Afterlands (25 page)

I am in love with you, he nearly says.

Help me roll him onto his spine, sir, so we can slit open his belly.

After a moment or two he mutters, Yes, of course. And he returns to her side. They return to work as though nothing important has been uncovered—but there is one more suspicion that he wants to confirm. He says softly, Why then did you not use your husband’s snow knife at the cache … ? Her silence gives the answer he was expecting. Her husband knows nothing about the cache.

After various small, hidden surgeries, her hands deep inside the body, she tenders the crescent knife like a salver. On it is a slice of steaming, plum-coloured meat.

From the front of the heart, she says, meeting his eyes.

He wonders if the heart means the same things to her people—more than meat. He wonders if she could be trying to bribe him, buy his silence. He’s in a position to blackmail her, he supposes, to gain her favours. Of course he would not, but still this longing, this toppling forward into her eyes; and are Esquimau husbands not said to follow old traditions of erotic hospitality? So the other men used to point out, often enough.

Please, Mr Kruger, help yourself. Or have you no appetite now?

He leans into her, almost bringing his throat against the red blade-edge, and kisses her on the lips. She pulls back and slaps his face with her free, bloody hand, her ring leaving a lightning-thread of pain along his jaw.

Mr Kruger. I am a married woman.

He stares at her frankly, helpless. Her widened eyes seem to show a contained desperation.

If you’re not inclined to respect my husband, sir, or Inuit marriages, consider also that we were married in London, before God, by a vicar of the Church of England.

His hand comes away from his face bloody, though with his blood or the animal’s, he can’t tell. He grins with the pain.

Of course, you care no more for God than you do for Inuit ways.

But it was
you
, says Kruger, stung and no more able to ignore an apparent hypocrisy than to quit thinking—it was you who went against your people’s laws in taking the food. Was it not?

A facial flicker of shame as she looks down and he is sorry for his words.

As for Joe, he whispers—Ebierbing—I respect him very much. Only, love trumps respect, I now find. But forgive me, all the same. I shall trouble you no further.

I did not eat any of that food, Mr Kruger! She looks up at him with something close to passion. Not a morsel! I reserved it as a final store for us, should the crewmen leave us bereft. And still, it felt like an evil thing. Still it feels so, like a savagery!

No, he says quickly, no, you may well have saved us. I think you’ve saved all of us. He wants to reach out and console her. There are further things he should say here, but he can’t seem to complete a thought, let alone express one. He can’t help eyeing her smoking bloody hands and wanting to kiss and lick them clean. Nor can he help grabbing like a child and pinching the slice of heart’s meat on the blade and shoving it into his mouth.

One day at dusk Tukulito takes Punnie out to the new latrine, the old one having vanished the night the ice disintegrated. In a year or two, bemused whalers might discover it mysteriously bobbing along on its own tiny floe. The new facility is a too-shallow pit dug behind a hummock, which forms a kind of sloping back wall, with two side walls of rough snow blocks extending out from it to stop the wind. The sea-edge is just a dozen paces off, though in the latest cold snap the leads have all frozen over and the floe and the towering bergs are again part of a solid pack inching southward like a glacier.

As mother and child approach the latrine hand in hand, a low muttering is audible from back of the hummock. German. This although the crewmen have their own latrine.

Tukulito stops and calls, Yes? Who is it?

You know very well whom!

She can’t place the voice: shrill, scolding. Mr Jamka staggers from behind the hummock, crab-eyed, hoisting up his fur trousers with grubby hands. His feet, purple, swollen and hairy, are bare in the snow. He wears no parka, just a sailor’s jumper. Above his matted beard the sharp nose is burgundy against his white, white face. She has not seen him outside in weeks.

You have been looking straight at me! he says with a crafty expression.

But you were in the latrine, Mr Jamka.

Ah! he says triumphantly, and how can you have
known
such a thing without looking?

And perhaps you are mistaken in the dusk, sir. This is not your latrine.

But it is not at all dark, Madame, look about you!

A sighing crack runs through the new ice and Jamka peers around with rolling, primitive eyes, the whites clear and luminous in the twilight. From beneath the floe comes an enormous gulping, belching sound. When it subsides Jamka looks wily again. The knee-length trousers give him thick furry thighs under a shrunken torso, like a satyr. He still seems not to notice Punnie.

Perhaps all along you knew I was here, he says with a look of pride, delight in his own shrewdness. We know so much about the squaws,
mein Gott, ja!

He comes at her, sets hands on her shoulders and draws her to him. Punnie, holding her mother’s hand, is tugged closer too.

Stop this at once, Mr Jamka, we are here because the child needs—

Oh do not
speak
to me of childrens! Jamka is pressing bearded kisses on her cheeks while trying to topple her back onto the ice. She mashes the heel of her palm into his gluey nose. Scrawny though he is, he dwarfs her in every way. He wrenches her down hard and Punnie, still a ghost to him, tumbles with them. Anaana! the child cries, wriggling out from under his furry thigh and leaping up. He is on top of Tukulito, trying to pin her by the wrists, his long nails gouging her skin, his lower body thrusting at hers through the layers of clothing. A braiding of veins, purple on white, stands out along his temples. His breath is hot and hideously sweet.

Stop this—my husband will kill you—

He may try, pants Jamka, continuing to thrust. So also your lover.

You are wrong—please—stop!

For I am protected by the Count.

She tries to butt him, bite at him, but he cranes his head back, limpid eyes staring down at her, straight through her, on through the ice and the green sea and the sluggish weeds to the bottom, as though possessed. Nuliajuk, she thinks: this might, must be the Old Woman’s judgment on Tukulito, for her stealing of the food. Then comes the thought that the Lord God would never permit the Old Woman to enter and control the soul of a Christian, like Jamka, even out here.

Get help, she tells Punnie in Inuktitut, though she knows Ebierbing is off hunting. In her spine she feels the receding thumps of the child’s running steps. Tukulito slips her right wrist free and while Jamka gropes to pin it again, she digs in her amautik pocket for her ulu, but it’s not there, slipped out. Jamka now pins the wrist beside her squirming hip, then tilts his face toward hers with an expression that is suddenly wistful, tender. He is trying to kiss her eyes. She bites into his cheek along the beard-line and tastes blood, raw flesh. His face opens with horror, then fury.
Du Kannibalin!
he hisses—I knew this! Through her flattened spine she feels steps coming fast and tries to twist her head to look, but Jamka’s moist forehead is clamped against hers. He seems to stretch and warp, like a monstrous limpet, to cover every inch of her. There is a sharp grunt, a thud, and Jamka arches and flies back off her as if yanked by a shaman’s puppet-lines. Kruger stands over Tukulito, his face red and distended, gripping his rifle like a cudgel.

Has he harmed you in any way?

No, Mr Kruger.

He lets the rifle fall. She sits up quickly, flushing. Punnie emerges from behind Kruger and embraces her at a run. A few feet away Jamka lies on his back whimpering, rolling stiffly, his face bloody, eyes shut, hands under his arched spine clutching it. Tukulito almost whispers
I am grateful
, but then it strikes her: that Mr Kruger might possibly have arranged this attack, yes, and heroic rescue, in order to win her good regard, her body. Who knows? It is vile, and childish, this infectious lack of trust, which she would prefer to think of as a White malady, or at least as a winter sickness, yet it’s worsening still, in her. Henceforth she will keep the revolver with her. People can be heard stirring in the camp. Briskly she lifts Punnie off herself and gets to her feet, retrieving her ulu, straightening and brushing her amautik. Lieutenant Tyson appears, then some of the crew. Kruger crouches beside the weeping Jamka. And watching everything, the child: who trusted Kruger enough to bring him here, even if her mother does not.

Mar 26. I know not what to make of this. Was Jamka forcing self on her or she “entertaining” him? Will not shame her farther by enquiry. The men protect their own by silence. However, Krueger saw & in jealous, or righteous outrage interfer’d. I have now Jamkas health to worry me too for he is struck in the face & spine. I have insisted K be responsible for him & tend to him carefuly wch he seems willing enough to do
.

If I told Joe about K & now Jamka I suppose he wd soon rid us of these Damned troublesome Germans, only they too I mean to bring Home alive
.

March 28
. The bladder-noses are here! I thought they could not be far off; and their appearance, after my prediction, appears to solidify the men’s faith in my command; they are beginning to act as helpful as raw ratings. Shot nine large seals today, and saved four—five of them sank. Three were Joe’s, and one Hans’s. Thank God, we have now meat enough for eighteen or twenty days. Our whole company feel cheered and encouraged, knowing we have now got to the promised seal-grounds, where great plenty can be obtained; and our ammunition holds out well. Mr Meyer has actually been out of his hut, and took an observation; he makes the latitude 62°47’ N, showing a drift of thirty-two miles in three days. We are now in the strong tides off the mouth of Hudson Strait; and because of our drift we again can see no land. Huge bergs—and I do not in the least exaggerate when I say hundreds in number—are plowing their way among the floes, almost as if they were sentinels, or guides; but our little ice-craft is making its way through the sea without other guide than the Great Being above.

One of the men, Jamka, received in a mishap a bad, but not mortal, couple of injuries; he was in considerable distress, but now appears to be mending.

April 1
. We have been the “fools of fortune” now for five months and a half. Last night there was a heavy sea, water all around us, and scarcely any ice to be seen; today’s sun, pale and sick, shows our shrunken home to be entirely detached from the main pack, which is far to the west of us, and which would be “safer” than this little bit we are on. And so, last night’s winds having abated, I determined that we should take the boat and try to regain it.

I did not make any conversation with either Meyer or the men about abandoning the floe, for the time had come when it was absolutely necessary to do so, and the men seemed to know it. We got launched, towing the
kyack
behind us. The boat was laden very heavy, and was, of course, low in the water, with nineteen souls aboard, instead of the six to eight it was intended for, and also ammunition, guns, skins, and several hundred pounds of seal-meat; so that the sea began to break over us, and the men became frightened, some of them exclaiming that “the boat is sinking!” Meanwhile our home of some five months receded behind us, the huts where we had lived so long soon resembling, at a distance, mere hummocks or slabs of raftered ice. The seas were such that for a while our “island” came in and out of our sight, and then vanished altogether, as if having passed over the lip of a cataract.

The men rowing did what they could, but we made little headway, having but four oars, and their every movement impeded by the heads or bodies of others. We were in fact so crowded that it was difficult for Hans and Joe to bail, which they did constantly, and I could scarcely move my arms sufficiently to handle the tiller yoke-ropes without knocking into some child—and these children frightened and crying almost all the time. I could not leave the tiller to eat—there was not room to leave anyway—so that Hannah had to feed me pieces of raw seal-meat as I steered.

Of course I wished to reach the pack without losing any thing more than was completely necessary, for we really had nothing to spare; but the boat took water so badly that I saw we must sacrifice every thing, and so the seal-meat was thrown over, with most of our rusted firearms, and other things; but the boat had to be lightened. After all was done, however, the boat was still overloaded fearfully. It was with much difficulty through these changes that I preserved Captain Hall’s small writing-desk from destruction, as some of the men were bound to have Joe throw it overboard; but I positively forbade it, as it was all we had belonging to our late commander. Hannah, who reciprocated my feelings in this regard, argued in untypically open fashion with Kruger, who declared that she and I were being sentimental. One might expect a native to put survival before human sentiment at such a time, but Hannah in many ways is civilized, and she and Joe loved Captain Hall like a father. She rightly made the point that it is only our “sentiments,” at a time like this, that keep us from barbarism.

Soon afterward, however, a wave broke over us to larboard, and, as the boat rolled, Kruger contrived to push the little desk in the direction of the roll, and over it went in a moment and was lost to us in the waves. Hannah’s feelings can be imagined, although she said nothing; Joe actually looked as though he might approve of this crime; and, in reply to my angry rebuke, Kruger declared that “The desk would soon be swimming at any event, it being only a question of whether we wished to swim with it, or remain in an upright boat.” Well, he can phrase things as deftly as a lawyer, but he knows less of boat-craft than I; Captain Hall’s desk was, if a risk, a minor one, and well worth taking for reasons of morale. Calling him a thief and a scoundrel, I warned him that he could expect to keep double watches for the next few nights.