An Island Between Two Shores

by Graham Wilson

  In their empty apartment, Liana’s father excitedly told her about how wealthy they were about to become. “There are nuggets just waiting to be picked up,” he exclaimed. Liana knew about the Gold Rush. How could she not? Every magazine and newspaper had written about it for the past couple of years. The fact that her father seemed to think it had just started concerned her. When she asked him whether there would still be gold when they got there, he reassured her: “There’s lots of gold. Don’t worry.”

  Once everything was sold, they took a train at the Paris Metro bound for the coast. They arrived in Nantes, where they would spend a couple of days before boarding their ship. Liana’s father found them simple accommodations near the harbour, and they carried their meager belongings to a spare hotel room. They ate bread and cheese quietly on their beds while listening to the ring of distant lighthouses and ship bells. Liana slept fitfully that night, unsettled to be leaving her beloved Paris.

  In the morning they sat up in bed, their bags and clothes spread messily around the room, and ate the remaining stale baguette from the night before. They spoke softly about last minute travel details and the adventure they were about to begin. Liana dreaded traveling on the ship and being cooped up for almost two weeks, but her father reassured her that it would be okay.

  In the afternoon they visited the Jardin des Plantes de Nantes, an ancient botanical garden. Even though it was October, the plants seemed to flourish. Her father told her of the legendarily cold December in the 1870s when most of the plants in the gardens had died. Nobody could remember a cold snap as severe, and the few magnolias and other plants that survived were so hardy that nothing could kill them. Liana marveled at the ordered gardens, the fountains, and the large man-made hill called the “artificial mountain.”

  Liana’s father told her about Paul Marmy, the man who built the garden’s spectacular palm house and orangery after the gardens had been neglected for decades. It was now twenty years later, and to Liana, the trees Marmy planted looked as mature as if they had always been there.

  The visit to the gardens was a welcome relief from days of preparation and hurried packing. Liana felt it was the best day she had had with her father since her mother’s death. She felt optimistic about the future because he was in such good spirits, and when he bought her a bag of toasted chestnuts from a street vendor Liana didn’t think the day could get any better.

  The next morning they boarded the SS Kolata and said goodbye to their old ways. They were bound for New York City and eventually a fresh start in the gold fields of the Yukon. The days on the ship passed slowly and Liana settled into a boring, repetitious routine. She rarely went above decks and kept mainly to their cramped stateroom. Her father, on the other hand, was never below decks except at night. Occasionally Liana ventured from their room to find him. He was always in the salon, listening to people talk about their travels. The main wave of gold seekers had left a couple of years before, so he wasn’t able to find any kindred souls. Liana heard him ask one of the stewards about his brother. The steward looked weary of having the same conversation repeatedly with Liana’s father, but politely explained that he hadn’t heard from his brother since he had arrived in Dawson City. “He’s probably filthy rich by now,” said Liana’s father proudly, “drinking the best champagnes France can spare!” The steward shrugged and busied himself clearing tables. Liana was starting to feel sorry for her father and his single-minded interest in the gold fields. Little else seemed to captivate him anymore.

  Arriving in New York City was anticlimactic for Liana, the Statue of Liberty unimpressive. Her father pointed to it and said “That was France’s gift to America,” but Liana didn’t really care. She was too tired and bored from the journey across the Atlantic. They were only in the city overnight and slept leaned against each other on a bench in the lobby of Grand Central Station. Their suitcases and bags stood at their feet.

  In the morning they shared a chewy salted pretzel and boarded a train bound for San Francisco. The travel and disturbed sleep left Liana even more tired and overwhelmed, but as the train rattled and jerked out of Grand Central, her world started to feel expansive again. The confines of the ship were replaced by a coach seat with a large window to lean against and dream. The farmland and grey forests of the east gradually gave way to the silver prairie and mountains of the west.

  In San Francisco they boarded a small, worn ship headed north. They pitched in the open oceans around northern California, Oregon, and Washington before entering the protected northerly waters of the Inside Passage off the coast of Canada. Vancouver Island and then the respite of the islands of the Alaska panhandle protected them from the chop of the North Pacific. As the turbulence subsided, Liana felt a greater peace traveling through the hundreds of miles of mist- shrouded fjords. Her father stared at the remote parade of mountains and bright glaciers in quiet contemplation. Liana snuggled into his arms and wondered how they would survive this foreign, fierce landscape.

  After more than a week on the ship they approached their destination: Skagway, Alaska. Her father couldn’t contain his glee. “We’re here. We’re at the start of the Klondike Trail,” he all but exclaimed, but Liana was more reserved. She braced for the remaining part of the journey and was barely able to muster a smile for her father.

  From the ship, Skagway seemed a cluster of shabby buildings at the base of impossibly steep mountains. It looked cold and raw and Liana felt hesitant to get off the ship. But as she walked down the gangplank, she squeezed her father’s hand and was reassured by his commitment to their journey. As they collected their suitcases, Liana thought about how far she had come. They had crossed an ocean and traversed North America. They had plied the Pacific Northwest for more than a thousand miles before landing at the most peculiar place she had ever imagined. But she knew that the most challenging passage was still ahead. Staring at the seemingly impenetrable wall of mountains made her feel small and full of dread.

  Skagway was a bustling boomtown. Broadway, the main street, was crowded with tent stores and false front buildings. Clusters of shaggy looking men crowded the streets and wooden boardwalks. The sounds of pianos and laughter emanated from seedy saloons that seemed to occupy every second building.

  Liana clutched her father’s arm as they struggled under the bulk of their bags and slowly walked from the wharf to the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway Station a few blocks away. Her father bought train tickets to Whitehorse, another grubby town they needed to pass through to reach Dawson City. Whitehorse was more than a hundred miles away, on the other side of the Coast Mountains and the Canadian border. Whitehorse was as far as the train went. From there it was either a paddlewheeler or horse-drawn sleigh to cross the remaining hundreds of miles north to mythical Dawson City. This late in the season, they would travel by sleigh.

  Liana took a seat at the back of the depot. Her father piled their bags around her and then set out to get them something to eat and explore this shabby little town before their train arrived. As he walked out the door, he forgot to look back and Liana felt small and inconsequential huddled amongst their meager possessions. She wiped a small peephole with her elbow through the condensation on the window and studied the busy little street. A team of what Liana thought were huskies was tethered to a sapling across the street. The dogs were hitched to a small wagon and seemed unconcerned with the bustle of the street. Liana had never seen anything like them before. She had heard of dogs being used to pull sleds but had never seen it with her own eyes. The sight was exotic and foreign to her.

  Liana was curious about the street scene, but after several hours her father still hadn’t returned and she became bored with the view. Liana thought about her father’s wanderings in Paris and the way his absences had become both disappointing and familiar. She closed her eyes and napped, and when she awoke, the depot was bustling with activity. The train was about to arrive and porters prepared their carts and trolleys. When the train pulled in, scraggly men climbed down fro
m the coaches and swung their canvas sacks and trunks onto their shoulders and disappeared into the crowded streets. She knew this was the train she and her father were supposed to take, but inherently understood her father wouldn’t make it. Once again, Liana closed her eyes and rested under the wall of bags arranged at her seat. She wasn’t disappointed to delay this leg of their journey.

  In the morning her father woke her by holding a stale waffle under her nose. He stank of cigarettes and whisky but she was pleased to see him. Liana nibbled on the waffle and cleared the sleep from her eyes while he told her the stories he had heard in the saloon. They spent the rest of the morning with her father talking excitedly about the Klondike and how rich they were about to become. Liana was happy that her father was so excited and found the names of the people he was describing, like “Flapjack Pete” and “Poor House Jimmy,” comical. And when the train pulled up to the depot they gladly climbed aboard and soon disappeared into the great northern forest with its impenetrable mountains and tumbling rivers.

  After a day on the shaking narrow-gauge railway, they landed at Whitehorse, where they marveled at the enormous paddlewheeler ships that had been dragged from the river for the winter. Her father told her Dawson City was only a few hundred miles downriver, and with only a quick stop for the bathroom, they boarded a sleigh pulled by six large horses. They pulled heavy blankets made from wooly buffalo hides over themselves and braced for the cold. With a hearty crack of the whip, the coachmen signaled to the horses to begin the journey. The fresh snow was already rutted from horses and men, and the blades squeaked under the sleigh. Liana took a deep breath through clenched teeth. Her father’s face beamed.

  The path they followed was well travelled and they passed other sleighs every couple of hours. Every twenty miles or so was a simple log roadhouse where they would rest and eat deep bowls of greasy stew made from moose or whatever the proprietors had been able to shoot that fall. Most days they were able to visit three roadhouses and travel sixty miles. They changed horses at each roadhouse, and Liana enjoyed the pace of sleigh travel more than the ships and trains she had experienced on this trip. They arrived at each roadhouse exhausted but content with the progress north.

  The coachman warned them that soon the quicksilver would register fifty below or even colder. The cold already had a volume Liana felt she could taste, and she was curious about the deep cold. But as the sleigh pulled them up the valley of the Yukon River toward Dawson City, Liana felt closer to her father than she had in months. The broad landscape with its distant mountains and vast river made her feel small and inconsequential.

  Remembering her first impressions of the North and their journey to the Yukon comforted Liana. Since that first winter she had experienced minus-fifty temperatures before Christmas, and she knew it was possible this early in the winter for the mercury to drop that low. Her father enjoyed the phenomenon of spitting in the air and watching pea-sized frozen granules bounce off the ground. She knew she wouldn’t last a night at that extreme. She had experienced the infamous mistral—the fierce winter wind that savaged Paris—but minus-fifty always felt surreal, like a brittle, somber dream. She never understood why her father was drawn to the North.

  “Why did you choose this for us?” she sighed.

  The looming trees were blasted with snow and frost. Branches creaked under the burden of the snow. Sometimes lingering sap froze in a trunk, and the sound rang out like a rifle shot. Most of the time, however, the forest was silent—dark and impassable as a high stone wall. During the day the trees along the bank were bathed in varying hues of blue. Light didn’t penetrate past the front row of trees. Liana studied those that bordered the river and wondered what lay beyond.

  She often imagined that she was someplace else, somewhere far from the bleak island. Her wandering mind whisked her back to France. Her parents hugged her; their bodies were soft, their skin smooth as silk. She could have stayed in their embraces forever. She walked to the patisserie for éclairs and croissants, which she dipped into deep bowls of hot chocolate. She imagined she could feel the warmth from the oven and smell the scent of butter and sugar. She saw her dog Pitou and gave him a foamy bath in a basin outside in the courtyard amid delicious sunshine and the scent of flowers. Sometimes she thought about her days in Dawson City with her father. She knew that she wasn’t strong enough to think about the cabin and avoided drifting back upstream in her mind’s eye.

  Liana knew that the North would never be home again. She no longer found beauty in the great boreal forest, the high crags, or the cold lakes. She vowed that if she got off the island, she would leave the region forever. Bitter thoughts filled her until she had to leave her lair to get a drink of water. She climbed out of her enclosure in the lee of the big log, and the reality and disappointment of still being on the little island made her heart sink to unimaginable lows. In the relative comfort of her nest, island life was a bad dream.

  “Why didn’t I just drown?” she asked. “Just get it over with.” The ritual of leaving the cavern for even a few minutes was now horribly difficult.

  Her biggest challenge was motivating herself to check the slow progress of the ice. Most mornings the ice appeared to make little if any gain, and Liana’s heart would become heavy and the day much colder. However, during the last week the ice had marched steadily and had almost entirely bridged the island to the mainland. The gap had become a narrow strip of river confined by a sharp, thick shelf of ice. The ice had thickened noticeably and Liana was feeling encouraged. The dark river wound a path between the island and the shore with a gap less than ten feet wide. Half this distance and Liana could have made an attempt to escape by jumping it.

  This morning Liana drifted in and out of dreams especially easily. She worried momentarily if her end was near but then memories of warmth and food and family began to comfort her. She softly and slowly sang several verses from “On the Bridge of Avignon,” a song she sang at home and in the schoolyard.

  On the bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing

  On the bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing in a circle.

  The handsome men go like this.

  And they go like that.

  On the bridge of Avignon

  The bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing

  On the bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing in a circle.

  The beautiful women go like this.

  Then they go like that.

  On the bridge of Avignon

  On the bridge of Avignon

  The bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing

  On the bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing in a circle.

  The gardeners go like this.

  Then they go like that.

  On the bridge of Avignon

  The bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing

  On the bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing in a circle.

  The tailors go like this.

  Then they go like that.

  On the bridge of Avignon

  The bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing

  On the bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing in a circle.

  The winegrower goes like this.

  Then they go like that.

  On the bridge of Avignon

  The bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing

  On the bridge of Avignon

  Everyone is dancing in a circle.

  The launderers go like this.

  Then they go like that.

  This simple folk song with the graceful movements of its accompanying dance reminded Liana of everything she had lost. Deep in her earliest memories, she heard her mother singing it at her bedside and she tried to sing along. When she used to stumble on the lyrics, she would ask her mother to sing more slowly. Her mother would smile patiently.

  “Chantes plus lenteme
nt, Mama,” she requested in a child’s voice. She laughed as her mother reached the end of the song. “C’est bonne, Mama,” she exclaimed with delight, clapping her hands softly. Liana was comforted by the softness of her mother’s voice and smiled as she started to sing “On the Bridge of Avignon” again. Her voice trailed off as she squeezed under the log and lay on her back. Liana rested her head on her arm and rhythmically filled her chest with air. The confines of the lair were becoming familiar, and she knew that without the log, she would have been dead long ago.

  6

  The wolves had not returned for three days. Liana was still exhausted from their harassment and from the cold and the starvation and the loneliness and the million other things conspiring to drain her essence. She bristled at even the slightest whisper of wind and stayed holed up for all but the briefest escapes. The wolves’ haunting cries and avid panting drilled into her brain so completely that the sounds felt like a part of her.

  The creatures even appeared in her dreams. Her mother cautioned her to take good care of her pal Pitou so the Bois de Bologne wolves didn’t eat him. The Gypsies cursed the wolves for stealing their fish. Liana’s dream-self just shrugged knowingly and repeated with her mother, “Beware of the wolves. Beware of the wolves.” In Paris, wolves seemed like creatures from a time gone by—like dinosaurs. “Did Mama mean wild dogs?” Liana wondered.