Alaska (43 page)

So a kind of rough order was established at dissolute Three Saints, a kind of peace descended upon the Rudenko household, and under encouragement from Baranov the new reli—

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gion flourished while the former receded ever deeper into the shadows. Chief Manager Baranov attended mostly to the task of moving Three Saints to a more favorable spot at the other end of Kodiak, but he had completed only the provisional planning when Rudenko, chastened by the threats of death that Baranov had made, came crawling in to curry favor: 'Sir, have you ever hunted the great bear of Kodiak?'

When Baranov replied that he had not even heard of such a bear, Rudenko fell over himself to offer expert guidance into the beautiful wooded area well to the north of Three Saints where mountains rose out of the sea to the majestic height of nearly forty-five hundred snow-capped feet. A party of six was arranged, and during its expedition Rudenko showed himself to such advantage, tending to all matters and working diligently, that Baranov concluded he must have seen the fur trader at a temporary disadvantage in that first meeting, so on the third night out he told Yermak: 'When you behave yourself, you can be an admirable man,' and Rudenko replied: 'Under your new rules I always behave.'

When they detected signs that one of the monstrous Kodiak bears was in a region of rolling foothills and spruce trees, Rudenko assumed command, sending four skilled helpers in various directions until they had circled the still unseen beast. Then, with everyone moving toward the center of the area thus subtended, they approached what Rudenko assured Baranov in whispered instructions was going to be a massive one: 'Stay behind me, Chief Manager. These bears can be terrifying.' With his left arm he pushed Baranov to the rear, and it was fortunate that he did, because at this moment a hunter on the opposite side of the ring made an unplanned noise, alerting the bear, which started running right at Rudenko.

When it loomed out from a cluster of trees, stopped, and reared upward to scout what lay ahead, Baranov gasped, for it was immense, a towering animal with awesome claws.

Instinctively, Baranov sought a tree behind which to hide, but the nearest one was too far away for him to reach before the bear swiped at him with a raking paw. The few steps the manager did succeed in taking saved his life, for the terrible claws penetrated only the back of his parka, ripping it with a sickening noise. However, because Baranov was so slow and the bear so swift, another swing of that mighty paw would surely kill the man, but here Rudenko boldly thrust himself between man and bear, brought his rifle up, and pumped a bullet upward through the animal's throat and into its brain. The bear staggered sideways, struggled for nearly half a minute to maintain its footing, and finally collapsed in 267

the snow. When a shaken Baranov and Rudenko measured the dead beast, they found that erect, it would have stood eleven terrifying feet, and Baranov asked: 'How can they grow so large?' and Rudenko explained: 'Kodiak's an island. More berries than you ever saw. Lots of grass too, and nothing to bother the bears. So they eat and grow and eat and grow.'

Baranov ordered that after the beast was butchered, with edible parts being sent back to Three Saints, the skin be salvaged and mounted for his office, and it was this towering stuffed bear, looming down from his corner, that subsequently saved Rudenko's life, for after he gained the good graces of the new manager, he wrongly believed that this restored his right to thrash his wife, who, as an Aleut, merited no regard. In a sickening scene he accused her of some trivial fault, and when in her customary style she not only denied his charges but mocked him with her silence, he became enraged and beat her about the face.

When boys ran to the shaman's hut to inform him of what Rudenko had done, he asked only one question: 'You said she was bleeding?' and they replied: 'Yes, all over her mouth,' and then he knew that he must intervene, for if the Russian managers had visible proof of such misbehavior and refused to take action, he must. So he bade the mummy farewell and marched forth to what he suspected might be his last undertaking as a shaman, but one he could not avoid.

Thin, unkempt, bent slightly forward, an old man burning with a determination to preserve his one true religion and fight evil influences that were paralyzing his people, he walked boldly to Rudenko's hut, crying as he approached: 'Rudenko, the spirits place a curse upon you! Never again will you see your wife! Never again will you abuse her!'

Inside the hut Rudenko was sharing with two companions a kind of beer fermented from cranberries, young spruce needles and seaweed, and the noise outside became an irritation, especially when Rudenko heard words which threatened him. Going to the improvised driftwood door, he was disgusted to see the wretched figure of the shaman: 'Begone!

Let honest men drink in peace!'

'Rudenko, you are cursed! Evil of great dimension will fall upon you!'

'Stop your caterwauling or I'll thrash you.'

'Rudenko, never again will you abuse your wife. Never again ...”

From the doorway Rudenko leaped upon the shaman, and as he did so, his two cronies tumbled out, eager to beat the 268

old man, even kill him, but it was Rudenko's intention merely to scare the shaman and drive him back to his hut. 'Don't hit him!' Rudenko shouted, but he was too late, for his friends dealt such heavy blows at the old man that he reeled back, fought to control his feet, and stumbled off toward his hut, where he collapsed among its roots.

Father Vasili quickly heard what had happened, and although he had opposed all that the wizard did, he knew that Christian charity required him to help this man who had endeavored to hold his community together prior to the arrival of Jesus. Hurrying to the hut, he entered for the first time the shaman's dark world.

He was appalled by the gloom, the dank earthen floor, the bundles piled here and there, but he was more aghast at the condition of the old man, for he lay in a heap, hair disheveled, blood speckling his gaunt face. Cradling the shaman's head in his arms, he whispered: 'Old man! Listen to me. You'll be all right.'

For a long time there was no response, and Vasili feared that his adversary was dead, but gradually the fierce old battler recovered the energy which had kept him struggling against great odds for the past years of Russian occupation and the onslaughts of Christianity. When he finally opened his eyes and saw who his savior was, he closed them again and lapsed into a lifeless stupor.

Father Vasili stayed with him most of that afternoon. Toward dusk he called for children to fetch Sofia Rudenko, and when she stood in the doorway of the hut, anguished by what she saw, he said simply: 'He's been hurt. He needs attention,' and with a fearful glance about the filthy, disorganized place, he asked in wonderment: 'Sofia, how could you have thought there was illumination here?' Without waiting for an answer, he left her, unaware that he had been present as the old religion of shamanism was perishing in its struggle with Christianity.

Unfortunately, the children who were sent to summon Sofia were nearby when Rudenko returned home, bellowing: 'Where's my wife?' and they told him: 'She went to the shaman's,” and this infuriated him so that he shouted for his two drinking companions: 'Let's finish that old fool right now!' and the three stormed out to the hut among the roots, found Sofia there tending the shaman, and Rudenko struck her across the face before tossing her out. Then they dragged the old man to his feet, and as he toppled forward, Rudenko met him with a mighty smash to the face, knocking him to the floor. As he fell the men kicked him to death, and in this 269

brutal manner the Russian Christians terminated their debate with a pagan religion they were fated to displace.

THE SHAMAN'S MURDER PROVOKED CONFUSION FOR KO-diak's two administrators. Father Vasili, hearing of the death, hurried to the hut, where he assumed control, as if it were an adjunct to his church, which in a way it had been. Feeling no sense of personal triumph in the defeat of his rival, he lit a candle beside the corpse, stared, nauseated, at the blood which stained the earth, and felt tears of compassion welling in his eyes as sailors finally carried the dead body away. But after he had knelt to pray for the departed soul of his misguided but valiant opponent, he rose with renewed determination to end this plague of shamanism.

With the zeal that young men experience when they know they are doing right, he began to gather the ridiculous assembly of twigs and bits of carved wood and scraps of polished ivory and the stones with which the shaman had presumed to converse with spirits, and piling all this junk into a heap where the body had lain, he scattered inflammable spruce needles over it and with his candle set it afire.

As the pile began to blaze, people ran up, shouting: 'Father Vasili! Get out. . .

quickly!' But as he started to leave he saw in a darkened corner a sack made of sealskin, and when he opened it he found that it contained a dark, leathery substance, and half-choking from the noxious fumes of the burning symbols, he muttered: 'This must be the mummy Sofia spoke about,' and when he pulled the bag apart he found himself facing this stubborn old woman of thirteen thousand years.

With a shudder at the heresy she represented, he was about to pitch her into the fire when Sofia dashed into the hut, saw what was happening, and, too late, she screamed: 'No! No!' Then she watched with horror as flames consumed the .old woman whose spirit had refused to d
ie.

'What have you done?' she cried, and when the priest left the hut she followed him into the night air, shouting at him, but she was soon silenced by her outraged husband.

With a savage slap he struck her across the face, and she fell to the ground. For a long moment she lay there, staring at the flaming hut, and then she surrendered to the great confusions of her life. 'She's fainted,' Father Vasili cried, and two Aleuts picked her up.

At this moment Chief Manager Baranov arrived at the scene, and when he learned of the shaman's murder he was aghast, for he appreciated the complications that might arise.

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Like all Russians, he held shamans in contempt, but he also recognized that they were a constructive agency in keeping Aleuts under control. 'Who did this thing?'

he asked, and then he saw Sofia Rudenko, held upright by the two men, her face a mass of bruises.

'Rudenko,' Kyril Zhdanko replied. 'He did both. Killed the shaman. Beat his wife,'

and without being instructed to do so, he set off to apprehend the criminal, who had now committed his fourth murder.

When the bearded hunter was hauled into the temporary office of the chief manager for punishment, Baranov took one look at him and remembered his earlier threat to shoot Rudenko if he ever again beat his wife, and now, since that offense had been compounded by murder, he had double reason to act. But as he faced Rudenko, he saw in the corner behind the wretch the huge stuffed figure of the Kodiak bear, and he remembered that he was alive only because of this renegade's bravery. With disgust he handed down his verdict: 'Rudenko, you're a disgrace to Russia and mankind. You have no right to live, except one. You saved my life when that one attacked, so I cannot shoot you as I threatened. Instead, your marriage to Sofia Kuchovskaya is annulled, for it should never have occurred in the first place, and you will be taken back to the Seal Islands, the only place I can think of that God might want you to live.'

Refusing to listen to Rudenko's impassioned promises of reform, he told Zhdanko: 'Guard him till the next boat sails north,' and with a glance of repugnance toward Rudenko, he left to console Sofia with news that her infamous marriage to Rudenko was dissolved.

But he had not taken into account the priest, Father Vasili, whose devout parents he had known in Irkutsk and whom he respected for his piety. When he told Vasili: 'The marriage between Sofia Kuchovskaya and the brute Yertnak Rudenko is dissolved, you should never have married them in the first place,' Vasili replied firmly, relying first on the Gospel According to Mark: ' ”What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder,”' and then on an equally powerful injunction from the Irkutsk countryside: 'Thunder and lightning shall not separate a man and his wife, even though God Himself sends the thunder.'

'I didn't mean that I was annulling the marriage,' Baranov apologized. 'I meant that since you performed the ceremony, you would do so.'

But Baranov underestimated the zeal with which this young priest adhered to the teachings of his Bible: 'A vow is

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a solemn engagement undertaken in the sight of the Lord. There is no way I could annul it.'

'You mean, this fine child . . . her husband banished to the Seal Islands ... as a Christian she has to live alone . . . the rest of her life?'

In his reply, Father Vasili revealed the harshness of his Christianity, for when the practical problems of a human life, in this case the welfare of the innocent child Sofia Kuchovskaya, conflicted with the teaching of the Bible, it was the child who had to sacrifice: 'I concede that Sofia has known great sorrow in her life, the tribulations of Job, and now we place yet one more upon her. Well, God nominates some of us to bear His yoke so that others can appreciate His ultimate grace. That is Sofia's assignment.'

'But to waste her life . . . ?'

The priest was adamant: 'That's the cross she must bear,' and he would not deviate from this harsh judgment.

At this juncture it must have seemed to the people of Kodiak Russian and Aleut alike that in the great confrontation between the two religions, Father Vasili had triumphed.

He had bested the shaman, who was dead, removed the pernicious influence of that provocative mummy, whose ashes were banished to a proper grave, and had won for himself a church with an onion dome, symbol of the best in Russian religion. But anyone who offered that hasty judgment would be ignoring the power of the Aleutian Islands to strike back.

Scientifically, the disaster could be easily explained, but to the Aleuts it was obviously the revenge that Lunasaq and the destroyed mummy exacted on Father Vasili.