They’re likely to be used to seeing white men—the Arctic Ocean was a thriving whaling and fishing-ground before the war—but I was warned at Godalming to be very wary of them. Was told that Eskimos are thieving, diseased, immoral, not averse to selling information to the skipper of any stray German sub, etc, etc.
I suppose I should keep my head down, and padlock my hut and supply shed every time I go out. But now that I know I’m not alone, I think I might try to meet them.
September 14th
A long, long day, and the preternatural darkness that fills the air now that the clouds are moving in and the sun is sliced for so long by the horizon gives the whole exploit a weird sense of dream.
I found the Eskimo encampment. It lies a little west of the place Frank Cayman showed me on the map, and was easily visible once I’d climbed north beyond Point B out of the valley from the rising smoke at the edge of the boggy land before the mountains. It’s only about ten miles off, but it took me most of six hours to get there, and my boots and leggings were sodden.
No igloos, of course, but it was still odd to see Eskimos living in what looks remarkably like a red Indian encampment from an American western movie, and even more so because peatsmoke and the dimming light gave the whole place a sort of cinematic grainy black-and-whiteness.
Was unprepared for the smell, especially inside the tent of caribou skin and hollowed earth that I was taken into. Seem to regard urine as a precious commodity. They use it for tanning—which is understandable—but also to wash their hair. But for all that, I was made welcome enough when I squelched towards the camp yelling “Teyma!” (Peace—one of the few Eskimo words I can remember) although the children prodded me and the dogs growled and barked. A man called Unluku, one of the elders, could speak good English—with a colourful use of language he’d learned from the whalers. He told me that they knew about my hut, and that they didn’t mind my being there because I wasn’t eating their caribou or their seals. Also asked him what they knew about the war. Stroking the head of the baby who sat suckling on his mother’s lap beside him, he said they knew that kaboola—whiteman—was killing himself. They strike me as a decent people; strange and smelly and mercurial, but content with their lives.
September 15th
Re-reading my encounter with the Eskimos, I don’t think I’ve really conveyed their sense of otherness, strangeness.
The liquefying, maggoty carcasses of several caribou had been left at the edge of the camp-ground, seemingly to rot, although I gathered that this was their store of food. And, although the people looked generally plump and cheerful, there was one figure squatting in the middle of the rough ring of tents, roped to a whalebone stake. The children would occasionally scoop up a pile of dog excrement and throw it at him, and Unluku took the trouble to walk over an aim a loose kick. He said the figure was Inua, which I assumed to some kind of criminal or scapegoat, although tried to look it up, and the closest I can come is a kind of shaman. Perhaps it was just his name. I don’t know, and the sense that I got from those Eskimos was that I never could.
September 20th
Supply ship came this morning—the Tynwald. Was expecting her sometime today or tomorrow. I was given a few much-read and out-of-date copies of the Daily Mirror, obviously in the expectation that I would want to know how the world and the war and Jane are getting on. And more food, and spare lanterns, and a full winter’s supply of oil. And fresh circulars from Godalming, including one about the pilfering of blotting paper.
Stood and watched the ship turn around the headland. Say they’ll probably manage to get back one more time before the route between the islands becomes impassable. Already, I’m loosing the names and the faces.
October 1st
Looking out through the hut window now, Venus is shining through the teeth of white mountains in the halo of the sun where the wind shrieks and growls, and the Milky Way twines like a great river across the deep blue sky, striated by bands of interstellar dust, clearer than I’ve even seen before.
I seem to have come a long way, just to make some sense of my life.
October 12th
The Eskimo encampment has gone. Climbed up from Point B to the edge of the valley this morning when the full moon was shining, and my old pre-war Zeiss binoculars could make everything out through the clear sharp air.
No moon now. The edge of the sky is a milky shade in the corner that hides the sun, and the wind is up to force 6. There were snow flurries yesterday, but somehow their absence today makes everything all the more ominous.
October 16th
Three days of dreadful weather—only managed one trip up to Point B, and the balloon was out of the question.
Then this. Been out for hours, slowly freezing, totally entranced by Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. Like curtains of silk drawn across the sky. A faintly hissing waterfall of light. Shifting endlessly. Yet vast. There are no words.
I think of charged particles streaming from the sun, swirling around the earth’s magnetic field. Even the science sounds half-magical. I must
An interruption. A clatter outside by the storage shed that sounded too purposeful to be just the wind. And the door was open—forced—flapping to and fro. Must say I felt afraid, standing there with the wind screaming around me in the flickering auroral half light. I’ve re-fixed it now (cut my thumb, but not badly) and I’ve got the little .22 rifle beside me as I sit at this desk, as though that would be any use. But must say I feel lonely and afraid, as these great hissing curtains of light sway across the sky beyond my window.
But—being practical—it simply means that some of the Eskimos haven’t gone south, and that they have light fingers (although I can’t find anything missing) just as I was warned by the trainers at Godalming. Suppose this is my first real test.
October 20th
Out today in better weather taking readings in the pallid light before my fingers froze, I saw a ragged human figure about quarter of a mile down the freezing beach. I assume that this must be my Eskimo-thief. Once I’d seen him, somehow didn’t feel afraid.
Went down along the beach afterwards. I made out a grey lump in the darkness that the waves were pushing up the shore. It was the body of a long-dead seal—not something that I would ever like to consider eating, although from the fresh rents and the stinking spillage over the rocks this was obviously exactly what the figure had been doing.
Was he that desperate, or, in view of the rotting caribou I saw at the camp-ground, am I still stuck in the irrelevant values of a distant civilisation? Was always impressed by the story of those Victorian polar explorers like Franklin, who ended up eating each other and dying in a landscape that the Eskimos lived off and regarded as home.
But still, I feel sorry for my Eskimo-thief, and am even tempted to put something outside the hut and see what happens, although I’m probably just going to attract the white wolves or foxes, or the bears. It might seem like an act of foolishness, but more likely it stems from gratitude towards my Eskimo-thief, and for the fact that I don’t feel quite as afraid or alone any longer.
October 22
My Eskimo-thief is squatting in the hut with me now. Eating, I have to say, like a dog. There’s a gale howling, and alarming drifts of snow. Easily the worst weather so far. He was hauling himself across the beach on hands and knees, crusted in ice, trying to grab a broken-winged tern. He still hasn’t spoken. His clothes are filthy, moulting caribou hair all over the hut, and he looks almost a child. Very young.
I think he was probably the figure I saw roped to the whalebone stake, which I suppose means that he must be some kind of criminal or scapegoat. The tribe has obviously moved south and left him behind. I recall the stories of how the Eskimo are supposed to leave their ill, elderly and unwanted outside in winter for the cold and the wolves to finish off.
He wants more. If he can devour unheated pemmican like this, he must be very hungry.
But he can’t be too ill.
Evening
I’ve made a stupid assumption. My Eskimo-thief is a woman.
October 24
The storm has died down. The twilight is deepening but I still get the sun for a few hours around noon and the bay as yet hasn’t iced over.
My Eskimo-thief is called Tirkiluk. I discovered her sex when, after she’d finally finished eating, she pulled down the saucepan from over the stove with some effort, unwound her furs and squatted over it to urinate. She’s terribly mal-nourished. Painfully bare ribs, a swollen belly.
October 27
Hard to tell under all those layers of fur, but Tirkiluk seems to be improving. She still mostly wanders up and down the ashen shore muttering to herself, or sits rocking on her haunches under a sort of awning that she’s rigged up in front of the hut out of canvas from the supply shed and driftwood from the shore. Did I really save her life? Was she abandoned by the tribe. ? Was I just interfering?
October 29
The supply ship came today. The Silverdale Glen. Tirkiluk started shrieking Kaboola!, and I ran out from the hut and saw the red and green lights bobbing out in the of the bay. Thought for one odd moment that the stars were moving.
I got many knowing looks from the sailors when they saw Tirkiluk sitting on a rock down the beach. Many of them fished these waters before the war, and of course there are the stories about Eskimo wives being offered as a gesture of hospitality. So, and despite her appearance, the crew of the Silverdale Glen assume that I’ve taken Tirkiluk to comfort me through the months of Arctic night, and I know that any attempts at denial would have been counter-productive.
They’ve gone now, and I’m alone for the winter. It’s likely as not, I suppose, that word of Tirkiluk will get back to Godalming.
November 1
Went out to collect water this morning. The storm of the past few days has died entirely, and waves are sluggish, black as chinese lacquer. Down on the shore, discovered that the water around the rocky inlet where the river discharges has formed a crust of ice. You can almost feel the temperature dropping, the ancient weight of the dark palaeocrystic ice cap bearing down through the mountains, the weather changing, turning, tightening, notch by notch by notch. Soon, I think, the whole bay will freeze over.
Tirkiluk still sits outside.
November 6
Tirkiluk and I are making some progress in our attempts to converse. Her language bears little resemblance to the Inuit I was taught, although she’s surprisingly adept at picking up English. Often, as I try to explain what the place I come from is like, and about the war and my monitoring of the weather, or when she describes the myths and rovings and bickerings of her tribe, we meet half-way. Don’t think anyone who overheard would understand a word of it, and a great deal of it is still lost between us. She seems to speak with affection for the tribe, and ignores my attempts to discover why she was left here when they moved on.
November 12
The bay is now solid ice, and the weather has cleared. Earlier, I stood outside with Tirkiluk, pointing out the brightest stars, the main constellations, naked-eye binaries. She recognised many stellar objects herself, and gave them names—and myths or stories that were too complex for our pidgin conversation to convey. The Inuit are deeply familiar with the night sky.
Everything is incredibly clear, although somehow the idea of measurement and observation seems out of place. There’s an extraordinary sense of depth to the Arctic sky. Really sense the distance between the stars.
One of the oddest things for me is the almost circular movement of the heavens, and the loss in the low horizon of stars like Alkiad, although in this dazzling darkness, many others have been gained. Counted fourteen stars in the Pleiades when my usual record is eleven, and Mu Cephei glows like a tiny coal. There is still some degree tilt to the stellar horizon. Aquila (which Tirkiluk calls Aagyuuk and has some significance for her that she tries but can’t explain) has now set entirely.
November 20
The gales have returned, and Tirkiluk and I now share the hut. Much to her puzzlement, have rigged up one of the canvas awnings across the roof beam, which makes for two very awkward spaces instead of a single moderately awkward one. She sleeps curled up on a rug on the floor. When I lie awake listening to the wind and the ice in the bay groaning, can hear her softly snoring.
November 22
Must say that, despite reservations about her personal habits, I welcome her company, although I realise that I came here fully expecting—and wanting—to be left on my own. But she doesn’t intrude, which I suppose comes from living close to many other people in those stinking little tents. We can go for hours without speaking, one hardly noticing that the other is there, so in a sense I don’t feel that I really have lost my solitude. Then at other times, we both become so absorbed in the slow process of communication that yesterday I forgot to go out and knock the ice off the transmitter wires, and nearly missed the evening transmission.
She told me an Inuit story about the sun and the moon, who came down to earth and played “dousing the lights”—a self-explanatory Inuit sex-game of the kind that so shocked the early missionaries. But the sun and the moon are brother and sister, and in the steamy darkness of the Eskimo hut, they unwittingly broke the incest taboo. So when the lamps were re-lit, the moon in his shame smeared his face with lantern-soot, and the sun set herself alight with lantern oil, and the two of them ran out across the sky, where they still chase each other to this day, yet never dare to meet. It all seemed so poetic—and the story was such an effort to for Tirkiluk get out—that I didn’t attempt ask what happens when there’s an eclipse.
November 28
This morning, took a shovel from outside to clear a way through the crystal drift that half-covers the supply shed. Hands were bare, and the freezing metal stuck to my skin. In stupid panic, I ripped a big flap of skin off my palm. I staggered back out of the gale into the hut, dripping blood, grabbing the medicine box and trying to open it one-handed. But Tirkiluk made me sit down, and licked the wound—which was oddly soothing—breathing over it, muttering what I imagine is some incantation, making me stretch my fingers. The weirdest thing is that it hardly hurts at all now, and seems to be healing already. But I’ve dosed it in iodine, just to be safe.
December 1
Hand almost completely healed.
Better weather—the low cirrus sky glows with an odd light that could be the hidden moon or refracted from the sun or even the Northern Lights. Tirkiluk and I went out walking along the flat glistening bay. With her encouragement, I took out the .22 rifle, and had a lucky shot at a seal that was lying on the ice. The bullet was too small to kill, but Tirkiluk ran over to the creature as it lumbered around, apparently too lost or dazed to find its airhole, and slit it wide open with the bone-handled knife she always carries. Blood and hot offal spewed everywhere, dark as ink, and the flanks quivered and those big dark eyes still stared as she proceeded to eat the steaming liver, offering it to me to share.
Somehow, I would never have considered killing any of the local wildlife without Tirkiluk. But with her, and despite the churning in my stomach, it seemed oddly right. Against Tirkiluk’s protests, I have lugged the carcass back to hut and left it outside to freeze. Did have plans to try to cook it, but now I’m just wondering how I’ll ever get rid of it in the spring.
December 2
Needn’t have worried. I was woken last night by a shuffling and grunting outside the hut, and by Tirkiluk’s smelly hand pressed hard across my mouth to make sure I stayed silent. We crept to the window together and cleared a small space in the dirty crust of ice. There was a polar bear, dragging off the carcass of the seal. An incredible beast. Know now why Tirkiluk didn’t want me to drag the seal back to the hut. And understand the Inuit word ilira, which is the awe which accompanies fear.
December 7
Looking back at this journal, I see that I imagined Tirkiluk’s name was Inua when I saw her at the camp-ground. She tells me now that Inua is actually som
e fingerless hag who lives at the bottom of the sea, although she can’t or won’t explain why there should be any connection with her.
December 13
Beyond the edge of the bay, hidden in a steep ravine that I must have walked past many times without even noticing, Tirkiluk has shown me a place of bones. Somehow, the ice and snow hardly settle there. Thought at first that it was simply a place where unwary caribou and musk oxen had fallen and died over the years, but to my horror, and in the eerie light of a clear moon, I saw that there were many human skulls amongst the rocks.
Said her tribe has several places like this, where they leave their dead. I suppose there’s little chance of burial with the ground frozen for almost half the year, and any bodies left out would be dragged away like my seal. But she’s matter-of fact about it. She kept pointing and saying something about herself, and repeating bits of the story of “dousing the lights”, and the sun and the moon. There’s some message I don’t understand.
December 18
Understand now why Tirkiluk was abandoned. Discovery is of far more than academic curiosity. Hardly know where to begin.
Have seen her semi-naked a few times. She doesn’t exactly wash herself, but she goes through an elaborate process of scraping her skin clean with her knife. Although I’ve tried hard not to look at this and other aspects of her toilet, it’s difficult to have something like that going on in the hut—usually accompanied by her rambling half-spoken songs—without taking notice. She’s put on some weight, but I’d assumed until now that the continued swelling in her belly was a by-product of earlier mal-nutrition. Now, I realise the significance of the sun and moon incest story that she keeps telling, and the reason why she was thrown out of the tribe.
Tirkiluk is heavily pregnant, by a half-brother named Iquluut. Think he was the hunter I saw looking down at me from Point B all those weeks ago. He’s a senior in the tribe, twice her age, and apparently as the male he’s regarded as blameless in the liaison, even by Tirkiluk herself. I shouldn’t try to judge, but I know that in many ways the Inuit treat their women badly. A “good” wife is regarded as being worth slightly less than a decent team of dogs, and a “bad” one is unceremoniously dumped. And love doesn’t come into the Inuit way of life at all, although lust—male, and female—certainly does.
Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Stories of Ian R. MacLeod Page 32