Nasook stared as if he was unable to comprehend. Genevieve made a cautious move to reach for his hand. To her relief, his brown hand coupled hers. He watched as she placed his hand on her belly. Suddenly the baby moved and Nasook jumped back. There was wonder in his eyes and then the light went out of them and they seemed to fill with sadness. He got up and left the cave.
What is he going to do? she wondered. If Nasook didn’t kill her she would probably freeze to death once her wood was gone. The stunted starrigan trees close by and singed from the fire that had skirted her place in the cove were heavy with snow. She lay resigned, chained by her shivering body, beneath her dark, slated roof.
She thought of France and the place she had held in Monsieur Laurier’s maison. She swallowed in hunger, remembering the summer fruit: grapes, oranges, apples, tangerines, and mangoes. Some of these had been imported from other countries. Monsieur Laurier had been less than generous in sharing the costly fruits. She smiled, thinking how she and the chambermaid had tasted a mango without Monsieur’s knowledge. They had discovered an unfinished mango left on a plate in the pantry. Another time they had stolen a whole tangerine and shared it. She would have liked to fill the emptiness of the present time with memories of a pleasant past in the Monsieur’s maison as a pampered adopted daughter, and not as a slave caged in the drudgery of scullery work, contending with the bruising pinches of male servants. The wrath and treachery of humans in a familiar place had been replaced by the wrath and treachery of the elements on a foreign island. One moment the sun was a beaming face smiling down from a blue sky. Then the sky turned grey, then black. Stars often poked through as if refusing to be covered by whatever black mantle had tried to smother them. There had been no time for Genevieve to look at stars or stand in the sun’s warmth when she was in France. There had always been work to do, and fast; even when she went to the market for légumes she had to hurry back.
She turned toward the sound of scraping. Her heart jumped like a trapped animal as the cave mouth darkened. Her lips parted in disbelief as she stared at Nasook. He was bringing kindling inside the cave and stacking it for a fire. Soon the cave was like a heated garment around her body. Nasook went back outside and dragged in what looked like a huge snail. He had killed a seal! She watched as he pulled his flint blade down over the sealskin, opening it, letting out a dark red flow. He cupped his hands and filled them; then he brought them over to Genevieve. She hesitated, cringed, then opened her lips. For my baby, she thought, shuddering at the rusty taste. Nasook let the rest of the blood flow away from the seal, while he danced, soft incantations leaving his lips. He is beautiful, she thought. Her own flesh quickened as she imagined the man under the animal skins.
He stopped as suddenly as he had started, stooping to cut inside the sealskin, stripping fat. Some of it he tossed on the fire. He cut off strips of meat, laying them aside on birch wrap. “For you!” he offered, “for later days. I wrap meat and dig snow, cover with snow and rocks.”
“Why didn’t you take all the meat to your people?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Some of my people lost to white man’s fever. Now . . . more victuals than needed.”
His answer angered her. Why hadn’t he brought food to her because he cared about her—not because his family had more than enough? She shoved her resentment aside. She had another human being inside her. That was what mattered.
Nasook went outside with the meat. She watched from the entrance as he strained to dig into the earth. When he had dug deep enough, he placed birch-sealed meat in the shallow hole. He covered it with rocks, and lifted his head with a smile. “Rocks keep animals and birds away.” She backed into the cave, and he followed her, bending with his knife to strip a large piece of seal.
Genevieve felt a hazy sense of peace as the fire rose and spread out, enveloping her. The presence of another human being amid the warmth of a fire settled her, gave her hope. Nasook held out a piece of uncooked seal meat. She shook her head, and turned toward the fire. Nasook took the piece into his mouth. He cut another sliver of meat. Then he pierced it with a pointed stick and hung it over the flames. Soon the smell of roasting seal filled Genevieve’s nostrils, stirring her appetite. Desire and hunger mingled as she watched Nasook’s strong male hands turn the meat over the fire. He held out the stick and she took it, slipping the cooked meat into her mouth. She closed her eyes and chewed slowly, relishing the taste of fresh meat.
Nasook sat watching her. His nose looked more pronounced with his hair flattened in seal oil. He was close enough for her to draw in the musky scent of his skin. “I wanted come, but I scared we do what we do afore and I put your life in trouble,” he said softly. “I not know what to do.”
Genevieve met his look. She swallowed hard as he continued. “After I with bouguishaman—white man—I afraid my people not have me. When I look for them, they found me. I come back with smell of white man and his sounds on tongue. They want bougatowishi—to kill me—at first, though I speak out my people’s words. They shot arrow at me as if I bougishamesh—stranger. Then they put heads together. After they talk they say they not kill me. I speak white man’s words. I talk to bouguishaman for them in barter sometime.”
Nasook was talking more than he ever had, seeming to forget that he was letting his spirit enter the white woman. Genevieve let him run on without answering, afraid he would stop.
“I purified after days sitting among bathing rocks. Sometimes I pass away with power of steam; my people lift me gently into cool air. Each time I pass away, white man’s spirit overtaken by my born spirit and slowly die. I not speak English words to my people, but when I alone down by beach, walking among sounds of birds, I throw up English words into air and my ears catch them, so I keep minding them. For a year of moons I speak white man’s tongue, and I not want it leave my head. Not now.” His look grabbed for hers. “My people accept me now—not kill me—but you . . .” His words hung heavy in the air and her eyes followed him as he stood up and left the cave without another word. She did not call after him—ask him to stay. A strange people might follow him—Red Indians filling the cave.
While crossing the Atlantic, she had listened to male voyagers tell tales until the women and children clutched themselves in fright, tales of Indians scalping fishermen and skinning the flesh off the bodies to be preserved and used as pouches. There had been stories that Indians rendered seal fat and stored it mixed with seal blood in sealskin bottles lined with bark and that they stuffed seal stomach and intestines with herbs and ate them. Hidden somewhere in the forest, she knew, were people of word puzzles the white man had not been able to put into true pictures. They were people she would be afraid to trust.
Once Nasook had gone outside, Genevieve walked to the mouth of the cave and watched as he piled his sealskin sled he called bochmoot with seal meat and laid upon it his harpoon—aduth, he told her. She longed for him to leave the Red Man’s world and stay with her. He could still carry his people’s memory and their god inside his heart where no one could take it, she reasoned.
He stooped to tighten the sealskin babishe—cord—in his snowshoes; then he lifted his head as if he knew she would be watching him. His eyes said goodbye as he pulled his bochmoot across the white ice land around a point she couldn’t follow, leaving few words behind to fill her emptiness.
In the silent icescape stretching across the sea, it was so easy to forget the live waters with jewels of sunshine dancing on them. She felt as if she were going inside herself, her life shrinking to a pinpoint. She grabbed the chain about her neck, ran her fingers around it until she found the cross, and brought it back to her bosom, clutching it. She was alone except for God. There had to be such a being, and her lips moved in words upward to where she perceived Him to be. “Take care of me,” she pleaded.
She lay down by the fire and fell asleep. She slipped into a pleasant dream: Elizabeth walks up the steps to a beau
tiful white building. A tower rises high above a large door. Windows in the sides of the building are as pretty as sunshine on crackers of ice over pools. The building sits on a mount of land above the sea. Inside is a host of people. In front of them is a man in a black suit and a woman in a white dress . . . a man in a white robe holds a book. “Dearly beloved . . .”
“Dearly unloved . . .” a woman’s voice whispers over and over.
Genevieve pulled as hard as she could to get away from a dream that began pleasantly then ended in strangulation.
Chapter 6
Nasook and the Stranger
Genevieve stirred, awoke herself with the word unloved hanging in her mind as stark as a cliff above the sea. A self-pitying thought filled her head: You can’t fight this cold, white enemy and live. She believed it until she felt her baby move, and then it was as if the baby’s voice was louder. Live! Live! Live! Her heart sang the words as her hand moved down over her taut, rising belly. She found the strength to yell, “My bébé will live!”
She got up to stoke the fire, grateful for the brushwood Nasook had brought into the cave, piling it against the wall near her own stack of deadwood. Golden, orange tips arched and licked dark air, as if the sun had come into the cave like ribbons of sunshine.
She pulled her garments tight as she sat on her heels beside the fire, feeling its warmth and life moving in the damp, dark cave where insects crawling out of the rocks and along the damp earth were her only companions.
Days slipped into nights and nights into days, spent with Genevieve losing count. Then one morning a figure darkened the cave’s entrance. Genevieve’s eyes widened in terror at the sight of the scruffin dressed in a canvas garment. Hardly a sign of jowls showed beneath a coarse, black beard. A beaver pelt lay around his neck.
He met Genevieve’s terrified stare as if astonished. “Femme sole!” he exclaimed.
Genevieve did not answer. She backed farther into the cave, her heart pounding. The Frenchman didn’t stop. With a quick movement he lifted a hand toward Genevieve’s skins. He pulled them from her body, dropping them. He rent the bodice of her dress with a triumphant guffaw. She stood with her arms over her bare breasts while he stared at her rounded belly. Her legs tightened against each other in a helpless pose. A deafening terror billowed inside her head. She could not keep her body away from the man, her baby away from harm. He would likely kill her if he knew that a savage had filled her belly! She stared, her eyes wild and fearful. Maybe he would save her if he believed she was a French girl who had fallen from a ship, if he believed her husband had been killed by Indians. Perhaps he would honour a relic—a widow—and leave her be.
A saucy look spread over his face. “Sauve qui peut. Escape if you can!”
Nasook made no sound as he stole up on the man and sank an axe into the Frenchman’s skull. Genevieve slipped down on the ground, whimpering. Eyeing her belly, Nasook dropped quickly to the earth and gathered her skins. He held them against the heat of the fire before wrapping them around her. She cringed, closing her eyes, imagining the pirate’s scalp Nasook would drop on the cave floor—long hair around an oval patch of bloodied sod.
Nasook announced, “Breath gone from all the bad men now.”
Genevieve opened her eyes a slit to see Nasook dragging the man, scalp intact, from the cave. She tightened her hands against her ears to deaden the sounds of digging in the sand of a beach swept clean of snow.
She sat curled up like an ammonite, her hands over her face, her eyes looking through her fingers as Nasook came back. Cruel thoughts took shape. Luke and his father may not have sailed away after all. What if they were under the hard ground, killed by Nasook or captured by his tribe? She wanted to ask him about it, but she feared her imaginings, feared they were true.
She asked, with a shudder, “Did you scalp the man?”
Nasook’s eyes narrowed angrily. “My people not take scalps. Lies! All lies white people spit. I killed man afore he kill you. The Frenchmen hide ship on other side of island and come pirating through woods looking for Beothuk to kill. My people take t’ings from fishermen; they take our people’s shores and fish. They kill our people and laugh. Weem no more than appawet—seal.”
Nasook settled back on his heels. A sad look crossed his face. “We here after land first upped out of sea, so long ago only Mother of life remembers. Birds come from south to pitch. Ice, moving from one sea to another, brought animals. Flowers hold berries our people taste. They smile. Good taste.”
Genevieve sensed Nasook’s love for the land she imagined as a giant mammal rising up through huge sheets of ice in an Atlantic sea, settling its body on a grand shelf, a long neck reaching up from its large body lying on its bum, feet licked by the sea’s salty tongues. The land lay, new life springing from its wild vegetation every spring.
Genevieve imagined red men and women walking gently over the land, gathering seashells and birds’ eggs with their children.
Nasook got a faraway look. “My people everywhere before white sailors come looking for new land and sea riches. We not afraid go to sea. It was time of cow a ya seek—warm moon—when I heard first voice of Frenchman. We had three tapatook—canoes. We hid under them just as Frenchmen run through woods. Kisa, my sister, held her little girl of thirteen moons. She began cry in dark. She cry so loud she madyrut—hiccough—and elder put his hand on her mameshook—mouth. Her limbs give way—must have covered nose too. I heard heavy feet of men in sand, the sound of words and of gun, then lesser sounds of Frenchmen as they moved farther away. I didn’t know little Koee dead until I saw Kisa trying to put breath back inside her mouth. She turned colour of wet sand, her fat little legs no more run to me, her laughing eyes no more holding sight of me, her uncle. When Koee’s arms hanged loose, there was silence as deep as dark over dawn before world stirs to light. Kisa’s eyes grow stormy. Days after days, she wandered around sounding mamatrabet—song—to drown cries of baby Koee filling her head.
“I told Kisa, ‘Our elder saved others. If he hadn’t, all could have died—baby Koee too.’ I showed her hole in my shoulder pelt and tapatook where Frenchman shoot. Kisa knew truth of my words, but they not help her feelings. Mangawoonish—sunlight—was drawn out of her eyes, leaving them empty. Another time come when pirate Frenchmen find her on beach picking beedeejamish—spring flowers—and take her.
“Frenchmen must pay for killing my father and his brother and taking sister Kisa. I always look for her. She only emmamooset—young girl—left among our people. We search for ships on rocks and sea rovers. Sometimes we find good things.”
Genevieve’s eyes grew dark. “I don’t want to see dead men,” she cried.
Nasook shrugged. “You want be dead woman with baby inside you when you got no gaboweete—breath.” He left without saying anything else, without looking back to where her gaze clung to him. She sat looking into the fire, wanting Nasook to stay. He had lain hard against her only once, passionate in his movement, but he had never lain soft against her, holding her in a coupling embrace, done in tenderness. That was what she wanted now more than anything, the warmth of his body to cut through her loneliness like a hot dancing flame cuts through cold.
A sob filled her throat and spread like a shudder through her body until she burst into cries, the sound filling the cave. “Why can’t you stay with me—and help me? Why am I here alone?” Tears fell onto the rugged slate beneath her feet. She lifted her head as a finger touched her face. Nasook sat down and asked her to remember what he had told her about his people.
“I am letting your spirit into my body and yours into mine when we do words together. My people will not be happy.” He wrapped his arms around her, held her against him without speaking. Their breathing coupled and Genevieve felt her loneliness vanish like cold air licked by fire. He pulled away abruptly and stood up, letting a word hang in the air: “Bethoeote.” Puzzled, she looked up at
him and he repeated the word in English. She felt comforted that bethoeote meant good night—not goodbye.
She curled into herself, knees drawn up, wrists turned in like lobster tails, her body around her baby. Soon she was asleep.
Work runs Mary Jane’s fists knobby, her knuckles scrubbed raw as they push clothes over a sudsy washboard. Her wet fists tighten with the news her brother Edward has brought . . . What she wants to do is sit by a window and watch a skiff fight its way through gales. On it will be a fisherman with thighs hard, knees locked against the raving sea, lips rained on by salt spray already opening to the thoughts of her kiss. He’s coming home to her and her soft body, growing hard with child. Instead, the skiff on the horizon does not carry Joe. He is somewhere in the sea, his boat in pieces on growlers. That’s what people tell her. After days without a sight of Joe, Mary Jane sees his skiff coming in from the sea. She is running down the gravelled path. She is on the stagehead. She makes out Joe’s face. She is dancing, and the stage rails are dancing under her feet . . .
Genevieve awoke, feeling happy at having a dream with a happy ending.
Chapter 7
The Water Bear
She had lain surprisingly warm all through the night. Like a bear in its lair, she thought. Now that it was morning, she eased herself to her feet to take a look outside. The wind had sculpted ridges in the snow, but there were no markings of any living thing: not a bird claw in the snow nor a bird silhouette in the sky. She began to walk through the soft drifts, looking behind at her feet marks, pretending there was a family of people coming behind.
By the sea’s edge, she scanned a white ocean. The whole world from land to sea was a quiet scape. She stepped on the ice, walking out a ways to look back at the land. She thought of going as far as a little island sticking out of the ice. She walked gingerly. She didn’t notice the white-furred creature lying on the frozen seascape, blending in with it. In an instant it was on its feet not far from her. It was taller than she was, its large, menacing paws patting the air as it rolled its head from side to side.
Maiden from the Sea Page 5