Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series)

by Ferenc Máté

  Wooden masks with enormous beaks, and hemlock wreaths were piled around me. The moaning rose again and, with an arm extended, I moved toward it until I touched boards. The moaner seemed to have difficulty breathing. I was running my hands along the boards, feeling for an opening, when I heard footsteps in the snow. A key slid in the lock, then the smooth sound of the tongue sliding out, and a knock as it was lifted. Torchlight fell into the house and I looked for a place to hide, but there was nowhere, except a sheet covering long lumps on the floor. I crawled under it and tried not to breathe. The torchbearer took a few steps, slipped another lock, and at once the moaning became a menacing growl. The torchbearer gave gruff orders and the growling stopped. Then the torch neared and the sheet over my face turned bright and lit up the corpse that lay inches from my face. It was a dry, hollow-skinned, long-dead corpse, who stared curiously at me. The tip of his tongue stuck slightly out, as if, in the last moment of his life, he had been tasting something memorably good. I lay there in a drunken swoon, wondering if the deadman was me.

  Doors thudded shut and locks slipped into place, but the torch remained. I pulled the sheet aside and raised my head. The main part of the house was empty, but inside a cage-like room something moved. Stepping among the masks and piles of cedar bark, I approached. Inside were two naked youths, their eyes wild, their carriages distorted, beastly. I started back toward the hole in the roof when, on an impulse, I stopped at the sheet, drew back a corner, and saw the other long-dead corpse: a woman. Her parchment-skinned face—salt-air-dried, wind-dried, sun-dried—had the eyelids drawn with deep folds as if she were dreaming. Her nose—a long miracle of rises and curves—was sculpted and delicate; her cheek bones were surrounded by shallows, and her eyebrows were raised, as if in surprise. There were swirls like whirlpools painted on her cheeks. She was beautiful; someone who must have loved and been loved all her life. The torch flared, then flickered out. Moonlight drifted in. I sat down beside her on the cold earth.

  THE SNOW HAD stopped falling. The moon shone bright on the edge of a cloud and threw dark shadows of the carved beasts on the snow. The ketch huddled white on the dark waters and the islands lay in paling layers until they blended together in the distance and the mist. I sneaked along the wall back to the big house.

  Great piles of pots, blankets, pails, and mirrors were being carried in. Singing and drumming filled the air. The rum must have made its rounds, because many weaved and bobbed merrily as they sat, and others had bright twinkles in their eyes. Sayami’s eyes were barely open, Nello wore a blissful smile, and Charlie too must have had her share, for her head lay heavily on his shoulders. No one seemed to care that I’d returned or even noticed that I had gone.

  They had stacked all the gifts to be given away—bales of sea-otter skins, mink skins, and blankets, boxes of biscuits, pots, pails and kettles—in enormous piles on the ramps on both sides of the door, squeezing us farther and tighter in the corner, blocking our escape unless we descended to the floor. Trays of sweet steamed cakes of dried fruit came around: cranberries, crabapple, salmonberry—trailed by that cursed bucket of oil, of which I took only an empty spoon, but made up for it with long, long gulps of rum. I was handing the bucket back to the cousin when she leaned close and asked, “Where did you go?”

  “The Hamatsa house,” I said. “She wasn’t there.”

  She smiled in case anyone was watching. “At dawn we’ll find the shaman’s shack. We can follow his footprints in the snow.”

  I took another slug of rum. People ate with fervor and no one seemed to notice that the beat of the drums had grown louder and as quick as the thumping of a heart.

  Women pulled pails of ash from the fire and spread them around on the dirt, leaving a drifting ash cloud in their wake. The mirrors, waist-high, dozens of them, had been put side by side all around the house, leaning against the lower rise around the floor, creating infinite images of flames. The ash cloud was settling when a wild cry from outside filled the night. The crowd fell silent, the drums barely thudded.

  Across the way, a corner roof board was ripped aside and in glared flashing eyes. Then footsteps on the roof, and the roof board above us slid open. A low wail-like wind over a hollow log—surrounded the house. A gust of icy air swept through as a giant wooden mouth on the back wall yawned wide and into the house leapt—over the chiefs, landing in a cloud of ashes—one of the half-beasts I had seen in the Hamatsa house. He was naked as before, but now one side of his face drooped in a demented snarl as he crouched. People drew back from the edge of the lower ramp; only the chiefs managed to sit still. Near them, a man stood up, raised a white skull in each hand, shook them, making a rattling sound, took a step forward, and the half-beast stood still. The man climbed over the mirrors down to the floor. The half-beast cocked his head. Nello pulled Charlie close, turned her head away, and seemed to look around for an escape but we were blocked in by the mounds of gifts; the only quick way out was the hole in the roof. “You might not want to watch,” Nello whispered. “Hamatsa. Cannibals.”

  “You said it was theater.”

  “Some is. This isn’t.”

  The man shook his skulls, and the Hamatsa, coiled low, howled. The man made a triumphant half turn to the crowd, and in that instant the Hamatsa flew with jaws open wide and knocked him to the ground. He sank his teeth deep in the man’s neck. Blood squirted in an arc and splattered in the ash. Screams rose from the crowd. Men leapt to the floor with sticks, yanking the Hamatsa back, while others forced a stick between his teeth.

  A woman appeared, her bare breasts glowing crimson, her skirt stirring the ashes, leaving low clouds in her wake, and she danced toward him, her palms up, as if she held some power. He grew calm.

  Then, with great effort and a howl, he tore out of their grips and leapt into the crowd, clawing, biting bits out of whoever he reached. In the doorway, shrieking, “Ha ap, hap hap,” the other Hamatsa appeared. He was much older, fined-boned, light-skinned, almost white, with a limp, frail figure slung over a shoulder. He stopped on the steps.

  “Half English,” Nello whispered. “He helped Boas collect things—like corpses.”

  The white Hamatsa descended with his load—the long-dead corpse of the man I had seen before. He brought down the corpse—all dark, the skin shrunk into the hollows—and flung it to the floor. The first beast came and sniffed the thin legs, then leapt to a mirror. Awed by his own face, he glared and then smashed it with a violent blow. He watched the blood drip from his knuckles, then took a long, curved piece of the broken mirror, wrapped some shredded cedar bark around one end to make a handle, and waved it in wide arcs in the firelight. Staring at his splintered reflection, he came back to the corpse, lay the shard like a long blade on its chest, and then he sliced. He held up the long piece of flesh like a trophy in the light. The crowd gasped. The other grabbed it from his hand and they fought, snarling, like starved dogs feeding.

  Their struggle fanned the flames and churned the ash until they vanished in a cloud of dust and smoke. When it thinned, the floor was empty; only the shard of mirror lay there, throwing a jagged reflection into the darkness.

  25

  SNOWY NIGHT

  In the special house used for winter dances, secret tunnels were dug, and overhead mechanical devices installed…. Artificial limbs, guts, seal eyes and seal bladders filled with blood were used for gory effects…. Many of the torments however, did actually occur.

  —FRANZ BOAS

  When I felt a warm breath on my neck, I thought Hamatsa, and I yanked out the pistol, fell against a mound of biscuit tins, and aimed squarely at the cousin’s face. I was glad she couldn’t see me go red in the dark. She glanced around to see if anyone had noticed but the fire was low and no one looked our way. Frightened groups broke up and people returned to their places, but the few raised voices were hushed as if one loud word would trigger the Hamatsa’s return.

  An old chief stood up, raised both arms, and in a voice so calm and melodious he could
have been inviting us for tea began an interminable speech. The cousin leaned so close I felt her breath again and whispered, “The paxala left. We follow.”

  It was well after midnight but nowhere near dawn; the hole above us still yawned black. “In the dark?” I asked.

  “The moon,” she said. She turned and whispered something to Nello, then with quick motions climbed up the carved corner post and pulled herself through the hole into the night. I followed.

  Below us, the islands and the village, snow-clad in the moonlight, seemed the most serene, peaceful place on earth. She scrambled up to the gable, where the open arms of the bear of the entrance pole towered over her. She grabbed the bear’s arm, swung out, then, groping with her toes for footholds on knees and in open mouths, she climbed slowly down. We sneaked along the walls to the end of town and stopped near the shore. She leaned down in the snow and pointed to where small feet had left sharp-edged hollows. When she rose, there was a fierce look in her eyes that would have unnerved me even in broad daylight, but here, at the end of the earth in a half-light more eerie than darkness, I involuntarily grabbed her arm and she stiffened but she didn’t look afraid—just defiant.

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “I’m not,” she snapped. “I’m helping me. Find your stupid woman and go. This is our Tseka.” And she pulled away with force. “Ours!” she said, stepping backward in the snow and swinging her arm wide to include the village, the woods, the islands, and the stars. Then she strode off into the woods without looking to see if I would follow.

  THE PAXALA WAS either very old or very drunk, because he dragged his feet so much his toes rarely left the snow, and his path made no sense at all: weaved here, swerved there for no apparent reason in this open woods with gentle rises. He seemed to walk in arcs: one to the left, one to the right, then another to the same side. I lowered my feet cautiously so as not to crackle snow.

  She walked slightly bent, nimble as a child, looking for the footsteps, which grew less distinct now in the tree-filtered light. Just ahead a big bird, roused, took flight, shaking a tree limb, and the snow drifted in sparkling clouds and thudded down in clumps. She stopped and knelt, but the clumps had cratered the snow over a wide patch and the footprints were gone. I looked for them where the craters ended, but there was only virgin snow.

  “Go right, I’ll go left,” she whispered.

  I had taken but a few steps when a hard gust shook the treetops and clumps thudded all around. I looked back; my steps were gone. Nothing moved in the moonlight.

  “Calm down, Cappy, calm down.”

  Someone touched my shoulder.

  THE OLD PAXALA fanned the coals with drunken determination, until they flared and filled his small cave with light. He and the cousin talked in low, warbling sounds, patiently, waiting until the other had his say, then the paxala looked at me and launched into an oration. When he finished, the cousin said to me, “Very beautiful.”

  Quietly, I said, “Thank you.”

  “Not you.” The cousin laughed. “Your woman.”

  Maybe it was the rum, or just the nerves of long days, but I laughed too. After that, I felt no need to be polite.

  “When will I see her?” I asked.

  The paxala’s reply was long. The cousin’s face grew taut.

  “He said,” she began, and stumbled, “that she will come at midnight. With the ghosts.”

  The cave started tossing like a skiff in a storm. I put my hands on the ground.

  “Alive or dead?” I blurted.

  The paxala flung a log into the fire and sparks flew in the air. He spoke but the cousin said nothing, just looked at my face, as if what she saw there would in some way determine what she’d say.

  “You white people,” she began, then stopped as if the words defied continuance, then said simply, not accusing, “Have a simple world: day or night, alive or dead. What about in between? You have few words for rain, and few for the sea; we have them without end.”

  He stirred his fire, then spoke in rhythm with his stirring. The cousin spoke so softly her voice blended with his, and at times I couldn’t tell whose words they were, or if they were at all.

  “We have killer whale ancestors, and other ancestors that return as ravens. Live ones die, then come back: come and go like the tides. Dead, half dead, many times dead, many times returned, never-born, part-born, part-died. I was dead once,” the paxala went on. “I died and they wrapped me in blankets. There was heavy snow falling, more than tonight, so they just took me to the end of the village and left me in the snow. They heard wolves howl there all night and in the morning I was gone. Many nights later they heard me singing. When the moon rose, I was on the point with the wolves around me…I don’t look so bad, do I?” He stirred his coals to an unhurried time. “The Tuxwidl had the water of life.”

  A chink of light glowed beside the door: the moon, or the dawn, or something in between. The cave rolled again; this time putting my hands on the ground didn’t help. I reached into my coat, pulled out the gun, but wasn’t sure where to aim it, so I pointed it at the ground. He didn’t even look up, just stared at the coals.

  “Are there fences on the sea?” he asked. “Or borders among the stars?”

  Then he said something with a sigh, and the cousin smiled.

  “He said to pass you the rum.”

  I FOLLOWED THE setting moon among the trees out to the salal that blocked the shore, then turned north toward the village. The drums and the singers’ voices were dampened by the snow. At the house of the Hamatsa, there was no lock on the door, so I stopped and tried it; it opened. There was silence inside. I left the door ajar. The long-dead woman lay there as before, only alone; she was even more beautiful now with the stray light from the moon. I thought of saving her; wrapping her in the sheet and carrying her down to the sea and the skiff. The tide had come in; I wouldn’t have far to push. Then row out to the rocky islet just beyond the ketch and carry her up, shuffling through the snow. There was a cleft in a rock; I could lay her there and let her bask in the moonlight.

  AS I NEARED the big house, children’s laughter rang out and echoed over the cove, again and again mingling with their shrieks, drifting over the snow like Christmas morning joy.

  The big house was filled with that uncertain gloom of firelight and dawn. Overhead, dangling from ropes, a huge bird—a chaos of feathers, human limbs, and a great carved head with coppery eyes—fluttered and circled. On the floor, a black-bearded giant with long wooden breasts threw glittering dust from a basket over the crowd, and children leapt and grabbed for it amid long shrieks and laughter. Later a chief spoke but by then few listened; they leaned against the walls, or lay in each other’s arms, and slept in the warmth of those around them. And the voice of the chief was a distant drone. We drank more rum. When no more came, we rowed back to the ketch, blinded by the sparkles of the low sun on the snow.

  THE SHIP’S CLOCK struck eight bells. I awoke with a start, not knowing whether it was morning or midday or late afternoon. Only when I saw the sun through the portlight did I realize it had already crossed the sky having left the snow in the trees and a pink glow in the clouds. The fragrance of roasted meats drifted from the village. I saw Charlie’s tiny feet sticking out from the covers, saw the space beside her empty, saw Sayami in the cockpit, oiling the Winchester, and the sun sinking behind him. I came fully awake only when the skiff bumped the ketch. It was Nello, with a weary look in his eyes, not just fatigue but resignation, as if something was now unfolding with nothing to be done. He held on to the gunwales and stared at the sea.

  “A canoe came from the south,” he began. “They paddled all night. There’s a big boat coming. Fancy, lots of windows. Slow, sticking its head into every nook; but coming.”

  He looked up at Sayami.

  “It could be anyone,” Sayami said, pumping the lever and sighting a tree top.

  “Sure,” Nello said.

  The ship’s clock struck twice. Seven hours till midn
ight.

  When the drums started again, we wrapped ourselves in blankets, hid the rifles beneath them, and rowed ashore. Nello stared at the pass leading to open water.

  “Whoever it is can’t get in here in the dark. We’re safe until morning.”

  When we landed on the beach, they stepped one at a time from the bow to keep their feet dry, and then they were all ashore, getting the gear comfortable in their arms, ready to haul the skiff up high, waiting for me to follow. But I didn’t. I just sat there. The dark current caught the skiff and washed it south toward the mouth of the pass that fed into the strait. I glanced up at the three of them standing there, then I looked over my shoulder. I felt an irrepressible urge to row out and get help from some of my own kind—whoever they were, the church boat, the police, even the bloody yacht—ones who would understand, intervene, set things right—against the savagery, the barbarity, the phantoms in the darkness. And I lowered the oars into the water and set the blades upright. And the village? The hell with them! Don’t they do the same? Aren’t they driven by a madness they cannot see? And if they perish—these half-beasts, dead-eaters—what of it? Didn’t they exterminate whoever was here before? Why should they be spared? It’s just their turn to go and ours to conquer. As it will be for those who exterminate us.