Neverness (35 page)

   Of all the triumphs of civilization I sometimes think the greatest and most sublime was the invention of the hot bath. How I longed for soap and hot water! How I missed the joy of soaking my cold limbs, of letting the wet heat lull me and warm me from skin to bone! How badly I wanted to be clean! I missed the sounds and smells and comforts of the City and found myself thinking about her all the time. Why had I left her? Why had I come here seeking nonexistent secrets, killing seals, feeding toothless old men, disturbing the harmony of the Devaki families? How could I have believed a civilized man could live as a savage? From where had I acquired such arrogance?

   One night over a mug of tea, Bardo confessed that he, too, missed the comforts of our city. "I would advise that we leave here as soon as Katharine has collected her samples," he said to me. "We don't want to starve, do we? How long can it take her to swive a few men? Excuse my candor, Little Fellow, but I don't understand why she has ignored so many, ah ...
possibilities
?"

   Of course, he hadn't had the slightest thought of leaving so long as he could fill his belly with meat every night, and every night fill one or more women with his seed. The others, though, were not so eager to leave as I would have hoped. Soli welcomed the hardships of our primitive life and seemed to be enjoying himself, if that dour man was capable of joy. Justine found everything about her new existence "fascinating," as she put it, while my mother reveled in her power to make her living directly from the things of life. And as for Katharine, she seemed to be biding her time, to be waiting for some important event that she would not reveal. As the storms of the new year grew more frequent, I gradually became aware that the Devaki had not completely accepted us. I do not mean that they necessarily suspected our civilized origins. But many of them, not just Yuri, thought that we were strange, and worse than strange. Because of the storms, the hunting became more difficult and dangerous. Our hunger deepened. Sometimes there were grumblings and complaints and petty arguments over the division of the meat. More than once I heard the men grumble that my killing my doffel had brought them bad luck not good. There was a rumor going about the cave that I had fed Shanidar half of the beautiful liver of a snow loon. (In truth, ever since my encounter with the Old Man of the Cave, I had been smuggling him choice cuts of meat, to keep him alive. It was wrong of me, I know, but what else could I do?) And there was other gossip, vicious talk the women spread among themselves that gradually reached the ears of their husbands. I should have been warned something was wrong when Piero of the Yelenalina family and Olin of the Sharailina began threatening to leave Kweitkel for the islands of the west. I thought they were just crabby with hunger, but I soon discovered they had other complaints.

   One late afternoon after a long, fruitless day of hunting, Yuri caught me aside in the forest outside the cave and said, "Piero is wrong to blame you for our hunger. If Tuwa was not sick with mouthrot, we would have plenty to eat."

   I agreed that it was so.

   "Still, it is strange that the animals no longer leap to our spears, is it not?"

   I agreed with him that it was strange.

   "Although Piero is wrong to blame you, I cannot blame him for blaming you Can you? And there are others who might observe your strange behavior and come to blame you for their own misfortunes. I myself have no respect for these people, but how can I blame them?"

   "How is my behavior strange?" I asked. "Do they blame me for killing the seal, then?"

   He held up his scarred hand and shook his head. "It is not that, even though there are few men who kill their doffels. It is this: A wise man takes care not to be left alone in his hut with his sister, especially one so beautiful as Katharine. Then no one can blame him for abominations which bring his people bad luck."

   As he said this there was a sudden sharp pain in my stomach. I felt sick I felt the burn of guilt coloring my cheeks, and I was grateful that the wind through the trees was so icy and bitter that my face must have already been crimson with cold. I turned to Yuri, who was leaning against a boulder and puffing steam as he looked out across the broad, white valley below. I wanted to tell him that whoever had accused Katharine and me of abomination was guilty of slander. And more, I wanted to shout out, to scream into the valley that Katharine was not my sister. I wanted to reveal the ugly tapestry of lies and fakery that had led us to pose as Alaloi. I wanted to do this for two reasons: to bring this foolish journey to an end, and so Yuri would know I was a man of honor. But I said nothing, did nothing. How could I make this savage, one-eyed man understand the complexity of civilized ways or the esoteric nature of the quest? I said nothing, and Yuri shrugged his shoulders. "Katharine, too, she is a strange woman," he said.

   On the tenth day of midwinter spring, I discovered just how serious the slander against me was. It was a day of ice flurries and moist, heavy air. The snow was gray and leaden, and the trees were grayish green beneath the dark gray sky. The wind, blowing in fits and stops, smelled like wet slate. The few men who had gone hunting the day before - they were all Sharailina - returned to the cave in the closing grayness of twilight when the snow and the shadowed slopes and the low, dark sky seemed to merge into an impenetrable sea of gray. They had found meat, they said. Ouray and his son, Vishne, beat the snow from their gray furs as they stomped into the cave. They were followed by Olin the Ugly, a surly man with a great swatch of scar running down his forehead to his jaw. Olin was grasping the tail of a half-eaten animal, dragging the carcass towards the Sharailina's huts. "Sabra meat!" he announced, and his ugly wife, Jelina, and the rest of his family came out of the huts smiling" and eagerly sniffing the air.

   I looked up from the shaft of a new spear I was carving - I was standing on the snow-packed cave floor outside our hut - and I saw at once that Olin had little meat to share. I was wondering how Olin had found the wolf carrion when he began telling the story of their hunt.

   The day before, it seemed, the Sharailina men had tracked Totunye, the bear, through the southern forests down to the sea. When the snow began to fall, young Vishne wanted to return to the cave, but Olin led them down to the beach where, he said, he had heard rocks cracking and a distant roar. Ouray, though, thought the cracking was the sound of the heavy limbs snapping off the trees and the roar was only the roar of the wind. When they emerged from the forest they saw a white bear clawing a wolf apart against a mound of rocks. They rushed the bear, but Totunye, with his long, black claws and cowardly eyes, saw the scars on Olin's face (this is the story as Olin told it), and he fled into the storm because he could see that Olin had long ago been scarred by another bear and was therefore invulnerable. And so they had returned with the meat of the wolf which, as Ouray put it while staring at the face of his brother, "is leaner and tougher than bear meat but not as costly to take."

   Several of the Manwelina had gathered around to listen to this story. Wicent's son, Wemilo, and the ever-mischievous Choclo began making jokes. Seif, who looked much like his brother, Liam, except that he was not quite so handsome or large, covered his eyes and laughed at Olin. Then Liam came out of his hut and joined in the fun. "Are you
certain
that it is Sabra, the wolf?" Liam taunted Olin. He licked his red lips and flung back his long, blond hair. "I would want to be
certain
before I ate him, wouldn't you?"

   Olin cursed and he ripped the tail from the base of the wolfs carcass. He threw it at Liam, who was laughing and rubbing tears from his eyes.

   "Do I not know Sabra when I see Sabra?" Olin shouted.

   Liam licked his lips again and cruelly joked, "Do
I
not know Devaki when I see Devaki? And then he laughed harder.

   He was referring to the unfortunate abomination which had fractured the honor of the Sharailina family. Once, years ago in false winter, Olin's great grandfather had cached some shagshay meat for eating the following midwinter spring. When the time came, he and his family had dug up what they thought was shagshay thigh and they had eaten it. The next day Lokni, who was Liam's great-grandfather, had discovered the meat was in reality part of a human corpse that a bear had uncovered from the graveyard above the cave. Apparently, the bear had dragged the human remains down to the snowfield below the cave where the Devaki sometimes store their meat. It was an understandable mistake, but ever after, for three generations the sons of Lokni had made a tradition of ridiculing the eating habits of the Sharailina family.

   Liam laughed and licked his lips and rubbed his belly, and he picked up the tail Olin had flung at him. He held it to his open mouth as if he intended to eat it. He made a gagging sound and said, "How I love Sabra's furry tail, there is so much meat!" And then, "It makes me happy that you are certain this is wolf meat. But I must ask you one thing." And here he turned to Seif and shook his head with fake sadness. He looked back at Olin all the while running his finger through the shredded gray fur. "Does a wolf have gray fur?" he asked. "I myself have only seen white wolves; perhaps the Sharailina know a different kind?"

   Olin bent to the carcass and kicked it with his foot. "The fur is white," he said. "It is only the lack of light that makes it seem gray."

   "It is as gray as the fur of a dog," Liam taunted.

   "No," Ouray said, defending his brother, "it is white. It has been stained gray by dirt and sea-salt."

   Liam, who thought he was a funny man, suddenly dropped down on his hands and knees, and he pulled his golden head back and let loose a series of barks. "It is a dog," he said as he flopped over and rolled about in his mocking imitation of a dog scratching his back "You eat the meat of a dog."

   I watched this ridiculous scene as I twirled my spear beneath my carving flints. I realized what should have been obvious all along: Olin and his brother had found the cairn of stones that Bardo and I had built over the body of my lead sled dog. The torn carcass lying by Olin's hut was what remained of Liko.

   "Dog meat!" Liam said. "The Sharailina hunt dogs!"

   Olin protested again that it was indeed a wolf. He moved to flay it with his knife, and I crossed the cave as quickly as I could. "It is a dog," I said. I explained how the thallow had killed Liko, how Bardo and I had buried him. "Don't cut him - he was brave and loyal, and it is not right to eat him."

   By this time the whole Devaki tribe had emerged from their huts. They encircled us. The voluptuous Sanya, who was suckling her newborn girl, said, "It is not right for the mothers to grow so hungry their milk dries like puddle-melt in the sun. Mallory forgets that meat is meat; meat is neither brave nor loyal."

   All this time Liam was rolling on his back laughing in between his derisive dog sounds. "Rart, rart, rart," he barked. "Rart, rart, rart, rart." And then he looked up at Olin and said, "I hope the shagshay leap to our spears soon. Or else we will be meat for the hungry Sharailina."

   This proved too much for Olin. He shook his long, flint knife in the air, cursed and fell upon Liam. Olin's knees crushed the wind from Liam's chest - I heard the
whumph
of air escape from Liam's lips. Someone called out, "Watch the knife!" and for some reason which made no sense to me at the time, Olin dropped the knife. They wrestled, then. On the hard snow, they grappled and heaved and rolled. Liam managed to trap one of Olin's arms between their bodies. He used this momentary advantage to jab at Olin's eyes with his long fingernails. I was sure that he intended to gouge his fingers into the sockets, to feel for the eyestrings, to blind him. Olin had been mauled by a bear once; it made me sick to see the bearlike Liam mauling him again. "Not his eyes!" I yelled, and I stepped forward, planted my foot, and whacked Liam's temple with the butt end of my spear. He tumbled away from Olin, stunned, holding the side of his head. The blow had cut him; blood flowed from between his splayed fingers, trickling down his thick golden beard.

   He cursed me and spat at my legs. He shouted, "What is wrong with you that you cannot tell sport from killing? Your brains have softened like seal fat - but that is the way with sister-seducers. Did Katharine suck out your brains along with your seed?"

   I think I tried to kill him, then. As Olin and Yuri and all the people of the families looked on, I raised my spear back behind my head. I clutched the shaft's leather grip, dimly aware that Bardo and Justine and my trembling mother were watching me from behind a wall of astonished Devaki. "No!" I cried, and straight ahead of me as I sighted on Liam's throat, there was Katharine standing between two Manwelina women. She was staring at me unashamedly as if she knew I would not kill him. "No!" I cried again, and I began to whip my arm forward. But there was a sudden resistance; I could no more cast the spear than I could uproot a shatterwood tree. All at once I felt other hands on the shaft, and someone ripped the spear from my grip. I turned and there was Soli holding the spear as he would a dead fish. His lips were hard against each other, as white as ice. He was holding his breath; beneath his forehead's white skin pulsed a thick vein.

   Yuri came forward and grabbed the spear from Soli. He broke it across his knee. His eye flashed on me like a rocket beacon, and he said simply, "Strange you forget we are not hunters of men." Then he turned away from me, leading the rest of his family back to their huts.

   Olin came over to me and scratched his scarred face. "It was only a game," he said. "Why do you think I dropped my knife? Do you think Liam would have blinded me, his near-brother?"

   He looked at the halves of the spear lying crooked on the snow, laughed nervously and walked away, repeating, "It was only a game."

   Soli stood there glaring at me, stiff and cold as a tree. Katharine bowed her head to us and went into our hut. After a few moments Bardo, Justine and my mother went inside, too. Soli and I were alone in the middle of the darkening cave. I thought he might never move or speak again. Then he whispered, "Why, Pilot? Why are you so
reckless
? Tell me, please." With his heel he ground the spear into the snow. "Why do you do what you do?"