Afanasi and Jeb Keeler organized a rescue party and found Amy's mother slightly wounded; a relative from farther south had come to take charge, and both women insisted that Amy leave school to assume responsibility for the hut. When Kendra heard this preposterous suggestion, she exploded: 'This girl will not leave my classroom. I forbid it.' Afanasi explained that if Amy was needed at home, which she obviously was, she would have to go there, that Eskimo custom demanded this, but Kendra cried: 'This child is brilliant.
She can accomplish anything. I've written to the people at the University of Washington and they've shown great interest. Might even enroll her at age sixteen if she's as bright as I claim.' Her voice broke into a wail: 'Mr. Afanasi! Don't sentence Amy to a life of darkness!' Her plea was futile. Amy was needed at home and that took precedence over any other consideration.
On the day this wonderfully gifted child was to go home, Kendra walked with her for two miles across the bitter tundra where no tree sprouted and only the tiniest flowers bloomed. When they parted she embraced the girl, held her to her bosom, and fought to keep back her tears: 'Amy, you know that you have a remarkable mind. You've seen in school that you have special gifts. Look, I tell you the truth. You're way ahead of where I was at your age. You can accomplish anything. For God's sake, read the books I've given you. Do something with your life. Do something.'
'What?' the girl asked listlessly, and Kendra answered: 'We never know, Amy. But if we treasure our life, something turns up. Look at me, Amy. How in hell did I wind up in Desolation? Where will you wind up? Who knows? But keep moving. Oh, Amy ...'
There were a thousand relevant things she wanted to tell this girl in their last moments together, but all she could do was lean down and kiss the round brown face, an act which Amy accepted without emotion.
The next two weeks were bitter cold, more like midwinter than spring, and Kendra was as desolate in spirit as the storm-blown landscape, for she saw that regardless of how ably she and Kasm Hooker managed their school and encouraged their students, the harsh realities of Eskimo life established the limits of what could be accomplished, and one night she invited Afanasi and Keeler to her apartment in the Teacherage to discuss these matters with her and Hooker.
She began by posing a problem which depressed her: 'Mr. Afanasi, why are you the only Eskimo in Desolation with a world outlook ... no, even an Alaskan outlook?'
'I had a good grandfather who taught me what to do, a father and uncle who taught me what not to do.'
'How can Kasm and I produce young people with the outlook and the capacities you have?'
'It happens by accident, I think. With Amy Ekseavik, you'd have had a chance. With Jonathan Borodin ... well, you know, he should be exactly like me. Able to handle himself in the white man's world, a pillar in his Eskimo village. But somehow we missed, and now all he commands is a snowmobile.'
'He tells me he may want to become a shamanin the ancient pattern, but a constructive one.'
Afanasi heard this news with great interest: 'Now, that's not a crazy idea, not at all. I've thought for some time that perhaps with the pressures of modern life, television, snowmobiles, clatter, that there might be a place for the revival of shamanism as my grandfather knew it.' He rose and walked about the apartment, picked at some food, then sat down close to Kendra: 'A hundred years ago, when Healy and his Bear came here with Sheldon Jackson, the shamans they met were a disreputable lot. Jackson's reports gave the system a bad name, but the shamans my grandfather worked with were a much different sort.' He rose and stalked the room again, concluding: 'Maybe that Borodin boy, you know he has unlimited talent, you saw that in school, Kasm. I'm going to talk with him.'
The conversation never took place, because three days later, in a swale that still contained deep snow, Jonathan Borodin, nineteen years old, got his rifle, his SnowGo-7 and five gallons of spare gas and headed far inland to get himself a couple of caribou, which his grandfather sorely wanted as the best food an Eskimo could eat. Dragging a cargo sled behind him to haul the meat, he rode speedily in an easterly direction toward where lakes and wandering rivers abounded, and in an area which he had often visited before, he shot two big caribou, slaughtered them on the spot, loaded the abundance of fresh meat on the sled and the horns on the back of his snowmobile.
On the way home he met with two disasters: a tremendous storm thundered in from the south, bringing new snow and whipping about the remnants trapped in the swale. When the blizzard struck, he was momentarily frightened, for the hunters of Desolation stood in awe of any storm coming at them from the south. If it were to continue at its present rate, he could be in trouble, but he felt sure that when it abated he could pick his way westward to Desolation. He never considered abandoning the sled he was dragging and speeding homeward as fast as possible: When I shoot me a caribou I bring it home.
But as he descended a moderate slope, with the bitter wind from the sea driving hard against his face, he realized that the remainder of his journey, some thirty-five miles, was going to be rough going: No worry. I have loads of gas. Then as he climbed the western side of the slope his motor began to cough, and at the very crest, where the wind was fiercest, it stopped entirely.
Again he had no immediate fear, for on his varied trips he had mastered the intricacies of his machine, and he assumed that he could repair it now. He could not. Some new defect, far more serious than before, had disabled his SnowGo, and with the gale whipping about him, he failed in one attempt after another to identify and repair whatever had stalled his engine. As the grayness of late afternoon fused into a whiteout, he realized that he was in peril of freezing.
Only his grandfather was aware that Jonathan did not return that night, and he felt sure that the boy had taken refuge behind some hillock, but when noon came and there was still no sign of Jonathan, the old man began to worry. But he did not alert anyone, because his mode of life kept him apart from others, so a second night passed with the boy still missing.
Early next morning the old man, trembling with fear, reported to the makeshift office from which Afanasi conducted his business, and there he delivered the appalling news:
'Jonathan, he went out, two days ago, caribou. He not come back.'
Afanasi leaped into action, and telephoned Harry Rostkowsky at the airfield in Barrow to fly south and east of Desolation toward the lakes to see if he could spot a missing SnowGo with a boy camped nearby. The area to be searched was due south of Barrow, and Rosty radioed the airfield three times to report that he had found nothing, and Barrow reported this by phone to Afanasi, but on a later pass Rosty saw the stalled machine and an inert body huddled beside it:
'Rostkowsky calling Barrow. Inform Afanasi Desolation SnowGo located atop ridge due east. Body nearby probably frozen.'
A party of four men and two snowmobiles was organized immediately, with Afanasi riding pillion on one, a highly regarded Eskimo tracker on the other. Rostkowsky, aloft in his Cessna, spotted them leaving town and signaled the direction they should take, and after nearly two hours, for they traveled slowly and cautiously, they came upon Jonathan Borodin's new SnowGo, his five gallons of spare gas, his two butchered caribou and his frozen corpse.
WHEN KENDRA SPOTTED THE MOURNFUL CORTEGE Approaching the village from the east she knew what to expect, for everyone in Desolation had been alerted to the probability of tragedy, but forewarning did not make the death of this excellent young man any easier to take, and she ran to where the corpse lay, still in huddled, frozen posture.
'Oh my God!' she cried. 'What a terrible waste!' And that was the threnody that sounded throughout Desolation Point.
It was not until the school term ended that Kendra felt the full impact of the tragedies that had darkened the spring months when hope should have been so resurgent, and for two weeks she idled about the lonely school, filing her grocery order for the coming year and purchasing some two thousand dollars' worth of unnecessary specialties to be used for entertaining her students and their pare
nts. But then Afanasi, who seemed to look after everyone in his village, came to her with an order: 'It's time to get you out of here. Go to Fairbanks or Juneau or Seattle. We have funds for teachers'
travel, and here's a ticket to Anchorage with an extension for wherever within reason you want to go. Utah to see your folks? That would be okay.'
'Right now I do not care to see them,' she said firmly, but she accepted the tickets, one to Anchorage, one open, and as she flew south with minimum baggage, for her home was now Desolation Point and she was loath to leave it, she looked at herself coldly, as if she had a mirror before her face: I'm twenty-six, I've never been close to marriage, and that article by the woman researcher in Denver made it so clear that with every passing year after twenty-three, an educated woman has less and less chance of ever getting married, but I want to live in Alaska, I love the frontier, I thrill to the challenge of the arctic ... Oh God, I'm so mixed up.
But of one thing she was certain, and this pertained to the nature of life itself, and as the engines of the jet droned on she continued talking to herself as if she were the subject of an analysis by an outside observer: I love people. Amy Ekseavik is part of my life. Jonathan Borodinoh God, why didn't I talk to him more? And I do not want to live alone. I cannot face the endless years. The arctic night, I have no problems with it, for it passes, but loneliness of the spirit never passes.
Very slowly and with a recognized confusion she took from the mock-leather portfolio in which she carried her school papers a torn sheet on which was written an address in Anchorage, and at the airport she hurried to a cab, as if she feared she might change her mind, and thrust the paper in the driver's hand: 'Can you find this?' and he replied: 'I'd be fired if I couldn't. Biggest apartment house in town,' and although she was fully aware that she was doing a most dangerous thing, she took the elevator to the fifth floor, knocked on the door, and expected to see Jeb Keeler waiting for her when the door opened. He was, and as she embraced him she whispered:
'Without someone to love, I was lost in a blinding snowstorm,' and he said he understood.
Later that night as they lay together, she confided: 'Amy and Jonathan, they tore at my heart. We come to a place to teach, and the children teach us,' and Jeb said:
'It's the same with lawyers. We learn much more than we help others.'
She stayed with him for five days, and near the end of their time together she said:
'Afanasi suspected that I might be coming to see you. I think that's why he gave me the ticket to Anchorage. He says you're a man to be trusted. I asked him if he gave every lawyer that recommendation, and he laughed: "Not Poley Markham. I love him but I sure don't trust him,"' and Jeb said: 'He's wrong there. Poley's different, but I've found him to be completely honest. Never touches a dime that isn't his!'
The conversation then turned to talk of their future, and she said that perhaps at the end of the next school year, if Jeb still wanted to specialize in Alaskan law, particularly north of the Circle, they should consider marriage, with the understanding that Kendra wanted to continue teaching at Desolation, or perhaps move into Barrow.
Jeb assured her that with his and Poley's leverage they could get her one of the jobs in Barrow, and she said, as she kissed him goodbye: 'Let's think about that.
A good teacher with all that expensive equipment ought to be able to turn out some terrific Eskimos.'
At the airport, as she waited for her northbound plane, she watched idly the arrival of a Japan Air Lines plane from Tokyo as it discharged those passengers who would be stopping over in Anchorage, and saw five athletic-looking Japanese three men and two young women who were also going to have a very deep but much different interest in Alaska.
THEY CALLED HIM SENSEI.
EVERY JAPANESE ADDICTED TO mountain climbing, and they were legion, called him Takabuki-sensei, an honorific which could be translated as something like Revered-and-Beloved-Professor Takabuki. At forty-one his official position was professor of moral philosophy at Waseda University in Tokyo, but arrangements had been made with both the university authorities and the Japanese government for him to be absent on expeditions as often as the funding and a balanced, dependable climbing party could be arranged.
Japan's premier mountaineer, this small, wiry, normally clean-shaven man was familiar to newspaper and magazine readers from his photographs as a heavily bearded figure standing at the windblown, snowy apex of some great mountain. Because Japan lay relatively close to the great mountains of Asia, he had as a young apprentice climbed both Nanga Parbat and K-2, and in later years had led two assaults on Everest, one aborted at 27,000 feet by the death of two members, the other successful when he and two of his team stood on top of the world at 29,028 feet above sea level. The latter had been a classic performance without even one minor accident.
Encouraged by his successes, Japanese supporters had raised funds for him to lead lesser expeditions to Aconcagua in the Argentine, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the Matterhorn on the Italian-Swiss border, twice to Mount St. Elias in Alaska and once to Tyree in Antarctica. Even his German competitors agreed that Takabuki-sensei was a complete mountaineer. Said one German periodical specializing in alpinism: 'He can do anything he sets his mind to, and he has two salient characteristics. Even in adversity he smiles to keep the spirits of his fellow climbers high, and he brings them back alive.
The two deaths that destroyed his 1974 assault on Everest occurred two thousand feet below where he was climbing close to the summit. Two members of his team, unroped, moved carelessly and plunged to their deaths.'
But in all his recent triumphs, another challenge gnawed at him, and in time his obsession grew so great that the mountain he had not yet conquered seemed to move about with him wherever he went, filling his mind. It can be done, he assured himself repeatedly. It's not a difficult climb. I could have mastered it when I was a boy.
It's no more than 1a walk, really, but to take that walk requires a mixture of brute strength and infinite delicacy. At this point in his reverie he usually stopped, stood flat-footed, looked off into space, and questioned: If it's so simple, why do so many meet their death on that damned mountain?
He was in this frame of mind on the third of January when he was scheduled to meet with the mountaineering leaders of Japan, especially those industrialists who in the past had financed expeditions. When he and his associate Kenji Oda stood, before them he realized that the Japanese New Year celebrations wildest in the world, with even more alcohol consumed than at Scotland's Hogmanay roistering had left these gentlemen somewhat hungover and bleary-eyed, but after some friendly joshing as to who had been drunkest everybody in Japan, it seemed, having been so to some degree or other they were as ready for business as they were going to be this day.
'How many would be in your team, do you think?'
'Five. Three men, two women.'
'Very small in comparison with your Everest teams.'
'A totally different climbing method.'
'In what way?'
'Fewer camps, much lighter gear.'
'But why does Denali fascinate you, Sensei?' Quickly the interrogator added: 'Because it does, you know.'
Takabuki's face hardened. His hands clenched and he disclosed what tormented him.
'Compared to the really great mountains of the world, Everest and Nanga Parbat for height, Matterhorn or the Eiger for rock work, Alaska's Denali is trivial.'
'Then why allow it to become an obsession?'
'Because of its challenge. Especially to a Japanese.'
'But you just said it was easy.'
'It is, except for three facts. It lies close to the Arctic Circle, less than two hundred and fifty miles ...'
'In kilometers?'
'In Alaska they use miles. Everest is nearly two thousand five hundred miles farther south, and that difference in latitude makes Denali seem quite a few thousand feet higher than it really is.'
'Why?' a well-lubricated industrialist asked, and Takabuki
said: 'At higher latitudes the air is thinner, just as it is at the higher altitudes. Everest, very high and moister. Denali, not so high, but very thin all the way up.' Satisfied that he had justified his basic respect for Denali, he moved on to his second-point: 'It's true that Denali does not present us with much serious rock work, hardly any. And that's where the trouble comes for us Japanese and Germans, Because we're used to steep rock work and very high altitudes, we scamper to the top and yell back jubilantly "See! It was nothing!" And then on the way down, we grow careless in our euphoria, plunge over the edge or get lost in an avalanche, and no one ever sees us again.' He stopped, stared at his questioners, and added: 'They don't even find the bodies.' Halting again, he said painfully: 'Denali is a burial ground for German and Japanese climbers who come down the mountainside rejoicing,' and he asked Kenji Oda, who had studied with him at Waseda, to show the committee the map and chart they had drawn up. It displayed the mournful record of the arrogant Germans and the inattentive Japanese.
'Here is a team of four Germans, great climb, record speed I believe. No challenge whatever, they said later. That is, the two who didn't die on the way down.' He indicated another group of five Germans: 'A masterful team. I climbed with three of them in the Alps. They could go straight up any rocky face. Two more dead.' He pointed to the record of a team of seven that had lost two, a team of five that had lost one.
'How could a relatively easy mountain like Denali exact such a heavy toll on experienced climbers?' asked a manufacturer who had climbed with Takabuki-sensei in earlier years, and the dean of mountaineers added his third significant fact about this tall, beautiful and terrible mountain: 'Because it lures you, like the sirens of Ulysses, but when you're up there on its peak, triumphant, it's apt to send forth storms of hellish magnitude. Winds of a hundred miles an hour, temperatures of minus-ninety with chill factors to below a hundred and twenty, and when a storm strikes, if you don't burrow into a snow cave like an animal, you perish.'