The reverend, ready for bed in the kitchen, saw the other room turn dark. He thought of himself as Joseph, saw himself waiting as Joseph might have, outside the manger, ready to tiptoe in, careful not to wake.
The reverend tiptoed in quietly, past the woman in his bed. He was as tired as Joseph and he wanted to be as quiet. Still, the sleeping figures drew him. He wanted to look into their faces, to pull the blankets warm around their necks. He stood for a long time, then touched the pelt-runged loft ladder and stepped, fur-footed, higher into the room. He looked, as before, straight forward through the darkness. The ladder was soundless so the reverend stepped higher, once, twice. Blankets dark as night wrapped the sleeping figure in the loft, a shadow etched on the dull light of the window. He remembered Ellen bound in her summer cocoon and wanted to see her again. How different she looked now. He thought of Mary, bone-tired from childbirth.
The sleeping figure turned on its side, then sat up, eyes wide, facing the reverend.
“What?”
Oh my God, Henriette! Joseph sped from the manger. The reverend’s red face was hidden by the dark.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to see if you were all right.” Whispered.
“What?”
“Shh.”
Henriette, sleep falling from her like fish scales, misunderstands. “It’s not time yet? It’s not morning?”
“No. Be quiet. Don’t speak so loudly.”
“Oh.”
“I wanted to see if you were all right. I’m sorry.” Nothing more to say. Wait until she lies down again, then back away. Make her lie down. Oh God, make her lie back down.
Henriette sat farther up, holding the bedclothes to her neck. She could see him now, a little, dark head stiffly balanced there. Must be terrified. Room’s quiet, nothing could wake Ellen, she knew.
“I’m sorry,” the reverend said again. And then, “Morning comes early. You’d better sleep.”
Henriette pushed her hand slowly into the darkness, letting it meet the cool flesh of the reverend’s cheek. Her fingers were on the side of his neck, rubbing. “It’s cold in the house,” she said. She pulled him, nearly weightless, from the ladder, settling him on the loft floor beside her. Sweet Mary and Joseph …
“Thank you for your concern,” she said, whisper of whispers, laying the words in his ear like gifts.
The reverend felt his head spinning. “I am very, very lonely,” he said evenly. And then he peered at her dark face and added, “At times.”
Henriette moved near him, pushing her breast to his head like a pillow. “I wonder if there is a colder spot on earth,” she said, pulling her blankets around them both.
The reverend couldn’t speak. She, warming him, took the shaking of his limbs for cold and put him down on her mattress, arms around his shoulders lightly.
“There, there,” she said. The reverend’s mouth wetted the outside of her nightshirt, mound of breast pushing his lips against his teeth.
“There, there,” she said, nursing him.
Oh sweet Jesus, thought the reverend. Mother of God. Was he freed from the confines of his body? He could feel nothing of his arms and legs.
“There, there.”
God, he felt sorry for Joseph, hands pushed into pockets, walking the lonely streets. Utter freedom. Glory be to God, did the man have a life of his own? Joseph, Joseph, Joseph. The reverend wet Henriette’s shirt with his mouth and eyes giving her a second skin, soft as the breath of God. He closed his eyes vice tight, dams bursting throughout his body. Still the image of Joseph clung. “Go blind,” he told himself. “Go blind.”
“There, there,” said Henriette.
Finn and Kaneda ate a large meal and sat, in the aftermath, full-bellied, the dog between them cleaning himself like a cat. Kaneda counted his money. There was more than he expected there would be. There was the right amount of coin, but there was pure gold too. This man had brought pure gold all the way back from town, where he was supposed to have exchanged it.
“Gold,” he said, pointing at the delicate webbing.
“That’s right,” Finn answered, head nodding vigorously. “From the beach placer. It’s Fujino’s share.”
“Fujino?”
“Share,” said Finn. “It’s his share.”
The two men spent much of their time discovering ways to communicate. They used single words and drawings. They pointed to objects. Kaneda looked at the dog and said, “Inu,” until Finn did the same, the dog’s eyes darting from one man to the other.
Time passed slowly. They went outside in the gray daylight for a while. They sang to each other. Finn cut blocks of ice from the stream bed and brought them into the room. He had a sharp knife and carved figures from the blocks. As he finished them he looked at Kaneda, asking him with his eyes to guess what the figure might be. He carved Fujino, head and shoulders protruding from the bath, mouth a gaping zero, then he let it melt away without explanation.
After the first few days Finn was careful not to mention Fujino by name. When it was dark and they had nothing to do, Kaneda would again begin to pray. He found his posture each night, then spoke to Finn a moment, then began to chant. Finn listened as if he understood, and each night, after only a few minutes, he’d begin to hear it as if it were Latin, and was impressed with the power of it. It took him back. As Kaneda prayed for Fujino, Finn swirled through the streets of Londonderry, in and out of memories. He followed himself as a boy and as a young man. The tone of Kaneda’s voice brought him to it…. The priests and how they entered his life. His teachers had nearly all been priests, as many of his classmates were now, his own brother, his cousin. “Have you thought of a life of the cloth?” they’d say, but only to the best students, only to those who exhibited themselves properly. It had been a joke among the lower classes, among seamstresses and tailors and shoeshine boys. Have you thought of a life of the cloth? Oh how they’d laughed, holding up pieces of material and smiling through them.
Finn thought of crook-necked priests turned away from him, visible through the dim slats of the confessional. He had always tried to disguise his voice.
“I’ve had impure thoughts again, father.”
“What’s that? Speak up son, it’s hard to hear.”
“In my mind I have traveled a dangerous path.”
“And what path might that be?”
“The curve of thigh, the bend of knee.”
“Lust, my boy?”
“Yes, father.”
“And who was it? Toward whom were these thoughts directed?”
“Toward the girls I pass in the street. Toward the women friends of my mother. Toward those whom I happen to see in rooms. Toward my sister and the nuns of her school. Toward a woman that my mind has shown me, no one I have ever known, but someone who is with me always.”
“Toward your own sister and toward nuns?”
“Yes, father.”
“Shame on you young man. Shame.”
Had it ever happened? It made Finn smile now. He’d left the confessional like a crab, jacket pulled high over his head, priest peering out. “Who’s that? What boy walks like that?” Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s a story from a mix of memories, bits of a dozen confessions remembered as one. Finn thought of priests confessing to priests, of nuns confessing … “I’m in love with one of the priests, father.” Bur-headed confessor perks up. “Which one is it? It’s not me, is it? Which one?”
Finn laughed inwardly and came back to Kaneda, who was still chanting, still nailing the soul of Fujino to the walls. He could hear bits of familiar prayers in the old man’s speech. The church, it’s like flypaper; did he ever think he was away from it? Foolish man. You can’t escape. You are what ties you to it. You are the temple and the source of it all. Finn turned and cracked the hide door. Black night froze them in once more, its cold breath touching his face, but in a moment quiet hit the room like an explosion. The prayer was over. Wide-eyed Kaneda, tired, looked at Finn, waiting for a glass of whiskey. Finn poured. It had become
his job at the end of prayer to tend to thirsts. “Cheers,” he said. “Cheers,” said Kaneda, his first new word.
Kaneda drank the liquor down, worn throat dying for it. He had been hurrying again, taking shortcuts because the listener was a foreigner. There were gaping holes in his history, Fujino would be appalled at what he was leaving out. Still, the gist of it was there. And the order was correct, and the style. It’s only the speed that he’d worried about. He covered fifty years tonight. Just enough to finish the seventeenth century.
The stockings were laid at the base of the frozen tree before any of the children were awake. The night before, the reverend had told the women not to worry about oversleeping. “One of the things about me,” he said, “I can get up whenever I want to. I just repeat the time to myself before I sleep, and sure enough, that’s the time I wake up.”
They had laid the packages on a blanket, hoping they’d be free of ice and easy for the children to pick up. The dark morning air hit their lungs like knives. They worked quickly, silent as foxes, then scurried back to the reverend’s house for a cup of the coffee brought to him from Nome. A gift from Ellen and Henriette.
Christmas had made Ellen expansive. She’d slept well and had the reactions of the children to look forward to. She supposed it wouldn’t be a bad life, living here. Ellen sang to herself, hands warmed over the stove. The reverend and Henriette stood behind her, not looking at each other. Henriette leaned toward him, occasionally letting her hand touch his, but the reverend stood straight, trying to think of other things, humming along with Ellen, giving her cause to turn and look at him.
“As much as Henriette is a singer you are not,” she said, smiling. “But don’t let it worry you. Christmas gives us hope.”
They sat in the candled room, in three chairs equally spaced and facing each other. Still hours to daylight, Christmas morning. Henriette looked at the reverend and remembered the feeling she’d had when Fujino first took sick. She could be of some use to this man, help him, be the one he relied upon, the one that gave him strength. His mouth upon her breast had warmed her over, made her remember what it was like not to be alone. She would not be a nurse to him, but she could perform a service as valuable. She got up and went to the kitchen for more coffee.
Gray light brought Phil first, then others, carrying parts of the Christmas meal, building fires, reheating, slicing slabs of seal. The children had their stockings and wore them like slippers, warm-footed, throughout the house. They hung the necklaces around their necks, or tied them to the tops of the stockings and let them trail behind. Everyone brought their drawings and set them around the room for everyone else to admire. They would ask Ellen and Henriette to make comments on each, not as drawings, but as snowflakes. Not as paper, but as gold.
The reverend gave his gifts to Ellen and Henriette. “My mother was French and taken with jewelry,” he said. “I have no more use for it.”
In each of the packages a pair of earrings, Henriette’s long and silver, Ellen’s neat and round. “I know there’s not much chance to wear them here,” he said, “but my mother would have liked to see them used.”
Ellen thanked him, holding the jewelry in her warm hands. Henriette hooked the earrings to her ears and ran to see herself in the small cracked mirror of the kitchen. She felt like spinning around, and swung her head to make the earrings move. “I’ll wear them rain or shine,” she said. “I’ll never take them off.”
Phil gave each woman small bone carvings that he had done. “They are made from the tusks of a walrus and will give good luck,” he said. “Always remember, however, to leave them home when you go walrus hunting.”
The reverend held up Finn’s gift and shook it. “I do wish that he had come,” he said. “It’s just a piece of old wood given to me by a teacher, but I think it would give him confidence, keeping his faith strong, whatever his persuasion might be. These things should be passed on.”
“I have been home too long and am growing fat,” said Phil. “I will take it to him. Topcock Creek. I know where that is.”
Phil took the small package from the reverend and tucked it into his pocket. Henriette wanted to ask if he would take it today, but Christmas dinner, red feathers riding on top of it like flags of distress, was carried in on a wooden platform and placed across two chairs.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the goose,” said Ellen quietly, standing behind the others.
People pressed to the edges of the table, child fingers poking out from between them. Seal in all its forms, and salmon. There were steam-heavy potatoes and more meat, and more meat.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the reverend said, getting ready for his prayer.
“The goose,” whispered Ellen, again.
“When Joseph awoke the next morning tired and hungry and confused over the three answers he had gotten, three kings were poking their heads in the door.
“‘This couldn’t be the place,’ said one, but Joseph was on his feet and walking toward them before they had a chance to leave.
“‘Being a good son is being a good father,’ he said. ‘Here’s the baby. What makes you think this isn’t the place?’
“That was Christmas Day,” said the reverend, “and when the three kings saw the baby they said: ‘There are not three kings here, but four,’ a comment that pleased Joseph quite a lot.
“Anyway, this is Christmas dinner, in celebration of all that. While we eat we should remember it, but not to the point of forgetting to enjoy the food. Amen.”
The reverend picked up a piece of fresh seal and slid it into his mouth. He brought forks and knives for Ellen and Henriette, but everyone else used their hands.
“Ah seal,” they said. “Your liver is gone but you are still here. Ah seal,” they said, “your heart is gone but you are still here. Ah seal, your body is gone but you are still here.” These were the prayers of the Eskimos; low voices, talking to the food between bites. “Ah seal, ah seal…”
Phil put strips of the meat in a hide bag and hung the bag next to his body, next to Finn’s boxed gift. He talked to his family, gesturing in the direction of Topcock Creek, then strode toward the door, slipping the ice skates under his jacket as he went. Another course, same as the first, had been brought in. People ate, and the reverend looked at Ellen. “To think,” he said, “we have done this with just two seals and with no bread at all.”
Phil closed the door on them, stepping warm-footed onto the trampled ground. He pulled the hood around his head and marched off. The Snake was a smooth path; he’d leave the dogs and be there faster. He got to the beach and could see the shining window of the reverend’s house behind him. He walked with his head down, feeling the weight of the seal in his stomach, pretending not to notice the cold.
Inside the house the seal diminished. The reverend walked about the room talking to his parishioners, always knowing exactly where Henriette was standing. Ellen, upstairs, saw Phil go, watched his dark shape move across the window of the loft. He’d find Finn, bring him back safely. Finn, a man with a will like the tides as they flow under the ice, a pubman, a talker. Her father fell forward in her mind when she thought of Finn. She loved her father with all her heart but she’d not end up with one like him. Had she come to the furthest ends of the earth only to find Finn smiling like a neighbor, welcoming her from the ship? No, Finn, father had me years and years and that’s enough. I’ll not be passed from hand to hand.
Ellen turned away from the window, a smile on her face, a laugh for herself. Here’s me talking as if he wanted me and turning him down. I am as a sister to the man and that’s as it should be. Still, it’s uncanny how he resembles father in his resolutions and his defeats. Father’s Christmas speeches were nothing like the reverend’s. More like something Finn would say. Yet Finn and father would come to blows if they were forced to spend ten minutes together. Politics and religion. Each would bloody his hands on the head of the other.
From the loft railing Ellen watched the reverend making his roun
ds. If his mother was French then his father must have been English. Here is a tender man, a gentle, harmless man. Him being a man of religion would be enough to hold her father at bay for a while at least. But religion would be his only weapon and he doesn’t know how to use it.
Father’d have him sitting quietly in the corner of the parlor among darned stockings and women’s talk. It’d be no match, after all. Ellen shook her head as if to get the thought away. And who I spend my life with will be my own business, she said, punching her voice back into her memory. Never mind who I choose and I’ll not be bringing him home to boot, thank you very much. You’ve seen the last of me.
She turned and started down the ladder, backing into the voices of the Christmas party. Her father, bull-headed even about leaving her thoughts, stood in the parlor one hand each on the throat of Finn and of the reverend. She could see his thumbnails digging into their flesh, she could see them wriggling, trying to get away. “These two? Are these what you’ve brought back after such a long cast?” Finn and the reverend hung like trophies from her father’s arms. Ellen turned to the room where the Eskimo women were full and joking. She took up a piece of meat quickly, like a change of subject.
Phil, at the river now, locked the skates to his feet the way the reverend had shown him, the way he’d done before. Sharp knives on his shoes, he always expected the skates to disappear into the ice when he stood up. Like a ship’s keel, the skates would keep him up, letting him lean, but not letting him fall over.
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