Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler Page A

whip. Before chopping their food with an axe, Ephraim made a point of overturning the sled, securing it as tightly as possible to the slavering dogs so that they couldn’t run off with it in their excitement. Then he hurled the meat at the pack, laughing as the strongest ones, a couple of them with their ears already torn, lunged at the biggest chunks. “From now on,” Ephraim said, “this is going to be your job.”
    Ephraim understood that the boy enjoyed handling the dogs, but he continued to watch him closely, annoyed by his churlish manner, the grudging way he undertook other chores and his Latin studies. He began to wonder if he had been wrong about him, just as he had been mistaken about so many other people over the wasting years. Then he discovered that Solomon had been surreptitiously filling the pages of one of his exercise books with a map of their progress, landmarks carefully drawn. He noted with even more satisfaction that each time he had apparently dozed off, Solomon would sneak out of the igloo, hatchet in hand, marking a tree in every one of their camps with a deep gash.
    Their first real quarrel followed hard on a Latin lesson.
    â€œYou’re eating while I’m asleep,” Solomon said. “I can tell when I pack the supplies.”
    â€œCheek.”
    â€œI think we should split the food in two right now and if you run out before we get there, well …”
    â€œYou don’t even know how to hunt yet. At your age I was reading Virgil. Go harness the dogs.”
    â€œSo that you can complain I did it wrong just like everything else?”
    â€œHop to it.”
    â€œYou do it.”
    â€œI’m going back to sleep.”
    They lingered in the camp for three days, not speaking, until Solomon finally went out and harnessed the dogs. Ephraim followed after. Solomon had done it well and Ephraim intended to compliment him, warming things between them, but, old habits dying hard, he stifled the impulse. All he said was, “You managed not to bungle it for a change.”
    It took them many days of hard sledding to reach the shores of Great Slave Lake.
    Elsewhere Tsu-Hsi, the Dowager Empress of China had died; Ephraim’s old friend Geronimo was ailing and would soon expire as well; Einstein surfaced with the quantum theory of light; and the first Model-T rolled off an assembly line in Detroit. But on the shores of that glacial lake, Ephraim—not so much shrunken now as distilled to his very essence—squatted with his chosen grandson, man and boy warming themselves by their camp-fire under the shifting arch of the aurora. A raven was perched on Ephraim’s shoulder. “One of the gods of the Crees,” he said, “can converse with all kinds of birds and beasts in their own language, but I can only make myself understood to the bird that failed Noah.”
    Ephraim stood up and pissed and threw the dogs some jackfish. “Do you hear that in the hills?” he asked.
    â€œIs it a wolf?”
    â€œThe Chipewyans, who will kill anything, just out of spite, even small birds in their nests, never harm the wolf, because they believe it to be an uncommon animal. Me, I’m no Chipewyan. Come,” he said, offering his hand.
    But Solomon, sliding free, wouldn’t take it. He was longing to, but he couldn’t.
    â€œI’m going to show you something,” Ephraim said.
    Ephraim slid a long knife free of their sled and planted it upright in the snow. He melted honey over the fire and coated the blade with it, the honey freezing immediately. “The wolf will come down later, start to lick the honey and slice his tongue to ribbons. Then the greedy fool will lick the blood off the blade until he bleeds to death. Do you understand?”
    â€œSure I do.”
    â€œNo, you don’t. I’m trying to warn you about Bernard,” Ephraim said, glaring at him. “When the time comes, remember to spread honey on the