Afterlands (21 page)

Seize the next seal and butcher her in here, Meyer whispers, and you’ll see that it’s true!

What! What is true, Graf Meyer? asks Jamka. He trembles constantly, all of him.

The words of Napoleon, of course. We seem to hear them again now …

He pants softly. He grips Herron’s hand and holds it concealed inside both his own—huge hands, scaly yellow, orange-clawed.

“We were in the forest … on horseback in the forest, hunting, and we killed a deer, and I had the men cut it open, and I saw … inside it’s the same as a man. Just the same. If I have a soul, so does it. If it has no soul, as we are told, then neither do I. I have no immortal soul. All is simply matter, more or less organized …”

Anthing, picking his teeth with a filleting knife, says, Time to rest, Count.

We need you well, sir! says Lindermann with a dab of panic, glancing at Anthing as the others nod slightly. Anthing looks quickly round at them.

What are you staring for, Krüger? If you want something wet, take me to your cache.

I tell you again, the cache is not mine.

The men seem unsure what to believe. Kruger fears that if he guides Anthing there, he and the men will finally set out with the supplies and the boat, leaving Tukulito and the children, among others, to die.

For the first time in days Count Meyer sits up. Leaning forward he squints toward Kruger.

But … I thought we had executed this man, Major Anthing?

You ordered me to have the men fire high, sir.

Ah, yes—so I did!

Still squinting, Meyer topples forward like a plank. Anthing and Jamka spring to his aid, propping him back up on his ledge. And now his eyes soften, as if discerning in Kruger—if in fact they can see him at all—a long-estranged comrade.

But, only tell me this much, my dear Krüger … Why have you stood against me? Please speak freely. You have my permission. I find that I … I rather long to know!

The Count’s droopy lower lids are awash in tears.

Please!

Kruger whispers, Because you all think with your blood.

Anthing folds his arms over his chest. To him ideas, new things, are a visceral affront; but Count Meyer seems serenely thoughtful. With our blood! he murmurs.
Mit unserem Blut!
We think with our
blood
. … How
fascinating!

Anthing and now Lindermann help the Count to stretch out on his snow throne. He’s already asleep, a child’s cozy smile on his hunger-eaten face. They drape furs over him. And next time Joe brings in a seal, Anthing tells them, you claim it and drag it in here. It’s the Count’s order.

Feb. 21
. This morning, land became visible to the west, perhaps sixty miles distant. This should be more heartening; but, considering our weakness and the condition of the ice, it might as well have been a thousand miles. I have been cleaning house to-day, shaking the filthy “carpet,” and bringing in ice to cook with; Hannah, I suppose, is too busy with little Tobias. She is doing all she can to maintain life in him, while Joe seems to feel the child is beyond help, and acts as though he believes Hannah’s efforts are simply a kind of torture. As for me, I can not resist sometimes giving poor little Punnie a part of my scanty rations, and would do the same for Tobias, if only he would eat. Between our daily rations and the pilfering, which for now seems to have stopped, there is little left in the storehouse.

Feb. 22, Evening
. To-day, all over the United States, I suppose there have been military parades and rejoicing, and balls and other festivities in the evening, being “Washington’s birthday” anniversary. We might have fired a salute to the flag, had I been in spirits to do so. But I forget; there is no one here who knows or cares any thing about Washington, or our flag, though they signed on to this expedition willingly enough, and took their false oaths of loyalty, doubtless tempted by the lure of a good wage.

I must be on the watch. There is a double game working around me; it is plain that the Esquimaux are anxious to get on shore to reserve their own lives from other dangers than scarcity of game. I think Joe feels that if he were on shore, without this company of men to feed, he could catch game enough; but to catch a living for eighteen discourages him, and indeed it seems impossible.

So this party seems set to disperse in three, perhaps even four, separate ways. God help me, I have never felt so tired! If men ever suffered on earth the torments of wretched souls condemned to the “ice-hell” of the poet, Dante, I think I have felt it here; living in filth, like an animal. Sometimes I feel almost tempted to end my misery at once—but thoughts of the divine restriction hold me back. Had our Maker left us free to choose, had not

“The Everlasting. … fixed his canon

Gainst self-slaughter,”

I think there would be one wretched being less in this world.

To-Day is in remembrence of a great Hero for whom I am named What a mockery. Yet have tried as I have always! Is my God &

America then a lie for I have trusted to honest striving to raise my Fate from Foundling to Captain & it has come to this. Emmaline & George Jr forgive me. Let Hannah & Joe forgive too for any cruel words I spoke or in these pgs, they did there best in there ways. Devil take the rest for
Thieves
&
Mutineers
& Krueger for a
Damned Spy
. I can not stop them so weary my Colt has been useless for some time for the hammer & cylinder springs rusted what is more the Men must know, Krueger wd have told them after he burst in. & him unarmed, tho a Thief I almost killed an unarmed man & sparked a Slaughter. Not my self it seems I cant stop them. Food almost gone. At least they’ll not get my Body. Hang them all for Canibals &
Cowards
.

After Tukulito has sung the children to sleep, the lieutenant emphatically scratches some lines in his field-book, then replaces it among the hides with his customary small adjustments and pats and flattenings—perhaps, she thinks, so he can detect if it has been meddled with. It will not be. Without a word or glance he crawls out of the iglu. He has not spoken for several days. As his crunching footfalls slowly recede, she and Ebierbing lean together above the qulliq.

Tomorrow we set out.

You know Punnie is too weak, she says.

We can keep her alive, he says. But here …

The thing is impossible.

Are you my wife anymore? I don’t know. You’re taking their ways too far.

In thought she taps her loosening teeth with her forefinger, swallows a cough.

We leave early, he says. The sky will be clear and the moon up.

But now I’m the boy’s mother, too, and as long as he’s alive, I can’t leave him.

I don’t know anymore what you’re faithful to. Their ways, ours. Tobias, Father Hall, him, or me and Punnie. You seem so …

You’ll wake them, she says. Who do you mean, him?

Him—the lieutenant. You seem so strange to me these days.

That may be, but I am still your wife.

Tomorrow then, he says softly, with finality.

She nods but says, Tomorrow is not here.

Under a humpback moon Kruger and Anthing slog inland through the puny “foothills” of the Central Alps. There’s a groundswell groaning from under the ice—the ocean at high tide—with fitful snapping sounds from the shore of the floe where pieces are constantly breaking off. Anthing is forcing Kruger to walk slightly ahead, but because he, Anthing, is stronger, he keeps overtaking Kruger, then jabbing him forward with the snout of the pistol. It feels to Kruger as if no meat is left on his frame; the scavenging wind blasts through his skeleton. After days and nights of smoky dimness in the hut, this moon and its crystalline reflections are as dazzling as a July sun at sea.

Anthing has broken him. He agreed at supper—watching the men feast on their scant gruel of hardtack crumbled into seal-bone broth—that he would guide Anthing to the cache in exchange for a tin cup of water (which he drank instantly) and a return to full rations, for both him and Jackson, tomorrow.
It’s all right
, a voice in his ear cajoled him.
With food you’ll be able to think, and to act—to find some better way of stopping him! And Jackson is dying! He must eat!

He has seen man defined as “the rational animal.” Maybe “the animal that rationalizes” comes closer to it. But he is too hungry for shame.

How much farther? Anthing’s voice, too, is breath-starved.

Not far now.

And were you never afraid of bears—sneaking out here unarmed?

Kruger is still sly enough to be silent. The courage of thugs is precarious, not built on long-weighed principles but on a fickle thing, animal vitality. And Anthing is running short. Once again he shoves Kruger forward, but it’s little more than a sloppy ineffectual tap. This unremarkable weakling is the most powerful man on their shrinking little planet. They round a hummock shaped like an inverted whaleboat. Tyson appears a hundred paces off. He approaches from the direction of the cache in the slumped, plodding way of a man who has just had to shoot a favourite dog. The pistol Kruger knows to be useless is tucked in his belt. His head droops, the visor of his cap hides his face. He must be frozen dead through. Anthing, behind Kruger, doesn’t see him, and clearly Tyson, upwind, hasn’t heard the two men coming—or is he too deeply distracted? The weight of guilt, maybe. Yes: guilt and false accusation. To think it was him all along! Tyson’s path takes him behind a long spiny hummock. He will emerge in a matter of seconds and Kruger is strongly tempted to let it happen.

Why have you stopped? asks Anthing.

Kruger stands frozen.

You see something? What?

Something looks wrong here, he whispers. I’m not sure.

Be sure and be quick about it.

Another moment’s hesitation, and then: I believe it’s over this way, sir. Along that line of hummocks. And he leads Anthing away from Tyson and the cache.

He has betrayed us again, says Anthing.

I couldn’t find it, Kruger tells the men, a bead of sweat trickling down out of his armpit, under his sweater. It’s been too long, the ice has changed. Tomorrow in daylight I believe I can find it.

The men don’t look as disappointed or angry as he had feared. They seem, in fact, relieved, except for Jackson, whose swollen Adam’s apple bobs as his eyes swing slowly away from Kruger.

Anthing says, It’s bright as day out there. You’re stalling. We leave for Greenland tomorrow anyway. You’ll take us to the cache on our way east. If you won’t, I’ll shoot you myself.

So, you will come with us one way or another, Jamka says in a hollow monotone.

Shut up, Sergeant.

But sir, says Lindermann, we can’t leave, not now. What if he really can’t find it?

Then we take all of whatever’s left in the storehut, not just half. And maybe some fresh meat also. The others can live off game, and Krüger’s cache, when they find it.

A cautious grumbling starts and Anthing says sharply, You must understand that we no longer have a choice! If we ever got to the west shore with the others, and back to America, we’d be tried and hanged. East to Greenland and Europe, there’s our only hope.

He pauses to let this sink in.

I suppose we could even leave Krüger here, alive. To help the others find the cache.

I was having a dream, says Meyer.

The Kaiser is awake!

We can’t leave, says Lindermann, stubbornly frowning down at his hands. It’s not only about food. It’s the lieutenant. He must be right. If we can see the west shore, Greenland must be hundreds of miles away. We’ve all seen maps.

It’s true enough, says Lundquist. Madsen nods and meets Anthing’s glare.

Are you refusing my order? Sergeant Jamka—arrest this man.

Yes, sir! says Jamka. He sits staring.

Really sir, no need to wave that thing about, Herron says in English. He, and now Jackson, seem to be following the German argument. We can talk just fine without it, can’t we?

Wasser!

Herron—water for the Count!

Jackson wriggles in his bag, props himself on an elbow and rasps out, You can’t just go shooting the bunch of us. If you aim to, why, just start with me.

Or with me, says Lindermann.

You all address me as sir!

Kruger eyes the pistol. If Tyson’s has rusted out, there’s a chance that Anthing’s has too, though Anthing has oiled his with lamp-blubber a few times. Kruger is on his knees beside Anthing who stands stooped under the dome.

Set the gun down, Matthias, Kruger says softly. Anthing aims it at him, frog-eyed.

Wasser … unter dem Eis!
Everyone turns to Meyer, who is tossing off his robes, sitting up in his festering Jaeger-wear and speaking in a slow, clear voice: I was in the arctic lake, under the ice with the Teutonic knights, sinking with our horses. But the water … it cooled my fever. I will soon be well again. Very soon we shall continue our push to the east … toward Novgorod.

The Kaiser’s dream is a prophecy, says Jamka. It means …