There was no cure: according to the doctors, my only chance of escaping a tracheostomy would be to exercise self-restraint and try to avoid verbal communication, which had always been one of my most prized assets, not to mention my instrument of work. And in doing so, I would have to give up having anything to say and get used to being silent—which, given my personal inclination and position, I feared would be impossible.
When I announced my condition at the university, it was you who first found out about the Skali and brought them to my attention, during one of the face-to-face meetings that stood in for my classes. Your plan was so simple that it bordered on naivety: among the various peoples of the world, there had to be one whose language had fewer words than all the others. After a couple of days’ research at the department of comparative linguistics, immersed in rare languages, you finally found the answer you were looking for.
The discovery led you deep into the Skali universe. Nomadic inhabitants of Siberia, they separated from the more numerous Nenet at least two millennia ago, undergoing an accelerated process of linguistic divergence thanks to their geographical isolation. Their alphabet, transcribed during the mid-nineteenth century into Cyrillic, has just fourteen letters, just over half that of most written languages. Insignificant by Western standards, but adequate to describe a world made up of ice, mist and herds of reindeer and to ensure the precarious continuation of an ethnicity on the brink of extinction.
The Skali’s tiny vocabulary is composed of around three thousand words, almost eighty per cent of which are nouns. These tend to be used with minimal recursion, with no articles, inflections or other adornments, and almost no syntax at all. On the rare occasions that the Skali decide to express themselves, they usually do so in the simple manner of children: a single word to refer to an object (a sledge, ublik; a shovel, fümp; a storm, triblika), whose importance is self-evident and needs no explanation.
The remaining twenty per cent of their vocabulary consists largely of simple verbs with self-contained meanings, conjugated through the final consonant in the present, past, future and imperative (“it’s raining”, plek; “he died”, yunb; “run!”, gür). As a result, the Skali speak an average of three hundred words a day, or just over a hundred thousand a year—less than a third of other Siberian populations, whose languages are closer to their Slavic roots, and a small fraction of the verbal production of Western cultures.
None of this was enough to make me particularly interested in the Skali, who I initially assumed were an irrelevant anomaly in the Gaussian curve of languages. Your girlish enthusiasm for them seemed like a juvenile impulse, which my age prevented me from sharing. But then came the photographs. They appeared unannounced on my desk one day in September, stowed in a brown envelope with no return address.
The black-and-white images had been taken during the Communist period in a Soviet effort to map the diversity of populations united under the red flag. The people, however, were the last thing to catch your attention. Men with slanted eyes, who posed uncomfortably for the army cameras, looked insignificant before the plain, in which sky and tundra were muddled together in an icy mist. Once in a while, a reindeer made itself known in a corner of the photograph. Beyond that lay the steppe, white and motionless.
I couldn’t find a trace of a smile, or even of parted lips, in any of the photographs. But it wasn’t this or anything about the Skali themselves (facial features, clothes or adornments) that made the silence tangible. Rather, it flowed directly from the empty plain that surrounded the figures and that brought with it the undeniable assertion that words were not needed.
Shortly after seeing the photographs, I called you into my office, guessing it was you who had left them there. As you entered the room, I could see you knew what I was thinking before I even brought it up. And when I asked if you’d like to accompany me on the trip as my assistant, your shy smile was enough for me to know the answer was yes.
From then on, you took charge of the preparations for the trip while I spoke to doctors to find out how feasible our undertaking would be. The laryngologist thought I was mad when I explained that I needed an environment with fewer words and that I intended to find it in Northern Siberia. But his views on my sanity didn’t matter much: all I needed to know was whether the cold might make my condition worse.
His response came two days later: as far as my larynx was concerned, there was no reason to fear the glacial temperatures. In fact, evidence from animal studies suggested that the progression of the fibrosis might even slow down in the cold. Even so, there was the rest of my body and the spirit inside it to consider, and they would have to endure a winter that seemed brutal.
But none of this was enough to discourage me. I knew you would make the necessary arrangements for us to be welcome among the Skali. They’d already been visited by a group of geographers from another department, and you’d reach out to anyone who could help us be accepted by that notoriously elusive community. And once we were integrated with the Skali, who had lived in that winter for thousands of years, we knew we’d have a chance of surviving it too.
We landed in Arkhangelsk at the beginning of autumn. We knew the choice of season was far from ideal: we’d face winter shortly after arriving, and our timing couldn’t have been more unfavourable, or frankly risky. But the question of my health inspired our hastiness, and waiting didn’t seem like a sensible option. Despite knowing this, my confidence wavered when I descended the stairs from the plane. But, unable to protest due to my illness, I had no option but to trust in the path you’d chosen.
Melek, our guide, greeted us with a curt nod, which we later discovered was an animated greeting by Skali standards. He said that it was an honour for his people to receive such an important intellectual and that we’d be very welcome there. Shortly after getting into the old Lada jeep, however, his eyes went back to the road ahead, and his broken English dissolved into the noise of the wind, of our hands rubbing together to stave off the cold and into the many other sounds that would soon dominate our lives.
Our impression on arriving at the Skali settlement was almost disappointing. Unlike the immensity of the plain, the camp on the outskirts of the city was simple and didn’t have much picturesque charm. Apart from the impressive chums, large hide huts that could comfortably house an entire family, the other objects spread around the area were nothing more than Western trash, acquired second-hand from Russian workers. But the Skali received us with unassuming courtesy, and we preferred not to waste time with misgivings or complaints.
The departure for the Yamal plains would take place in two weeks. The ground next to the city froze too easily in winter, and in order to support the herds of reindeer lodged beyond the suburbs, we had to migrate to better pastures. Until then, we would stay in the camp and get used to basic survival tasks: travelling by sleigh, building fires and erecting chums. Our first few days were devoted to endless cycles of rolling and unrolling layers of hide around tree trunks—skills that you, with surprising strength, seemed better able to master than me. And after brief and intense afternoons of work—the days already getting shorter—we’d retire to our accommodation in the city where, after a quick goodnight, we’d each go to our rooms so that sleep could relieve us of the wait.
Our closest contact with the Skali came at mealtimes, during which a few words—or many, by their standards—were spoken by the clan chief before the food was served. On the first few days, we’d look to Melek to translate, but with time we learnt that he’d only do so when we were sitting around the fire, gathered over the samovar of boiling water to share tea. “Words are spoken at the table, but are intended to be heard later on,” he’d say, which perhaps was why it took us so long to understand what he meant.
On the day we left, the clouds disappeared, and the blue sky reflected in the snow obscured everything around us. I asked Melek how our departure had coincided with the good weather, but he merely cast a respectful glance towards the clan chief, as though in deference to his wisdom. And by his and the others’ silence, I knew that the time for words, which had only been few, was giving way to that of work. The first reindeer were retrieved from outside the city to pull the cargo sleighs. Around us, the Skali were all leaving their tents at once, busying themselves with their tasks in silent harmony.
As you helped a pair of boys fold a dismantled chum, I felt lost in the middle of the camp’s methodical activity, which reminded me of an ant colony at work. I had no option, however, but to join in, and soon I was tying the wooden rings that fastened the animals to their sleighs, listening to the reindeer’s calm breathing in front of me while the dogs barked around us. Absorbed in my task, I only realized we were leaving when the animal took a deliberate step forwards. When I looked around, the clan had started its march, and you were among them without anyone needing to tell you.
Once under way, the movement was immaculate. In a matter of hours, the listless, disorganized village had transformed itself into a cohesive rectilinear march, which penetrated the territory like a sharpened blade. Just as a bird, after hours of aimless circling, begins its plunging descent towards the glimmer of fish. Except there were no fish and no glimmer to draw us in. Only the steppe. A steppe that welcomed us with a perfect day, while also making its conditions clear in the icy ferocity of the wind. Triggering once again a game of ancient transparent rules, which only the cold and adversity could teach.
Despite the obvious power imbalance between us and the climate, what most caught my attention was no longer the immensity of the landscape or the harshness of the cold but the journey’s quiet stubbornness. The impassive walk of the reindeer, who had been following the same migratory paths for millennia. And the crawling, unrelenting progress of those people, who had accompanied the deer for so long that it was impossible to know who was following whom. For man and beast, that toing and froing was their whole world. A world that, in a way I hadn’t recognized until then, we were starting to become a part of.
When we stopped to set up camp, the sun was beginning to set, and the freezing cold would soon turn lethal. Wasting no time, you were among the first to unroll the chum and begin assembling it over stakes driven into the ground. My own initiative in trying to help was more automatic than deliberate. But I couldn’t say the same for you, whose eyes translated a quiet enthusiasm I hardly recognized, seeming to indicate that something had changed.
With the tent ready, we took the hide bags from one of the sleighs and went in, not used to the idea of sharing the space we’d have to call home. But the chums were few, and sharing one between the two of us was already an unusual privilege. Inside the tent, we were motionless for a while, bags in hands, until you took the lead and put yours down on the thick hides that would serve as our bed. You opened it between the blankets and started taking out your grammar books and a mirror, as though all of this were natural.
Once we’d lit the fire and prepared the tea, you were the first to lie down. I hesitated before doing the same, cautious about giving in to a strange intimacy, which made it obvious how little we knew each other. For a long time, I tried to think of topics to break the silence, only to remember afterwards that we were there to avoid doing so. In the absence of having anything to say, I distracted myself with the sounds from outside, while you studied verbal declension, serene beneath the covers. And as the wood beneath the chum’s hides creaked, rocked by the wind, that tenuous arrangement started to make sense. There was nowhere else to go, and that became increasingly obvious as the temperature plummeted.
As sleep crept over us, reclaiming our exhausted bodies from the journey and the cold, the previously uncomfortable silence started to feel welcoming, as though the tension between our distinct positions in the world had entered into a truce. One last time before falling asleep, I looked over at you, still unsure what to do with the unlikely proximity. But you only smiled and sat up to blow out the candle that illuminated the tent, declaring the day over.
The following morning, we met a herd of wild reindeer and waited for hours as the younger members of the clan went inland with the dogs to fold them into the herd. We ate lunch in the company of the women who, with the sudden rupture in hierarchy, seemed to risk more frequent glances in our direction, though it wasn’t enough to spark a conversation. And when the men returned with cries of awak! (“success!”), you were the first to resume your place in the line so we could continue marching.
We travelled until much later to make up for lost time, and by the end of the day exhaustion had set in. When I entered the newly assembled chum, noting the stark change in temperature, I found you beneath the covers as on the previous day. Lifting your gaze momentarily from the book you were reading, you smiled with an inquisitive air and said, “yuj?” For a moment I was confused, but with a little effort I remembered it was the Skali word for “firewood”. Overcome with tiredness, I had forgotten to collect the wood before coming inside and left hurriedly to get it before night fell.
Outside, the last of the Skali had already gone in. The wind had died down, but the lull foreshadowed worsening weather as clouds formed densely in the distance. Not wanting to waste time, I went towards the pile of firewood. And standing there alone, beyond the outer circle of the tents, I tried to take in the enormity of the emptiness that surrounded us, a steppe that extended in every direction with no landmarks for guidance. Apart from a faint blue that still shone in the sky, unable to keep night at bay, but signalling the west and evoking a world that felt further and further away from me.
There was no time for nostalgia, however, and after gathering enough wood, I quickly returned to the chum. Inside, you’d left your spot under the blankets and were waiting for me by the fireplace. Putting the wood on the floor, I told you to go back to bed (“kür”) while I made the fire. But you stayed by my side as I blew on the embers in the metal drum to arouse the flames. After a while, you touched my arm lightly and said I didn’t need to worry (“kuyut”). Seeing you look at me and not knowing what to say, partly due to my limitations in the language, the only thing that occurred to me was “traltak”. Thank you.
And with no intention other than expressing my gratitude, I took your hand, dwarfed by the sleeve of your coat. Feeling the heat radiate from your warm body, I allowed myself to linger for a while almost without noticing, my gaze drifting between you and the fire. When I realized what was happening, I worried it might disrupt the harmony that had settled between us and tried to withdraw. But as I pulled away, you clutched my arm and slipped your hand into mine, before edging it under the sleeve of my coat and clasping me by the wrist.
As I felt your warmth emanate beneath my clothes, which had become my second skin, I was flooded with the sensation of being nothing but temperature and touch. Remembering for some reason the view from outside, the plain and the dying blue, I held onto your arm too. And soon those two points of contact weren’t enough and they became an embrace, in which we hurried to find each other under the thick layers of clothing.
I looked at you one last time, fearful of overstepping a delicate boundary, and started to say something. But as though guessing my intentions, you touched a finger to my lips, reminding me that there were no words, boundaries or borders at that latitude. Only the steppe. Within seconds your clothes had been thrown across the reindeer hides, and from then on I remember feeling warm and small as I left the vastness behind and was swallowed by an even greater silence.
It was already mid-morning when I awoke the next day. Beside me, you were still asleep under the blankets. For a moment I was afraid we’d missed the sound of the reindeer hide drum. I thought we might have been left behind, that the Skali were already walking ahead and we’d be lost forever in the middle of the tundra. But after hurriedly opening the tent, I was covered by a blast of snow. Unable to see anything outside other than an indistinct white expanse, I realized what was happening. The conditions were too poor to dismantle the camp, and our only option was to wait in the chum until the weather improved.
Between my disappointment at the hostile weather and the relief of not having been abandoned, I tiptoed back to the pile of hides that served as our bed, trying not to wake you. But you soon opened your eyes, and when you saw my face, with shards of ice stuck to my beard, you merely made space beneath the covers. As though you already knew we couldn’t go anywhere. As though somehow you’d known all along.
That was the first of many days when we were unable to leave. Now, as the cold grows harsher, it is increasingly common for us to spend several days trapped in one place, the horizon shrouded in mist. Even when we don’t march, the work doesn’t cease, as the reindeer still need to be fed and protected from the storms. At mealtimes in the central tent, the Skali are even more subdued than when travelling, as though they’re worried that idleness will allow our spirits to relax, which could prove fatal when the march resumes.
These enforced pauses mean we spend more and more time in the chum. I’ve adapted slowly to this routine, learning to sleep in short spells throughout the day, something that seems to come naturally to you. When our bodies are apart, we keep ourselves busy conjugating verbs, revising the four simple declensions and discovering pearls of succinctness in the Skali vocabulary (arküli, to break the ice and catch a fish; treëut, to chase escaping reindeer; ungat, to cling together until the cold passes). When I don’t feel like talking, I write. You’re silent most of the time too—either to keep me company, or because our mouths are occupied with each other’s bodies.
Sometimes I feel the need to go outside, on the rare occasions that the weather permits it. When you come with me, you entertain yourself by making sculptures in the snow while I contemplate the clouds in the distance. Around us, the Skali work in silence. We distract ourselves by pointing out the few things that are visible across the plain—a cluster of pine trees, a large rock, a flock of birds—and finding the corresponding words in the dictionary. You are quick to find them, so much so that I suspect you feign ignorance for my sake. For anything without a translation, we invent words with the same roots, taking care to retain the principle of economy (klip, hug; huf, nostalgia; yüm, an irresistible urge to escape the cold and get back under the covers).
Sometimes when I go out you prefer to stay in the tent, and that’s fine too. On these occasions, as though I have to do it in secret, I practise a word or two in English to test my glottis and monitor the progression of the disease. If my throat allows it, I also use the opportunity to practise my clumsy pronunciation of the Skali consonants. Most days, however, I just write, more to pass the time than because I have anything to say. Then something sends me back to the tent, and I find you in a silence almost always greater than mine. “Yüldur”, you say, and blow out the candles.
The winter is getting worse. It’s more and more difficult to go out, even for the Skali, who feed the reindeer in shifts to avoid hypothermia. And despite our willingness to pitch in, I feel they’re starting to spare us from the most laborious work, though they won’t admit it.
My glottis is doing well, perhaps even better than before the journey, but I don’t feel any particular need to speak. My joints, on the other hand, bother me a lot, as though the cold is aggravating my otherwise mild arthritis symptoms. The storms on the horizon have become more intense and beautiful, and sometimes I’m tempted to describe them using my native language. But being wasteful with words, even in writing, has started to seem unnecessary. So I limit myself to watching, as you do, and the intensity of not saying anything is greater than that of speaking or writing. When we don’t know what to say—which is most of the time, as comprehending the steppe is beyond us—we are almost always together staring at the horizon. We stay until the cold grows bitter, and the only path left is the one leading back to the tent.
Once in a while, when the sun emerges from behind a storm, we manage to march again for a few hours, causing commotion amongst the Skali, who hurry to get the sleighs ready to leave. When this happens I’m no longer thrown by the bustle of work. I just make my way towards the animals, murmur in their ears (“bolür!”, let’s go), and from then on, even with the pain in my knees, being part of the flow is natural. An aspect of life as inevitable as breathing. Even when you pass me on the march, we just smile and keep walking, without breaking step. There’s a lot to do, and great distances to cover.
A noise wakes me in the early hours, like a ghostly scream on the wind. You’re sleeping soundly next to me, unclothed and slightly sweaty under the covers. Sleepless, I put on my coat and go to the entrance of the tent. When I pause in front of it, I notice that the sounds have dissipated along with the remnants of my dream from moments earlier, in which wolves were chasing reindeer into the forest and you were not with me.
So instead I turn around and study your sleep, which is always deeper than mine. I stay there for a while, finding it strange to see you from afar. Perhaps sensing you’re being watched, you gradually wake up, open one eye, then the other. You look at me with a smile, without me understanding why. And then you speak, in a slow voice still drowned in sleep.
“Brel.” (“Light”).
“Tritlir, tritlir” (“Sleep”), I reply.
“Brel. Ewar.” (“Light. Let’s go out.”)
With an eagerness I don’t understand at first, you quickly get out of bed, put on your boots and throw a coat over your naked body. Rushing in my direction, you take my hand and pull me towards the entrance of the tent. And when we’re outside in the biting cold, the light is in fact on the horizon, over us, everywhere.
Under the green arcs of the northern lights, you open your arms and look at the sky. And although you say nothing, the gesture translates the awe of your silence. We know the moment can’t last, that we’ll soon have to return to the tent for our own survival. But for a second we are in the centre of everything, in space and time. Standing beside the tent, your arms, lifted against the unreal light, are the only reference that remains in the darkness of the plain.
*
Despite the snowstorms, we’ve been marching continuously for three days. The clan leader is afraid the grass will freeze beyond the reindeer’s reach if we stop any longer, which would put us at risk of starvation. And though it’s impossible not to fold to his reasoning, sometimes hunger seems like a better fate than the fatigue that has taken hold of my body.
In a way, I feel the cold is finally collecting its debts. The huge price to be paid for the privilege of being in silence. I’m still able to join the march, but my arthritis is getting worse, and walking becomes more difficult each day. When we assemble the camp, you’re quick to bring me inside, heat some water and cover my knees with hot compresses. Your face doesn’t betray fear or pity as you do it. Only the calm conviction that you are doing what you can, which is perhaps what we mean by love.
As my arthritis deteriorates, words, which were already deadly when spoken, begin to fail me in writing too. My fingers no longer close properly, and my dexterity has been ravaged by the stiffness that is slowly seizing my joints. Faced with the idea of having to stop writing, I ponder without much interest the options I’ll be left with to communicate complex ideas, if I need to at all. But this need seems less and less likely. For I know that when I grow silent, you’ll be close by and will know what to say, without needing to say it.
And as the sun sets behind the grey mass, which will soon become a new snowstorm, I contemplate the plain’s vast reach. Of the few words in the Skali vocabulary, there is none to describe their territory. It is everywhere, and there is no need to allude to it: accepting its existence is enough, as there is nothing else beyond. I look at the Skali, who are assembling the camp around us, oblivious to our presence. I watch the fire flicker in our tent, the precarious security of our makeshift arrangement in the middle of the impenetrable steppe. And I feel closer to a kind of understanding, albeit insufficient, of my dizzying descent towards silence.
And as I look at the increasingly hesitant letters that accumulate on the page, I know they’re incapable of expressing any of this. Just as my voice—trapped between a crude accent and the English I’m beginning to forget—would be incapable too. But even if both slip away, I know I’ll hold onto the few words I still need, in a vocabulary even smaller than Skali, though sufficient given how little I know.
That night, the clan chief visits our tent. To our surprise, he motions with his head for us to follow him outside and walk with him to the edge of the camp. He sits down next to us. Shortly after, he takes you off to a quiet corner so the two of you can talk in private. He points towards our tent, to the centre of the camp, and I understand what he’s saying. There’ll be no march tomorrow. Or at least not for me. The Skali call this yurfit. Compassion.
A little later, he comes back and rests his powerful hand on my forehead. He pulls away in silence, leaving us alone in the middle of the snow. I think about going back to the tent, but somehow I understand that my time has come and gone, that all that’s left for me now is the cold. So I slowly lie down on your lap, the wad of paper in my hands, my gaze trained on your smile, which gently soothes me, everything else around us nameless.
The wind is blowing forcefully. My hand falters, then writes a few clumsy words. By your smile, I know that you’re still able to decipher them. And that is enough.
Air. Plain. Snow. Winter. Skin. Heat. Reindeer. Light. Milk. Tundra.
Ground. Fire. Tent. Firewood. North. Pain. Relief. Cold. Body. Space.
Snow. Cold. Bread. Silence. Body. Cold. Snow. Snow.
Cold. Heat. Body. Silence.
Snow. Snow. Snow.
End.
Steppe.
You.
