Alaska (35 page)

that we will go into the jaws of that whale if we have to, but we shall lodge our harpoon in that whale.' However, even as she spoke, she doubted that Innuwuk would have the courage to do it.

Then came one of those revelations which enable the human race to progress, for as Innuwuk slept she dreamed with horror of the moment when she would be sitting in her kayak, reaching out with her harpoon to stab the great whale, and she woke bathed in sweat and terror, for she knew she could not do that thing. But as she lay in the darkness, trembling, she suddenly had a vision, a kind of synthesis of brain and imagination and kinesthetic control of her muscles, and in a blinding flash she understood how a harpoon thrower worked. Again and again she drew back her right arm, feeling an imaginary stick and harpoon in place, and as she threw her arm forward she felt all parts of this marvelous machine harmonizing shoulder, arm, wrist, fingers, stick, harpoon, flinted point and she leaped from her bed, ran out to the shore, grabbed harpoon and stick, and with great swinging movements of her arm, flung the harpoon far and true. After the sixth proof that she had mastered the mysteries, she ran shouting to the others: 'I can do it!'

And in the dawn when they saw with what accuracy she could throw her harpoon, and from what a distance, they knew that next time a whale swam into their sea they would have a strong chance of landing it.

The six crews were ashore when the little girl watching the straits came shouting: 'A whale!' and then, as if she realized the terror her information would cause in some, she added: 'A little whale!' and the women ran to their kayaks.

They were very small, these women who presumed to attack leviathan, none over five feet one, and with Old One, who had masterminded the assault, at less than four-eleven and ninety-one pounds, one for each year of her adventurous life. Cidaq, watching her climb in with her driftwood paddle, knew that the frail old woman could contribute nothing to the speed, but everything to the courage of the other five crews. As for herself, Cidaq was determined to take her craft right up against the whale: 'Mother, be ready! This time we won't fail!' And trailing behind Old One, the other teams went forth to do battle.

The little scout had been correct, for this whale weighed only nineteen tons, a great deal smaller than the first giant, so that when the women saw it coming toward them, many thought: This one, maybe! and they moved ahead with a courage they had not known they had. From the rear of their canoe, Cidaq paddled with undeviating direction, assisted by

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counsel from Old One in the middle, who kept dipping her paddle from side to side, and both called to Innuwuk perched in the prow: 'Steady! You've proved you can do it.' And finally, with a slingshot thrust that was exceedingly powerful for an untrained woman, the harpoon was lodged, and from another kayak a safeguard was stabbed home, and the bladders streamed out, and for two days of grandeur and terror and hope the six groups, driven by Old One's indomitable zeal, trailed their stricken whale, and in due course towed it slowly, triumphantly back through the Bering Sea to the salvation of their island.

IN 1790, AFTER THE WOMEN HAD PROVED THEY COULD

survive for an entire year, a small, hull-wracked ship, the Tsar Ivan, put into Lapak to take on fresh water. It had been dispatched from Petropavlovsk by that indestructible entrepreneur Madame Zhdanko, who had crammed into it a horrible collection of dregs from Russia's jails who had heard the sentence popular with judges in those days: 'To the gallows or the Aleutians.' They had chosen the latter, permanent exile with no hope of reprieve, but with every intention of murdering island officials if they got the chance.

When the Tsar Ivan

hove to, its crew, not realizing that the island had been abandoned by the Russian government, found the marooned women in a state of perplexity. They hoped that the ship was going to carry them to their husbands, but knowing the Russians, they feared new abuses, and as soon as the sailors spoke, they knew it would be the latter: 'No woman gets on this ship!' and there was stolid grief as the women realized that they really had been left here to d
ie.

There was among the criminals a multiple murderer named Yermak Rudenko, thirty-one years old, big, burly, bearded, and a scoundrel almost impossible to discipline.

Knowing that he had nothing more to lose, he swaggered about exuding so clearly the threat 'Don't touch me!' that officials let him alone. He had been ashore only a short time when shrewd Old One spotted him, and sidling up with Russian words she had acquired, she began speaking to him about this and that, but always mentioning her great-granddaughter Cidaq, and she started this man's thinking along such lines by arranging one day when the other men were loading water that Rudenko and Cidaq were left alone in the old woman's hut, and later that afternoon made her proposal: 'Why not take Cidaq with you to Kodiak?'

He was startled by the idea, but as the old woman pointed 222

out: 'She speaks Russian. She's a wonderful child. And believe it or not, she's already helped kill her whale.' This last claim was so preposterous that Rudenko began asking about the supposed killing of a whale by a girl not much more than fifteen, and the women confirmed that it was true, and to prove it they showed him and the other Russians how the skeleton was being used in imaginative ways.

When Innuwuk learned what her grandmother was proposing, the sale of Cidaq to this rude sailor, she protested bitterly, but the old woman was adamant: 'Better she live in hell than never to live at all,' and she allowed no counterargument: 'I want this child to know life. I don't care what kind of life,' and when Rudenko showed interest in what Old One was proposing, she took Cidaq aside: 'I dragged you into the world by one foot. I slapped life into your lungs. I have loved you endlessly, more than my own children, for you are a treasure. You are the white bird coming from the north.

You are the seal diving to escape. You are the otter defending her young. You are the child of these oceans. You are the hope, the love, the joy.' Her voice rose almost to an impassioned chant: 'Cidaq, I cannot see you perish on this forlorn island.

I cannot see you, who were made for love, go down to lifeless leather like the mummies in the caves up there.'

When the terms of sale were agreed upon, with the women of Lapak receiving a few trinkets and some lengths of gaudy fabric, Old One and Innuwuk dressed Cidaq in her best furs, warned her to be on the watch for evil spirits, and led her to the shore where the three-hatch kayak awaited. 'We'll take you out to the ship,' Old One said as Cidaq carefully stowed the small bundle that contained her meager belongings.

However, at the last moment a woman for whom the family had had little respect ran up with a labret handsomely carved and suited for the spot at the corner of the girl's mouth: 'I carved it from the bone of the whale you and I caught,' and before Cidaq stepped into the rear hatch of the kayak, she removed the gold-colored walrus labret she had been wearing and gave it to the surprised woman, inserting in its place the new white one from her whale.

It was now time for Old One to take her place in the middle, but before she did she created a great stir along the beach, for she had asked another old woman to bring to the departure objects whose unexpected appearance tugged at the heart of every woman in the crowd. Bowing gravely, Old One took from her accomplice three of the famous visored hats of Lapak, those made and worn by the hunters of that island, and handing one to each of the other two members of her family, she donned the third, an elegant affair of

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gray and blue with plumes of silvery baleen and sealion whiskers, and thus attired she directed Cidaq to head for the Tsar Ivan, but when the women ashore saw the splendid hats on the waves once more, they cried 'Ah me1' and 'Woe, woe'' and tears fell like mist for a scene that they would never again see-the men of Lapak going forth in their gala hats.

At the gangway to the ship Old One took Cidaq by the hands, ignoring the leering insults shouted by sailors along the gunwales 'It's not a proper thing we're doing, Girl,' she said, gripping Cidaq's fingers tightly 'And the spirits may frown. But it's better than dying alone on this island In days ahead, Cidaq, never forget Whatever happens, it's better than what you left'

The Tsar Ivan

had scarcely left the shadow of the volcano when Old One's pragmatic philosophy was put to the test, for Rudenko, who now owned her, dragged Cidaq below, ripped off her seaotter garments and began the series of brutal acts which left her dazed and humiliated What was worse, when he was finished with her, he passed her back and forth among his brutish friends, who abused her in ugly ways, keeping her stowed in the fetid hold of the ship and feeding her only intermittently after forcing her to submit to their indecencies. Since Rudenko acknowledged no responsibility for her well-being, her treatment degenerated so savagely that several times during the fifty-two-day passage to Kodiak she suspected that before the voyage ended, she might be tossed overboard as a nearly lifeless object of no further use It was as dark an experience as a young girl could have, for among the seven or eight men who slept with her, there was not one who developed any affection for her or any feeling that he should protect her from the others. They all treated her as inhuman, a thing of scorn But she knew that on Lapak she had been a child of value, the leader of girls her age and the peer of the boys, and that the awful indignities she was suffering were the price she had to pay to escape from a situation that was even worse. Remembering her great-grandmother's words, she never once considered ending the abuse by throwing herself overboard, even when her tribulations became almost unbearable. Not at all! If this passage to Kodiak was her only chance for survival, she could endure it, but she did take careful note of the men who humiliated her and kicked her when they finished with her, and she vowed that when their boat landed at Kodiak, if it ever did, she would have certain scores to settle, and sometimes there in the darkness a sea-swept smile would take possession of her entire face, and with her tongue she would touch the new labret. If I helped kill that whale, I can handle Rudenko And

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she devised so many heartening possibilities for revenge that the creaking of the ship and the hideous behavior of its passengers ceased to distress her.

The journey did end. Contrary to expectations, the rickety Tsar Ivan limped in to Kodiak Island, and when its stores had been unloaded to the cheers of the starving Russians stationed there, Cidaq was allowed to gather her pitifully small bundle and step into the barge that would ferry her into the turbulent life of this island colony. But even though she was now free, she could not leave this dreadful ship and its equally dreadful passengers without saying farewell, so when the barge pulled away she looked up to where the men who had misused her were laughing at her from the gunwales, and cried in Russian: 'I hope you drown! I hope the great whale drags you to the ocean depths!' And despite her fury she flashed that grim smile which seemed to warn: 'Watch out, Masters! We shall surely meet again.'

HER FIRST GLIMPSE OF KODIAK ISLAND TOLD ClDAQ THAT

it was both similar to Lapak and much different. Like her home island it was barren, indented with bays and rimmed by mountains, but there the resemblance ended, for it contained no volcano; but it did offer something she had never seen before. In certain meadows there were alders, low-growing shrublike trees, and the manner in which their leaves and branches moved back and forth puzzled her. In a few protected spots clumps of cottonwoods with peeling white bark collected, and at the far end of the village in which she would be living rose a single majestic spruce whose towering height and dazzling green-blue color amazed her.

'What is that?' she asked a woman hauling fish from a boat.

'A tree.'

'And what's a tree?'

'There it is,' and Cidaq remained gazing upward at the spruce.

Three Saints Bay was a small collection of rude huts hugging the shore of a bay shaped like an upside-down capital L, but it provided safe anchorage for boats engaged in the fur trade, because it was further protected by a large island a quarter-mile offshore; but it had little hinterland for development, since it was pinched in at the foot of tall mountains.

It was two days before Cidaq, existing as she could from hut to hut, learned the major difference between Lapak and Kodiak: the people of her new home were divided into four distinct groups. There were the Aleuts like herself who had been imported here by the Russians; they were small in size, 225

in numbers and in importance. Then there were the natives who had always inhabited the island, Koniags they were called, big, difficult, quick to anger and outnumbering the Aleuts twenty or more to one. One Aleut who had known Cidaq on Lapak told her: 'The Russians brought us in because they couldn't control the Koniags.' Next up the ladder came the fur traders, wild and horrible men stationed here for life unless they could contrive some excuse late in their lives to accompany a shipment of furs back to Petropavlovsk. And finally there were the few true Russians, usually sons of privileged families, who served here for a few years before they stole enough to retire to estates near St. Petersburg. They were the elite, and the three other castes behaved as they directed, and occasionally warships put into Three Saints to enforce the discipline they dictated.

What Cidaq lacked the experience to understand at this early date was that her Aleuts were slaves; there was no other word for it, because over them their Russian masters exercised absolute power from which there was no escape, for if an Aleut tried to run away, hostile Koniags might kill him. With no women on hand to share their misery, and no children coming along to replace them, the Aleut men slaving on Kodiak were exactly like the Aleut women in isolation on Lapak: both were condemned to live brief lives, die, and speed the extermination of their race.

The fur traders were not much better off, for they were serfs, tied to the land without chance of betterment or the possibility of ever establishing a proper home back in the Russia from which they were exiled. Their only hope was to catch some native woman, or to steal one from her husband, and with her have children known as Creoles who might in time gain Russian citizenship. But for the most part, they were the property of the company, and until they died, were to toil endlessly to enhance the riches of the empire.