Consumption (20 page)

They had fed earlier in the day, diving hundreds of feet and more to the bottom of Hudson Bay, there to swallow great gulps of mud for the shellfish within, like mining pistachio ice cream for the nuts. The mussels sat in their bellies now, holding their shells as tight as they could, but weakening from the stomach acid and the enzymes. All the walruses had to do was wait for the mussels to exhaust themselves and release their grip. When hunters killed a walrus, the first thing they liked to do was slit open the stomach and dig out the opened mussels and swallow them, still warm and bloody and steaming. This is called
qalluk
, and is considered one of the best things there is to eat in the Arctic. Emo had told Pauloosie what it tasted like as they had motored up the coast.

In the summer, on Hudson Bay, there is always fog, which is much more of an impediment to men, who can see, than to
iviaq
, who would prefer that nothing else could either. When the lapping of waves upon rocks became audible, it was necessary to shut off the engine so they could glide closer. The odour of belched half-digested shellfish was as good as a beacon. They carried303 rifles and military ammunition. The bullets did not mushroom on impact, and so penetrated deep into the layers of blubber, the lungs and heart. Emo and Pauloosie had already chambered their rounds and held their rifles level with the sea, as they peered into the fog. They could not see the beasts but heard the snuffling of calves sucking at their mothers.

When the mist cleared they were within fifteen feet of shore, in front of mounds and mounds of walrus flesh and hair and tiny beady eyes, muzzles like fat, old bewhiskered men’s and shining white tusks idly scratching, rubbing, nuzzling.

Gunfire exploded for a long minute. Each time Emo and Pauloosie fired, they looked for the walrus just shot, seeing the blood spurting from its chest—or was that its neighbour? Firing again, levelling the rifle, pulling back the bolt, firing. Then there was nothing to shoot at, the walrus all gone in great barely noticed splashes into the sea, all except three, bellowing, roaring: two young
bulls and an old cow, probing the air with their tusks, waving and thrashing and coughing out a red miasma that drifted out over the boat, more desperate aching protest and then, slowly, the sound of wet loud breathing for a long time and then nothing at all.

Simionie was watching the kettle boil, hunkered in front of the fire. Victoria sat at the table and watched him watch the kettle. She had not wanted to make love today, and this was the first time she had ever said that to him. She assured him that nothing was the matter. She was just a little stressed out. School had started and Marie still didn’t look right to her and they still didn’t have the test results. She seemed more and more withdrawn and listless.

“I think that may be how teenagers are,” Simionie said. “On the TV, they are, anyway.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Still, I can’t help thinking something is the matter.”

He didn’t contradict her. Sallow and thin, Marie had hung around town that summer like an underfed caribou calf: all limbs and joints and wide eyes. Nobody outside her family ever heard her speak.

“How’s Pauloosie doing?”

“He spends all his free time with his grandfather. We hardly see him. I think he’s this far from quitting school.”

“Well, your father knows a lot. He’s a good teacher.”

“How about you, what are you doing lately?”

“I’ve been out hunting a bit. And I’ve been going to that Attatatiak Committee whatchacallit. Okpatayauk and his friends.”

“What’s that about?”

“Okpatayauk thinks that all this talk about a new mine is based on something.” He stirred the coals.

“Yes?”

“He thinks Robertson is involved in it and wants to know why.”

“I don’t know much about Robertson’s businesses.”

“I know. But when Okpatayauk and his friends get together, all they want to talk about is this mine and why they don’t know anything about it, but he does.”

“You two close? You and Okpatayauk?”

“We have coffee sometimes.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I think maybe we don’t need a diamond mine on the tundra,” he said, turning from the stove at last to look at her.

“Well, there should be a discussion, if there is to be one.”

“There won’t be. It will just be pushed through. And all the jobs and money will go to Kablunauks. Like your husband.”

Victoria sighed and crossed her legs. Through the window, the clouds were perfect cumulus cotton balls, each nearly the same size as the other, stretched out at regular intervals from one horizon to the other.

“Simionie, I don’t want you to get involved with Robertson, okay? He’s not a bad man.”

“Why should I be the one that keeps out of his way.”

“You just have to be.”

“We’ll see.”

“Simionie.”

“I said, we’ll see.”

Balthazar awoke from his sleep in the early afternoon. Around him, the disarray of his apartment pressed on him with a familiar and sallow weight, its hairy belly hanging on his face with malodorous gravity. He stirred himself and the thing on his face was his stiffened terry cloth bathrobe and, free of it, he could breathe after all. There was a knocking at his door. He swung his heavy legs over the side of his bed. Pulling on sweatpants and a T-shirt, he made his way to the front door and unlocked it. There stood Amanda.

“Samuel let me up,” she said. “He remembered me.”

“I see.”

“Can I come in?”

“Of course,” he said, moving aside.

She took in his apartment, which she had visited before. There was a moment as her eyes scoured the place—the stacks of pizza boxes and junk mail and unfinished meals. “Keith, they’re called M-O-L-L-Y, Molly, M-A-I-D, maid. Mo-oo-ll-y,” she said, enunciating this laboriously, “Mai-yuhd.”

“What are you doing in the city?” he asked.

She launched into a cheerleader routine: “Gimme an ‘M’! Gimme an ‘O’!” but broke up with laughter. Balthazar thought for a second that maybe she was high. But she wasn’t.

“What are you doing in the city, Amanda?”

She stopped laughing, slowly decelerating like a windup toy. She wiped her eyes and looked at her uncle.

“Will you let me stay with you for a while?”

“What? No.”

“Pleee-ase.”

“What’s going on, Amanda?”

“My parents are going crazy.”

“Oh, dear.”

“I want to live here until they get their act together.”

“Has anyone hit you or anything?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, then you have to go back. Imagine what your mother would say if you told her you were moving in with me.”

They both shuddered.

“You mean it, huh?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice rising unintentionally.

“Will you take me out for lunch then?”

“First, we’re phoning your parents.”

“Oh, God.”

There was no lunch, not after talking to a frantic Angela. Balthazar and Amanda walked to the garage where he kept his car,
stretching out her reprieve. He felt guilty—for what he was doing and for what he wasn’t doing. A problem without an obvious clean solution.

When Robertson walked into the kitchen, Victoria looked up at his anxious face and found herself smiling at him. “The sputum came back negative for tuberculosis. The nurse just phoned and told me.”

“Thank God,” he breathed.

She had been holding on to the good news all day, waiting for him to get home. “Yes,” she said and hugged him.

His eyes widened at the sensation of her arms around his waist. He rested his chin on her shoulder, a once-familiar sensation. How could he have forgotten how pleasant this was? “Did anyone have any ideas about why she coughed blood?”

“Not really. She said that bad bronchitis can do that.” They breathed together and thought about that, and about the fact that they were touching one another.

“In a kid?”

“I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t sound right to me.”

They stood there, still holding one another for the first time in so long. She was thinking, It’s good we can be kind to one another, even though we’ve become what we have.

He was thinking, Things can get better, after all.

ELEVEN

VICTORIA HEARD THE HOOT OF THE TUG
in the bay and looked at her calendar. Third week of September. She had been late with her barge order and so her groceries hadn’t been on the first two, which had arrived earlier in the month. She wondered again if she had ordered enough food. Pauloosie was the variable. Every week his appetite seemed to double, but at the same time he was increasingly strident about eating country food, insisting on cutting up his own frozen char while the rest of the family ate roast. Still, she wished that Marie had even a portion of her brother’s appetite. These days Marie did hardly more than stir her food around on her plate. Char, fish sticks, toast, beans, roast: nothing moved her to eat. And she looked like it too. The teachers all commented on how skinny she was when she went back to school.

That afternoon Victoria drove down to the warehouse where the barge orders were being unloaded, wrapped in polyethylene and labelled prominently with the name of the person who had placed them. If you were lucky your order came off the barge first. Johnny Ingutar, one of the warehousemen, met her as she stepped out of the truck. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” he said, smiling broadly.

“What do you mean?”

He pointed. Robertson was already here, which surprised her. He had left two days earlier for Yellowknife and he wasn’t due back yet. But there he was, directing the placement of enormous crates on the hamlet office’s flatbed truck. Victoria walked up to him.

“I thought I’d pick up our groceries,” she said, touching his shoulder.

His face fell as if he had been caught in the act of doing something dreadful. Then he went various shades of inarticulate and stammering purple. Finally she asked, “What’s the matter?”

“I have a surprise for you, but you can’t see it yet.”

“Okay,” she said and walked back to her truck and drove home.

Victoria didn’t see Robertson for what remained of that day or the next. She thought that he had gone back to Yellowknife, that the surprise had something to do with the hospital. Perhaps they were going to begin construction that fall, or something.