Alaska (34 page)

Innokenti, infuriated by his stepfather's tardy response in adjusting to the otter's tactics, cursed at him and at the other paddlers, threatening the latter with beatings when he got them ashore: 'Form up! Come at her faster when I chase her your way!'

A few minutes later, when the hunters were grievously mispositioned, thanks to Trofim's ineptness, Innokenti turned to berate him again, when the old man, from his rear position, gave the kayak such a violent lurch that the front spun completely around, tossing Innokenti into the sea.

He did not panic. Cursing Troflm again, he did as before when he dove off the Evening Star,

flailing his arms and thrashing out violently to grab the leading hole of the kayak, and he would surely have saved himself a second time, except that when he reached up, Zhdanko moved swiftly away, looked down at his son, and struck him full in the face with the blunt side of his paddle. Then, as if he were hunting a helpless mother otter who had to surface, he waited for Innokenti's head to rise above the surface, whereupon he moved swiftly to that spot and almost crushed his skull with a second blow.

Biding his time, he paddled gently, waiting for the bloody head to appear, and when it did he calmly pushed it back under, keeping it there for many minutes. Only then did he wave his paddle furiously and start shouting: 'Help! Innokenti has fallen.'

MANY DAYS AFTER THE BODY CAME ASHORE, so Waterlogged and decomposed that no one could say what had happened during the otter hunt, the boy Kyril came to Trofim's hut, and after prolonged silences during which the old cossack thought: He's the same age as Innokenti was when I met him, but how different, the young fellow said hesitantly: 'I saw what happened when we chased those otters.'

Trofim made no response, and after a while the young man said: 'No one else saw but me. I was in front position.'

Tears came to the old man's eyes, not of regret but in response to the great contradictions of life. The young hunter

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did not notice them, for he was assailed by his own bewilderments this old man whom he loved had killed his own son but he did gain composure to say: 'He fell from the kayak because he turned too fast. Only he could be blamed. I saw it. I told the others.'

Again there was silence, during which each knew the other to be engaged in a deliberate lie, but to absolve their mutual guilt, Kyril added: 'He was a bad one. Old Father.

To kill that girl who had treated us so gently. To kill so many islanders. He deserved to die, and if he hadn't drowned himself the way he did, I would have killed him.'

He hesitated and the silence grew ominous: 'I don't know how, but I would have slain that one, Old Father.'

Zhdanko weighed most cautiously what he wanted to say next, because each separate word must convey its exact meaning, and he wasted perhaps half an hour staring at the volcano and speaking of inconsequential things, then in a low voice: 'Kyril, it is time again for me to take our pelts to Petropavlovsk. Madame Zhdanko will be waiting there with bales she's been collecting, too, and she'll have a ship to take me to Okhotsk and I'll have to go overland through the bad country to the Lena River.'

Subtly he changed pronouns: 'Then we'll pole the barge toward Irkutsk. Now that's a fine town, believe me. And we'll go on to Mongolia and trade our pelts to the Chinese buyers, but you'll have to be careful with them or they'll steal your back teeth,'

He rocked back and forth in the cold sunlight, then asked: 'Would you like that?'

and the lad cried: 'Oh, yes!'

'It could take three years, you know. And with the leaky ship we have we might not even reach Kamchatka, but it'll be worth the try. And when we sail back to Lapak we'll quit this miserable place and move east to Kodiak, which they tell me is rich in fur.'

Kyril considered this for a moment, then asked: 'But if you want to go to Kodiak, why don't we go now?' and Trofim explained: 'Because I must inform Madame Zhdanko that her son is dead. She's a most worthy woman and should hear this only from me.'

'Did she know . . . about Innokenti?'

'I think mothers always know.'

'Then how could she go on loving him?' and Trofim said: 'That's the mystery of mothers.'

And this old man of seventy-nine, who should have been long retired, sat dreaming of turbulent seas, and robbers in a storm-swept Siberian pass, and the arm-wrenching torture of poling a barge up the Lena River, and the excitement of haggling with Chinese over the value of an otter pelt, and he 213

was impatient to wrestle once more with the old challenges and test his strength against the new in Kodiak.

For he knew that an explorer should dedicate his life to probing eastward, always eastward toward the sunrise: as a lad from a trivial Ukrainian village north of Lvov he had traveled east to serve Tsar Peter in Moscow, then across Siberia to meet Madame Poznikova, and on to the Aleutians, where he had known those honorable captains Bering, Cook, Pym and even to the coastline of America, where he had aided the great Georg Steller. And always there had been the noble challenge of the next day, the next island, the next stormy sea.

'I have no son,' Trofim said quietly, 'and you have no father. Shall we load our leaky ship and take our furs to Irkutsk?'

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V

THE DUEL

In that memorable year 1789, when France launched the revolution which would bring its people freedom from excessive tyranny, and the former American Colonies ratified their revolution by initiating a new form of government under a remarkable constitution ensuring freedom, a group of vicious Russian fur traders committed a great atrocity against the Aleuts on Lapak Island.

Two small boats appeared in the harbor, commanded by ruthless bearded traders who put into ruthless execution a cruel order: 'All males above the age of two, off to the boats.' When women came solemn-faced to the shore to ask: 'Why?' they said: 'We need them on Kodiak Island to hunt otter,' and when they asked: 'For how long?' they said: 'Who knows?' And when the two boats sailed that same afternoon, husbands and wives felt a panic which warned them: 'We shall never again see each other.'

When the lamentations ended, the women faced the hideous necessity of reorganizing their lives in ways never before contemplated. The islanders lived from the sea, but now there were none who knew how to hunt seals, or catch big fish, or go after the great whales that spouted past the island on their way north. Along the beach stood kayaks and harpoons and long clubs for knocking seals in the head, but no one remained who was practiced in using them.

The situation was not only perilous but also extremely 215

frustrating, for the Aleutian Islands marked the line where the vast Pacific Ocean collided with the Bering Sea, and enormous upthrusting currents brought ocean edibles constantly to the surface: plankton thrived, so shrimp could grow fat, and when they did, salmon could feed upon them, and when the salmon were plentiful, seals and walruses and whales could feed well. Nature threw an abundance of seafood to the surface at the Aleutians, but only brave and daring men could harvest it, and now there were no men. When storm winds swept out of Asia, they seemed to be crying: 'Where are the hunters of Lapak?'

In executing this barbarous policy the Russians had to be aware that they were operating against their own long-term interests, for they needed the Aleuts to do their hunting and fishing for them, but if they removed and ultimately killed off all adult males, the population could not be replenished, for male two-year-olds would not have time to mature to an age at which they could father other children. However, they were spurred to this insane behavior because they still believed that the Aleuts were less than human, and the mechanics of their grisly plan did seem workable, for with men absent, the supply of food would diminish rapidly.

But there was one characteristic of Lapak and the other Aleutian islands which the Russians overlooked: people lived longer here than elsewhere in the world, and it was not too unusual for men or women to reach into their nineties. Reliance on a balanced diet focusing on seafood rather than meat had something to do with it, but so did clean air from the sea, an orderly life, hard work and a sturdy inheritance from ancestors who had crossed from Asia. At any rate, there was on Lapak in 1789

a great-grandmother of ninety-one who had a granddaughter of forty who had a lively daughter of fourteen, and this strong old woman decided not to die easily.

The great-grandmother was called by her family and friends Old One; her granddaughter was Innuwuk. The fourteen-year-old girl bore the lovely name of Cidaq, which meant young animal that runs free,

and no more appropriate designation could have been awarded her, for to see this child was to see movement and vitality and grace. She was not tall, nor was she plump as some Aleut girls were at her age, but she did have the big round head which indicated an Asian heritage, the intriguing Mongolian fold to her eyes, the elegantly tinctured skin. In the left-hand corner of her lower lip she wore one delicate labret carved from an old walrus tusk, but what made her distinctive was her long, silky black hair, which reached almost to her knees and which she kept cut straight across her forehead, right down to her eyebrows, 216

giving herself the appearance of wearing a helmet, and customarily she scowled from under it.

But often, for she loved the vitality of life, her round face would break into a smile as big as a rising sun: her eyes would squint almost shut, her white teeth would flash, and she would throw her head back to utter sounds of joy. Like most Aleut and Eskimo women, when she spoke she kept her lips close together, so that she seemed to mumble or perpetually whisper, but when she laughed with her head back she was Cidaq, the little deer, the young leaping salmon, the little whale skimming through the seas in the wake of its mother. She, too, was an adorable little animal, and she belonged to the land which sustained her.

Now she was about to starve. With all the richness that the two seas provided when they met, she and her people were about to starve. But one afternoon when Old One, who still moved about with ease, was looking at the pathway between Lapak Island and the volcano, she saw a whale gliding past, not moving rapidly but lazing along, sounding now and then, revealing its enormous length by the occasional flipping of its tail or a sporadic turn on its side. And she thought: One whale like that would feed us for a long time. And she decided to do something about it.

Exploring the beach with the aid of a driftwood cane that she had carved, she chose six of the best two-hatch kayaks and asked the help of Innuwuk and Cidaq in separating them. Then she moved among the women asking who knew how to operate a kayak, but she found none. A few had broken taboos by riding in them and some had even tried to paddle them, but none had studied the intricate principles of using them in hunting otter or. seals, and it would have been unthinkable for them to go after a whale with their husbands. But they did know what the ocean was and were not afraid of it.

However, when Old One started to put a team together six boats with twelve paddlers she ran into opposition. 'What are we doing this for?' one cautious woman asked, and when she snapped: 'To kill whales,' this woman and others began whimpering: 'You know that women cannot go near whales, or touch the kayak that goes after them, or even let our shadow fall across one that is going after whales.'

Old One considered these objections for several days and, in consultation with her granddaughter Innuwuk, conceded that if things were normal, the troubled women could consult the shaman, and he would certainly advise them that the spirits would curse the island hideously if women trespassed on the path that whales took past the island, and that to

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touch a kayak about to be used in a hunt would be to ensure the escape of the whale and even, perhaps, the death of the men pursuing him. The evidence of ten thousand years was against the threatened women of Lapak Island.

But at the close of the third day of this speculation Old One stood firm, with the precept her grandmother had taught her long before the appearance of any Russians: 'Can do? Must do!' which meant that if a desirable thing could be done, you were obligated to try. When she proposed this operating principle to Innuwuk, the latter said with obvious apprehension: 'But everyone knows that women and whales have never . . .' In disgust the old woman turned to Cidaq, who stood silent for a moment, reflecting on the gravity of what she was about to say. When she spoke she did so with a firmness and a willingness to break old patterns which would characterize the remainder of her life: 'If there are no men, we'll have to break their taboos. I'm sure we can capture a whale,' and Old One, encouraged by this eager response, said: 'After all, men do certain things to catch a whale. It isn't all mystery. We could do the same things.' And the two agreed that it was nonsense to believe that spirits would want an island of women to starve to death because there were no men at hand to pursue whales in the traditional way.

Assembling the other women, Old One harangued them, with Innuwuk and Cidaq at her side: 'We can't just sit here and starve. Berries we have and shellfish from the lagoons and maybe a salmon or two in the fall. We catch birds, but it's not enough.

We need seals and maybe a walrus if one comes along, and we must have a whale.' She invited her granddaughter to ventilate her fears, and this Innuwuk did, most ably: 'The spirits have always warned women to stay clear of whales. I believe they still want it that way.' This brought loud assent from those locked in tradition, but then little Cidaq stepped forward, tossed her long hair from one hip to the other, and said: 'If we must do it, we can do it. And the spirits will understand.' When the younger women nodded hesitantly, she turned to her mother, held out her hands, and pleaded: 'Help us,' and with a nudge from Old One, this perplexed woman submerged her fears and joined those who said that taboo or not, they would speed out to sea in the shadow of the volcano and try to catch a whale.

From that moment, life on Lapak changed dramatically. Old One never relinquished her determination to feed her island, and she convinced even some recalcitrants that the spirits would alter the old rules and side with them if they were working to save their lives: 'Think how it is when a pregnant woman is giving birth and baby starts out back—

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ward. Obviously the spirits intended that baby to die, but Siichak and I ... we've done it many times . . . we turn the child around and thump on the belly and it comes out right, and the spirits smile, for we have corrected their work for them.'

When some still held back, the old woman grew angry and demanded that Siichak, the midwife, come and stand with her, and when this insecure woman did, Old One cried, grabbing her granddaughter's hand: 'Siichak! Did I not call you when this one was pregnant with Cidaq here? And did we not reverse the spirits, and bring forth this child properly?' And the midwife had to confess that Cidaq would have been born dead if she and the old woman had not intervened. After that the program to catch a whale went more smoothly.

Old One decided early in the process that she herself was too old to manage a harpoon, and when she looked about for someone who could, she concluded there was only one real candidate strong enough, her own granddaughter: 'Girl, can you be trusted to do your best? You have the arms. Have you the will?'

'I'll try,' Innuwuk mumbled with no enthusiasm, and Old One thought: She wants to fail. She's afraid of the spirits.

Now the six crews began to practice in the calm space between Lapak and the volcano, with various women recalling bits of the procedure. One knew how to tip the harpoon with flint, another how to make and inflate the sealskin bladders that would float behind the harpoon after it had been stuck in the whale, so that a visible trail would always be available. And still others recalled what their vanished husbands had said about this fight or that. They failed to recover all the knowledge they needed, but they accumulated enough to make a try.

But, as Old One had foreseen, her granddaughter failed miserably in her attempt to master the throwing-stick: 'I can't hold the stick and the harpoon at the same time, and when I try, I can't make the harpoon fly the way it should.'

'Try again!' the old woman pleaded, but it was no use. Since boy babies were instructed in the use of this intricate weapon from the age of one, it was absurd to think that an unpracticed woman could master it in a few weeks. So in the end the women agreed that when the whale came, they would paddle their canoes so close to it that Innuwuk could reach out and push her harpoon into the huge gray-black body. A sillier strategy had rarely been devised.

In late August a nine-year-old girl who kept watch came shouting: 'Whale!' and there in the passageway between the islands swam this monstrous creature, forty tons at least, and

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the prospect of untrained women going forth in frail canoes to give it battle was so unnerving that one crew member simply ran away. But this left five kayaks, and Old One could remember when her husband and one other craft managed to puncture a whale and harry it to its death.

So the five teams went solemnly to the beach, no one showing eagerness for this battle, and it had been agreed that Cidaq, a strong girl at fourteen, should sit in the rear of Innuwuk's kayak and guide her mother close enough to the whale for the harpoon to be driven home, but when they approached the beast and the women saw how tremendous it was and how pitifully small they were, all lost heart, even Cidaq, and not one craft came within stabbing distance of the whale as it moved sedately past.

'We were like tiny fish,' Cidaq confessed later as she spoke with her disappointed great-grandmother. 'I wanted to paddle closer but my arms refused.' Burying her face in her hands, she shuddered, then looked up from beneath her bangs and said: 'You can't imagine how big it was. Or how small we were.' And the old woman said: 'Yes, I can. And I can also imagine all of us dying here . . . eyes sunken . . . cheeks gone . . . and no one to bury us.'

THE PLAN TO CATCH A WHALE FOR LAPAK WAS SALVAGED

in a curious way. When the ten women scuttled back home without having come close to the whale, they were so ashamed of themselves that one young woman, who had been married only a short while before the men were taken away, said: 'Norutuk would have laughed at me,' and in the silence that followed, each woman visualized the manner in which her husband would have teased her: 'Imagine a bunch of women going after a whale!' and they longed to hear that teasing. But then the young wife added: 'But after he teased me, I think Norutuk would say: ”Now go and do it right.”' And more even than Old One's determination, this voice of reassurance from the absent men they had loved put fire into the hearts of these women, and they resolved to catch their whale.

Heartened by this resolve, Old One resumed with terrible concentration training her teams, and hammered at them that next time they must go right into the face of the whale, no matter how big, and bring it back. And on the fifth day of their training she appeared with a three-hatch kayak, and she told her women: 'When the whales come, I ride here with my own paddle, Cidaq rides in back to steer, and Innuwuk sits up here with her harpoon, and we have taken a pledge 220