Fools' Gold (15 page)

“Well, each time that Andrew was reduced to such threats, Jesus would take him in his arms and, talking lowly, walk with him around the inside of the circle of followers, until Andrew was calm again. And after he was down and quiet the others would breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Jesus,' they would say. ‘How do you put up with it? I'd go out of my head.'

“Three times Andrew built up enough nerve and enough guilt to go to Jesus and say, ‘I'll cut out my heart,' and on the third time he did it. He waited until the last of the late-sleeping disciples had slipped between his blankets, then he marched to the place where Jesus slept and, baring his chest, stuck a knife into it to the hilt.

“‘Ah, ah,' he said, ‘Jesus, Jesus!' for the sharp pain was surprising to him. And the savior was on his feet in an instant, and Andrew fell where Jesus had lain and clutching the still warm blanket to his bloody breast he said, ‘At last I have known the warmth of your bed,' and he died.

“Well, Jesus cried, and though Andrew had never endeared himself to the other followers, Jesus' tears led them to mourn Andrew with wails and tears of their own, and the following day Jesus gathered them together, and while some stacked rocks for the tomb of Andrew, he told the others that though suicide was murder and that both were wrong, Andrew was forgiven and waited for them even now beside His father's throne.

“Well, as you know, Judas was there, and this was more than Judas could take. Rules were rules, he thought, and so he asked, ‘On what grounds?' for he had always hated Andrew and more than once had succumbed to the impulse to strike him.

“Jesus looked at Judas for a long moment before answering, and then he said, ‘On the grounds that it was not suicide at all. It was an accident of fate.' And with that he gave Judas such a low and mournful stare that it made Judas cringe and it was as if to say, ‘Do not, Judas, deny forgiveness for accidents of fate.'”

The reverend stopped for a moment and looked at Phil and the others. Should he be going on like this? Clearly they believed him. As he stood in front of them, only the noises of the children could be heard. He had been talking for a long time, and while he had done so the Eskimos had been slipping their cups quietly over the side of the metal bowl and scooping up more punch.

He took a breath and continued. “Anyway. If Andrew can be forgiven on the very bed of Jesus, surely your friend Fujino will have no trouble. Consider it an accident of fate.”

After the reverend's little speech the party fell to normal rhythms. Eskimo women fed their children, men drank until the tin bottom of the reverend's bucket was scraped loudly by the edges of their cups. When the punch was gone they pushed the furniture out of the way and let an old man begin a drum dance using a new drum that he'd made especially for the occasion. Though the drum was simple, a flat skin with no echo chamber, the old man got three distinct sounds from the instrument, and once he'd established the rhythm he began chanting a story of his own, one about a seal waiting in the freezing depths of the bay, waiting to feed the starving Eskimo people.

Eventually everyone danced. They depicted the quiet waiting, the patient, breathless waiting of the Eskimo hunters. They became the sea under the ice and the seal gliding toward an air hole. It was a familiar dance, and with punch and time each Eskimo felt the need to hunt seal, right now, on the icy bay in front of their village. This kind of hunting was called feather hunting, and while the women left the reverend's house in search of feathers, the men went for their harpoons, and the reverend was left with the children alone. His winter parties often ended as abruptly as this. He took some food and his tin punch cup and, climbing the ladder, looked at the scattering people through his beloved window. The side of Nanoon's cold hut shone in the sun for him. Like the smooth shoulder of a hunched bird it stood, its feathers perfect for hunting so snatched here and there by the searching women. He imagined the girl wrapped in her furs and waiting. Could she feel her feathers lightly lifted? Did she know the hunt was on?

The idea of the taste of fresh seal was on everyone's mind, and in a few moments the Eskimo men popped from the earth again, harpoons pricked against the sky. All the hunters wore white boots, invisible against the land, so that as they walked toward the ice they appeared to be legless and floating, cruising above the earth. At the edge of the sea they broke into groups, fanning away from the shore and out onto the ice. They searched for holes the size of apples, the breathing holes of seals. They walked far out and when they stopped they bent and peered into the ice and remained still.

Phil found a hole and bent and scooped the snow and loose ice out of the way until he could see clearly the short dark tunnel that led to the water below. Carefully and quietly he placed an owl feather where the snow had been then slowly held his harpoon high, ready to plunge it downward. Today there would be only one seal. No one knew which air hole the seal would choose, yet all about the bay harpoons were cocked high above the heads of hunters. A seal, lungs cramped and heavy, would come to breathe and a feather would move and the chosen hunter would cast his harpoon so precisely that the feather would fold around its tip and disappear into the body of the animal. When the seal was dead the others, perched like eagles above their own air holes, would come running, would begin pulling the line hand over hand until the lean body of the seal slid from the broken ice like a baby from a shattered womb. Later, on the shore, when the hot meat of the seal warmed and colored the lips of the Eskimos, someone would dig the broken feather from the flesh and hand it, red now, to the hunter. And it would serve as a decoration for a drum or for the wall of his summer home, his lean-to.

The reverend watched from his window. The children had stopped playing and stood around his soft loft as quiet and still as those on the ice. From this distance the bodies of the men and women, curved like boomerangs over the air holes, looked to be dark shadows laid upon the ice. They waited. One seal would be enough for everyone. Even the reverend, after four years here, understood the anticipation, had acquired a taste for the hot red meat. He liked to let it please his fingers and he was beginning to understand touch as the first stage of taste. The reverend waited with the children, looking out at the white earth and the dark shadows.

When the hunters, frozen apart for so long on the canvas of his window, finally came together, only the reverend made a sound. He betrayed his newness to the village by a slight intake of breath. It was impossible for him to withhold it. It was a miracle, like watching the figures in a painting only to have them begin to move about. When the hunters came together black spots remained in the reverend's eyes. The hunters ran, even now were pulling the dead seal from the sea, yet they remained where they had been, dark shadows painted on his very eyeballs. The reverend blinked and waited, knowing that the spots would fade from their fixed positions, melt into the whiteness again or trail across his window and back into the bodies of the real men. He thought of the dead body of Andrew the Suicidal. He looked with the children and saw the long slim seal, born of the earth's cracked shell. He waited as the Eskimos did, he watched with a calculating eye, wondering how large it was, anxious to warm the tips of his fingers in its neat flesh.

Finn, off to see the old man, carried money in his pockets and pulled supplies behind him on a sled. He'd found a map among Fujino's possessions and would follow it, if necessary, throughout the rest of winter. It was not snowing on the day he left, yet the cloud cover was a shade grayer than the earth. Finn followed the map or saw the round mouth and the pinched eyes of Fujino in front of him. Pensum. Penance. Repentance. He'd be a different man after this. He'd be stronger because of it. After this, though he was forty-five, he'd try to begin again. Finn had read Fujino's shopping list and filled it, and when he found Kaneda he would explain. He would say he was sorry and would prove it by working for the old man and by taking none of the gold for himself. He'd brought Fujino's whiskey for he knew the old man would want it, but he'd have none of that himself either. He had potatoes and fish and salt. The old man might not be happy to see him at first, but Finn would make him glad. He would explain what had happened to Fujino, making the old man's memory of Fujino good and letting the old man take stories of Fujino's bravery home with him to Japan.

Before leaving Nome, Finn bought a dog. He'd been told by a man that the dog was of a breed that could walk through high snow drifts and that it would easily pull a sled as small as the one Finn showed him. The dog was gray like the sky and had almond eyes. And he was silent. Even under the most pressing circumstances, the man told Finn, the dog would make no sound. Finn called the dog Mute. They had been traveling long days slowly, but though the dog was good at walking through high snow he was not a puller. Each time Finn harnessed him to the sled he sat back, not understanding what to do. The dog leapt, gray like a wolf, through the surrounding snow, but Finn pulled.

They were able to move during daylight hours, but when the earth blackened they sat by a low fire, hollowed into a snow-bank, or buried under furs. Finn cooked over the fires he built, and though the orange flames gave little heat, he had regained the sense that it was not as cold as it ought to be. Finn saw the darkness around him as the expanding depths of the mouth of Fujino, and he was often sure that he saw, beyond the fire, the golden eyes of his dead mule as it kept its blind rider close to the man who would explain, who would tell Kaneda how it had been. Death was all around him. Finn had been responsible for Fujino, for that child in Ireland, and if he found Kaneda too late … He pursed his lips and bore his responsibility quietly. He leaned against the dog. “Father forgive me for I have sinned,” he mumbled, and there was no echo in the night.

“It's scandalous,” Ellen said. “People are getting used to the winter. They'll be coming past here soon to stare at him.”

Henriette stood at the window looking back at Ellen and out toward the sea. She too was ashamed. It had been her idea to place Fujino on the mule but at the time Ellen had quickly agreed for it hadn't seemed right to lay him on the snowing ground. And now he was frozen. When they came to their senses they dug a shallow grave in a bank of snow but it was too late. He couldn't be moved. He was locked as if one with the hairy body of the mule. Even his clothes, the way the trouser legs wrapped themselves around the poor man's thin ankles, were now fixed. And both the mule and the man had turned the color of lead. Henriette had seen statues like him in the parks of San Francisco, of military men riding with swords high.

“We'll need a man's help. Or we'll tip the mule and bury them both,” she said.

Ellen, sitting by the fire far from the window, knitted. She'd not stand staring as if there was nothing to be done. They'd received an invitation from the reverend and from Phil. Would they be interested in experiencing Christmas in the Eskimo village? If so, there were sixteen children in the village and could they bring a little something for each? The very smallest of gifts would suffice, the reverend wrote, but something would be necessary.

Ellen read and reread the reverend's letter. On the day of its arrival she remembered the wool she'd brought all the way from home. There'd been no chance to use it until now, but at Christmastime children got stockings. As a girl she'd found them tacked to the mantel above the fireplace quite early on Christmas mornings. Always two pairs, one from her mother and one from her grandmother. It had never been a surprise. And if there was time she might have a sweater as well, and from her father a coin tucked deeply into the toe of each stocking. She wore the stockings, one pair and then the other, and she threw the coins into the air and had them come down into her hands.

There was a Christmas game that she played with her father, who would always be dressed and friendly on that day. He'd swing Ellen high into the top of the main room then let her go just as she threw the coins, and he'd catch her just as she was supposed to catch them. She'd shriek and the coins would roll and she'd chase them, sometimes out of the living room, under chairs and under the big clock in the hallway, the one that ticked the seconds of her grandmother's life away. And after her father had three times thrown her and after she was exhausted and nearly in tears from laughing and running, her grandmother and her mother would come disapproving from the kitchen and one would announce the goose and the other the pudding, as though the goose and the pudding were guests in their house for the day. Her grandmother, looking stern and evil, would always speak more clearly than her mother. She'd look with her rooster eyes at the father and the child, then she'd sweep her arm and head forward and in her most cultured voice, acting like a butler, she'd say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the goose,” and Ellen and the others would walk quietly and with dignity into the next room to dinner. It was her grandmother's only joke, the only time Ellen had ever been able to see in the eyes of the old lady any spark of good humor.

As Ellen knitted she thought of her mother knitting stockings for her; she thought of her grandmother sitting with stiff collars pinned at the neck by cameos. The wool was gray and the stockings were all the same size. Those that were finished were washed for shrinkage in one of the bathtubs and hung around the front room of the bath like fish carcasses. Ellen tried to string the line as close to the heater as she could, and on the floor around their chairs now water drops left dark circles. Henriette, sitting again, moved her chair this way and that, each knee damp and the material of her dress sticking slightly to her skin. She too would give gifts, knotted necklaces, ready to wear with the golden snowflakes. She looked toward the ceiling and thought of the dripping stockings as long and slender teats coming from the dark underbelly of a cow somebody had forgotten to milk. She laughed. She had been depressed too long. It was nearly time for them to meet Phil, nearly Christmas.