Authors: Jean-Christophe Valtat
“Do you hungry?” asked Uitayok, who was looking for some way to dispel the tension that was condensing in the igloo. He was the host and considered his guest, however unwanted, to be under his protection. Gabriel, who remembered he had not eaten anything either at or since Brentford’s wedding, was hungry indeed, but the smell that rose from the food reserve Uitayok was indicating was not exactly appetizing. He said yes, though, thinking it would at least help in creating some sort of bond between them all.
But this proved even harder than he thought. Tuluk announced some
kivioq
, and dragging a dead seal from the reserve, he ripped it open with a knife. Gabriel’s heart darted up into his throat. The seal was actually a kind of larder, and had been filled with rotting sea birds looking a bit like miniature penguins (guillemots or auks, maybe, but Gabriel, the typical city dweller, knew little ornithology). These were now passed around. The Inuit took the heads of the birds inside their mouths, and having
gnawed at their necks with their renowned all-purpose teeth, peeled the birds like fruits, with a quick downward gesture, before eating their bodies. Then they took the fat from under the discarded skins and smeared their faces with it, as it was, Tuluk explained, good for the cold. Gabriel was instructed to put some on his half-frostbitten nose, which he did, wondering if they were not playing a trick on him. They were watching him intently, looking at each other and talking, he supposed, about the rather clumsy way he was doing things, with hands that were stinging and burning, and little better than two wood planks. Sometimes they chuckled, but he was not sure about what. He felt a bit like a child in the midst of teasing, slightly contemptuous adults.
But this was still better than having to eat raw half-rotten birds. Gabriel, hopelessly trying to hide his disgust, would have rather chewed the flesh of his own forearm than this sweet, reeking, melting flesh. His hosts’ systematic spitting and thunderous belches did not really stimulate his appetite either, not to mention the miniature bird carcasses strewn all over the floor.
Once again he wondered if this was the Eskimos’ normal way of doing things, or if they were putting on a show or some sort of hazing whose aim was obscure to him. Was it a kind of initiation ritual that would help him to be a part of them, if only for the short time they had to spend together? Or an attempt at self-assertion, to put him ill at ease, to make him feel how inept and useless he was? Maybe it was just his own delusion of the persecution he had come to associate with most forms of social life: two is company, three is a lynch mob, as he was fond of saying.
He thought of Brentford’s book and its dream of a True Community, but he couldn’t help thinking how opaque the communities would remain to one another, always misunderstanding each others’ motives. Well. Society is what you have to swallow, whether you like it or not, thought Gabriel, gulping
down his carrion snack with a lopsided smile that he hoped would pass muster.
“Good, huh?” asked Tuluk, with an inscrutable expression.
It was so good that after four or five rounds, Gabriel was on the verge of walking on all fours through the narrow entrance of the igloo to go out and deposit a full northern Lights yawn, as the delicate local wit called this rather frequent phenomenon. But he remained stoical, comforting himself with the idea that the next course could not possibly be worse.
“Seal’s eyes. Very Good,” said Tuluk, who looked sincere as he smiled, offering him a few small slices of some gelatinous matter, almost happy, it seemed, to share such a treat with their guest.
Gabriel did not sleep, but the night had been a nightmare on its own. He had been crammed, with almost no clothes on, into a
krepik
between Tuluk and the repulsive Tiblit, whose sexual jokes (if he understood correctly the general notion) amused Gabriel much less than they did the others—they even forced a mild smile onto the shaman’s face. Tiblit even had sex with dogs, a straight-faced Tuluk informed him. For a descendant of dogs, as all
qallunaat
were according to the generous Inuk mythology, this was hardly reassuring, and Gabriel turned his back toward Tuluk instead, much to the others’ delight.
The body heat brought back the blood to his extremities, but it was more like a long burn than a real relief. His neighbours snored so loudly that Gabriel almost expected the igloo to tumble down on them. He secretly abjured his faith in primitive anarcho-communism, or at least embraced the version which had private rooms and an à la carte menu.
He had the strange, unpleasant feeling than he was being subjected to some sort of life lesson, that he was supposed to enjoy the sensation of breathing under any circumstances or to
realize with gratitude that some people had harder lives than himself. But right now he did not enjoy it that much, to speak frankly. And what he mostly realized was that however the Eskimos lived, they were no wiser or better than he was. They knew how to do things that would be hard for him to learn, of course, but they would have a hard time learning some things he knew or could do. And in the end, anyway, the lesson the surrounding conditions were supposed to teach you so brutally was only this: when all human life is boiled down to the core, it’s not your race or class that counts but who you are as an individual. That is what matters when it comes time to decide if you are going to sacrifice yourself or sacrifice someone else. If you are just going to get down on your knees and offer your throat to the knife, or if you are going to turn around, knife in your hand, waiting for
them
. It is what having a soul is all about, not much more. Whether Inuk or
qallunaq
, the real mystery is what you are going to do when the end is here. And if you are lucky enough, you may never have to discover that at all. Whatever brought the best or the worst out in him, Gabriel, frankly, did not want to know more about than he already did. Great, he sighed, that’s it, now I’m going to think about Stella. It was one of those typical two o’clock sequences of ideas.
The three o’clock idea was that he was somehow paying for having toyed with the Inuit’s beliefs. His brain had wanted to play at being a shaman, and now he would see what being an Eskimo really meant. At some point he even had the feeling that the
angakoq
was not asleep but was staring at him in the dark, but that must have been his own sleeplessness going to his head.
Then, four o’clockish, he started worrying about Brentford. Helen, he remembered (sometimes taking for the truth what at other moments he considered a fit of delirium), was not going to help him. Gabriel had ruined his friend’s wedding, denounced his bride, and now had let him go to the North Pole on what
was nothing but a suicide trip. He reassured himself by thinking that he would ask the Inuit to help him find Brentford, if it was not too late.
When, lulled by the wind softly scraping against the igloo, he eventually fell into a rumble of unfettered pictures, the whole icehouse woke up.
He knew the reputation that some Inuit people had for throat singing, but their throat clearing was not to be underestimated either. For what seemed a half hour they grunted, snorted, coughed, hawked, and spat on the walls and on the floor, scratching themselves all the time, while Gabriel pretended to sleep a little longer, just as an excuse to keep his eyes shut. As he opened them tentatively, he perceived Tiblit passing through his hair the hand he had just dipped in the piss-pot, but he must have hallucinated that. At some point, though, they seemed to remember that they were fugitives, and hastened a little, leaving their
iglerk
regretfully in order to prepare some tea that had been left on the lamp to be heated. As Gabriel had done nothing to help—this was, at least, his interpretation—he was the last to be served.
He was as hopelessly useless when it came to packing for their departure. Contrasting with the Inuit’s rather sloppy domestic manners, strict rules and maniacal attention to detail prevailed when they loaded the sled. Gabriel, not knowing what to do with his hands, which were still unusable and burning, trampled on the ice a few feet away, trying to ignore what he felt were reproachful looks.
He was cold as well, with his best-man clothes still a little damp, and so ridiculously smart that they made him look like some lost miniature groom standing on an endless white wedding dress. It was a foggish, greyish day, and it froze him down to the marrow of his bones, even though the igloo had been built between hummocks a few yards off the coastline to
protect it from the winds as well as from being seen. The dogs were still around the igloo and Gabriel could see they had collars with little medallions hanging from them that tinkled as they moved, but although such ornaments were rather unusual for Eskimo dogs, he did not dare to come closer and check. He contented himself with exchanging looks with the lead dog, and it was a sort of relief for him to face eyes with no human intent or expectations he could not rise to. Maybe it was because the dogs were family.
The Inuit had forgotten something and were unpacking and then repacking. They were unhurried and cautious in a way that meant that they had enough problems of their own without adding extra troubles from either sled or dogs. Eventually, as the dogs were harnessed, Tuluk came walking toward Gabriel, who noticed for the first time the bear claws at the tip of his
kamik
.
“You come with us to Kalaallit Nunaat?”
Gabriel had not dared broach the topic during breakfast, when the talk had first revolved about their dreams and about how the amiable Uitayok admired the trash deposits of the Whites that he had seen while travelling to New Venice, and how, really, he dreamed of having such heaps of rubbish in front of his own house. All this, Gabriel understood, with his tongue rather hummocky in his cheek. Then they had decided to give their guest an Eskimo name. Gabriel, interpreting this as an honour, had prepared himself to receive it with dignity. It was Tuluk who proposed the name.
“Innatuumajuujaaraaluttuujanirartauqattalaurunnainiralaurtuugaluaq,”
he had declared solemnly, setting the whole igloo,
angakoq
included, rolling on the floor laughing, slapping their thighs, and pointing their fingers at Gabriel, who nodded stupidly, a waning smile on his face.
“Sorry. I do not know translate,” Tuluk said, wiping the tears from his eyes five minutes later. “It is about one who is a bit of a dreamer, who has a little dreaming seal in his head.”
“Oh?” Gabriel had said, deeming it was not the right time for any serious proposal.
But now it could not be avoided any longer.
“I have a favour to ask you.”
Tuluk frowned as if he wasn’t sure he had understood. Hadn’t they been helpful enough to the
qallunaq?
“A friend of mine, a good friend of the Inuit, is in trouble. He is on a trip to the Big Nail. I am afraid something will happen to him.”
“What friend of the Inuit?” asked Tuluk, doubtfully.
“Brentford Orsini,” answered Gabriel. The name had been an open sesame with the Scavengers and he had a faint hope it might work with the Inuit as well. And actually it did seem to work a little, to the point where Tuluk called the others and explained to them what Gabriel had said.
“Orsini,” confirmed Gabriel, thinking of a way to break the news that it more or less meant
bear
, as he knew that Inuit thought, just as he did himself, that
the name is as large as the man
. “He is a good friend of the Inuit. He wants them to rule with the New Venetians.”
Tuluk translated, using for the New Venetians the word
arsussuq:
“Those who live in abundance.” It was the same word, incidentally, by which they meant the Dead.
But the others would have little or none of it, and Ajuakangilak was most vocal about it. They had of course no reason to help, but Gabriel could feel that they still mulled over the involvement of the Polar Kangaroo and the danger of refusing anything to that white nitwit amateur of an
angakoq
, who had nevertheless secured the help of Kiggertarpok.
Waiting for the results, wondering how far Brentford could have got by now, Gabriel caught the eye of the lead dog. It was like a signal he did not know he had given. The pack suddenly darted toward the North, dragging the sled behind them. The Inuit, howling and cursing, ran after them as quickly as they could, and for a moment it seemed that they could catch up. Maybe it was only that the dogs,
looking behind from time to time
, gave the impression that they were slackening the pace, just enough to give hope to the chasing Inuit. But as soon as the Eskimos came closer, they sped up again.
Gabriel ran after them all, lagging behind, his feet full of pins and needles, slipping and tripping on rubbly ice, with the horrendous feeling that he was being abandoned on the frozen seas. He saw the sled disappear in the distance and then the Inuit, getting fainter and fainter, almost miragenous in the hazy morning.
He stopped after a while, panting, sobbing, his lungs like ice blocks about to explode, his blood throbbing in his ears, quite on his own again.
Except for the shadow that was looming over him.
Gabriel lifted his eyes. The shadow was that of a black airship that glided above his head, the very same that had been hovering above New Venice. A trapdoor opened from under the gondola, releasing a rope ladder that fell just in front of him. What choice had he but to take it and climb? He sprinted over and seized a rung, his hand burning through his glove as he did so, almost unable to grasp it firmly. But he had to go up, however painful that would be. He twisted his forearm about the rope and set his foot on the ladder. He started to climb, his clenched jaws slashed by the cold wind, jerking with pain at each new grip he took. But up he went, slowly, until the airship became the whole sky.
It took him endless minutes to reach the gondola. He did not dare look below, where the airship’s shadow twisted and folded as it passed over the hummocks, but looking in front of him, he could see faintly through the fog the Eskimos running behind the sled, almost catching it, but always missing it. “Follow that sled,” he said dramatically, as he reached the hatch and a powerful hand grasped his forearm to pull him inside.