Stef Penney - The Tenderness of Wolves

Shortly after he emerged from the bright fog of childhood, Donald had to acknowledge that he had difficulty seeing objects at any distance. Anything beyond the range of his outstretched hand became indistinct; small objects escaped him; people became anonymous. He could no longer recognise friends, or even his own family, and he stopped hailing people at a distance, as he had no idea who they were. He developed a reputation for coldness. He confided his unease to his mother and was provided with a pair of uncomfortable wire-framed spectacles. This was the first miracle of his life–the way the spectacles brought him back into the world.

The second, related miracle occurred one evening soon after. It was November, a rare clear night, and he was walking home from school when he looked up and stopped dead in astonishment. The full moon hung low and heavy in front of him, casting his shadow along the road. But what made his jaw drop was its clarity. He had assumed (without ever thinking about it much) that the moon was a fuzzy disc to everyone. How could it be otherwise, when it was so far away? But here it was, in sharp, exquisite detail–the wrinkled, pocked surface, the bright plains and dark craters. His new, augmented vision reached not just to the far side of the street and the hymn board in church, but countless leagues into space. Breathless, he took the glasses off–the moon was softer, larger, somehow nearer. His surroundings closed in, appearing both more intimate and more threatening. He put the glasses back on and distance, clarity, was restored.

That night he walked home filled with a huge, brimming delight. He laughed out loud, to the surprise of passers-by. He wanted to shout to them and tell them of his discovery. He knew it would mean nothing to them, they who had seen it all along. But he felt sorry for them, not to know what it was to appreciate a gift like eyesight, having lost it, and been granted it again.

How often, since then, has he felt that perfect, overwhelming delight? In truth, not once.

Donald lies in the narrow, uncomfortable bed staring at the moon over Caulfield. He takes his spectacles off and puts them on again, reliving that ecstatic moment of revelation. He remembers being sure he had been afforded a glimpse of something portentous, although not certain what it meant. Now it doesn’t seem that it meant anything much. But he became accustomed to looking at things from a distance, in order to keep them in focus. Perhaps that is why he gravitated towards numbers, attracted by their mute simplicity. Numbers are only ever themselves. If things can be reduced to numbers, they can be ordered and balanced. Take the community of native families that live beyond the palisade of Fort Edgar, and cause constant headaches to the factors. The voyageurs breed at an alarming rate, producing ever more mouths for the Company to feed. There has been much grumbling about the food they consume and the medical attention they demand, so Donald set to enumerating the work that the women do for the Fort. He listed the washing and vegetable tending, the tanning of hides, the making of snowshoes … and attributed a value to each task, until he could show that the Company was benefiting at least as much from the association as the families were. He was proud of this achievement, even more so since getting to know Jacob’s wife and children–two girls who stare at their father’s pale friend with huge, liquid brown eyes. These children with their trusting gaze and incomprehensible secret names are set against the furs that the Company lives on, although to be honest, no one is in any doubt which are more important.

When Donald first arrived at Fort Edgar, the Clerk-in-depot, a man called Bell, had shown him round the post. Donald saw the offices, the crowded sleeping quarters, the trading counter, the Indian village beyond the palisade (at a suitable distance), the log church, the graveyard … and finally the huge cold storerooms where the furs were stacked, waiting to start on their epic journey to London, where they would be converted into hard cash. Bell glanced furtively around him before breaking open a bale, and the glossy pelts slithered out onto the dirt floor.

‘Well, this is what it’s all about,’ he said in his Edinburgh accent. ‘This lot will be worth several guineas in London. Let’s see …’ He stirred the pelts with his hand. ‘Here’s a marten. You can see why we don’t want them to shoot the beasties–the traps barely leave a mark, look!’

He waved the flattened leg of a weasel-like animal at Donald. The head was still attached to it–a small, pointed face with its eyes squeezed shut, as though it couldn’t bear to remember what had happened to it.

He laid the marten down and plunged his hand back into the skins, offering them to Donald in quick succession, like a magician. ‘These are the least valuable; beaver, wolf, and bear, though they are useful enough–good wrappings for the other furs. Feel how coarse it is …’

The glossy pelts rippled under his hands, vestigial legs folding under them. Donald took the pelts as he was handed them and was surprised at their touch. He had felt rather disgusted at this vast warehouse of death, but as he pushed his hands into the cool, silky luxuriance, he experienced an urge to put the soft fur to his lips. He resisted, of course, but understood how a woman could want such a thing draped round her neck, where she could, with just a small tilt of the head, brush the fur against her cheek.

Bell was still talking, almost to himself. ‘But the most valuable … ah, this is silver fox–this is worth more than its weight in gold.’ His eyes shone in the dirty light.

Donald reached out a hand to touch, and Bell almost flinched. The fur was grey and white and black, blended together into a silvery sheen, thick and soft, with a heavy, watery flow. He withdrew his hand, as Bell seemed unable to let go of it.

‘The only one more valuable is black fox–that comes from the far north too, but you hardly see one from one year’s end to the next. That would cost you a hundred guineas in London.’

Donald shook his head in wonder. As Bell started to press the furs into a wooden packing mould, tenderly laying the silver fox in the middle, Donald felt uncomfortable, as if, despite Bell’s best efforts to hide it, he was in the presence of some secretive act of pleasure.

Donald wrenches his mind back to the present. He wants to think about his conversation with Jacob, to balance the facts until he comes up with a brilliant solution that makes everything come out right, but there aren’t enough facts. A man is dead but no one knows why, let alone who did it. If they could trace Jammet’s life back from its end point, if they could know everything about him, would it lead to the truth? It is, he feels, an idle thought; he cannot imagine the Company committing the men and the time to find out. Not for a free trader.

His mind turns again towards Susannah. He had sat with her in the parlour for several minutes without any awkward silences, and she seemed to find him interesting; she wanted to tell him things, and to hear what he had to say. He was too anxious to feel delight, but there was something like happiness there, unfurling like buds after a Canadian winter. He folds his spectacles and puts them, for want of a bedside table, on the floor beside him, where, he hopes, he won’t stand on them in the morning.

After the initial shock, I realise I am not in imminent danger. The man in the doorway is at least sixty years old, his bearing is bookish, and, most importantly, he isn’t armed. He looks distinguished more than anything, with smooth white hair brushed off a high forehead, a thin face and aquiline nose. His expression strikes me as kind. In fact, for a man of his age, he is (the word surprises me but it is right) beautiful.