Free The Chukchi Bible by Yuri Rytkheu Page A

Mekym’s chest and asked something. Having had no response, the stranger once again clapped his own chest and repeated:
    â€œSemyon!”
    Then he poked his finger at Mekym’s chest.
    â€œHe is telling you his name and wants to know yours,” Kalyanto said, on a hunch.
    Then Mekym, copying the stranger, clapped his chest and said, just as loudly as the other had:
    â€œMekym!”
    â€œSemyon!” The stranger repeated his own gesture and, pointing to Mekym, slowly enunciated:
    â€œMeh – keem!”
    Now it was not just the newcomers who were smiling; the men of Uelen, standing watchfully by, smiled too. The newcomers came up close to the Luoravetlan. They stretched out their arms, hugged the Luoravetlan and clapped their backs, laughing loudly all the while.
    At first glance, these people did not seem to have mouths, but these would suddenly appear among the dense facial hair as a row of yellow teeth. Even Kalyanto, the shaman, did not recognize a single familiar word in the visitors’ speech, though he could speak with the Aivanalin and knew the language of the Kaaramkyn.
    The fraternization continued on the shingled beach, to which the people of Uelen were now returning. It turned out that the visitors had not touched anything within the yarangas, save for scraping the stone vats clean of boiled meat.
    The one who had called himself Semyon had clearly marked out Mekym for his special friend. With his arm around the other man in a comradely
manner, he led Mekym to one of the enormous boats, which sat half-beached on the shingle. But Mekym preferred not to go aboard, though he looked at the bearded visitors’ seafaring technology with great interest. These were huge boats with exceedingly tall sides, smeared with something black, which looked like tree blubber – a thing of extreme rarity in these parts. The sails were made from an unfamiliar stuff, durable and light.
    The natives dragged some fresh nerpa meat out onto the shore, and the visitors lit fires, over which they hung vast cauldrons made of a dark, flameproof substance.
    They set to work with astonishingly sharp, wood-handled knives. Evidently, this was the “metal” of which tales had reached Uelen. The Luoravetlan’s southern neighbors, the Koryaks – who spoke a language somewhat similar to that of the Luoravetlan – were known to possess this durable material. Iron was a vain dream, a secret desire. The foreigners seemed to have it in plenty, from their cauldrons to their knives and axes, even the buttons on their torn, ragged clothes.
    Noting the interest in all things metallic, Semyon gave an order, and in an instant measureless riches lay spread out before Mekym: knives of all sizes, axes, hammers, and cauldrons, as well as a jagged-edged strip of metal, which, Mekym soon guessed, the visitors used to cut pliant wood. To top it all off, Semyon poured a heap of metal needles into Mekym’s open hand. It seemed like a magical dream. Surely when they awakened it would all vanish: these monstrous boats, these people with their hairy mouths, and the wealth of metal they had brought.
    But nothing vanished. Mekym’s tribesmen sifted over the treasure, passing knives to one another and cautiously testing their edges, flicking the iron cauldrons with their fingernails to produce a metallic peal.
    â€œIf I had even one of those knives!” Mekym thought to himself.

    Semyon pointed to Mekym’s clothing, then to the clothing of the other Luoravetlan. Then he plucked at his own . . . He swept his arm over the metal pile, as though to embrace it, and then made a sign that left no doubt that he was after Luoravetlan clothes in return.
    â€œHe wants to trade!” Unu cried.
    Trading was something in which the Luoravetlan were well versed. They traded with the nomadic deer herders, exchanging walrus, lakhtak, and nerpa hides and clarified blubber for deerskins, kamusses, deer meat, and tendons