The Day is Dark (25 page)

It seemed a simple
yes
or
no
was too much to ask of him. ‘I understand that you know this area better than anyone. Are you willing to tell me what’s wrong with this place? Are there often polar bears here?’

‘I
was
telling you. You do not listen.’ The man had become angry again.

‘Yes, I was listening but I have trouble understanding what you’re saying. We speak and think in a different way where I live. For example, our souls don’t move around after we die.’ Thóra knew she had a limited time to ask the man what she wanted to know. His eyes were starting to dart around as if to determine which way he should leave. To Thóra it was all one endless ice sheet that led either to the mountains or out to sea, but for him the landscape must look much more diverse. ‘We are missing two men and one woman from our camp. You said that our friends would not return. Do you mean these people, and are you implying that they are dead?’ The man did not reply, gazing into the distance. ‘Are they dead?’ For the first time since stopping in her tracks Thóra moved, stepping directly into the man’s line of sight. ‘I’ve got to know.’

‘Leave this place and tell the others to keep away.’ He stared into her eyes. ‘You will regret it if you do not.’

The man clearly didn’t intend to explain any further, so Thóra tried a different tactic. ‘What happened to your daughter? I was told that she died here in this place.’

Igimaq squinted at her. The corners of his mouth turned down. ‘My daughter is none of your business. She is no longer here.’

Precisely. ‘Did the same thing happen to her as to the people we’re looking for?’

‘You will certainly find that out if you do not leave. Then it will all be too late.’

He put the piece of beadwork in his pocket and put his glove back on. ‘When you see the marks you will understand what I am talking about.’ He moved past her. ‘But then it will be too late.’

‘What?’ Now it was Thóra’s turn to be angry. ‘Marks? Can’t you just explain properly? What marks do you mean?’ The man walked away without looking back. ‘Why did you come here?’ she called out after him, hoping to delay him.

‘I have done what I came to do. I came to ask you to leave.’ The man turned around, and now his face was framed by the fur hood he had thrown over his head as he left. ‘But you do not listen, any more than those who came here before you.’

‘Did you damage the satellite dishes and snowmobile?’ Thóra’s limited language skills prevented her from knowing what these things were called in Danish, but she hoped that the Danes had taken the English names unchanged, as they usually did with technical terms. The man looked back one last time at this, but his expression showed that he understood none of it.

Thóra watched him walk into the night, annoyed at herself. He had a long stride but walked in complete silence. It was as if he had made a deal with the snow not to crunch beneath his feet. When he walked between the floodlight towers they went on again, but he appeared not to be startled by the intense light. It wasn’t until he disappeared entirely from her sight that Thóra got moving herself. I doubt Bella is even watching, she thought as she tore open the cafeteria door. The man could have killed and eaten her during the time she had been gone, and there was no sign of her chain-smoking guardian angel. But this was probably just as well, since the man would have disappeared if someone else had turned up. Still, she decided to pause for a moment before she went back to the office building, just to torture Bella a bit, make her pace the floor and worry over Thóra’s fate. She was going to find Matthew and finish her glass of wine in the lounge before going back to bed. She did not need to search long; he and the doctor came running to the vestibule while she was still pulling off her coverall.

‘What’s wrong?’ Matthew hurried over and took hold of her shoulder to steady her when she stumbled trying to get out of the second trouser leg. ‘Did something happen?’ He looked in astonishment at her dress but said nothing. The last time he had seen her in it, they were at the theatre.

‘Well, not exactly. I met Igimaq, the hunter the woman told us about. He came here to tell us to leave.’

‘What?’ Matthew seemed furious. ‘What were you doing out there?’

‘I was coming over to warn you. The floodlights went on and we saw a man outside. He was walking in this direction and I thought maybe you were asleep.’ Suddenly she realized what a bad idea this had been. Maybe Oddný Hildur had made precisely the same mistake when she disappeared. The floodlight system hadn’t been operational at the time, but she could very well have seen the man despite that and followed him out into the cold. ‘Anyway, nothing happened. He was very cryptic and it was impossible to get anything useful out of him. We need one of the locals to speak to him for us.’

‘Are you out of your mind, just rushing out there like that? Especially when you’d just seen a stranger outside?’ He was nearly shouting.

‘I’m very sorry, and I know it was ridiculous,’ she said as apologetically as possible, ‘but I still managed to talk to him. That was worth something, since we’re not going to get to visit him by snowmobile.’ Thóra hung up her coverall. ‘He pretty much confirmed that Bjarki and Dóri are dead, as well as Oddný Hildur.’

‘What do you mean by “pretty much confirmed”?’ asked Finnbogi.

‘He said that our friends would not return. I can’t interpret that in any other way.’

‘Was he involved in their deaths?’ Matthew was clearly still annoyed about Thóra’s impulsive trip outside. And no doubt his anger was fuelled by the fact that he and Finnbogi had sat by the window and peered through a crack in the curtain when the floodlight came on, but had seen nothing. It hadn’t crossed their minds to go outside to see what was up. Doubtless it irritated him that, for once, she had proven to be more resourceful than him.

‘Maybe,’ she replied. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’ They moved into the lounge, where she told them everything she could recall of her conversation with Igimaq. Neither man understood his statement about marks. They guessed that he had meant some sort of signs or symbols. Natural phenomena that in a primitive understanding could be considered omens of hidden danger. After drinking the remainder of the Opal schnapps Thóra returned to the office building, now accompanied by Matthew. When they entered the meeting room Bella was not pacing the floor fretfully, as Thóra had hoped, but snoring under her duvet.

Chapter 20

22 March 2008

Oqqapia sighed in resignation as she surveyed the kitchen. There were no clean glasses or dishes. The stack in the washing-up bowl had become so tall that it was no longer possible to wash what one needed to use at any particular time without running the risk of all the crockery crashing to the floor. She couldn’t afford to replace the dishes, so she had recently resorted to wiping off the glasses and dishes as they were needed, using a ragged old dishcloth that was hardly any cleaner than they were. It wasn’t even as if she could wash up even if she did pull herself together. The village had no running water, which meant that she had to fill the house’s tank before she could do anything about it. Long ago the authorities had drilled for water in the village, but they hadn’t thought to lay pipes to the houses. If the villagers wanted access to water, they had to fetch it, drawing it from a pump in a little pumphouse into various-sized tanks. In their household it was Naruana’s job, but he’d been unusually lazy lately and in that kind of mood he was useless. Oqqapia was completely different, perhaps because she couldn’t allow herself not to care. Her job wasn’t much to speak of, but it was still important. Every three days she took on the task of emptying all the village houses’ indoor latrines into the sea. She made many trips with the foul-smelling buckets down to the beach, and although her burden was lighter on the way back she wasn’t able to carry more than two buckets at a time. When she started this job three years ago she made numerous attempts to carry four buckets at once but quickly discovered that this was unworkable as too much splashed up out of them along the way. Therefore, she had no choice but to make more trips with fewer buckets, and if she missed a shift she soon heard about it. The same people that had a go at her the few times it happened never complimented her when everything went according to schedule. She wished there were other work to be had, but the villagers knew that no one was waiting anxiously to take over from her and were thus careful not to keep her informed about other jobs that occasionally came up.

Oqqapia wasn’t about to add carrying water to the tank to her latrine duties. Naruana would have to do his own job. If she went and fetched the water for him he would take it for granted, and before she knew it it would be her job and he would be left with no responsibilities. So she had to settle for staring queasily at a juice carton before drinking from its spout. A sour smell rose from the frayed cardboard every time she raised it to her lips. The contents were still all right but the instant before the liquid entered her mouth was difficult. If there were just one clean glass.

Naruana appeared in the doorway. His black hair was dirty and hadn’t been cut for ages, and although his bare shoulders were still well-muscled they didn’t come close to looking like they had when she saw him undress for the first time. It was painfully clear that life had been tough on them both, and it wasn’t finished with them yet. She had removed the mirror from over the bathroom sink a long time ago. It was bad enough to wake up feeling as if death had settled into her guts, without having to look at herself to boot. But that was a temporary respite. She could see herself, and how things had turned out for her, reflected in Naruana.

‘Give me a sip.’ Naruana held out his hand and took the half-empty carton. He raised it to his lips and drained it, then put it down on the kitchen table, adding it to the pile of empty beer cans. ‘Are we all out?’ He didn’t need to explain what he meant; they were too similar.

Oqqapia nodded. ‘You drank the last can last night.’ She’d searched the house high and low for a beer, without success. In fact she couldn’t recall which of them had drunk the last one, but she supposed it had been him. That’s how it always was and how it always would be. He took priority, even though she contributed more to the household. For instance, they’d bought the beer with the money she’d received from the foreign woman. If they hadn’t used it, yesterday evening would have been pretty miserable; of course it had been dull anyway, beer or no beer, but that was another story. Alcohol numbed her feelings and made life bearable. When everything came good there would finally be no reason to drink. But when would that be and what would it take for it to happen? Two years ago she, like other villagers, had thought that better days were ahead with the arrival of the mine they’d heard was going to be dug in the vicinity. Finally she, and the others, would have more than an occasional half a day’s work, and life would regain its purpose. Wake up, work and sleep. That was better than wake up, drink and sleep. She still remembered the disappointment all the villagers had felt when it turned out that the mine would be in a place they had been taught to avoid and with which it was forbidden to tamper. The numbness that consumed everyone and everything in the wake of this discovery was awful, actually worse than life had been before the future appeared to hold some promise.

‘You shouldn’t have talked to that woman.’ Naruana could say that now, but he hadn’t complained when she came home with money. He had run immediately to Kajoq, who ran the village shop – if it could be called a shop. One never knew whether a product would be available since goods were supplied only twice a year, in spring and autumn. Fresh foods weren’t available except for a few weeks a year, but Kajoq never failed in one respect: there was always plenty of beer and liquor. She couldn’t recall him ever running short there. ‘You shouldn’t have talked to her.’ Naruana was repeating himself, like the old men who sat on the pier and went on about the same things day in and day out.

‘I didn’t tell her anything. Just suggested that she talk to your dad.’ Oqqapia knew this would cause him pain. Every piece of news concerning his father seemed to hurt him, no matter how insignificant. Despite this, she saw no reason not to mention him. She’d learned from one of the teachers who had lived in the village for a time when she was a child always to tell the truth, but also that unspoken words were sometimes just as misleading as outright lies. But what should one include in the telling, and what was better left out? Still, she did what she could to live by this maxim, despite the fact that many other virtues she had once held in high esteem had long since departed.

‘Why on earth did you say that? Why don’t you just invite her round here as well?’ Naruana turned away from the open refrigerator towards her. He was even angrier than before, but for other reasons now than just the lack of Coke or juice to be found there.

Now Oqqapia was in trouble, and her cheeks reddened slightly. Should she take this opportunity and tell him that she had actually promised the woman that she could use their phone to call, or should she not? She hadn’t technically invited her to visit, so she could deny that accusation in good conscience. She decided not to mention it even though she knew this was perhaps not entirely honest. Maybe the woman wouldn’t come, and if she did appear Naruana might not even be at home. It was just as likely that he would be down at the pier or visiting someone who might have beer to spare. ‘Come on. You were happy enough about it yesterday.’

‘I’m never happy. You should know that.’ He slammed the refrigerator door, causing the jars of jam and other food in it, most of it gone off, to clatter. That was another thing that had been neglected, besides the washing up: clearing out the refrigerator. ‘I just want to be left alone by that lot and you’re stirring things up by talking to them. If no one says anything they’ll just leave and everything will carry on as usual.’