The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [90]
It so happened that Asta thought so hard about ptarmigan roasting on a spit that it was as if she could hear the popping of the fat and smell the fragrance of the cooking meat. Soon she became impatient, and arose from her bedstead and went to the door, but Margret was not coming, so she went back to her bed and lay down. But then it seemed to her that she heard shouting, as if of men over their trenchers, and she went to the door again to look out. All was white waste, and she ate some of this snow. She went back to her bed and lay down, but as soon as she had pulled up her furs for warmth, the sound and fragrance of the roasting birds drove her out again, and to the door, and it came to her that Margret had caught some birds, and was roasting them on the hillside, so that she might have them all to herself. At this, Asta donned her cloak and shoes and went out of the steading. Now she followed Margret’s track, and the snow was deep and powdery, causing her to stumble about, for she had forgotten to put on her skis. And when she came to where Margret and Jonas sat, slumped and sleeping, with no ptarmigan roasting on a spit, popping and browning, she burst into tears and began shaking Margret by the shoulders.
Now Jonas suckled at the breast all the time, night and morning, but it seemed that the only time he got anything was just after Margret awoke. Other times in the day, when he was hungry, they gave him snow, and they ate much snow themselves, and Asta sometimes said that hers tasted like sourmilk with bilberries, but Margret said that hers never tasted like this, although such a thing was pleasant to think of. Jonas no longer played such games as he was accustomed to, nor did he try to sit or creep, as he had, but only sometimes did he take something in his hand and look at it while he worked at the breast, but soon enough it would fall from his hand, for his grip had no strength. One day they ate the last of the seal blubber, and soon after that the last of the cheese and butter. Now their provisions consisted of a few pieces of dried reindeer meat, a little sourmilk, and some angelica stalks, and they each ate one bit of dried meat every day and a mouthful of sourmilk, and otherwise they lay under their furs in the bedstead, all together, for any touch of the cold made them shiver so that they could not hold a spoon. Margret’s breasts were so flat that they looked as though they had never been, except that the nipples were raw from the constant sucking of the child. And one of these days, when Margret awoke in the morning after a long sleep, Jonas was still asleep in the crook of her arm, with his hand slipped into the slit of her dress and outspread on her skin, and his arm was as thin as the bones of birds, though his belly was round and fat, and she saw that he was, indeed, not asleep, but that the life had passed from him in the night, and she put her hand over his hand that rested against her skin and she wrapped him more tightly in her cloak and lay there quietly, waiting for Asta to awaken.
One day after this, the servingman came from Brattahlid with news, and he found Margret and Asta dozing in the bedcloset, as was their habit, and they were so exhausted that they could not by any means sit up. Margret asked him if it was Lent yet, and he laughed and declared that it was nearly Easter. The other news he brought was that a whale had stranded on the ice near the mouth of Eriks Fjord some two days previously, and all the men of the settlement were engaged in carving up the great leviathan, and he bore with him some other provisions, sent by Marta Thordardottir to last them until the whale flesh had been carried home.
At this Easter the Greenlanders rejoiced greatly in resurrection, they