White Moss

by Anna Nerkagi

Genres: General Fiction; Coming of Age; Native American & Aboriginal

Synopsis

A poetic and fiercely moving Russian novel of tradition, change, and thwarted desire by an internationally celebrated writer from the Indigenous Nenets community of northern Siberia

Perfect for readers of Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, the work of Louise Erdrich, and other emotionally powerful, lyrical narratives of global Indigenous communities

Providing rare, direct insight into the beauties and struggles of the Indigenous reindeer-herding Nenets community of the Russian north, White Moss tells a piercingly moving coming-of-age story of the conflict between individual dreams and collective life.

On the eve of his wedding, young Alyoshka pines for an earlier love. Ilne chose to leave the nomadic Nenets community behind 7 years before, moving to the city and taking his heart with her. As the seasons have passed and his mother has grown older, Alyoshka has been under increasing pressure to marry and fully embrace the Nenets’ age-old customs of home and family. Unwilling to give up his hope for another life, the young man struggles against everything he has been taught to accept, while other painful transitions shake the stability of the small camp and minor human tragedies play out against the cold expanse of the tundra.

With bursts of lyricism and a Chekhovian eye for human frailty, Anna Nerkagi crafts a multi-voiced drama of tradition and change within her Indigenous community.

Release date: April 7, 2026

Publisher: Pushkin Press

Print pages: 192

Sample

Scorching salt sprinkled onto a healing wound – that’s how the wedding of his young neighbour felt to Petko. A vital, necessary thing. No grief, however intense, should stop the flow of life, just as a boulder thrown into a river would not turn its current. The water would move around it and
keep flowing, as was preordained.

A year ago his wife, the woman from the Lamdo clan, not quite old, had departed into eternal night. Now there was no one to set the family tea table in the morning, no one to mend the boots, to start the fire. When a woman dies, she takes half of life with her, and then you begin to understand that the one with whom you have shared your days also takes away a part of your soul.

Their tent – poles and reindeer hides – was placed on the sledge and left near the Three Trees, as the Nenets called the spot where even centuries ago they would leave sledges that were no longer needed. As for Old Man Petko, he began living in his old friend Vanu’s tent, on the vacant side. Living across the fire, old people would have said: in other words, not in one’s own tent.
Somewhere, in some settlement or other, he had two daughters. The eldest had gone away a long time ago, Petko couldn’t even remember when, but the youngest would visit often. How he and his wife had loved their daughter’s summer visits. Like two old birds, they admired her from each side. Just as bird-parents clean the feathers of their only chick, he and his wife had dressed her in the best furs their sledge carried. But the daughter always left, like a fragile bird that fears winter and flies off to warmer places.

The Lamdo woman died in winter, on a very cold day. Maybe that’s why their bird-daughter did not come to her funeral.

To think how their young neighbour, the one who was getting married today, had admired their bird-bride. They had played together as helpless children, they had grown up together, and once he, the father, even saw them rocking a toy cradle made from an old swamp boot.
He remembered something else, too. During one of the visits, in spring, her bed had stood empty for a whole white night, and when she came back, her cheeks were as scarlet as ripe red cloudberries. Mother and father didn’t ask her anything. They didn’t dare, they felt ashamed to ask.

To think of the pain in Alyoshka’s eyes every time he touched the back of the sledge on which their daughter would journey far.

And now an inexplicable, heavy resentment clung to Petko all the days that the small camp prepared for the wedding – although it was difficult to call what was happening a wedding. This was not how people married. There had been a time when family pots rang with emptiness and life did not allow for games. The old man remembered weddings rich and poor. In all of them, guests were sacred. The more guests, the better. The more kind words were said, the more happiness would befall the family which was born anew.

No guests at this wedding, that’s what the young neighbour had wanted. No word about the wedding was sent to any other camp, and no relatives, close or distant, were invited. Though it was a sin not to do so, they hadn’t even sacrificed two reindeer calves, one from the groom’s camp, another from the bride’s; they did not sanctify the sacred sledge with their blood. And there was no wedding ceremony in the bride’s tent, either. Everyone just sat down at the table, as though they were having ordinary tea, and downed a glass, without a good word spoken. They had brought the bride to the groom’s camp as though she was not a woman, not the mistress of the tent and of life, but a cart of firewood. Without song, without joy, they were weary and irritated by Alyoshka’s baffling stubbornness.

Alyoshka’s mother, who had recently grown much older, lived through those strange days as though in a dream. The woman could make no sense of what was happening. Was this a wedding? Or had these grey-haired old men and women turned into mere puppets at her son’s will, into children’s rag toys he was free to treat as he pleased? The bride’s parents, sensing that something was amiss, cited the long journey and did not go to the groom’s camp. And when the sledge caravan with the bride was about to leave, Alyoshka’s mother, holding the driving pole at the ready, turned back to look at the bride’s mother, a woman her age, and suddenly wanted to get away quickly, to run off like a beast with its prey, before someone could snatch it from her. And while they were travelling, she looked back often.

Is that how it used to be? And is that how it’s supposed to be? thought the woman. Her secret thoughts caused her to mistrust the Great Life, but one had to keep living, so she kept moving, didn’t turn back, like an old she-wolf with hungry, skinny cubs waiting for her in the den.
And when they got back, and needed, at least for appear- ances’ sake, to perform the sacred ritual of bringing the new mistress into her new tent, into a life that is easy to enter but hard to leave, the woman held her young daughter-in-law’s hand tightly, more tightly than necessary, and froze before the entrance flap. She was overcome by soul-scalding fear: was this a good omen? Would this girl be happy in her tent, with her son? Shouldn’t they come to their senses? Maybe her son was right? He was not sixteen after all, he was twenty-six, a fully grown man, who by this time of his life should already have not one but two or three children in every corner of the tent. After all, he too had a head, not a hummock, on his shoulders. Maybe the truth of their old, often hungry life had died, as everything dies? And some new, entirely other truth had been born? Each time has its own face, and therefore its own truth. But the woman pulled herself together: to think too long is to stay too long in one place. It’s too late to think. The truth of life is the same, and its meaning remains this: to live and to work, honestly.


All will be well. In vain do they, the old men and women, weep like stupid loon birds on the lakeshore before rain. There will be no rain, the sun will peek out.

Not letting go of the embarrassed girl’s hand, the woman walked through the entrance first, almost dragging her inside, and stopped for a moment before she could find the strength to say the old words that had once been said to her by her own mother-in-law:

“This is now your tent. This is where you will live.” Not letting go of the girl’s hand, she led her to the bed and sat her down, understanding with her sensitive heart how alien and cold the tents of strangers can be, and that however gently a mother-in-law’s words may be spoken, young people understand them in their own way.

Quickly and skilfully, the woman kindled the fire and cut up some meat. Filling a black, soot-stained pot to the brim, she hung it over the flame. All this time, while the hands did their usual work, the heart and the mind did theirs. Her mind, argumentative and nagging, whispered:
“How the people of the tundra will laugh at the wedding of your son. Women will caw like crows, and the word-worm will crawl across the snows as fast as the wind: the groom’s mother cut up the meat for the pot herself, kindled the pure fire of new life with her own sinful hands. She did everything herself, like an errand girl, who, at normal weddings, scampers from one task to the next like a nimble mouse. Neither the bride nor the mother of the groom can or should be working. That is a sin which brings no honour to any wedding, poor or rich.”

“Let it be…” the heart objected cautiously and timidly, “never mind the shame, at least you’ve married off your son. Is that so bad? You won’t have to thrash around in anguish like a mother bird over a ruined, empty nest. The family nest won’t be empty, it will begin a fresh, thriving life, and the same women who now wash their tongues with their own spit will, in time, come and sit at the table of your daughter-in-law and your son.” When the meat was cooked and her son entered the tent, she slipped outside and ran to the neighbouring tent, afraid that he would hear. Neighbours had to be invited to the table. He was not a stranger to them, and they were not strangers to him, and maybe her son’s heart would soften. Not outsiders, no – beloved elders who would bring the bride, the woman with whom her son would not play games but live a life, and sit her down by her husband’s knee.

The elders were expecting her. They sat side by side, sniffing tobacco, quacking softly like avlik birds, and talking quietly. She lowered herself to the edge of the floorboards near the entrance flap, and after the period of silence that befits a woman, she requested:

“Come, let’s sit the children down,” and left without waiting for an answer. She was certain that they would come, and together they would convince her son that this was how it should be. This is what the Nenets had always done. The woman would sit down by the man’s knee, becoming a part of him. In this lay the truth of life.

The elders did come. Alyoshka threw them a dark look but did not say a word. The adults seemed to him like stubborn children who did not understand the gravity of the game they had begun. He had been silent for a few days now. Words, the loudest or the softest, are empty just the same. No word will – no word can – express love. Words are dust. If people spent more time being silent, then how well and how long they would love. In silence, there is a special tenderness and suffering. In suffering lies the blood of love.

Her hands trembling, the mother led the bride through and sat her down in the place where a Nenets woman sat only once in a lifetime. Beside the groom: not on the floor planks, where she would have her eternal place for all the days of her life, but on the bed. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed her son’s lips quivering with disgust, and once again she began to fear for this wedding.

Without showing her feelings, she poured tea for the elders and sat down at the table, but immediately jumped up and began throwing more dry, brittle branches on the fire. It seemed to her that the moment she stopped moving, her bird- son would surely stand up, spread his shoulder-wings, push the table away with his strong hand, and firmly say: “Enough, I was just kidding… I don’t want to marry.” He’d stand up and she’d have no strength to make him sit back down.

Neither the thick, hot tea, nor the tasty meat, nor the downed vodka could enliven the sombre wedding. The elders, although they sat like two imposing crags that had grown into each other, were feeling just like children, unable to understand anything. And they were silent like autumn birds, afraid to call misfortune to their nest.