Afterlands (7 page)

Kruger has read somewhere that “character is fate” but to him, now, fate is simply People in Power—Budington, who seems to have deserted them, and Tyson, who has tried to make them quit the floe’s relative safety for what seemed, to Kruger and the other men, certain death in an open boat stripped of supplies. What chance would they have stood in a gale, or if the milling ice had crumpled the boat? Well, brave men love to roll the dice.

But at least when fate takes human form, it’s resistible.

On their sixth morning adrift, a piece of good luck from bad. Kruger, Herron, Jackson, and Jamka, reasoning that several hunters will be more effective than one, discreetly follow Ebierbing to the banks of the small floe in a glacial twilight. Knowing stealth to be vital they conceal themselves in back of a small hummock thirty paces behind Ebierbing, who is prone on the floe-edge beside his kayak. Jamka’s presence makes Kruger uneasy. His service in Bismarck’s recent war with the French has left him damaged. Kruger is baffled as to how he got past the immigration agents in Battery Park, then hired on for this expedition. He is shaggy and gaunt, as if cast away for years already. Sometimes he looks cross-eyed and his gapped teeth are stumpy and brown. He fidgets, startles at the slightest noise.

Ebierbing lifts onto his elbows and aims his rifle at a vague form on an ice pan some way off in the dimness. The crewmen also take aim and slowly, in near silence, thumb back their hammers. Let Joe shoot first, Kruger whispers, nodding toward Ebierbing while trying to catch Herron’s eye—because Kruger is wary of him, too, his exuberance. There is no endearing trait in anyone that’s not also a liability sometimes. Ebierbing holds his aim, motionless for minutes, in wait, it seems, for the ice pan to drift nearer, as it appears to be doing, if slowly. Breezes riffle the wolf-fur fringing of his hood. Kruger’s forefinger starts to prickle with the cold. There’s a sharp report and the four deputy hunters open fire and continue shooting as quickly as their fingers can lever and jam the trapdoor-breeches with rounds. The ice pan disintegrates in a fountain of snow and its passenger lurches or falls off with a splash, merging into the black sea.
Habn wir’s erwischt?
asks Jamka—but Ebierbing is not leaping into his kayak to retrieve any seal. In fact, he is staring over his shoulder at the men. His brown face, fringed with the hood’s grey-white fur, shows surprise veering toward exasperation, even disgust—a frankness of anger completely untypical of him.

Have we a seal to our breakfast then? asks Herron as he rushes toward Ebierbing, who without a word gets up nimbly and seems stanced to dodge out of the way should Herron try to embrace him—Herron’s custom with everyone—thus possibly propelling both men into the sea. Now Jamka with his strong accent bellows, WE HAVE WAITED UNTIL YOU HAVE FIRST FIRED!—and though Ebierbing usually just shrugs and grins whenever Jamka tries to address him, he now says curtly, I never fire my Spencer. You hear the ice break. I wait for this seal be much more closer—seal gives a hunter just one shot!

In silence Kruger and the others study their sealskin boots. After some seconds Ebierbing seems to chuckle and Kruger looks up: the man is shaking his head, laughing broadly, stub teeth under his long Mongol moustaches. Kruger offers gruff apologies while Herron, as if wishing to make reparations, starts gesturing upwind. Look! I believe it’s a walrus, something big! All turn: another dark shape on the edge of what seems a much larger piece of ice, looming. Herron and Jamka seem keen to start blasting away at it. Ebierbing raises his hand. After a few seconds of level study he says calmly, By golly, boys, it’s the boat.

The rest of the party soon gathers with them while the larger floe, with the lost boat aboard, glides toward them, as if conjured and hauled in by their collective will. Herron and a few of the men cheer—a small, hollow sound in the face of the floe’s vast and silent approach. Hurrah. They cheer on, Kruger now, too, as if this were the ship returning, the
Polaris
whose mainsail they still spy in every passing berg. But there is no one to cheer back.

Thank God, says Tyson, his face taut with emotion.

That evening in the big communal snowhut Tyson stands as straight as he can under the dome and says that tomorrow they will re-establish themselves on the large floe. With the five hundred pounds of biscuit recovered with the boat, he says, they now have about 2,400 pounds of provisions, but, considerable as that may sound, they will have to commence rationing tomorrow. Meyer, Kruger and the others grudgingly consent to the necessity, but Anthing, Jamka, and Lindermann grumble. (The Esquimaux remain silent—unconsulted, and, it seems, unconcerned.) Anthing: Surely the
Polaris
must soon come for us, or we will arrive at the shore? Tyson stares at him without a word and Anthing can find no more words of his own, at least in English, although he does mutter something in German to Jamka, his bulbous eyes scanning the other men’s faces. Kruger can’t make out the words. An uneasy silence follows.

Still, for the first time since the stranding there is some cheer in their camp. They eat a last, large meal of pemmican stewed with biscuit, then canned apples, then coffee and chocolate, all prepared in cleaned pemmican tins by Tukulito and Jackson. After dinner the men play euchre while Ebierbing tells the children a story in their language, deftly animating it with hand-shadows on the snowhut dome. At one point Kruger makes out a dancing fox, then a large bear rearing over the card players’ bowed heads. Tyson and Meyer are scratching and correcting a rough map on the wall, discussing their position. Herron suggests that as Greenland is receding from view, they must be drifting toward the west-shore, and God willing tomorrow or the day after they might find themselves aground on the coast. It’s muskox loin to our dinners then, lads, he says.
I
hear as they’ll just stand in a circle and let you walk up and shoot ’em.

Jackson says, I don’t reckon we’ll hit one any other damned way.

When Kruger goes out to the floe-edge before sleep, a half moon is peering through long louvres of cloud over the snowy summits and blue glaciers of Greenland. There’s Tyson, standing at the earthquake-seam between the small and large floes, apparently checking one of the ice anchors they’ve dug in to hold them fixed. A glint of moonlight on tin as he cants back his head to drink from his flask.

Kruger starts pissing as noisily as possible, aiming at a swath of hard ice. Tyson spins around, slipping the flask back into his jacket.

Mr Kruger! I did not hear you come out.

That preservative is not known to sharpen the senses, sir.

After a beat or two: I
beg
your pardon?

Your plan for rationing is a good one, sir, but you may not always make such good plans after consulting with your bottle.

Folding his arms across his chest, Tyson lowers his brow like a bull. The visor of the Russian cap hides his eyes. His hands are bare. Mr Kruger—you were second mate aboard the
Polaris
. Out here you’re simply a castaway. Don’t forget yourself.

It appears to me, sir, that you also are a castaway here.

Kruger shakes and tucks his frosted member back into the fur trousers.

If you will forgive my frankness, sir.

Go back into the snowhut, Tyson says, and Kruger nods once and turns away.

Oct. 22
. We have now given up all hopes of the
Polaris
coming to look for us, and this piece of ice will never do to winter on. So today I got the boats loaded, harnessed on the dogs, and so sledged all of our supplies across onto the big floe. It is fortunate, indeed, that we have these boats. Humanly speaking, they are our salvation, for in an emergency we can use them either for the water or as sledges.

Have had another talk with Mr Meyer about the locality of our separation from the
Polaris
. He thinks we were close to Northumberland Island, but I believe it was Littleton Island; he says “he ought to know,” for he took observations only a day before, and of course he
ought
to be right; but still my impression is that Northumberland Island is larger than the one the
Polaris
steamed behind. I wish I had a chart, or some means of knowing for certain. Meyer has now taken to reminding me that he is a “trained meteorologist,” by which he means “educated man”—and educated “in Europe,” too! Apparently books and diplomas count with him for more than experience. He has little of
that
. What with his blond, retreating hair grown somewhat long in the back, his full moustaches, and his hawk nose, he looks somewhat as the famed Colonel Custer might if that gentleman wore spectacles.

The weather has come on very bad; but, fortunately, we have got our new snow-houses built. We have quite an encampment—one “officers’ hut,” or rather a sort of half-hut, for Mr Meyer and myself; Esquimau Joe’s hut for himself, Hannah, and Punnie; a hut for the crewmen; a store-hut for our provisions; and a cook-house, all united by arched alley-ways built of snow. There is one main entrance, and smaller ones branching off to the several apartments, or huts. Hans has built his family hut separately, but nearby.

Joe did most of the work building these huts, or
igloos
—he knew best how to do it—but we all assisted. We have to do things fast, because there is not much light to work by; only about six hours a day, and not very clear then. On cloudy or stormy days it is dark all the time. Tomorrow, according to Mr Meyer, we shall see the last of the full sun until well into the New Year.

We only allow ourselves two meals a day now, and Mr Meyer has made a pair of scales, with which to weigh out each one’s portion, so that there should be no jealousy. We use shot for weights. Our allowance is very small—just enough to keep body and soul together; but we
must
economize, or our little stock will soon give out altogether. Our present daily allowance is eleven ounces for each adult, and half-rations for the children. Already the men visibly suffer, and I am so weak that I sometimes stumble from sheer want of strength.

Hans has just taken two of the dogs, killed and skinned them, and will eat them and feed them to his family, for they ate their full allowance at breakfast and have nothing tonight. I give each of the natives the same amount of biscuit, and whatever else we have, as I deal out to myself; but the Esquimaux are, like all semi-civilized people, naturally improvident; while they have, they will eat, and let tomorrow take care of itself. I do not suppose an Esquimau ever left off eating voluntarily before his hunger was fully satisfied, though he knew that the next day, or for many days, he would have nothing. Sailors have some kind of idea that a ship’s company must, under some circumstances, be put on “short allowance;” but that is an idea you can never beat into the head of a native, and yet of all people they are the most subject to fluctuations of luck—at times having abundance, and then reduced to famine. But there is no thrift in them. Still, they do seem free of the selfishness that commonly goes along with thrift, and they will share all they have with a stranger; and, also true, they will sometimes store away provisions, and build
caches
on their travelling routes, but this is always when they have more than they can possibly consume—as when they have been lucky enough to kill a whale or walrus, and by no means can eat it all. Only Hannah, I imagine, is more like a white person in this regard.

Then a short day of oasis. The sun rises, late, in the southeast and skims low and remote over the horizon like a hot-air balloon unable to lift free of the lower atmosphere’s gravity. Yet today its depleted rays can be
felt
. A mild breeze blowing from the southwest since dawn has swept the giant skies clear and is melting a little fresh water in the ponds so that rills begin to purl again in their summer channels, down from the modest heights of the floe’s interior and between hummocks and ridges to tumble over the wave-smoothed ledges of the “shore.”

Frederick Meyer, hatless, hair flying back, bustles about the floe with his crane-fly strides, taking measurements, scratching data, with the air of an aristocrat-scholar. The walrus moustache that frames his weak chin also hides his mouth, but through bottle spectacles his eyes shine in a fever of excitement. Four degrees centigrade and rising! Extrapolating from the known tendency of the human organism to manifest a last surge of energy in the moments before death, he wonders to Kruger if perhaps he has discovered a new polar phenomenon: the sun in its annual death throes issuing a last, defiant blaze of warmth.

The Meyer Effect.

Men are collecting fresh water in whatever will hold it and drinking their fill, rinsing faces darkened by the fat-lamp they still haven’t mastered, and which often flushes them out of their hut, swearing in their tongues, pursued by coils of greasy smoke, to the huge amusement of the Esquimaux. Soren Madsen, a slender and nervous Dane, hands on hips, scrupulously toes snow over the bloody patch by Hans’s snowhut, which the remaining dogs now avoid. These dogs are frisking on a hillock closer to the floe-edge, their barking, along with the shouts of the children and the piping of dovekies (whirring little airborne propellers), crowding the air with sound. Around the edge of the camp goes a game of Dogs-and-Bear, the children (Dogs) pursuing Kruger (the Bear) and pelting him with snowballs. The oldest child, Augustina, broad and chubby, the size of an adult, hurls devastating sidearm shots. Her mother Merkut sits mending in a southward angle of the snow walls with Charlie Polaris drooling in her hood.

Weak from the rationing, Kruger retreats before a unified assault and slips away. Punnie waves her tight little wave goodbye. Her solemn, stern-lipped face. Kruger waves back with a grin. He relights his pipe, gulps the dizzying fumes like food. A white-masked husky trots after him and they walk “inland” through a miniature mountain chain of upthrust ice. On top of Mt Hall he turns full around, in part to absorb the panorama in this constant sunset, but mainly in hope of spying a sail. People may say they’ve given up hope of something—at times that seems rational enough—but the heart and guts keep their own stubborn vigil. To say I give up hope is really to plead with life and luck to prove you wrong.