CHAPTER 2
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Gossip, starting like a small fire, got bigger and bigger. One occasion especially helped this evil rumor. On a holiday, years before, the people of the valley had gathered to eat and drink and dance. As always, the shamanist was present--a man believed to have power to communicate with the good and evil spirits who were part of an ancient faith. And as always he ate and drank with the gayest of the company.
The shamanist had long been jealous of Turgen because of his influence over the Yakuts. For one thing, Turgen was a sober man and kept his wits at all times, which the shamanist did not do. As the shamanist was dependent upon voluntary contributions for his living, he could not tolerate the thought of yielding any authority to another.
On this day the party went on hour after hour, until the shamanist from an excess of food, drink, and excitement fell down unconscious. To the superstitious Yakuts, who revered him greatly, he was in a trance and they waited eagerly to hear what he would report about his conversation with the spirits when he awoke.
A woman named Stepa went to him and wailed:
“Arise, O Shamanist, and open our eyes, ignorant people that we are. Tell us our future and what we have to fear.”
In a short while the shamanist rose, looked about him with wild eyes, seized his tambourine and struck it several times.
“I saw,” he muttered, “I saw a dark cloud swim across the sky to Turgen’s yurta. I looked. I looked, and in it was the figure of a devil. A real devil, with horns and a tail like a cow’s. I spoke, putting a spell upon him, and he changed into a wild ram. I made the spell stronger, and he vanished in the exact spot where Turgen lives. O my friends! Beware of the devil in the ram’s hide!”
With that, the shamanist fell to the ground again exhausted.
Amazed, the Yakuts said to one another, “He has seen the devil! Let us be thankful that the devil passed us by and went instead after the soul of Turgen.”
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But here the woman Stepa, who wanted to be in the shamanist’s good graces, interrupted. “Beware the devil!” she screamed. “He can come to you too. You say that Turgen is a Christian--but has anyone seen him pray when the priest visited us? No. Believe me, the devil is looking to have such people for a friend. Beware of Turgen! Avoid him!”
The Yakuts were more impressed by the shamanist’s vision than by Stepa’s words. Still they listened and remembered. When, not long afterwards, the shamanist had another vision in which Turgen was associating with the devil, the simple started to believe. They did not condemn Turgen, nor would they harm him. “If he has bound himself to the devil,” they said, “that is his affair. We’ll just stay away from him.”
They did so, and time passed. People might even have forgotten the story of Turgen’s sorcery had not a simple, foolish man named Nikita come running to the village one day to report in great excitement that he had seen Turgen sitting on the bench beneath his larch tree while a mountain ram strolled nearby.
“With my own eyes I saw it,” he declared. “A wild ram in company with a man.”
Everyone knew Nikita for a careless talker who embroidered truth with a lively imagination, but the Yakuts were a superstitious people and like many others were easily convinced by loud shouting. “Think of it,” they said, shaking their heads dolefully, “a wild ram has become tame. Such a thing has never been heard of before. This really smells of the devil’s work.”
For these men had hunted the mountain rams all their lives and they knew that no wild creature in the world was so fearful of human beings. Hunting them was hazardous sport because the rams lived in the most remote crags. Many a hunter had fallen and been crippled for life trying to search them out. There was a saying that anyone who killed a ram was certain to meet misfortune, but this was one of those popular beliefs not to be examined too carefully for truth.
Of course, the Yakuts might have gone to Turgen and questioned him, but they didn’t. “Is it reasonable to ask a sorcerer why he takes the devil for friend?” they asked. “Better stay out of harm’s way lest the evil spirits reach out and take the inquisitive ones also into their net.”
So it was that the people of the valley no longer visited Turgen, or he them.
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