The east wind, p.17
The East Wind, page 17
When he had gone outside Tun-sij was given the news: Sinsiew was with child.
The shaman woman slumped in her bed and closed her eyes.
“My dear ones, I can’t go on any more. Irovar, go out and talk with our son-in-law. I want to speak with my son. Sinsiew, go with him and give Vendel the impression that you’ll be going with him.”
Irovar went out obediently. His simple, devoted heart was heavy. Sinsiew followed him reluctantly.
Tun-sij turned her attention to her son with a great struggle. “Ngut, you have to do it because you are like me, my son. And afterwards ... the big boat sails in three days. Make sure Vendel is on board! We don’t need him any more and from now on he’s just going to be a burden to us. But your sister is to stay here. Her task is not quite over yet. She won’t mourn his absence and there were many foreign men who were looking at her during the festivities when she was in a dilemma. Vendel is not the man for her but he had a task to do and he did it. Will you tend to all of this?”
“Yes, mother,” said the boy with the inscrutable face and the skewed, intense eyes.
“Hand me my drum, my boy. From now on it will be yours.”
It puzzled and pleased Vendel that Sinsiew had changed her mind.
“We’ll have to prepare for the trip immediately. And don’t feel sad, Sinsiew, some day we’ll come back so that you can see your parents again. And we’ll bring a lot of things back for them, including grandchildren that they can admire.” He laughed with joy. But Sinsiew remained quiet and sulky, and she turned her back when he approached her in bed.
Vendel was extremely pleased about the fact that she was expecting a baby, and he solemnly promised that nothing dangerous would happen to her during the journey. He was so happy that he didn’t notice her reserve.
But the following morning Tun-sij was gone. Quietly and without any ceremony.
Vendel, who immediately grasped that she was dead, went straight to the place of sacrifice. Her chain with the bear teeth lay on the altar, but there was no new rock garden to indicate where her grave was.
Tun-sij had not been a great hunter. She had clearly just been buried in the ordinary fashion.
It remained a mystery to Vendel what that actually entailed. He grieved for her deeply and he couldn’t prevent his tears from streaming down his face.
Irovar met him by the gate at the place of sacrifice just as he had done in the early summer. Back then Tun-sij had been with them. The Yurak’s face was grey with sorrow.
“You are a good man, Vendel,” he said, and spoke a few consoling words to his son-in-law. He asserted that Tun-sij’s soul would speak well of him in the spirit world and that was consoling to hear.
Vendel noticed that there was a change. Now that Tun-sij was dead, the tie between Sinsiew and himself was broken. It had been the shaman’s will that had created his desire. Now he saw his wife for exactly what she was: a complete stranger who had opinions and beliefs that he was unable to share. He didn’t even like her!
But she was expecting his child and it would never have entered his mind to betray her in that situation. So they continued to make preparations for the journey, even though Sinsiew gave the impression of being oddly careless and indifferent.
The evening before the boat was to sail, Sinsiew took her father out for a walk, because she wanted to see her beloved valleys one last time, she said. Ngut invited Vendel to the tent for a farewell dinner. They needed to talk a little more with one another. They were brothers-in-law, after all.
Vendel remembered nothing of this conversation. He was given some soup, boiling hot and highly spiced. It wasn’t at all bad: it had been specially made for Vendel by Sinsiew and Ngut ...
The only thing he could faintly remember were Ngut’s burning eyes close to his face and how they had stared searchingly into his, before he fell into a strange sort of sleep in which it felt as if Tun-sij’s soul was floating around in search of itself.
The whole thing had been very odd and when he awoke everything around him was moving. He was looking up at a ceiling ... of wooden planks? The Nenets didn’t have those in their tents!
Sinsiew?
He fumbled in the empty space next to him. The only thing he found was the hard edge of a plank bed. His belongings lay next to it.
Vendel sat up with a start.
He was on board the boat. He got to his feet in a daze and found a door. He went up on deck.
Ocean. All he could see was icy ocean in all directions.
The crew eyed him inscrutably.
“Maja zjena?” he asked in Russian.
The captain, whom he knew from several conversations in the settlement, shook his head. “Your wife didn’t want to come along. She and her brother were the ones who brought you here tonight. We’re sorry, but there was nothing we could do.”
“But I ... ”
Vendel rushed across to the railing. But I have a child there, he thought despairingly. My child, who’ll be born at the beginning of next summer. I can’t leave my child!
It was true that he had given up on Sinsiew, it was actually a relief for him to be free of her. But the child! His child! And ... oh horror, a child of the Ice People! One that would be “touched”!
No, Tun-sij had said that they had a little boy in Taran-gai who was afflicted with the curse. So Vendel’s child would probably escape it. But he wanted the little creature, wanted to see it, take care of it.
Taran-gai?
He couldn’t see cliffs anywhere. Not even land. The sun ...
No, the unhelpful, eternally shining sun could not inform him.
“How long have we been at sea?”
“We got under way in the early hours,” the skipper answered. “It’s approaching night-time now.”
Had he slept for almost twenty-four hours? Oh God, what was he to do? He couldn’t ask them to turn around, that was out of the question. And anyway, he now had the chance of a lifetime to get back home. He had to go home. But the child!
His heart was burning with sorrow. Now he understood that it had been Sinsiew’s intention right from the beginning. And Tun-sij’s and Ngut’s. But not Irovar’s.
They had planned to put him on board the boat. To get rid of him. But the first plan, to make Sinsiew and him a couple, that had been Tun-sij’s plan.
Vendel gritted his teeth in rage and sorrow. He had been manipulated, there was no other word for it.
He stood by the railing sunk in his gloomy and chaotic thoughts. As far as the eye could see, the ocean was covered in large and small sheets of ice, porous and bluish in colour now that it was late summer. The boat seemed frighteningly small as it struggled on with its torn sails. Since it was always blowing on these waters they had enough wind but the ice sheets continually gave them problems. Vendel noticed that the skipper was a bit uneasy. The autumn had come quickly this year, he told Vendel, and what they feared most was that the ocean would freeze.
Suddenly the watchman shouted. “Look over there, straight ahead!” Everyone rushed in that direction. The crew consisted of just seven men, plus Vendel, on the small boat.
He squinted in order to see better what it was. Far ahead of them they could see something on a big ice floe, but none of them could tell exactly what it was from that distance.
“It’s not an animal,” the captain said.
No, they all agreed about that.
The boat ploughed on.
“I guess we’re far from land?” Vendel asked.
“Yes, but the ice floes keep moving. The wind and the heavy current can carry them far out to sea in the course of a few hours.”
They caught a good wind and quickly drew closer.
Then the captain yelled, “Sail around it!”
Everyone had seen it now. It was a person. A person who sat in and was tied to a sleigh. Vendel had seen many sleighs like it in the Yuraks’ camp. “But shouldn’t we save ...?” he began, but his words stuck in his throat. The helmsman hadn’t managed to make as sharp a turn as he wanted so they passed fairly close to the ice floe as the boat altered its course. Vendel saw the men in the crew make the sign of the cross while they mumbled a few prayers to their Greek Orthodox God.
He felt his chest tightening. He had seen who was sitting out there in the sleigh with eyes firmly fixed on the polar sun.
Tun-sij.
He clung to the railing.
“That’s how they do it, these heathens,” the captain said fiercely. “When they think it’s time to get rid of those who are elderly and no longer useful, they just leave them out on the ice to die.”
“She herself wished to die,” Vendel murmured. “I knew her. She was their shaman.”
And my mother-in-law, he was about to add, but stopped himself in time.
“Shaman?” the others whispered, pale with superstition. “God save us!”
“No, there’s no need to fear her,” Vendel said. “She was my friend and she won’t hurt us. Not as long as I’m here.”
He couldn’t say that he and the deceased were of the same blood because no one would have believed that.
“She died a few days ago,” he said as he threw a final glance at the figure as it disappeared behind them. “It was her wish to die. She had achieved everything she wanted in life.” It was not without a tone of bitterness that he said these words and the crew looked at him in wonder.
It was a long time before Vendel could forget that vision of the shaman woman out on the ice. But he thought it was wonderful to have the opportunity to speak Russian again. It was a language he was fluent in, while he had always felt that he was on shaky ground when speaking the language of the Yuraks. To his great relief the sailors had stopped hunting for seals because they didn’t have a moment to spare if they were going to reach Arkhangelsk before the winter.
Late in August – though Vendel was unaware that it was August – they passed the sound to the south of Novaya Zemlya. Their initial plan had been to dock at Naryan-Mar, the trading post of the Yuraks on the Polar coast, but they didn’t dare take the chance. Vendel was thankful for that. If he had met more Yuraks he would have felt so torn that he might have done something rash. Though he longed to get home he would have felt that he was destined to be stuck in the Yuraks’ land forever and his feelings of guilt would have gnawed at him for not returning to Sinsiew. It suited him well, in the agitated state he was in, that he had no control over where the boat would sail.
It’s the east wind, he thought. It’s carrying me home!
In September the cold came. The skipper’s expression grew increasingly tense. He smoked his machorka, a kind of homemade tobacco that smelt of death and decay, and he roared and yelled at the crew as though he wanted to make them jump into the ocean and push the boat forward.
They had managed to pass Cape Kanin and were on their way to the White Sea when a merciless frost set in. They watched in horror as the ice settled on the sails and ropes and on the rest of the hull. All their time was spent knocking the ice off to prevent the vessel from going under with its extra weight. Only the ship’s mate was spared that work. Vendel naturally helped, scared as he was of the white ghost that seemed to billow over the boat and envelope it in white garments. He was warmly dressed from head to foot but his hands had to be uncovered and they grew more and more stiff. They worked night and day to keep the boat free of ice. The wind was good and they were sailing in the right direction towards Arkangelsk. It would be useless to anchor near land because that consisted of nothing but frozen wilderness.
Vendel had only one thing on his mind, and that was reaching Arkangelsk safely. He would have to plan the rest of his journey to Sweden later. He wasn’t even halfway home yet.
Now it started to snow, which made their work harder. And one night what they had feared most happened: the boat began to tilt.
“We’re sinking!” one of the men shouted, completely beside himself with fear.
“Not yet,” Vendel yelled in response.
The days had changed. Instead of the eternal sun a murky darkness reigned, as though the daylight had been replaced with a grey-blue twilight. It was never truly light any more and they had to strain their eyes in order to see where they needed to hack the ice away.
Vendel took hold of the big hammer and got to work on the ice on the side of the boat that was sinking. The others helped in feverish desperation. The skipper yelled orders, which no one could hear because of the banging.
It seemed that they managed to straighten the boat slightly so that it wasn’t tilting to such a dangerous angle that it would have relentlessly rolled over. But one of the men was too eager, and leaned a little too far forward in order to reach the biggest of the ice clumps. He fell into the water, head first, but he managed to get hold of the railing with one hand.
The others rushed over to help him back on board.
“I’m stuck!” he cried, “I’m stuck in the ice!”
The ice continued to pack more and more densely around the hull and his legs were trapped in it. Vendel tied a rope around his waist and jumped overboard.
He had never imagined that the water could be so deadly cold. He gasped crazily for air. Then he finally managed to gain some control over his breathing. He had looked carefully and identified a good place to jump so that his legs wouldn’t be stuck too. He quickly managed to loosen the man’s legs from the clutch of the ice with the hammer he had taken with him, and the unfortunate man was pulled on board by the others.
But now that Vendel was in the water anyway he realized that he had the opportunity to remove all the ice from the boat. He shouted to his mates and started working on the ice on the less accessible side of the boat.
He couldn’t stay there long, so he hurried to deal with as much as he possibly could. After just a few minutes he noticed two things: the ship straightened up and his legs had grown completely numb.
“Get me up!” he shouted, because now he noticed something else: he was starting to get stuck in the ice.
It was some time before they managed to loosen him from the clutch of the ice. But they finally succeeded. He was hauled semiconscious over the railing.
“You saved the ship,” the captain gasped. “But you’re crazy, you don’t know what the ice water’s like here. Quickly, get him to bed!”
They placed his feet in hot water and they rubbed and massaged both him and the other man who had been in the water for much less time than Vendel. They laid him in his berth and wrapped him in all the warmest clothes they could find.
But to his despair Vendel couldn’t feel any of these things being done to him. He couldn’t feel his legs.
Two days later they anchored at Arkhangelsk.
Vendel was still confined to his bed. He was unable to move. The crew had stood around his bed and heard him talking deliriously in his fever. They looked at one another in amazement ...
He was carried off the boat to a small inn by the harbour that accommodated guests. The conditions were very bad but they ordered a doctor to look at him.
When the man had finished examining Vendel he looked at him for a long time. But he didn’t say anything. He just left.
Instead, two other men arrived about an hour later. They looked distinctly Russian, with round faces and coarse features. They wanted to know where he came from.
Vendel explained that he had been living with the Yuraks for a long time.
But they wanted to know his place of origin.
“St Petersburg,” he explained, because that was the closest place to Sweden within Russian borders and he wanted to be sent there.
“That wasn’t the language you were speaking on board the ship,” one man said.
Vendel quickly recovered from his shock. “No that was probably the Yuraks’ language.”
“Hmm,” the man said sceptically. “The captain said it was something else. He knows the Yuraks from Naryan-Mar. The language you were speaking was not that of the Yuraks. And how did a blond man like you end up in that polar hell?”
“It’s a long story,” Vendel murmured, unprepared as he was for that question.
“I can well imagine,” the other man answered. “But let me tell you something, young man. Here in Arkhangelsk we have a lot of prisoners of war working for us. And the skipper recognized your language. He’s heard some of the prisoners speaking it. You spoke Swedish in your delirious state. So a couple of soldiers are on their way here to fetch you. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
Vendel was speechless.
And a little while later the soldiers arrived. They transferred him rather roughly to a stretcher. He was carried to a building that resembled a kind of barracks in the town and they put him in a small, empty room. They closed the door when they left and turned the key in the lock. He was a prisoner once more.
Prisoner. He had been so close to succeeding. He wasn’t sure how he would have been able to move on from there but Arkhangelsk was a major seaport with international connections. Perhaps he could have stowed away on a ship bound for a western port, or perhaps he could have travelled across Finland, which wasn’t so far away. And Finland was, unless there had been a drastic change in his absence, Swedish territory.
But all that was now out of the question. His despair was so deep that he couldn’t even cry. What had his life come to? Behind him he had left an unborn child whom he deeply wished to know and care for. And in Sweden his parents were waiting for him in vain.
And now he was trapped here without any possibility of escaping. His legs were frozen, withered and dead and he didn’t even dare look at them.
Suddenly the Russian folk song popped up in his mind:
I will die here, and be buried
and no one will know where
my grave is.
No one will ever visit my grave
but early each year
the nightingale will start to sing there.
There were certainly no nightingales in Arkhangelsk. Maybe sparrows would do instead? Vendel’s black humour made him smile quietly. A grin that soon dissolved into a flood of tears.
