|
 |
|
|
|
|
// Mira Bergelson // Alaskan Newsletter
Áåðãåëüñîí Ìèðà Áîðèñîâíà
äîêòîð ôèëîëîãè÷åñêèõ íàóê,
ïðîôåññîð êàôåäðû ëèíãâèñòèêè è èíôîðìàöèîííûõ òåõíîëîãèé
ôàêóëüòåòà èíîñòðàííûõ ÿçûêîâ è ðåãèîíîâåäåíèÿ
ÌÃÓ èìåíè Ì.Â. Ëîìîíîñîâà,
Øåô-ðåäàêòîð àíãëîÿçû÷íîé âåðñèè ñàéòà Ïðåçèäåíòà Ðîññèéñêîé Ôåäåðàöèè
Mira B.Bergelson
Professor at the Department of Linguistics
and Information Technology,
Faculty of Foreign Languages and Regional Studies
at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MGU)
Chief-editor, English-language version
of the President of Russian Federation website
e-mail: mirabergelson@gmail.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ÏÈÑÜÌÀ Ñ ÀËßÑÊÈ / ALASKAN NEWSLETTER (1997)
Alaskan Newsletter #1
March 24, 1997
Village of Nikolai: Population - 101 (now 105); Native Americans - 96, Caucasians - 5 (now - 9). Number of houses - 45. Number of snow machines - approx. 70. Landmarks: the city hall (also features a laundromat, a library, a cafe, a health aid clinique), the school, the lodge, the church, a runway, a power plant with a gas station, a "downtown". Closest civilization center - city of McGrath(pop. 545) 50 miles down the river; available by a Cesna-type (6 passengers) airplane everyday at a $70 roundtrip. Temperature: High - 5F; Low - -6F. Sunny. Religion: Orthodox Christian.
We occupy the biggest house in the 'downtown' overlooking the church built in a familiar style of the eighteenth century village churches in the northern parts of Russia. Our house is a two-floor building with normally equipped kitchen and bathroom (hot water, shower), 3 available bedrooms, lots of shelves, absolutely rugged linoleum floors and walls with torn out wall paper, an oil heater and a wood stove, plenty of lamps (=bulbs).
Furniture deficiency (no sitting equipment besides chairs in the kitchen) is made up for by putting cardboard boxes on top of the chunks of birch wood. Also Andrei managed to build a very nice wooden stool using only a small saw (more like a nail file), a knife and a handful of nails all of which were pulled out of the walls. As it was his present to me at our anniversary, he also managed to burn out a very nice inscription on it using solar energy and Lila's magnifying glass. I was thrilled! (See below about another present I got on the same day).
Most of our household stuff and food were mailed from Fairbanks with a well grounded reasoning of their arrival a day or two before we land in. Well, the reality was far more fascinating. As far, only two of the seven boxes have arrived. We were lucky: the first one had our sleeping bags, pillows and bed linen. The second one brought toilet paper, rice, peas, spaghetti and Andrei's rain gear (that could have waited a couple of months) - all smeared in shampoo. Well, we are sure to have fun in the next few days. We did survive very well because we had some food and some utensils with us, and because people here are very nice and welcoming. I think the level of hospitality depends on how hard the life is in a given place. When it's serious enough people will take pretty good care of each other - it's a matter of survival, not just being nice. Here they brought everything we asked about (after they had suggested that we might need some stuff). Also we were presented with lots of unsolicited items like moose, bison and caribou (local reindeer) meat, salmon, bakery, coffee, candies for kids, etc. The meat is the main food here (people live from the ground). It is very good. I have already made a soup with bison meat. Moose meatballs and a caribou pilaf will follow.
We came to Nikolai the day before the spring equinox. There was an important festival on the weekend called spring carnival. It consists of various races and contests like fire building, nail pounding, ice picking, snow shoe race, snow machines race, etc. We had lots of fun watching these contests. I was interested in looking at the snow shoes. I saw men race and decided to take part in the woman race. The hilarious thing was that I won. It was easy. If only they had a 3 mile cross-country ski race (my favourite distance), then I could have shown whose national sport it is. The difficult part was not to crack up on my way back to the finish because I could see Andrei madly laughing at the absurd of the situation: it was the first time I have ever seen these things. And the locals were mostly surprised that I did not fall down even once. Well, on Sunday afternoon the awards were given. Again to our utmost surprise those were pretty substantial. I got a nice sleeping bag (just what we were borrowing because Lila's comforter was too light) and $15 cash.
The most striking impressions: - No dog barking. Not a single one in the whole village that features quite a few families that mush their dogs (this was a new word for us, non-native speakers, but I never heard it from the friends in the 'lower 48-s'; do you guys know that it means 'to travel by dogs on snow'?).
- Longer daylight time; absolutely beautiful sunsets; snow glittering to the extent that sun glasses are more important than gloves; crispy night snow and the comet hanging over the roof; spruce trees lining at the horizon, looking as if they have come from the illustrations of Russian fairy tales.
- Extensive use of snow machines by the locals; it seems like there are over 50 of them in the village; everyone over age of 10 drives them with a roaring sound of the formula one; no one walks more than a hundred meters (maybe that's why I have won the snow shoe race).
- Russian last and sometimes first names. Russian borrowings in the everyday language (tea, cup, kettle, spoon, and others).
- The transparency of the air, the strength of the sun, which surprises you so much that you - according to Anna's favorite expression - forget to faint. It's also very dry, which makes -10F(-25C - for those Russian native speaking friends) seem like nothing compared to what it would be in Moscow at that temperature. It's good for everything except for my skin.
The size and equipment of the school. More about the school. Girls started today. There are two teachers: one for the 6ht to 8th grades, another for the K through 5th. In the younger group they have one K, now two 1st graders, one 2nd grader, now one 4th, and two 5th graders. The school is equipped with all the gadgets of a regular American elementary school. There is also a gym. They play volleyball there. (I became sort of popular with the local teenagers because yesterday played volleyball with them). School starts in the morning by a "civil prayer": all the kids led by the head teacher say the appropriate formula addressing the national flag with their hand pressed to where supposedly the organ of patriotic feelings is located in the human bodies. Then they sing the Alaska hymn addressing the Alaskan flag (a beautiful navy with a golden North Bear constellation on it). However ironic may I sound, I believe this is the right thing to do (we had to persuade Anna she was not compromising her beloved Motherland by showing allegiance to the US flag; Lila is more, so to say, cosmopolitan). And the Alaskan song is very nice and poetic. Smth about the last frontier. We'll learn it.
The language is definitely dying. They try to revive it by introducing it as a school subject. So, our girls have an hour of the Upper Kuskokwim every day. And for free! Their Daddy has to pay $20 per hour to the same person for more or less the same information. I love US public schools! Again, the more serious the problem, the more inclined I am to make jokes. But it's a very controversial and complicated issue with no pre-cooked answers. Paying for the debts of the 19th-early 20th century development, clash of civilizations (to borrow the term), popular vs. traditional culture, these are just a few issues. And it's more controversial than just protecting endangered species because languages do not exist per se; they need a population to survive on; and they may determine the ways this population exists. Nothing new for us. We faced very similar problems during the field work in Russia.
The same is true regarding drinking, which is a problem here. Some local people felt very uncomfortable revealing that this is a burning issue here. Poor guys, they viewed us as whites from New Jersey, or Massachusets, suburbs. We had to admit that we had been aware of the problem (though, of course, for me an individual completely drunk with whiskey looks sort of more 'elevated' than the one with vodka - until you really have to contact them, which we did).
March 25, 1997
All our boxes arrived. While opening them I remembered Robinson Crusoe - because of the elation of getting every new item - despite the fact that we were not starving, were warm and clean without the stuff, too. People are so pettily attached to the small nuisance of having a cork screw, towels, juice concentrate, forks equaling the number of people in the household, and - I am terrified to mention it - paper towels. Yes, we are pathetic as species.
It's fun to learn small things that characterise the local life style. This includes the way you feed stove with the wood (what kind to use on what time of the day, how to position it inside, how to operate the draught) so that you get the right amount of heat, where and when you go ice fishing (we are anticipating it), how to operate your phone in the presence of sun spots that shut down the satellite connection (what a mundane aspect of such a mondial event!). We are figuring out the way to make email connection, and if you are reading this, it means we have succeeded.
Well, I have poured out, more or less, the best part of these burning new impressions. It's time to get started working on a regular basis. I'll keep you posted. One daily duty, of course, is socializing with people who show up at our doorstep. By now I have to more answer their questions than to ask mine. I hope I will be able to lean more about them later not only from the books we have with us.
Alaskan Newsletter #2
March 30, 1997
The fact that I have won the snowshoe race (ridiculous even to call it a race - so short it was) had some nice consequences. This is a small community, and news travel fast. Yesterday, I called McGrath (50 air miles from here) and talked to a Russian woman there at whose house we stayed on our way to Nikolai. She works - among other things - as a health aide in a clinic. She said that everyone coming from Nikolai would tell her this epic story. We are considered to be a 'nice family' - not only because of my athletic achievements, I believe. Then the Chief of the community, a very nice old gentleman, who speaks quite an educated English (without ever being to school), is very smart, and generally likes us, came to visit. He was beaming when he said he learned about my deed; they are mostly surprised I have not fallen once. Wow, I blushed, and cursed myself again. But I did not know at that moment what was the next 'probation'.
We were invited by the family of our new friends to go ice-fishing for pikes. The lake is about 7-10 miles away from the village, and they drove us there in a snow machine with the long sled attached to it (the one that is used with dogs). The ride through the woods (skinny slim spruce trees) and the open areas of swamps and other lakes was just marvellous. We were going eastward, in the direction of the Alaskan range, and the peaks were standing out as smth of heavenly origin (Lila could not believe these were not clouds; to me as an adult and thus farther from heaven, it looked like a wedding cake). Claude Monet would have been delighted with the colours! The trip in the sled is not that easy: it's quite bumpy. Andrei and Lila were in the sled, and I enjoyed standing on the rails (is it a runner?) because of my back. So I felt like a real musher.
With over 15 people on the lake and the roaring of snow machines the chances to catch anything were pretty slim. Actually, there was not a single bite. Andrei was not very sure whether we had the right equipment. Then another accident took our attention. Kids (ours plus two boy of our friends) were playing in the snow next to the lake edge (the ice is over three feet thick). Suddenly Lila got caught in the deep snow (in spring there is a crust on the surface, but under it the snow stays very dry and soft - like a flour) up to her waist. As she related later she thought she would stay there for ever because Anna could not get her out (and if even such a mighty person as Anna is helpless - you can only rely on God). But she kept pushing and pulling her legs in this flour-like substance, so that when Andrei - a God's representative - eventually came to get her out, she came out without her bootie. That was quite a tragedy: the pit was 6 feet deep, and no one knew exactly where to dig. (I suffered a great deal as a result of the whole adventure because I happened to be away at the moment of Lilla's extraction from the trench - was learning to drive snow machines; so Andrei had all the reasons to blame me for everything when I came back). It took 5 people and fifteen minutes to find Lila's bootie at the very base of the trench. Evryone froze out, so most people went to have a campfire in the woods; they also saw an otter very close. We joined them, but then heard that pikes usually bite at that time of the day. So we went out to the ice holes again, and in 10 minutes I caught two big pikes (the biggest - over two feet). Then Andrei caught two. And finally I got the fifth one. We were thrilled! Never in my life had I caught a fish even close to that. And so easy! Actually, the second one got loose while still in the water, but because it had to turn around in the narrow ice tunnel, it jumped out, and I managed to kick it out of the water (even Andrei had to admit that soccer training can be of some value sometimes). Again we were the most lucky! For our way back we were given a snow machine, and Andrei drove it, his squaw, and his catch (kids were taken earlier by our friends, otherwise their parents' enthusiastic fishing would have resulted in the frozen bodies) home. When we came to the village we found out the machine lacked a very substantial bolt that allows to steer (which explained why the damned thing preferred to only go straight), but the trip was so good!
Next morning, Sunday, when the head teacher from the school visited us, he already knew who was the most lucky fisher the other day. Well, both Andrei and I are looking forward to moose hunting. Who knows.
Alaskan Newsletter #3
April 10, 1997
Spring started a week ago with such an abrupt change of everything around that it looked like a fierce offensive on the peaceful village's way of life. At least, we had already known by that moment how to deal with winter. And now, the spring tackled us. For a few days the skies stayed grey (though of nice, so to say, noble, gray). Temperature rose from 5F (-15C) to 50F (10C) in two days. The snow lost its impeccable purity and became soggy. It was difficult to cross five feet of snow separating our doorstep from the main street (difficult means knee-high for Andrei, but hip-high for Lila - poor short people). People are saying good-bye to their snow machines and learn how to walk anew; again, we have an advantage of having this skill not thouroughly forgotten. But there arose a new problem - where to go - since it's quite an effort. The ice on the lakes is 3 feet thick and will stay there probably through June. As for the river, we expect a break up in a week or so: they say that up the river it clears up early because of the warm creeks and sloughs. It should be smth spectacular (not a Volga breakup, of course - as described by Aksakov - but still). Some families who live out in the woods on the other bank are moving in to the village for this time not to be separated from the civilization (everything is relative in this world, you know) for a couple of weeks when the river can not be used - neither snow machines, nor boats.
What really seems unbelievable is the length of the daylight: the sun sets only at 10:30 p.m. (I have to admit that I don't know when it rises - definitely before 7:00 a.m.). And it's only April! We know what 'white nights' are, but for Russians they are always associated with the summer sun glowing on the domes of the St. Petersburg cathedrals and palaces. Not much of either - summer or palaces - here.
A day before the spring started there was a slight snowfall. In the morning, as usual, the girls went to school (actually, getting up in the morning to pack up kids for school may sometime seem annoying, but this is the most permanent and stable element of my life - in Moscow, in Eugene, in Nikolai - everywhere we go to live, not to vacate. So, long live schools!). In an hour or so I went - in the same direction because "all the roads lead to Rome" - to the post office. On my way back I saw that the path leading to our house had only mine and kids' footsteps and elsewhere there was still virgin snow. It was almost noon. I tried to walk not stepping onto the footsteps that had already been there. What a metaphor! How nice it could have been to live in a space where you would see the imprinted footsteps of your kin and yourself and be able to walk without destroying them.
One interesting cultural tradition here is that after a woman has delivered her first child she gives it for adoption (and now they have to do it legally) to her parents. I found at least a couple of good reasons for doing so: it helps younger generation to raise a family of their own (there will be more than one child), it keeps older generation 'on track' and later they have someone to take care of them (it is normally (grand)daughters that are adopted). Still, possibly the best explanation came from an authentic source: one old lady told us what her daughter had said when giving her baby to them: "Look, mom, I am no more a baby. You need another one. You may have mine." Anyway, whatever reasons, but this custom makes it twice as difficult for us to understand the complicated network of relatives and in-laws in the village: quite a few people are aunts of their own siblings and siblings of their own uncles. Using English terms doesn't clear it at all.
About the language. NB: for those professionally involved - please, view it as an official advertising campaign breaking the ground for my husband's future publications. The language is infamously and infuriatingly difficult. Not for recording, or documenting, or even describing - but for making sense of it inner mechanics. The main problem here, it seems, is a tremendous difference (from Eurocentric perspective) in the conceptualization of events. It can not be grasped and understood via translation into English (or Russian - in this regards these languages are just twins). Andrei has all the gamut of a field worker activities, and types of informants, and settings, and equipment. I am sure he will crack it down. Meanwhile, white people will be 'jisik' which comes from 'Cossacks'. Russians have a special name 'jast'ana'.
People of Alaska
Friends. We have a few of them now. The first to be mentioned is John, the hunter. He is one of the few whites living here with their squaws and kids. He converted to the Orthodox Christianity when came to live here, is very active with school and church. He is a professional hunter, which means he hunts all kinds of everything and guides those hunters from the lower 48s who come here during the season for a moose, or a bear. Ifyou want to hunt a bison you have to win a right for it: every year there is a drawing organized by the State Dept. of Fishing and Hunting; this year there were 20 licences and 1,300 people who took part in it. We saw all possible sorts of furs at John's house: bear, bison, lynx, wolverine, marten, beaver, otter, wolf, fox, squirrels. His son killed his first caribou at the age of 9. Here, all local men are hunters. They use traps and snares - when hunting for furs, and, of course, guns - when hunting for meat. Most of furs are being sold to Canada - this country is too environmental for the fur trade, I believe. Here people wear synthetic parkas and fleece stuff, of course. The only exception are fur hats of extremely whimsical and funny styles (that's how they look to me, coming from the country of uniform ushanka and treukh - the styles any American tourist will immediately know) like having fur tails of various shapes and colors hanging of their sides. I felt very comfortable, almost going for native, in my US army parka bought in the U.S.Army Reserve Store because quite a few people were wearing it too.
Continuing 'Pike Stories' (for those initiated - don't confuse with 'Pear Stories', please). There was a special field trip organized by school, but, actually, a community event, when we all went for a fishing trip and a picnic to the fishing lake. This time we were not lucky at all. Our family, the four of us, scored zero. Anna was desperate: there was a $20 award for the biggest pike, and she said we did not understand what a bug sum it was for her and how serious she was about getting it. We sort of laughed, but felt the attitude - quite an American schoolkid (clarification: they will never, even now in the midst of a wild marketization of the society, offer money prizes for any sort of competition at a Russian school - no evaluative comment! Or am I behind the newest trends? Moscow correspondents, please, respond.).
But still our daughters had a lot of fun. They were taken to the lake not just in a regular snow machine, but in a real dog sled with 8 real dogs running them. What a treat! Then we saw how one hunter (I would have said trapper, but it sounds so much of F.Cooper novel "The Trapper") was skinning a beaver and an otter. I like that my daughters had had a chance to live in the country, in a regular village, enough to be able to appreciate the down-to-earth beauty of the skills essential for traditional ways of life, and that they were curious and not repulsed by what some town-nailed people might have found repugnant. (Beaver's meat is considered delicatessen here, and otter is not eaten at all; the latter was left hanging from the tree for birds).
In a couple of days, when the spring weather came, and I felt that just sitting at home was starting to cause an irreparable damage to my body (in certain, especially vulnerable areas) and self-image (as reflected in the mirror), I decided we should go to the nearest lake that for some mysterious reasons was not used by the locals for fishing. At least, not for ice fishing. But it is within a walking distance (a mile and smth), and also John told us stories about the giant pikes he was catching there a few years ago. The largest one had its mouth as big as a coffee can. You need to know that the only kind of coffee can used in this area is the three pound can. So, we borrowed an auger from the city (it's a horrible looking machine that works on gas, weighs one Lila and a half, but is absolutely indispensable when you have to make a hole in the ice three and a half feet thick) and started for the lake breaking through snowy desert (literally, desert - no pedestrians for 50 miles each direction). Well, we had a lot of fun and exercise (Andrei perforated ice to the extent I was afraid we would start floating and will be only discovered at the North Pole, and I, unfortunately, did not have with me at that moment the Russian flag to claim our record there), but no pike. Later John came, made more holes (same score for pike) and promised to throw in some meat and bones to attract re-e-eally bi-i-ig ones. He is a man of word. In two days, moved by the same incentives, I made another pilgrimage there. Being fortunate in avoiding getting into all those holes myself and preventing kids from this adventure, too, I had experienced a shock originating from the differences in the aforementioned conceptualization: what I understood to be 'bones', and what John understood under this word were two different things. When I looked in a hole that he had caringly marked with a special sign, I just forgot to faint - there was smth there. A giant pike! Immediately I let the hook go down, pulled - yes, it caught smth, smth big - and there emerged a giant white bone (bison? moose? - pathoanatomy of artiodactyla is not my fad). We will keep trying. I am not sure about pike, but sharks would definitely love these bones.
A lot of time last week was spent on IRS papers. It is also a cultural experience for us. Taxes are sort of a hot issue in Russia now. So I imagined I was training myself. Of course, I have no right to complain: forms for the alien non-residents (why not just call us 'Martians'? - much shorter and means the same) are so much simpler than for the nationals. And it was such an exercise - even after the three years spent in the depths of American bureaucracy I was getting a masochistic pleasure in filling out the papers. I put a Valentine stamp featuring an angel and the word LOVE on the envelope.
Professional experience. One night, when Andrei and the girls needed to oust me out of the house (they were making presents for me), I went to the city hall for a Bingo Night. I knew basic rules of the game, and I was also told that it was gambling: 25 cents per smth. Oh, what a serious business it was. There was a man calling numbers and the machine that would spit the balls with a sound of a rocket taking off, and a dozen of people absolutely submerged into 8-10 bingo cards in front of them. I understood I was among professionals. To save one's face in such a situation one needs to make an impression of a complete moron. I played this role easily and brilliantly. People were very nice and protective. So, my face (and, thus, purse) were saved. Next day I was approached by the local gamblers and was offered to become a caller - 'bingo-jockey', as I called it for myself. The reason for such a generous offer is that all the interested individuals would like to play, not to call numbers. They explained to me that this work is paid for - it is part of the game rules. My family had lots of fun watching me sitting there, calling out the numbers and collecting and distributing the money. Every time the game is played some money is set aside for the community needs and a smaller sum - for the caller. So, now I have a regular duty every Monday and Thursday night. I feel proud: not a missionary, of course, but still - definitely a community service. And having a loud voice is now justified by professional requirements. The only problem is where to put this achievement in my resume - under 'education', 'professional experience', or 'other interests'. And what would be the right wording. Anyway, it will be very helpful in Moscow - a town of casinos. If teaching and consulting in business communication doesn't pay well, I can always find a job in some casino pointing to my previous gambling experience.
Alaskan Newsletter #4
May 6, 1997
A striking thing is that looking out of the window facing northwest at 2:30 a.m. you will see the St. Nicholas church silhouette against the background of rose-, purple- and orange-colored sky. Though, we are not yet all the way down through the Subarctic spring: the river is now open almost all the way down (in our place since April 20th), it's sunny, warm and dusty, the geese and ducks have flown in - as are the mosquitoes - stale, last year breed; but the green grass is still a faint memory of the February spent in California, and the promise of the birch buds reminds me of the pictures in the textbook from my elementary school 3rd grade reading class, illustrating fragile intensity of the Russian 19th century poetry about the beauties (more spiritual than observable) of Russian early spring. The green color is still missing from my world view - and it has nothing to do with the lack of environmentalism instigated by our carnivorous diet.
Anyway, the time came when most expeiences are derived not from the frontier-style adventures, or even the climate/season peculiarities, but from observations of the community lifestyle and participation in its life. Also, the work has intensified to the extent when nervousness about the results, timing, etc. interferes with the serenity of the days passing by.
More about nature. We do live "from the land." Andrei and Lila have started operating a small plantation of birches that gives us a daily supply of the birch sap: a half gallon (2 liters) tea kettle of an excellent, healthy drink. Unfortunately, a highly seasonal operation can not be developed into a stable viable commercial enterprise - otherwise ousting Coca Cola from the market would be as easy as ABC.
There is another business incentive that we are very likely to undertake (may be forced to). It happened so that due to the contacts with their former hosts in Yakutia, some of the townsfolks had been exposed to one of the heights of Russian civilization - namely, valenki (=traditional felter boots). No wonder they have fallen in love with this footwear as if specifically designed for the cold dry climate (how I hated them in my early childhood dragging my feet through Moscow slush and sleet!). Everyone wants a pair for him/herself and a bunch of close relatives (local understanding of close relatives may embrace somewhat around 40 people). We are lucky that the sets of individuals' close relatives usually have significant common subsets. In any case, a container with somewhat two hundred pairs should be enough. It could be a nice start for the new version of Russian American Company.
Still, I am more inclined to propagate educational exchanges that enhance mutual understanding between peoples and cultures. For instance, drinking habits. I am sure that an exchange of groups of heavily drinking people from Russia with those of Nikolai would benefit both sides. Native Americans will see what it really means to drink heavily, and that one can literally die from it (not from associated reasons like murders, suicide, manslaughter, etc. - which are more common here), and this may horrify them better than any anti-alcohol campaign. Russians may find out that even while being drunk like a pig you don't necessarily have to impose on other people, but may stay home watching TV, not lying in a ditch singing loudly folklore songs.
Of course, the differences, or better say - reasons for heavy drinking are very culture dependent. The local culture praises so called deference politeness, which means no imposing on the other person, respect to the other's right to non-interference, to their self-determination, their autonomy of personal action. (It may be perceived as a withdrawing and non-welcoming behavior by whites. The most frequent answer to a request is 'I don't care', which is not rude at all, but means that you can act as you like.) So, these behaviorial patterns are more or less kept here even while drinking. For Russian drunks this is just incomprehensible. What one would drink for then if not to get out to the street, greet other people, make them drink with you, tell them how much respect you have for them, what a wonderful kind of folks they are (they better agree, otherwise they will be in trouble because Russian drunks are so sensitive when their love for mankind is being rejected). Also how terrific it is to sing and laugh together with some complete stranger, so that everyone, the whole neighborhood could share your joy!
For those who may think I am not fair towards my countryfolk drinkers: you have not experienced the drinking habits of the Caucasus area. This can be really dangerous. The militant culture of the highlands people takes a lot of pride in preserving man's dignity and not allowing even a small offence to one's masculinity. So the reason to get drunk is proving to the whole world how masculine and proud you are by challenging others.
The societal structure: As any micro-or macrocosm, this place also has it's inner role structure. I am not talking about the city or village councils belonging to the state or tribal systems respectively, but of the functional roles. There is Chief - head of the religious comunity; also - The Righteous Man of the Town, The Heir to the Chief, The Best Hunter, The Intellectual Opposition, The Greedy Merchants, The Teacher, The Drunkard, The Child Abuser (gone to jail while we are here), The Murderer (went to jail before we came here), The Hooligan, The Joyful Youth. We have our own place in this structure too - The Weird Whites, though our being Russians complicates the picture already full of contradictions. These include: urban people, but not completely helpless; whites, but not-Americans; study language, but speak with an accent in English; came out to stay in the bush, but brought their kids with them; come from a poor country, but have done quite a lot of international travelling. My participation in various instances of community life makes pinning us down as a a species even harder - a guest speaker at school, a substitute teacher, a bingo caller, a volleyball player, a student of beadwork. They find it funny and sort of treat me with a smile (approving? disapproving? who knows), but it is important for us because people got familiar with us through all these interactions and started to trust us more. Not that we leap out of the stereotype for white people (those who talk to strangers and talk a lot) - both Anna and I are prototypical representatives of this culture - but at least they have seen us doing various kinds of things with them, not just talking to them. I have got a confirmation for this kind of observations during the Easter week.
The Orthodox Easter is by far the greatest holiday here. The church was open, there were services starting on Friday and all the way through Sunday. People came to the church dressed up: women wore skirts and had funny, crocheted, decorated with ribbons small round covers on their heads that reminded me most of all of the kipas Jewish men would wear; men were shaved and wore jackets; a few older women had scarves on their heads. We also tried to look decent with kids in their Sunday dresses (fortunately, I have brought one skirt for myself too - not exactly the church style, of course) and scarves (babushkas?). The church looks inside as Russian as outside. It features some pretty old icons and some ugly postcards with angels and other attributes all mixed up on the walls. I am really curious to see some of the really old icons they said they had in the back room. (Did I mention that the village cemetery that surrounds the church takes a better parrt of the downtown area?) The service was led by the Chief and The Righteous Man (the latter could read from the Bible well - with all the appropriate seriousness). The Chief would sing both in English and Russian (a few days later we recorded him singing these church psalms in Russian: besides being a native speaker, one has to have a good knowledge of the contents to make sense of this quite beatiful singing). The apocryphal thing is that they sing 'Khristos Voskrese...' (Christ is risen...) starting Friday.
I should mention that because of the absence of a priest in the area (no parson closer than Fairbanks) the church stays closed for the most part of the year. So when it is opened a few times a year it is indeed a big holiday. The summoning call for the service is produced by ringing a small bell in the church yard (younger kids would perform this kind of service for the community). At midnight when the Holy Sunday came the resurrection was manifested by firing a gun several times (in the yard, I mean). Pretty strong impression. More singing followed. Then the congregation lined up to kiss an icon. We were strongly invited to participate, but restrained from doing it - for a variety of reasons. I, personally, thought that I had already done more for the sake of intercultural communication than might have been expected of me (it was my first time in an Orthodox church when I would attend a service, not just come as a tourist to see the interior). The effect of this proper behavior was obvious immediately. After we had exchanged kisses with half of the village population, even those couple of ladies who had considered us to be KGB spies - they knew about the Navaho code talkers of the WWII - changed their opinion and became very friendly (or maybe they just decided that getting valenki was more important, and the whole enterprise should be liberated from the ideological cliches). Sunday morning service was very nice too. The Chief made a speech/sermon on the importance of this day for the community. Andrei presented some of our closer friends with the Easter eggs that we had painted. The designs bore clear indications of the specialty of the place where we were making them: a running caribou, a pike - as a Christian symbol, a snow machine, a Russian church - to spice it a bit with nostalgia, a word 'Easter' in Athabaskan - Mosgak, and smth indecipherable -Lila's design, which she explained to be waves - a symbol of the endless life in Christianity.
At five in the afternoon we had another big event - a potlach. I derived this word from a potluck - because this is what it functionally stands for, but it is a much more important concept. The whole town (and it is actually only 80-85 people) was there with their food. And because Andrei intended to come a bit later (we did not know part of the event was to officially introduce us to the public) the whole crowd patiently waited. And the huge pots, skillets, bowls full of various types of local and "international" food were waiting too. Fifteen minutes passed, The Righteous Man approached me and both cautiously and casually inquired whether Andrei was going to attend. Somehow I understood this indirect speech act, rushed to the payphone (our City building proudly features one) and called Andrei. When he arrived a few minutes later The Chief started his speech. It was all together - Easter sermon, food blessing, introducing 'nice people from Russia' (he pronounces it - Rooshia) and - separately - advertising my 'kulichi' (I spent a good part of Saturday making them with Andrei constant pleading to make more and yet more - he helped to knead the dough though; not all the spices were available, and I experimented with the "from-the-land" stuff like low bush cranberry dried leaves; Andrei's point was that a good Fulbrighter's wife should be able to make enough kulich to feed the whole community). Well, the advertising campaign was so efficient that few minutes after not a single piece of kulich was left. I got a lot of approving comments, and we passed the test again.
The food at the potlach was very good: a variety of soups with poultry (geese and duck hunting was the main male activity for the last couple of weeks). One geese soup was just excellent - exactly what Prof. Preobrazhenski (from Sobachje Serdtse) would recommend after a shot of vodka (no alcohol at the potlach, of course). Nikolai community is, by the way, famous for their soups - another feature that makes me feel at home: real hearty stuff. Then there was fish - dried, smoked, fried, baked salmon (but it's the last year crop; the new ones will come beginning of July - alas!). And meat - moose, caribou, bear (both black bear and grizzly), pork (that was the stew prepared by a white guy, the middle school teacher). A few other local specialties included a rhubarb dessert, and a pike ice cream with blueberries (pike flesh carefully separated from the bones is ground together with some sugar, ice, berries and then frozen). Everything tasted good (I did not like the bear because it was a bit overdone - or at least tasted like that).
After the potlach there came the time when our Anna (ten years old by that day already!) had to fly to Anchorage - first time in her life to be separated from the family. She was representing Nikolai on a so called Annual Educational Fourth Grader Urban Survival Skills Trip - she is THE fourth grader of the village. There were 38 other kids from all the schools in our school district. Everything was paid for by the district. Everything including a special charter plane to pick up our daughter in Nikolai and take her to McGrath where the group was gathering to fly next morning to Anchorage (I told Anna it was her star moment: until she manages to become Member of Parliament, I doubt she will have another opportunity to enjoy a personal chaperone and a personal plane - even if a two-passenger aircraft; she could not appreciate the profound uniqueness of the moment - she was sobbing asking me to sing her lullaby every night on the phone, and - please, please - not to forget her during the week she will be far from us, and, please, not to forget to take her favourite doll Laura out every day for a walk unless her health deteriorates, and, please, under no circumstances allow Lila to take her diary). So, the baby was gone from us for a week. She made it through very well: called us every night via her personal calling card (an object of envy from the rest of the group), tried not to be too condescending when taught 'urban survival skills' like using a train, vans, going to a skating ring, to a swimming pool (we told her that the kids around her might have never been outside their small communities in the bush, and God forbid her from displaying any superiority of a capital town dweller!). I was surprised to learn from her how easily she was operating - first time on her own - say, making an order in the fast food places, in the shopping malls. It's not just the language those kids learn fast.
Lila was rewarded for the absence of her beloved big sister ("Mommy, who will protect Anna on the trip if someone offends her and I am here with you"? - Lila kept asking me; also we had to promise her that our next visit to Nikolai - an obvious necessity - will be scheduled so that she would be in the fourth grade and would be able to go on a trip like that too). She was the baby of the family, and a few of her friends were always in the house. "Ten Little Indians Dancing on the Second Floor" is a hit in our household. Local younger kids are attracted to our house because we don't drink and we play soccer with them. We became friends, and they even allow me now to give them hugs. I am especially in love with one seven-year-old Eskimo boy Sammy. He is smart, cute and good-hearted. Lila plays with these little kids all the time. Her Russian deteriorates really fast - quite proportionally to how her English has improved. Aspects, lexical choices, intonation patterns, verbal and prepositional phrases. Time to go home!
Our passing 'tests' with good scores allowed us to start a general offense on the language. We made a sociolinguistic questionnaire and started (a friend of ours from Eugene, who visits with us for a couple of weeks, is involved in it too) introducing it to the people of Nikolai - a unique opportunity to have a survey where a sample equals the number of the language speakers. It is too early to speak about any results, but just one observation: the main reason older people would give for less speaking their language and abandoning it is the feeling of shame they acquired since they had been kids in school and had not been allowed to speak their language (the Devil's language as opposed to English - the language of God). Wow, what a contrapuntal issue! No comment on my side because I don't believe there is a generally valid concept of progress, or development, or history as a targeted movement. My credo (which can be applied to a situation of language survival as well as to one's personal story) is to admit the general tragedy of the existence and make your own happy-end story out of it.
Besides that, Andrei was/is struggling with classificatory verbs, tones, seemingly aspectual(?) meanings of most morphemes, and deciphering one conversation he had recorded earlier. Not a big piece of spontaneous discourse, of course - it was difficult for them to speak out of the household. I am proud that my bakery provoked most of the verbal response (Andrei's file is even called 'cinnamon_rolls') - especially because it was sort of negative (they found my stuff too sweet), and that made them quite sarcastic. These locals here like to make fun of other people's blunders; I believe this is typical of any small community, and the fact that they sometimes make fun of us shows they have taken us as a part of the local landscape. (Did I tell before that Andrei's main consultant asked him why we would want to leave: "Why don't you guys just stay? Here is the house to live, the girls make it very well at school, Mira will find some job, and you will continue working on the language." She obviously is not aware of the J-1 visa regulations.) Also we are sort of local attraction: when Nikolai people talk to outsiders they would mention among other specialties that there is a Russian family from Moscow living in town, and their kids know Athabaskan just as ours.
The next event that involves the whole community is a wedding that will take place this coming Sunday. A real, authorized priest will fly up from Anchorage to marry Debbie and Thane who have been living more or less happily together for five or so years and have a son of four. Recently the religious authorities in Anchorage changed their position on whether Thane had to be first converted to Orthodox so that he could be married in local church. They make it looser now. There is also one 'test' associated with this wedding that we have not passed: I was never even close to being baptized, and I did not want to conceal the fact. The issue was raised when the bride came one afternoon to have a cup of coffee with me and told that they needed for the ceremony two people who could meet the following requirements: an officially married couple; both Orthodox Christians. In the whole town there is only one couple like that - The Righteous Man and his squaw. Other couples just live together (the divorce rate is close to 100%). And this only couple was sort of overexploited, so it was not really cool to use them again. Debbie was not exactly asking anything, just telling me what her problem was. I rushed to assure her that we would be happy to assist except that I did not belong to the Orthodox Church - to say the least! But if they allow the bridegroom to be an outsider, maybe they would allow the same for the less important party in the ceremony. After this preliminary conversation we never got back to it again. I assume we failed.
I was writing this letter for quite a time. There are first leaves on the birches by now. And we had the first rainy day. After the rain it smelled of spring, of life, of joy.
Âåðíóòüñÿ â ÁÈÁËÈÎÒÅÊÓ
Âåðíóòüñÿ íà ãëàâíóþ ñòðàíèöó
| |
)