The door of the little house creaks open with a start, the night sinks its claws into every cranny. On the doorstep, Simon, an animal dangling from his hands. His carries the exhaustion of the whole world in his face. The children burst into hurrahs, they hail him as a hero. He spreads out his booty, yes, on the floor, everyone wants their share in it, patting the seal, lifting it, weighing it.
Ana takes out her ulu, slices, carves the meat. Everything’s there: bones, cartilage, blubber. A ferrous smell, life seeping from the animal. At last, a desire to live in this place, to be here.
A Blanket against Darkness
The moon is the only street light possible at this time of year, the stars twinkle and die furtively, the thermometer outside Fari’s house reads -25, his breath dissipates in the crushing, humid air. He tells Juliann that he’s going out for a walk, she doesn’t listen, too concentrated on the sick child whose ashen face she strokes; she tries to coax down a little broth. She smears seal fat on his skin, skin as fine as rice paper, fiddles with the blankets beneath her fingertips. Fari looks at the child before leaving, the sight of little Jakob makes him shiver, it’s like a waxy film coats his face. His arms lay at his sides, he doesn’t move, impassive. Fari can’t help but retrace his steps and stroke the boy’s mop of hair. His sisters are sleeping in the other room, where a clown nightlight casts the sole glow, their breathing is even, they have not yet been touched by the dreadful flu.
A dog barks outside, smells Fari’s presence approaching, a few lights are on inside the houses, parents keeping watch over their children, in the cottages, the air sags with the smell of soup and coffee. Fari hasn’t told Juliann anything yet about how the tannery will probably shut down, his steps lead him down a soliloquy that’s a bit disorienting. How will he make a living now? What will become of the other men without work? Will they ban hunting permanently?
Fari remembers what happened in Ittoqqortoormiit, of their own accord hunters left narwhal carcasses lying on the bank; the pressure had become so unbearable that they launched into a mission of sabotaging their own way of life. Fari already understood the hunters’ despair; he now wrestles with the same degree of anger and devastation. He studies the mounds of snow and shivers, imagines the stranded bodies of the narwhals, molded by the hard snow; its surface forms a brittle crust, the whole village is a slippery slope, a probable fall. He hopes Jo will have some encouraging words for him, that he’ll sketch a solution, this is not the only outcome for the dozens of tannery workers.
Fari sees the lifeless house of his friend, he never noticed before how worn the paint was, shedding carmine scales that give him the impression that gleaming beasts are embedded in the wall, the brown door has been stripped by the wind. It’s pitch black at Jo’s, a feeble blue light glows in the living room, draws uncanny shadows, Fari makes out Jo’s parka on the back of the sofa, he must be there then. Fari is about to head back home, but the look of the place in front of him has something intriguing about it and the urge to talk with Jo is evidently too strong for him to wait. He will probably wake him, he’ll cuss a bit, but, once hauled out of his sleep, his good old Danish friend will offer him a cup of coffee.
Fari pulls off his boots, an insistent tick-tock sounds from the kitchen, he switches on a light in the hallway, stumbles over Jo’s gargantuan footwear, a little disconcerted; an impeccable order presides over the tannery manager’s home, not the slightest smell can be detected, not even the smell of a supper consumed a few hours earlier. A thick folder lies on the sofa, the same folder Fari saw a few days earlier on his manager’s desk, he knows what’s in it. He raps on the door of his friend’s bedroom. The silence is beginning to unnerve him, he knocks again, nothing. He waits a few seconds, asks himself whether he ought to enter, he always turns up at his friend’s place without any warning but has never opened his bedroom door without permission. The doorknob gently slides in his hand, he knows that, in a few seconds, his friend is going to roar, he braces himself for this likely event.
It is very cold in the little room, the blankets on the bed are stiff, like leaves transfixed by frost; the crucifix, above the bed, seems to be on the verge of tumbling down, from Fari’s viewpoint, he sees only a motionless bed, then makes out a body. Fari slides his hand over the wallpaper dappled with blue flowers, it’s as icy cold as every other object in the house. Everything hits at once: morbid diapositives, Fari’s hurtling pulse, the cold blankets—leaves frozen stiff in winter—the plastic bag, Fari’s legs, the fact that distress crucifies. For a split second, he saw Jo’s face, he now looks at the sheets frozen in time and doesn’t exit. His body is trembling beyond belief, he feels an enormous rift splitting beneath his feet, his mouth is dry, he takes a few steps backward, doesn’t turn on the light, he exits the bedroom furtively, as though he had caught Jo in the middle of committing an improper act.
He paces up and down, he needs to phone the police, but he needs a moment for himself, to nurse his own pain, to prepare himself for the horrible night ahead. A carousel of images turns Fari’s thoughts around; the inspectors’ visit, the announcement coming that the factory would close, Jo rummaging through his thick mop of hair, the lost look in his friend’s blue eyes, two anxious beads that looked at Fari and begged him for a word of encouragement, the few beers the night before at the bar, a Jo who grew sarcastic under the influence of alcohol, a Jo whose back seemed about to snap, it was so bent under the weight of grief. Fari searches for clues in these scenes, but his friend had been himself, although depressed, which was normal under the circumstances.
Fari is rooted to the spot in the very centre of Jo’s living room, the pain is palpable, acute, it reaches its peak the moment he dials the number for the local police, his voice is dry, he’s about to break down, reporting Jo’s death, over the phone, unlocks the floodgates to tears. He sits on the floor and yells. He feels like sending the lamp flying, the sofa, the tacky knick-knacks, the entire house.
Two police enter, they don’t remove their boots; on the rug, traces of melting snow lead to Jo’s bedroom.
Fari spins a large web; the skin, whatever clings to it, the obstacles of fat, the network of cartilage, all of this will serve another purpose. For the moment, he’s an artist; he tans, softens the tissue, fashions a masterpiece that is attuned to the world and to necessity.
Perfect leather, that’s what Fari’s after, scraping, tearing flesh away; he creates his own tissues, his own skins for winter. When the temperature plummets in draconian fashion—on the long polar night when the sun disappears—on the heavy, terrifying night that persists many months, when this confounded dread of outsiders comes, he designs, manipulates the flesh. He too quails at all those hours, snatched by the darkness, the first shivers, the first fever, amoq. So he lays an ambush for the night: by stretching out the hide, his bag against the cold. He prepares for the taking of hostages. He tans the skins to keep his own far from foreseeable insanity; it’s a blanket against darkness.
Around him is a museum in full array, sections of the wall entirely consecrated to the splendor of the seal, to its majestic skin, variations of grey, beige, the skin that the women worked and stretched out, hanging there, the animal’s beneficence, a soul that will save the inhabitants from the great colds. Fari sees no error in it, only a blessing, communal skins that enable the other workers and himself to guard against anguish.
A morose ambiance reigns today, a rumour is going around about the tannery’s imminent closure. Ole sweeps wide ribbons of blood from a stream of water and directs them toward the drain; his cap pulled low over his eyes, he doesn’t whistle like usual, he sluggishly chews a piece of tobacco, splatters Fari’s boots as he goes by. Fari’s eyes search for Jo, he’s not in his office or in the museum of skins. Ole picks up on what Fari’s looking for.
“He’s gone to Denmark for two days. Hell broke loose in the office yesterday morning. He was furious. He told me to tell you that, come this afternoon, we’ll be off for a few days.”
“I didn’t forget. I was thinking maybe he was still here. With all this environmentalist fuss, it was just a question of time; for the last few weeks, we’ve been walking on thin ice. I don’t see how the conflict can be resolved if the EU has halted the importation of skins. Sales are plummeting and despite all his optimism, Jo can’t guarantee many more paycheques for us. Jo’s really done a lot for us, but it’s just a matter of days before we close.”
“Jo will do all he can to ensure we’ll still have access to the grant money. The tannery will close a few days, but maybe it won’t be forever.”
“You’re optimistic, but as for me, I no longer believe it. No one buys a skin for four hundred crowns anymore. You know as well as I do how we’re viewed internationally: barbarians who eat seals and scrape their skins. Even if we’re not a threat to the seals’ ecosystem and even as we go on to prove it, public opinion won’t change. I would really like an environmentalist to drag his butt over here for a few days in the middle of February, to see if he could survive without donning a skin and some toasty kamik. I would really like him to know what winter is like during the polar night. He would end up wolfing down raw seal with his bare hands. They know nothing about our way of life and impose their own on us; if it’s not a power trip, I don’t know what it is.”
“Bah! If you want my opinion, it’s no worse than fattening a pig and then throwing it in the freezer.”
“Exactly. I still need to tell my wife, I haven’t said anything to her yet. I’m waiting until I have a plan. I don’t know how to tell her and I don’t know how she’ll take it. I’m not sure what kind of work I’ll be able to find afterwards. It’s been good here. I like what I do; my dad, my granddad, hunted, tanned. They certainly never would have imagined that it would come to this. I feel like I’m betraying them.”
“Listen, Fari. It’s probably not ideal, but I’ve got a friend who owns a sports store in Nuuk and he’s hiring some staff this week. I told him that I couldn’t take on any work, because I’ve got to do the cleanup at the bar; otherwise, I’d lose another job. Maybe it would tide you over for a while. Juliann won’t be against the idea, I’m sure.”
“I’ll think about it; Nuuk … that’s far. I don’t want to be away from Juliann and the kids too long, especially in the middle of winter. I hope to manage somehow without having to agree to this.”
“Well, let me know.”
“Have a good one, Ole. I’ll drop by the bar this week.”
Fari takes another road, he heads down to the docks to air his troubles. The place is deserted, a fresco of fog forms a glacial dome above Fari, a perfidious cope. He thinks again about Ole’s offer, the sports store, the night of pitch darkness, the children who are sick so often at this time of year, the lodgings he would have to rent out in Nuuk, the boredom that would creep, stealthily, all the way up his body. He thinks also about his conversation with Ole, about his sense of having betrayed the elders, this phrase always running through his head: to not kill the animal is to show it disrespect. Fari feels as though the traditions no longer have their place, he does not understand this intense desire that make men want to live like the West. The wind roughly toys with Fari’s face, his feet are cold, he forgot his kamik at the tannery. He thinks of Jo, of Denmark, the only man against an armada of functionaries, the only man to defend a tradition of hunters, a night without end.
Juliann is sitting at the kitchen table, she’s patching a piece of fabric, her hands perform an erratic waltz around the blanket, she doesn’t look up when Fari comes through the door. The smell of broth floats through the air, in the saucepan vegetables and fish smother in each other’s juices, the smell doesn’t comfort Fari, he’s already envisioning his wife’s face streaked with tears, her hands on her temples.
“Oh! It’s you! I didn’t hear you come in. You don’t look so good.”
“I have something important to tell you, Juliann.”
“Can you wait a second? I need to check the soup.”
“It’s important. Please sit down! The kids aren’t back yet, are they?”
“They’ll be back soon—what’s wrong?”
“I’ve often told you about everything that’s going on at the tannery; this afternoon we were laid off, at least temporarily. Jo’s gone to Denmark to try to negotiate access to the grant money. Keeping the tannery in operation has been an issue for a while now, but this time, I think it’s over.
“You mean the tannery’s going to close?”
“For a few weeks now Jo’s been negotiating an agreement, but from the beginning they rejected his conditions. The sewing workroom closed a few days ago. The rest will follow. It’s inevitable.”
Juliann massages her temples, gazes out the window at the endless heaps of white snow, a very fine film of frolicsome snow tumbles onto the hard crust, giving it the appearance of fledgling frost. Juliann cries, silently, she doesn’t try to hide her tears, doesn’t cover them, a dog whirls about the centre of the snowy tableau, Juliann’s tears slide down faster and fuller. Fari gets up, puts his hand on his wife’s neck, strokes her hair, he can’t look at her; inside, he rages, he rages against his helplessness, his inability to console his wife, his inability to revolt against being laid off next time, his inability to keep the ancestral trade alive. He leans in, close to Juliann’s shoulder, smooths out the fabric on her arm, gently, weakly, he also looks at the dog, stares at it, as though it were a reference point.
“Ole told me he has a friend looking for someone to work at his sports store; it’s in Nuuk but it would keep us going for a little while. It would at least give me time to find other work.”
“But what are you thinking, Fari? You would have to find a place to stay there! I would have to stay here all alone with the children. I don’t know how I would manage it. They’re so restless right now and clamour for you constantly. They wouldn’t see you anymore, Fari! What could you be thinking of—going to Nuuk?”
“I don’t know, Juliann. I’m trying to find a solution. I would send you money every week. I have a cousin in Nuuk. She could give me a place to stay.”
“Let me think about it—winter is so long. I’m already afraid.”
At the doorstep, in a total rumpus, the children toss their coats, scarves, boots, and mittens, they squabble, it’s a race to see who will get to the kitchen first and snatch the first chocolate. Tia clutches onto her brother’s backpack, pushes him against the wall; the boy grabs his sister’s arm, tickles her, they scream, the backpack’s contents spill onto the floor: pencils, erasers, binders, books. Juliann catches the bag, tips back the items inside, she bites her lip to keep herself from crying in front of the children. Tia’s defending herself. Fari catches her up in his arms, he seats her on his knees, drops a light kiss along her hairline.
“Daddy! You let him win!”
A bluish smoke undulates above the heads of the drinkers, an artificial curtain separates friends, a stereo belches exhausting techno music. Jo is parked at the end of the bar; with his thumb, he’s crushing chips and peanuts, amassing heaps of crumbs, knocking back the rest of his beer. He seems detached from the scene, doesn’t join the backslapping or the pervading tiffs, he pulls on a cigarette, then frees the smoke as though it were a long unwanted confab. The bartender slides over one beer, then another, the thirsty man doesn’t say a single word, he stares at a spot above the bartender’s head, a narwhal tusk, the only decoration in the bar that clashes with everything else. He smokes and drinks in turns, seems goaded on by intoxication, the flight home had been brutal, he had knuckled under before the EU, before the G. Greenland bosses; come tomorrow morning, he has to padlock the door and make sure that no one vandalizes the premises.
Fari slaps his friend on the back; upon seeing his friend’s face, he immediately regrets his move. Noticing Jo’s moist and phlegmatic eyes, he understands, he won’t ask him questions, at least, not right away, he’s here to drink with his friend, he’s here to stand with him, sketch out other plans that don’t inv
olve the tannery. Fari orders two beers; at the same time, he notices Ole giving the floor a mop in the back room, he calls to him, Ole hands him a folded paper that he stuffs into the pocket of his parka. Jo says nothing, he looks at Fari like a frightened animal.
“Sit down, you!”
“Here, take this. We don’t need to talk about things we both already know. All that I have to say to you is that I’ll help you clear the site.”
“We’ll see. Right now, I don’t even want to see the place.”
“Lend me a cigarette?”
For Jo, even the beer tastes like defeat, the bitterness coats his throat, he’s about to leave when one of the tannery workers accosts him, his nerves seem about to snap, his eyes beg, question Jo for a long time. Faced with the despair of the man who’s lost his job, Jo doesn’t know what to do, he’s scared of suffering from cyclical depression himself, of being confronted by the longing to quit this bloody world, he fears this winter most of all, he already dreads the gloomy hours, mornings spent scouring through the newspapers, unconvincing telephone calls, not enough money, and maybe starvation, always starvation, the sword hanging overhead. For now, he looks at the man, he’s known for a long time what abyss they’ve fallen into.
Fari sits on Jo’s old worn sofa, the police swarm about him, making the inside of the cottage seem like a beehive, the same icy wallpaper decorates the living room, this sight will be forever engraved in Fari’s memory, a wallpaper with completely worn-out blue flowers that still cling to the wall. He lights a cigarette, the digital clock illuminates only part of the living room, Fari sees his shadow projected on the wall, its desperate movements are magnified, a man takes hold of the folder on the sofa, he opens it gently, each document is examined as though it were a rare specimen. Fari chews on one of his nails, beads of blood pool on his middle finger, but he does nothing about it.
A Blanket Against Darkness Page 4
