Alaska (32 page)

A very old woman, one who had soared to the sky when young, was similarly honored, but the lift was too modest for her tastes. 'Higher!' she shouted, and Sopilak warned her: 'You asked us to,' and his men applied just enough pressure to send the old one well into the air, where miraculously she controlled her feet so that she landed upright. The sailors cheered.

And now it was the villagers who did so, because gravely Sopilak stepped before his wife and invited her to leap upon the blanket, which she did without assistance.

For some years, when she was sixteen to nineteen, Nikaluk had been champion of the village, flying with a grace and to a height which no other girl could match, for it was not the men alone who determined how high a girl on the blanket would rise; the use of her half-bent knees and the thrust of her legs helped too, and Nikaluk was bolder than most, as if she hungered for the higher air.

The rhythm started. The blanket pulsed. The excitement intensified as Nikaluk prepared for her first leap, and the sailors leaned forward, for they had been told by Atkins: 'The

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champion. None higher.' However, both Nikaluk and the men working the blanket knew that on her first three or four tries she was not going to rise very high, because both she and they had to test strengths and calculate just when to snap the blanket with maximum power, timing it with the bending of her knees.

So the first four tosses were experimental, but even so the rare grace of this lithe young woman was apparent, and the sailors stopped talking to watch the elegant manner in which she handled arms, legs, torso and head during her ascension, and upon no observer did her lovely motion have a greater effect than upon Captain Pym, who stared at her floating in air as if he had never before seen her.

Then, with no warning, she shot skyward at a speed and to a height which left him astounded: 'Oh! Goodness!' More than twenty feet above his head she hung motionless, every part of her body in delicate alignment, as if she were a renowned dancer in a Paris ballet, a creature of extreme beauty and grace. And now slowly, then gathering speed, she started downward in a posture that looked as if she would have to land awkwardly, but at the last moment she established control and landed on her feet in the middle of the blanket, smiling to no one and preparing herself and her knees for the next flight, which she knew would carry her even higher.

Coordinating with unspoken signals from her husband, she flexed her knees, took a deep breath, and soared into the air like a bird seeking new altitudes, and as she sped aloft, Captain Pym noticed a strange aspect of her flight: Those big fur boots she wears, her heavy clothing, they seem to make her more graceful, not less, and her control doubly impressive. She was a wonderful flying young woman, and there were not on the entire earth at that moment more than a dozen women, regardless of race, who could have equaled her performance and none who could excel. High in the air, with the sun about to bid her farewell, she hung at the apex of her art and she knew it.

On the last upward thrust of the blanket, she went higher than ever before in her life, and this was not because her husband pulled the blanket especially strongly but rather because she synchronized her whole body in one supreme effort, and she did this solely because she wanted to enchant Captain Pym, whom she knew to be staring at her, mouth agape. She succeeded in making a lovely arc through the sky against the quickly settling sun, and as she returned to earth like a tired bird, she smiled for the first time that morning and looked boldly at her captain in a gesture of triumph. She had been aloft where no woman of that village had ever been 201

before; she had been one with the newly born sun and the great ice field whose days were limited, now that her earth was moving into warmth. And when she was lifted from the blanket she experienced such a surge of victory that she went not to her husband but to Noah Pym, taking him by the hand and leading him away.

THE CELEBRATION OF THE SUN LASTED TWENTY-FOUR

hours, and three events in the course of that celebration became part of the tradition of the village of Desolation Point, some treasured, some better forgotten. The young woman Nikaluk went with the Boston captain Noah Pym to a hut where they made love throughout the night. The rough sailor Harry Tompkin from a seafront village near Boston crept down into the bowels of the Evening Star

to tap a keg of Jamaica rum which had been stowed aboard for medicinal and other emergencies. With the dark, delicious fluid he and two of his mates got drunk, but what was more significant in the history of Alaska, in their generosity and general mood of celebration, they shared their alcohol with Sopilak, who was staggered physically and emotionally by its stupendous effect. And when the sun came up for a second dawning, certifying that its return was legitimate, the old women of Desolation gave Captain Pym a present which in time would strangle him in a remorse that would never dissipate.

The lovemaking was a beautiful experience, a splendid Eskimo woman, pride of her village, striving to understand what the coming of this ship to her shore signified, sought to hold on to such meaning as she could discern. She knew that Noah Pym was the finest man she would encounter in< this brief life, and since she had for three months longed to be with him, she had deemed it proper to make her desires known at the celebration of the sun when she performed her ultimate act of reverence, the faultless leap to heights never attained before.

Her boldness in leading him to the twilight hut was not surprising in this Eskimo village, for although the older women disciplined the younger, forcing them to marry in an orderly way so that their babies could be protected and reared in security, no one assumed that marriage ended the desires of people, and it was not unusual for a young wife or husband to behave as Nikaluk had done; no stigma attached to it and life went on after such an affair pretty much as it did before, with no one the worse because of it.

But since sailors like those from the Evening Star went home from Eskimo land averring that 'this here husband

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offered our captain his wife, as hospitality, you might say,' the legend grew that the proffering of a wife to a traveler was Eskimo custom. It was not. About the same amount of affection between traveler and local wife developed at Desolation Point as in a rural community outside Madrid or one close to Paris, or London, or New York.

Nikaluk the Eskimo sky-dancer from Desolation had sisters all over the world, and many of the good things that happened in the world did so because of the desire of these strong-minded women to know of the world before the world left them or they it.

But Sopilak's disastrous introduction to rum was not a universal experience. White men had distilled this drink, so exhilarating, so liberating, for many decades and they had introduced it to people all over the world, and Spaniards or Italians or Germans or American colonists could imbibe it moderately, celebrate immoderately, and be little affected next morning. But others, the men of Ireland and Russia, for example, or the Indians of Illinois, or the Tahitians whom Captain Cook respected so highly when they were not drunk, and especially the Eskimos, Aleuts and Athapascans of Alaska, could not accept alcohol one day and leave it the next. And when they drank, it did terrible things to them. On the morning that Sopilak, the great hunter, accepted the liquor from the unwitting Harry Tompkin, the long decline of Desolation Point began.

When Sopilak swished that first taste of rum about his mouth he considered it too biting and too strong, but after he swallowed it and felt its effect all the way down to the depths of his stomach, he wanted another sample, and with its warmth began that indescribable swirl of dreams and visions and illusions of endless power.

It was a magical drink, that he realized in those earliest moments, and he craved more and then more. As spring returned he became the prototype of those myriad Alaskans who in later days became addicted to alcohol, prowling the beaches and waiting for the arrival of the next whaler out of Boston. They had learned that such ships brought rum, and no finer gift in the world existed than that.

It was a filthy business the good Christians of Boston were engaged in, Captain Pym's brother and uncle among them: fabrics to hungry buyers in the West Indies, slaves to Virginia, rum out to the natives of Hawaii and Alaska, and whale oil back to Boston.

Unquestionably wealth was created, but the slaves, the whales and the Eskimos of Desolation Point were destroyed.

The present that the old women of the village gave Captain Pym was delivered on the second morning after he had with 203

a remorse never experienced before left the hut of love and taken Nikaluk to her own, where he found her husband lying in a drunken stupor on the ground. In that awful moment he saw two old women pointing at him and Sopilak, and he could deduce that they were praising him for having used sorcery on the fallen man so that he could enjoy his wife. They were criticizing neither Pym nor Sopilak; in a sense they were congratulating the former for a rather neat trick. Then other women appeared bearing in their arms a garment on which they had been working for some time, and after they had raised Sopilak to his feet and slapped his face a couple of times, he took the garment from them, smiled sheepishly at the men who had gathered, and held out his arms to Captain Pym. John Atkins, who approved of all that was happening, translated:

'Honored Great Captain whose guns saved my life when we fought the bear, and who helped Tayuk and Oglowook to kill him when I could not, our village offers you this gift. Your men have been good to us. We honor you.'

Bowing, he allowed the garment to fall free, and the sailors who were still celebrating fell silent as they saw the noble cloak which their captain was receiving. It was pure white, heavy, long: the fur of the polar bear taken on that early hunt. Everyone insisted that he put it on, and he stood embarrassed and ashamed as Sopilak and Nikaluk draped the glorious cape about his undeserving shoulders. He wore it all the way back to the long hut and even during the inspection of the ship, but that night as the time approached for evening worship he laid it aside, and when the men looked to him for prayer, he turned ashen-faced to his first mate and said: 'Mr. Corey, will you offer prayer? I am unworthy.'

PYM'S SURRENDER OF EVENING PRAYER TO OTHERS HAD A constructive aftermath, for when the trying days of late April arrived, with permanent daylight but no indication that the frozen sea would ever relinquish its stranglehold on the

Evening Star,

the sailors grew at first restless and then downright belligerent. Fistfights erupted for no reason, and even when they were halted by Corey's quick attention, a general surliness prevailed.

When it looked as if real trouble might erupt, one of the ship's quietest men came to Captain Pym, saying shyly: 'Captain, sir, I've found proof in the Bible that God knows our

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plight and has promised rescue.' When Pym showed astonishment that the Lord should be concerned about this lost little ship and its sinful captain, the sailor asked: 'I was wondering if I might read Scripture tonight?' and Pym had to say: 'That's no longer my province. You must ask Mr. Corey,' and when the young man did, Corey gave quick assent, for if anything promised to ease tensions, he would try it.

So after evening meal, with the light as bright as it had been at midday, this frail young man, his voice throbbing with emotion, read from an obscure passage in the often overlooked book of Zechariah: ' ”Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.

' ”And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark:

' ”But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light.

' ”And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one.”'

Closing the Bible reverently, the sailor leaned forward to offer a brief emendation: 'Clearly, men, this prophecy pertains to us. When we sell our whale oil, the shares will be divided. When the ice melts, and it surely will, we shall be set free. Already we have continuous day, as the Lord ordained. And at evening time there is light, and the Lord our God does reign as king over all the earth. Since He has promised to save us, there is no need for bitterness now.'

Several sailors, grateful for what seemed like divine intervention, clapped hands as he finished, but Captain Pym, suspecting that he had outlawed himself from such dispensation, shivered and stared at his knuckles, but his remorse did not prevent him from spending hours and then days and finally nights with Nikaluk, so that when the ice did finally begin to melt, with the Evening Star

slowly resuming her position as a ship floating in water, Nikaluk started asking the inevitable questions, using the patois which the sailors and their women had developed over the nine months of the marooning: 'Captain Pym, s'pose Atkins take Kiinak with him. Why not you?'

He told her frankly: 'You know I have a wife, children. You have a husband. Impossible.'

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Without rancor, but with a realistic assessment of the situation, she said: 'Sopilak?

He what you call drunk all time.' And she began insisting that Pym take her with him. She had no concept of either Hawaii, where Atkins was going, or Boston, where the others were headed, but she was confident and with good reason that she would fit in and find for herself and Noah an acceptable life, but for two conclusive reasons he found it impossible to consider taking her to Boston: I already have a family, and even if I didn't, I could never show her there. No one would understand.

He was nowhere near brave enough to share that second reason with her, especially since Atkins had had no hesitancy in marrying Kiinak, Boston or no, so he postponed telling her definitely that he would be leaving her behind when the ship sailed.

Yet he could not break himself away from her, for he was ensnared in the great passion of his life, the one that awakened a man to what love and women and a life's destiny involved. She had already placed an imprint on his life that would never be erased, neither by time nor regret, and in a perverse way he found intense pleasure in strengthening the experience. He was in love with Nikaluk, and when he was away from her he could visualize her flying in the air, her heavy boots prepared for a sudden landing, her arms and hair out flung in a vision of wonder that few men ever had of their women.