Diego Marani - The Last of the Vostyachs

Ivan woke up in a sweat. He sat up in his bunk not knowing where he was, and gazed around him in bewilderment at the dimly-lit cabin. He was hungry and thirsty. He felt around on the shelves, in the drawers of the bedside locker, among the covers. He pulled on a handle and found himself faced by a row of bottles; there were also bars of chocolate and packets of crisps and nuts. He ate everything in sight, sampled each of the bottles and polished off the one with the blue label with the figure of a stag. He liked the sweet, fresh flavour: it reminded him of berries. His head was spinning, and his limbs, tense for so long with weariness and fear, were now at last relaxing. He undid his leather jacket and took it off. Now he was stripped to the waist, but the little low room was horribly stuffy, and he needed air. He picked up his sack, slung his drum round his neck and went out into the corridor. He came to a gangway with a glassed-in parapet, overlooking a thronged saloon. Dazzlingly elaborate chandeliers cast light on men with polished shoes, sinking their moustaches into tankards of beer and clutching half-naked women clasping glasses of brightly coloured liquid. A sweet scent hovered over everything, not unlike the one that pervaded the refectory in the mine on feast days, when lorry-loads of soldiers would come over from the barracks, singing and waving red flags. Beyond the glass door there was a wider corridor, walled with glass and mirrors. This led into another saloon, where the light came from panels set into the floor, causing Ivan to proceed with caution. The sight of a group of guards, in red jackets and white gloves, caused him to panic, but they simply smiled at him and moved off in the wake of the noisy throng. A staircase with small lamps on the handrail led up to a round dance-floor, roofed by a black dome studded with little lights, like a night sky but with a tangle of wires and steel pipes hanging down from it. Beyond the dance-floor was a raised platform on which Ivan could make out two drums similar to his own, as well as a much larger one, standing on a tripod, its skin kept taut by four iron pegs. People were swarming into the saloon and sitting down on the soft carpet which covered the staircase steps. Ivan did the same, partly because his head was swimming and his vision was becoming blurred. The lights went out, and a spotlight picked out four figures seated on the stage, dressed in multicoloured fabrics and strange pointed hats. Enthralled, Ivan gazed at the cymbals flashing in the darkness, listened to the electric guitars spitting out volleys of metallic sound worthy of submachine-guns. He listened enchanted as the saxophone let out its solitary wail, sending out flashes which lit up the faces of the audience. But when the awesome wave of sound of the big drum set the air throbbing, and the sound of deep singing rose up from the stage, Ivan leapt to his feet. That was his music! That was the rhythm the hunters of Tajmyr beat out on their drums to lure the bears out of their dens! Without thinking, without realising he was doing so, the Vostyach began to dance, stamping his right foot twice, his left three times, then both feet together, arms raised. He let go of his sack and raised his drum to his chest; then he too started playing the song of the maddened bear. The spotlight swerved away from the stage and settled on to him. The musicians abandoned their scores and matched their rhythm to his own demonic beat, while the audience clapped enthusiastically, thinking that the dishevelled individual in the tattered skins was a member of the Estonian folk group ‘Neli Sardelli’ performing for them there that evening.

When Ivan stopped playing, panting and sweating, to mad applause, the musicians rushed to cluster around him and bear him off with them on to the stage, putting microphones, kettledrums, hunting horns and a whole range of other drums before him. But Ivan batted them all away with a sweep of his hand, clutching his drum of reindeer skin more closely to his chest. He sighed deeply, narrowed his eyes and, with the tips of his fingers, drummed out the beat that told of the bear’s dash through the trees; then, with his knuckles, he played out its roar; with the flat of his hand he played its flight, and, with a grazing motion, he imitated the sound of the hunters’ arrows as they whistled through the air, piercing the bear’s coat with a moist thwack. When at last he laid them, open, down on the hard leather, his hands were burning, throbbing like wounds. He got down on his knees, lowered his chin and stayed there for several minutes, motionless. The audience stared at him with bated breath. Now came the magic song for warding off the devil, who was preparing to pounce once the bear’s spirit left his body. Ivan inhaled as deeply as he could; he needed all the breath he could muster for this song.

Uutta murha ristirimme

Pehkavalla pokevemme

Ulitalla tohkevasti

Pikku ranta vikevasti

Naike viike tukavanne

Ei se loutta polevanne

Namma tilla vanta rokka

Simme karatali ehka

Toise timmo rantaseli

Eika poro muisteseli

Murha tavon eli koska

Riitta sahko pulliselkska

Uutta murha ristirimme

Pehkavalla pokevemme

Ulitalla tohkevasti

Pikku ranta vikevasti

Ivan was beating time with his feet, smothering the words of his song within his throat so that they would raise no echo; that was what the hunters of Tajmyr had done. His song rose through the room like smoke, cloaked in hoarse warmth. Listening to those wild shouts no one had ever heard before, the audience was ecstatic, and began to sway along with the rhythm. As though wearing a succession of ever-changing masks, the Vostyach twisted his face into a thousand different grimaces as he forced the breath up from his belly and turned it into song. It was not just his voice that sang, but his eyes, his nose, his hands, his legs, his arching back, his whole body. Slowly, the people around him started repeating the odd word, then a verse, then the whole song. In the freezing night, the whole Baltic echoed with the song of the men of the tundra which had come down from the distant peaks of the Byrranga Mountains to the land of the thousand lakes.

Uutta murha ristirimme

Pehkavalla pokevemme

Ulitalla tohkevasti

Pikku ranta vikevasti

bellowed the drunken Finnish tourists at the tops of their voices, not understanding a word of what they were saying, raising their tankards with one hand and using the other to touch up their partners, themselves scarlet in the face from alcohol and the excitement of that unprecedented spectacle. None of them realised that what they were singing was in fact Vostyach, the unknown ancient language which linked them to the American Indians. None of them knew that the lateral fricative with labiovelar overlay was once more returning to its natural home, their very own mouths, and that thousands of miles away, across the ocean, deep within the Canadian forests, seated in a circle around their coloured totems on their reservations, the Algonquin Indians pronounced it in exactly the same way in their songs invoking the spirits of their ancestors. Yet, strangely, on the Aland Islands which were now streaming past them on the other side of the glass, the elk now raised their heads, the owls opened their eyes, the hares pricked up their eyes in their dens. Salmon, herring and whitefish, their bellies streaked with mauve, rose to the surface from the frozen depths and slithered silently behind the Amorella as she picked her way between the shattered ice floes heading for Stockholm, all lights ablaze.

The professor paused: he had already been speaking for twenty minutes. He poured himself a glass of water before carrying on, and the sound rang out like a cataract in the total silence of the lecture hall. He had now almost reached the end of his speech, but no one had laughed or clapped at the points where his secretary had put the asterisks. Cowed by Aurtova’s steady glare, by his wooden movements and dogmatic tone, the audience had listened to him in subdued silence, barely risking a cough, obscurely convinced that something momentous was about to happen. His expression invisible behind his thick glasses, rather than taking notes in preparation for some poisonous riposte, even Juknov was peering around as though seeking help. In the brief pause files rustled, chairs creaked, noses were blown; in their booths, the interpreters made use of the short interruption to consult each other about some problem word. But when Aurtova put down his glass and turned over the last sheet of his speech, silence reigned once more.