Louise Erdrich - The Antelope Wife

Shawano picked up the gunnysack uncertainly, ready to lower it back onto the porcupine man’s head.

“Nishi! Aapijinazh! Nishwanaaji’ a’aw maji-ayi’aawish ji-minonawe’angwaa gigichi-Anishinaabeminaanig gaa-onjigiyang.” Asin now spoke in a low and threatful tone. At his command, everyone fell silent. The old man was behaving in a way that did not befit an elder. Yet the younger men had been taught to respect him.

“Why should we do that?” asked Bagakaabi. “He can’t be a slave if he is dead.”

“It is the only way to satisfy the ghosts,” Asin answered.

“Haben Sie alle hunger, bitte? Wenn Sie hunger haben, werde ich für sie einen Kuchen machen. Versuches mal, bitte.” The prisoner offered to bake for them. He spoke modestly and pleasantly, though he seemed now in his wary poise to have understood the gravity of Asin’s behavior. He seemed, in fact, to know that his life might hang in the balance. Although Asin had spoken his cruel command in the old language, his ferocity was easily translated. With a burst of enormous energy, the German tried to make good on his offer using peppy eating motions and rubbing his middle with more vigor.

Booch, always eager for food, finally nodded. He knew the word kuchen . “Why not let him prepare his offering? We will test it and see if his sweet cake can save his life.”

He said this jokingly, but Asin’s gleam and nod told that he took the baking test seriously and looked forward to the German’s failure.

The First Metaphorical Cake

The porcupine man drew a tiny diagram or symbol for each thing he needed. Little oval eggs, flour in a flour sack, nuts of a rumpled shape, strawberries, sugar, and so on. By now, even though the men had no money extra, they had to go along and so they all dug deep into their hands, socks, the liners of their shoes, and the rabbit fur inside their moccasins. They sent Charlie to the traders’ for these things and he returned with his lower lip stuck out and fire in his eyes. He thought this whole plan was wrong and yet he was curious about the cooking aspect, the baking, which would in time become his passion.

The stove. The German seemed to have a problem with that. He fiddled and poked it and tried to figure out its quirks. The brothers picked red berries for him, though, ode’iminan, heart berries, from the clearings. So fresh and dewy and tender. The sweet red melted in your mouth. Charlie gave the prisoner a makak full of the berries, and was surprised by the emotional way he accepted the offering. The German lifted the container in his hand, inhaled the fragrance of the berries. His dark round eyes filled again and this time spilled over with tears.

“Erdbeeren,” he said, softly, with mistaken and genuine sincerity. “I fuck you thank you. Klaus. Klaus.” He pointed at his chest.

The men stood there in the kitchen before the stove and looked down at their feet, at the floor. Charlie reached out and shook the German’s hand, or paw, which he saw with a certain fear had fur on the back.

“Gaawiin niminwendanziinan omaamiishininjiin misawaa-go minode’ed,” he said.

Charlie’s kindness was tinder to Asin’s low fury. Asin flared up, insisted that Klaus had just delivered a most clever insult veiled in ignorance, fixed Klaus with a crushing stare. Asin bared his black teeth and gave a startling snarl. Booch and Shawano stepped out the door. Klaus waved Asin and Bagakaapi away from the smoking woodstove abruptly and began his efforts. Charlie stayed.

From inside the kitchen, then, where Charlie had stubbornly placed himself, the others got as much of the story as they could, or maybe as anyone was ever supposed to know.

First, the prisoner pounded almonds to a fine paste between two lake rocks. Took the eggs, just the yellows in a little tin cup. He found a long piece of wire and cleverly twisted it into a beater of some sort. He began to work things over, the ingredients. Using the bottom of an iron skillet, he ground pods and beans and spices into the nuts. He added the sugar spoon by spoon.

When he was finished, he took the thick syrupy batter and poured it as though it contained, as it did for him, the very secret of life. He made dark pools in four round baking pans. He bore them ceremonially toward the oven, which yawned, perfectly stoked beneath with coals glowing in the firebox. Bending with maternal care, he placed the pans within the dark aperture. Closed with a toweled hand the oven door. For a moment Charlie, mesmerized by the calm music of the German’s efforts, regarded the words set in raised letters upon the oven door. The Range Eternal. He backed slowly away from the stove and sat down. He offered Klaus a cigarette.

Outside, the other men sat smoking and thinking. They paid respect to the east. In their thoughts, in their prayers. They respected the manito who guards the south. They regarded with humble pleading the direction of our dead, the west. North was last.

After a while Charlie went out and sat near them. He sat alone. He sat in a fugue trying to remember each action, each movement, each ingredient. Mary, Zosie, and Peace came into the yard.

“Don’t go in there,” said Asin.

“We are waiting for something to bake,” said Charlie.

The women did not wait, of course. What woman sits waiting for something to cook in the oven? Disgusted by the male mystery and presence in the kitchen, they bustled ostentatiously. Made a lot of noise coming, going. Banged washing boards and banged pots. Banged anything they could, including the chairs of the men, who jumped. Once, but just once, Zosie banged the stove. At which point Klaus leaped high and with a scream that unnerved them all, grabbed her by the apron strings and swung her toward the door. She flew as though shot from a bow. Limber as a wildcat, Klaus poised, light on the balls of his feet, and motioned one and all to hush.

Everyone crept near, caught in the grip of what the prisoner sensed happening behind the blue enamel of the oven door.

Light in the window turned subtly more golden. Klaus set pans of water in the oven like offerings. A breeze sprang up. Leaves tapped. Nobody said a thing. Asin’s eyes grew bloody. His hands trembled and the air whistled between his teeth. They sat until finally Klaus rose. Like a groom pacing tranced toward his bride, he approached the oven. At the lip of the door he closed his eyes, cocked his head to the side, listening. Slowly and pliantly Klaus bent, hands wrapped in two thick rags. With firm control he pulled the handle on the door until it opened. Then, just for a moment, the waiting men lost their bearings as the scent of the toasted nuts, honey, vanilla, wild strawberries, sugar, and subtly united oils and flours escaped the oven box. The scent trembled in the air.

More than delicious. Impossible. Perhaps an Anishinaabe vision-word comes close. Perhaps there is no way to describe what they all experienced as Klaus tenderly drew the pan along the rack until it rested secure between his thick, furry, rag-protected paws.

More sitting while the brown cake cooled. Eyes of Asin sunk, blackening. He made everyone uneasy now with his scratchy breathing. As the creation cooled, the watchers remembered things they’d rather have forgotten: how Asin had suffered from time to time with nameless rages, pointless furies. These angers had assumed a name and form in the person of the porcupine man, Klaus.

Air poured in the screen door, cooling and healing. Dusk air. Pure air. Moved onto Ogichidaa. Bagakaabi took his fan, the wing of an eagle, and with immense care he swept the air toward Asin, whose face now worked in and out like a poisoned mud puppy’s, and who said, fixing everyone with eyes crossed:

“Let us deliver him to the west. We are Ojibwe men — the name has a warrior’s meaning. We roast our enemies until they pucker! Once, we were feared. Our men brought sorrow. Mii-go iw keyaa gaa-izhi-mashkawigaabawiyang mewinzha. What have we here? Chimookomaanag? Women? Our enemy is in our hands and we do not make him suffer to console the spirits of our brothers. We let him cook our food. It is this… Klaus”—he scoured the name off his tongue—“whom we should burn to death!”