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SEAL HUNTERS LIVE ON THE ARK AWHILE
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A big wooden boat appeared on the horizon. Some village men paddled out to it in kayaks. When they got to the boat, they heard, “Two of you can stayâthe rest of you go away!” The villagers saw a long wooden stick with bristles waving in the air and ravens flying off the bristles. The ravens landed on another part of the boat.
“I've seen that tool before,” a man said. “I saw it in a dream.”
“Let's find out who's sweeping ravens,” another man said.
“Yes, it's not right, to invite two to stay and tell the rest of us to leave,” another man said. “Very selfish.”
A few men climbed up the side of the boat. While they were climbing, winter arrived. Sometimes this happens, winter lands suddenly as a raven. Now it was winter.
The men stood on the deck of the boat. Then they saw a European man dressed in a white coat, but it wasn't made of sealskin. “Heyâwas that you shouting? Was that you sweeping ravens away?” a man said.
“Yesâget off my ark,” the man in the white coat said.
“Is that what this boat is called?”
“Yes.”
“What's your name?” a villager said.
“Noah.”
“Noah,” the villager said, “you can't blame ravens for coming around. That's what they do. Ravens are curious. Every time a person paddles out in a kayak, ravens come by, to see if a fish is being caught or cleaned. They like the fish guts, for one thing. They'll squabble right on a kayak, if fish guts are seen. Gulls, too. They beg for food. Hey, heyâwhat's that smell?”
“I have a lot of animals below deck,” this Noah said.
“Noah, what kind of animals, Noah?” a villager asked. “Seals, white bear, ptarmigan?”
“I don't know those,” said Noah. “I don't have those with me.”
“Where is your family?”
“They died.”
“Did any of the animals kill them?”
“No.”
“How did it happen, then?”
“One by one, they jumped from the ark and drowned.”
“Come to our village, tell everyone what happened. We'll find you a new wife. It's winter now. You'll starve out here.”
“Go away. I'm staying on the ark.”
“Well, can you eat the animals below deck?”
“I won't. Go away!”
“Noah-no-family says go away,” a villager said. “All right, we're off to hunt seals, then.”
When they arrived at the seal grounds, they spread out and leaned over seal breathing-holes. Soon many ravens arrived. “We're curious about the ark,” a raven said. “We're all flying over to it.”
“Watch for Noah's broom, it's got sharp bristles,” a man said.
“We heard about it,” a raven said.
The ravens flew to the ark. A villager said, “Let's hunt seals a few more days. Then we'll go to the ark.”
They caught seals, lashed them to their sleds, then went to the ark. When they got there they saw ravens swirling about. Some had broom bristles in their beaks. “HeyâheyâNoah!” a hunter shouted.
“Get these birds out of here!” Noah cried. “I know you sent them!”
“We told you ravens are curious.”
“Get them away from me!”
“Give us some planks of wood, we'll chase off the ravens,” a man said.
“All right,” said Noah.
He pried off some planks. He dropped them to the ice. The hunters spoke to the ravens. Most of them flew off. “We know what it's like having too many visitors,” a hunter called up to Noah. “One time all of my cousins stayed the winter, my wife's cousins, too. But we took them in. It was winter. They were hungry.”
With this, the hunters climbed up onto the ark. They started living there. They ate what animals they found on the ark. They liked the taste of some; they hated the taste of others. “This is goodâthis isn't!” “This isn't a bad place to live awhile,” one man
said. “Yes,” another man said, “we can visit our families easily, then come back out here. There's unusual things to eat.” They settled in for a long visit.
Finally, Noah said, “I'll give you many more planks, go away.”
“No,” said a hunter. “Stop complaining. We're not poking you with knives, we're not poking you with ice chisels, we're not making you get rid of our dogs' fleas. Stop complaining. Sit and eat a meal with us.”
Many days went by.
Some colorful birds flew off, but otherwise the hunters ate most of the animals Noah had on the ark. There was much talk about this, how they tasted, what they looked like, what their voices wereâ“That one was unusualâthat one was unusual.” When the ice-break-up arrived, the hunters paddled kayaks back to their village. There were many holes in the ark where planks had been pried off. The ark sank away into the sea. But the hunters had left behind a kayak for Noah and he paddled it clumsily to shore. “You can stay here,” a woman said.
“No, I'm leaving,” said Noah.
“Do you know how to travel without an ark?” a man said.
“I can walk.”
“You no longer have a family where you came from. Stay, we'll find you a new wife.”
“I'll try and find one where I come from.”
The villagers walked south with Noah a ways, then turned backâa few ravens kept going, too. They were curious. Noah never returnedânobody ever knew if he got home, either. That is what happened.
The Inuit Cultural Institute was in Eskimo Point, a community largely developed by whites, or Europeans, for administration and mining purposes and whose population in the late 1970s was growing rapidly. Eskimo Point, too, was justifiably famous for having amongst its citizens some of the most remarkable, prodigious, and skilled carvers and sculptors; work from Eskimo Point is in private collections and museums all over the world. Mark's nephew Thomas accompanied Helen one day up to Eskimo Point, where she purchased a narrative sculpture called
The Man Who Held Two Knives.
When she returned the next day, I saw
The Man Who Held Two Knives
prominently displayed on her writing desk, among papers, books, and other paraphernalia of the basically makeshift situation of life in a motel. “There's a wonderful cooperative up there,” Helen said. “I saw carvings in bone, ivory, antlersâlots of soapstone. But this one really knocked me out.”
I picked up
The Man Who Held Two Knives,
not only to admire the craftsmanship but to feel its weight, its solidity, and observe its detail close-up. I referred to it as a “narrative sculpture” for two reasons. First, the sculptor, whose name
was Lucy, had told the person who sold the work to Helen, “I dreamed what the man in the carving is doing.” Of course a dream is a narrative; in this instance, however, the artist herself defined the autobiographical origin, “I dreamed ⦔ but also, to some extent, takes responsibility for the action depicted in the sculpture
because
she had dreamed it.
“I don't know if Lucy believes that dreams enter a person,” Helen said, “or if dreaming's a creative act all on one's own. I didn't talk with her. The salesman in the cooperative told me what Lucy said. I didn't hear it from Lucy herself.”
The second reason I refer to the sculpture as “narrative” is that a folded-up written story had accompanied Helen's purchase. Therefore
The Man Who Held Two Knives
depicts a moment frozen in time, even though the work itself is kinetic, it has animation, a kind of life force. When you look at
The Man Who Held Two Knives
, you are entering the life of the figure in medias res.
He stands about ten inches high, made of gray, grainy soapstone. His head is almost perfectly round; his eyes are etched slants, his mouth askew, there is no nose. His upper body is a triangular mass, his legs thick and short, though each of his arms is of plausible human dimensions. His feet are not clearly defined as feet; it is more that the legs widen at the ground. His right arm is angled 45 degrees upward, his left arm is angled 45 degrees downward. There are no hands to speak of, but rather knives in place of hands, so that there is no question as to whether the knives (and violent action associated with knives) are a physical extension of the body. The figure is therefore not “holding” knives but is
partly
composed
of knivesâsculpturally, at least, symbolically, most definitelyâno matter what Lucy had titled her work of art.
The sculpture is a forensic tableau. At the figure's left lies the head of a seal, whiskers included, and at the figure's right lies the head of an Inuit man whose expression is a fixed grimace with broken teeth. Oddly, he is wearing snow goggles.
A seal was hunted; a man was murdered.
In a monograph,
Eskimo Point/Arviat,
published in Winnipeg, ethnographic art historian Bernadette Driscoll writes, “In a curious way, the procurement of food is implicit in the very act of Eskimo Point carving. In recent interviews a number of the artists responded to the question âWhy do you carve?' with the statement âTo purchase the equipment and supplies I need to hunt,' or, more explicitly, âTo put food on the table.' A very basic equation, that: sell artwork to make money in order to make a living in the more traditional, ancient manner. A dignified way to comport oneself on the planet.
So, Lucy had dreamed of a man doing an ill deed within an altruistic context. Still, according to the written story that came with
The Man Who Held Two Knives,
this man had murdered
in order to
provide for his family, a stunning ethical complication.
A man went out to hunt seals. He had his scrapers and a long, sharp spear. He also had two knives. He went many days with no luck. Then he saw another man who had just killed a seal. He offered the man something for it. When the man said no, the other raised
both of his knives and with one stabbed. That is what happened. That is what I saw.
“Lucy's dream has the quality of direct testimonyâyou know, as in a courtroom. Doesn't it?” Helen said.
“Yeah, like she's been brought in as the star witness.”
“âLucy, what did you see happen out there in nowheresville?'”
I set
The Man Who Held Two Knives
back on the table. “Why did this one catch your eye?”
“Oh, I don't know. I think partly it was knowing that a woman had made it. And partly, I suppose, because it's so striking; you just feel so much energy from it. And sadness, too. Strange, the whole scene it depicts, don't you think? I don't know. It's both grotesque and beautiful all at once. It's like hearing a story you wish you'd never heard, about something you wished never had happened. But of course it
did
happen and you
did
hear it.”
“Yes, Helen, but it was just a dream.”
“Think what you wish.”
Before I met Helen I had not heard of Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Then I saw the quote, “What good is intelligence if you cannot discover a useful melancholy?” taped to her typewriter.
“He is my most beloved writer,” she said. “He is my favorite writer.”
In his introduction to the collection
Rashomon,
scholar-translator Howard Hibbett writes, “To sketch the background and temperament of Ryunosuke Akutagawa is to risk a melancholy cliché. He was brilliant, sensitive, cynical, neurotic; he lived in Tokyo, went to the University, taught briefly, and joined the literary staff of a newspaper. Even his early suicide [in 1927, at thirty-five] only heightens the portrait of a modern Japanese intellectual, the double victim of an unsympathetic society and a split culture. But it is a vague composite portrait. For Akutagawa himself, aloof, elusive, individual, remains withdrawn behind the polished façade of his collected works. All that needs to be known about the author, besides the name stamped on the binding, may be found within these poems, essays, miscellaneous writings, and more than a hundred beautifully finished stories.”
Helen displayed a framed magazine or book jacket photograph
of Akutagawa on her desk. Looking at the camera, it's as if Akutagawa wants us to dismiss his youthful handsomeness as a fraudulent representation of a tormented inner life. With his intense sidelong glance of preoccupationâor dismissal of earthly concernsâhe seems to judge the sparse, café-life tableau of table and teacup as an annoying “writerly” cliché. Weary, sardonic smile, sensual mouth, disheveled black hair combed back from a high forehead on a long face, his is one of the most severely enigmatic expressions I have ever seen. I think it is safe to say that in the West, Akutagawa is known best as the author of the collection of stories
Rashomon;
a story in that collection, “In a Grove,” which centers on the rape of a traveling wife in front of her husband by a thuggish stranger, an incident related from seven points of view, including that of a ghost, served as the basis for the famous film
Rashomon,
directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune.
When Helen translated the quote on her typewriter, I said, “Where did Akutagawa write that?”
“In a letter, I think,” Helen said. “Or an essay.”
“And do you agree with it?”
“Well, it is a question, after all. It can't be completely answered. But you can think about it. You can enter into a kind of philosophical dialogue with it, can't you? But finally, yes, I do agree. Melancholy seems just the right mood to keep a clear perspective on life. Yes. Yes, I do agree. What do you think?”
If Helen were alive today I would be able to answer, “I have thought about that question practically every day.” Which is the truth.
Helen loaned me
Rashomon
and another book in an English edition written by Akutagawa,
A Fool's Life
, whose fifty-one elegantly composed vignettes make for a kind of literary suicide note. It begins with a letter-dedication to a friend, Kume Masao; in part this reads, “I exist now in a most unhappy happiness. But strangely without remorse. Only that I feel sorry for those who had me as husband, father, son. Good-bye. In the manuscript,
consciously
at least, there is no attempt to justify myself.”
After reading
A Fool's Life
and
Rashomon
the worldâand I search for diction that allows ebullienceâ“opened up anew.” I fairly begged Helen for a reading list in Japanese fiction, works in English translation, of course. On her list was Kawabata, Akutagawa, Soseki, Junichiro Tanizaki, Ibuse. “After that, you're on your own,” she said. “But these will keep you for a good long while, I bet.”
But over the weeks I did not leave that quote alone. Finally, I realized that I had a specific curiosity about it. I wondered to what extent the quote (“What good is intelligence if you cannot discover a useful melancholy?”) vindicated Helen's previously existing melancholiaâas she described her “normal” state of mindâor did her adoration for Akutagawa require her to adopt his epigrammatic philosophy. Of course, when I finally mustered up enough courage to ask her, my inquiry lacked, to say the very least, sophistication: “Helen, why's that quote so important to you? I mean, it's on your typewriter, so you read it every day, don't you.”
“It's haunting, that's the thing,” she said. “I can't entirely explain it. I won't tryâbut, well, you read that story âIn a Grove,' didn't you?”
“Yes. And I'd like to read it again before giving it back.”
“Well, the ghost's testimony is from the afterlife, you remember? The quote is like that, I suppose. My beloved Akutagawa is dead and gone. Butâand I can only imagine how this might soundâhe speaks to me.”
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NOAH AND THE FLOOD
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One day just before winter arrived, some villagers saw a lot of seagulls swirling up from a big wooden boat. “Heyâlookâlet's go out and see why the gulls landed there! Let's go look at this boat close-up.”
“Should we bring spears?” a man said.
“Yes,” another man said.
The villagers paddled out in kayaks to the boat. When they got there, a man appeared on deck. “My name is Noah,” this man said. “Go away!”
“What's this boat called?”
“It's called an arkâgo away!” this Noah shouted down.
“Is your family with you?”
Three people stood next to Noah nowâ“This is my wife, my son, my daughter,” Noah said. “Go away!”
“Why are you here?” a village man asked.
“Where we come from, there was a big flood,” said Noah's wife. “We got on this ark and floated away in the rain.”
“Who built this boat?” a man said.
“My husband,” said Noah's wife.
“Why did you have to leave home?”
“People all around us were behaving badlyâdoing bad things.
Our strongest spiritâGodâcaused a flood and they drowned. Everybody drowned except us and all the animals on the ark.”
“What kind of animals?” a village man said.
With this, a lot of big animalsâand colorful birdsâappeared on the deck of the boat. “It's good we brought our spears,” a village man said. “Push those animals into the water, we'll get them before they sink awayâwe'll catch some, kill them, and eat them.”
“No,” said Noah.
“What did people do, where you came fromâwhat made this God so angry?” a man asked.
“They were greedy,” said Noah. “They killed each other. They stole things from each other.”
The villagers all were laughing hardâthey laughed hard, and the laughing went on a long time. “In a village north of here,” a man finally said, “somebody stabbed somebody else, but we didn't have a flood. In a village north of here, somebody took somebody else's wifeâthey ran off together. We didn't have a flood. In a village north of here, somebody hit somebody else on the head with a rock, he died. But we didn't have a flood.” In a village north of here, a man reined up his dogs badly, the dogs got away and choked and died, but we didn't have a flood. In a village north of here, a woman poisoned her husband and ran off with the man who had provided the poison. No floodâno flood.”
“Where we come from, there was a flood,” Noah's wife said.
Soon winter arrived. The ark was stuck in the ice. “Noah,” a man called up, “bring your family to our village. Give us a few animals, a few planks of wood, we'll get you through the winter. Otherwise, you'll starve.”
“No,” said this Noah.
“All right,” a villager said, “but at least let your family come with us.”
“All right,” said Noah.
The villagers set out with Noah's family. But instead of going to their home village, they traveled to a village to the north. When they arrived, a man said, “Did you see that big wooden boat out to sea?”
“Yes,” said a man in this new village.
“Noahâthat's his nameâis on the boat. This is his wife, his daughter, his son. We're leaving them with you for a while.”
Now Noah's wife, son, and daughter were living in this new village. That very night, Noah's wife took out some pieces of food from an animal on the ark. A haunch and neck, from a strange animal. These new villagers weren't giving them anything to eat, so they ate this, from the ark. Right away this happened: Noah's wife ran off with a man from the village; but first, she knocked the man's wife out with a rock. Noah's son stabbed a man, then tried to run off with that man's wife, but the man knocked Noah's son down. Noah's son ran out and didn't return. Noah's daughter found her brother half dead on the ice a few days later. Soon after, Noah's daughter fed some sled dogs pieces of her clothes soaked in seal oil, the dogs choked and a few dogs died. The next morning, Noah's son and daughter were sent to the next village to the southâbut there was no flood.
When the ice-break-up arrived, Noah's wife paddled a kayak back to the ark. “Where have you been?” asked Noah.
“I ran off with a man from a village to the north,” she said, “but, finally, I choked him a little and ran off again, and now I'm here.”
“What about our son, what about our daughter?”
Noah's wife told Noah all that had happened, in that village to the north. “OhâOhâOh” said Noah, weeping. “Ohâohâoh.”
In a few days the ark was floating free of ice, and Noah's son and daughter paddled out in kayaks. They all floated in the southerly direction. But the ice had cracked the hull planks wide open and the ark sank away. “Which village should we paddle to?” asked Noah's wife.
“Not the village to the north,” said Noah's daughter.
The village to the south took them in. “What will you do now?” a man asked.
“We'll walk in the southerly direction,” Noah said. “Yes,” said Noah's daughter. “Yes,” said Noah's son. “Yes,” said Noah's wife. The next day, they did that. They never came back. They didn't come back to the village to the northâor the village to the south.