Read Online The Seal Wife by Kathryn Harrison - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kathryn Harrison
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Historical fiction, Psychological, Psychological fiction, Romance, Historical, Love Stories, Anchorage (Alaska), Mute persons, Meteorologists, Kites - Design and Construction, Kites, Design and construction, Meteorological Stations
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effects of loneliness, the toll of displacement: all of these are so strong that Bigelow never considers the more likely possibility, that the house has a new occupant, with a new bed. Under his cheek the smell of wolf is unfamiliar, but he falls asleep quickly, lying on his side, his knees drawn up.
In the dream, he dismembers her. It’s easy enough; he’s learned from watching her skin and cut up game. And there is no blood. Instead, a stream of writing spills from her veins, letters and runes and symbols he doesn’t understand. They pour out in order, like a Weather Bureau teletype, a cipher he is to translate into meaning.
Except he can’t fathom the writing inside the woman. He’s killed her for nothing.
Bigelow wakes disoriented from the nightmare, reassuring himself that he can’t have killed her, for people bleed blood, not language, and where is the knife he used?
A lamp is burning on the table, and a man sits in the chair watching him. His arm balances on the stock of a shotgun. “Have a good rest?” he says, when Bigelow doesn’t explain himself.
“What are you doing?” Bigelow answers.
“What am I doing?” The man is older than Bigelow, with a typically Alaskan beard, unbarbered and grizzled, his left eyebrow jigged through by a scar that continues up to his hairline.
“What have you done to her?”
“What’ve I done to who?” He leans forward, a posture more curious than predatory, and Bigelow, still suffering the effects of his dream, stands and points at the bed he was lying on.
“Her,” he says. “She. The woman—her bed. The woman who lies here.”
“There isn’t a woman that lies there. Wish there was,” he adds.
“There is. It’s hers. The tobacco. The kettle.” Bigelow points at things, and each time the man shakes his head. “Mine,” he says each time, until finally Bigelow understands. The woman hasn’t returned.
He makes an abrupt lunge for the door, but the man blocks his escape, and the two of them stand together, close enough to embrace. Bigelow, too ashamed to speak, looks at the floor. Slowly—slowly enough that, were he to try, Bigelow could elude him—the man reaches out and takes hold of the front of Bigelow’s shirt, making him aware of how his heart is pounding under the fabric.
The man holds him like that until he can feel Bigelow’s humiliation, until Bigelow, defeated, allows himself to sag inside his clothes. Then the man pushes him backward out the door.
STANDING ON THE BLUFF as the line plays out, peering up into the limitless and empty sky, he feels he can’t catch his breath. He sinks to his knees and turns his face from the vastness above him.
Caruso sings, outsings wind scraping over rocks. Bigelow has carried his gramophone up the hill for company, a human voice, loud and triumphant, even if the language isn’t one he understands.
But it’s not working. Kneeling on the ground, eyes closed, panting as if he’s been running, he can’t stop himself—he wonders where she is, and why she left him.
NOVEMBER 19, 1916: 13 degrees; barometer 29.90, falling; .09 precip, Wind: ESE 22 mph. November 30, 1916: 13 degrees; barometer 30.00, falling, Trc. precip, W: NE 27 mph. December 2, 1916: 2 degrees; barometer 29.80, falling, 1.02 precip, W: 0 mph. December 17, 1917: –4 degrees, barometer 29.60, falling. 0 precip. W: SE 3.5 mph.
Barometer falling, barometer falling. How can it be that the barometer is always falling? Wouldn’t it have to rise sometimes? Years later, remembering his second winter in Anchorage, Bigelow’s impression will be that the pressure continued impossibly to plummet, and that the long nights were (every one of them, despite notations to the contrary) unrelieved by the rising of the moon or the appearance of stars.
He uses more kerosene than he can afford, buying extra lamps and keeping a circle of them burning around his table as he works, getting up to crank the gramophone, to set the kettle to boil, to stamp
In the dream, he dismembers her. It’s easy enough; he’s learned from watching her skin and cut up game. And there is no blood. Instead, a stream of writing spills from her veins, letters and runes and symbols he doesn’t understand. They pour out in order, like a Weather Bureau teletype, a cipher he is to translate into meaning.
Except he can’t fathom the writing inside the woman. He’s killed her for nothing.
Bigelow wakes disoriented from the nightmare, reassuring himself that he can’t have killed her, for people bleed blood, not language, and where is the knife he used?
A lamp is burning on the table, and a man sits in the chair watching him. His arm balances on the stock of a shotgun. “Have a good rest?” he says, when Bigelow doesn’t explain himself.
“What are you doing?” Bigelow answers.
“What am I doing?” The man is older than Bigelow, with a typically Alaskan beard, unbarbered and grizzled, his left eyebrow jigged through by a scar that continues up to his hairline.
“What have you done to her?”
“What’ve I done to who?” He leans forward, a posture more curious than predatory, and Bigelow, still suffering the effects of his dream, stands and points at the bed he was lying on.
“Her,” he says. “She. The woman—her bed. The woman who lies here.”
“There isn’t a woman that lies there. Wish there was,” he adds.
“There is. It’s hers. The tobacco. The kettle.” Bigelow points at things, and each time the man shakes his head. “Mine,” he says each time, until finally Bigelow understands. The woman hasn’t returned.
He makes an abrupt lunge for the door, but the man blocks his escape, and the two of them stand together, close enough to embrace. Bigelow, too ashamed to speak, looks at the floor. Slowly—slowly enough that, were he to try, Bigelow could elude him—the man reaches out and takes hold of the front of Bigelow’s shirt, making him aware of how his heart is pounding under the fabric.
The man holds him like that until he can feel Bigelow’s humiliation, until Bigelow, defeated, allows himself to sag inside his clothes. Then the man pushes him backward out the door.
STANDING ON THE BLUFF as the line plays out, peering up into the limitless and empty sky, he feels he can’t catch his breath. He sinks to his knees and turns his face from the vastness above him.
Caruso sings, outsings wind scraping over rocks. Bigelow has carried his gramophone up the hill for company, a human voice, loud and triumphant, even if the language isn’t one he understands.
But it’s not working. Kneeling on the ground, eyes closed, panting as if he’s been running, he can’t stop himself—he wonders where she is, and why she left him.
NOVEMBER 19, 1916: 13 degrees; barometer 29.90, falling; .09 precip, Wind: ESE 22 mph. November 30, 1916: 13 degrees; barometer 30.00, falling, Trc. precip, W: NE 27 mph. December 2, 1916: 2 degrees; barometer 29.80, falling, 1.02 precip, W: 0 mph. December 17, 1917: –4 degrees, barometer 29.60, falling. 0 precip. W: SE 3.5 mph.
Barometer falling, barometer falling. How can it be that the barometer is always falling? Wouldn’t it have to rise sometimes? Years later, remembering his second winter in Anchorage, Bigelow’s impression will be that the pressure continued impossibly to plummet, and that the long nights were (every one of them, despite notations to the contrary) unrelieved by the rising of the moon or the appearance of stars.
He uses more kerosene than he can afford, buying extra lamps and keeping a circle of them burning around his table as he works, getting up to crank the gramophone, to set the kettle to boil, to stamp
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