Ian McGuire - The North Water

“If they give us seals,” he says to Cavendish, “we can live until the spring. We can eat the meat and burn the blubber.”

Cavendish nods.

“Aye,” he says. “I need a parley with them aboriginal fuckers. I need to strike up a good bargain. Problem is, they know we’re fucked already. Listen to ’em out there, laughing and joking with themselves.”

“You think they’d let us starve to death?”

Cavendish sniffs.

“Happily they would,” he says. “Heathenish fuckers such as them int burdened with the Christian virtues as men like us are. If they don’t fancy what we have to offer, they’ll be gone just as quick as they arrived.”

“Offer the rifles,” Sumner suggests. “Ten dead seals for each rifle. Three rifles is thirty seals. We can live off that.”

Cavendish thinks a moment, then nods.

“I’ll tell them twelve,” he says, “twelve per rifle. Though I honestly doubt the savage bastards can even count that high.”

After they have eaten, Cavendish goes back outside, and Sumner goes with him. They show the Yaks one of the rifles and then point back at the tent and make feeding gestures. The Yaks examine the rifle, heft it, peer along the barrel. Cavendish loads a cartridge and lets the elder Yak shoot it off.

“That there’s a fucking good weapon,” Cavendish says.

The Yaks talk to each other for a while, then slowly reexamine the rifle. When they finish, Cavendish leans down and makes twelve short marks in the snow. He points to the rifle, then he points to the marks and then to the tent. He makes the same feeding gesture as before.

For a minute, the Yaks say nothing. One of them reaches into his pocket, takes out a pipe, and stuffs and lights it. The other smiles briefly, says something, then bends down and rubs out six of the marks.

Cavendish purses his lips, shakes his head, and then slowly reinscribes the same six marks.

“I won’t be jewed down by no fucking Esquimaux,” he says to Sumner.

The Yaks look displeased. One of them frowns, says something to Cavendish, and then quickly with the toe of his boot rubs out the same six marks again and then rubs out another.

“Shit,” Sumner whispers.

Cavendish laughs scornfully.

“Only five,” he says. “Five fucking seals for a rifle. Do I honestly look like that much of a cunt?”

“If they leave us now, we’ll starve to death,” Sumner reminds him.

“We’ll survive without them,” he says.

“No we fucking won’t.”

The Yaks look back at them indifferently, point down at the five marks on the ground, then hold out the rifle as if well prepared to give it back. Cavendish looks at the rifle steadily but doesn’t reach for it. He shakes his head and spits.

“Gouging ice-nigger bastards,” he says.

* * *

The Yaks build themselves a small snow house fifty yards away from the tent, then mount the sledge and go back out onto the ice to hunt. It is dark when they return. The black sky is dense with stars and upon its speckled blank the borealis unfurls, bends back, reopens again like a vast and multicolored murmuration. Drax, still in manacles, but left unguarded now since they are all, in effect, imprisoned by the shared calamity, watches them unship their kill. He listens to the throttled grunting of their caveman speech, sniffs, then smells, even through the frigid air, the sour reek of their grease-streaked armature. He weighs them up awhile — their height, their weight, the speed and implication of their various shiftings — then walks towards them, clinking as he goes.

“Ye got two nice fat-looking ones there,” he says, pointing at the two dead seals. “I can help you butcher ’em if you’d like.”

Although they have been out hunting all day, the two men seem as fresh and lively as before. They look at him a moment, then point at his chains and laugh. Drax laughs with them, then rattles the chains and laughs again.

“Them cunts in there don’t trust me, see,” he says. “They think I’m dangerous.” He makes a distended, monster face and claws the air to illustrate his meaning. The Yaks laugh louder still. Drax reaches down and takes one of the dead seals by the tail.

“Let me butcher this one for ye,” he says again, making a cutting gesture along its belly as he does so. “I can do it easy.”

They shake their heads and wave him off. The elder takes a knife, leans down, and quickly cuts open and guts the two seals. He leaves the parti-colored giblets, purple, pink, and gray, steaming in a pile on the snow, then separates the blubber from the meat. Drax watches on. He smells the ferric blood-tang of the innards and feels the drool begin to puddle in his mouth.

“I’ll haul that over for ye if you’d like it,” he says.

The two men ignore him still. The younger takes the meat and blubber over to the tent and gives it to Cavendish. The elder starts swiftly picking through the piles of giblets with his blade. He finds one of the livers, slices off a good-sized piece, and eats it raw.

“Christ alive,” Drax says. “I hant seen that before. I seen plenty, but I hant seen that.”

The man looks up at Drax and grins. His teeth and lips are red with seal blood. He cuts off another piece of the raw liver and offers it to him. Drax considers a moment, then takes it.

“I’ve eaten worse in my day,” he says. “Plenty worse.”

He chews once, then swallows it down and smiles. The elder Yak smiles back and laughs. When the younger one comes back from the tent, they confer for a while and then beckon Drax closer. The elder reaches into the pile of giblets and pulls out a severed eyeball. He pierces its skin with the point of the knife and sucks out the inner jelly. They look at Drax and grin.

“That don’t trouble me none,” Drax says. “I’ve eaten eyeballs before, an eyeball’s easy pickings.”

The elder finds another eyeball, pierces it as before, and gives it to him. Drax sucks out the juice, then puts the rest into his mouth and swallows it down. The Yaks start cackling wildly. Drax opens his mouth wide and sticks out his tongue to show that it’s truly gone.

“I’ll gobble down anything you can give me,” he says, “any fucking thing at all — brains, bollocks, hooves. I int fussy, see.”

The elder Yak points to his chains again, growls and claws the air.

“Aye,” Drax says. “Aye, that’s about the size of it right there.”

* * *

That night the Yaks feed their dogs with the remains of the rancid walrus meat, tether them to whalebone stakes driven into the gravel, and then crawl inside the snow house and settle down to sleep. They leave again early the next morning but return after dark with no seals to show for their labor. The next day, it is snowing too hard to hunt and they stay inside the snow house all day. Drax hobbles through the blizzard, past the scattered humps of curled-up dogs, to visit them. He gives them each a pinch of tobacco and asks them questions. When they miss his meaning, he repeats himself more loudly and makes signs. In response, they point and laugh and trace out patterns in the air or on the rawhide surface of their reindeer sleeping bags. Occasionally, they slice off a piece of the frozen seal liver and gnaw on it like licorice. There are periods of silence, and periods in which the Yaks talk to each other as though he is not even there. He watches them and listens to what they say, and, after a while, he understands what he must do next. It is not a decision, so much as a slow uncovering. He feels the future gradually show itself. He smells its hot perfume hanging in the arctic air, like a dog smells the rank requirements of a bitch.

When the blizzard abates, the Yaks go out seal hunting again. They kill one seal on the first day, and two more on the next. When they give over the final butchered carcass as agreed, Cavendish shows them the second rifle. He makes five more marks in the snow, but the Yaks shake their heads and point back in the direction they came from.