“That’s pretty, too …. ”
“But my dad didn’t go for it, so they finally agreed on Yasmeen after the flower, Jasmine. My mother’s an avid gardener ….”
“Hey, me too.”
“And then there’s my mother’s name, Samiyah.”
Elliot tipped back his chair. “Once I was in a cemetery in a hick town called … shit, I can’t remember, where was that place? Anyway, I was wandering through and I saw a tombstone with the name Murch Skillies on it, and I says to myself, ‘Who goes through life with a name like Murch Skillies?’ and I scratched my head and thought about it and I figured he had to have been either one of two things, the dapper captain of the Love Boat or some burly fisherman with a shaved head and a tattoo on his neck.” He paused for a breath. “Being in a backwater town, I went with my second theory.”
“Elliot, you know I love you, but can we please let Yasmeen finish?”
“Finish what?”
“She was trying to tell us about her mother.”
“Samiyah—that almost sounds like my name, Samantha. I guess by now you know that everyone calls me Sam for short.”
“It means Exalted One in Arabic. But enough about me, Sarah, what about you? Someone mentioned you’re the priest at the Pentecostal church.”
“Let’s not get her going on that.”
“Pastor, not priest. Priests are Catholic.”
“I wouldn’t mind checking out your service sometime.”
“Of course, anytime. You’re more than welcome. All of you.” She beamed across the table at Paulussie.
“Where in hell are the toothpicks?”
“Right in front of you, you silly man,” she said. “It’s a good thing you have your head attached.”
“Okay, enough, you two lovebirds,” said Elliot. “When’s our next hunting trip, Paulussie?”
“You tell me, Boss.”
“You don’t strike me as the hunterly type,” Yasmeen interjected.
Elliot pointed to a miniature gold pin fastened to the collar of his golf shirt. “Note the hunting horn,” he boasted, raising his chin up. “For about ten years, until I started working up here, yours truly was an official member of the Hunt Club. How do you like them apples? Or should I say ‘snowballs’?”
“Haw, haw.”
“Go ahead and make fun, but Paulussie and I had a couple of great days last year, remember, buddy? Remember that killer bear?”
“Yep, I sure do.” He tapped a cigarette from his pack.
“My rifle’s the one thing I took with me after the divorce. Besides my socks, I mean. And my Calvin Klein briefs.”
“Too much information, mon beau Adonis.”
Elliot continued. “I got another one for you.”
“Spare us.”
“What’s a synonym for vegetarian?”
“I give up.”
“Bad hunter.”
“Very funny.”
“Actually, it is.”
“What about the weekend after next?”
“What about it?”
“Labour Day. I was just thinking it would be fun to take all the new teachers—and you old timers—on a camping trip. Before school starts. What do you think?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I’m in.”
“Me too.”
“What about you, Iris? Can the school principal afford to take a break from her busy schedule?”
“I think I can manage a day.” She blew her nose discreetly into her napkin, folded it and stuffed it in her sleeve.
“Tommy? We’ll need a second boat. That means you.”
“Aatsuuk, maybe. Whoever brings the bottle of gin gets to go with me.”
“TOMMY! Taima!”
“Kidding.”
Before tea was served they ironed out the details of the trip, the time, whose boats, who’d bring what supplies. One by one they weighed in on the idea of roughing it with just a tent and a few provisions. Yasmeen could hardly wait.
“You’re going to fall in love with this place,” said Jacqueline.
“Hear, hear.” Elliot lifted his glass as though it were a crystal wine goblet. He tilted it back and forth in the light, sniffed the rim and laid it back down on the table before veering off on a tangent about a cruise he and his ex-wife once took. “It’s hard to imagine any other kind of life,” he chortled, “after strudel and cappuccino on the banks of the Danube.”
•
Yasmeen had always been a light sleeper. The slightest disturbances woke her—a fly trapped between two window panes, a humming refrigerator, a subtle shift in the barometer. But here, the minute she hit the pillow, Yasmeen descended into the dark vapours of sleep. She floated and had strange dreams that she remembered afterward.
One dream was about crocuses that wouldn’t stop growing. They sprouted up out of the soil until they became giant snow-capped mountains that surrounded her like a wall. Then the peaks melted and everything slid down into the ground, clicking into place like a lock-slot over a steel bolt. She had other dreams, too, like the one about a primitive tribe that believed animals and people shared the same souls. They had no language, they just went quietly from place to place. Time was fluid. They travelled by the light of the stars. It was more of a dream she watched from the sidelines, but somehow their joy flowed into her, crossing the hemispheres of her brain, rippling through her scalp, down her neck and spine into every follicle of hair, every vein and ligament, every limb and finger and toe, every dormant cell along the way.
There was also a surreal dream that was just a casual conversation between her and the radio guy Elliot had introduced her to, Joanasi or whatever his name was. They were on the airstrip in the pouring rain and everything they were saying was code for something else, which they both understood, as though they were on the exact same wavelength. He questioned her on her musical tastes, whether she liked rock ’n roll or not.
That’s a no-brainer, of course I do.
Stairway to Heaven?
Who doesn’t?
Freddie Mercury?
Do you really have to ask?
Air Supply?
Now you’re pushing it.
Just testing.
She stared at her feet. Seconds before she woke up he said a very sweet thing. It took her by surprise.
You smell like snow.
FOUR
Their sharp-nosed canoes moved in tandem, slitting the water like shark fins. Yasmeen and Iris rode with Paulussie and his two boys, Jimmy and Silasie, and Elliot, who looked a class above everyone else in his Tilley hat and designer sunglasses. Tommy followed in the other boat with Jacqueline and Sam and a moraine of supplies—tents, sleeping bags, fishing nets, food and a spouted canister of gasoline.
The land was pristine, a violet-blue relief that seemed to scroll on forever. Yasmeen closed her eyes, lulled by the gliding rhythm of the boat.
By the time they reached their destination, a narrow apron of land spotted with boulders and uneven patches of low-growing vegetation, the clouds had come unmoored and dusk had softened the forms of plain and sea.
“The best blueberries in the area are found right here,” said Paulussie, dragging the canoe in with Elliot’s help. He glanced around with affection and explained how four decades earlier, in the exact same place, his mother had squatted over the damp lichen to give birth to him. It astonished Yasmeen that such a small thing, such a small big thing as the land, could give a man such deep joy.
When the tents were spiked, Yasmeen and the other women wandered around with the children to collect whatever moss and roots and driftwood they could find for kindling. The air had begun to cool. Tommy sat on a bald rock in the distance, flicking the firefly embers of his cigarette.
After a couple of false starts, Paulussie got a decent fire
going. He told the children to keep feeding it until it woofed into a steady flame. When he was satisfied, he lit a cigarette and levered himself into a comfortable position on the ground, legs splayed apart, an arm resting over his thick stomach.
Elliot wiggled in next to Yasmeen. He tipped his hat up and inspected the sky. “Holy moly,” he said. “Doesn’t it just boggle the mind that there are so many living creatures on this planet? I mean, experts figure there could be anywhere from three to a hundred million species and barely a million of those have even been catalogued.”
Yasmeen stared into the orange flame. The intense heat on her cheeks made her feel sleepy.
Elliot pressed on. “Scientists say that at the present rate, it could take over a thousand years to classify the rest! Can you even begin to fathom that? Can you? It means that some species will become extinct before anyone even knew they existed!”
Jacqueline lifted her arms into the air, snapping her fingers. “So, carpe diem. It took me nearly twenty years to come to terms with the idea that we only go around once.” The fire hissed and crackled.
Something about Jacqueline’s bohemian manner appealed to Yasmeen. She had a casual sense of abandon that shouted I’m here, take me or leave me as I am. Her movements were fluid and sensual and communicated a bewitching message to men in general and Tommy in particular. The two seemed to have a physical and psychic connection, an ability to detect the other’s low-frequency signals and vibrations the way certain animals did. And then there was the key tattooed onto her ankle, which Yasmeen took as a symbol of their love. She wondered whether Tommy had one too.
•
Years back, Yasmeen saw a play in Toronto in which the main character, played by someone with a Jeremy Irons sort of accent, was obsessed with the Chinese poet, Li Po. The actor, whoever he was, was superb. Incredibly convincing in the role.
Yasmeen thought a long time about where her tattoo would go. She tried out a few different places on her body, drawing a small x with her pen, until she finally settled on her right hip just below her belly button. There, she could safely wear a bikini without her mother noticing it. Going through the whole rigmarole to have it done was rather like going for an abortion in a seedy part of town, but with far less at stake. She went alone so no one could talk her out of it. Morgan reprimanded her when she found out.
“What the fuck, you tattooed lipo on your body?”
“It’s not lipo, you nimrod, oh my god.” Yasmeen rolled her eyes. “Can’t you see the upper case letters and the space between Li and Po?”
“What then?”
“You think I had liposuction? And that I decided to walk around advertising it? Well, I didn’t. Obviously.”
“I know that, what do you take me for?”
After that, Li Po, not the poet but the tattoo of his name, became Yasmeen’s barometer for men. It was how she gauged who was and wasn’t worth her time. If the guy was hot but a little rusty on his poetry, she went easier on him. If he tried to bluff his way through or impress her with some bloated, academic-sounding jargon but didn’t have a royal clue whatsoever, her bullshit detector kicked in and she immediately dumped him. In any case, Li Po was really for her. The tattoo. It wasn’t for some random guy to approve or not approve.
•
Elliot nudged Yasmeen in the ribs. “What’s the most memorable thing you’ve ever experienced? I mean, something that really knocked your socks off.”
She couldn’t think of much. She hadn’t done Europe like her friends with trust funds. She hadn’t seen the Taj Mahal or Stonehenge or the Great Wall of China, except in magazines or in other people’s travel albums. Lake Louise was the best she could come up with on the spur of the moment.
“Good one,” he said as though she were a student who required encouragement. “All that turquoise water. Just fabulous.”
“I must have taken about a billion pictures from every possible angle, but I could never quite capture the true colour, you know?”
“I’m just happy to be here,” interrupted Sam, with the awe of an infant discovering her hands for the first time. “It’s so incredible, all of it.”
Paulussie bellowed out to Tommy, still perched on his rock. “Kaapaa! Bring the beans and some bannock. We need to eat.”
Tommy lifted his baseball cap and rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist. He thought for a minute, then put the cap back on his head. Chucking his half-smoked cigarette sideways, he ducked inside the tent, emerging, moments later, with a wiry black fishing net draped over his arm.
Elliot’s eyes lit up. “Now you’re talking, buddy!” He rubbed his hands vigorously together.
Jimmy and Silasie ran to catch up with Tommy, nipping at his feet like restless pups. “Iqalutsiuriarumavunga! I want to fish, too,” they squealed, chasing him down to the shoreline. Elliot and Paulussie jumped into their rubber boots and caught up to them.
Yasmeen watched from the campfire as the men waded knee-deep into the water, casting the net wide. She’d never seen people honestly earn their food before, actually go out and hunt for their dinner. City people had their favourite haunts, supermarkets and bakeries and butcher shops. There were poissonneries and farmers’ markets. If it wasn’t around the corner, it was only a bus ride away. All you had to do was decide, and there was much to choose from behind the glass display counters: artisanal cheeses, cool French pastry, Chorizo, sausages, and a hundred varieties of mushroom; long sweet peppers and wrinkled black olives floating in brine. There were imported vinegars and bottles of first-pressed oil, there were chocolate truffles and exotic coffees and bagels and crusty loaves of bread hot out of the oven. You just had to load it into your grocery cart. The only hunting people did in the city was for a parking spot or for the cash in their wallets.
She hugged her knees into her chest and shuddered as a dark stiff breeze skipped across the hollow of her spine. A spark from the fire popped and flew into the dusky air like a star going nova.
Voices shot up from the water as the men splashed around the net, the darkened silhouettes pulling and tugging the slippery weight of what was flapping and flailing inside. The children leapt out of the water, shouting Iris, get a bucket, get a bucket! and soon everyone, including Yasmeen, was gathered at water’s edge watching the spectacle. Cigarette screwed into the corner of his mouth, Paulussie knelt with his knife and slit the giant fish from head to tail in one fluid motion. They carried their excitement back to the blazing bonfire, sharing the fresh raw catch around the circle. Yasmeen watched Tommy slurp back his waggling morsel.
“Mamaqtuq,” he said, rolling it around in his mouth. “Very tasty.”
Yasmeen lunged for a piece and passed the plate along. Iris shook her head politely, pulling a clean handkerchief from her pocket. She spread it out on a small flat rock and laid down the handful of blueberries she had collected while they searched for kindling. One by one she nibbled them down.
Tommy belched as he stuffed more fish into his mouth. He gorged on it with great pleasure, the way Yasmeen enjoyed a good prime rib with Yorkshire pudding. She closed her eyes and pushed beyond her squeamishness, biting into the cold squishy sliver in her hand. It slipped effortlessly down her throat. She was surprised at how fresh it tasted. Like the ocean. The burping and farting of Paulussie and the children, their thanks for what the great earth had provided for them, seemed a natural part of the occasion.
A honking convoy of geese startled her. She gazed up at their ragged formation, arcing into the sky’s darkening vortex, as though she had never seen a bird before or the undisturbed eloquence of nature, everything rolling along as it should, as it was meant to be. In perfect time. She felt a stirring at the base of her spine as though a cobra that had been tightly curled there all her life were finally uncoiling. The voices around the fire had evaporated and her shoulder blades released, and an immense pleasure took root and bloomed inside of her. Sh
e thought about the people who had once made do with a piece of flint and a simple harpoon, people whose spirit required nothing more than a raw scrap from the earth or sea, simple and unembellished.
“Earth to Yasmeen … Hey you, dreamer over there … Yasmeen!”
“Huh? What??
“I said, are you in for marshmallows?” Elliot was peeling a melty, blistered one from the blackened tip of his skewer. He offered it to her. She shook her head.
“I’ll take it,” said Sam.
“You know, the one thing missing here,” he said, “is a decent ski slope.” He deliberately brushed Yasmeen’s shoulder to hand Sam the marshmallow.
It seemed a stupid thing to say, a comment that didn’t apply here. Yasmeen caught Iris sneaking a look at Paulussie who was picking fish out of his teeth and searching his pocket for cigarettes. Her face was frozen into its usual half-smile. Probably, Yasmeen mused, she thought exactly the same thing about what Elliot had said. Saqijuvik wasn’t a winter resort where after a full day on the hill you headed to the knotty-pine lodge for a cup of hot chocolate. It was a primal place where people didn’t manipulate nature for their own benefit but, rather, lived in harmony with it. Yasmeen felt a cold drop of rain on her hand.
Tommy said, “Okay, enough waiting.” He pulled a bottle from his jacket, uncapped it and passed it to Paulussie.
Paulussie beamed. “That’s my man.” He curled his stubby fingers around the bottle and took a slug. He swallowed down a second and third gulp before handing it off to Elliot.
“Thanks, old buddy. You too, Tommy.” Elliot toasted them with the lip of the bottle.
Paulussie wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve. His eyes gleamed as he stared into the fire. “An Inuk becomes a man when he kills his first polar bear. I became a man when I was thirteen years old.”
Except for the rasping wind everything was quiet. No one blinked or moved or uttered a word, their faces radiant in the blaze of the fire.
“Father was very proud of me. He said, ‘To have killed the Great One from the land at such a young age. Now you are a hunter like me and your grandfather and your great-grand- father.’ Everyone was so happy, and we sang and danced and ate that bear until we were all tired and fell asleep.”
Yasmeen Page 5