The Incomparable Atuk

  ‘Is she a nice Eskimo girl?’

  Atuk scratched the back of his neck.

  ‘Speak no more. Atuk, my son, I remember when your eyes were deep and true as the blue spring sea. I recall when your soul was pure and white as the noon iceberg. This is no more. Today—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, will you cut out that crazy talk. You sound like you were auditioning for Disney again or something.’

  ‘If not for the fact that I was taller than John Mills—’

  ‘All right. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have had the part. But—’

  ‘I do not wish to hear of marriage with a non-Eskimo girl.’

  ‘You know something, Old One. You’re a bigot. You’ve never overcome your igloo mentality.’

  ‘I’m proud of my heritage.’

  ‘So am I. Only I refuse to be imprisoned by it.’

  ‘Tell me, Atuk. What would you do about the children?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘How would it be for me to sit your little half-breed on my lap and he wouldn’t be able to speak an Eskimo word?’

  ‘We’ve discussed the question of children. We intend to give them a modern type education.’

  ‘Ha! But will his friends at school let him forget he is an Eskimo? Atuk. Atuk, harken to me.’

  ‘Won’t you even meet the girl? I love her.’

  ‘Shall I go to their home. To be stared at. An Eskimo. Would I feel relaxed there, Atuk? I’d have to wash and eat with cutlery. Do they know the joys of smoked deer meat? Minced seal pancakes? No. I’d be expected to eat condemned foods. Like filet mignon.’

  ‘So you’d make a few adjustments. A big deal.’

  The Old One gave Atuk a savage look. He sighed deeply. ‘It all begins with taking a bath. It seems a little compromise, I know. But one day you take a bath and the next you have turned your back on your own people. Now I suppose,’ he added contemptuously, ‘it is nothing for you to eat fish that has been cooked?’

  ‘There are other problems besides the Eskimo problem, Old One. I am a man who just happens to be an Eskimo.’

  ‘You can stand there and tell me that when you know as I do that before the great ice-sheet drew back this land was ours from sea to sea.’

  ‘Let’s face the facts. We’re never getting the land back.’

  ‘Atuk, you have a good Eskimo head on your shoulders. Think. They believe in pills and artificially frozen foods. How could you ever feel at home in such a background?’

  ‘I’m not marrying a background. I’m marrying the girl I love.’

  ‘Ignak is right. An Eskimo who lives away from his land is no Eskimo.’

  ‘Ignak is an Eskimo fascist. OK. Don’t say it. It all starts with taking a bath.’

  ‘Go, marry. But you have not got your father’s blessing.’

  ‘She’s a fine girl, Old One. Very fat and oily. Stinky too. Like one of ours. Won’t you even meet her?’

  ‘Tell me, what would she say, for instance, if you wanted to hunt next Saturday?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, Saturday wouldn’t do. It’s their day of rest.’

  The Old One looked baffled.

  ‘You see, their God … em, created the world in six days,’ Atuk said in a faltering voice, ‘and on the seventh day, Saturday, he rested.’

  ‘Oh,’ the Old One said, slapping his knee, ‘it’s one of those one-God religions, is it?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Through all the ages, from the time of the great ice-sheet, what has held our people together? Speak!’

  ‘Our belief in plenty of gods.’

  ‘We are the chosen pagans, my son. We have a message for the world.’

  ‘You live in the past, Old One. The ice is never coming back. Our people will never again hunt the white bear in the Bay of San Francisco or run dogsled races in Miami.’

  ‘It is written that—’

  ‘I don’t care what’s written.’

  ‘No. You think it’s poetry, that’s all. Good reading.’ The Old One paused for breath. ‘What would she say, Atuk, if you wanted to eat smoked caribou? Remember the caribou sandwiches after the hunt at Benny’s? With blubber on the side?’

  Atuk grinned.

  ‘Well, what would she say?’

  ‘Deer is out. It’s unclean.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You see, in this particular branch of one-god religions—’

  ‘What is it called?’

  ‘It’s called the Jews. The Hebrews.’

  ‘Are they Jews or Hebrews?’

  ‘It depends on their income. The poor ones are Jews.’

  ‘Jews, Christians, Hebrews. I’m not concerned with nuances. They’re all white. Atuk, it’s hard to be an Eskimo. I told you so long ago. But you must hold your head high. Why, in this country when it comes to culture what is there besides the Eskimo? Our sculpture is acclaimed the world over. Our poetry too. And one day we shall rise again and claim the land that is rightly ours … from sea to sea, as it is written …’

  Atuk lowered his head.

  ‘Return with me to Baffin Bay. Tonight.’

  ‘No. Never. What is there for me at the Bay? Disney shoots about one picture every two years and the Film Board pays nigger wages. Shall I be like Kupi? Can you see me building a block of igloos with inferior ice and soaking my tribe for it? I’m going to marry the girl and settle here.’

  ‘You think you’ve been accepted, don’t you? Ha!’ The Old One grinned spitefully. ‘Tell me, Atuk, will you be obliged to use the missionary position?’

  ‘That’s none of your goddam business!’

  ‘For the rest of your life—’ he gasped, shaking with laughter. ‘For – the miss—’ Again, it was too much. ‘The miss – missionary position.’

  Laughter came from the hall too. The giggling of girls.

  ‘Oh, that’s rich! What fun! The miss—’

  Everyone but Ignak scattered when Atuk opened the door.

  ‘Assimilationist!’

  Atuk pushed him aside.

  ‘But you will be getting what you deserve very soon,’ Ignak called after him, ‘or haven’t you seen today’s headlines?’

  Atuk poured himself a stiff drink. Afterwards he didn’t bathe, even though it was the tenth day of the month and he had promised himself, as a matter of personal discipline, to bathe at least once a month. She will have to take me as I am, he thought. An Eskimo. No more missionary position.

  9

  Bette was trying to do something about this week’s accumulation of fan mail. There were the usual requests. A librarian from Moncton, NB, had sent a stick of Wrigley’s gum for her to chew and return (a self-addressed envelope was enclosed). There were at least thirty photographs to sign. A member of the British Columbia legislature asked Bette if she would be good enough to wear high button shoes on her next television appearance and a persistent fan from Montreal asked once more for her soiled nylons. Bette, making a note to return the man’s cheque again, shook her head, and wondered whether the fool didn’t know he could buy nylons, new nylons, for less money. Her self-elected aunt, in Moose Jaw, Sask., had written a sweet letter and Mr O’Toole, absolutely Bette’s favourite, had sent a cigarette box he had made himself. There were still more requests for photographs.

  Bette gave up.

  She knew Atuk’s show had been taped days in advance and Atuk had promised, he had given his word, that he would come to watch it with her. He had promised to be there promptly at six and here it was eight o’clock and he still hadn’t arrived.

  Bette simply couldn’t sit still. She tried the parallel bars, but that didn’t work. Neither did the bicycle machine or the punching bag. She seemed to be driven by a surfeit of energy, an edginess she just couldn’t work off. Bette couldn’t understand it. Even swimming hardly pleased her any more. Nothing, in fact, satisfied like giving help. I guess, she thought, reaching for the gin bottle again, it’s like I’m a nun. Sort of. If only Atuk needed help more often, she
thought, like in the old days. The good old days.

  Was it possible, just possible, that Goldie was giving him help now? No.

  Bette lit a cigarette, put it out quickly, and reached for the gin and carrot juice. She phoned Atuk once more. No answer. ‘Goddam him,’ she said aloud.

  Well, time for the show. Bette sat down before the television set, filing her nails, and switched to Crossed Swords with Seymour Bone.

  The massive redhead faded in with a bucolic smile. ‘The programme,’ he said, ‘is Crossed Swords and the rules are very simple. Viewers send in a controversial quotation and our panel of experts tries to identify the quotation and then discusses it. Our guests tonight, ladies and gentlemen, are Rabbi Glenn Seigal, Harry Snipes, Canada’s Angriest Young Editor, Rory Peel, advertising executive and Atuk, the poet. Gentlemen, our first quotation.’

  A card flashed before the camera.

  BLESSED ARE THE MEEK: FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH

  The panel looked pensive.

  ‘He was born in humble circumstances,’ Bone said. ‘His father practised one of the graphic arts.’

  ‘Hemingway,’ Snipes said. ‘I recognize the style.’

  ‘Not a bad guess. You might say he influenced Hemingway.’ Bone turned to the viewers with a twinkle in his eye. ‘And many others too. An underprivileged child, you might say he developed into an excitable, malajusted adolescent.’

  ‘Not one of the Angry Young Men,’ Rabbi Seigal said.

  ‘Well, of his time perhaps.’ Bone couldn’t resist a chuckle. ‘To go back even earlier, the conditions of his birth, well, this is the CBC and it’s not our policy to take sides on matters like these but, ah, I might venture, I think I might safely venture that the conditions of his birth were allegedly unique. He was purported to have magical gifts. He, ah, performed a world-famous feat with fish.’

  Obviously, they were still stumped.

  ‘Atuk. Haven’t you any ideas?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘One more hint, then. He was a religious leader … a widely-quoted author … still a best-seller …’

  ‘Herman Wouk!’

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  Rabbi Seigal looked embarrassed. ‘I try to read all the important books as they come out, but, well, it’s impossible to keep up with everything. Hardly any time to read for pleasure any more …’

  ‘All right. Another hint. He died at an early age under unnatural, even cruel conditions. Well, Atuk?’

  Atuk shrugged.

  ‘Gentlemen?’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Snipes said. ‘Chessman. Carl Chessman.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What’s that Russian,’ Rory Peel demanded, excited, ‘he wrote the property that won the Nobel Prize. He’s got a name like black bread.’

  ‘Pumpernickel?’

  ‘Pasternak!’

  ‘Nope. Gentlemen,’ Bone said, ‘enough. Now let’s turn to the merit of the thought itself. “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” Mr Peel?’

  ‘Well, Seymour, I’d like to see some statistics before I commit myself, but speaking off the top of my head, well, no.’

  ‘Atuk? Haven’t you anything to say?’

  ‘The thought is inspiring, much inspiring, but where has it got my people?’

  ‘Mr Snipes?’

  ‘That’s just the kind of namby-pamby talk that leads to welfare statism and’ – he turned menacingly towards Rabbi Seigal – ‘and pacifism. Or to put a true label on it, selling your country down the river. It—’

  ‘—it’s not the sort of sentiment that built this great country out of a wilderness,’ Rory Peel said.

  ‘And,’ Rabbi Seigal said, ‘and perpetuated needless cruelties against the original Canadians: the Eskimo.’

  Atuk blew his nose.

  ‘You don’t stand anywhere on nuclear disarmament, Rabbi,’ Snipes said. ‘You’re on your knees.’

  ‘Look here, I—’

  ‘Order,’ Bone said. ‘Order. Rabbi?’

  ‘When you take the thought inherent in the quotation under discussion and analyse it purely as a religious slogan, well, it lacks the impact of – The Family That Prays Together Stays Together. The quotation, I believe, runs, Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Well, speaking professionally, this lacks appeal. Nobody today wants to be thought of as weak, a shmo, if you’ll pardon me. We like to think of ourselves as lions.’

  The doorbell rang. At last, Bette thought, and she started to unzip her skirt with one hand and undo her blouse buttons with the other. But it wasn’t Atuk.

  ‘Doc Burt!’

  ‘Himself. Back from the hills at last.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I only had time to slip into these things when the bell rang.’

  ‘Your young feller here?’

  ‘No.’

  He didn’t seem at all surprised.

  ‘But he promised he was coming. I have no idea what’s keeping him.’

  ‘Sure, sure. Well I wanted to have a private little pow-wow with you anyway.’

  Bette turned down the sound on the set and tottered over to the table and fixed two gin and carrot juices.

  ‘It’s about the sort of help you’re giving the Eskimo.’

  At the very mention of the subject Bette felt parched, edgy again. Like she had to scratch herself everywhere.

  ‘You don’t approve?’

  ‘On the contrary. I think it’s wonderful of you. I’m proud.’

  ‘Oh, Doc,’ she said, sitting down beside him on the sofa, ‘I knew you’d understand.’

  ‘Why, I’ve known you since you were this high,’ he said, pressing his hairy hand against her thigh. ‘Never was a purer, cleaner-minded girl born in the province.’

  Bette blushed.

  ‘Come closer, child. Let ole Doc Burt help you with your buttons.’

  Until he mentioned it, Bette hadn’t realized that two buttons had still been left undone. Head thrust back, she leaned forward tenderly. Dr Parks caressed her throat with one hand and, with the other, fumbled and fussed with the buttons. ‘How I admire your lung-power,’ he said.

  He was not, to Bette’s astonishment, all that fatherly about it. In fact, it seemed to Bette that he was squeezing her breasts.

  ‘You have the most lovely pectorals too.’

  The room began to spin.

  ‘Remember how you used to sit on my lap?’

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  ‘Would you do it again, for a sentimental ole fool?’

  Bette climbed gracefully on to his lap and the edginess that had bothered her before seemed all-consuming now. Doc Burt told her about his troubles. ‘We had to disband the troupe in Moose Jaw.’ Brotherly love, Doc Burt discovered, had gone too far between Best Developed Biceps of Sunnyside Beach and Lake Ontario Jr. The boys were arrested on a morality charge. ‘It was terrible,’ Doc Burt said, ‘just terrible.’ Bette felt a hand start under her skirt. ‘But I managed to get the boys paroled under my custody and things have taken a turn for the better since.’ Doc Burt told her that he had been made manager of this year’s Miss Canada contest. With his free hand, he reached into his inside jacket pocket and showed Bette photographs of some of the more promising competitors. One of them was a striking, unusually tall blonde. Jane Something. ‘And do you know what,’ Doc Burt continued, ‘Jean-Paul McEwen has agreed to be one of the judges.’

  Bette squirmed as the Doc’s hand ventured higher. She drew his head compulsively to her bosom.

  ‘Bette, a word from the wise. The thing about giving help is that once you start there’s simply no end to it.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, ‘uh-huh,’ vaguely conscious of her stockings being rolled down so slowly she had to suppress a cry.

  ‘It’s just give, give, give.’

  Her eyes shut, Bette nodded.

  ‘Not that your Eskimo fellow would care. He’s getting help elsewhere these days.’

  That did it. Bette leaped up. ‘Is he? Honestly?
Why, isn’t that just wonderful!’

  ‘You mean you’re not jealous?’

  ‘But, Doc. You don’t understand. It’s like I was Sister Kenny and my first patient had just learned to walk.’

  ‘You mean to say there are, um, other patients?’

  ‘Now, now. Mustn’t pry.’ As Bette turned to do up her stockings she was startled to see Seymour Bone watching her. ‘Could you at least turn off the set, Doc.’

  Dr Parks turned up the sound in error. Bone’s image was cut off in mid-sentence. ‘We interrupt this programme to bring you a special bulletin. The RCMP, working in close co-operation with the FBI, has uncovered an important clue in the search for the missing Colonel Swiggert of the US Air Force. The Colonel’s—’

  Bette switched off the set herself. Atuk’s heading for trouble, she thought. Bad trouble. He’s going to need a powerful friend. Bette picked up the phone and dialled Twentyman’s unlisted number.

  10

  Atuk, nobody’s fool, had already purchased two aeroplane tickets to London under the pseudonyms Mr and Mrs Chong. Laden down with parcels, he pounded on the door to his house. ‘Hey!’ It was Ti-Lucy, to his surprise, who undid the locks one by one and lifted the bar for him.

  ‘Where’s the Old One?’ Atuk asked, immediately suspicious.

  ‘All is not well, brother. You’d better come down to the basement.’

  ‘Let’s see today’s figures,’ Atuk asked quickly.

  Ti-Lucy handed him her clip-board with the production figures. ‘But that’s not bad,’ Atuk said.

  ‘You’d better come down to the basement.’

  Atuk had a look at the day’s output. Every painting was representative. Literal. The statues were perfectly shaped. All crudeness and innocence gone. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Atuk said, ripping a painting in two, ‘if I want Norman Rockwell quality goods I can hire Rockwell.’

  Brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, all tried to conceal themselves behind the thrusting, bellicose figure of Ignak.

  ‘I should have guessed you were behind this. Well, speak up.’

  ‘Why is it,’ Ignak asked, ‘you always want us to paint and sculpt badly?’

  ‘That’s what they want, not me.’

  ‘We refuse to be condescended to,’ Ignak said.