Ice Brothers Read online

  “Lesson one,” Mowrey said with grim satisfaction, “sled dogs are not pets. The Eskies treat ’em rough and don’t even feed ’em much when they ain’t using them. Sled dogs will kill you if you fall. They kill kids all the time up here. The Eskies look at that the way we look at car accidents.”

  “I see,” Paul replied, still finding it hard to believe.

  “You got to talk to a sled dog in his own language,” Mowrey continued. “And one thing they know is to run when it looks like a man is throwing a stone.”

  After passing a sod warehouse, they saw the village ahead of them. Paul had half expected to come upon a collection of igloos or primitive huts, such as he had seen in schoolbook illustrations, and was surprised to see what appeared to be a toy village, about a dozen miniature cottages and a church, all painted brick red with white trim.

  “The Danes bring in wood for construction,” Mowrey explained. “It’s expensive and so is coal, so they keep everything small.”

  A half dozen children dressed as Greenlanders, but with faces of varying cast and hue, greeted them with a fine mixture of shyness and exuberance, laughing but keeping their distance. The youngsters led them toward the largest of the houses, which had neatly painted white shutters and gingerbread trim, but was no bigger than a two-car garage. The frozen mud around it had been raked during a thaw and looked curiously neat compared to the lane which they had been following, a stony path littered by dog droppings, heaps of cans and other trash awaiting a thaw for burial. On this bright spring night the temperature was not much below freezing and there was no sting in the soft wind from the sea, but it was cold enough to rob dirt of any odor. The only smell in the crystal air was the acrid tang of soft coal burning in small stoves so carefully tended that almost no smoke came from the stone chimneys of the little houses.

  As they approached the biggest house, the front door opened and Peter Anderson, the tall Dane who had boarded their ship, came out to greet them. When he had boarded the Arluk to lay down the law about enlisted men coming ashore, he had appeared stern to the point of hostility, but now his whole manner had changed and he was the deferential host. He ushered Paul and Mowrey through a vestibule so small that Mowrey had to edge his great shoulders sideways through rows of sealskin parkas hanging on the walls into a livingroom which was only about twelve feet square and which looked even smaller because it was crowded with eight Danes, all of whom looked enormous with their heads almost touching the ceiling. They were all wearing their best European clothes, and the three women had put on dark silk dresses like short evening gowns. One of these women was maybe sixty or seventy; one was about thirty, blonde and pretty, if a little gaunt, and the third was a fat, round-faced woman who could have been twenty-five or forty-five, and who wore a low-necked gown which she apparently had bought before gaining much of her weight. The top halves of her huge breasts bulged from this in a way that might have struck Paul as grotesque in Boston, but he had already been away from women long enough to make the display almost unbearably attractive.

  Peter Anderson gave formal introductions. None of the Danes was proficient at English, but all knew a few words. The fat woman’s name was Hilda. She had a circular, curiously babyish face above her triple chins and spoke in a high childish voice, interspersed with giggles, which made her startling bosom quiver in its tightly buttoned black silk bindings. Paul was wryly amused at himself for considering her beautiful and charming. He was disappointed when she appeared to have eyes only for Mowrey, who was, after all, much older than she, and whose beefy, old fighter’s face had always struck Paul as exceedingly ugly. But he was still the captain.

  The old man, Paul saw with surprise, possessed a brand of social charm which he never displayed aboard ship. He was courtly, formal without being unfriendly, and curiously dignified as he accepted the biggest armchair in the crowded room and smiled at the people who passed him drinks, canapés, and sat in a semicircle around him to pay court. Here, after all, was the commanding officer of the long-awaited supply ship, an American fighting man whose strength, wisdom and courage somehow appeared to be boundless. These Danes, who had lost their own country to the Germans, and some of whom had come to Greenland as refugees, treated him as an oracle, as well as a savior. As soon as the drinks (a kind of sweet warm martini which would have horrified Paul in Boston but which now tasted marvelous) were passed, everyone asked Mowrey his opinion of how the war was going.

  “Now it’s not going to be hard to take them Nazis,” Mowrey said with a casual tone. “We can do it fast or we can do it slow. The thing is, we can take them with less loss of life if we take time for a big buildup first and the proper strategy. No one wonders whether we can beat the Germans. It’s like killing a mad dog. First you have to get yourself a net and then you want to put it over his head without taking any chance of being bit.”

  This assessment of the military scene seemed well received. Hilda edged the invisible little chair under her so close to the captain that her great bosom almost rested on his knees. Which caused Mowrey to take off his dark glasses, a most unusual gesture, and to pat her shoulder affectionately. She in turn handed him a square of toast with a particularly succulent piece of smoked salmon.

  No one paid much attention to Paul, a slim junior officer standing at the back of the room. The good-looking blonde woman was apparently Anderson’s wife. She passed a platter with strips of salt cod and smoked salmon to Paul and filled his glass, but when he asked her if the winter had been hard, she smiled in confusion and said, “I have no English.” Even so, she seemed to understand the captain and laughed whenever he made a joke.

  Soon a buffet dinner was served, largely native foods, Anderson explained, because they had long ago used up most of their supplies from Europe. There were several kinds of fish, all of them delicious, seals’ liver which tasted like good calves’ liver, bear meat, which was stringy, and ptarmigan, which was much like quail, although smaller. Newly-baked bread took the place of potatoes, and canned tomatoes which almost had to be spooned up like soup were the only vegetable. For dessert there was a variety of baked goods which gave the phrase “Danish pastry” new meaning. A sweet, homemade wine which had been made from raisins was served with the meal, but Mowrey stuck with tumblers of the warm martinis, which he tossed off with gusto.

  Anderson apologized for being able to serve neither coffee nor tea. Except for one remaining pitcher of the martinis, he could offer nothing more to drink.

  “Why hell,” Mowrey said, “I got a dozen cases of booze consigned to you down at the ship, and we got plenty coffee and tea. Yale, run down and have the boys bring up just enough for tonight right away. The booze is locked in the lazaret. I haven’t told no one about it.”

  Shifting in his armchair, Mowrey took a key on a big ring from his pocket and handed it to Paul. “Hurry along now.”

  After the stifling little room, the cold air felt good. Paul’s wristwatch told him that it was a little before ten in the evening, but the sun was still high above the polished backs of the dun-colored granite mountains. Still unable to take eternal daylight for granted, Paul felt odd as he walked back toward the ship. When the pack of dogs suddenly leaped from the shadow of a warehouse, he roared at them Mowrey-fashion and made throwing motions. “Get out of here, you sons of bitches!” There was great satisfaction in seeing them retreat. He was getting to be almost an old Greenland hand, he thought. Well, at least he was not a man who could be cowed by dogs.

  Nearing the ship, he saw a line of Greenlanders carrying heavy crates and boxes from the wharf to the warehouse. When he saw their faces, he realized that they were all women. The men, who were dressed in similar furry clothes, were taller, and they were standing with folded arms, watching the women work and giving instructions. Boy, I wonder what Sylvia would think of that, he thought with a grin. All evening he had not thought of Sylvia, and the memory of her trim figure made the fact that he had been spurned by the fat Danish woman that evening seem funny. As the
old general had said, war is hell.

  Anxious to leave a port where they were not allowed ashore, the deck force was continuing to unload cargo. As Paul boarded the ship, he saw Nathan standing like a solitary sentry on the flying bridge, a lone figure in a parka outlined against the sky. On impulse he climbed a ladder to speak to him. Absorbed in thought, Nathan did not hear him approach.

  “You’re not missing much of a party,” Paul said.

  “I’m glad I didn’t go. We copied a message from Green-Pat to the Nanmak. I just decoded it.”

  “What’s up?”

  Nathan looked and sounded excited. “My God, nobody’s sure what’s going on, but our monitoring stations have picked up all kinds of radio signals on the east coast, all the way from Cape Farewell up to practically the damn North Pole. For days there was complete radio silence, and now there are German signals from seven different sources.”

  “What the hell can that mean?” Paul asked.

  “The bastards know we’re after them, with planes as well as the Nanmak, so they’re trying to confuse us with decoys, I think.”

  “How would they do that?”

  “GreenPat isn’t sure. The visibility cleared considerably up there just before the signals came through. Maybe they have a long-range plane circling and sending signals.”

  “Maybe,” Paul said. “Do the signals all come at once from different places?”

  “Mostly no, but they do sometimes. The Krauts could have dropped recording devices or even floated them from balloons. They could have landed small shore parties all up and down the coast—”

  “Or they could have a whole fleet of icebreakers and trawlers up there,” Paul said.

  “That’s right. We’ve got three PBY’s patrolling the area right now, but the visibility comes and goes. Paul, if they do have more than one ship up there, wouldn’t we send more ships? Isn’t there a chance that they’d take us off this milk run and send us up there?”

  “I guess,” Paul said, and was ashamed of not feeling sufficient enthusiasm. The thought of one heavily armed German icebreaker had been bad enough. How about sailing into a whole fleet of them?

  Nathan obviously felt no such hesitancy. “God, I’d like to get into that brawl,” he said. “If they could put me aboard the Nanmak, I could at least fix the radar. I doubt like hell if all those German ships have radar yet. If we had it we might be able to call the planes down on them without even having them sight us.”

  “If the weather was good enough for planes,” Paul said. “What did Hansen have to say about all this?”

  “Nothing. He just acknowledged the message. He’s trying to keep radio silence as much as possible.”

  Paul wondered what Hansen must be feeling as he sat in his well-furnished cabin plotting German radio signals all around him.

  “If the weather gives them a break, the planes ought to find what’s going on up there before long,” Nathan said.

  Paul was not so sure. If any ship was painted white, she would be difficult for even low-flying planes to see in the ice floe. Certainly the Germans would be smart enough to jam a ship between two big bergs, cover her decks with snow and blur the outline of her guns with large sheets of white canvas. In his own mind he had rehearsed such steps if his ship were ever the quarry.

  “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” Paul said, and remembering his errand, went to the lazaret in the stern of the ship. Mowrey always wanted him to hurry, but never more than when he was sent out after booze.

  The lazaret was a large storage compartment, the after end of which had been partitioned with heavy wood and a door with a padlock. Inside there were many stacks of cases of whiskey, gin and vodka, each marked with the name of a port. Mowrey himself had supervised the storage of these goods, and the boxes for this port were on top. Paul had planned to ask a couple of deck hands to help him to carry the heavy cases, but it seemed suddenly wrong to ask men to lug liquor to a party which they could not attend. After putting one box of twenty-four bottles of scotch on the deck, he returned to lock the door. For a moment he could not find the padlock, but after locating it between two floorboards, he put it in place, snapped it shut and pocketed the key.

  The case of scotch was clearly marked, HAIG & HAIG. As he climbed from the lazaret and picked it up, Flags and one of the seamen laughed somewhat bitterly.

  “Good party, sir?” Flags asked.

  “If you like Danes fat as whales,” Paul replied with a grin, and shouldering the heavy box, walked to the gangway at the well deck. First Boats and then a dozen seamen solemnly snapped to attention and rendered statuesque salutes as the executive officer with the big box of scotch on his shoulder passed.

  “Shit, guys,” Paul said. “This is for the Danes. It’s part of their consignment. They paid for it.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Boats said. “First time you ever did stevedore work, sir?”

  “Look, I’ll try to get the skipper to break out some beer for you guys in the morning. I’d give you this booze if it were mine.”

  “Sure you would, sir,” Boats said with a smile. “We know your heart is in the right place, sir.”

  Feeling ridiculous, Paul hurried to the Dane’s cottage. He was halfway there before he remembered that he was supposed to bring tea and coffee too, but he doubted whether they would be missed.

  In Paul’s absence the party had livened up. The table and chairs had been pushed into a bedroom and people were dancing to a scratchy record of “You Are My Sunshine.” In the center of the room Mowrey had stretched his arms around all of Hilda’s quivering charms. The two of them were enjoying the dance without bothering to move their feet much. “By God, you finally made it!” Mowrey said when Paul carried the case of whiskey into the room. Taking the heavy box off his shoulder, he ripped it open with one swipe of his heavy hand and handed it to Anderson. The Dane’s thin blonde wife appeared almost immediately with a tray full of glasses and a pitcher of water. As the whiskey was being poured, the spring of the victrola began to wind down, drawing the words of “You Are My Sunshine” into a mournful moan. Striding across the room, Mowrey cut it off. “Let’s make our own music,” he said. “How about a song?”

  With his arms still around Hilda, Mowrey started with, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” the title of which everyone chorused, though no one knew many more of the words. The Danish national anthem came next, followed by “The Star Spangled Banner,” “America,” and “God Bless America.” After a short pause for refilling glasses, Mowrey started on “One-Eyed Riley.” Few people understood the words, which he did not pronounce clearly, but they recognized the fact that the song was bawdy and cheered lustily. The blonde woman passed a platter of codfish strips which had been salted so heavily that they produced a burning thirst. Anderson opened another bottle of whiskey.

  Standing at the back of the room, Paul drank his share. It was hard not to contrast this revel with the predicament of the Nanmak, now ringed by enemy radio signals. Suddenly it seemed inevitable that the Arluk would soon be sent to help her. The thought that this might be his last party crossed his mind and seemed more gloomily realistic than melodramatic. Hilda’s breasts jiggled magnificently as she attempted to dance with the captain. Now the victrola was playing Italian opera.

  Paul’s legs began to ache and the floor felt strangely comfortable when he sat on it. A thin bald man who explained that he was a doctor joined him. He carried a bottle of whiskey and kept both of their glasses full while in broken English he described the medical problems of the Eskimos. They suffered a great deal from tuberculosis, from venereal diseases, and from what white men call childhood diseases. Most died before they were forty. Eskimos melt like snow once white men arrive in great numbers, the doctor said almost casually. They can’t handle alcohol. Sugar rots their teeth, and they exhaust their game supply soon after getting guns. It takes only a few years for their best hunters to become drunken beggars.

  This news deepened the brown of Paul’s mood. T
he Eskies were dying and probably he himself would not last long. Finishing his drink, he lay down on the wonderfully comfortable floor and napped. When he awoke sun was still streaming through the lace curtains at the windows. His watch told him it was a little after three, and he was suddenly unsure whether that was three in the morning or afternoon. Most of the other people were now sprawled on the floor. Mowrey was sitting with his back against a wall and his arm around Hilda, who was stroking his face. Mowrey did not react. His mouth was slightly open, and when the victrola stopped, Paul heard him snoring lightly. Hilda caught Paul’s eye, and moving surprisingly fast on her hands and knees, crawled over to him. At that time and place her method of locomotion did not seem in the least surprising. Her great bosom swayed attractively in front of her.

  “The captain, he no hold liquor good, you say?”

  “I say,” Paul replied, and folded her into his arms as she sprawled by his side. The room was so full of tobacco smoke that his eyes stung. Some of the Danes had left and those who remained were asleep, as far as he could make out in the dim light. Hilda kissed him, her lips blubbery and soft, her breath coming hot and hard.

  “No men here,” she said. “No men for very long time.”

  “It must be tough.”

  “You beautiful boy.”

  “You’re beautiful too.”

  Certainly she seemed that at the time. He buried his face between her breasts.

  “You come my place,” she said, stroking his hair.

  They had difficulty standing up. It was hard enough for him to get on his feet, but almost impossible for her, and when he tried to pull her up, she won the tug of war and he found himself sprawled on top of her. After kissing some more, they crawled to a window ledge, and using that for support got to their feet with only two heavy falls. Her hand hit a whiskey bottle that had been left on the windowsill and sent it clattering against Mowrey’s feet. Awaking with a grunt, the captain kicked it away. With much laughter and more embraces, Paul and Hilda put on their parkas in the vestibule and staggered out into the eternal sunlight. Holding each other up, they had not walked more than a hundred yards toward the nearest cabin when Mowrey came staggering after them. He had put on his parka but had not buttoned it, and in his hand he carried a bottle of scotch.