‘It must be okay to have a Coke,’ said Eyjólfur loudly, standing up with a can in his hand. ‘I’m dying of thirst and this fridge is full of drinks. The Coke can hardly be poisoned.’ Thóra wasn’t going to let him get away with changing the subject.
‘Do you agree?’ she asked, as he flicked open the can and swigged from it. ‘Do you think there’s a curse on this place?’ She choked down her own overwhelming desire for a Coke. They needn’t both become ill; it was better to wait and see whether he lost consciousness before she yielded to the temptation. She wondered whether a Coke could be counted as one of the doctor’s potentially contaminated canned goods.
Eyjólfur took another gulp and sighed happily before replying. ‘No, I wouldn’t say that.’ He looked at Friðrikka as he spoke. ‘
Places
aren’t good or bad. At most, you can only describe the people who live in them that way.’ He tipped the can as if toasting the geologist. ‘Don’t you think so?’
Friðrikka did not reply immediately, but looked disdainfully away from the grinning man and stared at the wall. ‘Doesn’t matter, because in the end it’s all the same. Maybe it was just all of you and what went on here that made the place bad.’
‘Could you be a little clearer?’ asked Thóra. She was in no condition to read between the lines. Maybe what had happened here was unconnected with recent events; perhaps it had simply been typical work stuff, like an extramarital affair or some other gossip, but it still wouldn’t hurt to know what they were talking about.
‘For God’s sake, it was a lot of fuss over nothing,’ replied Eyjólfur. ‘Friðrikka simply gave up and quit. She didn’t have the nerve for it, or the sense of humour you need under these conditions. There’s nothing wrong with the place itself, although the work arrangements were pretty fucked-up. This kind of workplace isn’t for everyone.’
He was hardly one to talk. By his own account he had only come here for a week at a time while others stayed for lengthy periods. However, Thóra decided to say nothing, to protect Friðrikka. The geologist might turn out to be a crybaby who had convinced herself everything was intolerable in order to justify her leaving. Thóra could find this out later if necessary. She looked outside once more. ‘There’s smoke coming from the chimney on the roof,’ she said. ‘That must be a good thing.’
Friðrikka peered out and nodded. ‘It looks like the generator is running again,’ she said. ‘Unfortunately it’s probably too late for the showers and water, but who knows. Hopefully it was shut off intentionally and the water drained from the system. Either way, it’ll be nice not to have to sleep in here on the floor.’
‘Why shouldn’t the showers be working? They don’t run on electricity,’ said Thóra grumpily. It was bad enough not being able to have a coffee or an ice-cold Coke. Bella’s expression suggested that she felt the same.
‘If the camp has been without heat long enough for the water to freeze in the pipes, most of the lines are probably broken,’ said Friðrikka. ‘Unless they left the taps trickling, but I didn’t notice that when we had our look around.’ Thóra said nothing, hoping they had simply overlooked this during their inspection of the site. But she didn’t hold out much hope. They would probably have heard the water running in the oppressive silence.
‘Fuck,’ said Eyjólfur, seemingly just as pissed off as Thóra. He didn’t elaborate, but took another huge gulp of Coke. He reached for the tap on the sink next to the coffeemaker and sighed in relief when water ran out of it in a dense jet. ‘Well, at least we can flush the toilet in this building.’
‘I guess I should go out and help them turn the lights on and get everything working,’ said Friðrikka. ‘I know where everything is, so we’d get it done faster.’ Thóra wondered for a moment whether she should be lazy and lag behind, but she pushed away the thought. They would all have to contribute.
The hunter Igimaq watched the four people emerge from the big building. Three females and one male, all dressed in colourful outdoor clothing that contrasted with the environment. Despite their thick clothing and their distance from him, the man realized at the same moment that all the women were too tall for his taste, and two of them too thin. The man was no good either: he was scrawny and weak-looking, though he was not exactly a runt. It was like that with all Westerners. Their worship of skinny physiques was the best example of how they had broken all ties with nature. Despite their winter clothing, those three women would freeze to death in no time if they were forced to fend for themselves without the food and shelter they took for granted. They probably ate meat, but would puke if he took them hunting and showed them how such food was acquired. That was in the unlikely event that he would manage to catch anything with them or their ilk tagging along. They couldn’t even see him right now, even though he did nothing to conceal himself. He simply stood still and allowed the blowing snow to play about his warmly dressed body. His hood shielded his eyes, but he still had to squint from time to time in the strongest gusts. He watched them walk over to the other big building, where others were standing, from the look of them two men and a woman. They spoke together briefly, but he could not make out the words and would not have understood them anyway. He did understand Danish, although he had difficulty expressing himself in that language; not because he didn’t know the words, but rather because they were not sufficiently descriptive for what lay in his heart. It was a language that had developed under different circumstances than Greenlandic, based on an easier struggle for life and different values. The faint sound of the people’s conversation died out and he watched the group enter the building. Shortly afterwards, one light after another went on inside it. He continued to stand there, expressionless, though he felt uneasy. This couldn’t end well.
Igimaq turned and walked away. It was useless to stand here any longer; he had heard the helicopter and wanted to find out whether those it carried were on their way to this area. It was bad, but following every single movement of the newcomers wouldn’t help. Although they were defenceless out in the open, they were on their home field indoors. In any case he could change nothing, any more than he could anything else in this life; things went their own way and providence was often unreadable and illogical. No one knew that better than him. More than ever it seemed to him that trying to grasp what mattered most to human beings was like grabbing at sunbeams; they disappeared at the same time as one was still enjoying them, and one could never get a grip on them. Similarly, whatever a man loved always disappeared; he would come to possess something only to lose it later. The hunter had hardened his heart regarding all the things that had disappeared from his life over the years, and thankfully he had largely succeeded; he was even starting to feel the same about the family he’d lost. Perhaps he had already succeeded there, too. Igimaq could not be sure, because the thought of his family’s fate was so difficult for him to bear that he had refused to allow himself to think about anything since the time just before it happened. Had he been left in peace, this would have worked; until just recently, his mind had never turned to the woman he had loved and lost, and very rarely had he given a thought to the daughter and son who had also gone from him.
The hunter grimaced at the broad expanse of ice and snow. These outsiders and those who had come before had torn open an old wound. Triggered memories of a son who had awakened in him such great hope, a hope that had felt so sublime that it was bound to fail. He still recalled the little feet sticking out from beneath the blanket when he saw him newborn; the thick, broad soles that suggested he would make his mark on the world. Nothing had come of this, any more than his wife consistently seeing to his needs following each good hunt, as she had promised. Yet he had fulfilled his obligation, had given her two children who appeared healthy and had seen to it that there was always enough food on the family’s table. He had doted on the boy, but without him being aware of it. A good hunter, a real man, had to learn certain lessons on his own and build his own character through difficult experience; otherwise he would never learn the interplay between land and animals. But none of this mattered in the end. His wife and their two children were lost to him. His daughter was dead, and the same could be said for his wife and son. They would never break free from the fetters of alcohol and although it would be no trouble to visit them, he knew he never would. To him they were as dead as his daughter.
He approached the snowdrift behind which he had hidden his sled and heard the regular breathing of the dogs. They were tired after their strenuous day, but when he appeared only one of them continued sleeping. That dog lay curled up with its tail over its nose to protect its respiratory system from the cold. The other dogs had cocked their heads and now watched the hunter with attentive eyes. They stood up, one after another, until finally the sleeping dog stirred. It immediately sprang up and growled, softly but deeply. The growl was not directed at the hunter; that much was certain. Perhaps it was to remind the other dogs that it was still their leader. It could also be that by growling, the animal was making clear its irritation at the fatigue it had exhibited. With good reason; its days would soon be numbered. It tired too quickly, and even though it was not particularly old, its behaviour was showing ever increasing signs of its age. The hunter did not know what caused this any more than he knew what had caused his son’s life to ebb away. Maybe the dog was simply one of those whose legs failed them early, or else the battles it had fought to become the leader of the pack were starting to take their toll. After its death another such conflict would begin, in which the dogs would fight each other until the strongest and cunningest assumed power with the taste of its fellows’ blood in its mouth. The hunter just hoped those fights would not cost him more dogs, as sometimes happened.
The hunter stood and looked at the lead dog and saw in the creature’s intelligent eyes that it knew what lay ahead. He saw questions glittering in its speckled pupils: had it done a good job? Had it not led the team diligently through the dangers that accompanied the thinning of the ice? Had it not always made sure that the rest of the team behaved and obeyed his commands? If this creature could have spoken, they could have discussed its situation and he could explain to the dog why he was going to dispose of it. It was better to die as a lead dog than let the team force you out. But the connection between the hunter and the dog was not strong enough for such debate: the man understood the dog and the dog understood the man, but some things they could never express to each other. The dog would never understand this decision, even though it was more difficult for the man than the animal, which felt nothing. He had seldom or never had a better lead dog; this was the animal he had waited for ever since his grandfather had told him in his childhood that somewhere he would find a creature to whom he could speak without words. A beast that would understand him and help him through his greatest trials. That would follow Igimaq into the jaws of death without any hesitation.
There was something in the dog’s eyes that encouraged him to wait a while before implementing his decision. It was not the creature’s instinctive will to live, but something different. The moment that his grandfather had spoken of had likely not yet come, despite everything that had already happened. He should put off the inevitable just a bit longer, that would scarcely change anything. Spring was around the corner, and perhaps the dog would be refreshed by the warm winds. Or it might gain strength if he upped its food ration. The hunter could surely spare more meat. There was no shortage of it at the moment. The dog seemed almost to follow the hunter’s train of thought, and it perked up proudly and glared at the other dogs. They cowered in submission, and the dog looked towards the hunter to check the man had observed its dominance over the team. The hunter smiled at the animal, his teeth gleaming whitely against his dark face, then turned and looked back at the green buildings in the distance. It was not his job to rescue full-grown children who came here on a fool’s errand. He would concentrate on saving the dog; it was far more important to him.
Chapter 6
20 March 2008
Thóra woke up exhausted, having repeatedly jolted awake in alarm during the night. She didn’t know why; the stillness had been absolute. Perhaps that was precisely the reason, perhaps she was unused to such overwhelming silence. This explanation was more to her liking than the idea that she had been woken by a noise or movement from someone – or something – that had fallen silent when she stirred. She felt tired and stiff after a night on the lumpy mattress of the single bed she’d shared with Matthew, although at least her hangover was gone, leaving her with a clear head and a tongue no longer puffy and fuzzy. She vaguely recalled Matthew nudging her and saying he was going to get an early start. It was probably an hour since he had left the room and it was still only seven o’clock. By Thóra’s criteria, even that was too early – to get up at six in the morning she considered madness, only excusable if one had to catch a morning flight. She threw on yesterday’s clothes; although her hangover was gone, she did not want to start the day by opening her suitcase and discovering what she had packed. That could wait.
The weather had not got up to much overnight, and the murmur of the wind outside now did not suggest that the much-anticipated storm had arrived. She hoped it would stay like this, since hardly anyone in the group wished to be here any longer than necessary. Thóra shuddered at the thought of being in close confinement with these people for days and days. She actually had nothing against her fellow travellers – except perhaps Bella – but being isolated with strangers was a recipe for trouble. Especially if the doctor’s ban on drinking the coffee wasn’t lifted. Matthew had, understandably, not had the brainwave of bringing any bottled water to Greenland. When the doctor asked him about water supplies he replied shamefacedly that he had assumed they could melt snow if they ran out. He then added that he had brought a considerable supply of milk, fruit juice and other soft drinks. Shortly afterwards Thóra had made her own contribution to the reduction of those supplies, and this morning she was dying for a coffee rather than a Coke. Hope flickered in her heart when she encountered the aroma of coffee as she approached the kitchen, but her joy was tempered somewhat when she saw Bella sitting in the cafeteria. Thóra engaged in a brief internal struggle about whether to turn around and eat a handful of snow on the way out of the office building or break the doctor’s ban and have a cup of coffee in Bella’s company. Her craving for caffeine had the upper hand.