Sloan Wilson - Ice Brothers

“It’s interesting,” she said, putting the gun on the table, but still staring at it. “Someday perhaps I’ll buy one for myself. Perhaps it’s something every woman should have these days.”

“Brit, I have to get back to business. Will the other Danes try to turn the Eskies against me when Swanson is gone?”

“They’ll do whatever you tell them to. They’re good at that when they’re under a gun. Only Swanson would tell you to go to hell.”

“How do you really think I should handle him?”

“You’re right. You’ll have to lock him up if you’re not unkind enough to kill him. As a matter of fact, I can tell you how to get him out of here without a scene that would alarm the Eskimos.”

“How?”

“Tell him he can visit the prisoners on their island. He’s been worried about them, not because he really sympathizes with the Nazis, but because they’re people and he really is a kind of saint.”

“Sort of a horny saint for an old man?”

“That’s cheap. He’s a Greenlander now, not a Dane, and he lives by Greenland customs. It was I who needed him when I sailed in here alone with a crazy father.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Forget it … Anyway, he’ll be glad to visit the prisoners. When he gets out on the island, you can tell him he has to stay with them. He will accept that.”

“Would the Eskies understand why I had to get rid of him?”

“The Eskimos are a very realistic people, but they won’t love you for making their saint a prisoner. Tell them the Germans are keeping him out there. Most of them are simple enough to accept that.”

“Is Peomeenie?”

“Peo is not really simple at all, but he can be bought, as you found out. I’m afraid that many of them can be.”

“Will you get them together for me tomorrow morning so I can talk to them?”

“The church is our only meeting place. Do you want to use it as a recruiting station?”

“I guess … you know, victory has been prayed for in every church since Christ’s time, on every side, in every war. The Lord helps those, and so forth …”

“I’ll have them come to the church tomorrow. Now do you want hot chocolate or tea?”

Suddenly conversation was difficult. It seemed to him that the most revealing thing she had said was that she both loved and hated him and he could almost see the conflict vibrating in her tense, narrow face.

“Aside from Swan, I have to admit that I myself hate to think of you leading the Eskimos into some kind of battle,” she said. “It’s not their war. They don’t understand anything about it. It will be like you were leading some kind of children’s crusade.”

“Brit, I’ve never really known any Eskimos. Why is everyone so sentimental about them? They’re not children. They know more about survival than anyone. As you told me, when things get really bad, they leave their old people and girl babies on the ice to die. They sound pretty tough to me. I bet they’ll understand me.”

“They understand fighting the elements, not men. Hate is a luxury they can’t afford.”

“You think it’s romantic of them to fight polar bears with bone knives, but they want guns. I bet they’ll make great troops. How many able-bodied men are there around here?”

“Not much more than twenty. There used to be a hundred. You’ll want to hire the women too. The men won’t go far without them, and the women do all the work except for the hunting and fishing.”

“So maybe I can get forty people to work for me. That will just about double the men I’ve got. The Germans may have close to a hundred. Do you see why I can’t play games?”

“Yes, you don’t have to convince me anymore … Paul, do you want to make love?”

“I didn’t think this conversation was leading to that.”

“That’s what you really come here for, isn’t it? You have a lot of empty time to make up for. We probably don’t have much time together, so we better make the most of it.”

She astonished and confused him. As she methodically undressed, she suddenly seemed as coldly purposeful as a prostitute, but after the first embrace she began to tremble and made love as fiercely as though she were fighting for her life. There was no laughing together this time.…

When he had got dressed, she picked up the gun he had left on the table and handed it to him with two hands as solemnly as though it were a religious article, and insisted on helping him to buckle his pistol belt. Suddenly she smiled. “There,” she said. “Now you look like an American folk hero, all ready to make the Indians bite the dust.”

After dressing herself as an Eskimo, which apparently was her usual custom, Brit took him to Swanson’s house. They found the old man sitting in an overstuffed armchair which filled a quarter of his tiny livingroom.

“Swan,” she said softly, “the captain here says you can visit the prisoners on the island if you want to.”

Swanson was obviously surprised and pleased.

“I think well of you for this,” he said to Paul in his strongly accented English. “Although you are the military authority here, I feel I still have certain unavoidable responsibilities.”

“Dress warmly,” Paul replied. “It’s colder than you might think out there on that island.”

“Captain, I respect you in many ways,” Swanson said, “but don’t tell me about Greenland weather. I understand it.” Before putting on his parka, Swanson served them thimble-sized glasses of Aquavit and told his native housekeeper that he would be back “in about two hours.”

Never in his life had Paul felt so disreputable, so thoroughly contemptible, but he was still sure that he was only doing the necessary. Military leaders should not be commissioned as officers and gentlemen, he thought. They should be required to swear their willingness to lie and cheat as well as die for their country. They should be required to put a hand on the Bible and promise to do in old men, women and children if the situation required. Why should he be feeling guilty? If the Germans were occupying Greenland, they would almost certainly shoot the old man if he opposed them. Putting him on the island with the other prisoners was a damn sight more merciful.

And it was the Germans who had created this nightmare world where it was necessary to lock up elderly saints for the very crime of saintliness, Paul thought as they trudged through the snow to the whaleboat. Hatred for the Germans was as sustaining as love, even more so sometimes. When he thought about the Germans, there was a spring to his step and he felt more alive than usual, like any young lover, or hater. If he kept on thinking about the Germans it was almost possible to forget that he was deceiving an elderly clergyman and leading him into a crowded prison camp. On the wharf several Eskimos had gathered around the whaleboat and Paul was glad that he was not taking Swanson away by force.

Paul first stopped the boat at the end of the point where the machine gun stood and went alone into the ice shack. Williams was on duty. He was sitting on a box by the window reading a paperback book which he stuffed into his pocket as Paul entered. Paul asked him to call the Germans so that he could tell them to stay in their huts until the boat left. Walking out to the machine gun, Williams took Boats’s boatswain’s pipe from his pocket and placed it to his lips. He had not learned to blow it at all well. It gave a thin, wavering call much like Williams’s own voice, but it was still piercing enough to bring a man from each hut. Cupping his hands to his mouth, Paul told them in German that he was bringing a man to the island, and that they should all remain inside until the boatswain’s pipe sounded again.