Coppermine (38 page)

Uluksuk and Sinnisiak stared out at the horses and human beings going by like herds of caribou on a migration. What a strange world this was. Sinnisiak turned to look back and was reassured to find Creed in the car behind them. Mainprize stopped taking notes for a moment to ask Uluksuk what he was thinking. Angituk spoke from her own heart as she translated the old hunter’s response.

“Never have I imagined or dreamed that such a place could exist, or so many people!”

Twenty

Uluksuk and Sinnisiak were offered a luxurious suite at the Hotel Macdonald, and Creed and Angituk were to escort them in and get them settled. The impressive “Mac” was a railway hotel and featured the town’s first public elevators. Even Uluksuk was impressed by them. They stood in the little room and each time the doors opened there was a new place outside. The hunters could have ridden the elevator for hours.

Ada Henry insisted on coming with them to the room. She was planning all kinds of activities for them the next day. Ada stood observing them as Sinnisiak examined the light coming from a bedside lamp, assessing the heat with his open hand.

“This would take a long time to cook meat.”

Uluksuk was turning the taps on and off in the bathroom, scalding himself with the hot water. He looked at his red fingers and chuckled.

“What are you thinking, Uluksuk?” Creed asked him.

The old man laughed and pointed to the taps as if they were a private joke between them. Who could have imagined?

The mayor’s wife watched them for a moment longer, fascinated. She didn’t want to leave. “Is there anything else they need?”

Creed smiled, shook his head, and offered his hand. “Thank you so much for all you’ve done, Mrs. Henry. They’ve really had quite an afternoon. If I know them, a nap will be in order.”

“They really are like children, aren’t they? All right. But I’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be ready for you.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Uluksuk … Mr. Sinnisiak.”

“Goodbye,” they both said in English, still very distracted by their surroundings.

Just as she was leaving, the suits she had ordered were delivered from her husband’s clothing store, Blowey & Henry, on 106th Street. They were dark brown pinstripe, three-button wool with cuffs, along with white shirts and brown spotted ties and black oxfords and checked, brimmed caps. The tailor had taken measurements from their old caribou skins.

“These are for dinner tomorrow night,” Mrs. Henry explained before she left.

There was a suit for Angituk too. Blowey & Henry had asked that in return they be allowed to take photographs of the Eskimos to prove their motto, “Our clothes make the man.” Sinnisiak and Uluksuk tried them on with Creed’s help and they fit perfectly. They stared at themselves in the full-length mirrors and then laughed at each other. Angituk laughed at both of them.

“I knew you could become a raven or a wolf,” Sinnisiak told Uluksuk, “but now you have become a white man!”

The hotel sent up barbers who shaved and trimmed them.

“I wish old Agalakti could see us. Can we bring this clothing home to show?”

Creed assured them they could.

“It would not be very warm,” Uluksuk cautioned.

“That’s true,” Sinnisiak agreed. “But it would be okay for the summer caribou hunt.”

Angituk laughed at them again. “That I would love to see—you hunting caribou in those suits.” She shared the joke with Creed.

“The caribou would be laughing so hard they would be easy to kill,” Creed suggested.

They each tried one of the cigars they had been given. Creed lit them, and after the initial coughing fits they both began to enjoy the rich smoke, which they found much smoother than the dried lichens and caribou grass Uluksuk usually smoked in his pipe.

The photographer from the Blowey & Henry department store arrived. He wanted to photograph them just as they were, in the chairs with the barbers, only he gave Uluksuk a newspaper and Sinnisiak a movie magazine to pretend to read. Creed warned them about the flash powder so they wouldn’t think they were being shot, but they were used to photographs; it was nothing to them. They relaxed and smiled. Uluksuk took a deep draw on his cigar.

“You know, I think this is proof that what we dream is life and what appears as life is really a dream.”

They all agreed.

THE NEXT MORNING,
the mayor’s wife and her entourage of press, photographers, and councillors’ wives took them to the museum to view the African exhibit. They stared in awe at the stuffed elephant, the rhinoceros, and the lion. The hunters were cautious in case the dangerous-looking creatures somehow became reanimated.

“I thought the horse was impressive, but look at these …” Uluksuk said in a reverential whisper to Sinnisiak. “Are these animals found around here?”

“I don’t know.”

“I would like to go hunting for them.”

“Me too.”

“Do they have any fresh ones we can eat?” Uluksuk inquired of Angituk, and was disappointed with her reply.

“No. Those animals do not come from around here. They come from other lands far away.”

Uluksuk considered this for a moment. “Other lands? You mean there are other lands beyond our lands, the Cree lands, and the white men’s lands right here?”

Angituk looked at him and nodded. “It is a big world.”

ULUKSUK AND SINNISIAK
posed for press photographs among the Neanderthals in the prehistoric exhibit with Mainprize quipping, “Stone Age Man Meets Stone Age Mannequin.” They admired the fine quality of the bearskins the statues wore and the nicely made flint tools.

Next was the matinee at the Imperial Theatre, of a new movie called
Yankee Doodle in Berlin
that parodied the German Kaiser and his officers. The Eskimos stared at the world within a world. The close-ups scared them when an actor’s disembodied head suddenly blew up large. They were relieved to be sitting on either side of Creed, who continued to reassure them. And then there was a short afterwards, a ballet sequence with women in tutus that appealed to Sinnisiak but Uluksuk found shocking.

“Those women are naked.”

“They are too skinny for much comfort, but I like how they move,” Sinnisiak offered.

The afternoon finished at the Funland at Borden Park, where Sinnisiak teased Uluksuk into riding the notorious roller coaster known as the Green Rattler. Uluksuk, convinced he was about to die, passed out and Creed had to hold on to him tightly for the rest of the ride so he would not slide down onto the floor of the car. When at the end the cars rolled into the loading area and stopped, Uluksuk pulled away from Creed, jumped out, and walked away unsteadily. He was very angry and it took Sinnisiak and Angituk and Creed to calm him down.

Their day ended at the calliope. Uluksuk loved the colourful wooden menagerie that rotated to the pretty organ music. It lifted the shaman’s spirits and Creed and Angituk breathed a sigh of relief. Uluksuk rode a silver unicorn with a golden horn because it reminded him of the noble horn of a narwhal. The last photograph of the afternoon showed old Uluksuk riding the unicorn and Ada Henry’s entourage all around him, smiling.

MAYOR HENRY HAD PROVISIONED
and outfitted gold seekers headed to the Klondike in ’98 and ’99. With his profits he had opened two large department stores and acquired a beautiful home. The Henrys’ large manor house overlooked the North Saskatchewan River. As Ada Henry’s entourage approached, the house was so brightly lit by the electric lights inside that it appeared to Uluksuk to be on fire.

Sinnisiak and Uluksuk, in their new suits and trimmed hair, were shown to their seats near the head of the long table of twenty-five guests in the mahogany-panelled dining room. A large and dazzling electric crystal chandelier, all the way from Montreal, hung above them. Tridents of open candles were interspersed along the table, making the hunters feel at home, as much as they could in this foreign environment. Creed observed his former prisoners and was amazed to see how quickly they adapted to the observed table manners around them. Their napkins lay across their laps, and they ate with the knives and forks, cutting their meat into small pieces. They politely passed food plates to others and sipped their wine quietly. Sinnisiak had by observation and practise perfected lifting the wineglass with only three fingers, as if he’d been doing it all his life.

Creed sat across from them in his scarlet jacket with Nicole by his side in a lovely long white silk dress with matching scarf. Creed could feel Angi’s eyes on him when Nicole put her hand on his or smiled playfully at him. He had decided, with the verdict in, he would have to have his talk with Nicole tonight.

He stole an amused, affectionate long look at Angituk in the pinstriped suit as she conversed with Koeha and Ada Henry. He wondered if the mayor’s wife would appreciate the clever way she could gut a caribou or snare and cook a ground squirrel, or the fact that she was a girl. Angituk laughed at something Ada Henry said and pushed her cropped hair back from her eyes, and Jack’s mind returned to the Great Bear River on that spring day, her skin a hot contrast to the cold water. Then Angi’s eyes were on him and, as if reading his thoughts, she smiled.

The mayor was still a little awkward in the presence of his two guests, but his wife made up for it with a stream of chatty questions and observations.

“I say the time has come,” Ada Henry declared with conviction to her dinner guests. “It’s absurd we haven’t had it before now in a progressive, modern world. Women were given the vote two years ago in Manitoba. Are we more backward than Manitoba? God help us.”

“I entirely agree with you, Mrs. Henry. It’s absurd,” Nicole offered.

“What do you think, Inspector Creed?”

“I’m all for it, the women’s vote, ma’am. Could make for a kinder, gentler world.”

“There, you see, William? A progressive young man. Now, Mr. Uluksuk, do your women have a vote?”

Uluksuk had found the smoked salmon, the one white man’s food that pleased him and didn’t upset his stomach. Somewhat putting aside the white manners he had perfected, he used both hands to make short work of an entire tray. Ada Henry was happy to see him so enjoying the dish. After Angituk translated the question about sexual politics in Copper Eskimo society, Uluksuk stopped eating and wiped his hands and mouth to better respond to his hostess’s question. Angituk explained the dynamics of the inquiry to him and he responded.

“Our women always had the vote.”

Creed went on to explain. “There does seem to be a relative sexual equality, a mutual support, where the man does the hunting, fishing, trapping, and the wife looks after the home—cooking, clothing, children. But sometimes they will trade jobs: the wife will fish and the man will sew clothes. And decisions are made by consensus of husband and wife. Oh, and wife beating is rare.”

The mayor’s interest was aroused. “But I thought Eskimos could take more than one wife. Doesn’t the old one here have two or three?”

“That’s true, but there are also some women who take two husbands. It is about what is practical. Uluksuk here, as you know, is a shaman or medicine man, but about one-third of the shamans are women. It’s quite egalitarian. There are no real politics. Communal hunting and food sharing is the norm. The environment forces everyone to work together to survive.”

“You see, William? Sexual equality, practicality, even socialism. It’s almost like you’ve discovered a utopian society in the High Arctic, Inspector Creed. It’s so exciting.”

“That may be overstating it, ma’am, but I think we can learn a lot from these people. I’ve come to like and respect them very much.”

Angituk smiled at Creed’s coy compliment and felt an overwhelming desire to tease him, until she felt Nicole’s gaze settle on her. Angituk lowered her eyes. She was asked to translate a question for Sinnisiak, directed to a pretty girl across the table. The girl, whose fashionable dress revealed a provocative bit of cleavage, had been drinking wine and was flirting with the handsome hunter, showing off a little, asking about the animals he hunted and if he sang songs and did dances. It was apparent, too, that she had attracted Sinnisiak’s interest, and he was quite candid about sizing her up as possible wife number two. What he wanted to know now was her technique for butchering caribou. Did she possess a good knife, and were the sealskin boots she sewed soft and waterproof? She confessed to her inexperience in these things.

“But I’m a fast learner!” she exclaimed, and everyone laughed.

AFTER DINNER,
they retired to the large parlour for brandy and champagne, and in keeping with the new sexual politics of Mrs. Henry, the women joined the men. Her two blond daughters, Elizabeth and Victoria, aged six and nine, were also permitted because they were fascinated by the strange little men they had seen in the newspapers.

Uluksuk was sitting in a large wing chair looking apprehensively at the pocket watch Koeha had given him. It had been a gift from the man named Mainprize, but Koeha was scared of it. Uluksuk studied it again, the second hand rotating in microscopic increments, controlled by the gears he could see in one corner through a tiny glass window inside. Koeha had explained carefully to him that he who held the watch held the power of the entire world in his hand. When the little black stick reached the bottom figure of 6, the sun would rise. And, as he understood it, of course the opposite was true too: if the stick failed to reach the bottom, the sun would not rise and there would be no day. It would be like the time before the wolf and wolverine digging in the cave discovered the sun. Koeha had transferred this huge responsibility to Uluksuk, and Uluksuk was having second thoughts. The stick on the watch still seemed to be moving. All should be well, but he was beginning to wish Koeha had not given it to him.

He put it safely, carefully, into his pocket just as young Victoria and Elizabeth arrived. They approached him without fear.

“Are you a magician?”

When Angituk explained, Uluksuk replied, “I am.”

“What tricks do you know?”