Anatomy of a Night by Anna Kim

Author:Anna Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 978384425305
Publisher: Frisch & Co. Electronic Books Inc.
Published: 2013-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

3

Per and Poul were born one year before Sara, Per in Amarâq, Poul in Ittuk. Shortly after Poul's birth, his father Boas moved to Amarâq with him, to live in the capital city where within a few years dilapidated houses were repaired, or rebuilt, and square-shaped apartment buildings were set up on the frozen ground, residential dinosaurs with low ceilings and small windows, which keep the warmth trapped inside. The glittering white administration building, where Boas was hired, completed the image of a modern, freshly-painted Amarâq: a town that made its postcard-image proud. The second wave of modernization, which had already hit the western coast of Greenland a decade before, wasn't leaving the far-flung east behind, but the wave was already receding, and the east remained as it was before; it only became more colorful, restyled, and newly settled with teachers from the motherland that arrived in helicopters, idealists with old ideas and careerists with new ones. But they had one thing in common: they wanted to improve Amarâq because it was insufficient.

The secretive father: until he started going to school, Poul didn't know every child had a mother, he had always believed that it was optional, because no one had ever told him about his. Boas the Still—who took care of his dogs for two hours every day, removing a rotting seal from the wooden shed in the middle of the village, first cutting off the flippers, then dividing it into pieces, and distributing it to the yipping, barking dogs piece by piece—left behind his past as a hunter in Ittuk and moved with his son, a plastic bag with clothing, and the patched pair of boots that he had worn for twenty years, to Amarâq, where a small, new, boxy apartment was waiting for him, a kitchen with a stove and a sink, and two vacant rooms which would remain empty, except for a mattress and a pile of clothing that lay in the middle of the larger room, as if it were waiting for the next move.

Boas was reliable and respected by all as a good hunter, his opinion counted, which was why they had pushed him into politics, he was supposed to represent the hunters of Eastern Greenland, and there were papers placed in front of him which he could only decode with effort, although he had learned to read and write. Often the words would retreat when he drew near, and he would push the letters aside and stare out the window, at the mountains, and although he couldn't see the fjord, he could feel it and smell it, and the image became so strong that he felt he was kneeling on the shore, fingers in the cold water, watching how the waves mirrored the back of his hand.

Alice had to call for him several times before he reacted. She needed his signature, and because she had already spent several hours fighting for the money she deserved, she had come into his office looking for a fight, she had in fact yelled, but he hadn't heard her.

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