Heinrich crushed yet another mosquito. With his pen he formed letters on the page, and the movement of his hand forming each letter relaxed him. When he imagined Inge reading what he was writing, his exhaustion diminished, though his legs felt heavy and his shoulders ached. It was evening, and he’d escaped the silence of the boulders. Moss and flowers surrounded him. The earthy sweetness smelled familiar. To his right gushed a fast-flowing brook. He dipped his cooking pot in the tumbling, cold water. He managed to light his stove (which was Jeremy’s stove) and he cooked his dinner. After his meal, his belly full, he wrote with one hand, the other swatting at mosquitoes.
The degree of his weariness surprised him, given the beauty now spreading out in front of him. What he’d witnessed, in the overturned and shifting landscape at the base of the Turner Glacier, had exhausted him more thoroughly than he’d realized. Each movement he made demanded a great effort. By evening an impression of failure overcame him. As he looked about, observing the abundant pink flowers that bordered the brook, his heart filled with gratitude and happiness, and he understood that the impression of failure invading him did not belong to the present moment; yet it felt inescapable in its familiarity. He wrote in his journal, quickly, as if hoping to outrun some perpetual shortcoming.
Inge, would you call our father a Disappointed Man? I know that I have added to his disappointment. But is it fair to call him a Disappointed Man? Should such a category exist? Whenever he has a student who shows promise, who does not disappoint him, he ceases to be a Disappointed Man. Every label misleads. To those students in whose abilities he believes, he gives fervent, unwavering encouragement; and several of these students have not let him down.
In the morning, Heinrich woke early and, while drinking his tea, again he wrote in his journal, taking care to keep his handwriting compact:
Half a dozen caribou are racing along the opposite bank of the Weasel River but I can’t see them because my eyes, like those earliest cameras, erase anything that moves. Imagine, Inge, if this were true! Let’s suppose my eyes required such a long exposure time that they eliminated all waterfalls and moving animals. The crashing of water and the pounding of hooves would be heard inside a scene of complete stillness, a scene from which they appeared to be absent. This could be the case, Inge. So much is vanishing, and so much is hidden, and so much we choose not to see.
All of the next day he walked calmly, admiring the mountains and the river, which seemed in its narrowing and widening to continually reinvent itself. Every patch of lichen pleased him. Evening came, and Heinrich ate a cursory meal while shadows climbed the mountains. They climbed on the east side of the river, and the luminous sky remained cloudless. He washed and stored his cooking gear, packed the last of his food, checked the ropes of his tent to be sure they were secure, and set off to explore his surroundings more closely.
Something unexpected caught his eye. It moved. At first, he could not tell what it was. Because of its long, tapered ears, because of its size and markings, he mistook it for a small goat. But it was not a goat. It was a large hare, a hare much larger than he’d ever imagined a hare could be.
Heinrich crept closer. He got down on his belly and wriggled forward. The hare held its pose, then disappeared behind an erratic. Heinrich sat in the heather and waited. He was no longer alone; from a safe distance behind a rock a fellow animal was observing him.
The next morning, just as he did every morning, he took down his tent, collapsing its poles and rolling up the fabric tightly. He swung his pack onto his back and checked the ground to be sure that he was leaving nothing behind. Every morning, he left nothing behind but his surroundings, and though it felt good to be leaving he walked away slowly, attempting to memorize every detail.
The second time that he spotted the hare (though possibly it was not the same hare) it appeared to be waiting for him. When it bounded off, he followed. The hare arrived at an immense erratic that was split in two. Three or four powerful leaps carried the hare through the slot between the rock’s two halves. The rock stood taller than Heinrich and was shaped like a rounded hill. The hare emerged out the other side of the passage through the center of the giant stone. Sniffing the air, it held still, as if waiting for someone or something. Heinrich entered the slit. No sunlight entered with him. He passed between the two smooth walls of stone. Just as he emerged into the daylight, the hare dashed off. A few yards away, the long-eared animal stopped. It turned its head and gazed at Heinrich, who stopped moving also, uncertain how to respond. The two contemplated each other.
Maybe it is in order to meet this giant hare that I have traveled from Tettnang to Baffin Island and walked the length of this valley? What is more certain is that I am running out of food, that my knees ache, and that my map is falling apart from repeated folding and unfolding.
He continued to walk. As he descended the valley, the riverbed widened decisively. The tongues of the glaciers did not reach so far down as before, or so it seemed to him. Close to the river’s mouth he came upon four backpackers. Two of them were cooking while the other two walked about, choosing the flattest spots to pitch their tents. Heinrich approached and asked if they were entering or leaving the park. A fully formed, comprehensible sentence came out of his mouth. The sound of it surprised and relieved him. It felt like years, not weeks, since he’d last spoken with anyone, anyone besides Hearne. The hikers answered him:
“Leaving,” one of them said. “We’re headed back to Pang tomorrow morning.”
They’d arranged for a boat, which would be coming to collect them.
“There should be enough room, if you need a ride,” another offered. They were friendly, and didn’t seem to find him peculiar.
“How far up the valley did you get?” the first who’d spoken now asked.
“To Mount Asgard.”
“Fantastic. We had to turn back at Thor Peak. We only had four days. Are you from Germany?”
“Yes.”
“The mosquitoes here are pretty awful, eh?”
“The mosquitoes? Yes, there are many of them.”
How do I smell? Heinrich wondered. How do I look? He went some distance off, farther along the riverbank, to pitch his tent. That night, he lay awake, visited by images of Hearne fingering the fabric of his tent, Hearne filling his pipe and the two of them smoking, Hearne shouting over the anguished cries of a young woman being murdered. He saw Inge at the bottom of a deep hole, and a row of naked children kneeling on the ice of the Turner Glacier; his father appeared, cradling a small engine attached to a board, and his mother listened to Karl or pretended to listen while the breeze played with the hem of her skirt. He knew he must not tell anyone what he’d witnessed or speak of his strange encounters. He could not explain, therefore he must keep silent. Was he going soft in the head?
He did not feel as if he were losing his mind. Perhaps his recent experiences could be explained. What he’d seen and heard had been tossed to the surface by the melting ice and the slowly shifting moraines. Tossed to the surface of his consciousness? Surging from where? This was the closest he could come to an understanding. It was incomplete and not an understanding he could expect anyone else to accept as proof of his sanity. He rolled up one of his T-shirts, placed it over his eyes, and listened to the sounds outside his tent, to water falling down a rock face, and to the quiet flow of this same fresh water spreading wide at the river’s mouth. He heard the salty sea. It advanced and retreated, tugging at the mouth of the river.
18 Is the large pear tree in the Schlögel back garden still alive? On my last visit it appeared healthy, towering above the fence, a breeze caressing its uppermost leaves, and already some of its fruit had fallen and rolled. I did not go around to the front and knock. There was no point in my speaking a second time with the new owners.
19 This half page was posted on a site called “Did You Lose This?”—a site dedicated to returning mislaid journals, notes, letters, and portions of diaries to their rightful owners. It was one of
a dozen fragments described collectively as “lost handwritten texts of unknown origin and authorship, mid to late twentieth century, mostly German.” I immediately recognized the handwriting. I contacted the person who’d posted the fragment and explained my interest in acquiring it. She was reluctant. She would have preferred to be contacted by the actual owner of the journal. I explained my role, and she relented.
20 Like Heinrich, I’ve read Hearne’s depiction of the slaughter at Bloody Falls. On the subway one morning, I came upon his graphic passages, read them once, then a second time, wondering how much of it was true. Hearne’s memory insists that what he witnessed made him feel like weeping, and that he risked speaking out in defense of the girl being tortured. But did the young girl exist or did he add her in for his readers? She’s absent from the notes he made directly after his journey. It is not always easy to describe immediately what has been unbearable to witness, and this could explain his failure to include her in his early notes. According to Hearne, a number of the Northern Indians, the Chipewyans, who accompanied him on his expedition, did so hoping for an opportunity to murder some Inuit. The hatred they felt for the Inuit had deep historical roots. On the banks of the Coppermine River, near a waterfall, they came upon a vulnerable Inuit camp and spared nobody.
PART FOUR
Pangnirtung
Panniqtuuq
Place of Many Bull Caribou
1
A Woman’s Knife
There were more houses, more cars and machinery than he remembered. This did not surprise him. He’d anticipated a shock. He’d foreseen that his return to “civilization” would feel like a head-on collision: his interior world confronted by a noisy place that claimed to be real and felt vaguely familiar but was wrapped in an aura of strangeness.
As the boat glided closer, headed for the harbor, he stood in the stern, exposed to the icy wind, and watched the roads, where cars and all-terrain vehicles raced people and objects from one fixed dwelling to the next.
The roads had widened and multiplied during his absence. Or perhaps his memory of them was inaccurate. Before setting out, he’d stayed barely twenty-four hours in Pangnirtung. As before, there were buildings with solid roofs and walls; there were front steps and back steps; there were glass windows and metal chimneys. The long, low Hotel Pangnirtung, which crouched at the water’s edge, was now painted blue rather than brown. Possibly it had never been brown? The Hudson’s Bay shed, with its unmistakable white clapboard, its red roof, and black lettering that stated its year of construction, 1926, had not moved.
The boat bumped against the shore. Heinrich jumped onto the rocks, along with the other hikers. The packs were passed out and the boat’s owner paid.
“Are you staying in Pangnirtung awhile?” the others asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “Yes, I think so.”
They were headed for the hotel.
“We’ll see you then, at the hotel?”
“I’ll come by later. I don’t have a room reserved. The parks office, I must go there first, I think. Aren’t we meant to tell them that we are safely returned?”
“In theory.”
That was the idea, the others agreed, but before anything else they wanted a shower and a hot meal. He also longed to shower, to dress in clean clothes, to sit at a table and be served food that he’d not pulled from the bottom of his knapsack, measuring it out nervously, aware of how little remained.
“See you ’round.”
“Yes. See you later.”
Heinrich looked around him. Just as before, in the grass and flowers between the houses, snowmobiles waited, and heavy wooden sleds on runners waited; children’s bicycles, battered toys, scraps of metal, discarded carpet, plastic, and shards of glass waited. There were char, headless and gutted, hanging out to dry on the front porch of the house nearest to him, and beside the back stairs of the next house over, two sealskins were stretched on frames and drying.
He remembered his immediate purpose and walked up to the visitors’ center. The drab, single-story building overlooked the harbor. A large sign, above the door, stated: ANGMARLIK VISITOR CENTRE. He tried the door. It was locked. A broken window had been boarded over with a scrap of plywood cleaner and newer than the rest of the building.
A few meters to his left stood an unfamiliar structure with a cathedral ceiling and immense windows. An outside deck offered a panoramic view of the fjord, its drifting slabs of ice, and the high hills descending into the ocean. He could just make out the far-off entrance to the river valley. From there he’d emerged a little over an hour before. Heinrich contemplated the picture-perfect vista and tried to imagine himself still wandering inside it.
PARKS CANADA OFFICE, the sign above the door informed him. This was not, however, the “Parks Canada office” that he remembered. Could there be two? He pulled on the door, which opened, and he stepped into a narrow mudroom. On a low bench, he sat and removed his boots.
In his stocking feet, he entered a spacious foyer dominated by an information desk. Panels, mounted on the walls, displayed large photos of local flowers and lichen, of arctic fox and hares, of Mount Asgard and the Turner Glacier. There were photos of rushing streams and steep moraines. A teenage girl stood behind the information desk, quietly observing him.
“I’ve come to report my safe return.”
The girl offered him a quick, shy smile, as no doubt she’d been instructed to do. Then she waited, silent and awkward, avoiding his gaze. Heinrich realized that he hadn’t told her his name. He said his name, then spelled it. He explained that he’d been hiking in the park, though this seemed obvious.
She had short hair, and small breasts hidden under a loose T-shirt. For a moment he’d been uncertain if she was a girl or a boy. She was perhaps sixteen, he guessed. It must be a dull job, to sit behind a counter all day, waiting for hikers to walk in and ask questions, probably the same questions over and over.
Her eyes on a small screen that looked like a TV screen but wasn’t one, she was typing hurriedly on a keyboard that appeared to be connected to the screen. What was this machine? As she typed, words appeared. From his side of the curved counter he could see only a portion of the screen and before he could stop himself he leaned forward, staring. She stopped typing.
“I’ve made a mistake. I must have entered a letter wrong, or I didn’t hear your name right,” she apologized. She slid a pen and a slip of paper across the counter. He wrote out his name.
“I hope my handwriting is not too bad.”
She smiled.
“Not bad like mine,” she assured him.
Again, she tapped on the keys. A list of people’s names slipped into existence, slid up and down the screen, then vanished, replaced by more names, also numbers, indicating dates. He wanted to ask her about the machine she was using, but could feel himself blushing at the thought of revealing his ignorance to her.
“I can’t find you. You’re not in here.”
“I’m not in where?” he asked.
“In these files. When did you enter the park?”
“On July 6.”
Again, she tapped on the keys, searching. Then she shook her head, to indicate that she’d not succeeded, and he felt tempted to reach out and touch her thick, dark hair.
“Nope, not under July. I’ll have to check with my supervisor when he comes in.”
“Will that be soon?”
“Could be. He said this afternoon.”
“Is there another thing I must do? May I leave, if you can’t find me?”
She looked at him, amused.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” she asked.
“A movie?”
“Yup.”
“Maybe. Thank you. Maybe later.”
He looked once more at the strange typewriter, then glanced around the unfamiliar room, with its high ceiling and illustrative panels.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Okay.”
“Is there another pa
rks office, somewhere else in Pangnirtung?”
“Nope.”
“It’s just that this building, I don’t recognize it. I sat at a table and signed the forms to enter the park, but in a different building.”
Her warm, incredulous laugh softened the sharp edge of his unease. Some of the tension in his neck and shoulders loosened. Nonetheless, the room where they stood continued to make no sense to him.
“These ceilings, they’re much higher than I remember, and the windows, and the platform outside . . .”
The girl was listening to him intently.
“I must be thinking of somewhere else,” Heinrich concluded, overcome by shyness and confusion.
“We have some movies you can watch,” she offered again. “Do you want to see a movie? They’re about the park. There’s a new one called The Asgard Project.”
He declined. He thanked her for her patience and stepped outdoors into the brightness, into the midday dust and mosquitoes. A truck slowed, rolled down its window. There were people approaching on foot, talking as they made their way. There were people repeatedly stepping aside for passing cars and other traffic. There were frenetic vehicles, without doors, roofs, or windows, charging here and there, riding high on four big wheels, confident as military tanks yet driven by grandmothers and children. From the harbor came the dull, steady roar of more machinery, scraping and gouging.
Heinrich stood where he was, where he happened to be, on the shoulder of the road, and listened to the incessant, motorized travel linking one end of the village to the other. Movement and noise braided the gathering of houses into a whole, while just beyond the last dwellings spread the treeless silence of the wind-scoured land.
The Search for Heinrich Schlögel Page 11
