The North Water

by Ian McGuire

  “Good,” the priest says. He scoops another piece of meat and does the same again. Sumner eats three more pieces but lets the fourth drop out onto the floor unchewed. The priest nods, then lowers Sumner’s head back down onto the blanket.

  “We’ll try you with a mug of tea later on,” he says. “See how you do with that.”

  After two days more, Sumner is able to sit up and eat by himself. The priest helps him into a chair, puts the blanket over his shoulders, and they sit together on two adjacent sides of the small wooden table.

  “The men who found you consider you what they call an Angakoq,” the priest explains, “which means ‘wizard’ in the Esquimaux language. They believe that bears have great powers, and that certain, chosen men partake in them. The same thing is true of other animals too, of course—deer and walrus, seals, even certain seabirds, I believe—but in their mythology the bear is the most powerful beast by far. Men who have the bear as their genius are capable of the greatest magic—healing, divination, and so on.”

  He glances at the stranger to see if there is any sign that he has understood, but Sumner looks impassively down at his food.

  “I’ve seen some of their Angakoqs in action and they’re naught but conjurers and charlatans, of course. They dress themselves up in gruesome masks and other audacious gewgaws; they make a great song and dance in the igloo, but there’s nothing to it at all. It’s nasty heathenish stuff, the crudest kind of superstition, but they know no better and how could they? They’d never seen the Bible before I got here most of them, never heard the gospel preached in earnest.”

  Sumner looks up at him briefly but doesn’t pause from his chewing. The priest smiles a little and nods encouragement, but Sumner doesn’t smile back.

  “It’s slow and painful work,” the priest goes on. “I’ve been here alone since the early spring. It took months to win their trust—through gifts at first, knives, beads, needles, and so on, and then through acts of kindness, giving help when they needed it, extra clothes or medicines. They are kindly people, but they are very primitive and childlike, almost incapable of abstract thought or any of the higher emotions. The men hunt and the women sew and suckle children, and that forms the limit of their interests and knowledge. They have a kind of metaphysics, true, but it is a crude and self-serving one, and, so far as I can tell, many don’t even believe in it themselves. My task is to help them grow up, you might say, to develop their souls and make them self-aware. That is why I am making the translation of the Bible here.” He nods at the piles of books and papers. “If I can get it right, find the correct words in their language, then they will begin to understand, I’m sure. They are God’s creatures after all, in the end, just as much as you or I.”

  The priest spoons up a piece of meat and chews it slowly. Sumner reaches for his mug of tea, picks it up, sips, then puts it back down on the table. For the first time in days he feels the words gathering inside him, dividing, accumulating, taking on strength and form. Soon, he knows, they will begin to rise up his throat and then they will spill out onto his bruised and ulcerated tongue, and then, whether he likes it or not, whether he wants it or not, he will speak.

  The priest looks at him.

  “Are you ill?” he asks.

  Sumner shakes his head. He raises his right hand a moment, then opens his mouth. There is a pause.

  “What medicines?” he says.

  It comes out in a blurred mumble. The priest looks confused, but then smiles and leans eagerly forwards.

  “Say that again,” he says. “I didn’t quite catch…”

  “Medicines,” Sumner repeats. “What medicines do you have?”

  “Oh, medicine,” the priest says. “Of course, of course.”

  He stands up, goes into the storeroom at the rear of the cabin, and comes back with a small medicine chest. He places it down on the table in front of Sumner.

  “This is all I have,” he says. “I’ve used the salts a good deal, of course, and the calomel for the native children when they have the flux.”

  Sumner opens the box and begins taking out the bottles and jars, peering at the contents and reading the labels. The priest watches him do it.

  “Are you a doctor?” he asks. “Is that what you are?”

  Sumner ignores the question. He takes out everything in the chest, and then tips the chest upside down to make sure it is truly empty. He looks at the collection arrayed on the tabletop and shakes his head.

  “Where’s the laudanum?” he says.

  The priest frowns but doesn’t answer.

  “The laudanum,” Sumner says again more loudly. “The fucking laudanum, where is it gone to?”

  “We have none of that left,” the priest says. “I had one bottle but it’s used up already.”

  Sumner closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, the priest is putting the medicines carefully back into the chest.

  “I see you can talk plain English after all,” he says. “For a while there I was fearing you were a Polack or Serb or some other strange denomination.”

  Sumner takes up the bowl and spoon, and starts eating again as if nothing has happened.

  “Where are you from?” the priest asks him.

  “It doesn’t matter so much where I’m from.”

  “Perhaps it doesn’t to you, but if a man is being fed and kept warm in a spot where he would likely die if left to fend for himself, you might expect a little courtesy is due to the people who are doing it for him.”

  “I’ll pay you back for the food and the fire.”

  “And when will you do that, I wonder?”

  “In the spring, when the whaling ships come back.”

  The priest nods and sits down again. He rakes his fingers through the edges of his gray beard, then scratches the point of his chin with his thumbnail. His cheeks are flushed, but he is struggling to remain charitable in the face of Sumner’s insults.

  “Some might call it a kind of miracle what happened to you,” he says, after a pause, “being found preserved alive on the ice inside the body of a dead bear.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that myself.”

  “Then what would you call it?”

  “Perhaps you should be asking the bear.”

  The priest stares back at him for a moment, then yaps out a laugh.

  “Oh, you’re a clever kind of fellow, I can see that,” he says. “Three days lying over there silent as the grave, not a single word from your lips, and now you’re up and making merry with me.”

  “I’ll pay you back for the food and the fire,” Sumner says again flatly, “just as soon as I get another berth.”

  “You’re sent here for a reason,” the priest says. “A man doesn’t just appear like that from nowhere. I don’t know what the reason is yet, but I know the Good Lord must have one.”

  Sumner shakes his head.

  “No,” he says. “Not me. I want no part of that rigmarole.”

  * * *

  Half a week later, a sledge arrives carrying two hunters the priest has not seen before. He pulls on his anorak and mittens and goes outside. The woman, whose Christianized name is Anna, comes out of the igloo at the same time, greets the men, and offers them food. They talk to her for several minutes, and then, speaking more slowly so he will understand them, they talk to the priest. They explain that they have found a ruined tent a day’s journey away with four dead white men lying frozen within it. They show him, as proof, the items they have salvaged—knives, ropes, a hammer, a grease-stained copy of the Bible. When he asks if they will go back there to retrieve the bodies so they can be buried with the proper rites, they shake their heads and say they must continue on with their hunting. They feed their dogs on walrus meat, then eat in the igloo and rest awhile but do not stay overnight. They try to sell him the Bible before they leave, but when he refuses to trade for it, they hand it to the woman Anna as a gift. After they have gone, Anna comes to the cabin and explains that the hunters told her they also found t
wo dead Esquimaux at the white men’s camp. They were both stripped naked, she reports, and one had been murdered with a knife. She points to her own neck and indicates the location of the wounds.

  “One here,” she says, “and the other here.”

  Later, when the two of them are alone, and after he has thought on it a little while, the priest tells the hunters’ story to Sumner. He watches his reactions.

  “As I understand it, the place they found the bodies is not so very far from where you were found yourself,” he says. “So I’m guessing you will know the men who died; I’m guessing that they were your own shipmates.”

  Sumner, who is seated by the stove whittling at a piece of driftwood, scratches his nose and nods once in agreement.

  “Were they dead when you left them?” the priest asks him.

  “Only the Yaks.”

  “And you didn’t think to go back there?”

  “I knew that blizzard would have killed them.”

  “It didn’t kill you.”

  “I’d say it tried its damnedest.”

  “Who murdered the Esquimaux?”

  “A man named Henry Drax, a harpooner.”

  “Why would he do such a thing?”

  “Because he wanted their sledge. He wanted to use it to escape.”

  Frowning and shaking his head at this extraordinary intelligence, the priest picks up his pipe and fills it with tobacco. His hand is trembling as he does so. Sumner watches him. Charcoal ticks and crackles in the stove beside them.

  “He must have traveled north,” the priest says after a pause. “The northern tribes of Baffin Land are a law unto themselves. If he fell amongst them there is no way of us ever finding out where he is or what has become of him. He may be dead, but more likely he has traded the sledge for shelter and is waiting for the spring.”

  Sumner nods. He watches the candle’s shimmering ghost hovering in the darkened windowpane. Beyond it, he sees the pale template of the igloo, and, beyond that, the high hard blackness of the mountains. He thinks of Henry Drax still alive somewhere and shudders.

  The priest stands up. He takes a bottle of brandy from the cabinet near the door and pours them both a glass.

  “And what is your name?”

  Sumner looks up at him sharply, then turns back to the driftwood and continues whittling.

  “Not Henry Drax,” he says.

  “Then what?”

  “Sumner. Patrick Sumner from Castlebar.”

  “A Mayo man,” the priest says lightly.

  “Aye,” he says. “Once upon a time.”

  “And what is your history, Patrick?”

  “I have none to speak of.”

  “Come,” he says, “every man has his history surely.”

  Sumner shakes his head.

  “Not me,” he says.

  * * *

  On Sundays, the priest holds Communion in the main room of the cabin. He pushes the table to one end of the room, clears off the books and papers, and puts a linen tablecloth, a crucifix, and two candles in brass candlesticks down in their place. There is a pewter jug and chalice for the wine, and a chipped china plate for the wafers. Anna and her brother attend always and sometimes four or five others come down from the camp nearby. Sumner acts as altar boy. He lights the candles, then blows them out again. He dabs the lip of the chalice with a rag to keep it clean. When required, he even reads the lesson. The whole thing is nonsense, he believes, a crude human circus with the priest as ringmaster and lion tamer combined, but it is easier to go along with it once a week, he thinks, than argue the toss on each separate occasion. What the Esquimaux make of it all, though, he can’t imagine. They stand and kneel as required, even sing the hymns as best they can. He suspects they find it secretly amusing, that it serves them as a form of exotic entertainment in the otherwise dull expanses of winter. When they get back to their igloo, he imagines them laughing at the priest’s solemnity and gaily mimicking his pointless, ponderous gestures.

  One Sunday, after the service has concluded and the tiny congregation is standing smoking pipes or sipping mugs of sugared tea, Anna tells the priest that one of the Esquimaux women from the camp has a sickening infant and is asking her for medicine. The priest listens, nods, then goes to the storeroom and selects a bottle of calomel pills from the medicine chest. He gives the woman two of the white pills and tells her to divide them in half and to give the child one-half each morning and keep it tightly swaddled in the meantime. Sumner, who is sitting by the stove in his usual place, watches on but doesn’t speak. When the priest has moved away he stands up and walks over to the Esquimaux woman. He gestures to look at her child. The woman says something to Anna and then, after Anna replies, removes the child from the hood of her anorak and hands it to Sumner. The child’s eyes are dark and sunken, and its hands and feet are cold. When Sumner pinches its cheek, it doesn’t cry or complain. He gives the child back to his mother, then reaches behind the stove and takes a small piece of charcoal from the galvanized bucket. He twists it beneath his boot heel, then licks his index finger and dabs it down into the black powder. He opens up the infant’s mouth and smears the charcoal powder on its tongue, then gets a teaspoon of water and washes it down. The infant turns red, coughs, then swallows. Sumner takes a larger piece of charcoal from the bucket and hands it to Anna.

  “Tell her to do what I just did,” he says. “She should do it four times each day, and she should feed the baby as much water as she can in between.”

  “And the white pills too?” she says.

  Sumner shakes his head.

  “Tell her to throw away the pills,” he says. “The pills will make it worse.”

  Anna frowns and then looks down at her feet.

  “Tell the woman I am an Angakoq,” Sumner says. “Tell her I know a lot more than the priest ever will.”

  Anna’s eyes widen. She shakes her head.

  “I cannot tell her that,” she says.

  “Then tell her she must choose for herself. The pills or the charcoal. It is up to her.”

  He turns away, unfolds his pocketknife, and starts up again with the whittling. When Anna tries to speak to him again, he waves her away.

  * * *

  The two Esquimaux hunters who rescued Sumner return to the mission a week later. Their names are Urgang and Merok. They are ragged, cheerful men both, lank-haired and boyish. Their ancient anoraks are torn and shabby, and their bulbous bearskin trews are darkened in patches by seal grease and baccy juice. On arrival, after tethering the dogs and doing the decencies with Anna and her brother, they draw the priest aside and explain that they want Sumner to come with them on their next hunting trip.

  “They don’t need you to hunt,” the priest tells Sumner shortly afterwards. “They just want you to be there. They suspect you have magical powers, and they think the animals will be drawn to you.”

  “How long would I be gone?”

  The priest goes outside to check.

  “They say a week,” he says. “They’re offering you a new set of furs to wear and a fair portion of the catch.”

  “Tell them yes,” Sumner says.

  The priest nods.

  “They’re good-hearted fellows, but crude and backwards, and they speak not a word of English,” he says. “You’ll be able to act as a good example of the civilized virtues while you’re in amongst them.”

  Sumner looks at him and laughs.

  “I’ll be no such fucking thing,” he says.

  The priest shrugs and shakes his head.

  “You’re a finer man than you think you are,” he tells him. “You hold your secrets tight, I know that, but I’ve been watching you awhile now.”

  Sumner licks his lips and spits into the stove. The blob of khaki phlegm bubbles a moment, then disappears.

  “Then I’d thank you to stop watching. What I may or mayn’t be is my business, I think.”

  “It’s between you and the Lord, true enough,” the priest replies, “but I hate to
see a decent man miscount himself.”

  Sumner looks out of the cabin window at the two slovenly-looking Esquimaux and their piebald pack of hounds.

  “You should save your good advice for those who need it most,” he says.

  “It’s Christ’s advice I’m giving out, not my own. And if there’s a man alive who doesn’t need that, I’ve yet to meet him.”

  In the morning, Sumner dons his new suit of clothes and perches himself on top of the hunters’ sledge. They carry him back to their winter campground, a low complex of interlinked igloos with sledges, tent poles, drying frames, and other pieces of wood and bone scattered about on the trampled and piss-marked snow. They are greeted by an eager cluster of women and children and an uproar of barking dogs. Sumner is led into one of the larger igloos and shown a place to seat himself. The igloo is lined, top and bottom, with reindeer hides, and warmed and lit by a soapstone blubber lamp at its center. It is dank and gloomy inside and reeks of old smoke and fish oil. Others follow him in. There is laughter and talking. Sumner fills his pipe bowl and Urgang lights it for him with a taper made of whale skin. The dark-eyed children chew their finger ends and silently stare. Sumner doesn’t speak to anyone or attempt to communicate by glance or gesture. If they believe he is magic, he thinks, then let them. He has no obligation to set them right, to teach them anything at all.

  He watches as one of the women heats a metal saucepan full of seal blood over the lamp. When the blood is steaming hot, she removes the pan from the low flame and passes it around. Each person drinks, then passes it on. It is not a rite or ritual, Sumner understands, it is just their way of taking food. When the pan reaches him he shakes his head; when they press it on him he takes it, sniffs, then gives it to the man on his right. They offer him a piece of raw seal liver instead, but he turns it down also. He realizes that he is offending them now; he notices the flickers of sadness and confusion in their eyes, and wonders whether it would be easier, better, to concede. When the pan comes round again, he accepts it and drinks. The taste is not unpleasant, he has eaten worse. It reminds him of an oily and saltless version of oxtail soup. He drinks again to show himself willing, then passes the pan on. He senses their relief, their pleasure that he has accepted their proffered gift, that he has joined them somehow. He doesn’t begrudge these beliefs although he knows they aren’t true. He hasn’t joined them—he is not an Esquimaux any more than he is a Christian or an Irishman or a doctor. He is nothing, and that is a privilege and a joy he is loath to give up. After the eating is finished, they play games and make music. Sumner watches them and even joins in when he is asked to. He throws up a ball made of walrus bone and tries to catch it in a wooden cup; he artlessly mimics their singing. They smile and pound him on the shoulder; they point at him and laugh. He tells himself he is doing it for the new set of furs, for the promised portion of the seal meat, both of which he will give to the priest. He is busy paying his way.