Afterlands, page 11
The Sirian and the Saturnian board their comet and flee back to saner worlds.
Christmas afternoon, the crewmen awaiting dinner. Along with two biscuits each, there will be a small piece of frozen ham (the last of it), a few morsels of dried apple (the last of it), and a half-mug of seal’s blood (the last, the last). Since breakfast the men have been telling stories and singing carols and songs, in a mood of truce even allowing Jackson to sing in English, and then Herron:
Herod the King, in his raging, ordered he hath this day,
His men of might, in his plain sight, all children young to slay.
The air is dense with pipe smoke, lamp smoke—a warm and lovely fug. And when Meyer and Anthing crawl outside to discuss their “New Year plans,” the other men urge Kruger to read to them from Littlebig, the only book on the island. Sentence by sentence Kruger translates it into German while Herron and Jackson cook around the lamp and the men, supine in their bags, listen with the glassy eyes and slightly open lips of spellbound children.
Dinner is served and bolted in minutes. But the men are determined to prolong the feast. One by one they offer their ideal Christmas menus, and these become the main course after the brief appetizer of the meal. Herron’s bill of fare, translated by Kruger, is heavy in roast fowl and beef, baked cod and herring, pheasant pies, black pudding, bread pudding, fig pudding, marzipan cream custard, mulled ale and Madeira and heavy port and hot gin punches. (The colours all dark and rich, like blood.) Eyes and cheeks shining he describes his table as a kind of busy harbour crowded with ship-like serving dishes, gravy boats, tall cruets of sauces, little varied bowls of walnuts, hazelnuts, prunes and raisins, all these like ferries or dories constantly on the move between plates. Jackson misses plainer stuff, like the beans and fatback he used to serve up as cook in the Federal Army during the war, but then he pictures the welcome-back from his own folks, now in Brooklyn: a pork roast, sweet potatoes glazed with molasses and then pickled okra and peas in vinegar and turnip greens and sweetened grits and hoecake and corn pudding and watermelon pickle and applejack. Lundquist and Madsen festoon their different tables with so many candles that it’s no easy task to find room for the feast, but room is soon cleared for the roast goose or suckling pig and stuffed eels, the alebread or the pytt i panna, the platters of old cheeses, rye breads, balls of butter, bottles of apple brandy, urns of black coffee, cherry or lingonberry preserves and candied fruit heaped like soft gems in great glass bowls. Anthing, who before emigration lived near the Russian border, his long-dead mother a Russian, stocks his Festtafel with a steamed pork pirog, roast sturgeon, a great beet and cabbage soup made with beef stock and sweetened with thick cream, black bread, dishes of cherry and gooseberry jam … these along with the roasts, the wursts pan-fried and awash in hot fat, the platters of mashed potatoes with senf and butter, the stewed sauerkraut, the hefty fennel bread and pear and plum and apple cakes and Glühwein and Kümmel that the rest of the outcast Germans also include. … Yes, and as Kruger, mouth watering, renders this riveting list into English for a rapt Herron and Jackson, he yearns for his boyhood home with an intense monopolizing ache, like hunger, but throughout his body, a hunger in the cells and blood, and again he feels something like love for his countrymen, even Anthing, who sings the ancient carols so richly. The man is singing again now, in his effortless tenor, leading the others. He was an orphan choirboy, of all things, in Memel. Easy to see the boy in him anyway. Es ist ein Ros’entsprungen. Kruger is no singer, but he joins in. Not for the first time he reflects, How sweet, just to yield to sentiment and slip back among the mob, the Clan!
Out here where there’s so little to tempt one, temptations are that much stronger. Yesterday the lieutenant informed Meyer that raids on the storehouse are continuing, and he believes “parties” in the crewhut to be responsible. Meyer himself blames the natives. Kruger knows this to be unlikely. Aboard the Polaris Tukulito once explained to him and Herron some of her people’s taboos; to steal the food of others, or to refuse to share one’s food, would bring about failure in the hunt, for the mistress of animals under the sea would no longer send the hunters any game.
But if the Esquimaux are not the thieves, and not Tyson, who looks increasingly thin, then who? Meyer has ready access to the storehouse, but if he has been taking extra food it hasn’t stuck to his bones. Likewise Herron. Madsen always was girlishly slender and now is morbidly so—a skull with red lips and large, woeful blue eyes. He hardly ever goes out. Jamka is close to nervous collapse, alarmed by the slightest noise from the noisy ice, terrified of bears, so he too seldom emerges, except to rush to the latrine with the hunger-flux, gripping a few sheets of Tyson’s spare notebook (that much, at least, the men have openly filched). Which leaves the less decrepit men: Anthing, Lindermann, Lundquist, Jackson, and Kruger himself.
Next morning breaks cuttingly cold, a gale from north-northwest blowing the snow into drifts. With Christmas done and its spirit of tolerance safely re-contained, Count Meyer is consumed by a new mood. Perched on his bed-ledge with Anthing standing beside him—Anthing’s curly head stooped, eyes sweeping, pistol on his hip—he says, Henceforth all rifles are to be kept inside the snowhut, with us.
Kruger translates quietly for Herron and Jackson.
Herron says, But Count Meyer, sir, what of Joe’s warning? About them rusting out …?
Meyer, in German: We will not worry about such things. The native may know his country, but he knows little about the principles of metallurgy. Steel will never degrade at the rate he suggests. And I suspect he has other reasons for wanting us to leave our weapons out there.
Anthing: Jawohl, Herr Kapitän Meyer.
Kruger translates.
Jackson: Captain? Now he’s promoted up to Captain?
Kruger: A holiday gift to himself, I think.
Herron: But sir … the ammunition’s all indoors here, and Joe and Hans use different stuff.
Meyer: Let them rust a little anyway. We will soon reach Disko, and plenty.
Jamka: Disko! Disko!
Meyer: Meanwhile you are to drill outside with Sergeant Anthing. And from now on, we post a watch.
Kruger: To drill … to post a watch with the men starving and the weather like this … Surely this is somewhat—reckless.
Herron: What’s that you said, Kru?
Meyer: But my dear Kruger, not only are such things necessary, they also afford science a rare opportunity to examine the resources of different kinds of human bodies under extreme conditions.
Meyer’s hunger and confinement are affecting him even worse than the others. Underlit by the lamp’s flame, his gums are lurid, cheekbones gouging through the white and loose-slung skin of a Walpurgisnacht hex-mask. But then, others have spoken before, on full stomachs, in just the way he speaks now. Above all we must be prepared to defend ourselves and the honour of the young German Empire against the aspersions and encroachments of her enemies. We must be ready in body and spirit to depart for Greenland, and to fight, if necessary, for the boat and our share of supplies … which will, of course, be greater than our apparent share, as we will have to forgo the comforts of Hallburgh, and will no longer have the natives to hunt for us.
Anthing: Jawohl, Kapitän Graf Meyer!
Anthing tries to click his heels together but the fur boots make no sound.
Jackson: Why ain’t you translating no more?
Kruger: So then, you’re preparing to come out in open mutiny.
Meyer: Ah, but how could there be any question of a “mutiny” where there is no fixed authority to rebel against … ? Well? For we are now our own authority.
The windstorm outside roaring, ravening like a crowd.
When Kruger translates, Jackson takes off his cap and digs his fingers into his hair. Well, that’s secession, he says. I’ve seen with my own eyes what that means.
New-year’s Morning, Jan. 1, 1873. “Happy New-year!” How the sound, or, rather, the thought—for the sound I do not hear—reminds one of friends, and genial faces, and happy groups of young and old! We shall not make any “New-year’s calls” to-day; nor will the ladies of our party have any trouble in ciphering up their “callers!” Some of the men, it is true, may be troubled to keep their footing, but it will not be with overmuch wine and revelry. A happy New-year for all the world but us poor, cold, half-starved wretches; though today, it seems, we shall at least eat well.
Yesterday Joe and Hans were out sealing, and Hans shot one seal, but lost him. It seemed very stupid, but I suppose he could not help it; if we were getting plenty we should not notice such an accident. Luckily, just now, Joe also shot a seal; as it floated away from him, he shouted as loud as he could call for his kyack, and a few of the men, who were attempting to place some kind of object, which I could not then identify, on top of the crewmen’s hut, stopped their work and hurried it over to him—happy enough to assist if it might mean food. He got in and was fortunate enough to bag his game, which we shall dine on presently.
In dividing meat, suspicions among us are such that we now pick a “distributor” from one side of the camp, and a “caller” from the other; the distributor picks a portion at random, and the caller, standing with his back turned, calls out names in random order, so that each in turn receives his portion without any favoritism. But the men, who are usually somewhat appeased and more cooperative in the presence of fresh food, only grudgingly went along with this method today.
Now it has sometimes happened that when the Esquimaux have been tramping about for hours on the hunt for seals, and at last get one, they are by that time famished; and as, when they bring it in to the camp, they know they will get no more than those who have been “home” all day, they sometimes open the seal, and eat the entrails, kidneys, and heart, and perhaps a piece of the liver; and who could blame them? They must do it to keep life in them. They could not endure to hunt every day without something more, occasionally, than our rations. Yet the men complain of this, and say they do not get their share: so unreasonable and unreasoning are they. And now Mr Meyer, or “Major Count” as the men are calling him, advises me that “they will not stand aside for this practice again”! Well, we shall see.
But enough now; I must stop, and have my share.
Tukulito, Ebierbing, Punnie and Tyson have joined Hans’s family in their larger snowhut to feast on a portion of the seal and to share Tyson’s tobacco. Tukulito has not heard such laughter, if any, for many days. The fresh blood with its raw, iron smell, its sensational colour spattering the canvas floor and the filthy walls, is a token, to the being she was born as, of celebration and plenty, while the literate Christian she later became has to hold her revulsion in check. But this is no great feat, now, with her mouth full of the purple, lamp-warmed flesh, as sweet as she has ever tasted. As they eat or smoke—the adults and Augustina sitting on the canvas floor, the children on the bed-ledge—all eyes are fastened on the pemmican-tin qulliq whose white flame gives sign of a fresh abundance of blubber. The first strong light they have seen in weeks, it streams through the eyes into the dark brain to revive hope and joy: a June sun drawing life out of the tundra.
Increasing heat in the iglu brings to life other, worse smells. Tukulito doesn’t care now, not even about Merkut, pipe chomped in her mouth, cleaning Charlie Polaris’s bottom with her long tangled hair. Or Hans’s ebullient belching. Or how Augustina—who was so fat on the ship that she still retains some fetching flesh on her bones, a blush in her cheeks, and who at twelve is the age that Tukulito was when she met her husband—is making eyes at the lieutenant, who shows no sign of noticing. He is devoting himself to his food, hunched over the dish, brow crumpled, eyes shut, jaw grinding. He holds his fork with a tight overhand grip, like a trowel. Now Tukulito feels Hans’s slightly wall-eyed gaze on herself; as if one appetite satisfied must revive other hungers.
And what of Mr Kruger, off in the men’s iglu—the way his eyes follow her? Eyes that can seem both mocking and rueful. And then that rare, flashing smile. Is he mocking her, and everything else? She understands her own people, and she understands most Christians—their curious mix of ambition and piety, pride and shame—but Kruger is neither one. Lately, on the rare occasions when he is near, her belly almost forgets its hunger. But as an Inuit wife and also as a Christian she is loyal to her husband, despite his own past infidelities, plenty of them. She loves him in her marrow.
To what is Mr Kruger loyal? she wonders.
Tyson peers up from his food with softened eyes, as if under a reprieving spell. He says, The little friends, they eat those seal’s eyes with such relish! Paternally he smiles at Punnie and Succi—cross-legged on the ledge, chewing cheerfully, their little mouths and teeth slathered with blood—as if they’re in pigtails and ribbons eating humbugs on a summer veranda.
But I thought the youngest would receive the eyes … ?
He takes only mother’s milk as yet, sir, Tukulito says.
As if Merkut understands, she lifts her furs and slaps Charlie Polaris back onto her lax, pancaked breast. Tyson looks away, as if in pain, and his gaze collides with Tukulito’s. Again he looks away fast. Ebierbing and Hans are setting buttons in place on the canvas checkerboard. Hans looks up with a startled face and says, Ahhh! We need drum! For dance now!
Or the accordion, says Ebierbing.
This drum we make now!
Ebierbing replies in Inuktitut and Tukulito automatically interprets for Tyson, who, like the other men, seems to find it quite natural that the natives should address each other in pidgin English; showing surprise, and maybe suspicion, only when they revert to their own tongue.
Sir, my husband says that by the time we scrape the skin and make this drum, we shall all be too weary to dance. For lack of food.
Hans tilts back his head and slurs something emphatically. He appears drunk on the seal’s blood—the regained bliss of it. He gives an extensive baritone belch that sounds like throat-singing, then a tight, quacking fart. Tukulito averts her face and covers her lips as she coughs.
Tyson: Is he saying they’ll … they’ll catch more seal tomorrow?
He says, sir, that by the time we finish the drum, we shall have to eat it. She smiles. Pom, pom, pom, goes Hans, puffing his keglike torso in time. The sound of a man with a large drum beating in his stomach. The children giggle, even Tobias, the nine-year-old, who has been looking ill and absent, his posture concave, features pinched. Augustina with her jiggly laughter now seems a child once more—but then, taking a puff on her father’s pipe and widening her eyes at Tyson, she is fully a woman. The transformation is borderless and Tukulito recalls how she herself played wolf tag and sledded on dogskins with her friends the morning after first sleeping with her husband. This was long before her Conversion; such an early union now strikes her as some years too young. But Merkut doesn’t mind her daughter’s flirting. Now the baby writhes free of her arms and begins crawling naked toward the qulliq. Always such an air of disorder in here.
There’s a hard, air-tearing crack from outside.
Not the ice? Tyson plants his hands on the floor as if to rise.
Rifles, Ebierbing says calmly. Fire all of the same time. He yanks Punnie down off the ledge onto the floor beside him. Hans snaps some Greenlandic phrase that Tukulito has never heard and then starts dragging his own children down.
Might be for the New Year, Tyson says, though clearly with little hope as he feels for the butt of his revolver and dons his cap and then, looking weary but decisive, lumbers off on hands and knees, butting through the wolfskin blocking the tunnel. Charlie Polaris, gurgling happily, tries to crawl after him. Tukulito scoops him up and passes him over the qulliq to Merkut. Ebierbing and Hans are pulling on their parkas as they duck toward the tunnel. With his eyes Ebierbing signals Tukulito: Stay here. With her own eyes she relays the message to Punnie, and then, having passed it on and out of her, ignores it, slipping into her amautik and following Hans into the tunnel where he takes his rifle and emerges ahead of her into the dimness of midday.
Almost windless, not so cold, under a waning white moon. A few steps ahead, her husband and Hans and the lieutenant are silhouetted as if turned to stone, watching. Across the way stands Mr Meyer, a glare of moonlight on his spectacles, gaunt and tall beside the men’s iglu, above which a flag hangs limply. Six crewmen are ranked at attention, anonymous in parkas, rifles over their shoulders. Hunched on the other side of the iglu, like a small chilly audience at the Changing of the Guard, are Kruger and Jackson. She knows them by their postures and the moonlight’s shining on Kruger’s curved pipestem.
Meyer barks something in German and the men awkwardly unshoulder and aim their rifles. Hans chuckles. They think they get the moon, he says. A breeze fans out the flag: the silhouette of something like a raven, though Tukulito guesses it is probably meant to be an eagle, the German totem, as she knows. She stands up. Another command and the rifles fire, more or less in unison. The orange muzzle flares are liquid, molten. Another command, the men turn, and with Meyer calling orders in a surprisingly firm voice, gangling beside them on his splayed-out feet, they troop single-file toward the floe-edge a few hundred paces north. Emaciation exaggerates the uniqueness of each man’s walk. That will be Anthing first, with his tense, hunched, prowling tread, Lindermann with his loping forester’s strides, Jamka shuffling like a convalescent in slippers. Lundquist still has the strength to lift his knees and truly march. Frail Madsen makes wary little steps, like an old man on bare ice. Herron lags, trudging and reluctant.
