The Chukchi Bible by Yuri Rytkheu Page B

with its smell. Kalyach rolled a whale vertebra close to the fire, sat down and peered at the dark shard of walrus tusk in his hands. Stroking its smooth surface he could see Outstretched Wings – the magical object he was going to carve from the tusk. This would take a good deal of time. In his mind’s eye Kalyach already saw Outstretched Wings carved and decorated with circles and arcs; what now remained was the long, meticulous process of making them.

    He did not like to delay, and began work immediately after a snack of warm walrus meat and a piece of sweet unev in clarified nerpa blubber.
    In the meantime, in another yaranga, a nameless newborn boy who waited for his naming ritual happily suckled his mother’s breast. Bent over her infant, the overjoyed mother softly crooned an ancient lullaby:
    Grow, grow, my son!
Grow and grow up fast!
Grow to hunt the beasts at sea,
Grow to feed your family . . .
Grow, grow, my son!
You shall be the strongest hunter,
You shall be the fastest runner,
You shall be the longest leaper . . .
    The boy was her first child, and as she cradled the tiny, warm body, the woman reveled in the deep, tender new feeling of motherhood. Her song rose and fell, mingling with the howling of the wind that raged outside the walls of the yaranga. What a pity that a person’s fate could not be determined from birth! Who will he be, this child who snores so sweetly, and only seldom opens his little eyes, black and shiny like wet shingle? Doubtless he will become a hunter and live out his life in this ancient yaranga; but whom he would caress during the long winter nights and how many children he would have – well, that even Kalyach could not foretell. And maybe there was no need. That’s the beauty of life, not knowing what even the next day may bring. Of course much would depend on himself, but much also on
weather, luck, and the abundance of sea life by Uelen’s shores. And more than likely the boy would marry someone from neighboring Nuvuken, his mother’s birthplace.
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    Kalyach settled down by the unsteady, flickering firelight and set to work. First he roughly chiseled the walrus tusk shard with a bone-handled stone adze. Slowly the contours of a winged, headless bird appeared from inside the shapeless bone. It was not to have a head, because destiny does not have sight or smell. Destiny is driven by different powers entirely, powers beyond human comprehension – powers whose presence can only be guessed at, because they never act in a straightforward way but only through portents and signs. Kalyach had spent half his life attempting to understand their unseen influence on man’s destiny. Even as a child, he’d often been pulled away from childish games and reminded of his special purpose, subjected to trials and even to pain. Little Kalyach ate the worst of the food, was not allowed to fully quench his thirst or wear warm and waterproof clothing. Uelen’s chief shaman, a direct descendant of Keu and Keleu, used to stand the child on the edge of the Great Crag and teach him to suppress vertigo and fear. As a boy, Kalyach would use a walrus-hide strap to drag a walrus head over the hard shingled beach; then it was a whale head, and finally a heavy rock, all to develop muscle. He would sprint to Keniskun and back in snowfall and in cold summer rain, and run up Pegyk mountain with a leather sack full of stones on his back. He took part in the rituals for the elders who wished to leave life, looking into faces disfigured by suffering and pain. This was called “looking death in the face,” sensing its breath. On dark nights he was made to sit alone over the graves of those just buried on the Hill of
Hearts’ Peace and listen to the conversing dead, whose souls came to mingle under the cover of darkness. Not many could have withstood such testing, and indeed many of Kalyach’s fellows broke under the strain, some losing their minds