Heartbroke Bay (10 page)
Authors: Lynn D'urso
“I write in a fine hand,” Hannah tells him, “and know enough of accounts from my father to assist you. Selling ship’s goods in England is surely not so different than dry goods in Alaska, is it?”
Uliah hires her more for her clear way of speaking and the elegant way she removes her gloves—which reminds him of his own wife, dead under the saber of a pogrom-mad Cossack in Poland when his name was still Wittgenstein—than from any desire to see order in his books.
Hannah draws a new ledger from Uliah’s inventory, sharpens a group of pencils with Hans’s shaving razor, and sets herself to the task of bringing order into Uliah’s life. She enjoys aligning figures in neat rows down the cream-colored columns of the ledger, ordering the history of Mr. Witt’s business into chronological files, and building a system to record the future. Soon Hannah starts adjusting the shelves of merchandise, rearranging stemware and bolts of fine cloth into a household department, separating the sewing needles from the saddles and shaving supplies.
Now, customers often greet Mrs. Nelson before addressing Uliah as they enter the store. The women of Sitka come by for bobbins of thread and squares of baking chocolate, for which they have no immediate need. A man sporting ten years’ worth of whiskers purchases a razor. Uliah cleans out a storeroom, installs a bed and stove, and encourages the Nelsons to make it their home.
Hannah is reassured by the schedule of work—seven each morning until four in the afternoon, Monday through Saturday—and gives little consideration to the future. Although Hans speaks often of prospecting and gold, Hannah sings as she works, and the cold, hungry misery of Skagway fades until it is no more than a past entry in her journal. Winter comes down from the north, pushing all thoughts of spring back into the purple shadows, and jeweled feathers of snow drift quietly down from the pearly skies.
Each morning Hans and Harky walk by lantern light to a cobbled beach north of town, where a small launch gathers the sawmill crew for a short run across the water to a camp established on one of the humpbacked islands that guard Sitka Sound from the sea. They carry their lunches in lidded tin buckets and make coffee in a pot hung over a fire of cedar scraps. Some days Harky jokes quietly with Hans as they linger over hand-rolled cigarettes while waiting for the launch to return them to town. Other times he is sullen and stares at the ground. On those silent days, the Texan works harder than any three men, hefting and poling the heavy logs and cants of lumber about with a furious energy. At the end of every day their hands are as black and rough from hardened sap as those of Negro field hands, until an Indian woman explains to Hannah how a bit of butter used as soap will cut the resin from the men’s hands. When Harky sees how well this works, he exclaims, “I’ll be damned!”—then turns red and stutters his regret at cursing in front of a lady.
Hannah is tempted to attend church services on occasion, but the lingering tenets of the Church of England leave her uncomfortable among Lutherans and Baptists. Hans declines to join her, preferring instead to stop by a bar for a discussion of the future with other idling gold hounds, in an endless exchange of opinions on the virtues of placer versus hard rock mining. Harky sometimes joins him but says little as he attends to his beer.
By January it has become the Sabbath habit of the Nelsons to part company after luncheon, with Hans setting course for the saloons and Hannah joining Mr. Witt for an evening of music. Uliah owns a cello, a violin, and a piano and plays all three. For him, music takes the place of religion. Early in life, he had studied the different musics of the world to see what they might have to say about the riddle of humanity’s purpose, but before solving the riddle, he had seen God take away some, but not all, of his hearing, sealing off just enough of the high notes and finer tones to prevent him from reaching a level of ability sufficient to satisfy his teachers. They encouraged him to take up the Talmud instead. Declining, he continues to play out of avocation and habit.
By frontier standards, his playing is virtuoso, and it thrills Hannah to sit by the stove in his apartment, listening as the crackle and pop of burning wood add counterpoint to his rhythms. He plays sparely, saving notes like bright dimes until he has a dollar to spend, then paying them out in delicate silver streams.
For Hannah, who plays no musical instruments, to hear the cry and sob of strings under Mr. Witt’s fingers here on the ragged border of the wilderness seems a miracle. Afterward, she sometimes walks along the shore in the last, soft light of evening, then returns to the cabin, where under the spell of the evening and the music, she finds herself overwhelmed with contentment, which she persuades herself is a symptom of love for Hans, who wonders at the ardor with which she mingles herself into his warmth, under the covers, throughout the night.
Dear Diary,The newspaper carries word of a terrible avalanche of snow on the Chilkoot Pass above Skagway that has killed more than sixty men, with many others missing in the chaos. Thank you, God, that my husband and I are not in that terrible place. Boats come weekly bearing men defeated by the winter of the interior. Often they are missing fingers or ears and wear the black marks of frost on their faces. There are natural baths of hot springs near Sitka, which Mr. Witt says are heated by volcanic action deep within the earth. These hot springs are very popular in the treatment of the miners’ chilblains and rheumatisms.Wintering in Sitka is delightful, and I sometimes think to stay here, but Hans’s stubborn Norwegian blood will never allow him to willingly abandon the dream of growing rich on gold. There may be little choice, however: Our savings grow slowly, even as the cost of the goods necessary to enter the Klondike continue to rise. A small keg of common nails now costs eighty dollars!
“You keep a diary, Mrs. Nelson?”
Hannah sits in a chair by the store window for the better light, writing between customers. She looks up at Uliah as he speaks and raises her voice in answer.
“I do, Mr. Witt.”
Uliah smiles and begins to poke at the order of goods on a shelf. “And what do you write? Stories of love, eh? Your adventures?”
Hannah blushes. She often feels the urge to write of those things, but always imagines others reading her words someday and edits for good effect, avoiding passages she fears to be too revelatory. Mr. Witt’s question unsteadies her in a pleasant way; she has never heard a man mention love so easily. She knows Hans, if pressed for some slight reassurance of his love, would look out the nearest window and say, “ah,” in a distracted fashion.
“Just observations, Mr. Witt. A record of my thoughts, events, that sort of thing.”
“Ah, well. Surely love is the only thing truly worth writing about, don’t you think, Mrs. Nelson?”
Hannah, unsure of his meaning or how to respond, toys with the place-marking ribbon that hangs from the spine of her journal, then looks up questioningly.
Uliah continues. “Love is certainly the rarest thing, yes? Everyone has experience with friends, emotions, work, what you call ‘that sort of thing.’ So one diary is much the same as the next. But a record of love, that’s an important thing to leave the world, do you see?”
Hannah thinks then answers. “But surely love is a common subject of diaries all over the world? After all, everyone falls in love sometime, and most marry sooner or later.”
“Yes, yes. I was married myself once, a long time ago. And women all over the world write pages and pages of love in their diaries, I’m sure. But do they really know what is love? Or do they write simply hoping for love?” Uliah shakes his head, then adds, “How many of us ever really know what love is?”
Something in the question discomfits Hannah, and she answers to dispel her own doubts. “Well, we marry out of love. It comes naturally, doesn’t it, when you meet and join with the right person?”
“Marriage is common, certainly. But I’m afraid that is more often motivated by business, or simple biology. No, to see one person truly loving another, that is the rarest of things.”
“Whatever do you mean, Mr. Witt?” Hannah is not sure she wants this conversation.
Uliah raises his hands, palms out in a calming gesture. “Please don’t misunderstand me, Mrs. Nelson. When I say business and biology, I mean nothing so harsh as that sounds. After all, that is the way God made us. Women need security. They want to have homes, have children.” He cups his hands together as if holding something delicate. “They build nests and hope to fill them with love.”
“And men? Surely men hope for love as well.”
“Yes, yes, but we are more . . .” He swirls his hands about and gropes for the right phrase. “Men are more driven, somehow. They build the nest to get the girl, not for want of a nest. That’s what all this chasing after gold is about, running crazy to get rich.
“You see the rich man, the man with money, a nice home, nice things. He has a beautiful wife. You think, ‘Aha! I will get rich and have a beautiful wife, make some children.’ So a man goes insane, runs away to the Yukon or something, all because he believes, without thinking properly, that if he is good at some business, his biology will win and his lineage will continue. Do you see?”
“I believe I understand your meaning. I understand, but do not completely agree. Surely you loved your wife, Mr. Witt?”
Uliah lifts his shoulders. “Oh, there was great affection between us. A wonderful woman. And I am sure we could have come to love each other truly if . . .” He shrugs again and clasps his hands together, sighing. “But she died before we had time to learn how. Pity, because we had the wonderful example of her parents to follow, a love like I have never seen.”
Hannah closes her journal, looks up at Uliah, and leans forward in her chair.
“They were old when we married. Her mother was a gross creature, fat and with marks on her face. I almost did not marry her, because they say you have only to look at the mother to see your future wife. But I couldn’t believe the beautiful girl I was marrying could ever become old or ugly.” He laughs, indicating his own stooped, aging body. “Nor did I believe that I could become as I am now. So we married.”
Hannah asks, “And her parents?”
A winsome smile curls the corners of his mouth. “Ah, it was something to see. Two old people, she so thick and indelicate, he all spots and wrinkles. In the fifth year of our marriage, my wife’s mother became ill. Sick in her mind, addled, and daft. Never knew her own family anymore, just sat and mumbled all day in a chair. And do you know, my wife’s father brought her flowers every day and sat with her, holding her hand and reminding her of all that they had shared, their children, how they used to dance when they were young.
“And that, Mrs. Nelson, is love. Because there was nothing in it for him and never would be again. She didn’t even know he was there, and there was no chance she would ever offer him solace as he grew old, because her spirit was already gone. But he gave himself every day to whatever slim opportunity there might be that he could offer her one more moment of comfort and love.”
Hannah feels her eyes grow damp and a knot form in her breath. When she relays the story to Hans over dinner that night, he looks puzzled for a moment, then asks if there is more stew.
Harky comes from the bars one February night and knocks at the door to the Nelsons’ room. There is drink on his breath, and after removing his hat when Hannah answers, he asks for Hans. The men hold a mumbled conversation in the darkness outside the door, after which Hans comes back inside for his coat.
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