Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series)

by Ferenc Máté

  —WILLIAM DUNCAN, Anglican Missionary

  One of the chief characteristics of the Indians on the B.C. coast is their hospitality and I have never known of a single instance where anyone was allowed to go hungry while an Indian had food near him. This hospitality has been regardless of race or color.

  —W.M. HALLIDAY, Indian Agent (1918)

  Is it not a beautiful custom among these savages (wilden) that they bear all deprivations in common, and are also at their happiest best eating and drinking together. I often ask myself what advantages our “good society” possesses over that of the “savages”…. If this trip has for me (as a thinking person) a valuable influence, it lies in the strengthening of the viewpoint of the relativity of all cultivation, and that the evil as well as the value of a person lies in the cultivation of the heart.

  —FRANZ BOAS

  I awoke in my berth to thunderous drumming.

  “Cappy, you’re wanted,” Nello called from above.

  I climbed up into a day as gloomy as the dawn; the chill in the air warned of snow.

  A boat-length from the ketch were four canoes full of broad-shouldered men, some moving their paddles to hold the canoes in the stream, others banging them against the gunwales in unison.

  A magnificent man stood in the first canoe: head raised, wearing a carved eagle helmet, its wings spread toward the clouds. A dark blanket hung over one shoulder, trimmed in red, decorated with shells, but under it he wore a gold-trimmed purple coat that could have belonged to an admiral of some tiny landlocked nation or the doorman of a high-priced downtown hotel. Below it showed tuxedo trousers and bare feet. He carried a carved stick taller than himself, ringed with bands of hammered silver and topped with a brass knob from a bedstead. He spoke with proudly lifted head and raised right arm, his voice as lordly as a challenge, as emotive as an oration.

  “He said he has paddled clean around the world,” Nello translated.

  “From where?” I asked.

  “From the beach there. We like to exaggerate.”

  As he spoke, the man stepped gracefully from the canoe and walked toward us—ankle-deep in forty feet of water. He stopped with an arm raised, like some apparition, in the middle of the sea.

  “How did he do that?” I whispered.

  “Christ only knows,” Nello said.

  The man talked on, waving here, gesturing there.

  “Is he threatening?”

  “He’s inviting us to his feast.”

  “As the main course?”

  Instead of answering, Nello raised his right arm and, in a voice deep and stern, gave a long reply.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “Thank you.”

  WHEN THE CHIEF had walked back to his canoe and the canoes turned for shore, I pointed at the sick shack. “Last night, I saw a woman in there. Her eyes were deranged, her face so twisted I couldn’t tell for sure but—”

  “But what?”

  “Do you think it could be her?”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s probably not.”

  CANOES CAME FROM both north and south all day, some single, some rafted together to make a stable barge, bringing what had been secretly made or accumulated over years: masks, boxes, baskets, furs, enormous carved feast dishes the size of a small bathtub; piles of blankets, sacks of flour, pails, mirrors, bolts of cloth, washbasins, pots, pans, hats, braided wreaths of cedar, stickloads of bracelets.

  Everything they brought was to be given away to celebrate the past year’s big events: deaths, births, marriages, the raising of poles, the building of houses, the transfer of rights to fishing privileges or berry patches. “They come to feast, to sing and dance, Cappy. Tseka—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Halloween rolled into one. Feasts and theater all winter long. We forget the world outside, just laugh and cry and frighten each other to death, and kiss each other’s wives because there is no jealousy during Tseka.”

  At noon he rowed ashore and came back an hour later, excited.

  “Come on, Cappy. I found a cousin married into this tribe. She’ll show us around. We might just….” But he stopped when he saw my eyes.

  Charlie stayed aboard to look after Sayami, and Sayami to safeguard Charlie. We rowed to the north end of the beach, and landed near the brambles where smoke rose from fires that burnt in pits like shallow graves. Women tended them, putting a layer of stones over the coals, then flopping salmon and halibut onto the stones and covering them with seaweed to bake. Their movements were flowing, unhurried, the way small waves move as they spread over the sand. They watched me curiously as I said, “Good morning,” but made no reply.

  Where seals were being butchered out, a cloud of gulls shrieked and circled, then flew off toward canoes that came in, heaped with fish. Men were hauling great loads on their shoulders, and young girls worked an open fire ringed by skewers and roasting-tongs stuck into the sand—all with fish heads and slabs of fish and fish tails on them. The roasting fish smoldered when the girls watched the men more than the flames. They looked at us openly with dark, knowing eyes; one with a sensuous mouth and blanket open at her bare chest looked away, as if she knew men like us from before.

  The village rose above us on the midden. From close in you could see its steep, eroded side and the dark layers of earth and white layers of shells where, over the centuries, the remains of old villages piled upon each other. Stairs led up the midden onto the boardwalk. Two strides wide, it ran the length of the village, covered with old and young: carrying or stacking high the arriving presents, or sitting weaving, or hanging hemlock branches onto housefronts. A raven cawed from a roof. We walked under fixed gazes and suspicious eyes, carved posts with monstrous heads towering over us. I stumbled over a loose plank and into the arms of an ancient woman. Her weathered skin hung in deep folds, her gray hair flew wildly, and her nose and jaw were as twisted as her feet. I apologized. She said something and laughed, and loud laughter rose around us.

  “She said she’d keep you,” Nello said, “if only you were younger.”

  We were stopped by two black bears beside a door. They were perfect but for their dead eyes and their angular human movements. Nello pulled me away like you pull a child. “That’s the house of the Hamatsa, the Cannibal Dancers. If someone who shouldn’t goes in there, he dies. And that’s no theater.”

  A few houses farther on, we ducked through a yawning mouth into the gloom of a great house where the stench of urine mingled with smoke. “Don’t stand there, Cappy, that’s the pee box,” Nello said. “We use it to wash blankets. And to wash our feet to keep away ghosts.”

  Around a fire in the center of the house, women squatted on their haunches, taking hot stones with tongs and dropping them into wooden boxes spouting vapors that smelled of fish. A pretty young woman came toward us; pieces of abalone shells hung from her ears and played in the light. “My cousin,” Nello said, then, “Captain Dugger. An old friend.”

  “My soup is almost done,” she said in perfect English. “I will show you the village.” And she went back to her box.

  “She speaks well,” I said to Nello.

  “Best in the village,” he said. “She learnt from the missionaries when they came a decade ago and took away the children. It was for their own good, they said; for their health. Like hell. It was to teach them to speak white, think white. Be good white Injuns to work in sawmills and canneries, not ones that quit to go feast and dance all winter. That’s why they hate the potlatch, Cappy. It doesn’t make good slaves. Anyway, the kids refused to learn.”

  “Except me,” the cousin said. “I learnt. I wanted to know what they said behind my back.”

  She led us out toward the quiet end of the village and, looking directly at me, asked, “Are you her husband?”

  I started to answer, but was stopped by a hardness in her eyes.

  “I thought so,” she said. “The paxala has many places: huts in the woods, caves. All hidden.”


  “She’s not in the sick hut, is she? There’s a woman there who—”

  “There’s just a girl and an ancient one, and a crazy lady. Nice but crazy.”

  “And in the Hamatsa house?” Nello said.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  By the time we rowed back to the ketch, the air had chilled and the first flakes of snow ghosted over the sea.

  AT DUSK THE beach emptied, the canoes stood alone, and the embers of the fires glowed through the falling snow. Snow-blurred figures with blankets over their heads shuffled like humble faithful along the boardwalk, heading toward the great house at the north end of the cove.

  A booming voice drifted across the water, muffled by snow.

  “It’s beginning,” Nello said. “Dress warm; we could be there awhile.”

  “How long a while?”

  “Hard to say. My uncle went to one for a day and stayed two years.” And he folded two blankets for him and Charlie. “You coming or staying?” he asked Sayami.

  “You kidding?” Sayami smiled. “You think I’d miss a party?”

  With all of us aboard, the skiff had little freeboard, so I rowed slowly. We hauled the skiff up the beach to just below the midden, out of the reach of the rising tide. “Remember where we’re leaving it,” Nello instructed. “Below the killer whale pole. And remember where the stairs are. If we’re separated—or if anything happens—we meet back here. If the skiff is gone—”

  “Why would it be gone?” I cut in.

  “I don’t know. But if it’s gone, just take the smallest canoe and get back to the ketch.”

  “And if that’s gone?”

  He ignored me. “Take it and don’t wait. For anyone. They won’t wait for you.”

  The snow had covered the midden and the houses, and hooded the eyes of the carved beasts as if putting them to sleep. The people filed by barefoot through the snow, some carrying twigs as torches, others holding dried eulachons with their tails aflame. They stopped at the big house. At each boom of the voice from inside, a man stepped from the line—always of noble carriage, richly dressed in furs or ornate blankets—climbed the short steps to the door, and stood with the light from inside throwing a glow around him; his tribe followed close behind.

  “The chiefs are received in order of stature,” Nello said.

  When everyone else was inside, the name of the ketch, a bit garbled, was called.

  “Go, Cappy,” Nello said. “You chief.”

  I walked slowly up the steps.

  24

  POTLATCH: THE FIRST NIGHT

  The missionaries have labored for years to convert the Indians to industrious white ways, but the results seem to be negative. Until the potlatch is eliminated, there is not much chance for any great progress. The potlatch takes so much of their time and so many hours are spent at it in laziness and idling that it does not produce energy and ability.

  —W.M. HALLIDAY, Indian Agent, Alert Bay (1913)

  Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in celebrating or encourages either directly or indirectly another to celebrate any Indian festival, dance or other ceremony of which the giving away of goods or articles forms a part…is guilty of an offence and is liable to imprisonment.

  —SECTION 149 OF The Indian Act Statutes of Canada

  Towering flames leapt from the fire pit in the vast house, licking roof beams and igniting sparks in roof planks. Around the fire the floor was empty but the raised platforms against the walls were dense with people sitting on their haunches, wrapped in their blankets, all watching me. On the far wall above the ramps hung torn sails painted with monstrous faces blinking and snarling as they moved in the fire’s breeze, and far above them, catwalks, trapezes, and pulleys dangled from heavy ropes. Across from the entrance sat the chiefs, and at their feet sat the singers moaning a slow song, drumming on boards with long batons, or on skin drums that they held out to tighten near the flames. Only then did I notice the pack of carved beasts around me.

  Enormous crude snouts encircled the door opening: a wolf with its head raised and teeth bared, standing on its tail; another with its neck twisted, snout down, jaws awry, the eyes wide open as if frozen in horror; and one, lying horizontally overhead, had its paws dangling near my shoulders. The flames died down. The two bears that had guarded the Hamatsa house, guided me down the steps, along the edge of the floor, up to our seats, on the top platform, in the shadows of a corner. Nello, Charlie, and Sayami came close behind. Near the singers, a row of solemn figures sat as still and dark as tombstones. “The family of those who died,” Nello whispered. “A mourning song for them.” It was a stumbling song, erratic like the beats of a frightened heart. The drums rolled softly as if from a place far away.

  I searched every face, but the flames danced and shadows flickered and faces burst out for a moment, only to vanish in the darkness. Over the moaning a few clear words were repeated. I nudged Nello. “They’re asking, ‘Which way is he gone?’”

  “Who?”

  “The one who died.”

  One by one more voices joined, wistful, questioning. The smoke burnt my eyes so I closed them, and with the drumming and moaning I drifted off. Tum, ta ta tum, ta, ta, tum, tum.

  AT A DISTANT raven’s call, I awoke. The fire was down, the smoke hung in flat layers drifting on the currents. A solemn sitter rose and began to dance, head down, arms raised and swinging while circling the fire, now and then shuddering the way cormorants do when trying to dry their wings. “Shaking off sadness,” Nello whispered. One by one the sitters rose, all dancing the same way, as if feeling the same pain, shaking the same sorrow. Then the first one cupped her hands, drew water from a cedar box, and poured it over her eyes. The others did the same. The drums now beat louder, the voices grew stronger, the dancers moved freely. A bear neared the fire and hurled a pail of oil into the flames; the flames roared to the roof, and in that same instant the drumming and voices stopped.

  The first great, carved bowl—in the shape of a reclining giant, bearded but with pendulous breasts—appeared in the doorway, and the fragrance of stewed meat filled the air. Four men hauled it to the chiefs, lifted the face, and served the first chief from the hollow head. The right breast was removed and the second chief was fed. They took her apart in pieces, finally scooping the contents of the hollowed trunk into small bowls and handing them to the crowd along with shredded cedar inner-bark to wipe our mouths. We ate a frothy mush that looked like melted soap that drooped when lifted with the wooden spoon.

  “Seal stew,” Nello offered.

  “Boiled blubber,” I said.

  “Not to eat is a mortal offense. And we don’t swallow the spoon; we eat only with the point. We’re not savages.”

  A little boy ran down onto the floor but a roaring bear chased him back. Long trays arrived laden with hemlock boughs and seaweed that reeked of putrid fish and had clusters of tiny pale balls all over them. “Dried herring roe, Cappy. It’s good, I promise.” Sayami loved it, and Charlie didn’t mind it, so I took a bite. The stench of it choked me and the brittle seaweed stuck in my throat.

  “Dip in here,” a soft voice beside me said. “It will go down more easily,” and out of the darkness flashed the cousin’s abalone earrings as she held out a bowl of thick liquid. “It’s the most precious thing to the Kwakiutl,” she said.

  It ran thickly down my fingers, so I splashed it in my mouth.

  “Water,” I pleaded.

  “No water,” Nello said. “Water and oil don’t mix. Make you retch.” I couldn’t answer, just tried to hold it down. The drummers started a rhythm and the cousin came back with a square wood pail. “Drink this,” she said. I started to push it away until I smelled the rum. I filled my mouth with it, then swallowed it, then filled my mouth again. I must have drunk a mug. They all laughed, and they all drank. The fire was so low it barely lit our faces. I pulled Sayami to one side and before he could say a word I took my hat and jammed it on his head. With my hat here I wouldn’t be missed
. “Back soon,” I said.

  Nello grabbed at me but I slipped away along the dark wall and out the door into the night.

  IT WAS BRIGHTER outside than it had been in the house. Thick snow covered the walk, the beasts, the canoes; it stuck to the walls, molded the bushes into one, and weighed down their branches; the only thing it couldn’t hide was the darkness of the sea. It crunched in singsong under my feet. When I heard voices behind me, I jumped between two houses and watched as young men came out with empty trays and walked away into the next house. I moved along in a deep crouch. When the rum hit me, I leaned against a wall.

  I thought I saw the ketch through the falling snow, then it was gone and reappeared near the far tip of the cove, and at the end I wasn’t sure if I had seen her at all. Perhaps she had dragged anchor and had been blown out to sea. Who knows, who cares? I thought, too drunk to give a damn. “Let her go, Cappy,” I whispered. “Let her go.”

  A gust came through the trees and swept snow onto me from the roof. I got up to go but couldn’t think of where to, until the snow melted on my neck and I remembered—her. I headed for the house the bears had guarded. In the next gust, an owl took flight and swept over the cove. “While the owl lives, the soul lives,” I muttered, and pushed on. The drums behind me had faded to a drone.

  With the bears gone, the Hamatsa house was unguarded, but its door padlocked. I tried forcing it with my shoulder; it wouldn’t budge, but a barely perceptible moaning rose inside. I went between the houses to the back but there were no other openings and there was no way to the roof. At the house next door I climbed onto a pile of firewood stacked high against the wall, grabbed a roofboard and pulled myself up. But the Hamatsa house was a good three strides away. On all fours, I scrambled to the gable; the gusting wind almost blew me down. With all the balance I could muster, I ran down through the snow and, spreading my arms and legs, hit the roof across the way. Splayed, I began to slide; I clawed until my nails dug into the wet roofboards and held. I slithered sideways to the back wall, trying roofboards until I found one that gave, and slid it aside. It was pitch black down below. Wedging my toes between the corner post and wall planks, I climbed down until I slipped and fell face down in the dirt. Light filtered feebly through the hole above, and I could make out shapes. Someone moaned close by.