Afterlands (8 page)

His eyes devour this last wafer of sun. Eastward above billows of tidewater fog the glacial tongues of Greenland are lit up vermilion like flumes of molten ore; to the west, the tors of Ellesmere Land in the glassy air seem touchably close; southward Baffin Bay under pack ice fans out like a pink desert studded here and there with bergs, like crags and mesas of salt rock—a vast coherent landscape drifting south. Then there’s northward. New weather on the way. The pack ice scraping around the floe gives a sort of constant whimpering, as of a pod of seals bobbing at the surface in pain or unease.

Meaning to deflect his hunger with a drink, he slogs over a hummock toward Lake Polaris. It’s barely a pond. The castaways, inspired by Herron, have been taking lyric liberties in naming the floe’s “landforms,” which amuses them but also gives comfort, making it easier to fool themselves and pretend that Great Hall Island
is
an island, and stable, out here where nothing is. Spike bounds ahead and stoops to lap water at the pond’s edge. Kruger stops short. In profile, kneeling straight-backed on the shore, working the ice with her knife, is Hannah—Tukulito. She gives no sign of knowing anyone is there. It’s disorienting to see her out here, in a long-tailed white-trimmed parka, like an Esquimau woman. On the
Polaris
they had grown used to her in the layered hoopskirts, poke-bonnet and fringed caribou cape she preferred, or seemed to, speaking with her mild English accent, each word placed as carefully as a foot along a seacliff path.

Good afternoon, Mr Kruger. She has not looked up; he must be reflected in the membrane of meltwater on the surface. A kind of spectre, with no belonging out here.

He removes his watch-cap and bows slightly.

Good day, madam. May I ask what you’re doing?

I am cutting new windows for our houses, sir. The others have melted somewhat. Please feel at liberty to smoke.

He realizes his pipe has gone out again. The men often jibe him for having it in his mouth and not noticing it is cold.

Thank you, but I haven’t much left. I fear soon I’ll be rationing this also.

She works in silence, not looking up. Her small brown hands are bare. He has never yet seen her use this knife of hers—a half-moon copper blade with a toggle-shaped handle—on anything but skin or sinew.

Is your husband off on a hunt, then?

He is, sir, yes—and then, as if reading his mind, she adds, And gone with his snow knife, sir, so I must use my own at this.

Her downturned cheek seems flushed, but then her cheeks are always ruddy, red on brown. That vital blush and the strength of life in her eyes cancel out her plainness. She moves with a simple grace of purpose; she’s one of those who perfectly fill whatever space they occupy. For some time after you speak with her, her features will return to your mind in clear flashes.

The sound of Spike’s lapping tongue fills the silence. Kruger nods northward at an encroaching rim of overcast.

I hope your husband means to return soon. It’s turning colder, I think.

I believe it is, sir.

Hannah, you and your husband … you have been lost before on the ice as we are?

Never like this, sir. This is no common occurrence, among Inuit.

Around his pipestem Kruger smiles. I see, yes. A matter of white stupidity.

She looks up and meets his eyes, a rare thing.

I say nothing, sir, of white stupidity.

No, I say this myself. Our leaders are all drunkards and at odds with each other, and we—

Father Hall was not like that, sir, no drunkard! And we must give the lieutenant some time.

Yes, says Kruger, time to run dry, then time to dry out.

I do not understand you.

One’s leaders are always drunk on something. Mostly themselves. In the meantime, we underlings hope for the best.

Mr Kruger—are you proposing that we …

Oh, I propose nothing, he says, regretting his irony. She’s not amused by his banter but instead seems perplexed, wary. So, he sees now, he did intend to charm her, does feel drawn to her. The Meyer Effect, perhaps. They might well be dead, after all, before the month is out.

Mr Kruger, I shall finish my work here, if I may. And breaking gaze she draws from the shallows a dripping, finger-thick oval of ice. Turning away she holds it up to her face like a mirror and peers through.

Oct. 27
. Weather cold, and growing colder for some days. Should judge the latitude to be about 77°30’. We have now lost sight of the sun’s full disk, though at noon he showed a quarter of his diameter above the horizon—

“Miserable we
,

Who here entangled in the gathering ice
,
Take our last look of the descending sun
,
While full of death, and fierce with tenfold frost
,
The long, long night, incumbent o’er our heads
,
Falls horrible!”

We are all very weak from having to live on such scant allowance, and the loss of the sun makes all more or less despondent. But still we do not give up. To-day with the “little donkey,” transformed into a sled, the crewmen have brought in a load of stuff—one of the
kyacks
, and some poles and canvas, thrown from the ship on that terrible night—but the ice is very rough, and the light so dim that they can fetch but little at a time. There seems now no chance of reaching the Greenland shore, we have drifted so far to the west. Yet we
must
try for land one more time.

The sled has been followed home by two additional dogs—“Bear” and “Chink;” these animals have been lost for three days, perhaps searching for fresh meat. May the great and good God have mercy on us, and send us seals, or I fear we must perish.

In early morning darkness the lieutenant leads the party west toward Ellesmere Land: a line of basalt crags and spurs rearing out of the coastal icefield like fangs embedded in bloodless gums. Grudgingly the men cooperate. They load one of the boats, and with the starved dogs helping to haul it, they cross a broad adjoining floe with surprising ease, so that suddenly, amazingly, the land seems within reach. It’s at this point the ice fractures almost beneath them and a well-timed gale funnels shrieking out of the northwest, a perfect ambush, forcing them to retreat in disorder to their camp.

Tukulito feels some relief at this. She knows that the coast of that land can offer them little comfort, being uninhabited and all but empty of game. God can only provide where there is something to provide. On the floe at least there are seals—and, beneath the floe, the spirit that governs them. This drifting ice rests on the meeting line of the white God and the darker, hidden gods of her people. In America, and aboard the ship that was really a northbound fragment of America, God was dominant and the old powers in abeyance; out here, the Woman under the Sea has equal power, perhaps more power. And, as if to further reclaim Tukulito from Hannah by sending a token of that power, the Big Woman dispatches a small seal for her husband to capture at its air hole some hours after their return to the floe.

To trust now in that spirit, Nuliajuk, is only sensible. Still, the ice can only be depended on to a certain point, and the current is bearing them ever farther from shore. Worse, they now have only one whaleboat to resort to when the ice does break up, for soon after their retreat to the encampment the men took hatchets and began to chop up the second boat—at first gingerly, as if in spite of themselves, then with a mounting, almost giddy excitement.

Downwind in the stinging snow Tukulito and Punnie watched with Merkut and her children as the beat of the hatchet blows accelerated and splinters and wood chips flew. Ebierbing and Hans were off on their hunt. In his little cotton jacket and cap Tyson lurched among the men, ordering them to stop. The faces—Tyson’s pale, the men’s blackened by their lamp and with darting bloodshot eyes—were contorted in their various intensities as if performing some grotesque, melodramatic minstrel show. Those soot-black faces amused her no longer. Over the storm Tyson was roaring
Listen to me, all of you—you are leaving us with only half a hope!
Anthing, his pistol in a belt cinched tight around his parka, yelled back that Tyson was a damn drunken fool, he must let the men alone. Tyson turned paler, stiffening into a statue of helpless rage. The men now hacked with a will, in the grip of some collective madness, and apparent elation; she had noticed before how white men could derive a curious pleasure from harming their prospects. Yet these men had seemed dependable—mostly. Lindermann, a mild giant, his long bangs almost hiding his surprised blue eyes; Lundquist, mutely respectful, a boy, his lumberjack jaw almost hairless; Soren Madsen, frail but methodical. Even Mr Kruger, Herron, and Jackson were in the thick of it—although for a moment Kruger lowered his hatchet and with a dazed, half-absent look, raising his voice over the wind, told Tyson that since they had abandoned this boat anyway in their push for shore, clearly it had been thought unnecessary and was therefore as good as gone. Why should the men not enjoy a little warmth from it, their lamp being useless?

Now Meyer, who on the party’s return had crawled weakly into the officers’ hut, emerged in his hooded parka and spectacles and pitched into the argument, on the men’s side. Three times in the slashing snow Meyer and Anthing turned away from Tyson to confer in German, the words too faint for Tukulito to hear, although she was trying; a gifted linguist exposed to a tongue daily for over a year will naturally acquire some.

Mostly the way of her people is to allow adults to disagree as equals, then act as they see fit—as the men were doing themselves—yet she was deeply troubled by this scene, not only because of the loss of the whaleboat but also because the crewmen were white (Jackson too she considers white) and the custom of white men is to obey their superiors. If these men were already acting in such an erratic manner, who could say what other laws and customs they might be willing to violate, given time? An answer was not long in coming—as if the men, having supplied themselves with fuel, now felt that it should be set to use for more than just heat. As if all prohibitions had collapsed at once. While Tyson, helpless and trembling, stamped off to the officers’ hut, and Meyer looked on, a line of men began crawling in and out of the storehut like beetles, taking provisions back into their hut along with the freshly cut wood. Lindermann stood outside the storehut holding his rifle with both hands at an angle across his chest. A mutiny, then. Tukulito sent Punnie back with Merkut and her children but remained to watch as Kruger, now putting himself in the way, sealskin boots planted, argued with the men in harsh German. Herron and Jackson, who spoke no German, stood looking confused, noncommittal. Anthing thrust a long shard of ship’s biscuit—half weapon, half temptation—right under Kruger’s nose and said something. Tukulito edged closer. She seemed invisible to these men, or irrelevant. Finally Kruger shoved the biscuit away and trudged stiffly back to the crewhut, tearing off his cap as he went.

In disgust she bent and began salvaging wood chips from the deepening snow.

For hours afterward the men could be heard feasting. Eventually some of them became ill, vomiting and coughing outside in the storm. A keen ear can identify the tone of a cough; one of the sick feasters was Kruger. And why should she have expected any better, after all? Travelling far from home without women and children, as white men do, has always struck her people as odd; yet now, as Punnie by the lamp feeds a supper of imaginary sealmeat to Elisapee, one could certainly wish to God that one’s only child were somewhere other than here.

Oct. 29. Night
. This is very bad business, but I cannot stop them, situated as I am, without any other authority than such as they choose to concede to me. Armed as they are, it will not do to thwart them too much, even for their own benefit.

Mr Meyer to-night joined the men in their hut, for their banquet. This too is a bad business, for we appear to be drifting into a future where all and any barriers of rank will be broken down; and where there is no authority, there can be no order; where there is no order, no survival. On Mr Meyer’s return, when I asked him why he did not help me to enforce order, he replied haughtily, “That he had signed on with Captain Hall as a meteorologist, and it was not his look-out to help me to control the men,” adding that in his view I was “not fitted to command them anyway”—which, given his imperfect English, could be a reference to my inadequate clothing, which does indeed weaken my position, or, more likely, another reminder that he alone of the men on this floe—and in this officers’ hut—has the benefit of “higher education.” But it is an education which, I observe, has not provided him with the moral scruples to resist the pilferers’ feast from which he has just returned. His belly full, he sits combing his blond hair and moustaches—in want of nothing so much as a mirror—and not deigning to answer further.

May the one Authority, that none can challenge, continue to watch over and help us all!

Oct. 31
. Cold and blowing. Since the men’s feast, there has been no more
open
pilfering—indeed, several of the men have looked rueful and sorry—but a worse symptom has appeared: some one, or some group, has secretly made free with the store-hut. We have only had chocolate prepared for the party four times, and it is
nearly all gone!
It is far too cold to set a watch; but it is plain enough to be seen that things have been meddled with. May God keep the watch for us, or we may soon have nothing left.