Voyage of the Narwhal

by Andrea Barrett

  Side by side they crowned a rock, antlers branching above white bone and lidless eyes. Erasmus, under their gaze, knelt and pointed out the joints most easily severed. Left went the knife, and right and left and down: intestines steaming, a large smooth liver, stomach pouring out masses of green paste. In another pile ribs and shoulders, haunches and loins and tongues. They wrapped the meat in the skins and Erasmus hefted his end of one bloody bundle and then froze at the sight of his own reflection in the eyes. The thread of their voyage had broken, he thought, the plot unraveled, the point disappeared; nothing was left but the texture of each moment and the feeling of his soul unfurling after years in a small dark box.

  “Are you all right?” Isaac said. “Is this too heavy?”

  The caribou were watching themselves being carried away. “Let’s try to drag the bundles,” Erasmus said. “Down to the boat.”

  The odd humming feeling persisted in his head. And when he and Isaac climbed aboard the Narwhal and found Zeke standing on the quarterdeck with Joe, talking to three Esquimaux while the crew gawked from the bow, at first Erasmus thought he’d hallucinated them.

  “They’re so short,” Isaac whispered.

  He stepped back toward the railing, and Erasmus involuntarily squeezed the meat in his arms. What if these strangers were dangerous? Or if the crew members did something to anger them? Zeke and Joe had no weapons; Erasmus, leaving Isaac to deal with the bloody mass, hurried to Zeke’s side.

  Joe and the Esquimaux spoke at some length. Then the Esquimaux stood quietly while Joe explained that these people, very different in dress and habits from those they’d met at Godhavn, wandered inland each summer in small family groups, searching for caribou. The camp of this particular group, Joe said, was several miles away, out of sight of the ship—they’d seen the hunting party, and had sent a delegation to investigate. “They invite our leaders to their camp,” Joe said. “Three of us, to go with the three of them.”

  Zeke said, “You and me, of course.” He was silent for a minute. “And Captain Tyler,” he added.

  Erasmus felt a little thrill at the idea that his figure, crouched near the skulls, had been the sight that drew the Esquimaux; then a fierce disappointment that he should not be included in the delegation. When he took Zeke’s arm and begged to come, Zeke shook him off and said he couldn’t ignore Captain Tyler’s rank.

  The crew watched in silence as the six men dropped down the side of the brig, rowed to shore, and disappeared over a low hill. Three and three, dressed entirely differently, Zeke’s pale hair glowing behind the darker heads. The crew murmured behind them: suppose they’re murderers; suppose they’re cannibals; suppose they’re plotting to return with a great crowd and take over the ship—Fletcher Lamb with his bandaged hand, Barton DeSouza, Robert Carey.

  Out loud, over the muttered comments, Dr. Boerhaave said, “What if they don’t come back?”

  “There’s no point in even thinking like that,” Erasmus said. Although he was worried himself; if something happened to Zeke, how would he explain to Lavinia that he’d stayed safely on the brig?

  “Shall we look at the bones from the mergansers?” Dr. Boerhaave said. “I finished the other set while you were hunting.”

  From the sea he pulled a dripping sack. The water was boiling with Cancer nugax; he and Erasmus had learned to take advantage of the little shrimps’ hunger, hanging their roughly cleaned skeletons over the side in a fine-mesh net. Erasmus, still distracted, opened the sack to find that the voracious creatures had cleaned everything perfectly. The sight of the disarticulated bones calmed him a bit.

  Dr. Boerhaave, making notes, said, “I’m ashamed to admit this, but—don’t you sometimes experience the search for Franklin’s remains as just . . . distraction? I wish our only task was simply to observe this amazing place and its creatures.” In the breeze his soft brown hair with its streaks of gray lifted from his forehead and fell and lifted again, like partridge feathers.

  “But it’s not,” Erasmus said, clutching a fistful of wing bones. He looked down at the beautiful planes and knobs in his hands. Zeke would be fine, he had Joe to help him; the Esquimaux had seemed quite friendly. “But I know what you mean. Would you pass me that wire?”

  When he looked up again it was early evening, and Zeke and Joe and Captain Tyler were hopping back onto the deck unharmed. Erasmus followed Zeke down into the empty cabin, a jawbone still in his hand.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

  “It went well,” Zeke said. “Joe didn’t have much trouble interpreting—he says the dialect is similar to that of the West Greenlanders. They liked our gifts.”

  Up on deck, Captain Tyler began lashing down everything movable. “Esquimaux will steal anything,” Erasmus heard him tell the men. “Everything. And you can be sure they’ll be visiting now that they know we’re here.”

  “But—what were they like?” Erasmus asked Zeke. “What were they wearing? What were they eating? What do their dwellings look like inside?”

  “Interesting,” Zeke said. “Different. I was concentrating on the conversation with our host. Don’t you want to know if I heard any news of Franklin?” A huge smile split his face. “I’ve been waiting years for this,” he said. “Don’t you understand? Ever since I was a boy reading your father’s books.”

  Suddenly he looked like that boy again, and Erasmus was reminded of something Lavinia had told him a few days after her birthday party. “How can I discourage him from this trip?” she’d said. “We fell in love talking about Franklin, you don’t know how many hours I’ve spent listening to his stories and plans. He cherishes that in me, he says he loves the way I listen.” Erasmus had asked her if she truly shared Zeke’s enthusiasm, and she’d sworn she did. Or at least one part of it: “I admire Franklin’s wife,” she’d said. “Her steadfastness.”

  “I’m sorry,” Erasmus said, abashed. “Of course I want to know.”

  “I asked the oldest man point-blank if he’d ever seen a ship frozen in the ice, or white men marching anywhere around here,” Zeke said. “He said no but I thought I saw him exchange a look with the man sitting next to him. They’ve asked us to return tomorrow. Will you come?”

  OF COURSE ERASMUS went, as did Ned, Mr. Tagliabeau, Thomas Forbes, several other men, and Joe—still their only interpreter, despite all the evenings Zeke had spent with him, transcribing into his black book Joe’s version of the Esquimaux names for things. This time Captain Tyler, Mr. Francis, and a small detachment stayed behind to guard the ship. Dr. Boerhaave nearly stayed behind as well; Fletcher Lamb had returned to his hammock, complaining of shooting pains in his limbs and face, and Dr. Boerhaave was worried. But there was nothing he could do for Fletcher after giving him a few drops of laudanum, and so he joined the delegation.

  They carried offerings of duff and dried apples, as well as knives and needles and files and beads to barter. Over the hills they went, into a rough and scrubby land bare of trees and veiled by a light drizzle. As they walked Erasmus listened to Joe, who was trying to teach Zeke some things about this group called the Netsilik. Now and then Erasmus bent to gather pebbles; he’d been lax, he felt, about examining the area’s geological structure.

  “You might want to be a bit more . . . cautious,” Joe was saying to Zeke. “About asking directly for information; it’s not these people’s nature to respond to pointed questions, they dislike being cross-examined. And if I could let them know that we’ll barter for everything they tell us, that they’ll be rewarded?”

  “Fine,” Zeke said impatiently. “Fine, fine, fine.”

  Erasmus and the others could hardly keep up with him. In the treeless, featureless landscape, the six tents forming the camp stood out starkly. A bunch of dogs, tied away from the tents, howled like wolves.

  “They’d eat the tents in an instant if they were free,” Joe said as they approached. All around, on the rough stony ground, were dog carcasses, bits of rotted meat and blubber, and broken bones. T
homas Forbes tripped over something and Dr. Boerhaave, bending down, said, “I believe that’s a human femur.” The bone was still shrouded in bits of leathery skin.

  Thomas leaped backward, stumbling on the shallow pit in which the bone had been interred. The flat pieces of limestone meant to cover the body were small and quite light, Erasmus saw, and had clearly been pushed aside by a hungry fox or a dog. Thomas cursed and then bent over, very pale.

  Joe said, “It’s not what you think. It’s not that they disrespect their dead: but they believe that a heavy weight placed upon the deceased’s body hinders the spirit from moving on. Of course the dogs uncover them, the dogs are always hungry.”

  “Savages,” Thomas said. Later he would disappear for a day in the company of a young Netsilik woman, recently widowed, whatever discomfort he felt with the tribe’s habits apparently overcome. But now Erasmus saw Thomas look with dislike on the man who emerged from a strong-smelling tent to greet them. The stranger had a sparse moustache and a tuft of hair between his chin and his lower lip; the bottom of his nose was bent to one side, as if it had been broken but not set. When he spoke, Erasmus heard the word kabloona.

  “White man,” Joe translated. In the light rain they stared at each other. The tent, Erasmus saw, was too small for them all to sit inside. They seated themselves on stones just in front of its opening.

  Everything smelled of caribou. Behind him Erasmus could see how the rain saturated the hides, which hung heavily on the poles; how the rain dripped through the tiny holes drilled by warble flies when the animals had still been alive. Here too there were animal skulls, scores of skulls, jaws and eye sockets tilted among rocks and lichens. Zeke and the man who’d welcomed them—Oonali, he called himself—did all the talking, with Joe acting as interpreter. In return for the clasp knives and tobacco Zeke offered, and after Zeke had made it clear that he’d be honored to see Oonali’s hunting outfit, Oonali brought out a bow and some arrows that Zeke admired.

  “I’d love to bring these home to the Toxophilites,” he said to Erasmus. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Erasmus was scratching steadily in Lavinia’s journal—he couldn’t write fast enough, he couldn’t get down all the details. He sketched the bow: fir strengthened with bone and made more elastic by cunning springs of plaited sinew. He didn’t sketch the curiously twisted bowstring or the slate-headed arrows, as Zeke had by then arranged to trade a pair of axe heads for the entire outfit. Next to him Dr. Boerhaave scribbled similarly, while Ned, who’d stuck his head beneath the door flap, turned his head slowly from one view to the next. Whalebone vessels and walrus-tusk knives, spoons made from what looked to be hollowed-out bones.

  The camp was almost empty that afternoon: “The men are out hunting,” Joe explained. But soon three women gathered around Oonali’s tent and stood shyly gazing at Erasmus and the others. They were comely, Erasmus thought, despite the tattoos on their cheeks and hands. Less than five feet tall and plump, with tiny hands and glossy hair. He tried to sketch the black patterns twining up their arms while the women crowded around and laughed at his efforts. Zeke rose and offered each a steel needle.

  The women made noises that seemed to indicate pleasure, promptly depositing the needles in little bags attached to their breeches. Each bag was made from the skin of a bird’s foot with the claws still attached: charming, Erasmus thought. As he turned to ask Joe’s help in bartering for one, the women reached toward Zeke and fingered his brass jacket buttons.

  When Zeke pulled back, the women bent to Erasmus, still seated on his stone. He froze while the hands played over his chest. The slightest tugging, much more gentle than the crowding Fiji Islanders of his youth; it was the buttons they coveted, he realized, even more than the needles. Back in the brig, thanks to all his lists, he had a large tin of spares. With his knife he sliced off his three lower buttons and offered one to each woman.

  Zeke frowned at him—but it was the buttons, Erasmus thought, that turned the tide of the afternoon. Four little boys pushed up to him, reaching for his journal and stroking the smooth white paper so insistently that he finally tore two blank pages from the back and handed them over. The boys grinned and ran away with their treasure; from the corner of his eye Erasmus saw them crowded on a stone cairn some way from the tents, tossing shreds that spun in the breeze like butterflies.

  The women brewed vats of tea, which they served in bowls. Dr. Boerhaave, turning one round in his hand, said, “I believe this is made of the base of a musk-ox horn.” As he bent and sniffed at the horn with his long, square-tipped nose, hair drifted from the tent and into everyone’s tea, catching in their teeth as they drank. An older woman with heavily tattooed hands arrived, bearing a dish of boiled caribou. Erasmus made a strangled noise when she offered him a portion on a metal spoon.

  “Quiet,” Zeke said.

  He reached for the spoon and examined it: silver, shapely, as alien here as a palm tree. To Joe he said, “Tell Oonali that yesterday, I asked if he’d ever seen white men’s ships. And he said no. Ask him if perhaps he’s forgotten to tell me something?”

  Oonali said nothing at first. Joe stood to one side, translating, while Zeke asked quick questions, his anger ill-concealed. Had they seen any white men? Had they seen two ships? Where had the spoon come from? Did they have more like it? Had they ever met a kabloona named Dr. Rae, who’d traveled east of here several years earlier, and who’d bought spoons and other white men’s goods from some Esquimaux?

  Joe struggled to keep up with the flow of Zeke’s words and made, Erasmus thought, conciliating gestures toward Oonali as he translated. Then Oonali, who had been calmly eating, spoke.

  “We have not seen such ships,” he said, or so Joe translated his words. “But we have heard a story, from some Inuit we met hunting seal several winters ago. These men told us that, during the previous winter, they found a ship abandoned in the ice. They climbed on this ship but found no one there, only one dead man on the deck. They wished to see into the spaces below, but the passages to the lower part”—here Joe paused, looked at Zeke, and said, “Hatchways? Must be hatchways”—“were sealed over. These men told us that one side of the ship was wounded, and that they pulled wood away from there until they’d made a hole. Inside they found many useful tools and much iron, which they took so it wouldn’t go to waste. They had many spoons, like this one. I traded two good hides for this.”

  “But you didn’t see the ship yourself?” Zeke said.

  “No ship,” Oonali replied.

  “You haven’t seen any white men?”

  “I have never met one, although I have heard about them. You are my first to talk with.”

  Zeke, excited now, drew his copy of the Rosses’ map from his jacket. “We’re here,” he said, indicating the bay where they were anchored. “This is the Great Fish River, here”—he asked if Joe knew the Esquimaux name for the river, which he did—“and this is the western shore. Can you indicate where the ship was seen?”

  Erasmus and his companions leaned around Zeke and Joe and Oonali, forming a circle. They all knew Parry’s and Ross’s tales of men who could outline long stretches of coast with remarkable accuracy. Esquimaux traced maps in the snow, carved them in wood, built them from little piles of pebbles. Drew them when offered pencil and paper. “I’ll give you a knife,” Zeke said. “If you can show us anything.”

  Oonali gazed at the paper. “Where the seals are good,” Joe translated, as Oonali touched a finger to a bay and spoke.

  Oonali touched an inlet, then the mouth of a river. “Where my friend was lost. Where the fish are caught in the rocks.”

  With his thumb Oonali pressed the edge of the map, which showed the east coast of King William Land butted up against the border. He moved his thumb off the paper and a few inches into the air, where the west coast might have been had the map been larger, and the west coast charted.

  “This is where the ship is sunk.”

  “Sunk?” Zeke said.

  Eras
mus didn’t know whether to watch Oonali or Joe, whose face was so surprised that he could hardly form words.

  “Underwater,” Joe translated. “Those Inuit, they did not at first take all the goods they found, but piled them on the deck to carry back later. Then they went hunting. The hunting was good that winter. When they returned the ice had begun to break up, and the ship was gone except for the tops of the three tall poles, which pierced the water. The things on the deck had disappeared. It is thought that taking the wood away from the wound in the side caused the water to pour in.”

  “Is there anything left?” Zeke said. “Anything for us to see?”

  “There is nothing,” Oonali said. “The men who told me this story, they took from the shores all the things that floated in. Nothing is left.”

  THAT NIGHT, WHEN they returned to the Narwhal with their bow and arrows, the musk-ox bowls Dr. Boerhaave had traded for, and their precious silver spoon, Zeke gathered the entire crew and told them what he’d learned. He meant the men to be impressed, Erasmus thought, to be seized with the knowledge that they were close to the site where at least one of Franklin’s ships had been. But Sean Hamilton said, “This Oonali—he didn’t actually see the ship? And the ship is gone? And all we have to show for this story is a spoon?”

  “The spoon has a crest on it,” Zeke said angrily. “We’ll undoubtedly be able to show exactly which of the officers it belonged to.”

  Sean shrugged. “I don’t see how that’s more than what your Dr. Rae came home with. All this way, and you’ve got a story told by a lying Esquimau.”