live this way?

“What do you say?” Kalyantagrau addressed Mlatangin first.

“I think the main thing is what Mletkin himself says. He is growing into a man with each passing day. Let him train his body, and when the time comes to test his spirit – we will see.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Kalyantagrau mused.

“But we are not going to make a shaman out of him by force,” Tynemlen cautioned them.

“I chose to be a shaman freely, remember,” said Kalyantagrau. “And my grandson too, if that should be his destiny, will choose this life only of his own free will. No one will compel him.”

The inside of Kalyantagrau's yaranga was always permeated by a faint but potent odor, though there was nothing out of the ordinary there, nothing different from the contents of any other yaranga in Uelen. To the right of the entrance, behind two wooden barrels where stores of walrus blubber and pickled greens were kept, towered a voluminous chest for fur-lined clothing and deerskins; behind the chest were more barrels. To the left was the firepit, clad in a casing of flat thin stones, all of them blackened with soot; a similarly greasy and blackened iron chain, hooked at the end, was rigged to be lowered into the fire from above. Beyond the fire pit, more barrels and household implements. The wooden supporting walls were hung with hunting gear. The necessary kit for seal hunting was composed of an
akyn
– a wooden toggle hooked on the end of a rope used to retrieve a kill from the water – a spool of thin nerpa-skin string, bone hooks, buttons, and a small bag whose contents were as yet unknown to Mletkin. Next to it, were two pairs of “raven claws” – snowshoes fashioned from wooden frames netted over with lakhtak-hide thongs – and two matching walking staffs, one with a sharp hook at one end and a long metal spike on the other, used
to sound the thickness of new ice. The second staff was the usual kind, for leaning on as one walked. There were storerooms along each side of the polog, too. Maybe that was where the shaman kept the objects he used in his rituals, the tambourines and holy vessels . . . There was not an idol in sight, though in any other Uelen yaranga the Keeper of the Home would be easy to spot.

In addition to its master and his wife, Minu, their daughter Itchel' and son Vukvun also lived in the yaranga. Both were older than Mletkin and he regarded them as adults. Itchel', a stringy, sickly young woman, had some sort of an emotional distemper. Abruptly, she would go rigid and stare into space with unseeing eyes, as though absenting herself from the world. She could remain in this suspended state for hours. The whole village knew about the young woman's peculiarity and left her alone during her spells. Eventually she would come to and resume her interrupted task or conversation as though the pause had lasted only a moment. Vukvun, on the other hand, was just the opposite of his sister. Cheerful, lively, quick-to-laugh, he was a great lover of women. His manly prowess was legendary. And he was not choosy in bed partners – young women or respectable mothers of broods were equally delightful. Caught in the act by a jealous husband or jilted suitor, Vukvun always took the blame and tried to shield his lady of the hour.