Afterlands (28 page)

Near dawn, the churning seas visible, icebergs riding the storm like agate galleons, Tukulito forces Punnie down out of her parka, under the thwarts with the other children. She and Merkut clamber over the side to help the exhausted men. And for the rest of the battle she is there in front of him, between him and Herron, the jaunty point of her hood, still stained with Jamka’s blood, giving an impression of strength and surety. In the crush of the bigger waves they’re often shoved together, front to back, the way her people are said to prefer fucking, and he believes, will believe for the rest of his life, that the warmth and solidity she exudes through her layers, and her animal smells, blood and smoke, fishy seal oil and sweat, are what keep him going and alive.

Tyson looks gaunt and grey but unyielding, pure will.
Bear down, men. We can beat this one too
. In any life a moment must come when one gets nearest to satisfying an ideal image of oneself—reaching that state we might always maintain if we were more, or less, than human. A lucky few might even excel their ideals. This must be Tyson’s moment now. To Kruger, whose dis taste for the colonels of the world is in necessary abeyance, he now merits total loyalty.

In the grey-green morning light he orders them to launch for a much larger floe, adrift downwind. He rearranges them round the boat, himself at the stern by the tiller, Kruger and Ebierbing at the bow. With a game cry they shove off the floe-edge and haul themselves and each other in over the side as the bow bucks over a lesser wave, spray like birdshot stinging Kruger’s eyes. Oars! shouts Tyson, now! Behind Kruger an urgent grunting. Anthing and Jackson are trying to grapple in over the same part of the gunwale. Anthing has one leg inside the boat, Jackson now clinging like a giant barnacle, his knees curled under the gunwale, trying to keep his feet clear of the sea. Don’t! he cries. Half-blind with the salt Kruger can’t see what is happening. The boat heels to starboard, dunking Jackson, and as it rolls back up he loses hold. Anthing swings his other leg into the boat before the falling man can grab it. Jackson disappears, then finally bobs up thrashing and reaching amid the ice-wrack, already a rope’s throw away and drifting south. He will surely go down before they can row to him. But then he drags himself onto what looks like a small slab of blackened ice studded with weirdly upright shafts. Table legs. Captain Hall’s writing desk will not let itself be discarded, it seems. Jackson waves and yells something inaudible. A sheen of triumph on Tyson’s face as he orders them to row toward the overboard man, and the desk.

On their latest floe they’re resorting to a snack of dried sealskin that has been saved for patching clothes, when Ebierbing, atop a hummock a snowball’s throw away, ducks and slides down the scarp on his rump and dashes toward them. Everyone but Meyer gets up. A steamer! cries Herron. Joe, t-t-tell us, it’s a steamer? Ebierbing says that a bear is on the way. You boys, he says—you all look like seals now. Lindermann and Madsen glance at each other in quick inspection. Meyer gurgles with amusement. With a rare note of impatience Tukulito says, He means you must all lay yourselves down, scattered about, and remain still, as seals do.

The crewmen hesitate, exchanging looks.

Do it, says Tyson.

So, so one of us is to be the bait then?

Hans lovingly thumbs a cartridge into his rusted rifle.
Tuavilauritti!
he says.

Please do hurry, Mr Herron, the men will slay the bear. And she lies down where she is and pulls Punnie down beside her. As the child again tunnels up into her parka, Tukulito bares her right hand and rests it on the gun butt protruding from her boot. Merkut and the children make a group with them. Kruger lies so as to come between the bear and the women and children. Meyer sets a fine example by simply maintaining the seal-like posture he assumed on arrival at this floe.

The crewmen arrange themselves around Meyer like a basking herd; there’s some difficulty as they compete for inner positions.

Stop that, all of you, lie still where you are! Tyson says. Not another sound!

A tarnished sun glows dully through the haze. Hans and Ebierbing are flat on the hummock, their hoods off and back so that the points don’t break the skyline. The bear is visible, ambling over a neighbouring floe with its pigeon-toed gait, nose low and engaged. The yellowed fur stands against the white of the old ice and the cloudy absinthe of a looming berg. Jamka whimpers, holds his breath. Merkut’s soiled hand is clapped over Succi’s mouth. The bear, snout angled up, silently swims a lead, eases onto the floe without stirring it, and then bounds directly toward them. The rifles fire together and the bear plunks its nose straight into the ice and its body follows, caving. The floe flinches with the weight of its fall. Everyone leaps up, shouting. A little mob of skeletons races toward the bear, Jackson and Jamka and Anthing sobbing with joy as Merkut looses her terrible tremolo keening,
Aliannai, aliannai!
, Herron in tears now lurching ahead of her and Kruger, who sees the others’ tears before he feels his own salting his inflamed cheeks.

Herron kneels to kiss the salt-and-pepper bridge of the huge muzzle, the little toy ears. The hunters look baffled but seem prepared to see this as some sort of tribute. Jamka crowds into the emaciated flank and sucks at the mouth of the larger wound. A shudder runs through the body lying among its splayed limbs. As Jamka and Herron and the others recoil, the black eyes open and then glass over, a rattle flows from its throat like the ghost of a growl, and its breath-smell—that human hunger smell, precisely the same!—fills the windless air.

For several days they remain on the floe as it erodes. The rain quickens the wasting and soon dissolves the meagre shelters and wind-breaks that Ebierbing and the men scrape together from what little snow remains. They’re all soaked to the skin and the rain keeps lashing at them out of the northeast. Now and then, for variety, they have a snow squall—so Tyson quips grimly. Everything is softening to grey, oozing slowly back down into the sea. Only the raw bear-meat, gnawed on constantly, keeps any heat in them.

They launch in the battered boat and try to follow a narrow lead toward shore, but the wind shifts against them and the lead closes. Of
course
, Tyson’s tight, oddly satisfied smile seems to say. His face now like a fist shaken at the sky—though not without a certain zest. They haul up on another, smaller floe already on its way to pash. But a steep hummock survives on it, maybe thirty feet tall, a vantage point from which to search for more openings, bears, the land, or steamers.

Kruger is on watch at dawn with Hans’s rifle slung across his back. For miles eastward the cloudline and the broken ice are veined and softened by a diffused fuchsia glow. No sound but the steady, sly crackling of tons of melting ice. Below, the others are huddled in the boat like street arabs in a Brooklyn areaway. The desk, offloaded to make room, stands beside the stern as if waiting for somebody to wake and pen a version of these unfinished events.

He hears the raven from a long way off.

Oh good, you’ve come back to us.

A heavy cold has taken most of his voice. The raven passes close overhead, frankly perusing him and the boatful of dying sleepers. The slow whooshing pulse of its wings. It wheels and flaps off, finally alighting on the pinnacle of a small iceberg about a rifle shot away.

Kruger climbs a few feet down the back of the hummock, out of sight of the boat; Tukulito might wake, or one of the children. It takes some time to get the piss trickling out of him, weak and orange, as if tainted with blood. He turns his head at a crunching sound. Anthing stands above him, skylined on top of the hummock, his curly head haloed with rosy light and his panting breaths.

Ah. Krüger. I assumed you’d deserted your post.

Guten Morgen
, Kruger whispers hoarsely.

It has gotten painful, hasn’t it?

To talk?

I noticed yesterday that you’d lost your voice, Anthing says. But, no, I meant painful to piss.

Anthing whisks the
ulu
from his outer pocket and descends on Kruger, who is too busy working himself back into his trousers to unsling the rifle. Before he can finish he has to retreat down the steep flank of the hummock, but his feet are swollen numb, he stumbles backward, falls, sledding headfirst on his spine, the rifle trapped under him. The leather strap that Hans’s family have been gnawing on for weeks splits and the rifle is gone. Anthing picks his way down, stooping to collect the rifle as he comes. Kruger has rolled onto the flat ice at the bottom, not twenty steps from the floe-edge. Winded, he stands, fumbling with the front of his trousers while Anthing chuckles above him. The hummock like a wall between them and the others in the boat.

How did you get her knife? Kruger rasps. If you’ve harmed her …

Can’t hear a word. Why not wait till I get a little closer?

Kruger, backing, repeats himself as best he can.

Ah. Don’t worry, not about that. She didn’t wake. You’ve worn her out, I think. She even looks pregnant, with the child inside her coat.

If you mean to skin me, Matthias, I’m afraid you’ll find little fat for the lamp.

No sign Anthing has heard him. Almost spry, he trots the last steps down onto the flat ice. In his frost-burned face the eyes look eerily fresh and alert. Kruger has run out of backing room. Anthing weighs the rifle in his bare hand like a harpoon, then arcs it over the floe-edge. The slush-clogged sea ingests it without a sound.

In fact, Anthing says, you must have more fat and meat on you than any of us.

I hope you mean to share me with the others, then.

Anthing’s gapped grin stays in place, but his eyelids grow heavier. And give your heart to that nigger squaw? You’ll be going into the sea, like an animal. You’re not one of us. I believe it was really you, the thief. Not Hans Christian.

What does it matter now, the supplies were …

Speak up!

All the supplies were returned!

But why ever should you go unpunished? You are a looter. A traitor.

Lieutenant! Kruger tries calling, but he only gets off a throttled squawk.

You never cared to be one of us, Roland. Like a, like a scholar of some kind. Or a Gypsy. Or a Jew! Why, you even have the colouring of a Jew.

If men like you despise Jews, then I’ll be a Jew.

With sudden petulance Anthing tilts an ear toward Kruger.
Was hast du gesagt?

Think of me as a Jew.

You believe the future is for men like yourself, but it belongs to men like me!

Those are Meyer’s words, Matthias, and Meyer is mad.

No! The Graf Meyer is correct!

I never said he wasn’t correct.

What? Anthing steps closer, the
ulu
trembling by his blood-matted beard. Kruger’s impulse—the only form of retreat left—is to kneel, shrivel down into the ice. But that would look too much like begging.
I was perfectly alone. I’d become meat—nothing more than meat
.

Anthing says, You probably don’t even
miss
the Fatherland.

This has nothing to do with Jews! Kruger exclaims in small, rodent tones, or the Fatherland, or with pilfering! You just crouch in ambush behind the principles. You only want power.

Anthing swipes the
ulu
at Kruger’s throat, Kruger ducks, and now he is on his knees.

And in my heart I’d remain a German even if men like you destroyed Germany. But my mind is another matter. My mind is a free man.

He has to break off, bottling up a sneeze. The raven with its active instincts appears over the hummock where it hovers attentively, then lands. And Kruger begins to sneeze, severely, helpless to stop. This is Anthing’s moment—yet he doesn’t act. Kruger peers up at last. Anthing’s eyes, empty as bubbles, growing larger, seem liable to pop with enough force to tip Kruger over on their own. His words are slow, subdued, remote. I always had nothing, Roland. … Go on, your country is that way … nowhere.

It seems he wants to avoid soiling the
ulu
, or getting fresh blood on his boots and parka. Of course, blood would be evidence. They stay in this position for some while—Anthing unable to finish the job, Kruger refusing to jump. Anthing studies his odd weapon, then breathes on his shivering hands. Neither man speaks, as if they’re seized with a sudden shyness, or embarrassment. And in this truce of hesitation Tukulito appears. Rounding the hummock she pads toward them with her small rapid steps, feet placed one in front of the other, quiet and deliberate. She holds the cocked revolver straight in front of her like a duellist. Her parka is filthy and blotched. Her eyes are puffy. Her large plate-like face, creased with sleep, is gaunt, pale, hard, implacable. The most beautiful thing Kruger has ever seen.

April 28. 4:30
P.M
.
A joyful sight—a
steamer
right ahead of our boat and bearing north of us! We hoisted our colors and pulled toward her. She is a sealer, going south-west, and apparently working through the ice. For a few moments what joy thrilled our breasts—the sight of relief so near! But we have lost it! She did not see us, and we could not get to her; evening came down, and she was lost to sight.

We boarded, instead of the hoped-for steamer, a small piece of ice, and once more hauled up our boat and made camp. A new moon, and the stars shining brightly. The sea is quiet, and we can rest peaceful; for, although one steamer has passed us, we feel that we may soon see another—that help can not be far off. We take all the blubber of yesterday’s seal, and build a fire on the floe, so that if a steamer or any vessel approaches in the night, she will see us.

We are divided into two watches, of four hours each, except for Meyer, who is too ill; Jamka, whose feet are too swollen to stand on; and Anthing, who has sustained a head blow, apparently in a fall. We had a good pull this afternoon, and made some westing. The hope of relief keeps us even more wakeful than does the fear of danger. To see the prospect of rescue so near, though it was quickly withdrawn, has set every nerve thrilling with hope.