Once the boy learned that he was to be tested, he would run away from people and avoided asking questions. At night, before leaving the village with the others, he cut off a lock of his sister’s hair, and ate a slice of her flesh. This was the last thing that had entered his stomach, which was now gathering together like an empty sack, becoming smaller as it did so, and, as it grew smaller, gnawing at the emptiness within him.
Drums were played along the entire route. Later, when they reached the shore, they lit a huge fire and arranged themselves around it; women on one side and men on the other. The boy, next to the fire, dove into the body of his mother, who was beside herself, and whose body was as tense as a bow, and whose looks pierced him like an arrow. As dawn broke, the fire went out, and the basket was placed in the centre. When he emerged from the basket three days and three nights later, he would either be a shaman or a nothing.
When he stroked the walrus-tusk necklace his mother had given him, he was overcome with despair. They’d gone by now, all of them had gone. The boy remained all alone in the snow, inside an overturned basket. Since then he hadn’t eaten a single bite or uttered a single word. Until He arrived, not a bite nor a word would pass his lips. He was waiting for Him; his soul’s equal, the visitor who was the soul of his equal. The visitor he was waiting for could be a human or an animal or a plant. The visitor would either grant him superhuman powers and make him a shaman just like his sister, or the complete opposite, indeed he might even be punished for his presumption: Whatever happened, whatever the risks were, he was waiting for Him. If the visitor was human He would arrive on foot, if a bird, flying, if a fish, swimming, and if it was a plant it would emerge from the snow, see the basket and come. He would come and decide whether the boy was to be the tribe’s new shaman.
The beardless youth couldn’t keep a strange sense of distress from eroding his courage. Even if he hadn’t admitted it to himself yet, and even if he didn’t know the reason for it, he felt a terrible fear of being seen.
The sailor was smiling peacefully.
Timofei Ankidinov was watching him anxiously. On one hand he couldn’t rein in his jealousy at the thought that the sailor might be dreaming about the Pogicha, and on the other he was looking for some way to keep the man from freezing.
The visitor hadn’t come yet. The beardless youth was thinking neither about his elder sister nor about the name he would be given when he became shaman. He was miserable from hunger, weariness and fear. He could change his mind at any moment, but he didn’t have the strength to change his mind
At that moment his whole body shook. Something had entered the basket. For a while he stood waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, as if he hadn’t been living in this complete darkness for three nights, and as if when the visitor came He wouldn’t bring yet another curtain of darkness. An indistinct figure slowly became apparent. It was a big sable. It was at least five times bigger than other sables. When the boy saw it he couldn’t keep from smiling. This meant that the visitor he’d been awaiting so long was a sable that was his reflection in this world, a mirror of his face. This meant that, just as their eyes were identical, his soul also resembled this agile animal.
The boy and the sable stood eye to eye.
The boy and the sable looked at their resemblance. Both of their eyes shone with the knowledge of death. They were like two mirrors facing each other. As they looked, they flowed into each other and strengthened one another. Then they shut their eyes tightly. Then, in a manner that was both relaxed and energetic, and as if they were out in an open field rather than in that narrow basket, they began to dance the ancient dance of the shamans. The sable licked the boy’s wounds. Every wound healed as soon as the animal’s tongue touched it.
Without taking their eyes off each other, they spun at the same moment and at the same speed in the snowstorm of their hearts. They spun so much that they made the world’s head spin. As they spun they were beside themselves. In that dark, narrow basket they discovered the boundlessness and the brilliance of their souls. And they loved each other. Later, when they emerged from the basket, each would go to the place where his body belonged, but their souls would not part. This, this was their secret. And this moment was their moment. The intimacy of the shaman and the animal.
Timofei Ankidinov had made a sledge from scrub and branches and he lay the sailor, who by the way his smiling face was growing pale seemed in danger of freezing, onto this sledge. His aim was first to get away from the sea and to find shelter. The rest he would think about later. Not that there was much to think about. He had a feeling he was going to make a fortune in these still undiscovered lands. This had to be a sable heaven. And who knew, perhaps it was even close to the Pogicha. Perhaps he was very close to that magnificence of which he’d always dreamed, to the boundless plenty, to his elegant lady.
As Timofei Ankidinov walked, pulling the sledge behind him, he kept his eyes on the land onto which they’d not yet stepped; his friend on the sledge, his eyes wide open, silently watched the road along which they’d passed.
Suddenly an indistinct shape passed in front of them. It was a sable, at least five times bigger than other sables. It passed without noticing the men and a little further on disappeared from sight.
When Timofei Ankidinov saw this enormous sable he was so surprised and so excited that he had difficulty keeping himself from crying out. He didn’t say anything to the sailor. He changed the sledge’s course, and started following the sable’s tracks. The tracks dwindled, and stopped in front of a small mound. As the sable trapper approached noiselessly and began brushing the snow off the mound, he understood that it was a large, overturned basket. This discovery excited him even more. Perhaps under this basket was a door that opened onto the Pogicha. Perhaps all the sables in Siberia were succeeding in hiding from the trappers by passing through this door. If it could swallow such a big sable as that one, there was definitely a priceless mystery inside it.
‘Perhaps it would be better if we didn’t look. It could be a trap for trappers. Or a Siberian curse.’
As the sailor said this, he was trying to straighten out. Timofei Ankidinov look sourly at his face. He would never allow the Pogicha and its enormous sables to belong to anyone else. He pretended to stop looking, returned to the sledge, and suddenly attacked the man lying on it. The sailor, who was very weak and who was not expecting an attack like this, was so astounded that even as his body was being stabbed he didn’t put up any resistance.
bloodinthesnowbloodinthesnowbloodinthesnowmansnowman.
Trembling wildly with excitement, Timofei Ankidinov looked around. There was a lot of blood around. Everything he saw had turned red. He cleaned off the blood that filled his eyes. He flung the bloody dagger far away and approached the overturned basket. He opened it and looked inside.
Sable and boy, two twin souls, two existences linked by blood, two balls of sadness, two strange faces, two confused hallucinations, boy and sable…Their two souls, causing each other to increase, were on the point of melting into one, but their union was left half completed. With the opening of the basket the daylight dove in with a brazen smile, followed by the stranger’s avaricious stare. And at such an intimate moment. They had to be far from watching eyes; they definitely ought not to be seen. The spell was broken. It was all left half finished, and temporary. Now the boy and the sable were struggling to bring back the half that was each one’s own body. Since there was only one body present. Because the spell had been broken right in the middle of their union, they could neither step back and return to their former states, nor could they step forward and complete their transformation.
The light that had torn that darkness, that counted intimacy for nothing, disappeared the way it arrived. Timofei Ankidinov’s mouth hung open with surprise, and his eyes grew to the size of crystal balls from terror as he looked at the creature under the basket.
The military governor of Tobolsk was lying on his back, gulping his drink and picking at the scabs of the wound that had appeared at the end of his nose several weeks ago and somehow wouldn’t heal. After all, Tobolsk had become the most important city in Siberia. Because the Russians saw Tobolsk not only as a commercial but also as a religious centre, they’d built a convent and a monastery side-by-side, as well as a religious school. The missionaries who sought to teach God’s name to the primitives and to uproot idolatrous practices were entertained here for a while before setting out into the wilderness. When it came to commerce, all the merchants saw it as an important place to visit regularly. Tadjik and Tartar tradesmen in particular used to bring valuable goods from the east to the markets of Tobolsk.
The military governor of Tobolsk looked at the blood on the tip of his finger. The wound had bled again when he had picked at it. He filled his glass again. When he came here he’d had fifty servants, five prostitutes who were always bickering among themselves, three priests, and hundreds of barrels of wine and drink. If things continued to go the way they were, he was sure that he would leave with nine or ten times more. The trapping season was about to reach its end. Soon, all of the native tribes along the border would deliver their tribute. Any day, the Cossacks who ranged further would be turning back, with their furs. Furs! The military governor of Tobolsk smiled as he crushed between his fingers the scab he had picked. He loved fur. If it wasn’t for fur he wouldn’t be able to stand this cursed place for a single day.
He started to do the accounts in his head. Indeed his favourite thing was to go to his room at the end of the day and gulp his drink while adding up what he had made. This time he’d even succeeded in fooling the devil. When he’d thought of kidnapping the children of the troublesome Tunguz tribe, who hadn’t paid their protection money for some time, he’d solved the problem once and for all. Now he was selling the children back to their parents for sable furs. To tell the truth, kidnapping the leaders of the tribe was very difficult, but quite profitable. He could get sledges full of furs in exchange for them. When some of them unnecessarily tried to resist, the military governor dealt out their punishment himself. He branded them with an iron whose capital letters had dropped off. He always branded them in the same place; right between their eyes. Wherever the prisoners went in the future, none of them would ever pick up a mirror again, and they would remind everyone who saw them of the military governor’s power.
There were also shamans among those who were kidnapped. They were quite strange. They made such startling sounds in their cells at night that none of the guards liked to watch over them. They would ululate until dawn and stamp their feet, and they’d spin for hours, tearing their rattling chains and jingling walrus tusk necklaces to pieces. Sometimes the military governor would go down and watch them from a corner. He would throw maggot-infested meat that had been put aside for the sledge dogs in front of them. Until now, none of them had refused it. They’d chew heavily on the repulsive, stinking meat; the colour of its rottenness wrapped itself around the eyes. Every time he saw this, the military governor became nauseous and rushed away.
It was not long before he’d be free of this cursed place. He was going to leave in the near future. If he’d sunk his teeth in just a little bit more, he would have been one of the wealthiest men in the country when he left. His train of thought was broken by the pounding on the door. It was his orderly.
‘Sir, there’s a sable trapper outside. He says he has something very valuable in his sack. He won’t show it to anyone but you.’
‘All right,’ said the military governor. He sighed in distress. ‘Let him come in. Let’s have a look and see what he has in this sack.’
A little later, Timofei Ankidinov, with a haughty expression, followed the orderly inside. He had straightened his back and was about to recite the pretentious sentences he’d prepared days before, when the military governor cut him short with a harsh expression, and asked for the sack to be opened at once. Meanwhile, the military governor was unable to speak for a moment because of the pain from the wound he’d made bleed again by picking at it. When he came to himself, the first thing he did was to pat Timofei Ankidinov on the back with one hand and raise his wine glass to the honour of the sack. Quickly filling every empty wine glass he saw, he repeated the same sentence no one knows how many times.
‘This kind of ugliness is something everyone has to see.’
In a low, airless cabin in Tobolsk, the Sable-Boy used to get up and dance on top of a round wooden table. The overflowing crowd around the table would consist of merchants, trappers, adventurers, exiles, outlaws, holy men, Cossacks, prostitutes, the Czar’s spies, high officials and their underlings, that is, everyone chance had set on the road to this distant land; shouting, cursing and insulting one another as they gulped their drinks, watching the Sable-Boy. Every evening the military governor of Tobolsk would drop by and look things over; he’d count the number of spectators. Since he’d managed to get Timofei Ankidinov out of the picture with a little money and many threats, it was all his. No one could interfere. Every night, he earned the value of at least two sledges full of sable furs from the people who came to see the Sable-Boy.
What had happened was that the boy, who hadn’t become the tribe’s new shaman, had become stuck somewhere between being a human and being a sable. Indeed he was a sable-person, because he had a sable for a soul-mate. And inside that overturned basket, when the moment came for his soul to embrace its twin; that is, at the moment when he was about to draw the sable’s soul into himself and blow his own soul into the sable; I mean, at the moment when he was about to complete the transformation he had to undergo in order to become the tribe’s new shaman, first becoming two beings in one with the sable, then later becoming one being in two; everything remained half finished simply because a hand had opened the basket from outside, and a pair of uninvited eyes had seen what they shouldn’t have seen and the light from those eyes had shredded that intimate moment to pieces. The soul-mates had become separate within the same body. Indeed he was a sable-person. He was half sable, and half human. He was an unfortunate creature, imprisoned in order to display his unfortunate ugliness.