Ian McGuire - The North Water

“And what is your history, Patrick?”

“I have none to speak of.”

“Come,” he says, “every man has his history surely.”

Sumner shakes his head.

“Not me,” he says.

* * *

On Sundays, the priest holds Communion in the main room of the cabin. He pushes the table to one end of the room, clears off the books and papers, and puts a linen tablecloth, a crucifix, and two candles in brass candlesticks down in their place. There is a pewter jug and chalice for the wine, and a chipped china plate for the wafers. Anna and her brother attend always and sometimes four or five others come down from the camp nearby. Sumner acts as altar boy. He lights the candles, then blows them out again. He dabs the lip of the chalice with a rag to keep it clean. When required, he even reads the lesson. The whole thing is nonsense, he believes, a crude human circus with the priest as ringmaster and lion tamer combined, but it is easier to go along with it once a week, he thinks, than argue the toss on each separate occasion. What the Esquimaux make of it all, though, he can’t imagine. They stand and kneel as required, even sing the hymns as best they can. He suspects they find it secretly amusing, that it serves them as a form of exotic entertainment in the otherwise dull expanses of winter. When they get back to their igloo, he imagines them laughing at the priest’s solemnity and gaily mimicking his pointless, ponderous gestures.

One Sunday, after the service has concluded and the tiny congregation is standing smoking pipes or sipping mugs of sugared tea, Anna tells the priest that one of the Esquimaux women from the camp has a sickening infant and is asking her for medicine. The priest listens, nods, then goes to the storeroom and selects a bottle of calomel pills from the medicine chest. He gives the woman two of the white pills and tells her to divide them in half and to give the child one-half each morning and keep it tightly swaddled in the meantime. Sumner, who is sitting by the stove in his usual place, watches on but doesn’t speak. When the priest has moved away he stands up and walks over to the Esquimaux woman. He gestures to look at her child. The woman says something to Anna and then, after Anna replies, removes the child from the hood of her anorak and hands it to Sumner. The child’s eyes are dark and sunken, and its hands and feet are cold. When Sumner pinches its cheek, it doesn’t cry or complain. He gives the child back to his mother, then reaches behind the stove and takes a small piece of charcoal from the galvanized bucket. He twists it beneath his boot heel, then licks his index finger and dabs it down into the black powder. He opens up the infant’s mouth and smears the charcoal powder on its tongue, then gets a teaspoon of water and washes it down. The infant turns red, coughs, then swallows. Sumner takes a larger piece of charcoal from the bucket and hands it to Anna.

“Tell her to do what I just did,” he says. “She should do it four times each day, and she should feed the baby as much water as she can in between.”

“And the white pills too?” she says.

Sumner shakes his head.

“Tell her to throw away the pills,” he says. “The pills will make it worse.”

Anna frowns and then looks down at her feet.

“Tell the woman I am an Angakoq ,” Sumner says. “Tell her I know a lot more than the priest ever will.”

Anna’s eyes widen. She shakes her head.

“I cannot tell her that,” she says.

“Then tell her she must choose for herself. The pills or the charcoal. It is up to her.”

He turns away, unfolds his pocketknife, and starts up again with the whittling. When Anna tries to speak to him again, he waves her away.

* * *

The two Esquimaux hunters who rescued Sumner return to the mission a week later. Their names are Urgang and Merok. They are ragged, cheerful men both, lank-haired and boyish. Their ancient anoraks are torn and shabby, and their bulbous bearskin trews are darkened in patches by seal grease and baccy juice. On arrival, after tethering the dogs and doing the decencies with Anna and her brother, they draw the priest aside and explain that they want Sumner to come with them on their next hunting trip.

“They don’t need you to hunt,” the priest tells Sumner shortly afterwards. “They just want you to be there. They suspect you have magical powers, and they think the animals will be drawn to you.”

“How long would I be gone?”

The priest goes outside to check.

“They say a week,” he says. “They’re offering you a new set of furs to wear and a fair portion of the catch.”

“Tell them yes,” Sumner says.

The priest nods.

“They’re good-hearted fellows, but crude and backwards, and they speak not a word of English,” he says. “You’ll be able to act as a good example of the civilized virtues while you’re in amongst them.”

Sumner looks at him and laughs.

“I’ll be no such fucking thing,” he says.

The priest shrugs and shakes his head.

“You’re a finer man than you think you are,” he tells him. “You hold your secrets tight, I know that, but I’ve been watching you awhile now.”

Sumner licks his lips and spits into the stove. The blob of khaki phlegm bubbles a moment, then disappears.

“Then I’d thank you to stop watching. What I may or mayn’t be is my business, I think.”

“It’s between you and the Lord, true enough,” the priest replies, “but I hate to see a decent man miscount himself.”

Sumner looks out of the cabin window at the two slovenly-looking Esquimaux and their piebald pack of hounds.

“You should save your good advice for those who need it most,” he says.

“It’s Christ’s advice I’m giving out, not my own. And if there’s a man alive who doesn’t need that, I’ve yet to meet him.”

In the morning, Sumner dons his new suit of clothes and perches himself on top of the hunters’ sledge. They carry him back to their winter campground, a low complex of interlinked igloos with sledges, tent poles, drying frames, and other pieces of wood and bone scattered about on the trampled and piss-marked snow. They are greeted by an eager cluster of women and children and an uproar of barking dogs. Sumner is led into one of the larger igloos and shown a place to seat himself. The igloo is lined, top and bottom, with reindeer hides, and warmed and lit by a soapstone blubber lamp at its center. It is dank and gloomy inside and reeks of old smoke and fish oil. Others follow him in. There is laughter and talking. Sumner fills his pipe bowl and Urgang lights it for him with a taper made of whale skin. The dark-eyed children chew their finger ends and silently stare. Sumner doesn’t speak to anyone or attempt to communicate by glance or gesture. If they believe he is magic, he thinks, then let them. He has no obligation to set them right, to teach them anything at all.

He watches as one of the women heats a metal saucepan full of seal blood over the lamp. When the blood is steaming hot, she removes the pan from the low flame and passes it around. Each person drinks, then passes it on. It is not a rite or ritual, Sumner understands, it is just their way of taking food. When the pan reaches him he shakes his head; when they press it on him he takes it, sniffs, then gives it to the man on his right. They offer him a piece of raw seal liver instead, but he turns it down also. He realizes that he is offending them now; he notices the flickers of sadness and confusion in their eyes, and wonders whether it would be easier, better, to concede. When the pan comes round again, he accepts it and drinks. The taste is not unpleasant, he has eaten worse. It reminds him of an oily and saltless version of oxtail soup. He drinks again to show himself willing, then passes the pan on. He senses their relief, their pleasure that he has accepted their proffered gift, that he has joined them somehow. He doesn’t begrudge these beliefs although he knows they aren’t true. He hasn’t joined them — he is not an Esquimaux any more than he is a Christian or an Irishman or a doctor. He is nothing, and that is a privilege and a joy he is loath to give up. After the eating is finished, they play games and make music. Sumner watches them and even joins in when he is asked to. He throws up a ball made of walrus bone and tries to catch it in a wooden cup; he artlessly mimics their singing. They smile and pound him on the shoulder; they point at him and laugh. He tells himself he is doing it for the new set of furs, for the promised portion of the seal meat, both of which he will give to the priest. He is busy paying his way.