I have said nothing to Lam Fan of my intention. She has already told me that she knew the last of the native whalers—Chief Atlin and Chief John Moses. She would only try to interfere. Either by insisting on accompanying me and telling me her stories, or by preventing me from exploring on my own.
And so, after dropping anchor, I signal for a boat to come and get me (we no longer have a dinghy since ours was sunk in the storm in Cachalot Inlet). The man who arrives, rowing a punt that is filling with water even as he steadies it to take my weight, wears a knitted cap and a vast number of hand-knit sweaters beneath his plaid wool jacket. He gives me a toothless grin. He has a scarred, sun-weathered face, and when I ask him he says that, yes, he is a fisherman, but that it is his father who owns the boat, and is right now out in it.
“Your father?” I say in surprise, reassessing my ferryman, who must be younger than he looks, and who has stopped rowing to bail.
“We live up there,” he says, pointing to a shack at the end of a row of shacks at the western edge of the village. “There are six of us children. I’m the eldest.” He smiles again. And in a few more minutes we have beached the punt and are walking to the house he pointed out. Just above and behind it is the spire of the Catholic church. He has invited me for tea.
Large juice cans, potted with geraniums, flank the steps. On the porch, a long-haired mongrel sleeps. My acquaintance toes him over to open the door.
“Ma!” he cries. “We’ve got a visitor.” A woman, thin and dressed in workman’s jeans and flannel shirt, and towing two little girls wearing pink party dresses, comes from the kitchen. The woman shakes my hand.
“I’ve made biscuits this morning, they’re still hot,” she says, “we can have some with our tea.” Her son goes to the stove in the sitting room, stokes it up with wood, and puts the kettle on to boil. We sit down side by side on a slumping sofa. The woman smoothes her hands over her knees. The little girls look at me curiously.
“It’s awfully kind of you to invite me in,” I say to her. “I’m sure you’re tired of sight-seers. The name, Friendly Cove, must attract a lot of people, and everyone knows that Captain Cook came here.”
“We don’t get that many visitors,” she says quietly. “But we have to keep an eye on those who do come to make sure they don’t do any damage. There are many sacred burial sites here, and we have to protect them. No one is allowed to wander off alone.”
“Oh! Of course not,” I say. Although this is the first time it has occurred to me that there are other interests than mine to be considered.
We sit in silence, listening to the boy chop wood outside, and to the little girls, tired of standing still and staring, rustling in their stiff, starched dresses as they try to wake the dog that sleeps, as if dead, on the porch. On the wall to my right, above a large floor radio with its knobs twisted off, there is a crucifix. A Bible is the only book in sight. But on the wall behind me, so near that the frayings of a cedar-bark rope tickle my neck, are the ancient weapons used in the whale hunt.
I have been trying not to look, afraid that my hostess will wonder at my interest, but I can’t resist. I shift myself round on the couch. There is a large harpoon, running almost the entire length of the room. Attached to this is a skein of sinew rope. There are several lances and sealskin floats, and more cedar-bark lines. The head of the harpoon is a pair of pointed barbs made of bone. The blades are made of mussel shells, and the whole is wrapped up tightly with cord and strips of cherry bark.
The woman is watching me. “Do these belong to your family?” I ask her.
She nods. I smile at her and sit up straight on the couch. The boy comes in and pours the boiling water into the teapot. He stirs the contents with a spoon, then tips it into cups.
“So,” he says, handing me a cup of tea, which he has whitened and sweetened with spoonfuls of condensed tinned milk, “what is there here that I can show you?”
—
We have taken the trail that runs behind the village. My guide, Sam (“My father took our names from the Bible”), shows me the little white-painted church, which all the villagers had helped to build. There is no bell in the steeple, but it is often used as a lookout for the fishing fleet. I admire the polished bone handle of the door, and inside, in front of the altar, a cedar rood screen bearing the likenesses of the killer whale and the thunderbird. The other item to interest me is in a locked glass case a few feet from the statue of the virgin. The case contains an Indian headdress.
“What’s this?” I ask Sam. He looks embarrassed.
“It really shouldn’t be in here,” he says. “There was a lot of argument about it in the village. My uncle wanted to sell it to the museum in Victoria, but my mother wouldn’t let him. She said it was part of her religion, and if it wasn’t good enough for the Catholic church, then the church wasn’t good enough for her. The priest didn’t seem to care one way or another, and so my uncle said the church could have it while he made up his mind. It’s been here ever since.”
I look at the eagle feathers, each nearly a foot in length, and at the tiny carved whales, which are tied to the headdress with cedar bark. “I thought the church made the Indians give up all that,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
I shrug, indicating not only the headdress but the screen and a drum, also bearing the design of the killer whale, which sits close to it. “Indian religion,” I say, “shamanism and so on, the potlatch. We were taught, in the school I went to, that the church repudiated all magic arts. Remember the story of Saul, who went to visit a witch? He came to a violent end because of it.”
But my guide has walked away from me, scowling, leaving me to find my way out of the church by myself.
Sam is waiting outside next to the cemetery. Long grass blows between the tumbledown headstones, but there are fresh-cut wildflowers in glass jars on nearly every grave.
I go and stand beside him. He has taken off his wool cap. His thick black hair is straight, cut to chin length, and tucked behind his ears. He does not look at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have learned by now not to talk about things I know too little of. I’ve offended you, and I’m afraid it’s out of ignorance.”
“We have a story,” he says after a minute of silence, “about what happens to strangers who do not understand our ways. They are lured by dwarves into dancing around a drum. Once they start, they can’t stop, and each step they take causes the earth to shake. They can’t go back to their ordinary lives ever again.”
Across the meadowland, on the other side of this curve of land from the cove, is the open ocean. The beach is long and pebbled, and from here we can listen to the sound of waves landing and withdrawing.
“The only reason I came here,” I say to Sam finally, “is to learn something about the whales. I know that this is the village where the whalers made ready to hunt. I want you to take me to the place they prepared. Where they performed their rituals.”
A small smile plays about my young guide’s lips. How old is he, I wonder again? In his teens? Twenties? The smile turns into a grin. “You sure about it?” he asks.
“Yes.”
—
At the edge of a lake, deep in the woods, inland from the village, I dance. Sam, who has seated himself on the ground, is beating a log with a stick. And singing.
Me. A middle-aged pilot, on the verge of being elderly, in the midst of a story concerning his mother, is dancing round and round, stamping his feet. Three times already I have dipped my body into the lake.
Round and round. While the sun does its turnabout.
And I do not care if the boy is laughing at me. I do not care what he thinks of my antics, nor do I need to know why he’s agreed to help me. Whatever I am doing, I am doing it for me, Robert Lam. For myself.
Round and round and round. Drunk with it. Until the singing sits inside me. Clasps itself tight and will not be moved. And so does strength. No more weakness in my limbs, no more numbness in my finger
s or face.
And on and on until I hear my stepmother calling, and find myself returned to the Rose, face down on the deck.
“How did I get here?” I ask her, sitting up.
“A boy brought you,” she answers. “He left you this.”
She holds the harpoon head of a whaling lance. I take it with both hands, cradling it. “You spoke to him?” I ask her.
“Of course not!”
I get to my feet, filled with sudden energy, and go forward to start the anchor winch. “Let’s get going,” I say to Fan. “We haven’t got much time left.”
“For what?” she questions.
I do not answer, but the hunting song still courses through my veins.
—
Time on D’Arcy Island. Where the only measure of progress is in the advance of winter storms blowing in from the Pacific and across the land, and in the deterioration of the lepers’ condition. And in the gradual evolution of relations between the exiles and my mother. For more and more they must depend on her assistance, and more and more she must depend on theirs.
Keeping fires going, cooking communal food, sharing warm clothes, doing laundry, dressing sores. And, as well, writing poems, polishing stones (in a bag looped round a rock and left in the sea), identifying plants and insects. Keeping a diary. The actions of civilized beings.
Civilization. Without the wood, brick, and stone of buildings and cities. With conversation and memory and invention, and curiosity.
And suffering. And laughter.
Friendship.
But in the pass leading from the mainland and between the Gulf Islands, and heading for D’Arcy Island, there was a boat. And in this boat there were several officials: men who would be glad to finish the job they were doing and return to their homes in Vancouver. For without the knowledge of the authorities in Victoria, whose responsibility the leper colony was, these men—a doctor, two members of the Vancouver Board of Health, and two policemen—were secretly delivering a brand new inmate to the D’Arcy Island colony.
His name was Oung Moi Toy, and he had come from New York to Vancouver equipped with a travelling certificate of health and a train ticket. He had been an inhabitant of the lepers’ island near New York City, but had been discharged from there with a changed diagnosis of syphilis. Because, it was rumoured, the New York colony could not cope with his conduct.
Having arrived in Vancouver, he had been held by immigration and diagnosed again as a sufferer of leprosy. Which diagnosis he would not accept. Nor would the Americans take him back. He wanted only to continue to Hong Kong by ship. But not a captain on the coast would agree to transport him.
He was a huge man, almost seven feet tall, with a shaved head, and covered with tattoos. His hands were in chains, because he had several times tried to assault his captors and escape. It was said that in his lifetime so far, he had killed more than a dozen men and numbers of women. This in San Francisco, and in New York City, before being confined to the east coast lepers’ colony.
And because it had not been a pleasant journey, and because the men in the boat were anxious to be rid of their charge and return to the more normal run of their jobs, they left Oung Moi Toy on the landing shore at D’Arcy Island without supplies—no food, not even any blankets—and only removed the chains from his wrists at the very last moment.
And so he stood on the shore in ill humour, suffering from seasickness, rubbing his wrists where the chains had chaffed and cut, and swinging his head back and forth like a wounded animal.
For there was something in the air that alerted his senses: not just the lepers’ dwelling nor the lepers themselves, who stood watching him, solemn as attendants, round a beach fire on which a kettle (into which they had placed dozens of shellfish, plus an onion and a carrot from their garden storehouse) was steaming, but some other element. Almost a scent. And unexpected.
For Toy was a man of instinct. And whatever was there that shouldn’t have been troubled him and irritated him and set up a current.
The lepers trembled as they watched him. What they realized, and remembered now that they had forgotten, was the sheer impact of physical size and strength. With its lack of perspective and its imminence. Its potential for evil.
Their skins prickled, their scalps tightened, and it was with an effort that they stopped themselves from running. This was no innocent, no piece of human refuse (like themselves) on whom to take pity. This was no brother, this was a threat.
Moreover, they were aware, as Oung Moi Toy could not be, what it was that he searched for and sniffed at in the air.
It was the scent of a woman. Who was my mother, India, who had come to see who had landed by boat, but had remained in hiding at the edge of the forest.
A pall of smoke rose from the burning driftwood; the soup in the kettle boiled, and the lepers stood in silence as the sky appeared to wheel and blur with darkness: for they knew that with Oung Moi Toy’s arrival on the island, their lives had changed for the worse.
Oung Moi Toy now turned to look at them directly, and as he did so he pulled out of his legging a knife.
Ng Chung spoke first. “Welcome to our island,” he said politely. “We did not know you were coming and so have not prepared to receive you. But you are welcome to share our food until you are able to arrange for your own.” Ng Chung indicated the boiling soup in the kettle. “What we have is the result of the labour of all of us. If you are willing to help, you will not find that the life here is too unpleasant.”
Which was not, exactly, the kind of speech that Oung Moi Toy might have expected. He was used to having an effect on people. He was used to them being afraid of him. He advanced on the lepers, still looking about him uneasily, but concentrating more and more on the scene in front of him. When he had reached the fire, on the opposite side of which the lepers were grouped, he kicked out with his foot and spilled the kettle of soup. The hot embers steamed and hissed, and some of the boiling liquid splashed onto Kong Ching Sing’s foot and burnt it. Although Kong Ching Sing felt nothing.
Unperturbed, Ng Chung continued. “As you see,” he said, pointing to the building on the slope above them, “we have a house. Unfortunately it is small, and all the rooms are full. You may sleep outside on the porch, or underneath it if you like. We will be happy to share our blankets with you.” Ng Chung smiled, as if to soften the bluntness of his words. But it did him no good. For Toy, knife in hand, simply walked round him and climbed the steps. He opened the doors of the cabins one by one and peered inside them.
“You!” he called after a minute, indicating Ng Chung. “You are going to sleep outside. I am staying here.” He went inside one of the cubicles and shut the door.
The lepers looked at each other in consternation. Sim Lee, with an urgent gesture in the direction of where India was hidden, signalled that she should quickly move inland. Then Sim Lee climbed the steps while the others watched him, knocked at the closed door, and said, “You do not understand. Someone is already living here. There is a better place for you. Come, and I will show you.”
The closed door opened and Toy stood, bending his head to clear the doorway and gazing out belligerently. He seemed to consider Sim Lee’s offer. “Where is this better place?” he asked him.
“Over here,” Sim Lee said, pointing to the storehouse attached to the building. “Down there is where we keep our supplies. It is warm and dry there. It is nice, you will see, there is more room.” Toy followed Sin Lee along the porch as far as the steps. He was curious, and the mention of supplies had certainly piqued his interest. But to follow any farther he would have had to pass Chou You, who had climbed the stairs in Sim Lee’s wake.
Chou You: who had no sense of undercurrents, of what lay behind what had been said; and who was far too inexperienced to be afraid.
Chou You, who in a gesture of greeting to this new companion, held out his hatchet. A gesture which, of course, was bound to be misinterpreted. Moreover, none of the lepers realized that Oung Moi Toy, for
all his size and strength, was terrified of being touched by them. Because he still believed, despite the evidence, that what had made him ill was syphilis, not leprosy. And he had no intention of contracting the other, more dreaded, disease.
Toy feinted at Chou You with his knife to warn him to step back and to lower the hatchet. But You, instead of acting as might be expected, took a step forward and in friendly response mimicked Moi Toy’s action. And so Toy, with inevitable logic, for he had observed not the simplicity of You’s ravaged face, nor the swollen hands with their weak grip, but only the all too familiar style of the movement, slashed his knife across Chou You’s cheek. “What makes a man bad, Fan?” I ask my stepmother as we head across the mouth of Nootka Sound in the direction of Estevan Point. We have to steer a fair distance west since there are sunken and drying rocks within one and a half miles of the point itself. The whole area is dangerous, with a propensity for sudden squalls, even in summer; and, with an ebb tide from Nootka Sound meeting the underwater ledge off Hesquiat Peninsula, the seas become confused and choppy. It is not my favourite point of passage.
“A man is bad when he acts without thought of the consequences,” says my stepmother briskly.
“But no one is bad to begin with,” I counter. “I’m asking you what makes him that way.”
She gives the matter some thought as I scan the horizon for spouts. There should be whales near here. There must be.
“A bad man is only a selfish child grown up,” she says. “He thinks only of himself and no one else. How bad he becomes will depend on circumstance.”
“You mean it’s up to chance?”
“In a certain way,” she answers. “There are degrees of badness. Most of us have no chance to find out how bad we can be. What matters, if we do, is what comes after it. If a man can learn from his mistakes, then he is not wicked. He can change. If the man learns nothing, he will get worse. Like Oung Moi Toy, who I am telling you of.”
To All Appearances a Lady Page 26