Kushan, The Eskimo, Dead.

T/W. This is based on a true and gruesome story reported in the New York Times in 1898.

I could barely keep up with Gustafsson. He handed me his hat and cane, and his heavy portmanteau for safekeeping.  

“I will need you to do the paperwork when all is said and done,” said Gustafsson, absent-mindedly. 

When we entered the dimly lit basement, it was like walking into a steam room, and I was struck by the irony and the stench. Gustafsson didn’t miss a beat. He was kneeling beside the body before my eyes had properly adjusted to the dim lighting. In the gloom, he looked like a giant bear about to feast on meat. I took pride from being his associate, no matter how peripheral my role in his great affairs.

Four Eskimos were sitting on a large driftwood log, which I assumed was salvaged from the Hudson. It was placed in front of the three abodes which I took to be igloos based on their semblance to Peary’s etchings.  At first, I thought the Eskimos were children, bundled up in strange, padded clothes, but I was soon able to make out their facial features as my eyesight keened. Three men, one woman, leather-faced dark eyed; their skin appeared an unhealthy gray in the half-light.  The log on which they sat was stained dark, greasy and well-worn by the abrasion of animal-hide against weathered wood. The ground beneath their feet, once a brilliant white, was dull and grimy.  Their feet were bare.

“Kushan’s kin,” explained Superintendent Wallace as he brushed by me. He was holding a white handkerchief over his mouth and nose.  

“Why haven’t they removed the body?” I asked.  I was shocked by the ghastly indifference of the Eskimos.

“Why indeed,” said Wallace “your question places us at the heart of the matter.” He briefly glanced at me then joined Gustafsson on the tiled floor. Next to the great Explorer, the Superintendent seemed like a dandified child. Gustafsson could crush his skull in that giant hand and feast upon the soupy brains. There were rumors of cannibalism from Gustafsson’s first voyage.

One of the male Eskimos rose from the driftwood log and walked over to the dead body. Gustafsson had pulled the heavy seal-skin parka away from the dead man’s face. The skin was blue, the eyes were open, blank and bloodshot. When Gustafsson rolled the body to one side it moved like a wooden effigy, and foul gas escaped into the thick air. The standing Eskimo started stammering in a strange tongue, becoming agitated at the sound of his own voice. The woman abruptly stood and started click-clacking and then hollering at nothing. The hood fell back from her head and revealed a cadaverous face, terrifying tattoos on and about the chin and neck. More than anything, it was her shiny black eyes that scared me, like those of a dog.

I was reluctant to approach either the Eskimos or their dead cousin. I remained near the entrance to the basement, the precious portmanteau grasped in my sweaty right hand. Outside I could hear the early morning crowds. I prayed that no one would venture into the basement.  

Superintendent Wallace went straight to business. “See here Gustafsson, we don’t need to resolve everything, not here and now. My men can take the body to a storage room while we figure out the legality of our actions.”

“Mr. Wallace, the morgue at Bellevue seems a more suitable place. It is where faculty can examine the body and determine the cause of death,” said Gustafsson, “Commissioner Keller of the Department of Charities will surely lay claim to the corpse and can arrange for its disposition”.

 To me the cause of death was obvious. I think the Eskimos, too, understood in their own dull way why he had died and why they were dying too. Should the body be burned? Buried? Thrown into the sea? The stench favored the most precipitous action.  

“It is not so simple Gustafsson,” said the Superintendent. “These are Kushan’s brothers and sister, at least that is what Peary supposed. They have five days to lay claim and secure a permit from the Board of Health. The procedure is very clearly defined.”

“But they are Weetakupski!” I protested, tapping some inner sense of justice that came over me like a hot flush. “They cannot understand our tongue”.  

Gustafsson and Wallace looked at me like I was a small child that had spoken out of turn at the dinner table, and I felt like a complete fool. As if the Professor didn’t know that we were betwixt natural justice and the law!  Of course, the Eskimo couldn’t speak English; it was central to the Museum scheme, the quest for authenticity. As if Gustafsson and Wallace hadn’t already advanced beyond common outrage into the more elevated realm of wisdom! These were men, true, but Gustafsson and Wallace were institutions too; they spoke not as men but as trusted repositories of the most advanced and enlightened thinking of our age.  Gustafsson glared at me, and I sensed that my position, already precarious, was now hanging by a thread.

The Eskimo woman was beating her head with her hands, silently now, thank God. Accompanied by her laments it would have been unbearable to witness, but in silence it was as if she were a play-acting member of a Greek chorus.

“Keller will sign the papers on behalf of the charitable trusts, he is authorized to do so through the Mayor’s office,” said Gustafsson with a finality that sealed the deal. Wallace sensed rightly that he was up against a zealot; and I guessed that his interest in the body was limited to the question of disposal. Wallace was not interested in the cause of death nor the scientific value of the body; his primary concern was the need to clean up the mess as quickly as possible so that business could proceed as usual. We could hear the visitors in the corridors outside.

“Very well, it is agreed,” said Gustafsson, suddenly more affable for having won his way. We could almost feel the generosity of spirit in his manner as he stood, stretched to his full colossal height. “I’m sure that Keller will have the skeleton suitably mounted and returned to the museum for display”.  He gestured toward the distant corner furthest from the stairwell. I could see how it would be a strong counterpoint to the exhibit.

My eyes by now were acquainted with the light that shone from a single electric lightbulb mounted on the wall on one side of the museum basement. I wrestled with the thought that it was more akin to a shadow-thrower, and this brought me to the realization that the scene was an authentic representation of the polar regions: the sun a single point of light on the horizon, arrived and gone, providing the briefest glimpse of life on the tundra. I knew, of course, that the igloos and tundra were artistic creations made of chicken wire and plaster of Paris. I understood, of course, that the light bulb was not the sun. I understood, of course, that the broken glass plate was not an icy pool of salt water. I understood that this was a fabricated place, and yet I was transported to the outer limits of civilization. For a brief instant I envied Kushan and his family, their grief was something that I could share, almost understand.

With matters settled Gustafsson grabbed me as he left the basement and plunged through the early-morning crowds at the Museum of Natural History. I was amused to see the West Side matrons scuttling out if his way, and the schoolboys cheering at sight of the great man striding toward the Central Park exit with me running alongside him.

I handed him his hat and cane. I offered him the portmanteau, but he waved it away, entrusting it to me.

Gustafsson was in a forgiving mood. I still had my job. We were hustling across the Park. It was bitterly cold, and the grass was still covered with snow and ice. The sharp intake of New York City air was a great relief to my senses, and the smell of death and decay was purged from my consciousness.  

“Why do you think he died?” I said.

“I imagine the erratic weather may have had something to do with it,” said Gustafsson, bending into the bitter wind. “The summer furs were too warm for the heavy climate, and he must have caught cold.”

“The atmosphere in the basement was so unbearably hot and humid. The exhibit felt like a Lapland sauna.”

“The Museum Superintendent is a damned fool,” said Gustafsson. “Wallace is killing Peary’s Inuit. They’ll be done by the summer”.  

I recalled the terrible pallid skin of the four surviving Eskimos, the dark sunken eyes, the listless disposition. The woman, in particular, alarmed me. Her behavior was similar to an animal I had seen in the Bronx zoo the prior summer. An African lion in a small cage; confinement seemed to have addled the poor creature’s brain. It moved like a clockwork toy that performs the same trick over and over and over.

“Kushan’s kin folk seemed so docile, the woman aside”, I said, seeking through the expression of thoughtful observation a way back into Gustafsson’s good graces. The man, famously, did not suffer fools gladly, or at all, preferring to have them thrown from his presence. The last thing he needed was a fool for an assistant. I resolved henceforth to make suggestions and offer observations sparingly, and to do so only when positive that I was adding to the intellectual wealth, not diminishing it.

“Civilization and the weather were too much for him, and I fear too much for his kinsmen, which is troubling because we do need to expand our understanding of these Northern tribes.”

“What of their strange docility?” I asked again, genuinely perplexed.

“There will be no mourning among his kinsmen as forgetting is the Eskimo mode of dealing with the departed”.

I felt very much as if the Professor expressed this idea to me as an equal, and so the walk across the Park was refreshing, and by the time we returned to the University campus at Columbia, I was feeling very confident in my ability to perform the duties required of me.