East of Desolation

Any minute now he was going to tell me just how noble death was and I cut in on him quickly and patted the Winchester.

‘Well this is my way – the Joe Martin way. Any bear who comes within a hundred yards of me gets the whole magazine. I’m allergic to the smell of their fur.’

He roared with laughter and slapped me on the back. ‘Joe, baby, you’re the greatest thing since air-conditioning. Come and have a drink.’

‘Not for me, thanks,’ I said.

He had a head start anyway, that much was obvious, but I followed him to the fire and squatted beside him as he uncorked a nearly empty bottle and poured a generous measure into a tin cup. The hunters from Narquassit watched us impassively, a scattering of dogs crouched at their feet. Desforge shook his head in disgust.

‘Look at them – what a bloody crew. I had to bribe them to get them this far.’ He swallowed some of his whisky. ‘But what can you expect? Look at their clothes – all store bought. Not a pair of sealskin pants among them.’

He emptied the dregs of the bottle into his cup and I said, ‘I’ve brought a visitor to see you – a girl called Eytan.’

He turned sharply, bewilderment on his face. ‘Ilana – here? You’re kidding.’

I shook my head. ‘She flew into Søndre from Copenhagen last night.’

‘Did she say what she wanted?’

I shook my head. ‘Maybe she’s come to take you home.’

‘Not a chance.’ He laughed shortly. ‘I owe too many people too damned much on the outside. Greenland suits me just fine for the time being.’ He leaned across, full of drunken gravity. ‘I’ll tell you something in confidence – confidence, mind you? There’s a lulu coming up that’ll put me right back there on top of the heap and take care of my old age. Milt Gold of Horizon should be in touch with me any day now.’

‘Maybe this Eytan girl has a message for you,’ I suggested.

His face brightened. ‘Heh, you could have a point there.’

There was a faint cry from along the beach and we turned to see an Eskimo trotting towards us waving excitedly. Everything else was forgotten as Desforge got to his feet and picked up a harpoon.

‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Let’s get moving.’

He didn’t even look to see if he was being followed and I shouldered the Winchester and went after him, the hunters from Narquassit following. You can tell when an Eskimo is happy because sometimes he’ll actually smile, but more often than not it’s impossible to know how he’s feeling at any given moment. Allowing for that I still got a definite impression that the men from Narquassit were something less than enthusiastic about the whole thing and I didn’t blame them one little bit.

We reached the end of a long strip of shingle beach and started across a much rougher section that was a jumble of great boulders and broken ice when one of the hunters cried out sharply. They all came to a halt and there was a sudden frenzied outburst of voices as everyone seemed to start talking at once.

And then I saw it – a great shaggy mountain of dirty yellow fur ambling along the shoreline and as the first dog gave tongue, he paused and looked over his shoulder in a sort of amiable curiosity.

You don’t need to be a great white hunter to shoot a polar bear. One thousand pounds of bone and muscle makes quite a target and it takes a lot to goad it into action, but when he moves, it’s at anything up to twenty-five miles an hour and a sidelong swipe from one of those great paws is guaranteed to remove a man’s face.

Desforge saw only the quarry he’d been seeking for so long and he gave a howl of triumph and started to run, harpoon at the trail, showing quite a turn of speed considering his age.

The dogs were well out in front, but the Eskimo hunters from Narquassit looked considerably more reluctant and I knew why. In their mythology and folklore the polar bear holds roughly the same position as does the wolf for the North American Indian, a creature of mystery and magic with apparently all the cunning of Man: on the other hand, they weren’t keen on losing their dogs and went after them fast and I brought up the rear.

The bear loped across the strand and skidded on to the pack ice, making for the nearest water, a dark hole that was perhaps ten or twelve feet in diameter. He plunged in and disappeared from view as the dogs went after him closely followed by Desforge, the hunters some little way behind.

I shouted a warning, but Desforge took no notice and started across the ice to where the dogs ringed the hole howling furiously. A moment later it happened – one of the oldest tricks in the book. The bear sounded, striking out furiously with both paws, erupting from the water and falling across the thin ice with his whole weight. A spider’s web of cracks appeared that widened into deep channels as he struck again.

The hunters had paused on the shore, calling to the dogs to come back. Most of them managed it safely, yelping like puppies, tails between their legs, but three or four tumbled into the water to be smashed into bloody pulp within seconds as the bear surged forward again.

Desforge was no more than ten or twelve feet away and he hurled the harpoon, losing his balance at the same moment and slipping to one knee. It caught the bear high up in the right side and he gave a roar like distant thunder and reared up out of the broken ice, smashing the haft of the harpoon with a single blow.

Desforge turned and started back, but he was too late. Already a dark line was widening between him and the shore and a moment later he was waist-deep and floundering desperately in the soft slush. The bear went after him like an express train.

Desforge was no more than four or five yards away from the shore as I burst through the line of hunters and raised the Winchester. There was time for just one shot and as the bear reared up above him I squeezed the trigger and the heavy bullet blew off the top of its head. It went down like a tower falling, blood and brains scattering across the ice and Desforge fell on to his hands and knees on the shore.

He lay there for a moment as the hunters rushed forward to catch the carcase before it went under the ice. When I dropped to one knee beside him he grinned up at me, the teeth very white in the iron-grey beard as he wiped blood from his forehead with the back of one hand.

‘I always did like to do my own stuntwork.’

‘A great script,’ I said. ‘What are you going to call the film – Spawn of the North?’

‘We could have got some good footage there,’ he said seriously as I pulled him to his feet.

They hauled the bear on to the shore and the headman pulled out the broken shaft of Desforge’s harpoon and came towards us. He spoke to me quickly in Eskimo and I translated for Desforge.

‘He says that by rights the bear is yours.’

‘And how in the hell does he make that out?’

‘The harpoon pierced a lung. He’d have died for sure.’

‘Well that’s certainly good news. Presumably we’d have gone to the great hereafter together.’

‘They want to know if you’d like the skin.’

‘What would be the point? Some careless bastard seems to have ruined the head. Tell them they can have it.’

I nodded to the headman who smiled with all the delight of a child and called to his friends. They formed a circle and shuffled round, arms linked, wailing in chorus.

‘Now what?’ Desforge demanded.

‘They’re apologising to the bear for having killed him.’

His head went back and he laughed heartily, the sound of it echoing flatly across the water. ‘If that don’t beat all. Come on, let’s get out of here before I go nuts or freeze to death or something,’ and he turned and led the way back along the shore.

When we reached the whaleboat he got in and rummaged for a blanket in the stern locker while I pushed off. By the time I’d clambered in after him and got the engine started, he had the blanket round his shoulders and was extracting the cork from a half-bottle of whisky with his teeth.

‘Looks as if they carry this with the iron rations,’ he said and held it out. ‘What about you?’

I shook my head. ‘We’ve been through all this before, Jack. I never use the stuff, remember?’

I had no way of knowing exactly how much whisky he had put away by then, but it was obvious that he was fast reaching a state where he would have difficulty in remembering where he was and why, never mind make any kind of sense out of past events. I knew the feeling well. There had been a time when I spent too many mornings in a grey fog wondering where I was – who I was. At that point it’s a long fast drop down unless you have enough sense to turn before it’s too late and take that first fumbling step in the other direction.

‘Sorry, I was forgetting,’ he said. ‘Now me – I’m lucky. I’ve always been able to take it or leave it.’ He grinned his teeth chattering slightly. ‘Mostly take it, mind you – one of life’s great pleasures, like a good woman.’

Just what was his definition of good was anybody’s guess. He swallowed deeply, made a face and examined the label on the bottle. ‘Glen Fergus malt whisky. Never heard of it and I’m the original expert.’

‘Our finest local brew.’

‘They must have made it in a very old zinc bath. Last time I tasted anything like it was during Prohibition.’

Not that he was going to let a little thing like that put him off and as I took the whaleboat out through the pack ice, he moved down to the prow. He sat there huddled in his blanket, the bottle clutched against his chest, staring up at the mountains and the ice-cap beyond as we skirted an iceberg that might have been carved from green glass. He spoke without turning round.

‘Ilana – she’s quite a girl, isn’t she?’

‘She has her points.’

‘And then some. I could tell you things about that baby that would make your hair stand up on end and dance. Miss Casting Couch of 1964.’ I was aware of a sudden vague resentment, the first stirrings of an anger that was as irrational as it was unexpected, but he carried straight on. ‘I gave her the first big break, you know.’

I nodded. ‘She was telling me about that on the flight in. Some war picture you made in Italy.’

He laughed out loud, lolling back against the bulwark as if he found the whole thing hilariously funny in retrospect. ‘The biggest mistake I ever made in my life, produced and directed by Jack Desforge. We live and learn.’

‘Was it that bad?’

He was unable to contain his laughter. ‘A crate of last year’s eggs couldn’t have smelled any higher.’

‘What about Ilana?’

‘Oh, she was fine.’ He shrugged. ‘No Bergman or anything like that, but she had other qualities. I knew that the first time I met her.’ He took another pull at the bottle. ‘I did everything for that girl. Clothes, grooming, even a new name – the whole bit.’

I frowned. ‘You mean Ilana Eytan isn’t her real name?’

‘Is it hell,’ he said. ‘She needed a gimmick like everyone else, didn’t she? I started out myself as Harry Wells of Tilman Falls, Wisconsin. When I first met Ilana she was plain Myra Grossman.’

‘And she isn’t Israeli?’

‘All part of the build-up. You know how it is. Israeli sounds better. It did to her anyway and that’s the important thing. She’s got a complex a mile wide. Her old man has a tailor’s shop in some place called the Mile End Road in London. You ever heard of it?’

I nodded, fighting back an impulse to laugh out loud. ‘It’s a funny old world, Jack, has that ever occurred to you?’

‘Roughly five times a day for the last fifty-three years.’ He grinned. ‘I’m only admitting to forty-five of those remember.’ And then his mood seemed to change completely and he moved restlessly, pulling the blanket more closely about his shoulders. ‘I’ve been thinking. Did Ilana have anything for me?’

‘Such as?’

‘A letter maybe – something like that.’

It was there in his voice quite suddenly, an anxiety he was unable to conceal and I shook my head. ‘Not that I know of, but why should she confide in me?’

He nodded and raised the bottle to his mouth again. It was cold now in spite of the sun and the perfect blue of the sky. A small wind lifted across the water and I noticed that the hands trembled slightly as they clutched the bottle. He sat there brooding for a while, looking his age for the first time since I’d known him and then quite unexpectedly, he laughed.

‘You know that was really something back there – with the bear I mean. What a way to go. Real B picture stuff. We don’t want it good, we want it by next Monday.’

He took another swallow from the bottle which was now half-empty and guffawed harshly. ‘I remember Ernie Hemingway saying something once about finishing like a man, standing up straight on your two hind legs and spitting right into the eye of the whole lousy universe.’ He swung round, half-drunk and more than a little aggressive. ‘And what do you think of that then, Joe, baby? What’s the old world viewpoint on the weighty matter of life and death, or have you no statement to make at this time?’

‘I’ve seen death if that’s what you mean,’ I said. ‘It was always painful and usually ugly. Any kind of life is preferable to that.’

‘Is that a fact now?’ He nodded gravely, a strange glazed expression in his eyes and said softly, ‘But what if there’s nothing left?’

And then he leaned forward, the eyes starting from his head, saliva streaking his beard and cried hoarsely, ‘What have you got to say to that, eh?’

There was nothing I could say, nothing that would help the terrible despair in those eyes. For a long moment he crouched there in the bottom of the boat staring at me and then he turned and hurled the bottle high into the air and back towards the green iceberg. It bounced on a lower slope, flashed once like fire in the sunlight and was swallowed up.

4

As we approached the Stella, Sørensen and Ilana Eytan came out of the wheelhouse and stood at the rail waiting for us. Desforge raised his arm in greeting and she waved.

‘Ilana baby, this is wonderful,’ he cried as we swung alongside and I tossed the end of the painter to Sørensen.

Desforge was up the ladder and over the rail in a matter of seconds and when I arrived she was tight in his arms looking smaller than ever in contrast to his great bulk.

And she had changed again. Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks were touched with fire. In some extraordinary manner she was alive in a way she simply had not been before. He lifted her in his two hands as easily as if she had been a child and kissed her.

‘Angel, you look good enough to eat,’ he said as he put her down. ‘Let’s you and me go below for a drink and you can tell me all the news from back home.’

For a moment I was forgotten as they disappeared down the companionway and Sørensen said, ‘So she is staying?’

‘Looks like it,’ I said.

‘When do you want to start back?’

‘There’s no great rush. I’ll refuel, then I’ll have a shower and something to eat.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll get you the evening weather report on the radio from Søndre tower.’

He went into the wheelhouse and I dropped back into the whaleboat, started the engine and turned towards the shore feeling slightly depressed as I remembered the expression in Ilana’s eyes when Desforge had kissed her. Perhaps it was because I’d seen it once already that day when Gudrid Rasmussen had looked at Arnie, offering herself completely without saying a word, and I didn’t like the implication.

God knows why. At the moment the only thing I could have said with any certainty was that in spite of her habitual aggressiveness, her harshness, I liked her. On the other hand if there was one thing I had learned from life up to and including that precise point in time, it was that nothing is ever quite as simple as it looks.

I thought about that for a while, rather grimly, and then the whaleboat grounded on the shingle and I got out and set to work.

I didn’t see any sign of Desforge or the girl when I returned to the Stella and I went straight below to the cabin I’d been in the habit of using on previous visits. It had been cold working out there on the exposed beach with the wind coming in off the sea and I soaked the chill from my bones in a hot shower for ten or fifteen minutes, then got dressed again and went along to the main saloon.

Desforge was sitting at the bar alone reading a letter, a slight, fixed frown on his face. He still hadn’t changed and the blanket he had wrapped around himself in the whaleboat lay at the foot of the high stool as if it had slipped from his shoulder.

I hesitated in the doorway and he glanced up and saw me in the mirror behind the bar and swung round on the stool. ‘Come on in, Joe.’

‘So you got your letter,’ I said.

‘Letter?’ He stared at me blankly for a moment.

‘The letter you were expecting from Milt Gold.’

‘Oh, this?’ He held up the letter, then folded it and replaced it in its envelope. ‘Yes, Ilana delivered it by hand.’

‘Not bad news I hope.’

‘Not really – there’s been a further delay in setting things up, that’s all.’ He put the letter in his pocket and reached over the bar for a bottle. ‘Tell me, Joe, how much longer have we got before the winter sets in and pack ice becomes a big problem and so on.’

‘You mean up here around Disko?’

‘No, I mean on the coast generally.’

‘That all depends.’ I shrugged. ‘Conditions fluctuate from year to year, but on the whole you’re clear till the end of September.’

He seemed genuinely astonished. ‘But that would give me another six or seven weeks. You’re sure about that?’

‘I should be – this is my third summer remember. August and September are the best months of the season. Highest mean temperatures, least problem with pack ice and so on.’

‘Well that’s great,’ he said. ‘Milt thinks they should be ready to go by the end of September.’

‘Which means you can hang on here and keep your creditors at bay till then,’ I said.

‘They’ll sing a different tune when I’m working and the shekels start pouring in again.’ He seemed to have recovered all his old spirits and went behind the bar and poured himself another drink. ‘You flying back tonight, Joe?’

I nodded. ‘No choice, I’ve got two charter trips arranged for tomorrow already and there could be more when I get back.’

‘That’s too bad. You’ll stay over for dinner?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘Good – I’ll settle up with you first, then I’ll take a shower and change. How much is it this time?’

‘Seven-fifty including the supplies.’

He opened a small safe that stood under the bar and took out a plain black cash box. It was one of the strange and rather puzzling things about him, this insistence on paying cash on the barrel for everything. His financial position may have been pretty rotten everywhere else in the world, but on the Greenland coast he didn’t owe a cent. He opened the box, took out a wad of notes that obviously contained several thousand dollars and peeled off eight hundred dollar bills.

‘That should take care of it.’

I fitted the notes into my wallet carefully and Desforge replaced the cash box in the safe. As he locked the steel door and straightened up again, Ilana Eytan came into the saloon.

I saw her first in the mirror behind the bar framed in the doorway and anywhere in the world from Cannes to Beverly Hills she would have had the heads turning.

She was wearing a slip of a dress in gold thread with tambour beading that must have set someone back a hundred guineas at least. The hemline was a good six inches above the knee, just right for swinging London that year and the black, shoulder-length hair contrasted superbly with the whole ensemble. Perhaps it was something to do with her smallness in spite of the gold high-heeled shoes, but she carried herself with a kind of superb arrogance that seemed to say: Take me or leave me – I couldn’t care less. I don’t think I’ve ever met any woman who looked more capable of taking on the whole world if needs be.

Desforge went to meet her, arms outstretched. ‘What an entrance. I don’t know where you got it, but that dress is a stroke of genius. You look like some great king’s whore.’

She smiled faintly. ‘That wasn’t exactly the intention, but it will do for a start. What about the letter – good news? Milt didn’t tell me much when I saw him.’

‘More delays I’m afraid.’ Desforge shrugged. ‘You should know the movie business by now. Milt thinks we’ll be ready to go by the end of next month.’

‘And what are you going to do till then?’

‘I might as well stay on here. It’s the perfect solution under the circumstances and I’m having far too good a time to want to leave just yet.’ He turned and grinned at me. ‘Isn’t that a fact, Joe?’

‘Oh, he’s having a ball all right,’ I assured her. ‘The only question is will he survive till the end of September.’

Desforge chuckled. ‘Don’t take any notice of Joe, angel. He’s just a natural born pessimist. Give him a drink while I have a shower then we’ll have something to eat.’

The door closed behind him and she turned to look at me calmly, hand on hip, the scrap of dress outlining her body so perfectly that she might as well have had nothing on.

‘You heard what the man said. Name your poison.’

I helped myself to a cigarette from a box on the bar. ‘Jack’s memory gets worse almost day-by-day. He knows perfectly well that I never use the stuff.’

‘That’s a dent in the image for a start,’ she said and went behind the bar. ‘Sure you won’t change your mind?’

I shook my head. ‘With a dress like that around I need a clear head.’

‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

‘A statement of fact. On the other hand I’ve no objection to keeping you company with a stiff tomato juice.’

‘Well laced with Worcestershire Sauce?’ I nodded.

‘We aim to please. Coming right up.’

There was an elaborate stereo record player in one corner and I moved across and selected a couple of old Sinatra LPs, mostly Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart material, with one or two standards thrown in for good measure.

The maestro started to give out with ‘All the things you are’ and I turned and went back to the bar. My tomato juice was waiting for me in a tall glass. It was ice-cold, obviously straight from the fridge and tasted fine. I swallowed half and she toasted me with an empty glass, picked up the bottle of vodka that stood at her elbow and poured some in. She added a scoop of crushed ice, something close to amusement in her eyes.

‘The perfect drink. Tasteless, odourless, the same results as a shot in the arm and no headache in the morning.’

I think I knew then what she had done and a moment later a sudden terrible spasm in the pit of my stomach confirmed it. I dropped the glass and clutched at the bar and her face seemed to crack wide open, the eyes widening in alarm.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

The taste started to rise into my mouth, foul as sewer water and I turned and ran for the door. I slipped and stumbled half-way up the companionway and was aware of her calling my name and then I was out into the cool evening air. I just managed to make the rail when the final nausea hit me and I dropped to my knees and was violently sick.

I hung there against the rail for a while, retching spasmodically, nothing left to come and finally managed to get some kind of control. When I got to my feet and turned she was standing a yard or two away looking strangely helpless, her face white, frightened.

‘What did you put into the tomato juice – vodka?’ I said wearily.

‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was almost inaudible. ‘I didn’t mean any harm.’

‘What was I supposed to do, make a pass at you on one vodka?’ I found a handkerchief, wiped my mouth and tossed it over the rail. ‘Something I omitted from the story of my life was the fact that I was once an alcoholic. That was as good a reason for my wife leaving me as all the romantic ones I gave you at Argamask. After I crawled back out of nowhere for the third time, she’d had enough. Her parting gift was to book me into a clinic that specialises in people like me. They did a very thorough job of aversion therapy with the aid of a couple of drugs called apomorphine and antabus. Just a taste of any kind of liquor these days and my guts turn inside out.’