The Fever in the Water by Christoffer Petersen

Author:Christoffer Petersen [Petersen, Christoffer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aarluuk Press for Arctic Noir, Action Thrillers and Greenland Crime
Published: 2020-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

Part 12

Tuukula said he would join us in a moment, leaving me with the two women as we walked between the red and blue houses. Iikkila chatted about Eqqitsiaq and Tuukula, how she could have married both of them, but of the two of them, Eqqitsiaq seemed like the least trouble. Ansu laughed when Iikkila pointed at Luui, now out of her suit, but clinging to it as the boys pulled her from one house to the next. Apart from the boys, Ingnerssuit seemed deserted, something I hadn’t thought about before.

“Everyone who could leave has gone,” Iikkila said.

“Why?”

Iikkila took her daughter’s hand, as she laughed again. She whispered to her, calming her until she stopped laughing, and then, with heavy tread, climbed the steps to the deck and disappeared inside the house.

“She’s struggling, now that Eqqitsiaq is in Nuuk.”

“Struggling?”

I tried to remember what Atii had said, about the children being high. But watching the boys spin Luui between the houses, they seemed high-spirited, full of energy, but nothing out of the ordinary. Iikkila tapped my arm and pointed to a yellow house with a white deck. It was partly obscured by two other houses – Ingnerssuit had twelve houses in total – and I had to step to one side to see all of it.

“The school,” Iikkila said. “Before the teacher left.”

“When?”

“She left thirteen months ago.”

Iikkila could have said just over a year ago, but she was more precise, as if it was important.

“And you haven’t had a replacement?”

Iikkila shook her head and pointed at the boys. “I’ve been teaching them, as best I could. A lot of baking, sports. Some science when Eqqitsiaq caught a fish. But I don’t know numbers, and I can’t force them to speak Danish.”

She paused as Tuukula strolled between the houses, puffing smoke around the cigarette clamped between his lips. His hands were full, gripping the handles of the holdalls and bags into which we had hastily stuffed clothes and bottled water – something Tuukula insisted on – before leaving Nuuk.

“Tuukula could teach them things,” Iikkila said, pressing her hand to his cheek as he stopped beside her.

“I’m too old to teach children,” he said.

“What about Luui?” Iikkila tucked her hands on her hips, knuckles inwards, slipping into imaginary grooves as if she did it often. “You’re teaching her, aren’t you?”

“That’s different,” Tuukula said, with a quick glance at his daughter. “They won’t teach her what she needs to know in school.”

“Iikkila says everyone is leaving,” I said. “And the school has no teacher.”

“We are nine,” she said. “Ten if Eqqitsiaq was home.” Iikkila slipped her hands from her hips, dusting the last flour from her palms with strong claps of her hands. “Let’s go inside.” She called for the two boys to come, then led the way up the steps to her house.

“Here,” Tuukula said, pressing a bottle of water into my hands.

“I’m not thirsty,” I said.

“For when you are.”

“Tuukula?”

I waited for him to explain, but he shook his head, as if to say not now, and then followed Iikkila into the house.

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