Excerpt from The Trail of Challenges, by Grigory Fedoseev, translated from Russian
The old man abruptly stops, lingers around a spot, pierces the snow with his stick, and looks about uncertainly. There’s nobody in sight, nor are there any tracks underfoot.
“Been here before, haven't you?” I ask.
“Now, someone stayed here for quite some time: the snow’s dense like at a campsite,” Ulukitkan answers, turns right and painstakingly thrusts his wide skis through a thicket. “Here it’s dense too!” he is clearly perplexed.
I can make nothing of it. I think we're wasting time here. Yet, Ulukitkan looks about him, searching for something.
“Look,” says he, pointing at a tree.
I see a moose skull with enormous spatulate antlers, that has been put in the fork of a not-so-thick larch tree, five feet up from the ground.
“Who would want to haul those antlers up that larch and why?” I’m puzzled. “Men don’t come here, and a bear would never imagine such a thing - let alone do it.”
Ulukitkan shrugs, trying to make sense of something he's seeing. He scans every trifling detail. His practiced eye spots something on the bark, lingers on tree forks, and apparently all the things he has spotted somehow come together. As the picture of the events that unfolded by the larch clears up in his mind, his face relaxes and brightens up.
“Two antlered bulls fought over a cow right here,” he says quite confidently. “This was when birds flew south. (Author's note: birds fly away en masse in the latter half of September.) One got his antler stuck in the fork, and the other killed him at once.”
So far I can’t see any proof for that statement and voice my bewilderment.
As usual on such occasions, Ulukitkan gives me a reproachful glance and shakes his head disapprovingly.
“Man’s brain must realize what his eyes see. The forest is no place for the sightless. Look here: there's hair stuck to the bark, and it’s short and black, which the antlered one only has in autumn, while in winter it’s long and fair. So I'm interpreting this to you: the beast was no more when birds flew south. And do you see this?” he goes on, pointing at two crosswise grooves on the larch trunk. “The bull made it with his antlers while fighting, and they only fight in the rutting season. Do you get it now?”
“Not entirely. Why do you think the antlered one was killed by the other bull?”
The old man clicks his tongue and shakes his head.
“Like I said, woe to the blind!” and, raising the antler, he points at the fork. “See, the bark is intact, barely grooved.”
“So what?”Ulukitkan laughs his usual silent laugh, as I stand in front of him like a schoolboy who hasn’t done his homework.
“A deaf reindeer won’t hear until given a shove. Look and think hard: if the beast had stood here for days, would any bark remain under his antlers? Now, the antlered one is a greatly mighty beast - he could even break the tree, he just had no time.”
Suddenly it’s all clear to me. One can only marvel at the old man; what a sharp eye and keen mind it takes to reconstruct the whole picture of the bygone clash – from a hair and a scratch on the bark!
I clearly imagine the dreadful combat between the two forest giants: hunching their backs with extreme tension, the beasts rushed at each other. I imagine antlers sweeping, blows and groans, snaps of broken trees, lumps of earth flying all over the place from under hooves, and thick hot steam cloaking the muzzles of the enraged rivals. Now one of them, perhaps the near-winner, got his antler trapped in the larch fork, lost his ability to defend himself and was immediately killed by his foe.
Apparently, wolverines, ermines and Siberian weasels feasted here all winter, carrying away and gnawing at the dead animal’s bones. Had the freshly fallen snow not covered their tracks, Ulukitkan would surely have also had a lot of interesting things to say about these predators, who trod around the larch and compacted the snow.
I am going to take the antlers down, but the old man holds me back:
“Now, others may come through here – let them also see this and figure out how it came about.”
This is a pretty sophisticated effort! But without seeing the original it's difficult to advise on style. How does Fedoseev handle the speech register of the old man? To emphasise his strangeness and ancient wisdom, a professional translator might consider using slightly archaic speech forms? But translating into a second language, that would be a lot to ask!
@Geoff Any advice on how this could be made more archaic or more dialect-sounding - will be welcomed! The old man's speech is generally clear, with occasional use of:
@NickU My goodness - that would challenge even a professional translator! You have to somehow dream up a consistent and exotic way of speaking...
On the assumption that North American native hunters have something in common with an old Siberian (?) tracker, here are some examples I found from successful modern authors. They all seem to use plain words, short clauses, quite a formal register, poetic rhythm and slightly unusual word order to create a sense of strangeness (Yoda lite!).
"We respect the bear because he's our brother. When we take him, we give thanks and honor him. Every part of him is used; nothing is wasted. This is our way, and it has always been so."
"The ice is alive. It speaks to us, tells us when it is safe to travel, when we must wait. This is something you feel, not something you learn from books."
"The coyote is tricky, like the white man's world. But the Earth Mother, she is constant. We listen to her, and she guides us true."
"We are bound to the land as we are bound to each other. When the wind speaks, it carries the voices of our ancestors. We must listen, for they guide our steps."
"The sea is my home, the gulls my family. Here, I am not alone, for the spirits of my people are with me in the wind and the waves."
As for the introductory word, I think you're stuck with "now". It's a very old word, so anything older in English or Scots just sounds weird: eg sithen, noo, nau. None of these would work.
Oh - proverbs and sayings. You could always look for a near equivalent in English, but it would probably have the wrong cultural resonances. So that leaves you with translating into something that sounds like a proverb! One option I've seen done is to quickly flag for the reader that it's a saying:
Etc.
Thank you @Geoff - I have to digest this! I think the assumption about similarity about Siberian and North American indigenous hunters should be correct.