The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [89]
The child Jonas was now nearly half a year old, with just the finest down on his domed head, which Asta declared signified a thick mane of fair hair to come. Asta was very fond of the infant, and chattered about him to Margret from morning until bedtime. Her examination of his parts brought those same parts of his father so vividly into Margret’s imagination that Skuli seemed to inhabit their tiny dwelling like the folk in old stories who refused to stay in their graves, but rode roof peaks and guarded doorways, tormenting the living inhabitants of the steading. Asta was eloquent on the subject of the boy’s hands, which were large and, according to her, unusually dexterous. He certainly liked above all things to take bits of stuff into his hands and gaze upon them. But this was too much like Skuli and his eternal carving, and Margret found in his evident pleasure a burning pain to go with the pain of her dreams, which continued unabated to resurrect the Norwegian each night so that he died again each morning, only to be replaced by his son at the breast, suckling furiously.
After the visit of Marta’s servingman, the two women ate but a single meal each day, and this consisted of two morsels of dried reindeer meat for Margret and one for Asta, a bit of cheese for each, some pieces of dried seal blubber for Margret, and a small bowl of sourmilk mixed with dried, powdered seaweed. Even with the seal blubber, which folk said always assured a copious milk supply, Jonas began to suckle more often, so that he was almost always at the breast, and still grew thinner, and he was smaller than he had been at the beginning of winter. Now Asta spoke less of the boy and always of the food at Marta Thordardottir’s table, where, she said, every meal was a feast, and all the servingfolk ate as much as they pleased.
One day Margret put Jonas on her back and declared that she was going to snare some ptarmigan, for the weather was fine and without snow or high winds for the first time in many days. As always now, the child moaned to be at the breast, but soon he fell asleep with the motion of Margret’s skis over the snow. Ptarmigan signs were easy to spot, and made the water come in her mouth as soon as she saw them, so that she had to sit down, panting, at the thought of food, though winter ptarmigan were often bitter to eat. Ptarmigan, she knew, were always fat as demons, even in the snowiest winters. Her fingers trembled as she tied her snares, and she was unaccountably clumsy, fouling her lines and crushing the snow and flailing about. After only five snares, and still just within sight of the steading, she grew so tired that she could think only of sleep, and she was ready to lie down in the snow and nap, but Jonas awoke screaming to suck, and this aroused her. Such a distance as she was from the farmstead she had trotted past without thought in the summer, but it now formed the limit of her strength, and even her determination. She took Jonas from her back and brought forth her breast to give him suck, but after the briefest while, he put back his head and screamed, and she could see no milk on his lips, nor was her breast full and hard as it once had been. Slowly, for she was very fatigued, she arranged herself and the child so that he