Barkskins

by Annie Proulx

  • • •

  Frugal missionaries often took passage on convict transport, and though Jinot objected he found himself swept aboard the Doublehail with Mr. Bone. Seasickness doubled most of the passengers, but not Mr. Rainburrow, who continued to enjoy his morning bacon. Jinot had never seen such a busy man, for the missionary rushed about from first light to lanterns-out. Mr. Boxall, his friend again, followed in his wake with his little yellow notebook.

  Belowdecks the dangerous felons crouched in chains and cramping cubbies, the convicts England was pleased to remove from her finer population.

  • • •

  Jinot was wearied by pitching decks, the missionaries’ zeal, the ocean’s monotonous view of a horizon as flat as a sawed plank. Everywhere the spread of ocean showed it was not the Atlantic, which had given Jinot the odor of life forever. Even deep in the Maine lumber camps certain weatherly days would bring the salt taste of it to him a hundred miles distant. Stern, cold, inimical, resentful of men, rock-girt and often flashing with cruel storms, for him, for all Mi’kmaq, it was the only true ocean, and like a salmon he longed to go back to it.

  When Australia finally came in sight as a great recumbent sausage at the edge of the world, he wondered how he could bear to sail still farther on to New Zealand. Only the thought of the interminable return voyage to Boston and a lack of passage money—for Mr. Bone had paid him no wages since they left Boston—kept him silent. He was fated to continue with the ax maker.

  Port Jackson smelled different and unfamiliar, a somewhat dry roasty odor like parched coffee and burning twigs.

  Through the strange trees flew birds of shocking colors, iridescent and violently noisy, birds with headdresses and wings like burning angels, flying apparitions from dreams. But in the month the travelers lingered in the colony awaiting passage, whenever they walked out they saw creatures that surpassed any nightmare, springing fur-covered beasts with rudder-like tails, lizards swelling out their throats in gruesome puffs, assorted spiders said to be fatally poisonous.

  In Port Jackson the missionary arranged with a Maori who had come to sell New Zealand flax, that he should give lessons in his language to himself and Mr. Bone. Soon Mr. Bone was flinging such words as tapu, waka, wahine, iti, ihu about, and imagining himself a fluent speaker of this Polynesian language.

  • • •

  Jinot was disheartened to see that the same detestable Doublehail that had carried them from England would now take them to New Zealand. There were several Maoris on board and Mr. Bone spoke to them in what he imagined was their language. The energetic Mr. Rainburrow had better luck and began proselytizing whenever he caught one of the Maoris gazing out to sea. Jinot was surprised to see that they listened with interest and asked questions. As for Jinot, the natives immediately classed him as an inferior servant to Mr. Bone and ignored him.

  • • •

  They sailed up a river past gullied stumpland and the voyage ended in a busy settlement. The dominant building was near the wharf, a trader’s huge whare hoka. Next to this warehouse stood a chandler’s shop ornamented with an old anchor for a sign. Two shacks leaned off to one side. The larger bore a sign that said NEW ZEALAND COMPANY. The houses of the pakeha traders and government men ranged along streets terracing the hillside. Behind a screen of distant trees was the Maori village—pa—fenced round with poles; farther back loomed a fantastic tangle of ferns, trees, creepers and exotic fragrances, a fresh world.

  “A translator will soon join you, Mr. Bone. You must excuse me as I am going to see the site chosen for our mission,” said Mr. Rainburrow.

  Mr. Bone and Jinot waited for the translator, a Scotsman, John Grapple, whom they could see descending the steep path. Grapple walked gingerly and Jinot guessed he was wary of falling on the precipitous way. He reached them at the same time a Maori canoe drew up on the beach and a muscular native man jumped out and walked toward them. They came together under a motte of trees.

  “Well, then,” said Grapple, showing his crimson face and fiery nose. “This chief speaks no English, so I will translate for you.” The moment Mr. Bone heard John Grapple’s Scots burr he loved him and the two talked for a quarter hour working out a remote kinship before they turned to the Maori who stood waiting, his heavy arms folded across his chest. Mr. Bone showed off some of his Maori words and amazingly, this man, his brown face a map of curled and dotted tattoos and clad in a sinuous flaxen cloak that tickled his ankles, understood some of the compromised phrases. At first the two men seemed pleased with each other. The chief wondered if Mr. Bone had come to buy flax. No? Sealskins? No? Spars? No? What then?

  Mr. Bone, casting his limited vocabulary aside, looked at John Grapple to translate as he tried to describe ax making and his plan for a factory. With a stick he drew figures on the ground that represented an ax on a forge and a looming trip-hammer. To further illustrate Mr. Bone removed a Penobscot model ax he carried in his valise and handed it to the chief.

  The chief’s eyes widened with pleasure as he examined the quality and beauty of the ax. Too late Mr. Bone realized that the man believed it was a gift rather than a demonstration of goods.

  “Well, no matter, I have others,” he muttered to himself.

  “You got others?” asked the chief in fluent if rather sudden English.

  “Let me congratulate you on your rapid command of our language. As to the axes, yes, I have others but they are only to show. I hope to manufacture them here as soon as we establish a source of good iron ore in New Zealand. I am the owner of an ax factory in the United States. I hope to construct one here.” A crowd had gathered around them, stretching their necks to see the ax.

  “What is wrong with these people?” said Mr. Bone to John Grapple sotto voce. “One would think they had never seen an ax before.”

  “I think that may be the case,” said Grapple.

  The chief smiled delightedly.

  “Oh my friend,” he said to Mr. Bone. “That is good. Good, good. Come with me. We wish to make a powhiri and hakari feast for you and your whekere,” he said, glancing at Jinot.

  “I think, sir,” whispered Jinot, “that he believes I am the factory. He sees a factory as a kind of servant. Or slave.” For he reckoned that the Maori had slaves.

  “Oh, what bosh! You do not understand the situation, Mr. Jinot Sel. He is in complete accord with me. He understands everything.” Mr. Bone, as was his usual habit, withdrew his repeating watch from his pocket. Before he had completed the motion the crowd sucked in its breath as one and stepped back, horrified expressions on their faces. They murmured “atua” at each other. Mr. Bone looked to John Grapple for an explanation.

  “Hum hum,” said Grapple, with a twisted expression, putting aside his Scots speech in favor of plain English. “They fancy your watch is a demon, they say they can hear its heart beating.” Mr. Bone smiled to hear such simple suppositions and added to the tension by pressing the button that activated the chiming mechanism. A soft ding-ding came from the watch. A man in the crowd shouted something.

  “What did he say?” asked Mr. Bone.

  “He said the demon wishes to escape from his prison,” said Grapple. “I suggest you put your watch away, sir, as the Maori have strong feelings about such instruments. Some years ago a whaler stopped here to rewater and gather spars. The clumsy captain managed to drop his watch in the harbor and a number of fatal illnesses and calamities fell on the people in the following weeks. They ascribed those troubles to the evil spirit that was lurking beneath their harbor.”

  But Mr. Bone decided to display his whiteman power. Frowning, he shook his watch and then spoke to it harshly as though to a disobedient child before putting it back in his pocket, where once again it seemed to call impetuously to its master to be released. The crowd breathed and drew back a little further.

  When Mr. Bone asked Grapple sotto voce where the chief had learned his English, Grapple said it was likely he had served as a sailor on an American whaler or sealer and was of a secr
etive nature that led him to hide his knowledge in order to gain advantages. Mr. Bone smiled at the chief. He took note of the tattoo pattern that he might recognize him again.

  “So, sir,” he said, “do you mostly fish, or make war?”

  “Sometime fish, sometime war.”

  “Ha. And what do you suppose I do with my life?”

  “You travel about?”

  Mr. Bone spoke slowly and loudly as one did with foreigners, and also because the birds in the branches above them overwhelmed their voices. “No, I rarely travel about. I live in America and, as I said, I make the best axes. Like that one.” He pointed to the Penobscot ax the chief still held in his hand. Mr. Bone extended his hand and waggled the fingers with a beckoning motion to show he wanted the ax returned to him. The Maori looked at Mr. Bone, his eye darkened and he fled with the ax.

  “Here!” cried Mr. Bone. “You ruffian! Bring that back at once.” But the man had disappeared into the ferns.

  “You are impetuous, Mr. Bone,” said John Grapple. “Metal tools are highly prized here.” He smiled and his voice wheedled, the Scots accent thickened. “He believes ye gae at tae him as a gift. Why do ye not come tae ma hoose and we’ll hae a wee dram and gab eh? Let us move awa frae thes bickerin blaitherskites.” Indeed, the birds were fiery in their declamations.

  • • •

  Jinot and Mr. Bone ate and slept in a hut in one of the established missionaries’ enclaves. Gourd plants grew up the sides, extending their tendrils to the roof peak, and jeweled geckos hunting insects rustled through them. “When Mr. Rainburrow’s mission buildings are in place we will shift houses, or when I find a factory site and put up our first dwellings. But for the time being we must accept this small guesthouse under the trees as our temporary home,” said Mr. Bone.

  “Do I hear my name mentioned?” called the missionary’s voice as he came into the twilight hut smiling and humming a hymn. “I am well pleased with the site for our mission. It lies on a moderate bluff overlooking the harbor and has a brisk stream of excellent water running through it. We have already begun the construction. Before I left fifty or more Maoris were cutting great poles and lashing them together with vines, a curious but effective way of construction.”

  At the end of the second week the missionary had become a partner with the trader Orion Palmer, a Maine man who had come to New Zealand years before in a sealer and had no intention of returning to the pine tree lands, where trees burst with cold in the winter nights.

  • • •

  Jinot rose before dawn to the sound of intertwining birdcalls, haunting organ-like notes, slow and deliberate as if the bird was deeply considering the composition. Low notes and harmonics seemed to express both sadness and resignation. A distant bird answered from far in the forest and the somber voices laced together. He twisted his head this way and that trying to find the feathered creature that made such a poignant song. And he saw it, a large blue-grey bird opening and closing its wings, fanning its tail. It showed a black mask and under its chin hung two blue wattles. The bird arched its neck, opened its strong curved beak and called lingeringly: . . . ing . . . ong . . . ang ang . . . cleet! . . . ing.

  Outside Jinot climbed up to the ridge through a forest so unlike the pine forests of Maine, New Brunswick and Ontario, or any other he had ever seen, he never could have imagined it. He sensed antiquity in the place but could not know that he was walking through the oldest living forest on earth, part of a world never scoured by encroaching glaciers, never overrun with grazing mammals. With the industrial ugliness of London fresh in his mind, New Zealand’s beauty moved him powerfully. It was a fresh world pulsing with life and color, the trees dripping vines, epiphytes, scarlet flowers and dizzying perfumes spilling from cascades of tiny orchids, supplejack knitting the forest together, red-fluffed rata—a place hidden from the coarser world by its remoteness. He had the feeling he should not be here; perhaps it was one of the tapu places the missionaries had joked about. The ground was cut with wooded ravines. At the bottom of each ran a clear stream. Threads of water twisted through tree roots. Birds crowded the tree branches like fruits and the crowns twitched with their movements. He would come to know many of them and the trees—totara, beech, kahikatea, rimu, matai and miro, manuka and kanuka, the great kauri and nikau palms. When he came on a secluded stand of kauri, their great grey trunks like monster elephant legs, he touched bark, looked up into the bunched limbs at the tops of the sheer and monstrous stems. He imagined he felt the tree flinch and drew back his hand.

  In his desire to see every part of this new forest he left the trail and descended into a ravine. It was like a somewhat nightmarish dream when he ignorantly touched a glistening leaf and received a burning jolt of pain. Looking closely at the leaves of this small tree, the stinging nettle tree, he could see silvery hairs. Alas, not a true paradise. And there were mosquitoes. A wave of anxiety suddenly washed over him and he felt he had to get out of the ravine quickly. His feet tangled in creepers and rough vines, in the maze of supplejack. An extraordinary jumble of plants, grasses, vines, trees, shrubs were crowded together in huge knots. His clothes, decayed by long exposure to sun and salt, began to tear as he climbed up again, slipping on the muddy slope, hoping to find the trail again, his pants in ribbons from cutty grass.

  Above him, at the head of the ravine, lay an old kumara field which in recent years had reverted to bracken. Eight or ten women and girls, their ko sticks laid aside, were resting from their labor of digging aruhe—fern root. The roots, many of them ten and twelve inches long, fat and heavy, were piled in great heaps. “What is that sound?” asked a small girl, cocking her head, alert to everything out of the ordinary. They all listened; yes, breaking branches and scrabbling slide of soil, a kind of thrashing in the ravine below. They half-rose in trepidation, ready to flee. The noise came closer and then a frightful creature came up over the rim and ran straight at them.

  Jinot, stained with mud, panting and itchy, clawed up out of the ravine. His bloodied clothing hung in shreds, his hair was spiky with sweat. To his delight he saw the women surrounded by their piles of fern roots. He could not resist. All his life girls had welcomed his company. But this time as he ran toward them smiling and stretching out his arms, waiting to be welcomed, they fled as if from an indescribable terror, some crying in fear. He shouted at them, “Come back, I mean no harm!” They were already out of sight. And the old, smiling, merry Jinot evaporated, in his place an aging man who had known sorrow and difficulty and now, painful rejection.

  • • •

  Mr. Bone had spread a mat on the ground and was sitting cross-legged on it drinking tea and eating baked yam and fruits. Jinot returned his greeting with a peevish grunt.

  “How I wish we had possessed the foresight to bring sacks of coffee. Tea is all very well, but it is not coffee.” Jinot said nothing, but he knew Mr. Bone’s Scots “cousin,” John Grapple, had a store of coffee. He had smelled it on the path out of the forest that ran behind the pakeha houses.

  • • •

  Several days later while Jinot was mending his torn clothing with a borrowed needle, and Mr. Bone scratching in his Idea book, the chief with the many-colored flax cape reappeared.

  “Oh, Mr. Captain Sir,” he said in a wheedling tone, “you have many ax?”

  “I have fifty in a crate,” said Mr. Bone, putting down his pen and waving at the hut where the crate stood, “for demonstration only. As I explained, it is my hope to establish an ax factory here. It is my hope to teach the Maori how to make axes of quality. I feel there is a great need here.”

  “You want see good deck for whekere? You walk me.” He gestured to an oblique trail leading into the bush.

  “Is it a place with a stream of running water?”

  “Oh yes. Too many water.”

  Mr. Bone smiled, turned to Jinot and said, “You see, it was very easy to interest this man in my idea. I’ll warrant he knows of a good location for the factory.”

  “Mr
. Bone, it is not possible. The trader says there is no iron ore in the entire country and laughs at you. You cannot make axes without metal.”

  “I think I know better than you, Mr. Jinot Sel, what I can and cannot do. It is not that there is no ore, it is only that it has not yet been found.” The cloaked Maori stood outside the hut stepping backward along on the trail and beckoning to Mr. Bone.

  “I would not go with him,” said Jinot in a low voice. “He may be planning mischief.”

  “Bosh! I’ll be perfectly safe. He is friendly. For a savage, Mr. Jinot Sel, you are timid. Nor do you understand these people any more than you understand establishing yourself in a new place,” he went on, for he had heard how the women had fled from the awful stranger lurching out of the ravine. It was the talk of the missionary enclave. “This is why whitemen get ahead. They know how to command. He will be my first recruit. In a year he will be running the trip-hammer. I take no satisfaction in saying that after all these years you prove a sad disappointment to me.” Mr. Bone left the hut and followed his eager guide up the trail.

  • • •

  After a mile and a little more the trail became faint and disappeared, but the chief pushed on, following a way marked with ponga ferns turned silver side up (invisible to Mr. Bone). Two more Maori fell silently in behind the ax entrepreneur, who was so absorbed in looking at the massive tree trunks that he did not notice. Huge, huge trees, giants of the earth, the pale grey columns as wide as European houses. Who could believe such immensity? Was it possible an ax could take such monstrous trees down? Could they be—?

  Much moved, he called to the chief, “Tell me, are these kauri trees?”

  “Kauri,” said the man, turning around and flashing his eyes at someone behind Mr. Bone. But so stunned was Mr. Bone by the impossible trees that he was not aware of the descending club that burst his brain. His last shattered thought was that a great kauri had fallen on him.