Afterlands (10 page)

Nov. 19
. I am down sick with rheumatism, hardly able to hold a pencil. Our island is now entirely encircled by water, and I judge we are drifting to the southward very fast. Today at noon, only a faint streak of twilight in that direction. The natives tell me that they saw two bear-tracks and five seal-holes; but they brought home nothing. How I wish they had better fortune.

Here we are, and here, it seems, we are doomed to remain.

Nov. 21
. The last few days the weather has been clear and cold; I have been confined to the hut with a heavy cold and rheumatism; but, thank God, I am around again. It has been very difficult for the natives to hunt this month, except the few times the moon has shone, on account of the darkness; but today, thank God, they have brought in two seals. Without them we should have no fire, with one boat already cut up. It will never do to touch the other, for the time must come—if we live to see it—when the boat will be our only means of safety. As for Captain Hall’s writing-desk, which is all we have left of him, and which the men might also cut up, two weeks ago I asked Hannah and Joe to keep it safe with them in their hut.

We are living now on as little as the human frame can endure without succumbing, and suffer much from the cold; when the body is ill-fed the cold seems to penetrate to the very marrow. Some tremble with weakness when they try to walk. Mr Meyer suffers much from this cause; he was not well when he came on the ice, and the regimen here has not improved him. He lives with the men now; they are mostly Germans, and so is he, and the affinity of blood draws them together, I suppose. This is natural enough, yet such growing affinity is troubling. He joined them three days ago, and now I have joined Joe, Hannah, and Punnie. I prefer living with them, as they can and will speak English, which Mr Meyer and the men seem increasingly reluctant to do.
The biscuit has disappeared very fast lately: more of this hereafter
. We have only eight bags left. God guide us; He is our only hope.

Punnie, poor child, is often hungry, and indeed all the children often cry with hunger. We give them all that it is safe to use. And indeed, tonight, for the first time since separating from the ship, we have all eaten enough. I have fed heartily on seal—yes, and drank its blood, and eaten its blubber, and even the skin and hair; it will give me strength, I hope. The seal’s blood was very savoury. For the last few days, being sick, I had eaten nothing—scarcely any thing for about a week. I really need and should have more, to make up for the days I ate nothing; but beyond this one meal, shall not ask for or take it. I must subsist as well as I may on the regular allowance. In our situation Joe is the “best man,” for without him we should get little enough of this game. Hans is not so good, though he does well at times; and, as for the rest, they have had no experience. I am the worst off of all, for I have neither gun nor pistol, and can only make a shot by borrowing of Joe.

This is a disadvantage in other respects, and the men know it. After Captain Hall’s death, for some reason unknown to me, arms were distributed among them, perhaps to organize hunting-parties; but, at any rate, while I was looking after the ship’s property on the night we were cast away, the men secured their weapons. My situation is very unpleasant. I can do no more than advise them, and some now sneer openly at my advice. At times, this is close to unbearable; yet the insubordination is not altogether their fault, for after Captain Hall’s death, Mr Budington allowed them to say, do, and take what they pleased.
And then, too, there appears to be some influence at work upon them now
. It is natural, no doubt, that they should put confidence in an officer of their own blood; but they will probably find that “all is not gold that glitters” before they get through this adventure.

We have discovered more bear-tracks on our floe, but have not seen the bears. Our two remaining dogs are very thin and poor, and unless we get more food, they will have to be killed. It is a great pity, for they would be very useful in bear-hunting.

Punnie is awake again, whining with hunger. The sound is different from other sorts of whining: at the same time more urgent and more feeble. Embracing the child, Tukulito lies between her snoring husband and Lieutenant Tyson. Customarily an Esquimau husband would sleep between his family and any man sharing their bed-ledge; this present arrangement is designed to keep the lieutenant, like Father Hall before him, from freezing to death.

Tukulito’s gentle alto suffuses the iglu with a song of her people, a survivor’s lullaby—
Aija aliannaittuqaqpuq inuunialiqtunga ijajajaja ijajajaja
—until, with no transitional pause, she flows on into the verse of a hymn that she has sung before in parlours in London, and New London, accompanied by local pianists, for salons of the curious, the amused and the moved:

I will sing you a song of that beautiful land
,
The far away home of the soul
,
Where no storms ever beat on that glittering strand
While the years of eternity roll
.

The lieutenant seems to be awake and listening. He sniffs softly, as if needing to blow his nose. As Tukulito rocks, pressing lightly against both men in the process, Punnie’s whining quiets and the child sobbingly promises Elisapee that there will be whale meat tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow, thinks Tukulito;
utarannaakuluk
, I would promise you the same if I could!

A few last, anxious hiccups and the child is asleep. Tukulito stops rocking. For some minutes the lieutenant continues to wriggle and shift his feet under the furs.

Are you cold, Lieutenant?

Forgive me if I’ve kept you awake, he says.

Perhaps we have kept
you
awake, sir, and she turns toward him under the furs. His body goes rigid, breath held, as she reaches for him, finding his shins and then his socked feet and pulling them toward her.

Your feet are like ice, sir!

In a choked, husky voice he says, I … try to get them comfortable, but can’t seem to.

She is peeling off the wool socks, feeling the bare skin with her fingers. Soapstone.

These feet will have to be warmed Inuit fashion, sir.

She has instructed him on the importance of sleeping pressed up against others when on the ice, yet he resists. Father Hall was like that too, at the beginning, when first travelling with them on Baffin Island, eleven winters ago. She intertwines her feet with the lieutenant’s as she once did with Father Hall. The lieutenant draws closer, as he should. And this is best. If the ship were to rescue them tomorrow, she would be glad again for her cabin and would allow no other man but her husband next to her—and the transition between these sets of customs would be seamless, graceful, and automatic.

Do you feel any better, Lieutenant?

Oh, yes … thank you!

His breath is on her face—the bitter-sharp breath of fasting. Burnt sourdough and greening copper. Her husband’s breath is the same, and Punnie’s too. Her own too, presumably. Hunger strips people of their own unique smells, good or bad, and makes them all one stinking clan. She is about to turn away when Tyson drapes a heavy arm over her shoulder, grips her braid and firmly draws her into him, ready in the way of men. She retracts her body and in the same motion removes his hand from her shoulder—all without disentwining their feet.

After a silence he says, Forgive me, Hannah. I thought …

He lets the sentence dangle. She has to cough, as is usual in the night. Turning her head away she politely covers her lips.

Please feel at liberty to leave your feet as they are, sir, she says finally. I trust it will help you warm them. Good night again, sir.

In the cold little storehut Kruger, Meyer, Tyson, and Hans kneel reverently around the ration-scales: two pemmican tins yoked together by a fulcrum of gaff wood. Rifle and shotgun cartridges are the counterweights. The daily rations now stand at six ounces of biscuit, eight ounces of pemmican, and two of ham. Children get half that much. Tyson divides and dispenses the rations in a silence that might appear surly if he were not so obviously weak. Saving his jaws for the food. Hans Christian nods and trudges off, along with Gumbo, their last shrivelled dog, who trails him closely with a slinking, crabwise gait.

Kruger, carrying his own burden, about the size and weight of a baby but feeling heftier, walks back to the crewhut with Meyer tottering alongside, precariously tall, his long bony nose and spectacles downturned in thought. Last night over supper he informed the men that he is in fact a member of the Prussian aristocracy, no less than a count, with a family seat in Torgelow, as well as a former captain in the Prussian army (Kruger understood that he was a second lieutenant, who emigrated because there were no prospects for advancement). Count Meyer has decided to reclaim his noble lineage—which he was obliged to set aside, he says, when he came to America and joined the Army Signal Corps, as a sergeant—so that the men will have greater faith in his fitness to command.

Mostly the men seem inclined, or determined, to take him at his word. At first aboard the ship the German sailors spoke proudly of being immigrants to Amerika and already part of a U.S. expedition. Now, in extremity, they’re Germans betrayed and endangered by poor American leadership. In their own fear and hunger the Swede and Dane stand with them. Something is shifting. Even Herron and Jackson seem encouraged to have a man of natural authority here to guide and protect the group—and perhaps Jackson looks to Meyer for personal protection. He’s anxious about the men’s guns, which they now carry all the time. As a youth he survived the conscription riots in New York City, which produced the biggest and most lethal lynch mobs that the country would ever see, North or South. Jackson was raised in the South in a village of Free Blacks, near Asheville, his family fleeing north in 1860. As for Jackson’s own weapon, Anthing has claimed it:
It is wrong if a cook have a rifle and a sailor but a pistol
.

Meyer assures Jackson that he is better off unarmed.

Herron’s case is different. He has been allowed to keep his rifle. But he’s the kind who, with friendly nods, will accept a story like Meyer’s, not out of cowardice but out of kindness, a deep reluctance to deny or embarrass anyone. He’s the kind who will swallow a great deal to avert discord. Who may love harmony too much for his own good. Besides—as he confides to Kruger, his bedmate—to cross Meyer or the others now would be foolish, reckless. For now he may be right. Meanwhile Kruger hopes to use his position to exert some moderating influence.

He and Meyer approach the crewhut in the still, bitter air. Kruger switches arms, cradling the food higher so as to catch faint, perhaps imaginary, whiffs of the biscuit. He’s glad to perform this coveted task for Meyer. Everyone wants to see the rations allotted, to spend as much time as possible in the presence of Food.

Now Meyer pants in German: Last night I looked about me and reflected on what a rare opportunity our presence here affords!

The ice is lit dimly, gorgeously, by the aurora borealis, which Tukulito has told Kruger her people see as the spirits of those who have died by violence, with heavy loss of blood. Today the shivering involutions are coral, crimson, golden; is Meyer talking about the scenery?

Think of it! When ever have the descendants of so many different peoples been gathered in such a small space before? We have Esquimaux here, an African, an American, an Englishman, a Swede, a Dane, a Russian-German, and of course ourselves, Germans. What an opportunity for comparative observations, tests, measurements!

Meyer stops in his tracks, out of breath. The northern lights crawl slowly over his framed, upturned lenses. Odd to hear him speak of tests and measurements when he seems to have lost interest in his meteorological observations, rarely going outside with his sextant, or now and then just sending Herron and Kruger out with the thermometer and barometer. He does, however, spend more and more time jotting, rearranging, pondering the data.

… observations of the sort that Monsieur Gobineau was forced to travel far and wide to conduct! And of course he never did reach the Esquimaux … to say nothing of the Africans. …

I suspect you may find that folk starve in pretty much the same way, sir.

Ach, vielleicht nicht!
We may well discover that the natives are naturally
adapted
to starvations of this sort … and should therefore actually receive a lesser ration than we.

Kruger glances back at Tukulito’s snowhut: gently flushed from within by the lamp.

Their work is keeping us alive, sir.

I bear them no ill will, Herr Kruger. I am simply after the truths of Nature. In any case it can do no harm to view Great Hall Island as a kind of … floating laboratory. Important scientific work, even a book, might emerge from such research … one to supplement, or perhaps
improve
upon, Count Gobineau’s work.