Read Online The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich - Free Book Online Page B

listening. Slowly and pliantly Klaus bent, hands wrapped in two thick rags. With firm control he pulled the handle on the door until it opened. Then, just for a moment, the waiting men lost their bearings as the scent of the toasted nuts, honey, vanilla, wild strawberries, sugar, and subtly united oils and flours escaped the oven box. The scent trembled in the air.
    More than delicious. Impossible. Perhaps an Anishinaabe vision-word comes close. Perhaps there is no way to describe what they all experienced as Klaus tenderly drew the pan along the rack until it rested secure between his thick, furry, rag-protected paws.
    More sitting while the brown cake cooled. Eyes of Asin sunk, blackening. He made everyone uneasy now with his scratchy breathing. As the creation cooled, the watchers remembered things they’d rather have forgotten: how Asin had suffered from time to time with nameless rages, pointless furies. These angers had assumed a name and form in the person of the porcupine man, Klaus.
    Air poured in the screen door, cooling and healing. Dusk air. Pure air. Moved onto Ogichidaa. Bagakaabi took his fan, the wing of an eagle, and with immense care he swept the air toward Asin, whose face now worked in and out like a poisoned mud puppy’s, and who said, fixing everyone with eyes crossed:
    “Let us deliver him to the west. We are Ojibwe men—the name has a warrior’s meaning. We roast our enemies until they pucker! Once, we were feared. Our men brought sorrow. Mii-go iw keyaa gaa-izhi-mashkawigaabawiyang mewinzha. What have we here? Chimookomaanag? Women? Our enemy is in our hands and we do not make him suffer to console the spirits of our brothers. We let him cook our food. It is this . . . Klaus”—he scoured the name off his tongue—“whom we should burn to death!”
    In the space of quiet that followed on his words, then, everyone realized the old man’s bitter ghost was talking.
    “Oooo, ishte, niiji,” Bagakaabi said, drawing the wing of the eagle through the air in a soothing and powerful fashion. “Good thing you’ve told us this.” Looking at the rest of the men meaningfully, he said to Asin in a calm tone, “We respect your wishes, brother. However”—and now Bagakaabi held the wing of the eagle stiffly pointed toward the cake—“would we be honorable men if we did not keep our promise even to our enemy? Before we roast the prisoner, let us try his offering.”
    Klaus, whose intuition of their meaning just barely kept him horrified, then took from his pile of ingredients a tiny packet of white sweet powder and, with a gravity equal to Bagakaabi’s, coated the top of the cake with the magical dust. Klaus then motioned to everyone to cup their hands, Asin, too. He cut the cake into pieces and served them out. When they all had the cake in hand, they looked at it hungrily and waited for the elder to taste. Asin, however, was too slow and Charlie the future baker too tempted. Charlie bit into the cake. Before he chewed, he gave a startled and extraordinary squeak and his eyes went wide. It was too much for the rest. They all bit. Or nibbled. Tasted. And everyone emitted some particular and undiluted sound of pleasure. There was not a one who’d ever tasted the taste of this cake. It was a quiet and complex sensation on the tongue.
    We are people of simple food straight from the earth, thought Charlie. Food from the lakes and from the woods. Manoomin. Wiiyaas. Baloney. A little maple sugar now and then. Suddenly this: a powerful sweetness that opened the ear to sound. Embrace of roasted nut-meats. A tickling sensation of grief. A berry tartness. Joy. Klaus had inserted jam in thin-spread layers. And pockets of spices that have no origin in our language. So, too, there was no explanation for what happened next.
    Together, they sat, swallowed the last crumbs, pressed up the powdery sweetness with their fingers. When they had licked every grain into themselves, they sat numb with pleasant feelings.