Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [105]
“Specimen dialogue,” Eskimaux Vocabulary for the Use of the Arctic Expedition, 1850
The voice, Gabriel thought, came with a rather bad breath. Bad enough to bring him back to life. Half opening his eyes, he could make out, in the dim light, the face of an Inuk bending over him. The Inuk said something Gabriel did not understand, and then started rubbing Gabriel’s nose with a fistful of ice. This woke him up completely, protesting and sputtering, while someone laughed not far from him.
His eyes were now wide open. He was lying in a dark igloo, surrounded by four Inuit who threw huge shadows on the curved glazed walls. It took a while to recognize them as the men he had seen in the Inuit People’s Ice Palace. One of them, the tallest, spoke a little English.
“How are you?” he asked, his brow knitted in a way Gabriel did not find especially benevolent.
“How am I?” Gabriel repeated, returning the question. He could not feel his hands or feet and felt in his stomach the sudden fear that they had been frozen.
“It happened that the poor Inuit found you at the foot of a big rock. Lying in the snow. But the qallunaq is safe,” said the tall Inuk.
Gabriel struggled to sit up. He was on an iglerk, wrapped in furs, his clothes drying on a rack over the oil lamp that also lit a scene that he found rather dismal. The igloo had been put up rather quickly, and was not very warm, with draughts swirling around. A pile of foul-smelling food lay in a corner, and the moss wick from the lamp spluttered a little, so that the surrounding Inuit flickered like the pictures of a finishing dream.
“I can’t feel my hands,” said Gabriel, with some anguish in his voice.
The tall man, turning toward the others, translated, eliciting a chuckle from one of them—the uncouth thief Gabriel had seen eloping with a knife. The one who had rubbed Gabriel’s nose, and who wore the paraphernalia of a shaman, now looked at him moodily, then spoke to the tall one, who in turn translated to Gabriel.
“They’re frozen. But it will come back.”
He then took Gabriel’s red, slightly swollen hand and shook it in the exaggerated Inuk fashion, the smelly man’s chuckle turning to laughter this time. Gabriel had the strange, scary sensation of having a wooden limb attached to his wrist, as if he’d slept on his arm.
“My name is Tuluk,” said the tall one.
“I’m Gabriel.”
They repeated the name, passing it around amongst one another as if it were some sort of strange absurd object they did not know what to do with. The oldest of the four eventually came to Gabriel and bowed, introducing himself in a broken English that had been fixed the Eskimo way: improbably but dependably.
“My name Uitayok. I am very sad this poor igloo offer.”
“I thank you for saving my life,” said Gabriel, bowing back.
“This one Ajuakangilak. Very powerful angakoq,” Uitayok kept on, pointing toward the brooding shaman, who barely nodded to Gabriel.
“This one here my son Tiblit,” Uitayok continued, in a tone that was almost more sincerely apologetic than when he had excused himself about the igloo.
Tiblit came closer to Gabriel and gave him another of those Five-on-the-Rossi-Forel-scale handshakes that seemed to amuse him no end. Gabriel wondered if Tiblit were not playing the classic part of the Eskimo Clown, knowing it would always work with the qallunaat and meet their expectations. There was always a bit of commedia dell’arctic to such occasions.
However, thanks to the violent handshake, the blood was starting to flow back into Gabriel’s right hand, and rather painfully so, like a spring river break-up carrying cutting slabs of ice down along his veins. His left fist, however, was still clenched and remained insensitive. But as he slowly pried open his fingers, he saw in his palm the Polar Kangaroo amulet that he had found at the I.P.I.P. He did not know how long he had been holding that.
The angakoq froze, while the others looked at each other.
“Kiggertarpok!” the shaman exclaimed, before casting a look at Gabriel that he interpreted as rather malevolent.