Afterlands (22 page)

He’s at a loss, pouting his lips, pleating his brow.

Well, I’m not crossing that ice, says Lindermann, and there’s my last word.

I believe I feel somewhat better, Meyer says.

Set it down, Matthias.

And if you shoot us all, says Madsen, who will you have to command?

Kruger grabs for the gun with one hand and Anthing’s forearm with the other, but he’s too slow and weak. Easily Anthing slips back, although he holds his fire, glancing round at the men.

None of you move. Sergeant—your rifle!

Like I said, Jackson whispers, you start shooting, I’m first in line. Slowly but gamely he is sloughing himself out of his bag, an impossibly frail thing emerging from a pupa. His neck, his naked chest, his cankered arms as they emerge seem part of a Dürer allegory of Hunger, an engraving of Death. Jawslack the men stare at this perfected emblem, their collaborative work. On Anthing’s face not horror but the frank and innocent sadism of a child.

Let me get you water and biscuit, Will, says Herron, quickly rising.

You will not touch this prisoner!

Fire away, sir, says Herron quietly.

Jamka? calls Anthing, angling round for any scrap of support. (Meyer, still sitting up, is snoring again.)

It means, says Jamka in an inspired tone, that we must not use
horses
to cross the ice!

With a grave and preoccupied expression, Anthing lays down his revolver.

Anthing has been accustomed to sharing his sleeping bag with a number of cold, hard, rusting firearms; tonight he sleeps alone, and Kruger, Herron, and Jackson have their weapons back. Kruger has grown accustomed to being on edge, alert in the darkness, so before long he wakes with a jolt. There’s nothing to keep him from going out to raid Tyson’s cache, and this time he can bring back extra for Jackson and the others. Tomorrow they will go together and retrieve all of it and distribute it among the huts. What he can’t do, yet, is expose the thief. The men’s unstable allegiance, now inclined toward Tyson, could still shift back to Meyer and Anthing.

The moon is in haze over the bone-glowing tors and spurs of that remote land to the west. Diffused milk-light makes colossal shards of tourmaline and turquoise of the bergs. He sets out toward the cache, then stops. Amid the faint snapping, gurgling, crepitating sounds, there is something else, gruff sobs, or growls, as of an animal in distress. He hunches, cocking his rifle. He squints toward the floe edge a few hundred paces off. A minute’s careful walk and there can be no doubt. Tyson’s silhouette stands on the edge: the cut of his cap, the muskox hide he drapes over his jumper. Kruger eases down the hammer and coughs softly. The silhouette jerks and shifts oddly and then, having turned toward him, resumes its shape. The face is blacked out, the moon behind. In a brief silence of the ice Kruger hears teeth chattering.

Stop. There where you are.

The voice is hoarse and small. Kruger lets his rifle drop on the ice but steps closer, to the edge of Tyson’s long shadow. He eyes the moonlit water rippling coldly at Tyson’s back.

Lieutenant?

I was out hunting. After a laden pause, he taps the butt of his pistol. Now that I have had this seen to.

It’s the middle of the night, Kruger says.

I expect the dovekies to return at any time. I listen for them nightly.

You will have to rethink things, Lieutenant, the crewmen are now—

But I can readily guess what
you’re
up to.

—the crewmen have had a change at heart.

Tyson’s laugh is brief and brittle, teeth showing in the blackness of his beard.

You make a better thief than spy, Kruger.

After a beat: There, there
are
no spies on this fucking floe! And as for thieves, although you hardly—

Go back to your den, Kruger.

Although I’m none too sure you deserve your victory, you do have it, and must live to take the men back from Meyer. You’re the only one who knows these seas well enough. When we take to the boat, we need yourself at the tiller.

The whites of Tyson’s eyes are visible. He’s staring intently, as if trying to believe.

Live? he says, as if there was ever any question.

As for your cache, I’m prepared to believe that it was only to protect the others. In case Meyer and Anthing took everything when they left. I only resented your accusations.

Tyson goes rigid. Squaring his skeleton shoulders he says,
Cache?
Mr Kruger, do you now have the face to accuse
me
of stealing the supplies?

Not steal. Put by.

I know of no Goddamned cache!

But this very evening I saw you, back there among the hummocks, returning from it!

After a few moments Tyson bows his head, then raises it, inhaling sharply. He says, I had only crossed to the far side of the floe—meaning to hunt there. So as not to disturb the others.

Kruger wonders if Tyson really does know nothing.

But the banks are all frozen there, Tyson says, no open water. So no seals. I came back here.

I thought you were looking for dovekies.

Tyson bristles. Paupers can’t pick their meat, Mr Kruger.

Kruger nods,
touché
. Tyson’s shadow now extends just under Kruger’s boots; he’s fully upright, roused back into himself by his embarrassed lies—at least about the hunting—and by a renewed, bracing suspicion. Life-giving lies, as so many are.

But what of this “cache,” Kruger? Suppose you tell me what
you’ve
been doing out here?

In my hunger, he says, I too was hunting. I too found nothing.

It’s never too late to become the man you might have been. Where has Tyson read that? He sees an oval of lantern-light in his first mate’s cabin aboard the
Seminole
, tacking north for the whaling grounds of Davis Strait in ’58, ’59. He forgets the book. He read so many in those years, an education scravelled together on the outskirts of long days, doing the world’s necessary work, with stiff discipline, an orphan’s resigned stamina fed by an instinct of cosmic grievance—a grudge with God, only sometimes conscious, which has kept him from acquiring the full Yankee optimism to go with his Yankee ambition and vigour. Now the collapse of Meyer’s and Kruger’s mutiny—no, near-mutiny—confirms his deep-laid belief that men of formal education (for this is how he sees Kruger, too) lack the gravel, the moral stamina, to back up their book-learning.

Very early he rises, claws his fingers through his ratty hair and beard by way of grooming and as if to rake away the shame that has accrued on him like caked filth.
It’s never too late
. He shudders. If Kruger had waited just one day more to offer the men’s surrender. … Tyson almost yielded to his own weakness.
Almost
yielded.
Almost
a mutiny. The natives are still asleep and for a moment his being first awake seems, in a small way, to further rectify his virtue, ratify his honour—until he reflects that of late they’ve generally risen before him. Still. It’s never too late to become oneself. Maybe he’s an optimist after all. The part of him that has striven since boyhood, like a pugilist’s corner, to keep him fighting with confidence—to talk or whip or holler him through the hard parts—is already back in control, in command. George E. Tyson is back in command.

Ah, Joe, he says softly, seeing the man open his eyes and frown to focus.

What, Lieutenant. Why you up so? Something happen?

Tyson’s split lips and cheeks sting wonderfully with the long-unaccustomed stretch of his grin.

He has them all congregate on the border. The morning is unclouded, the waxing moon low but bright, southeasterly skies softening to coral. Everyone is present except the ill child and the Count, though Jackson and Anthing, by the looks of them, should have stayed inside too. Crutched on a scarcely more hale-looking Herron, Jackson is lost inside his parka and trembling like a lapdog. Anthing is grey and shrunken, as if suddenly ill. Kruger stands a little apart. He seems to be trying to catch Hannah’s eye. Her downturned face looks puffy, sleepless. Only Hans, Ebierbing, and Lindermann are armed—Lindermann with Anthing’s pistol. Looming over Tyson with a sheepish air, he now offers it—resting on his upturned hands like a crown—and says, We are sorry that we let ourselves to be led to this mutiny, sir. We hope that this company may now be, ah, recounselled under your command … that is the word? He looks to Kruger (of course! thinks Tyson, Kruger has always been Meyer’s true lieutenant—even if he too appears to have been ill).

Reconciled, Kruger says softly.

Tyson says, Thank you Mr Lindermann. But bear this in mind: there has never yet been a full mutiny aboard a ship of the United States Navy, nor will I consent to this being seen as the first. (How odd, disembodied, the words sound on the air after being scratched in the field-book and mentally rehearsed so many times!) If you men are truly prepared to work for me in the weeks to come, so as to preserve all our lives, for my part I am ready to overlook and forget all that has happened so far aboard this floe. However, your flag must come down.

Ja
, sir, says Lindermann. The other crewmen nod.

Tyson turns toward Hans. Before Tyson can open his mouth Hans clumsily salutes, looking down at the ice and muttering, Yah, sure! I hunt again now.

Lieutenant? Perhaps both flags could better come down. (It’s Kruger.) We have no real need for the flags out here, and now we must try to be a—

But this is an American expedition, Mr Kruger. The flag is an inspiration to those who are truly loyal to it.

Tyson looks at him fixedly and continues.

Last night I happened to learn of the food cache that you crewmen, I assume, have made with the pilfered supplies. I can but assume that many or all of you know where it is. I no longer care if one, or some, or all of you are responsible—I only wish to see the supplies returned to the store-house, and by tomorrow morning.

Tyson, fully inspired now, aware of himself, his body swept with shivers, bends stiffly to place the revolver on the ice at his feet.

I will not be needing nor using this weapon. And my own Colt, as you must know, no longer works. You have asked me to resume command and I will expect your cooperation without any resort to force.

For a moment the men gape in silence. Then they begin to salute—Herron and Jackson, Madsen, Lundquist. Lindermann snaps to attention and cries, Yes,
mein Kapitän!

Lieutenant, says Tyson evenly, not Captain.

Jamka salutes. Anthing droops his head, as if for the hangman. On Herron’s face a pallid travesty of his old elfish grin, but a grin all the same. Jackson’s eyes glow like anthracite. Tyson’s heart is engorged—exultant. He blinks to dam back his tears. He feels solid as a granite hero and yet light as helium. Second Mate Kruger can’t seem to bring himself to salute, but he bows very slightly, on his thoughtful face a look that Tyson is at a loss to interpret. Impressed surprise, it could be, a sort of grudging regard—although this very appearance keeps Tyson’s suspicions intact. Still, he’ll take his chances and leave the weapon on the ice. Any of them can kill him if they wish, but now, it seems, they recognize him as their main hope of survival. And he will find a way to save them all. A new sort of hero for this modern, lawful era that people are talking of—the frontier all but conquered, new gadgets improving lives, democracy in advance—a hero who doesn’t cut down his enemies like a savage, but gets them home alive. Having now reconfirmed himself in this high pledge, nothing will make him take up that frontiersman’s Colt again. Which would seem an act of ignorant cowardice. And God, Tyson knows, hates a coward.

As the meeting breaks up, Tukulito quietly picks up the revolver.

23 Feb.——K. the Thief & I think Meyer’s main Help has offered there surrender & at the last moment Thank God!! May be God does not yet forget us, or forget
Himself
, as I feared. This is one of the sweetest hours I have known ever. God willing I shall yet see your beloved Faces again
.

So Kruger leads the stronger men—Lindermann, Lundquist, and Herron—out to the cache. They go that night, while the moon is low, because while Tyson and the crew may still believe him to be the thief, despite his firm denials, he doesn’t wish to parade his apparent guilt in front of the Esquimaux too. Especially in front of her. To her people, he knows, stealing food is a heinous wrong. Of course Tyson may already have told her and Ebierbing about their exchange last night; Kruger tried to catch her eye this morning, to see if she knew, but their one mutual glance conveyed little more than that she was relieved to see him afoot. Or was that his imagination? The interpreter is herself unreadable. Again and again her controlled, noncommittal face seems to invite him to read there whatever he will, or must.

It’s here, he says. He kneels out of the wind. With the trowel he makes a tentative prod at the mouth of the cache and it collapses inward, a thin pane of brittle snow. The men kneel around him. Herron lights a match. The walls and floor of the empty cave show a few pink stains, nothing more.
Scheisse
, Lindermann whispers, and Kruger nods. If the true thief has hidden a new cache somewhere, he himself will be blamed. The pink stains are making him salivate. Around the mouth of the cache the match-light brings out in chiaroscuro a few more of those faint crescent slashes.

Like the lid of a pemmican tin, Herron says.

I was thinking so too, Kruger says; yet something he once saw out here flits at the margins of his memory.

It really was not you, was it? says Lindermann.

We were together all day, Kruger says. I told you, I just found it.

But Matthias did go out today,
ja?

Not for long enough, I doubt.

I ask, Lundquist says—could it be really the Lieutenant Tyson? Or the Indians.

I doubt it could be the lieutenant. (Kruger feels he must say so, no matter how uncertain he may feel—so he has become a sort of spy after all, a secret intermediary.)