“So tomorrow we go to school and rip down all the decorations, is that it?” said Elliot.
“Yep. Probably.”
Tommy sat quietly, brushing drywall powder off his knuckles. He caught Yasmeen’s eye and looked away with a sliver of remorse.
Sam carried a handful of glasses to the table and filled them up. Tommy’s hand shot out for one. Jacqueline said no Scotch for her. She’d have a beer instead, straight from the bottle.
The radio voices faded into the background as Paulussie decided that the moment called for a toast. “If I haven’t said it, I’m saying it now. We’re happy to have you teachers here.” There was no clinking of glasses, everyone just nodded and drank up. Paulussie thinned out what he had and requested another. “Back in my day, we were sent away to school.”
Tommy shifted in his chair. Jacqueline blew across the top of her bottle, mimicking a foghorn.
Paulussie’s eyes glazed over. “Our parents thought it would be a good thing. Of course, way back then none of them knew much ….” He lifted the glass, almost missing his mouth.
Yasmeen noticed little smudges of dried blood on the table in front of where she was sitting, caused by the needle that had pierced her thumb. She finger-rubbed them off, wondering what Paulussie meant by “none of them knew much.” She watched his cigarette burn down to the filter.
Sam shot a beer cap at Elliot. “So, how was your day, Amigo?”
Elliot waggled his hand: so-so. “Apart from the kids bugging me about this Halloween thing, okay, I guess.”
Yasmeen saw that Paulussie was still drifting in and out of his past. It was no wonder that he needed a drink every now and then. To take the edge off. Who wouldn’t, given the circumstances? Despite what Sarah implied, Paulussie was pretty good about his consumption. He never got wild. Tipsy, yes, but never out of control. So what if he had a few drinks?
Yasmeen felt more compassion than sadness for him. The truth of what might have happened to him at that boarding school only strengthened her resolve. She could see why the parents of some of her students might be ambivalent about education and how their attitude might rub off on their children. She would have to work even harder to earn their trust and get them to a place where they could hold their heads high and live with themselves, with dignity.
Paulussie cranked up the radio. A village elder was making his case, slowly, languidly, oceans of dead air buoying each of his thoughts. Elliot tapped his fingers impatiently. Sam popped into the bedroom for a fresh pack of cigarettes. She jerked out the foil insert and passed them around. Elliot turned his nose up but Yasmeen reached for one, though she rarely smoked. Elliot flashed her a condescending look.
Paulussie was shaking his head, repeating over and over that he couldn’t believe his ears. Everyone knew what he meant. He snatched a cigarette from the pack and flipped off the radio, grimacing. “So, that’s it,” he said, his eyes bloodshot.
There wasn’t a drop left in the bottle. When he got up to leave, the chair accidentally fell backwards and clattered on the floor and he almost lost his balance, but not quite. Elliot rushed to help him, steady him on his feet, but Paulussie swatted his hand away and said he was just fine thank you very much, he had to go now, his precious, loving, broad-minded wife was waiting for him at home.
SNOW
NINE
Almost overnight the mercury plummeted. Mammoth drifts of snow leaned sideways against the village houses. Daylight dwindled to a few measly hours, while night was a vast chamber of darkness, marked by the ghostly breath of people out walking and the hollow skritch skritch of boots against the hard-packed surface.
Yasmeen knew city snow, the kind that crippled buses and planes and slid off rooftops in vast sheets or blew dangerously from the hoods of speeding cars. She knew snow that sifted down and deposited a soft, white fur on naked branches and telephone wires before turning grey under the tires of salt trucks and sawtooth ploughs. The year she turned twelve, a terrible storm cut the electric power and blew in hundred kilometre- an-hour winds. It dropped forty-seven centimetres of snow in only twenty-four hours. In the city, snow was snow. Sometimes it wreaked havoc.
In Saqijuvik, snow had nuances that gave the language a depth that English didn’t have. People had a name for every conceivable kind. Falling snow, wet snow, compact snow. Snow, broken by footsteps. Snow for drinking water. Thin, powdery snow. Airborne snow. Crusty snow hardened by rain. Fresh, soggy snow. Their fifty or more words had visceral beauty.
Yasmeen’s toaster popped and the air swelled with the yeasty aroma of a Fairmount bagel, a treat reserved for lazy weekends. A single lamp burned on the kitchen table where Yasmeen sat in flannel pyjamas enjoying a creamy, dark-roast espresso. As she got up to go butter the bagel, she heard a motor rumble outside her door. Curious, she shrugged on her parka and poked her nose into the nippy morning. A black Skidoo was coughing up smoke.
The driver was one of Elliot’s students, Adamie, an earnest boy with an infectious smile whom she had once tutored during her spare period. Yasmeen studied the splinter-grey sled hooked to the back of his Skidoo, its load wrapped in an electric-blue tarpaulin.
“Going hunting?” she called out before recognizing the stupidity of her question. Obviously he was, where else would he be going on a Saturday with a packed sled?
His eyebrows lifted. “Wanna come?”
It seemed impossible he was asking her, a woman, when Elliot was his teacher and definitely not shy about soliciting hunting invitations wherever he could get them. She wondered whether maybe he had overheard her telling Sam she wanted the experience of going out on the land. Anyway, who cared how he knew. He was asking her and she wanted to go. Every part of her was screaming yes, yes, seize the day.
He leaned casually against the Skidoo and pulled a cigarette out from behind his ear. “You got ten minutes.” He cupped his hands against the wind to light up.
Half an hour later, under a bare wash of sun, they were crossing sculptural snow dunes, bobbing up and down over crests and valleys, smoke unfurling behind them. Yasmeen held onto his slender waist. She twisted around, watching the village recede until it was a smudge and then a dot and then nothing at all. Above them, the sky duplicated itself over and over like the sprawling plain stretching toward infinity.
Yasmeen clung to him with all her strength. The last time she’d been on a vehicle that didn’t have at least two doors and a hood was on a motorcycle ride with a guy she hardly knew, the time she accidentally burned the inside of her ankle on the exhaust pipe. Her mother said it served her right going on a death-ride like that. Yasmeen shrugged and chalked it up to living in the real world, and if that meant getting a few scrapes and bruises along the way, so be it.
Once on a family vacation Yasmeen took her younger brother swimming and almost got them both drowned. The beach that day was irresistible, clear sky, a fresh salty sting to the air. Before long they were beyond the breakers, unable to swim back. It was only afterwards, when they were huddled blue-lipped under a towel, teeth chattering, the Coast Guard people talking gravely with her parents, that Yasmeen understood the full extent of the danger she had put them in. Even so, she felt only the adrenalin of excitement.
The Skidoo dipped. Yasmeen tightened her grip around Adamie. The landscape had flattened into a vast, white, monotonous plain. Yasmeen remembered Frank’s explanation of how repetitive stretches that appear featureless to a white person held important clues for the locals, wind leaving its Braille in the snow, a sudden weft of light or change in the rhythm of the land. They were the maps and street signs of the Arctic, guiding travellers to where they had to go, returning them home safely. Other markers punctuated the land now and then, Inukshuks mainly, rocks piled in a particular way to communicate information or act as a point of reference. They signalled food caches, travel routes, hunting grounds and places of worship. Their monolithic stature suffused the barren land with human presenc
e, a reminder to the people that they were not alone.
Yasmeen couldn’t quell the rush of being out on the tundra with someone she hardly knew but trusted nonetheless. This was his territory and he was solidly in it. His internal compass would steer them in the right direction, away from harm. She accepted the fact she had nothing to offer in this regard, no acumen or handed-down wisdom. Adamie was her guide, the window into his world. He was her armour. No matter the circumstances, instinct would kick in and tell him what to do. Even at seventeen he was miles ahead of the boys in her class, Qalingo and the others, whose knobby knees and ribs still poked through their clothes. She could easily imagine him slitting the full stomach of an animal, those same hands afterwards fondling his woman, slipping them underneath her shirt, up over her breasts, through her collar to her lips and face.
She lost all sense of time.
Unexpectedly, Adamie cut the motor. The wind blew a fine scrim across the landscape. Raw fistfuls of snow pelted her face, each sharp flake like a tiny bonfire on her skin. He removed his mitt and reached down to feel the steam curling off the snow, lightly touching a pair of animal droppings with his bare fingers. He pointed ahead to some white birds, all feather and bone in the wind. “Ptarmigan,” he said.
He ran for his rifle. He dropped down onto one knee. From the Skidoo, Yasmeen watched him wheedle his prey into the crosshairs. She forgot about the severe cold. She forgot the paltry sun barely hovering above the horizon. She forgot that they were two specks in a desert of ice. Her heart stopped.
The wind stilled.
Three shots fired into the silence. A slim column of smoke rose and dissipated.
Adamie ploughed through the deep snow to claim his kill. He knelt and dipped a finger into what Yasmeen guessed was their spill of blood. She watched with fascination as he plucked a feather off each bird and planted it in the snow. It felt so sacred and graceful in the pure, protracted silence. When the ritual was done he beamed at Yasmeen.
The dull light looked strangely radiant. Adamie strode into the long, blue arm of her shadow. “Welcome back,” she said. He loaded the birds onto the back of the sled and covered them with the tarpaulin. He climbed back on and yanked the pull-cord to power up the engine. The motor was shockingly brusque after the penetrating silence.
“Not too cold?” he shouted over his shoulder.
“A little.”
“Hold tight.”
The last of the sun dipped below the horizon. She pulled her hood forward, staring into the hazy afterglow.
“The old igloo we passed on the way,” he shouted, accelerating. “We’ll stop there to eat something.”
Cheek pressed against his back she leaned into him, intensely, into the wind, into the snow, into the long cold ride ahead of them, her tension evaporating. Her eyes closed.
When she opened them again, it was completely dark. They were no longer moving. Adamie went to loosen the tarpaulin and gather a few provisions. She tried to move her fingers but the cold had already bitten through her mitts. Her toes were numb.
He advised her to wait while he checked things out, hewing a path from the Skidoo to the igloo. The brittle crunch of snow under his boots grew fainter and fainter until he disappeared inside and she was alone in the absolute silence, cold snaking down her back.
Her imagination rushed to fill the absence. Emaciated, half-starved dogs appeared in her peripheral vision, jaws snapping. They mutated into foraging wolves with an arsenal of teeth. Their eyes were everywhere. Why was Adamie taking his sweet time? How long could it possibly take to investigate such cramped quarters? She sighed with relief when he reappeared at the mouth of the igloo and waved her toward him.
She climbed off the Skidoo and took the same path, sinking her boots into his tracks and following them until she arrived at the tiny opening. She dropped to her knees and felt her way inside.
In the obscurity, he was only a voice. “You okay?”
She felt his breath against her cheek.
He struck a match and they watched the amber flame pour into their sphere of darkness. He removed his hat and shook the wet out of his bangs. She removed hers and copied him. They laughed. She noticed that his teeth were very white.
With one hand he shook out the contents of the rucksack, thermos, votive candle, foil-wrapped bannock. He lit the candle and blew out the match. She imagined she was in a prehistoric cave by the light of the very first fire.
Together they laid down the caribou hide, pinching the corners into the drafty cracks of the igloo.
It occurred to her that if they died that night out in the cold in the middle of nowhere, no one would know it. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. They could be mauled by a polar bear or buried alive in a raging blizzard. The Skidoo could break down and they could freeze to death. Anything could happen. She felt her own vulnerability, how inconsequential she was, just a speck in the scheme of things, almost invisible, like the sun, which seemed enormous to humans but was really only one of two billion stars in the Milky Way. After her father told her that, she walked around the house for an entire week with a blanket over her head, pretending she was a dust mote.
Adamie tugged the sleeves of her parka and eased it off as the candle spread its warmth between them. He unlaced her boots and lifted her feet out. She could hardly feel them. He lowered the zip of her snow pants and gently removed them. She couldn’t stop shivering despite two other layers of protection, a pair of blue jeans and her long underwear. He kneaded her legs with his hands, rubbing the circulation back. It didn’t seem weird at all.
“Qallunaat are like kids when they go out in the snow,” he said. He massaged her toes, one by one.
Whenever past boyfriends had tried to touch her feet, she’d squealed and kicked them away. But Adamie’s hands felt good on them after the extreme cold. He seemed to know exactly where to touch to bring the blood back.
He moved from a kneeling position to a cross-legged one, facing her. “Atti, little woman, give me your hands, they’re freezing!” He warmed them with the heat of his own. She felt a pang of disappointment when he let them go.
He unzipped his parka and fished through his pocket for cigarettes. His eyes lit up when he put his hands on them. “It’s been a while,” he said. He struck a match on the toe of his boot. Leaning into the flame, he lit it and breathed the smoke in deeply.
Yasmeen gestured for a drag.
“Bad for you,” he said. “You’re a teacher, you should know better.”
She could tell he was only half serious. “Come on, just one. To warm me up.”
“Okay.” He held its moistened tip against her lips with the same fingers he had dipped in the ptarmigan entrails.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, almost forgetting where she was. The smell of ptarmigan didn’t bother her. Her only thought was of how people here survived against all odds. They killed animals and then they ate them. She imagined Adamie’s ancestor in caribou skins and sealskin boots, wielding his harpoon to feed an entire tribe, using the tricks of light to his advantage. When she opened her eyes, she saw Adamie staring at her. His eyes bore the reflection of a hunter bearing down on a creature, snapping its head back like a twig. Or maybe it was just the combination of excitement and the cigarette making her feel lightheaded.
He unscrewed the thermos and poured some tea into the cap. “Drink,” he said. Their fingers collided.
She tried to deflect the awkwardness. “You think I’m funny, right?”
“Funnyaluk,” he said. “No more smoking for you.” His smile spread like a warm band of sunlight. She took a sip of the tea.
After that he came alive telling her a story his grandfather had told him when he was small, a story about the land, the animals that inhabited it and the hunters who stalked them.
“You’re an amazing shot,” she said. “An incredible hunter.”
/> “We don’t like to brag about what we kill. One day we might not be so lucky.”
She listened intently. She wanted to learn everything he had to teach her. For a moment she forgot that he was only seventeen.
“My grandfather told me that the spirits of the dead animals could be listening too, and they could be offended. So we don’t show off.” He took a long puff on his cigarette.
His coarse hair was especially beautiful. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch his face. Each time the desire came, she slapped it down. It gave her palpitations. She wondered if she was the sort of person who lived exotic adventures just to have a story to tell, or if maybe she was a chameleon who behaved one way around family and friends and another among strangers.
By candlelight he looked like a man. He was a man. Already he knew what the land taught and how to survive the elements. A grown woman, what did she know by comparison? Math and history and literature. What good was any of that here in this primal place where all you needed was a strong pair of hands and wherewithal?
“Promise me one thing, Adamie. Promise that even when you finish school and get your diploma you won’t forget the old ways.”
He looked at her solemnly. She noticed a row of pimples in the indent of his chin.
“You know,” she said, “we aren’t doing anything wrong.”
His lips opened a crack. He blinked and moved toward her. She felt herself working hard to remain calm. His hair smelled of snow and cigarettes. Somewhere in the deepest part of her she wanted him to feel her with his hands. Her instinct was fighting for him. She moved closer, trying not to be obvious about it. His warm breath was blowing across her lips. Any closer and her hair would be in his mouth. She hesitated. She gave in. She pulled back again. She started to say, You’re amazing, this is amazing being out here with you but realized her talking was getting in the way. She considered letting him kiss her once. Just once, who would it hurt? At the last second, she retreated. She turned her mouth away and gave him her cheek instead. She hugged him with great affection, sweetly, the way it had to be.
Yasmeen Page 10