Alaska (160 page)

There were gasps, cheers, wild excitement among the schoolchildren, then a sobering question: 'Who's gonna pay for this?' and Afanasi's resounding answer: 'The school board. Our budget can stand it.' Then he recapitulated: 'We'll pay like I said. Twelve students. The five real young ones will stay here with Mrs. Hooker. Two teachers.

Three board members. Three mothers as chaperones. That's twenty. And if some of the rest of you want to pay your own way, and it'll be a bargain, we can accept five more.'

Because the salaries at Prudhoe Bay had been spectacular in recent years, five volunteers shouted their names, with Kendra noting that Jonathan Borodin, the nineteen-year-old with the snowmobile, was among them. Before the meeting ended, all details of the safari to Germany were agreed upon; Kendra and Mr. Hooker compiled lists of vital data for Mr. Afanasi to take to the federal building in Fairbanks in the morning for the issuance of passports, and boys' suits and girls' dresses were hastily refurbished.

In their classes Mr. Hooker and Miss Scott dropped all other studies to conduct crash courses on German geography, history and music. One mother had old copies of the Geographic covering Germany and another had recordings of Beethoven's Fifth and selections from Faust.

Children drew maps of Germany, and little Amy Ekseavik surprised everyone by drawing a fine map of Alaska, in the middle of which, displaying its insignificance in comparison with the North Slope and Yukon Valley, was shown Germany, East and West, drawn to the same scale. Amy would not tell the other students why she had done this, but after school she whispered to Kendra: 'I want to go, but it's no big deal.'

'There you're wrong, Amy. For two thousand years this part of Europe' and her right hand almost obliterated Amy's Germany' has dominated this part of the world. It isn't always bigness that counts.' And on a spur-of-the-moment impulse, she grasped Amy by both hands: 'You're a young girl, Amy. You could be so very much. Mr. Keeler said, ”You could be anything you wanted to be. Anything.”'

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'You're in love with Mr. Keeler, aren't you?'

Tm in love with Alaska, and all it stands for. I'm thrilled by the wonderful capacity you have stored inside of you. When you go to Germany, Amy, look, and weigh, and listen, and for God's sake, learn something.' She released Amy's hands and stepped back. From the door of the schoolroom Amy turned to stare at her teacher, recalling and evaluating all that had been said.

The expedition to Germany was a flawless success. The various planes took off on time. Lufthansa's publicity people peppered European papers with stories and photographs of the Eskimo schoolchildren. Museums, zoos, castles and industrial centers arranged special tours for the visitors, and one financial newspaper carried a long analysis of the financial structure of the North Slope and its petroleum bonanza. The reporter calculated that this commendable school adventure, which was apparently going so well, had cost Desolation Point not less than $127,000, all paid out of oil royalty funds. Afanasi issued a corrective: 'Only twenty of our people had their expenses paid by the school board, and this expenditure was roundly approved by the citizens.

The other six paid their own fares, because they wanted to share in the experience.'

He was right in his numbers. There were twenty official members of the party, plus the five who had volunteered that first night in the gym, plus an unexpected traveler who asked to join the party when it reached Anchorage. Jeb Keeler, lawyer to both the Desolation corporation and the school board, had felt that he ought to come along as a counselor to Afanasi, and he did not deny to himself that the thought of spending time with Kendra in Europe influenced his plans. She was flattered by this proof of his sincere interest, and no two members of the expedition had more joy in the trip through Germany than they. In fact, their pleasure in each other became so obvious that one of the chaperones told the other two: 'We've been watching the wrong ones,'

but everyone approved of the relationship, and speculation rose among the older students as to whether Mr. Keeler slipped in to Miss Scott's bedroom in the various inns at which they stopped.

One of the subjects that Kendra discussed with Keeler would have surprised the students: 'Jeb, I know this may infringe on the lawyer-client relationship, but I have to know.

The way Afanasi throws money around, this trip for example, is he stealing from the corporation?'

Jeb gasped, then grabbed Kendra by her shoulders: 'That's a rotten question. Afanasi's the most honest man I know. He'd cut off his right arm rather than steal a penny.'

Shaking

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her, he growled: 'And you can testify to the world that I said so.'

She was not rebuffed by his spirited defense of his friend: 'Then where does he get his money?' and he banged a table with his fist: 'Dammit, none of your people from the Lower Forty-eight believe it, but up here Prudhoe Bay money flows like water.

Afanasi's school board has money. I have money. My partner Poley Markham has money all of it legal, all of it verified by receipts. Now accept the facts. Up here money is very common.'

The observer who took the keenest interest in the sometimes stormy courtship was Amy Ekseavik, for her attachment to Jeb Keeler had intensified as she watched his courteous behavior in Germany, and she already had a proprietary interest in Miss Scott, because she, Amy, had been the first to detect that her teacher had fallen in love with the nice young lawyer. On several side trips Jeb and Kendra asked Amy to come along, and they were constantly amazed at her mastery of things German. 'Amy,'

Kendra cried one day in the Munich Pinakothek, 'you're speaking German as if you'd studied it,' and she said: 'I have,' and she showed them the cheap phrase book which she had practically memorized. That night, after a romantic interlude which moved the lovers much closer to an open avowal of their plans, Kendra said: 'If we ever do get married, I want to adopt Amy,' and Jeb agreed: 'We'll send her to Dartmouth.'

The expedition provided two delightful surprises: the American ambassador invited the Eskimos to a formal luncheon in Bonn, and then arranged for a sleigh-ride outing in the nearby countryside, with a halt at a rustic German inn where musicians in costume played old German folksongs and danced with the Eskimos.

As the silvery days of the German winter passed, with the visitors thinking often of the bleak darkness back home, Kendra became aware of something she had not noticed before: Jonathan Borodin was a surprisingly able young man. She had known him only as a rather brash fellow who had no job but did have that very noisy snowmobile whose echoes seemed to disturb her class whenever she was trying to make an important point.

During her first six months in the village she had not liked Jonathan, but now as she observed him on the trip, and saw how he cared for the younger children as if he were their uncle, she realized that the boy had possibilities, and she was so disturbed that he was not continuing with his education that during their trip into East Berlin she took a seat beside him in the bus and asked: 'Jonathan, why did you drop out of college?' and he replied in surly tones: 'I got 978

hungry for village life,' and she said without inflecting her words: 'Like maybe ”smokin' and jokin* ”?' and he replied: 'It's our way of life.'

She bit her lip, for she knew that if she ridiculed his pathetically limited vision, she would lose him: 'But I've been watching you, Jonathan, and you have unusual talents.'

'Like what?' he asked, half offensively, half with a desire to hear more.

'You're an excellent manager. Get an education and you could work anywhere, Anchorage, Seattle, maybe a congressman's aide in Washington.' When he looked at her in surprise, she said: 'I mean it. You have special talents, but if you don't develop them, they'll wither.'

He gave an arrogant answer, one that many young Eskimos might have given in these heady days: 'I can get a job at Prudhoe Bay anytime I need one. Make four times as much as you do teaching.'

She stiffened, for such kind of talk she would not accept: 'Who's talking money?

I'm talking about the entire future of your life. You drift off to Prudhoe, work there three or four years, waste your salary, and what do you have for the rest of your life? Think about it, Jonathan,' and with obvious disgust she rose and stomped off to another seat.

He was a young fellow of some spirit, for later that day, when they were back in West Berlin, he looked for her and asked if he could take the chair next to hers in the restaurant. 'Please do,' she said, and he astonished her by revealing that he occupied a somewhat special place in Desolation: 'My grandfather, you don't know him, but you think Mr. Afanasi is the big man in the village. Corporation, yes. School board, yes. But the real man is my grandfather,' and he proceeded to share with her the remarkable gifts his grandfather possessed and the power he exercised over events like the birth of a child or the catching of a whale. Finally, she laid down her knife and fork, stared at him, and asked: 'Jonathan, are you telling me that your grandfather is a shaman?' She had heard the word several times since coming to Alaska, so she was well aware of the extraordinary powers shamans had once exercised in those northern parts, but she had never dreamed that a real, live shaman could have existed into the present. Desolation had a Presbyterian minister, eleventh in line since that fateful day when Captain Mike Healy of the Bear

had put Dr. Sheldon Jackson ashore with timbers to build a Presbyterian mission and staff it with a converted Dmitri Afanasi. Everyone in the village was Presbyterian, always had been, and it was startling to think that a shaman from the ancient days coexisted with the church, conducting 979

a subterranean form of religion to which the villagers surreptitiously adhered. It was heathenish. It was impossible. And it was exciting.

When the group returned to Munich, the German Tourist Board, delighted with the favorable notices the Eskimos were receiving, provided free tickets to the four high-school students, both teachers and the adults in the party to a performance of grand opera in the historic Munich opera house. 'I'm sorry it's not for an easy opera like Carmen,'

explained the woman who would accompany the group, 'but its effects are magnificent, and I'll explain the action. Wagner's Die Walkiire. Music you'll never forget.'

Amy Ekseavik, of course, procured a copy of the libretto and prepared both her fellow students and her elders for what they were about to see, and with assistance from the guide, the people from Desolation were able to follow the intricate story. Kendra, who had never seen an opera, sat behind the students, with Jeb Keeler on her left and Afanasi on her right, while Jonathan Borodin sat in front of her, but two seats away, so that she could see much of his face, and when the brooding music began and the ancient Norse customs started to unfold, it was clear that the effect upon Borodin was profound. No other student and none of the adults followed the mysterious grandeur of the Wagnerian scene with the intensity that he did, and this prompted Kendra to ask Afanasi during the first intermission: 'Is it true that Jonathan Borodin's grandfather is a secret shaman?'

The question had an explosive effect on the wise, cultivated leader of the Desolation community, for he turned abruptly to face Kendra, and asked with force: 'Who told you that?' and she pointed to where young Borodin sat alone in a kind of trance, staring at the great curtain which masked the stage.

Afanasi remained silent for some moments, then leaned toward Kendra so that Borodin could not hear what was being said: 'We live in a dual world. The Presbyterian minister reminds us of Christian values we've respected for the last hundred years. But the elders remind us of values we followed for the last ten thousand years.' He wished to say no more, but when Kendra said nothing, he grasped her by the hand and assured her: 'Shaman? In the ugly old sense of that word? No. Magic? Cures? Curses? None of that. But a conservator of valued ancient ways we've followed? Yes.'

And there the matter ended, except that during the last two acts of the opera, Kendra saw that Jonathan was transfixed by the majesty on the stage, the dominance of the gods, the wonder of the scenic effects and the power of the singing, the action and the invocations. Like all the Eskimos, include-980

ing Afanasi, he was seeing an interpretation of northern life that was eerily foreign yet familiar. The guide had apologized when telling the visitors what the opera was going to be, but what she could not have known was that it would be one of the very best to show this group from another northern world.

As they filed out of the grand theater, the most impressive building the Eskimos had ever been in, Kendra found herself walking beside Borodin, and she asked him what he had thought of the opera, and he replied: 'They could have been Eskimos.

It was like our story,' and when little Amy Ekseavik caught up with them, she said: 'They lived in a cold land too, didn't they?' and the magic of the performance continued to manifest itself throughout their late supper and the conversation that followed.

ON THE FLIGHT HOME, KENDRA RECEIVED TARDY INstruction concerning two verboten subjects of discussion in an Eskimo community, and the repressive warning came from the most worldly of the Desolation community, Vladimir Afanasi. Sitting beside him on a portion of the flight, she congratulated him on how successful the expedition had been, and said: 'You did it. When I first heard your proposal to take practically the whole school to Germany, I said to myself: ”What a cockamamie idea!”Two days in Berlin straightened me out,' and he replied that it would not have been possible without the help of two teachers like Kasm and Kendra: 'People underestimate Mr. Hooker. He's one of those fortunate people in the world who find exactly where they want to be, and it's the place they ought to be.

He wouldn't be any good in the high school, where you have to teach specific subjects, because investigators are going to be testing your students. Do you know what he teaches?'