That was all I learned, and I didn't see every twist her courtship took, because it wasn't my business and after all I had my own swimming to attend to. (One sign of spiritual development, Buddhists and Christians agree, is drinking more water and enjoying it more, so swimming must be good for you, too.) I swam until my hands went numb and red. They were fiery when I got out and started walking home, the sun low over heaps of rock. I had no towel, so the shaggy boy loaned me his. He was one of the many souls who seemed to be looking only into your eyes but who'd suddenly point off toward Hudson Bay and cry: Look, Bill, a weasel, weasel! There, there! — They could all see things which I couldn't. Sometimes they seemed uncanny to me. They lived on their island amidst the ruins of a race of giants. The boy from Arviat rode me on his four-wheeler out to Kirchoffer Falls, where the water was sea-green and seemingly gelid: transparent, swirly, filled with bubbles like bath gel. The mosquitoes did not find us right away. He showed me where to walk up and down the poppied stairs of cliff. I scanned the inukshuks* on the opposite bank, which was also a long cliff comprised of slabs of reddish rock, here and there a paler gravelfall; and then he showed me the Tuniit house, a rock-rimmed pit in the moss.
The Tuniit were strong, said the boy from Arviat. So strong they could lift a big rock or a polar bear with one hand.
What happened to them?
The Inuit killed them, I think, he said. A Tuniit man had sex with an Inuk woman, and an Inuk man got so mad he killed many, and the rest ran away.
When I asked the shaggy boy, he said: Some sailors came, and then they got sick. All their wives died, so they couldn't make new people.
So they're all dead?
All dead, except maybe one or two. They don't know they're Tuniit, 'cause they got adopted.
What would you do if you found out you were one of them?
I don't know. Nobody would touch me then because I'd be too strong.
The next day I saw that the girl who'd stolen my best Polaroid was holding hands with the boy she loved. I was happy for her. I went to her and said that she was the strongest diver I had ever seen. I said that she was so strong that she must have a drop or two of Tuniit blood, and she laughed proudly.
Do you think Lydia's pretty? the girl beside her said.
Sure. I mean probably.
Really? You really want to fuck Lydia?
Probably.
Do you like
Probably, I said.
Why?
I don't know.
Who do you like best?
You, of course.
If you come live here you'll get a girlfriend, said a girl comfortingly.
Probably, I said.
Now it was midnight. Three boys were silhouetted on the bridge railing against the yellow light. Lydia's cigarette illuminated the breast of her multicolored parka like a Christmas tree light. — Guess this'll freeze me or kill me, aye? said her new boyfriend, diving in. Soon everyone was peeling down, some entirely, and playing in the cool greenish water, boys and girls together and secret. Some came out to sit again on the gravel bank.
Lydia's boyfriend lit a match and said: I like it here, 'cause it's tundra, aye? We got the fattest caribou.
* The Indians of Newfoundland were hunted down and exterminated in the last century.
* The inukshuks around Coral Harbour were particularly well constructed. Their job had once been to scare caribou. They had no job now. Each one crouched with its stone arms extended and its stone knees bent, as if crossing a stream. Every time I looked at it, I thought that it had moved.
The crack pipe was a tube of glass half as thick as a finger, jaggedly broken at both ends because the prostitute had dropped it. She kept talking about the man down the hall, whose pipe still wore a bowl. She said that that special pipe was for sale, but the John figured that he'd already spent enough.
