Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

Twenty minutes, she guessed. Twenty minutes for the part of the voyage involving the crew; then another fifteen for Zeke’s solo trip north on foot and his return to the empty ship. “Now,” Zeke was saying, “now began the most interesting part of my experience in the arctic. I was all alone, and winter was coming. I had to prepare myself.”

From the crates he began to pull things. His hunting rifle, sealskins, a tin of ship’s biscuit, a jar of dried peas. His black notebook, the sight of which made Erasmus groan. Into his talk he wove some stray lines from that, and then read aloud the section about the arrival of Annie and Nessark and Marumah. “The angekok is the tribe’s general counselor and advisor,” he explained. “As well as its wizard. His chief job is to determine the reason for any misfortune visiting the tribe — and the angekok of Annie’s tribe determined that the cause of their children’s sickness was me. So was my life changed by a superstition. From the day these people arrived I entered into a new life.”

He described the journey to Anoatok and his first days there. Then he said, “But you must meet some of the people among whom I stayed.” He stepped back from the podium and whistled.

There was rattling backstage, and the crack of a whip. Two dogs appeared — not his huge black hunting dogs but beagles, ludicrous in their harnesses, gamely trotting side by side. Apparently Zeke would not subject his own pets to this. Behind them they pulled a small sledge on wheels, with Tom crouched on the crossbars and Annie grasping the uprights and waving a little whip. Both Annie and Tom wore fur jackets with the hoods pulled up and shadowing their faces. When the sledge reached the front of the podium, Zeke gave a sharp command that stopped the beagles. They sat, drooling eagerly as Zeke held out bits of biscuit, and then lay down in their traces with their chins on their paws. Their eyes followed Zeke as he moved around the stage, but Annie and Tom stared straight out at the audience, shielding their eyes against the glare.

“These are two of the people who rescued me,” Zeke said. “The names they use among us are Annie and Tom.”

While they stood still he recited some facts. Annie and Tom belonged to the group of people John Ross had discovered in 1818 and called Arctic Highlanders — there were just a few hundred of them, he said, scattered from Cape York to Etah. Fewer each year; their lives were hard and their children sickened; he feared they were dying out. They moved nomadically throughout the seasons, among clusters of huts a day’s journey apart and near good hunting sites. All food was shared among them, as if they were one large family. Because no driftwood reached their isolated shores, they had no bows and arrows, nor kayaks, and in this they differed from the Esquimaux of Boothia and southern Greenland. They’d developed their own ways, substituting bone for wood — bone harpoon shafts and sledge parts and tent poles. “A true sledge,” Zeke said, “would have bone crosspieces lashed to the runners with thongs, and ivory strips fastened to the runners.” He went on to explain how they subsisted largely on animals from the sea.

“The term ‘Esquimaux’ is French and means ‘raw meat eaters,’“ Zeke said. “But there’s nothing disgusting in this, the body in that violent climate craves blood and the juices of uncooked food.” From the nearest crate he took a paper bundle, which he unwrapped to reveal a Delaware shad. A few strokes of a knife yielded three small squares of flesh. Two he held out to Annie and Tom, keeping the third for himself. The beagles whined. Zeke popped the flesh in his mouth and chewed, while Annie and Tom did the same on either side of him. The audience gasped, and Alexandra could see this pleased Zeke enormously.

“With the help of my two friends,” he said, “I would like to demonstrate for you some of the elements of daily life among these remarkable people.”

Now Alexandra saw the bulk of what the crates contained. Certainly he hadn’t carried all these objects home with him; he must have made some here, with Annie’s help and whatever supplies he could find. There was a long-handled net, which Tom seized and carried to the top of one crate. He made darting and swooping motions as Zeke described capturing dovekies. “These arrive by the million,” Zeke said. “When the hunter’s net is full, he kills each bird by pressing its chest with his fingers, until the heart stops.”

A soapstone lamp — where had this come from? — with a wick made from moss; Zeke filled it with whale oil and had Annie light it with a sliver of wood he first lit with a match, telling the audience they must imagine lumps of blubber slowly melting. In the huts, he said, with these lamps giving off heat and light, with food cooking and wet clothes drying and children frolicking, it had been warm no matter what the outside temperature. He brought out more hides and had Annie demonstrate how the women of her tribe scraped off the inner layers to make the hides pliable. “This crescent-shaped knife is an ulo,” he said, and Annie sat on her knees with her feet tucked beneath her thighs and the skin spread before her, rubbing it with the blade. Beside Alexandra, Erasmus pressed both hands to his ribs.

“Are you all right?” she said. She couldn’t take her eyes from the stage.

“That’s exactly the way I soften a dried skin before I mount it,” Erasmus said. “I have a drawshave I use like her ulo.”

Zeke said, “The women chew every inch after it’s dried, to make it soft,” and Annie put a bit of the hide in her mouth and ground her teeth. “I can’t show you the threads, which are made from sinews,” he said. “But the needles are kept in these charming cases.” Annie held up an ivory cylinder, through which passed a bit of hide bristling with needles.

Zeke took Tom’s hand and seized a pair of harpoons; then he and Tom lay down and pretended to be inching up on a seal’s blowhole, waiting for the seal to surface. As they mimicked the strike Zeke spoke loudly, a flow of vivid words that had the crowd leaning forward. They were seeing what Zeke wanted them to see, Alexandra thought. Not what was really there: not a rickety makeshift sledge, two floppy-eared beagles, a tired woman and a nervous boy moved like mannequins by the force of Zeke’s voice. Not them, or a man needing to make a living, but the arctic in all its mystery: unknown landscapes and animals and another race of people.

Her face was wet; was she weeping? As Zeke’s antics continued Alexandra found herself thinking of her parents and the last day she’d seen them. Pulling away from the ferry dock, waving good bye, sure they’d be reunited in a week. Then the noise, the terrible shocking noise. Great plumes of steam and smoke and cinders spinning down to the water — and her parents, everyone, gone. Simply gone.

She turned to Erasmus, who had his face in his hands. Gently she touched him and said, “You have to look.”

He raised his head for a second but then returned his gaze to his shoes. “I won’t,” he said passionately. “I hate this. All my life the thing I’ve hated most is being looked at. I can’t bear it when people stare at me. I know just how she feels, all of us peering down at her. It’s disgusting. It’s worse than disgusting. People stared at me like this when I returned from the Exploring Expedition, and again when I came back without Zeke. Now we’re doing the same thing to her.”

Had she known this about him? She looked away from him, back at the stage; she felt a shameful pleasure, herself, in regarding Annie and Tom. She longed to draw them.

Annie had pushed her hood back from her sweating face, while Tom had stretched out on the sledge and was pulling at one of the beagle’s ears. From his crate Zeke took a wooden figure clothed in a miniature jacket and pants. “The children play with dolls,” Zeke said. “Just as ours do.” Tom released the beagle’s ear, seizing the doll and pressing it to his chest. Then Zeke was winding string around Annie’s fingers, saying, “Among this tribe, a favorite game with the women and children is called ajarorpot(, which is much like our child’s game of cat’s cradle, only more complicated.”