Heinrich watched his mother’s toes curling and uncurling on the wooden dock. She was visibly deciding that between her and those who had dived no compromise was possible. A breeze, delicate as a surgeon, lifted the skin of the sea and folded it back.
Somehow, thought Heinrich, I must find my mother. I must rescue her.22
Close to midnight, Monsieur Pierre appeared in the hotel lounge, and Heinrich asked him for a job.
“I think that I must stay here for a while, in Pangnirtung. My plans have changed. Do you know where I could get work?”
“You want to work, eh? Tu me laisses un moment? I need a moment, a little moment. We all need a bit of time, no? I can’t do everything at once.”
Monsieur Pierre disappeared into the kitchen, and Heinrich found himself once more alone in the lounge. Three mismatched sofas surrounded a low coffee table, and in the back corner, a half-sized refrigerator kept liters of milk and plastic pitchers of orange juice cool, its motor humming steadily. Someone had set out a plate of freshly baked butter tarts, accompanied by a note that read: “$4.00 each. Help yourself. Put payment in jar.”
Heinrich eyed the tarts and considered stuffing some of his outdated money into the jar. Monsieur Pierre returned with an unlit cigarette clamped between his lips and a pitcher of lemonade in his hand.
“You could try the fish plant, or the Northern Store. What can you do? Have you worked before? You want a glass of my lemonade? No smoking in here. Too bad for me. There is the balcony.”
He removed the cigarette, which had stuck to his lower lip, and tucked it in the pocket of his apron. He glanced inquiringly at Heinrich.
“At home, in Germany, I worked picking and preparing the hops for making beer. I also have completed high school. And yes, please, I would like lemonade. Thank you.”
“At the fish-processing plant, the work, he comes and goes. I tell you how it is—if you are an Inuk and have a job, the government it is charging you more for electricity than if you don’t go to work. When you work, they are increasing your rent. You are better to go fishing for yourself, if you have a boat. Or you carve stone for the tourists. The fish plant is often short of workers. You go there, tell them Monsieur Pierre sent you.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Pierre.”
The cook, dismissing Heinrich’s thanks with a weary gesture, sat down on the sofa nearest to the windows and closed his eyes. He asked, “Dites-moi, do you know The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse?”
“Yes. I have heard of it.”
“This is my favorite book. It is one of the best books ever written. Hermann Hesse. Hermann Hesse is a very good writer, a huge writer.”
“I have not read it. I read very slowly.”
“How slowly?”
“I have read Narcissus and Goldmund.”
“That is a good start. C’est mieux que rien.”
“And you, Monsieur Pierre? What makes you stay here, managing this hotel, cooking all the meals?”
“Ten years, tabarnak. It’s like this. How should I say? I arrived at this place and I never left, I am too busy working to leave, too tired to go somewhere else. Besides. Did you see? Did you notice?”
With a sweep of his arm he indicated, through the window, the glowing pink and orange sky.
“Such luminosité. There is nowhere else. Ten years in this room, and never a night exactly like this one, never. Incroyable. You are looking at it? You see it? Wait here, I’ll bring you something, wait. Incroyable, un ciel de même.”
No sooner had Monsieur Pierre left for the kitchen than Heinrich sank into the sofa and allowed his exhaustion to overtake him. Somewhere to live—the thought formed behind the closed lids of his eyes. I’ll need a place to live, a room cheaper than my room in this hotel. He heard his father’s voice: “You are not my son.” He kept his eyes firmly closed.
Monsieur Pierre returned, bearing a plate of carefully arranged delicate slices of char, wedges of lemon, rings of onion, and tiny green capers.
“Eat, eat. One hundred platters of gravlax, I once served, on the main street in Boston, to the big delegation, one hundred platters, tabarnak, and they wanted more, so we gave them more, on the main street in Boston.”
He held out a fork, which Heinrich accepted.
“Eat, eat my gravlax. What was the name of that street, the main one in Boston? I don’t remember. But my gravlax you will not forget. The name of a street—it goes; the taste of my gravlax—it stays. And out there, regarde-moi cette luminosité.” He threw his arms wide, revealing the beauty of the world.
Heinrich ate; he forked the tender fish into his mouth, pools of lemon and salt gathering on his tongue.
“Is there a room?” Heinrich asked. “Do you know, please, in town, in someone’s house maybe, a room that would cost me not so much to stay?”
“You don’t like my gravlax? Ostie. And I thought, here is a young man of education, of finesse, with him I will discuss Hermann Hesse, we will eat my gravlax and talk of The Glass Bead Game, of Siddhartha.”
“I am sorry. I am a slow reader. Please, Monsieur Pierre, I must earn money to buy a plane ticket home. Your cooking is very good, so good, and I cannot stop myself from eating, you see?”
With the tines of his fork Heinrich speared the last morsel of fish and lifted it eagerly into his mouth.
“Ha! So you do like my gravlax? Good. You will go speak with Sarah, Sarah Ashevak. She will tell you if she has a room. You can go see her tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, yes. Thank you, thank you so much, Monsieur Pierre. Sarah Ashevak, I will go see her. Where will I find her?”
“I will tell you the way to her house, tomorrow. Now I am tired. I am going to bed. One day I won’t get up in the morning. They will come find me in my bed and complain, ‘Monsieur Pierre, your crêpes, your delicious crêpes, we are waiting to eat some, and our plates are empty, and you are not in your kitchen.’ ‘You are right,’ I will answer. ‘I am in my bed. I am warm and comfortable in my bed.’”
“Good night, Monsieur Pierre, and thank you.”
Despite the late hour, and the weariness that made his head heavy, Heinrich lingered in the lounge. He looked out at the sea and down at the shore, but his mother was gone. Once more, he stretched out on the sofa and closed his eyes.
In the morning, he received directions from Monsieur Pierre and headed out to find Sarah Ashevak. In front of the Parks Canada office the teenage girl whom he’d spoken with on the previous day stood smoking a cigarette.
“Hello,” she said, and she sounded neither pleased nor displeased to see him.
“Oolako.”
Hearing his pronunciation, she grinned.
“Oolako,” she corrected.
“Oolako.”
“Oo.”
“Oo.”
“La.”
“La.”
“Ko.”
“Ko.”
“Oolako.”
“Oolako?”
“Never mind, Mr. Deadman.” She blew a ring of smoke. “You remember, I couldn’t find you in the computer? I looked in the old records, the paper ones. You disappeared thirty years ago.”
“I am in your records? You have my file?”
Relief traveled, small and trembling, down his spine and along his arms, and he half expected to see his arms start floating at his sides, such a powerful sensation of lightness was spreading through him.
“Your family came looking for you. One of them left you this letter. I was gonna bring it to you when I get off work. It was in your file.”
She pulled an envelope from her back pocket and held it out. He snatched it from her and read—“For Heinrich Schlögel.” His name was penned on the outside, in a hand unmistakably Inge’s, the tiny vowels crushed between stiffly upright consonants. With utmost care, fighting the desire to tear at it, he unsealed the envelope.
“You don’t look much older than me, Mr. Deadman,” the girl murmured, shifting her gaze away from him and down the road, as if an unexpect
ed sound had caught her attention.
He did not respond but started reading. The shaking of his hands made it hard for him to decipher his sister’s words.
“You all right?” the girl asked.
He nodded.
“You sure you don’t need any help? Some crackers? A cup of tea?”
She lingered for a moment, watching him. She would have preferred not to feel so nakedly curious about this qallunaaq who had stared at her computer screen the day before as if he’d never seen one; a qallunaaq whose name belonged to someone who’d disappeared out on the land decades ago.
He glanced up from the letter in his hands, but he did not respond to her offer of crackers and tea, and his eyes returned quickly to the words that he was holding. Over and over again, he kept reading them. She left him and went back into the parks office.
Heinrich, perched on the edge of a picnic table overlooking the wharfs and the fjord, began once more at the top of the page:
August 28, 1980
Dear Heinrich,
Since you are reading this you must be alive. I cannot stay here any longer. I am going to Toronto. It is my fault you came to this country. Mama and Papa have just gone back to Tettnang. They are devastated. They will want you to come to them straightaway. Perhaps, if you are in fact reading this, you ought to go straight home. I will send them my address so that you can write to me. I don’t know where exactly I’ll be living. I have met a woman here, in the weaving studio, who is being very generous. She came to learn from the weavers but has now returned to Toronto, and has told me that I should go there. She thinks that she may be able to help me. I do not want to go back to Germany. Tomorrow, when I arrive in Toronto, I will start looking for work. If I can give German lessons or do some translating, and not be thrown out of the country, I will stay and wait for you. I will let Mama and Papa know my address, once I have found an apartment and have a telephone number where I can be reached. I must choose to believe that soon you will be reading this letter. I hope we will speak again, my dearest brother. Be well.
Inge
He slipped the letter carefully back into its envelope, got up from the picnic table, started to lose his balance but caught himself. Through an effort of concentration he walked. He lifted one foot, placed it down solidly before lifting the other foot, and by this method he reached the door of the Parks Canada office. The door swung open without resistance. He stepped meticulously inside.
“Please. I must find a telephone number in Toronto. Can you help me?”
The girl was typing on the same small keyboard as the day before.
“Whose phone number do you want? What street do they live on?”
“Her name is Inge Schlögel. She’s my sister. I don’t know her address.”
The girl’s fingers knew where to go and darted from key to key while her eyes examined the screen that was not a TV screen. It was somehow receiving information from her typing fingers. He’d never been good at typing.
“54 Raglan Avenue. Your sister lives at 54 Raglan Avenue and her phone number is 416-654-7839.”
He leaned forward and saw Inge’s name written on the little screen, followed by her address and telephone number.
“Do you have a telephone I can use?”
“Not for long distance. Maybe at the hotel.”
“Thank you.”
He turned to go.
“You think, in Toronto they won’t notice you’re dead?” she asked, grinning.
He stared at her. For several seconds he stopped breathing.
“You’re right, they probably won’t notice,” she continued. “There’s lots they don’t notice in Toronto, that’s what my grandma says. You’ll be okay, Deadman.”
“Excuse me, I must go and telephone my sister.”
“Computers. You haven’t used computers much, eh?” she asked. “That’s because you’ve been out on the land a long time. You have lots of catching up to do. That’s what they used to tell me in school, lots of catching up.”
“I must go to the hotel and call my sister.”
The girl shrugged.
“Qarasaujaq,” she remarked. “Something that works like a brain, that’s the way we say ‘computer’ in Inuktitut. You want to call your sister from here? If you don’t stay on the line too long, you can use this phone. I’m not meant to do this. But for you, Deadman, it’s okay.”
She lifted the receiver, held it out to him across the counter. She dialed.
His heart had become a small animal scurrying in circles. He would have liked to sit on the floor, to slide down slowly, the information counter supporting his back. But the telephone cord was not long enough to allow such a descent, and so he remained standing.
The ringing was cut off by a recorded announcement. A gently reprimanding female voice informed him, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.” The small animal inside his chest held still. While the woman repeated her message his fingers released the receiver, which was no longer of any use to him. The plastic object struck the counter and lay there. He could hear the woman inside the receiver urging him to take action: “Please check your number and try your call again.”
The girl’s thoughtful eyes observed him. She reached out, took hold of the receiver, and silenced the voice inside it. The useless object lay in its cradle.
“The number is no good,” he said, and he tasted salt, his own, running down his cheeks and slipping into the corners of his mouth.
The girl slid a box of Kleenex across the counter.
“You’ll find your sister. Come around here. I’ll show you how to search for her.”
He went behind the counter and stood next to the girl. She showed him a tiny dark arrow on the screen of her machine. Steering with a device that she called a “mouse”—a gliding hummock of plastic that fit under the palm of her hand—she guided the arrow in all directions. Then she took away her hand.
“You want to try? It’s easy.”
She attempted to teach him to right click and left click. With each click, the screen changed its contents. This fascinated and alarmed him. “Page.” “Icon.” “Scroll.” “Cursor.” “Google”—all of these words she taught him.
She told him to type “Inge Schlögel Toronto” and when he hesitated she typed it for him. They learned that his sister was a member of the League of Interpreters and Translators of Ontario, or had been in 2009. That was only a year ago. Why wasn’t she a member anymore?
“She has no web site, no Facebook page, no address or telephone number. She doesn’t really want to be found, your sister, does she?”
“She is not someone who spends time with other people. She is very private. She was very private, when I knew her, that’s how she used to be.”
“We’ll track her down. She’ll be happy to see you. If I had a brother like you . . . I dunno. What would I do with a brother like you, Deadman? We could call the League of Interpreters and Translators of Ontario?”
“Yes.”
While she dialed, he went around to the correct side of the counter, the public side; then she passed him the receiver.
Heinrich learned—this time from a live voice that spoke to him from Toronto—that a woman named Inge Schlögel had indeed been a member until a year ago, when she’d failed to pay her dues.
“It’s not uncommon,” the voice explained. “Sadly, many allow their memberships to lapse. People no longer understand the importance of community and common action. Not to suggest that your sister undervalued our professional community, she could have had other reasons for not paying her dues. She might have left the country, she might have been going through a rough spell, it happens. Working as a freelancer means uncertainty. She should have let the league know, that’s why we exist, we’re here to help. I’m sorry not to be of more help. So many families get torn apart. I hope you find her. For some, the league used to be a family, a better one than the family they were born into. But that’s all over now. Good luck with your search. So
rry not to be of more help. Have a great day.”
Click. Dead air, unreceivable sound waves crackling, searching.
Heinrich set down the receiver, then lowered himself to the floor, his back against the information counter. He brought his knees up and rested his head on them. The girl came and crouched beside him.
“Sounds like she’s still in Toronto, your sister. You’ll find her but you’ll have to go there. What are you going to do next? I could call my grandma and ask her to walk over and get you.”
He raised his head from his knees and looked at her.
“Your grandmother?”
He could imagine giving in, letting this girl whom he hardly knew do all his thinking for him.
“Sarah Ashevak, my grandma, she says you’re going to be staying with us. Weren’t you on your way to her house?”
“Yes. Yes, I was.”
“I’ll call my grandma.”
She saw his breathing become calmer. If he were a dog, she would have felt his nose. On the whole she preferred dogs to boys and men. She wanted to scratch this qallunaaq behind the ears, stroke the top of his head. Instead, she went back to the phone.
“I’ll be okay,” he said. “Don’t bother your grandmother.”
She stopped dialing.
“I’ll go on my own.”
“If you get lost, ask someone the way to Sarah Ashevak’s.”
“Will I see you later, at your grandma’s?”
“Yup.”
“What is your name? You know mine. But I haven’t asked your name.”
“Vicky.”
“Thank you for your help, Vicky.”
“You’re welcome, Deadman.”
She stood behind the information counter, restless, waiting perhaps for him to leave.
The Search for Heinrich Schlögel Page 14