“No,” said Noah.
With this, Noah’s daughter walked out onto the ice! She walked up to a seal. She grabbed onto its flipper. Both the seal and Noah’s daughter slipped through the ice and disappeared. “Get my daughter back!” Noah cried.
With this, Noah’s son climbed down from the ark, walked up to a seal, grabbed its flipper. Both the seal and Noah’s son disappeared under the ice. “Get my son back!” Noah cried out.
With this, Noah’s wife walked up to a seal. She grabbed its flipper. Both the seal and Noah’s wife disappeared through the breathing-hole. “Get my wife back!” Noah shouted.
“They won’t be back until ice-break-up,” a man said. “Go on, go on, grab a seal flipper and go after them!”
“No—no,” said this Noah.
With this, the villagers went out onto the ice to hunt seals. People at home in the village were hungry. They caught many seals. On their way home, they shouted up, “Noah—come with us. We’ll feed you until the ice-break-up. Just give us a few planks of wood.”
“No,” said Noah.
“Look—!” a man shouted. Everyone looked out onto the ice and saw Noah’s wife curled up next to a breathing-hole. Farther on, Noah’s son was curled up next to a breathing-hole. Farther on a little, Noah’s daughter was curled up next to a breathing-hole. “They seem to be doing well,” a man said.
“Wife! Daughter! Son!” Noah shouted loudly—it caused his wife, daughter, and son to startle and slip through the ice.
“How can I get them back?” Noah asked.
“Give the shaman your ark,” a village man said.
“Go away,” said this Noah.
The villagers kept Noah fed with scraps of food the rest of the winter. When the ice-break-up arrived, Noah’s family did not get back on the ark. They chose to live with seals—or maybe the shaman chose that. You see what a shaman does—you don’t always see the shaman!
Noah’s ark was now floating again. But the ice had cracked open the bottom. The ark sank away into the sea. Noah was given a kayak and paddled it near to the village. “I don’t like what happened here!” he said.
“Tell us what happened,” a woman shouted out.
“A shaman made my family live with seals. A shaman took the animals from my ark. My ark sank away into the sea.”
“The shaman didn’t stab a broom into you,” the woman said. “Stop complaining. Seals have good lives—be happy for your wife, daughter, son. They know how to get through winter.”
Then Noah paddled in the southerly direction until nobody could see him.
Part II
A HELEN MISCELLANY
PRAYERS
Sometimes I would lie on Helen’s bed reading while she sat at her desk, translating, composing a letter to one of her friends in linguistics all over the world, part of her obviously prodigious epistolary life. I noted addresses in Denmark, Japan, Canada, England. She once said to me, “I write at least one letter every day.”
She preferred notebooks with either black or maroon covers. The maroon notebooks—at least those she had in Churchill—were reserved for linguistics, rough drafts of folktales, notations in Japanese, English, and Inuit phonetics. In the black notebooks, and ledgers, she kept a diary and archived her life as a bird-watcher. “I don’t keep what people call a ‘life list,’” she said. “To my mind that would reduce the joy of seeing birds to arithmetic. I’ve been with people who keep such lists. I consider it a kind of bragging. It’s just my opinion, is all.”
“You keep very exact records, though,” I said.
“For my own memory, no one else’s,” Helen said. “I only took the one zoology course in university. A general sort of course.
“You always carry so many field guides with you?”
“Just about always.”
“You have a—what is it—a Dutch-language field guide. Do you read Dutch, too?”
“I like the illustrations in that book. In particular, in that book.”
In neat columns Helen wrote the names of birds she saw, geographical locales, time of day sighted, and so on. “I’m an autodidact of ornithology,” she said. “Mostly self-taught—. When you’re self-taught, of course, you’re your own best and worst teacher. But that can’t be helped, can it?”
“I thought you told me you had some formal classes at some point, in ornithology, Helen. It was—am I remembering this right?—out west in Canada. British Columbia, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I’d call those informal, uh, lessons. Not classes, really. Not in a classroom situation.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, and it was complicated by—”
“By?”
“Romance.”
“Complicated by romance.”
“Yes. Complicated by romance. But, still, I did learn quite a bit.”
“I would imagine.”
“—about birds. It was very, very useful knowledge. Knowledge gained, about birds out there, you see.”
Helen also kept a separate black notebook for prayers. She let me read it on any number of occasions. Come to think of it, she was less guarded about this notebook than the ones having to do with linguistics or birds, ironically enough. “Prayers” was Helen’s word for these compositions. I remember that exactly. They were written in Japanese; she translated quite a few for me, upon request, and I requested that at least a dozen times while we were in Churchill and a few times in our subsequent correspondences between Japan and Canada.
To the best of my knowledge—she and I never discussed this—Helen’s prayers did not echo any one religious sensibility. However, they all shared one thing in common: each was a request to see a bird. They each were a request to add, then, to Helen’s “life list,” no matter how she thought of it. In effect, these prayers to see birds elevated bird-watching to a spiritual plane, no doubt about that. Some were stated directly:
I would like to see
a red phalarope.
Or—and it made me laugh out loud when Helen translated this variation:
I would like to see
a red phalarope
(please).
To my mind Helen’s prayers did not betray outsized emotions, nor were they necessarily philosophical, except for the general and obvious idea that a prayer would be useless were there not some sort of powerful entity—perhaps God—who might be listening, or persuaded through elegant diction to listen, and thus be petitioned. Prayers, of course, are of the utmost intimate language (intimate dialogue), yet Helen’s were never confessional. For instance, nowhere in her prayers, even the longer ones of ten or twelve lines, say, was her illness mentioned. The word “cancer” was never used. There was no reference or allusion to physical pain at all. My guess—and it is only a guess—is that Helen did not wish to use sympathy to barter with God. Had she even obliquely exploited her “medical condition” it would have been undignified, demeaning, because it would imply a belief in a hierarchy of suffering—therefore, those in the most pain, or those about to die, might exact first priorities of mercy. How could any feeling and thinking person at all alert to the human condition possibly be convinced of something as absurd as that?
Helen’s prayers were never precisely haiku, nor did they, again as far as I knew, follow any compositional tradition. As I have said, for the most part they were rather declarative; all evidence of desire was monotonal. Her prayers had a utilitarian demeanor about them. Yet in the strictest sense, they were autobiographical, too, and in their own way revelatory as somewhat restrained entries in a diary:
I lost out as a Buddhist, worse as a Christian.
Never mind; I ask, please, to see a harlequin duck.
It would best be quite soon.1
I have in my possession all 116 of Helen’s prayers to see birds; some she translated, some were translated, albeit roughly, by a graduate student at the University of Michigan a few years after Helen’s death. Helen sent me the Japanese-language manuscript from Kyoto. It was typed on onionskin paper, wh
ich was what everyone used to type on. Each prayer has the title “Prayer One,” “Prayer Two,” and so on. The entire manuscript is titled “Prayers to See Birds,” practical enough, and I say “manuscript” because why else title it if you don’t see it to some extent as a work of literature? On the past page (in English and Japanese) is the sentence Typed by Remington Typewriter in Kyoto, Japan, July 6, 1978. Thirty-one days later Helen died in her brother and sister-in-law’s house in Kyoto. I like thinking of Helen alert and strong enough to type up those pages, no matter over what length of time.
Later I wrote to Helen’s brother and sister-in-law asking if “Remington typewriter” referred solely to the one typed sentence in English on the last page of the manuscript. Arthur, Helen’s brother, wrote back saying that, yes, it did, because her Japanese typewriter was made by a different company. “I know that you and Helen spoke often about typewriters,” Arthur wrote in that same letter. “Helen told me as much. I suppose that last sentence of her manuscript was meant for your special bemusement.”
In fact, a year or a little over a year after Helen passed away I wrote to Arthur offering to buy Helen’s Remington typewriter. I suddenly wanted it. It was a bout of acquisition fever, I suppose, and I am not pleased to be the person who asked for the typewriter, but I did. There was greed resident in my nostalgia. I wanted to own an object connected to my and Helen’s friendship. I do not know all that went into my comporting myself so crudely; I cannot forgive myself for it. It was Susanne, Helen’s sister-in-law, who wrote back, a prompt one-paragraph reply which ended by saying, “As for Helen’s English typewriter, you might recognize the font on the very page you are now reading. Yes, Mr. Norman, I am afraid that Arthur and I wish to keep the typewriter. You’ll understand. We use it, actually.” When I read her letter I recalled that Helen said of Susanne that she had about her “an elegant restraint.”
“I think I’d like to die quickly—I mean, at the very last,” Helen had said. “I wouldn’t want to be too aware of the moment.” It was about a week before we left Churchill. We were having dinner. Arctic char, potatoes, thawed green beans, as usual. “I mean, I don’t want to have to have all those tubes and such, in a cold hospital room.”
“That’s just not going to happen. Not from what you’ve told me about your family in Japan.”
“No, I suppose not. I shouldn’t be speaking of this. Two months knowing you, Howard Norman, I am speaking like this. Quite unfair, actually. You know what, though? I should do what this old woman I knew in Greenland did. I really should.”
“Which was?”
“About five or six years ago, I stayed in Greenland all winter. I was taking life histories, and I was working with one very old woman. She had cancer. There was no question as to what it was. A visiting doctor—maybe from the World Health Organization or some such. There was a diagnosis. Well, one night, she went around and said good-bye, she went right outside and disappeared. How cold—who knows, maybe minus fifty Fahrenheit, colder, probably. Out she went. All alone out she went, you know? Walked as far as strength allowed, I suppose, drank a bottle of whiskey top to bottom as my father used to say, lay down—perhaps. Perhaps took her clothes off, to hurry it along. How cold out. You’d get numb to feeling quite quickly, right? Anyone knows that. There’s a lot of good sense to what she did. I should pay attention to that. I didn’t witness it for nothing—”
“Was that the last anyone saw of her?”
“It wasn’t spoken about.”
NOAH GOES ON A SEAL HUNT
This happened, this happened, and three people from away died, because a big wooden boat floated into Hudson Bay. It floated out on the horizon. The whole village saw it.
There was a rough wind. Gulls-blown-around wind. It was a rainy wind. Rain became snow.
“Look—out there!” a man said. “It’s some kind of boat!”
“Let’s go out to it,” another villager said.
“Yes”—and it was agreed.
Some village men, women, children, a few dogs, all paddled out to the wooden boat. On the deck of this boat stood a man. Next to him stood his wife, his son, his daughter. Behind them stood animals such as the villagers had never seen. Strange-looking animals—one villager said, “I wonder how they might taste!”
“Hey, what’s this boat?” a man called out.
“It is called an ark,” the man on the deck shouted.
“What is your name?” another villager shouted up.
“Noah.”
The villagers moved the sound of this name—Noah—around in their mouths. Noah, Noah, Noah, Noah.
“Noah,” a village man said, “look out to the horizon. What do you see? It’s something you should learn about—quickly!”
“I’m looking,” said Noah. “But all I see is the horizon.”
“Look more closely.”
“I see the horizon, that’s all,” Noah said.
“Squint your eyes.”
Noah squinted his eyes and looked far into the distance. “Still—nothing,” he said.
“You see it,” a villager said, “you just don’t know what you are looking at. That’s because you are not smart about things up here where we live. In this place. You are ignorant about things here. Maybe you’re smart about things where you come from, but not here!”
“Tell me, then, what’s out there?” Noah said.
“It’s winter. You are looking at winter, gathering. It is heading this way. It is moving in fast. Look—there—see those gulls getting wind-tossed? Blown around—blown around. Watch out!”
Just then a seal flew in and landed next to Noah. It was now dead. “Look—the wind hunted a seal for you,” a villager said. “Go ahead and cut it up and give some to your family. There’s good seal-oil, too.”
“No—I don’t know how to eat this seal,” said Noah.
“Try the flippers, try the oil—don’t eat the nose or whiskers,” a village man shouted.
This made the villagers laugh.
“I don’t want to eat a seal,” said Noah.
“We’re hungry, though,” Noah’s wife said. “We’re hungry,” his daughter said. “We’re hungry, though,” his son said.
“We still have some food,” Noah said. “Some of our kind of food. Eat some of that.”
“Roll that seal off your boat, then,” a villager said. “Let us have it. We’ve never seen the wind hunt a seal like that before—it’s luck. It’s luck! Let us have it!”
“No,” said Noah, and he rolled the seal off the other side of the ark and it sank away before any villagers could get to it.
“A man travels a long distance just to turn down a gift from the wind—a wind-hunted seal, the first one I’ve seen in my life!” said an old village man. “This Noah is unusual.”
“Let’s paddle away from this unusual man,” another villager said.
“Yes”—and it was agreed. They paddled back to the village.
Winter arrived, seals gripped the ice near their breathing-holes. Noah saw polar bears hunting seals—Noah saw villagers hunting seals. Ice was all around the ark. During a blizzard the villagers didn’t visit the ark, but when the weather cleared, they visited.
“Hey—Noah!” a village man shouted. “How many of your animals have you eaten?”
“I can’t eat them,” Noah said. “When we’re done floating around, we’re going back to where we came from. Then I’ll let the animals go. I promised my God—he runs things. I promised I’d let the animals go.”
The villagers on the ice fell to laughing. The sound of their laughter echoed out over the ice, and seals slipped through their breathing-holes, back into the water. “There’s other spirits running things up here!” a village man shouted. “Ha, ha, ha!”
“Look—there!” another village man said. Everyone turned to look, and there, out on the ice, a black-and-white-striped horse was running. It did not know how to run on ice. It fell and slid, got up, fell, slid—then it fell through the ice.
&nb
sp; “Now it’s lost,” a villager said. “It would’ve been better to have eaten it.”
“I wonder how it tastes,” said Noah’s wife.
“I wonder how it tastes,” said Noah’s daughter.
“There’s another one on the ark, here,” said the son. “I’m going to kill it and cook it.”
With this, Noah said, “No!”
“I wonder how it tastes,” Noah’s son said.
“Give us a few animals,” a villager said. “Give us a few planks of wood from your ark. In return, we’ll hunt and fish for you, and you will make it through winter. You can even live in our village with us—all winter, all winter. When the ice thaws and breaks up, we’ll paddle you out to your ark, though the ice might crack it before then.”
“No,” said Noah.
“Why not go on a seal hunt with us, then?” a man said. “We’ll take you along. What you learn you can use to help feed your family.”
Noah went to the bottom of the ark, then he stepped out onto the ice. He fell a few times, then got his footing—much laughter. “Here’s a sealskin parka,” a woman said. Noah put it on.
Then they told Noah how to hunt a seal—quiet—crawl forward, don’t speak loudly—they told him some things, they said, “You stand back, we’ll go on ahead.” They gave Noah a spear.
Soon they saw a seal up ahead—it was facing away from the hunters, and the wind was blowing toward them—all for the good. “Now, stay back,” a hunter whispered to Noah—but this hunter saw that on Noah’s face was hunger and sadness, Noah had gone crazy in his head—Noah dropped to his knees and started to crawl toward the seal. “Stay back—stay back”—but Noah crawled toward the seal.
“At least don’t stand up,” a hunter said. But Noah stood up and the seal slid into the water.
Noah looked over at the ark. He saw his wife, daughter, and son crawling over the ice. They had been crawling in a proper manner toward the seal. As he watched, this happened: his wife, son, and daughter fell through the ice. This happened, this happened, and his family disappeared.
In Fond Remembrance of Me Page 6