The Translation of Dr Apelles

by David Treuer

  “We could never have hoped for so many gifts for our very plain daughter, especially from someone like you—your family is important and will do many important things in the years to come. But Eta is all we have. We are poor in every way except for her. She is our sole possession. And, if you must know, she hasn’t even bled yet, so I think you’ve come too early. Let’s see what happens when she becomes a woman.” All of this was a lie, but Gitim had no way of knowing.

  Gitim left with as much grace as he could manage after thanking them for their time and for the expense of the tea, served with real sugar, which was quite a luxury. Even though he shut the door with a sweet taste in his mouth, it quickly turned sour as he walked back to his parents’ cabin. He did not know what to do and was now in a terrible situation. He had robbed his own parents to gift Aantti and Mary. If he had returned their gifts in the form of a wife who could cook, trap, sew, it would have been different. But he was returning with nothing! He had not imagined it possible that he would be refused. And as for Eta, he was nowhere nearer to possessing her than he had been before he had so wantonly spent his family’s future.

  He was in agony. As he walked along he built up heat and the sweetness that had so recently graced his mouth was transformed into the bitter taste of anger and he decided that he would take Eta by force.

  By the time he reached his family’s cabin he had formed a plan. In the woodshed hung a bearhide taken from a large sow the spring before. He would disguise himself as a bear and lie in wait for Eta near one of her lean-tos. He would rush at her and she would be so afraid that he could easily achieve his desire. And if she got pregnant, she would have no choice but to marry him. Even if she didn’t, no one would want a girl who had been raped by an animal—something would have to be wrong with a girl like that. She would have to be marked as unclean by the spirits. Her parents would have to give her to him then.

  He wasted no time. He took the bundled bearhide from its nail and slung it over his shoulder and set off for the bush. He found a good hiding spot near one of Eta’s lean-tos and tied the front paws to his arms and the back paws to his feet and ran a cord around the head of the bear and under his own chin. The disguise was very good: when he crouched down he looked every bit like a bear. He found a thick patch of hazelbrush near the lean-to and lay there out of sight, ready to attack Eta as soon as she arrived.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Soon he could hear Eta coming down the trail singing as she came.

  Imbiijidaabaanaa chi-amik oo’ow

  eniginid o ’ow aa

  mechigizid eshkam o’ow

  badagoshkawid o ’owe

  Sure enough, she had a large beaver sliding along behind her.

  Eta drew close and Gitim got ready to spring out of the thicket and take what was, in his mind, already his. But Eta’s dogs had already caught his scent, and when they heard him rustle in the bush they sensed danger and set up a terrible howling. Eta stopped in her tracks and said “Get him” and the dogs pounced into the thicket where Gitim lay. The dogs tore at the bearhide and at first Gitim lay still, thinking if he didn’t move the dogs would realize their mistake and grow bored. Their teeth did little damage. The hide was so thick that it was hard for them, even for the biggest, to puncture it. But the dogs did not stop and his bear armor could only last so long. Soon it was shredded and Eta’s dogs sunk their teeth into Gitim’s legs and arms and tried to grip his back so they could flip him over and gouge out his belly. They were attacking him in earnest. Suddenly, his plan did not seem like such a good idea, and he was now in real danger. And then a new thought occurred to the luckless Gitim: what if Eta, who sometimes carried a rifle, got a clear shot and killed him?

  Gitim realized his trick would not work and began shouting.

  “Eta! Eta! Save me from your dogs. It’s your friend! I’m your friend!”

  He struggled to stand with the dogs hanging off him like overgrown woodticks.

  Eta saw immediately that her dogs were attacking her friend, not a bear, and she whistled once and all the dogs let go and trotted to mill at her feet.

  Bimaadiz, who had been hunting nearby, had heard the barking and had come running.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Bimaadiz immediately felt sorry for Gitim. Both he and Eta helped Gitim gain his feet, and they cut off the tattered bearhide. He was scraped and torn. His calves and thighs were punctured and bloody. They had no idea what foolishness desire causes in people. Together they sat Gitim down in Eta’s lean-to and cleaned his wounds with hot water.

  “That was a good one,” said Bimaadiz.

  Eta agreed. “I really thought you were a bear, and you know what a nuisance they can be. Your disguise was good. I really thought you were a bear.”

  They tried to make a joke out of the adventure as they chewed slippery elm bark and pressed it into his wounds. They thought he was playing a woodsy joke on them by pretending to be a bear in order to frighten them. They had no idea that Gitim had had darker plans and that his bear disguise was not an innocent pastoral joke. They tried to get him to stay for a dinner of roasted pike, but Gitim was embarrassed and anxious to leave so they sent him on his way as they chuckled about how good a joke it was that he had played on them.

  The adventure with Gitim and the bearskin had eaten up a large portion of the day, and so Bimaadiz and Eta were forced to skin the beaver Eta had caught late into the night. They skinned it by feel more than by sight because the fire was not bright enough to illuminate their work. For once they were tired enough to not feel the usual pangs of desire and to not try to steal glimpses or kisses. Bimaadiz decided to stay with Eta in her lean-to. They made for bed.

  It was a cold night. The fire warmed them on one side while the cold burned them on the other. Neither one of them could be totally warm at any given moment so they turned frequently: now facing the flames now, now facing away. They did not fall asleep immediately. Each feigned regular breathing, and each thought the near presence of the other and the miracle of their breath the most beautiful sound they had ever heard—as magnificent and tender as the soughing of the white pine that towered over and protected them both.

  6. So Bimaadiz and Eta continued hunting and trapping. After that period of listlessness both the children rededicated themselves to their work. It was a good winter for both and their families were rewarded by their efforts and received unforeseen benefits of the young people’s desire. Bimaadiz and Eta worked harder than ever

  before in an effort to quiet their beating hearts and their trembling hands. But as the furs stacked up and the meat platforms groaned under the weight of hindquarter after hindquarter, Bimaadiz and Eta were increasingly weighted down with thoughts about each other, about what they had seen and had been unable to forget. Eta had seen Bimaadiz’s naked body, and she could not forget it. Bimaadiz had received Eta’s kiss, had felt her lips against his and he could not forget that. They both wanted more but they didn’t know, exactly, more of what—they had no name for their desire. And then something terrible happened.

  7. It was the month known as the Stingy Moon. The weather had turned bitterly cold and stayed that way. The ice thickened, in some places it was three feet thick, and it grumbled and sang, protesting its own immense weight. It fissured and broke, but with nowhere to go, all the ice could do was scream as its thick plates rubbed together. Water squirmed through the seams and froze immediately, only to break, freeze, and break again. The small spring by Eta’s lean-to still ran free but only at a trickle. The river was skimmed over with ice at the rapids. The water level dropped and ice was left hanging from the rocks so that the rapids lost their voice and instead the rocks, with flat brims of ice stuck to them, took on the aspect of a group of men in hats. No animals moved in the woods. The beaver were not moving below the ice. As for the deer and moose, they were yarded up deep in the swamps and had abandoned their old haunts. The few deer that were taken
by Bimaadiz were stringy and tough and not worth the effort it took to snowshoe their carcasses back to Agencytown. It hadn’t snowed in weeks and the thin snow-cover was sullied by old tracks of every kind and littered with the frozen droppings of rabbits, porcupines, and deer, all of which were long gone. The forest felt like a cold, empty room filled with litter and desperately in need of a cleaning.

  Humans, too, had abandoned their trails and were yarded up in their own villages. With nothing to do and confined to their cabins and lean-tos, which were looking grubbier and meaner by the day, a small band to the north of Agencytown decided to go raiding. There was nothing to hunt except humans, and since the snow was not deep and was firmly packed by the wind, they knew they could attack and retreat back to their own territory quickly. They disguised themselves in the garb of their intended victims by donning beaverskin caps and parkas trimmed with black felt and decorated with beaded grapevines and clusters of cranberries, and pointed moccasins. They lashed round snow-shoes to their quick sleds and greased the runners with goose fat. They carried very little—nothing except their weapons and three cakes of pemmican each. They dressed and dragged their dogs by their traces to the sleds. With shouts and growls to match those of their dogs they tore out of their village at an unbelievable pace. They traveled in single file—twenty men on twenty sleds in all. They did not stop for rest as they moved south. The dogs had been primed on beaver meat and were anxious to run. With each mile the men grew more and more excited. They were free of their village and moving again, aware once more that they were human, and with this awareness their appetite for what was human increased. They had a taste for motion, for wind in their faces, for war.

  They were happy to be on the war trail. They were so enthusiastic that instead of taking the time to circle around their enemies and attack from a different direction and in doing so obscure their identities, they took the most direct route and crossed the river just downstream of the rapids, that collection of silent boulders all still wearing their caps of ice. They took the river at great speed and skipped over the thin ice in their empty sleds without a one breaking through. At the river they had left their own territory and were now in the land of their enemies.

  Once in foreign lands they abandoned reason and cunning that demanded they proceed with empty sleds to the farthest point of their raid and work their way back toward the river to preserve speed and surprise. They were too anxious for that, and, like wild dogs, they attacked whatever they saw and laid their hands on everything that fell into their path. They raided meat caches, stole snares hanging next to the trails, took bales of fur from shacks, and stole guns, bullets, axes, and kettles—anything of value.

  They were met with little resistance—the people to the south of the river were not expecting war in the winter. Battle was a pleasure they usually saved for the summer months, when the excess of life, its fat, could be trimmed off. So they were unprepared and fled into the deep woods where the sleds could not go. Their enemies not only stole their belongings, which is only natural, but even went so far as to burn down their shacks, cabins, lean-tos, and wigwams, thereby exposing many people to the hardships of winter. One of the attackers could not limit himself to the usual plunder and thought it a great joke as well as a sound victory to load a woodstove and a washtub onto his sleigh and to then burn down the cabin from which he took them.

  As luck would have it, Bimaadiz was hunting in an area directly in the marauding band’s path. Hunting had been poor, but suddenly deer and moose were darting everywhere between the trees and he had killed seven deer that morning. The wind was such he did not smell the smoke that would have warned him, as it had warned the deer, of close danger. He was exhausted from all the skinning and butchering, his mind lost to Eta. He had used all his ammunition on the deer, and so when the enemy was upon him he was both distracted and unable to defend himself. There was little he could do. He tried to run, but one of his attackers casually drew his bow (all the while chatting with his comrades) and let the arrow fly. Alas, Bimaadiz could not outrun the shaft, and the arrow sank deep in Bimaadiz’s thigh. He fell face first in the snow with a shout and could not move. He watched as his attacker stepped down off his sled and twirled his war club casually on its leather thong. The enemy warrior sauntered over to where Bimaadiz lay helpless. Bimaadiz watched him come and thought only of Eta: how he would never see her again, and he shouted out her name over and over again until his attacker could not stand the rattle of that sound in his ears any longer, and he hit Bimaadiz over the head.

  Eta was unaware of what was happening. She had been in a remote section of her trapping grounds and had not heard the commotion. When she reached the area where Bimaadiz had been hunting she screamed and began to cry. She saw the tracks—human, dog, and the parallel lines of the sled runners—and the imprint Bimaadiz’s body had left in the snow. His fawnskin bandolier bag lay there on the ground emptied of its contents, and the snow was stained with blood: a pool of it had melted into the snow from the wound in his leg, and the indentation his head had made was haloed with the splatter of blood, too.

  Eta was panicked and began to shake—all she could think about was Bimaadiz’s safety. She knew at least that he wasn’t dead, not yet anyway. But she didn’t know what to do, and she knew even if she was able to track and find the men who had wounded and captured Bimaadiz, she would be unable to defeat them. Without really thinking she took note of the tracks, their direction, the speed of those who had made them and, after snatching up Bimaadiz’s fawnskin bag she set off after them—also in the direction of Gitim’s trapping grounds. She hoped that their friend could help somehow.

  Eta was moving fast and she forced herself to slow her pace—it was bitter cold and she was drawing too much air too quickly—she did not want to sear her lungs. And she was sweating heavily. If she stopped the cold air would turn her sweat to ice. As patiently as she could she followed the tracks. She looked for blood or hair and noted when the enemy stopped. They stopped often now, as they picked their way through Gitim’s trapping grounds on their way back to the river. Their sleds were heavy with booty, and here and there, the tracks and disturbed snow attested to the fact that whatever they had lashed down had worked its way free, and they had been forced to stop and tie it back on.

  Before long Eta left her trapping territory behind and was in Gitim’s area. She crested the last hill before his trapping cabin and she was greeted with a horrible sight. Gitim’s small cabin was on fire, and she saw two dark shapes sprawled in the snow between the blazing cabin and the small lake on which it was situated. Eta rushed down the hill, careless of her own safety. One of the bodies might be that ofBimaadiz and he might still be alive.

  When she arrived in the yard, she could see immediately that the dead body, in clothes of her tribe, was that of a man she did not recognize. The other body was Gitim’s. He was still alive.

  He had been shot through the right lung and through the throat. She knelt next to him, but he could not turn his head.

  “Oh Gitim! Oh my friend!”

  He blinked up at the uniform gray sky and blinked again against the cold. Clumps of snow were caught in his hair, and his face was scratched and speckled with the blood that blew out of the wound in his throat. His breathing was shallow, a succession of small puffs, and as he exhaled small pink bubbles rose out of the hole in his chest, burst against his parka, and sank into the fabric. Eta looked around and saw a cone-shaped spray of blood and some scraps of tissue and bone behind him. He had fallen where he had been shot.

  “What have they done? You’ve never hurt anyone in your life. You’re not a warrior.”

  When he realized that the person next to him was Eta, a little spark of life animated his eyes. He tried to speak but there wasn’t enough air passing through his throat to make enough sound for speech. Eta knelt down and took his hands and pressed them to his throat and wrapped her hands over his.

  “
Eta,” he was able to say. “I tried to stop them.”

  He sounded helpless and small. Eta nodded.

  “Where’s Bimaadiz?” she asked.

  “They have him. He is alive. They took my dogs.”

  He paused for breath, but could not store up enough air to continue.

  Eta removed one of her hands from Gitim’s neck and slid it under his parka and over the wound in his chest and pressed down. Gitim winced.

  “They took my dogs,” he said again, when he was able to continue. “But they only listen to my whistle.”

  Eta nodded again. Gitim’s dogs, bought by his parents and trained by a Finn down in Crow Wing, were known to be the best in the area. They were fast, tireless, and, most importantly, well trained.

  Gitim struggled to remove his hand out from under Eta’s, and when he did it sounded as though he had released air from a bladder. Eta pressed down harder on his throat while Gitim reached in his bandolier bag and pulled out a bone whistle on a leather thong.

  “Blow it three times and the dogs will come,” he said.

  The search for the whistle and his instructions robbed him of what energy he had left and his body shuddered. Gitim tried to swallow but couldn’t.

  Eta was crying, and her tears fell onto Gitim’s body. “You’ll be fine,” she lied. “It’s not so bad.”

  “Eta,” he said at last. She had to lean in close to hear him. “Eta. I never won a kiss from you.”

  She blinked her tears away and shook her head in an attempt to dislodge them. She could not afford to move her hands. She turned her head and brushed her face on the frozen fur of her parka like a bird cleaning its face under its wing. She leaned closer to Gitim’s face and kissed Gitim on his lips, thereby giving him the gift he had always wanted but never had a chance of winning. And then she lifted her hands and the air whooshed out of Gitim’s body, and with it went his spirit. He was dead. Without wasting any time, she took the whistle and set off at a run down the trail, parallel to the lake, in pursuit of the marauders’ tracks north.