Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [110]
“You come with us to Kalaallit Nunaat?”
Gabriel had not dared broach the topic during breakfast, when the talk had first revolved about their dreams and about how the amiable Uitayok admired the trash deposits of the Whites that he had seen while travelling to New Venice, and how, really, he dreamed of having such heaps of rubbish in front of his own house. All this, Gabriel understood, with his tongue rather hummocky in his cheek. Then they had decided to give their guest an Eskimo name. Gabriel, interpreting this as an honour, had prepared himself to receive it with dignity. It was Tuluk who proposed the name.
“Innatuumajuujaaraaluttuujanirartauqattalaurunnainiralaurtuugaluaq,” he had declared solemnly, setting the whole igloo, angakoq included, rolling on the floor laughing, slapping their thighs, and pointing their fingers at Gabriel, who nodded stupidly, a waning smile on his face.
“Sorry. I do not know translate,” Tuluk said, wiping the tears from his eyes five minutes later. “It is about one who is a bit of a dreamer, who has a little dreaming seal in his head.”
“Oh?” Gabriel had said, deeming it was not the right time for any serious proposal.
But now it could not be avoided any longer.
“I have a favour to ask you.”
Tuluk frowned as if he wasn’t sure he had understood. Hadn’t they been helpful enough to the qallunaq?
“A friend of mine, a good friend of the Inuit, is in trouble. He is on a trip to the Big Nail. I am afraid something will happen to him.”
“What friend of the Inuit?” asked Tuluk, doubtfully.
“Brentford Orsini,” answered Gabriel. The name had been an open sesame with the Scavengers and he had a faint hope it might work with the Inuit as well. And actually it did seem to work a little, to the point where Tuluk called the others and explained to them what Gabriel had said.
“Orsini,” confirmed Gabriel, thinking of a way to break the news that it more or less meant bear, as he knew that Inuit thought, just as he did himself, that the name is as large as the man. “He is a good friend of the Inuit. He wants them to rule with the New Venetians.”
Tuluk translated, using for the New Venetians the word arsussuq: “Those who live in abundance.” It was the same word, incidentally, by which they meant the Dead.
But the others would have little or none of it, and Ajuakangilak was most vocal about it. They had of course no reason to help, but Gabriel could feel that they still mulled over the involvement of the Polar Kangaroo and the danger of refusing anything to that white nitwit amateur of an angakoq, who had nevertheless secured the help of Kiggertarpok.
Waiting for the results, wondering how far Brentford could have got by now, Gabriel caught the eye of the lead dog. It was like a signal he did not know he had given. The pack suddenly darted toward the North, dragging the sled behind them. The Inuit, howling and cursing, ran after them as quickly as they could, and for a moment it seemed that they could catch up. Maybe it was only that the dogs, looking behind from time to time, gave the impression that they were slackening the pace, just enough to give hope to the chasing Inuit. But as soon as the Eskimos came closer, they sped up again.
Gabriel ran after them all, lagging behind, his feet full of pins and needles, slipping and tripping on rubbly ice, with the horrendous feeling that he was being abandoned on the frozen seas. He saw the sled disappear in the distance and then the Inuit, getting fainter and fainter, almost miragenous in the hazy morning.
He stopped after a while, panting, sobbing, his lungs like ice blocks about to explode, his blood throbbing in his ears, quite on his own again.
Except for the shadow that was looming over him.
Gabriel lifted his eyes. The shadow was that of a black airship that glided above his head, the very same that had been