The Eskimo Invasion (6 page)

 

 

He squeezed her hand. She smiled a little.

 

 

Loudly the guests began to depart. Several girls glanced back at Dr. West,
giggling as they ducked out of the tent. As the lamp's floating wick
flickered and dimmed, and children dropped into sleep, and Edwardluk's
wife slid out of her parka and under the caribou skins, Dr. West removed
his hand from Marthalik's waist. With the caution of the experienced and
overly responsible bachelor, Dr. West already was trying to foresee the
future for himself and Marthalik. In only six days he would be gone.
If the bush pilot returns, would I leave these people now?

 

 

Gently he opened the fingers of her hand, sliding his finger across
her spreading fingers. "Marthalik, Marthalik, little one, in five days,
six days, this person will be gone. The whitemen's bird -- "

 

 

Her hand closed around his finger. Turning up her face, her eyes wide,
she whispered: "You have told me. But this person thinks -- this person
hopes -- no one leaves this land."

 

 

He smiled at that. She smiled up at him, and his finger touched the
huge dimple in her cheek. Her huge eyes closed, and she turned her face
against his chest. Against his ribs he felt the quick beating of her heart.
He touched the smooth rim of her ear. As if startled, her body jerked.
She moaned, which startled him.

 

 

With all these unpredictable people here,
what if she --
? He too vividly
remembered one distant night as a college freshman he'd parked with some
indecisive girl who unexpectedly screamed: "Help!" He'd fled out of his
own Mustang.

 

 

Against the tent wall gleamed Edwardluk's ivory-barbed harpoon. Elaborately
asleep under the caribou skins, Edwardluk and his wife apparently didn't
even need to breathe. Their heads were turned away in the other direction,
and they seemed to have fallen asleep as suddenly as if hit on the head.
But a little boy was sitting up, grinning at Dr. West. Dr. West scowled
threateningly at him, and the little devil's grin widened.

 

 

Abruptly Dr. West tried to decide against any involvement with Marthalik
-- tonight. He started removing his hand from her waist inside her parka.
But his rising hand under her breast insisted she must be a mature young
woman who -- With excitement he felt the touch of her fingers upon
the back of his hand, pressing his hand upon her. Within her parka,
he realized she had withdrawn her arm through her wide sleeve as she
leaned back. His fingers gently made love to her firming nipple, and she
sighed. As his lips touched her ear, he saw far beyond but in compressed
perspective that naked little devil still sitting there grinning.

 

 

With irrational fury Dr. West wished this budding little fiend would
explode in hellish flames. More rationally he dragged Marthalik out of
sight into the privacy of his sleeping bag. Her quickened breathing
against his throat became as uneven as his thudding heartbeats. His
hand smoothing up the cushioned warmth of her back muscles, she slid
her parka up over her head. Her trembling hand touched his, guiding his
fingers down over the ripples of her ribs to softening warmth, pressing
his hand on the huge dimple of her navel, and she shivered.

 

 

His hurried hand rediscovered downward that Eskimo girls wear tight
caribou skin pants extending down to meet their long sealskin boots
above the knee, and he smiled against her cheek. He still was clothed,
breathing hard and thinking harder, while his hands helped her squirm
from her pants.

 

 

In his frustrated excitement he felt like laughing or crying.
As a
professional population expert
, he thought,
should my travel pack
have included an assortment of the most modern devices and morning-after
pills for young ladies? Not funny, you unprepared idiot.
In the Eskimo
Sanctuary he hadn't intended to get involved at all, personally.

 

 

Gasping, struggling out of his clothes within their wriggling sleeping bag,
he reassured himself he could exercise responsible physiological restraints
more possible in intent than in practice. Smiling wryly against her ear,
he had no intention of abruptly interrogating her with questions such as:
Marthalik, do you have a calendar? Marthalik, are you among the 60%
who are dependably regular? Marthalik, you don't know?

 

 

She wriggled smoothly against his chest and lips as his hands helped off
her long soft boots. She moaned as his fingers rose, and inhaled, clamping
his right hand between the inner softness of her thighs. She exhaled. In
his throbbing excitement while he turned her huge-small body with her
moist breath sighing faster against him, lovingly he prepared her.

 

 

Dying with his love for her, vaguely he remembered he must remember his
responsibility to her. When the time came for him he must be able to
interrupt himself.

 

 

With her hand clinging to his back, she moaned with pleasure about --
babies? In his mounting excitement and their rhythmic smoothness repeating
faster and faster into a delicious shudder, she rippled wonderfully
inward like no woman he had ever experienced or been prepared for and
he exploded, everything forgotten.

 

 

Gradually his outer consciousness returned. Against his chest he felt the
relaxing rhythm of her heart, and on the back of his neck the stroking
of her fingers. She inhaled against him, exhaled: "Am I your wife?"

 

 

Bombed by the question, Dr. West lay, still part of her. To his own surprise
he blurted: "Yes. Marthalik, you are my wife." And he felt joy, better than
he'd ever felt, wonderfully free to love her now. He held her in his arms,
his throat swollen with love as if he wanted to cry.
And why not?
he thought.
And why not!
"Marthalik, you are my wife."

 

 

She giggled and snuggled against him. "This person will try to have a bigger
navel for you."

 

 

Her small hand guided his hand upon that part of her softness, and he
smiled, remembering vaguely that Eskimo men loved opulent navels. The
deeper the navel, the better-fed the wife, demonstrating the greatness
of the hunter because his wife had such a wonderfully deep navel,
beautifully cushioned in lush plumpness. To Eskimo men, and perhaps
to Marthalik, he realized the erotic symbolism of the navel must far
surpass the breasts and even the nose.

 

 

"Plump wife," he whispered, "you will always have plenty to eat with me,
and a navel so wonderfully deep. Such a perfect navel is yours now
because I love you."

 

 

To his surprise, her finger was making love to his navel, which was neither
deep nor opulent, but startlingly stimulated by the circular sliding of her
finger. Inward with delicately circling touches her finger was penetrating
so deeply, his abdomen hardened with sparkling nerve signals radiating
downward.
What have I been missing all my life?

 

 

Arousing deliciously, he discovered the Eskimos' affection for the navel
was based on more than abstract symbolism. Evidently these Eskimos through
thousands of years of long winter nights had elaborated that aspect of
culture known as physical love with intricate stimulants of touch and
movement and communication more powerful than any hurried whiteman's.

 

 

Gliding upon him and he within her, longer and more easily they breathed
and moved and flowed as one person toward unbearable excitement together
as her flesh became his as he surged upon her while she cried out in joy
carrying him as if they were falling through space.

 

 

In that moment, he saw a dazzling sun beneath him. Falling past asteroids
dotted with white domes, he surged upon her toward a green planet as he
exploded within her. Dazed, he raised his head and only the dim tent was
still there. Lowering his face in exhaustion, he slept upon the smooth
safety of her breasts.

 

 

 

 

Dr. West lived each day and night fully as if it were his last. With her
now, he felt so free he hoped she would conceive because she kept insisting
this would make her so happy. "Your sons will be strong hunters!"

 

 

A week ago during that first night with her, he'd hurriedly rationalized
that the odds of safety against conception that night were a fairly safe
five to one. As they lived together in happiness along her twenty-eight
day cycle, the odds were narrowing. Instead of wasting his time with
that confusing age-sex census which didn't make statistical sense,
he learned to make love to his wife's navel with expertise beyond any
Eskimo's, or so Marthalik assured him. He felt she loved him so much
that anything he did pleased her.

 

 

Sometimes upon her as if entering the darkness of space, he glimpsed
that strange sun again. On their gasping journeys he strained trying to
see again that green planet, but standing up in the morning after his
oddly recurrent amatory mirage, he laughed simply with the joy of being
alive and strong and truly in love for the first time.

 

 

Nearly two weeks had passed, and the Turbo-Beaver was not going to appear,
he thought. Anyway, he had no intention of returning with the pilot to
the Outside. Not yet. These happy people needed him. He wanted Marthalik
always to be happy, and for this reason he knew he would have to venture
Outside before winter. He would have to get them food --

 

 

On unlucky nights when the only seal carcass was bare bones, he listened to
these people's night myths. His arm around Marthalik, he watched Edwardluk
crouching lower than the flickering lamp. He heard the hoarse grunting
of Grandfather Bear emerging through Edwardluk's strange guttural voice.
Magically, all these Eskimos would become excited, smiling upward and
unable to explain what they felt.

 

 

Hungrily, Dr. West went seal hunting with Edwardluk on the bay ice.
Impressively he shot a seal with his recoilless rile. It favorably
impressed the seal because it floated long enough for Edwardluk to hurl
his harpoon. Edwardluk seemed less impressed, even though he admitted
old Peterluk could not shoot so far. "That old man's rifle is louder."

 

 

"Does Peterluk remember which direction you people came from?"

 

 

"Eh?" Edwardluk laughed in confusion at Dr. West's startling question.
"Always we have been here. Ever since this person can remember. And before.
Ever since Grandfather Bear we have been here, as this person has told you."
Edwardluk squinted at the vast blue sky. "If you are to understand --
where we come from, you must wait with us for Grandfather Bear."

 

 

"No one seems to remember what happened to the old people."

 

 

"Sometimes Peterluk says one thing, sometimes another."

 

 

"You can find Peterluk?"

 

 

"This person always knows where that
angakok
has traveled, and hopes
he will stay there."

 

 

The next morning, on the thawing gravel in front of the tent while
learning to cut a seal into the proper pieces, Dr. West asked Edwardluk:
"Will you take me to speak with that old man?"

 

 

Edwardluk looked north. "Peterluk is in a strong place with his rifle."
His worried expression showed he didn't want to go there.

 

 

"But he fled from me." Dr. West doubted that Peterluk would shoot at him
in any case. All these Eskimos seemed so nonviolent. "Already Peterluk
has fled from me."

 

 

"To get more power, he has returned to the Burned Place. Above the sea
on that great rock ledge, Peterluk is camped in the Navel of the World."

 

 

"But whitemen's magic," Dr. West remarked, "is stronger."

 

 

"My husband is stronger than Peterluk," Marthalik laughed, squeezing
Dr. West's arm. "And wiser and braver. Even though Peterluk pretends
he is not even afraid of Grandfather Bear, Peterluk always lies. He is
nothing but an old man. My husband could -- "

 

 

Dr. West laughed, unable to resist showing off for his wife, and he stood
up, towering above them. "Edwardluk, you are a strong man, too! We both
are strong men! We go!"

 

 

Edwardluk smiled unhappily as he looked around, surrounded by so many
curiously smiling faces. What could he do? They went, leaving Marthalik
behind, which hurt her feelings. "Who will prepare the camp each night?
Without a woman -- "

 

 

Like a strong husband Dr. West ordered her to stay, to give his letter
to the airplane, truly to keep her from the dangerous journey.

 

 

 

 

On this rough bay ice, any pilot would be afraid to land, Dr. West thought
as he helped Edwardluk heave the sled up over another pressure ridge.

 

 

Across smoother ice, the dogs raced over cracks the pressure had closed.
Riding the sled, both men laughed with man's third greatest pleasure,
a journey.

 

 

At first, Edwardluk had said the journey north along the coast might take
two sleeps. Dr. West expected to be back with Marthalik within a week. On
the bay ice, the sled short-cut from point to point, but beyond the next
promontory the ice had opened with leads of shimmering water, and they had
to work back toward the cliffs. Taking the longer route along the shore
ice, they had to follow all the indentations of the coastline. Proud he
was in such good physical condition, Dr. West trotted over the uneven
ice. Hour after hour, his pride kept him moving. That night he was too
tired to eat much. The next day he was stiff-muscled. The next day he
was slower.