As we advance along the riverbank, we’re also drawing near the sea. I begin to hear its murmur. Its voice grows louder and more insistent the closer we get. Then, beneath it, there’s something else. A faint sound rises, then disappears. Then it’s back. It goes away again. The wind plays games with it, with us, until at last the rhythmic sound swells so that nothing can blow it away. We round a bend in the river and the sound erupts like exploding cannon. What beats like a hundred drums? Roars like a thousand thunder claps? The noise rises through the soles of my feet. It fills my head until I can think of nothing else, then my heart until I believe it’ll burst.
We reach the clearing with the five houses, the one we gazed upon from the opposite shore only a short while ago.
Koliuzhi, perhaps a hundred or more, ring the houses. Everyone strikes the walls with staves, pounding as if intent on demolishing their own homes. Even atop the houses, people lash out with batons violently enough to break the very roofs they stand on. The houses quiver, as if constructed of nothing more than a scrap of cloth or hide stretched over a wooden frame.
Is this their victory celebration?
Across the river, we’d been safe together such a short time ago. Now, in the tall trees and shadows that stretch as far as I can see, there’s no sign of anybody. There’s nothing I wouldn’t expect to see in this overgrown forest—except for some of the sailcloth bundles, white as shells, scattered across the earth, many torn open—is one mine?—and a grey-brown mound collapsed at the foot of a tall tree. I can’t take my eyes away from it. I look for movement, any movement at all. But it’s lifeless.
“That’s not him,” Maria says, leaning near my ear to be heard.
“How do you know?”
“He led the men away. I saw him.”
“Quiet,” Kotelnikov snaps. “You’ll provoke the koliuzhi.”
The drumming stops suddenly, and everyone rushes to the doorway of one of the five houses. They squeeze through the yawning opening, men, women, children, even babies in arms.
We ought to escape. Run. But to where? All directions are the same when you’re doomed.
Finally, Kotelnikov’s captor pulls him toward the same door. The koliuzhi man strains against the apprentice’s weight, but he’s muscular. With a look at the man who herded me up the path, I say, “Come,” to Maria and Yakov.
Like the little house we stole the salmon from, this one is made from wide, wooden planks that run the entire length of the building. Unlike that little house, this one is enormous, as big as a Petersburg mansion, perhaps bigger. There are no windows. The broad door lets two or three people enter at once.
Inside, darkness blinds me. All I see is the harsh glow of a fire, which verifies its presence with smoke scented like a Christmas feast. I sense movement all around. When my vision begins to adjust, I start to notice faces emerging from the gloom. They’re lit partly by the fire and partly by the outdoor light creeping in through the door, chinks in the walls, and a hole in the roof, the purpose of which must be to release smoke.
Novo-Arkhangelsk and the hills that surround it were filled with koliuzhi. They lived there. They worked, traded, fished, and who knows what else? Others knew, no doubt, but not me. I didn’t speak with them. I didn’t enter their homes. I didn’t ask after their mothers and fathers, their brothers and sisters, their children. I didn’t seek their advice, nor did I offer my opinions. It’s not that I didn’t wonder about them. But I was uncertain how such overtures could have been made. I lived in a cloud of not knowing.
What is to be made of our situation? Will I die today? Will we all? None of us moves. We stand for what seems like an eternity with no one speaking. I strain to read the faces of the koliuzhi. I expect anger, but they keep their distance and watch. I remember those two koliuzhi men surrounded by our crew on the brig on the day we traded for the halibut. How long we forced them to stand before us in silence! Now, the table has turned.
“Híli Chabachíť
a, ib ťisíkw όki Chalaťilo ťsi
áti,”[8] says a man from deep in the shadows of the house. It’s difficult at first to locate who’s speaking. When I do, I see a man opposite us, dressed in a cape unlike any I’ve seen on this voyage. This cape catches the firelight and glows soft gold. It’s not fur. It’s made of bark, just like mine was, though the gold is natural, not paint. Glossy black fur trims its edges. The cape is tied at his waist with a wide belt into which is tucked a dagger. He stands in a manner that reminds me of the towering trees firmly planted in the spongy soil of this forest.
He thrusts out a strange cylinder, then shakes it. It rattles like a cart running over a rutted road. What is it? It’s shorter than a telescope, and I think it’s made of wood. Huge eyes, ringed in red, and the pointed beak of a bird have been carved into it.
“Hakόtalaxw sisá
wa boyόkwa hόtskwať,”[9] he continues. His voice rumbles and reverberates off the plank walls. I try to understand, to identify any familiar word, but there’s none. He continues to speak, directing his words at everyone in the house, not at us alone.
Before long, a woman steps forward. I think she’s about to speak, too, but instead she kneels and tends the fire. My eyes shift from her to the speaker and back again. It’s hard to know where to look. A second woman bends near the fire and lifts the lid of a wooden box, one of several scattered about like toy blocks, unnaturally large versions of the ones I played with so long ago when my father was teaching me about gravity and the physical properties of objects in relation to one another.
When the lid is lifted, this wooden box releases a plume of steam and the aroma of stewing fish. The woman dips a big spoon—it’s a seashell lashed to a handle—into the box and stirs. She’s cooking. In a box? A box can hold water? Steaming water? A third, then a fourth woman soon join them, and together they fuss with the fire and the contents of the boxes with sticks and spoons and stones. With long wooden tongs, they move stones from the fire into the boxes. The stones sizzle when they hit the water and more steam billows to the rafters and spreads among the grasses, stalks, coils of cord, baskets, and skewered objects hanging up there.
The speaker’s voice drones in the background while the women cook. One woman rises slowly from her fireside tasks, wipes her hands on her skirt, and walks behind us. The hair on the back of my neck prickles, but she just slips out the door. Immediately, the children become restless. They fidget, whisper, and giggle, drawing my attention away from the women. A boy makes faces while two girls pretend not to notice him and smother their laughter with their hands. One of those girls cradles a sleeping baby in her lap and curls a tendril of the baby’s hair around her finger.
After a long time and a short time, the speaker finally stops. I’d like to sit down. I catch Maria’s eye—she must be tired, too. But she only shrugs, shifts, and looks away.
It’s not over yet. Another man steps into the ring of firelight. He’s as wrinkled as Yakov, with eyes that glitter like stars in the night sky. His voice sounds much younger; its pitch and rhythm rise and fall, much like the river outside clambering over the rocks.
“Wáalaxw chaá
alosalas hi
ítxli xwa didídal atslá