University of Northern Iowa

On VoyageAuthor(s): Sharon WhiteSource: The North American Review, Vol. 272, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 15-17Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124838 .

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NAR

ON VOYAGE

Sharon White

They went ashore and looked about them. The weather was fine. There was dew on the grass, and'thefirstthing they did was to get some of it on their hands and put it to their lips, and to them it seemed like the sweetest thing they had ever tasted.

Graenlendinga Saga

1

A he second hour. We sit up in the tree like red leaves. From the tree we can see all the way to Mexico. A large body of land in the south. We can also see houses some blue some red and dogs and a family of raccoons in the bushes down the cliff. We can all see what we want to see from so high in the tree. But we don't like it up here at all.

The little town below is nothing compared to Mexico where we were all born. We put on wings in the first hour of this grand earth and flew north. It's just now that we've landed. Our wings are red. We all have the same voice.

And we all sing like mad. All the trees and fields are green in this strange land. We fear we're here forever. Our

wings stuck with sap to the tree a big old maple that grows and shivers on the cliff. Our hearts thump thump thump.

The night comes fast. The day goes fast. Our lives wear down our lives wear quick our lives wear thin like stock

ings in the tree.

Can we be cut down we yell. No one looks up. We write it in blue on the trunk of the tree. It stinks up here

put us down. No one comes. We want all sorts of things. Never beans. Perhaps the fruit of the mountains of Mex

ico. Purple and sweet and cooked up fast on our wings by the light of the moon.

When we were little kids we learned to curtsey and shake the hand of the bishop with our right hands. Our

momma gave us pudding on the day the bishop came. And we all said God save the pudding and the bishop and

dug in. In winter in deep winter we rode horses up on the

glaciers of the high fearsome mountains of Mexico. In

deep winter we ate no pudding and our momma went off into hiding. In deep winter the bishop was no fool. He

stayed inside and sent us off to the highest cliffs. We hated it. Our food fit for lizards and rancid at best our entertainment the drear wind. So we made wings and set

off at the first hour for the north. We saw a big soft field but all the fields were trees. We

landed in a tree. And the tree had green leaves. The river runs over there the horses run over there the

boy runs over there. Get us down we work for the bishop. He'll pay you well. He'll reimburse you with diamonds and a room full of flowers. The second hour we'll be here forever. No one in this town wants diamonds, they grow their own flowers. And in the far south Mexico cuts into our hearts and shivers in our wings. We'll get down yet.

We'll get down soon.

2 9 December

I advised the dear little woman that she should wrap herself up in fur tight as she could so Anooko would find no entrance to her sweet form. This she did and through the night I watched in the bright light of blubber the

man's efforts come to naught. He could not get in through her skins so to speak thus the bright hand of god and the

purity of the angels persevered in this dark northland. I have been here now for three long months. It is the

worst of the winter. We daren't go outside the igloo for fear of freezing to our deaths. The men howl round the house like wolves. They refuse to come inside like civi lized beings. They refuse to live with savages they say.

Let them freeze. God watches over the good and does what he will with the others.

/ January My boils are bad. I fear I may go blind. I have been told to drink seal's blood but the men have caught nothing for a month now. We hope that providence will support us in our need and supply us with food.

13 January There's a man here who wants my head. He took away all

my ink yesterday after I spent the morning melting snow and mixing up a fine bright batch of it. He is from the ship that was iced in a long time hence. He is quite crazy I think. He wears skins so thick he can hardly walk. The

men call him old Stagoona. Stagoona hates me and turns

June 1987 15

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SHARON WHITE

his fearsome wrath on my innocent soul. He spits ink at

my igloo and at my face if I so venture out from my house.

8 February The storm is bad. Food is low. Almost blind.

3 Sir. This is a fertile country inhabited by sweet disposi tioned savages who can be harnessed and used to good advantage. You must give them trinkets and then they are

happy. There are also many dogs with pointed noses

running in the extensive forests. Deep in said forests there is a tree of the softest bark of the deepest color

orange. I have no doubt but that this is a special tree

possessing rare powers. In the woods there are cleared places where the sav

ages have planted Indian corn and peases. And other roots

not known on our native soil. Last night we captured a

little savage from his sister and mother.

Two of the men sir were getting water in the fine brass

buckets and a savage came up and took one of the buck

ets. The man fired at the savage and chaos ensued. The

savages fled into the forest leaving a beautiful girl tall as our women and almost as fair. And her mother an old

white haired figure and two little boys. We caught one of the children as hostage for the bucket. But the girl bit and kicked and cried out whenever we approached her. We watched her drag the old woman and the other boy into

the forest after the savages. We still have in our possession the little boy savage and intend to convey him to Eng land.

7

It's very black in here. We're stuck. Have been for a day. The darkness all up and down the length of our bodies. Like clouds we thought at first. Clouds block the sun. But we've learned something. It's not clouds. The sun gone

and all down inside our little pool darkness is king. The worm is everybody's friend. He's my friend first. We kiss and it looks like fighting. When we were young we remembered the sun and long days on the dock crabbing.

But now the hour comes in and reminds us of the endless

repetition of the darkness. The worm kisses me but I fight him off. And the rest of us keep up a quiet crackling on the rock. Some of us feed all hours and others only at the

high tide. The difference is age. We're the little ones and we eat what we can for as long as we can.

Out on the water two red figures are walking. I hear

someone. All down inside us the orange color glows like

wings of the dead orange oriole. The beach is covered with these birds. The beach is not visible from where we feed. The position of our bodies is something new the

shape we take something new too. The darkness all

around us a collar of barnacle secures us to the rock. We

were much larger and could see what we wanted to see

but in this new hour we take this shape and pray that the kind will release us from the responsibility of a soul.

On the beach the figures put up houses just small

enough to look like pleasure homes. Replicas of an earlier time when we remember crabbing on the Gulf of Mexico and the large lonely fig tree in our grandmother's yard.

Only three figs would this tree give and each fig was

sacred. You must dust them off first but the taste and the tree grown from each fig is fantastic.

Out on the water the boat passes two red figures. We

call up our king and show him the crab and the snail and the anemone born of the wind.

We call up the wind and call up the water and call up the sun. But darkness is king.

8 We came after three years journey to a kingdom that was

the most beautiful place we had ever seen. The sky was full of birds with red feathers and the beak of a wood

pecker and eyes that grow wider and darker as they fly. It is a rich land and the people therein are a peaceful tribe. A

story is told there how one king, wanting to know if the soil of Persia was what gave the Persians their choleric

nature, had all the soil of Persia brought into his own

country and covered over with a carpet fashioned of the finest green silk. Then he had laid a table of the best cooked birds and fishes and fruits of his land. Pomegran ates as big as heads and plums as dark as a rose. Then he invited all the kindest people in the reaches of his Ker

mania kingdom. What happened was to be expected. The king picked

up the largest pomegranate and crushed it in his queen's face and all the other kind Kermanians buffeted each other with fish eyes and chicken wings and boars' knuck les.

So it was proven. The soil of Persia was at fault.

9

In the seventh month of that year we set out with fifty men for the northwest and the river that flowed to the

great rocky mountains. We had scant provisions. Enough maize and dried fish to hold us until we could procure fresh fish in the great river. We lost many of our men by starvation, the maize and fish not sufficient to stave off

hunger. There were no fish in the river. I was left in the

eighth month with twelve men and no food. We abandoned the canoes and set off on foot, for we

had come to the plains. We walked in the direction of the west thinking to come upon a patch of wood called an island by the indians, and a settlement therein. I had on

my person a bar of chocolate from which I broke a piece and melted it in the water we drank that night. The 23rd of September. Already snow was on the ground. My men

were making known to me that they could go no further. This flavored water revived them considerably. And the next morning we set out renewed. Towards the end of the

day again they beseeched me to stop saying they could go no further. So once again I broke off another piece of the chocolate and melted it in the water. Again they were revived and much improved in spirits.

On the eighth day of the month when the great waters

freeze, we came to a large lake in the far north. I went

with three Canadians to an island in the center of the lake. Here we found a great herd of caribou living on the small island and the bones of many others. There were no

beasts that prey on the deer, perhaps accounting for their

large size and the number of their herd. I thought that

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N A R

there must be much starvation in the cold months from the number of bones we found. We killed as many caribou as we could fit in the canoe and set off for the shore. The indians had no stories about this caribou island.

When we came to the river my brother Wanague and his

family took great spears and flipped the white fish one after another out of the river. Soon we had enough to last

us the winter. Great sweet fish as big as a child. We took near one-thousand of them out of the river that day. The

next days we spent drying the fish and making ready for the winter. I was not safe with anyone. The Canadians in

fear of me as an englishman and the indians like as not

quick to kill me. I took on the garments of a savage and

put dirt all over my face. In this way I lived for three years. And I can say that if it were not for the knowledge of a less

savage world, I could have lived in contentment in this

simple way until the end of my time.

11 We took our boat and followed the land that bent in on the

sea or the sea that bent in on the land we knew not which. All is dark. Othere presses us forward. The sea is wild and

spattered with ice. We cannot land. The people are hos tile. We followed the land for five days west the Great

Bear to the north. Othere says there is no fear in his heart.

We sail turning with the sea or the land we know not which. My stomach is full of bile. On the shore animals move the green light of the north in their eyes and teeth. It is harder than we could have thought. The night and the trees on the edge of the sea more night and the water,

night more black elements and nothing to hold us to a

place. We killed sixty horse whales in two days. The ship is full of the meat and tusks. The land is all waste land

except where the Finns live for hunting in the winter and in summer for fishing in the sea. We plan to sail west around the land for three more days.

We are as far as any whale hunters ever go.

12

There were women on the dock, of the strangest beauty.

They wore red woolen skirts and petticoats of the same

deep red pulled up around their heads, the band enclos

ing their extraordinary oval faces.

They set up a howl when they saw me. They were

taunting me for being unmarried, throwing rocks and dead fish at my face. I hurried off the dock and walked into the town. An old man called Martin came up and offered to take my baggage for me. The sky was lumines cent grey and the white washed houses of the village were

brilliant against the sky, broken here and there by the

indigo blue of a man's leggings or the red skirt of a woman.

I walked straight to the old woman's cottage and they welcomed me, and shut the two doors so we could gather by the turf fire and the wind pushed against the wood outside.

Later two old men came to tell me stories and one was

a dancer. I had brought my fiddle and I played what I knew but no one could dance to it.

Martin stopped by with a jug of poteen and we stayed that way?women crouched by the fire, men lined against the walls until late at night.

A woman came in, the sister of the man drowned

between south and middle island last week in the storm.

She asked to see the clothes of the dead man. We brought out a striped purse and a cap and a pair of torn indigo leggings, she set up a wild keening for they were her

brother's.

The two doors of the house closed shut, the fire dim. There were no windows, the turf smoldering.

In the morning I left for the south island where the

living is not as primitive.

14 First there is the English Peacock found in grass houses, cleverly woven by the little river Isis. People take quick looks at these rare spectacular birds as they sit on the

stone wall near the pub and drink their beer and sherry. The women all wear long dresses and pendant earrings,

opal, emeralds, glittering moonstone. The men are vain

birds, preening themselves and rearranging their cravats.

The peacocks are amused. Sometimes squirrels sit in the

branches of the green trunks. Sometimes other birds,

sparrows and such, join the peacocks. At dusk the pea cocks start up their song, the people are afraid and go inside. The river is still. The fish listen. It is louder than

anyone can hear. The peacocks are screeching, pretend

ing they are the voices of all the men and women dangling their legs into the Isis.

15 We sailed for a year around those hot islands looking for

her uncle who disappeared several years back. We befriended a whale and this was lucky. I could

take a ride on the back of the whale so to speak whenever I desired. It was lovely. We had showers in the spout of the whale. They were carefree days and we never found

her uncle, which was just as well. We always thought that he was, in all actuality, back in the states and married

again under a different name. We kept this from her. Oh how many things did we hide? I was a boy when we started and now I'm a man. Before we went on the

expedition to find her uncle, I had been around the world in a curragh, an old Celtic boat, narrow, delicately bal

anced.

I met a native on Gladiolina and fell in love. She was

gorgeous. Red hair, dark skin, round buttocks. I learned how to be a man. I killed off all her family and made a big house for myself on the island. This broke us apart. I left for the next island Martinolina. I met a white woman there who lived in a grass hut. She took me to this hut and introduced me to her passionate mother.

It was like Circe. I couldn't get away. I grew a beard and learned to polish my legs with snake skin.

I longed for the taste of fresh cow's milk. I was past adolescence, I was into the middle years. They brought

me goats and sheep and lizards hoping to milk something from them that would please me. I grew thin. I went away finally in my curragh, warped with the hot tropical sun and

my body seared to a blackness.

June 1987 17

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