‘No, no… This is quite enough for me.’ He stretched his neck, which had grown stiff and sore from the wind and the bumping waves. ‘I was just wondering if we could go ashore and take a look at the landscape instead.’
‘There,’ she said, pointing across the sea. ‘And there!’
‘What are you looking at?’ he asked, his gaze scanning the waves in vain.
‘The small black dots on the sea. Can’t you see them? They’re seals. There are lots of them.’
She leaned forward and picked up the rifle with one hand. The other slipped into her pocket and reappeared with a small black magazine filled with cartridges.
‘I can’t see anything.’ He narrowed his eyes and continued his search.
‘They pop up and then they disappear again,’ she explained and raised her rifle to her cheek. ‘They come up for air.’
The slim rifle seemed a part of her. As if she was born to have this long weapon close to her body. The butt was pressed against the thick jumper covering her shoulder, and her left hand merged with the wood and metal in a firm grip. She lowered the weapon and smiled contentedly. ‘Plenty of seals.’ Then she cocked the rifle. The bolt clicked in place, with a cartridge in the chamber.
She raised the rifle to her face again and wedged it against her shoulder, while she pressed her cheek against the glossy wood of the butt and closed her left eye. Her right eye stared into the telescopic sight.
He heard how her breathing slowed and became heavier. He couldn’t see any of her tattoos. Not a single leaf or a flower. No skulls baring their teeth. No deep shadows. There was only her face and shaved head. The freckles around her nose.
Suddenly a shot rang out. Her body was rigid. Frozen in the shot. She continued to stare into the solitary eye of the telescopic sight, then she put down the rifle and grabbed the tiller. The engine awakened from its slumber with a roar and the boat began leaping across the sea, wave after wave, until she released the tiller and let the boat coast until it came to a standstill.
‘There,’ she said, pointing diagonally to her left. She nudged the tiller slightly with one knee, so they were heading straight towards the animal in the water. It wasn’t dead, but it was struggling. Its head and eyes were above the water, while its body lay just below. It tried to swim but its body refused; the water along the left side of the animal was red from blood.
Matthew looked up at Tupaarnaq. ‘Aren’t you meant to kill it outright?’
‘Hang on.’
She turned and switched off the engine, before straightening up and pushing the boathook towards him with her boot. ‘You jab the hook into its neck once I’ve shot it a second time.’
‘Eh? But… it’s—’
She looked at him. ‘Are you going to help me or what?’
The seal splashed about in the water. It was trying to escape, but the bullet in its body and the onset of paralysis trapped it at the surface of the sea. Its small black eyes stared backwards. It waved a flipper.
‘I…’
She took aim and fired the rifle. The seal’s body jerked. The amount of blood in the sea grew explosively. The rifle ended up at the bottom of the boat again, while Tupaarnaq grabbed the hook and plunged it into the seal. ‘The least you can do is help me land it.’
Matthew reached out nervously. They had to employ all their strength to haul the smooth, wet body over the gunwale. The seal flopped down into the bottom of the boat in a sudden gliding movement. Its eyes were still two staring black beads, but there was no life left in them. Blood flowed quietly from the two dark holes in its skin.
Matthew slumped back in his seat, while Tupaarnaq grabbed a flipper and turned the seal onto its back, baring its speckled silver and black belly. The sun’s rays played in the hairs of the wet fur. She produced a hunting knife from her side pocket and stuck it into the seal, deep between its tail flippers. She tightened her fingers around the handle as the blade opened up the seal to its middle. The fat layer of blubber glowed pink; it looked like an open eye in the animal’s lower body. The meat was dark, black almost. Her hands delved into the warm body and pulled out a long ribbon of pink intestines. Somewhere deep inside the animal, she managed to loosen them so they came out in one piece.
Matthew watched the intestines go over the gunwale and plop into the sea. ‘You’re just going to throw them away?’
‘Well, I’ve no use for them.’ She turned to look at him. Her stare was hard. ‘You need to join in.’
‘It’s so gory.’
She gave a light shrug. ‘It’s just hunting.’ Then she turned her attention back to the seal, and carried on removing its organs and throwing them overboard. Only a quivering dark lump was dumped in the bottom of the boat.
When everything had been cut out and disposed of, she sank the knife back into the seal near its tail flippers and cut the skin around them free from the skin on its body. She did the same with the two flippers along the animal’s sides. Then she slipped the knife under the skin by its belly and started separating the skin from the fat and the body in soft movements, until only the glistening, flayed body remained. The skin itself she rinsed in the sea, then she tossed it at Matthew’s feet.
He looked at her, stunned.
‘It needs cleaning.’
‘What do you mean?’
She took out her ulo and grabbed the skin. Carefully but steadily, she used the round blade to remove any blubber still attached to it. ‘This is how you do it.’
Matthew took the ulo and bent hesitantly over the fur. The blubber was warm and greasy. Softer than he had expected, but viscous and tough to cut. It stretched, before snapping back like an elastic band.
‘You need to get right down to the fur, leaving absolutely no blubber,’ she told him. ‘But be careful. The skin is worthless if you cut holes in it.’
He hesitated. He squished a piece of skin and blubber between his fingers. ‘Do you eat this the way you eat whale skin?’
‘You mean mattak? No, this stuff tastes like shit.’ She took the ulo from him and let it glide in rocking movements along a piece of skin, leaving it clean and smooth. ‘Like this.’ She passed the ulo back to him.
‘Will you be eating the meat yourself?’ he asked, looking at the bloody body resting near him. She had even flayed its head, exposing the flesh and the sinews. The black eyes stared out at him from the flayed face.
‘No, I don’t eat meat. I’ll sell it down at Brættet. I need the money to buy a few things.’
The ulo rested in his hand. His fingers were glossy with fat and blood.
‘You need to taste the liver,’ she said, holding out a piece of the dark, quivering lump she had saved earlier.
He wrinkled his nose in disgust and felt his throat contract with nausea. ‘No, thanks.’
‘It wasn’t a suggestion,’ she snapped. ‘You can’t come home after your first seal hunt without having tasted warm liver. Those are the rules, and they apply to you too.’
‘I can’t,’ he croaked, staring at the small piece of raw seal liver. ‘I’m going to throw up.’
‘Not my problem. Eat it!’
His eyes sought refuge at the bottom of the boat. His sneakers were soaked with salt water and smeared with blood and guts. Her knee slipped into the picture, and when he looked up, she was squatting down right in front of him. A distant yet also present smile was playing on her lips.
‘You either eat it yourself or I shove it down your throat.’
‘Okay, okay, okay. I’ll eat it. Relax.’ He exhaled, then he frowned. ‘Have you ever tasted it?’
‘We all eat it. Some even by choice. As if it were candy.’
He took the liver from her hand. It felt soft, grainy and delicate between his fingers.