Polar Bear

 

 

1

Kazuo Moriama stood at the window of his Tokyo penthouse, trying to open the window so he could jump out.

Twenty floors down, illuminated by hundreds of blinking lights and signs, groups of male office workers staggered between the doorways of bars and restaurants. Brightly lit signs advertised beer, sushi, and Mr. Donut, or directed couples to love hotels. In the street, taxis crawled in single file.

Across the room, sitting on a chocolate brown leather couch, his friend Yukiko watched calmly. She knew the windows on the street side wouldn't open. He owned the building, but her  company managed the building, and she had long ago ordered the more dangerous windows sealed. On the side of the room, sliding glass doors led to a balcony, and the doors were unlocked. But the balcony overlooked another building next door, and the drop was only eight stories. He had too much sense to risk merely crippling himself. 

She sat with her legs casually crossed. In her hand she held out a glass of whiskey.

"Here," she said, shaking the glass slightly, as if the noise of the ice clinking would distract him.

He came away from the window and took the whiskey and politely sipped it, then stood looking off to the side.

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's ridiculous," he said. "No one cares whether I'm in the office or not. They hardly even know it when I'm there. I have nothing to do and no one wants to talk to me. I should quit."

"You've quit before."

He sipped the whiskey. "I took leaves of absence. But if I write a letter of resignation and give it to my father, if I tell all the V.P.s and directors that I'm never coming back, I'll lose so much face that I really never can. It's simple."

"Could you do that? I mean, if you decided that was the best thing, would you be able to do it?"

"I've already lost their respect anyway. They joke about me, the boss's son who can't do a thing. The 'Director of Quality.'"

He took another drink. He didn't like drinking very much, but this was excellent whiskey. The tumbler was crystal, with an object encased in its heavy glass bottom: a titanium screw manufactured by the company.

"So you'd quit for good. Then what?"

Kazuo finished the whiskey, then suddenly turned and hurled the glass at the center of the window overlooking the street. The crystal shattered, leaving the window intact.

He turned back to Yukiko, who had risen halfway to her feet, an alarmed expression on her face. "Sorry," he said. "I wanted to see if the tumbler was heavy enough to break the window." He went over and picked up the gleaming screw, then ran his fingers over the window glass. "Not a scratch."

He returned to the couch and slumped next to Yukiko. "Five hundred years ago I would have been a warrior. I would have died in a war to defend my lord's castle. Now there's nothing to die for and nothing to defend. All I can think of is to get out of the way."

She thought to herself, five hundred years ago, your family were peasant farmers, not warriors, but she said nothing. She had been his friend -- never his lover -- for two decades. In that time he had been in love only once. His girlfriend had been a fellow student at Sophia, the daughter of another rich man. A few months before they were to be married, the girl scandalized the haute monde by breaking their engagement and going off to Peru to be a revolutionary.

Since then Kazuo had suffered from depression. Yukiko privately felt this was ridiculous, since he was rich, not yet 40, decent looking and heterosexual -- he could have any girl he wanted. But instead of finding a wife or even a mistress, he spent his energies trying to pretend he was something he wasn't. He had gone to Paris to study painting; he had tried to produce films in Hollywood; he had bought a vineyard in South Africa. All these attempts at reinvention went nowhere, and he inevitably returned to Japan to resume his role as the heir of his father's industrial empire.

So what, she thought. Aside from his wealth, he was just like millions of people who went through the motions of life secretly doubting their usefulness. But obligation and fulfilling one's role were more important than personal fulfillment. Only artists and writers were allowed to be non-conformists, and as Kazuo had demonstrated in his short career as a painter, he had no artistic talent at all. Instead, he had the opposite problem: he was not afraid of being different; he simply wasn't different.

But Yukiko liked him nevertheless, partly because he had never yet given in to despair. He joked about suicide but had never tried it; just when he seemed at the end of his rope, each time he had come up with another quixotic scheme. This time, though, she was a little worried -- he truly seemed out of ideas. So she had come up with one for him.

"So, you feel you have nothing to lose?"

He laughed. "Oh, I have plenty to lose, just look around."

"But I mean your life. You seem to feel it isn't worth much."

Smiling bitterly, he held the titanium screw so that it sparkled in the light.

Yukiko bent down and reached into an apricot-colored leather purse. "If you feel your life is worth nothing, would you dare to risk it? Look at this Japan Times article," she went on, pulling out a clipping from the English-language newspaper. "It's about hunting for polar bears. You go to Canada, to the Artic Circle, and you hunt them on a dogsled. It's freezing cold, and if you don't die from exposure, the bear might get you. What do you think? Could you stand it?"

He took the article without looking at it, staring straight ahead at his reflection in the window.

"Do you have to kill the bear with a spear, too, like an Eskimo?" he asked.

"I don't know. Probably they let foreigners use a gun. In any case, it's you versus the bear."

He thought about it. If his life were worthless, or at least absurd, what better way to end it than by doing an absurd thing?

"Po - la bear," he said slowly.

 

 

In the autumn gloom before sunrise, Namuo Tankeekiwit, Inuit hunting guide, walked the mile from his cabin to the house of his friend Thomas Kemateein. The snow remaining from the season's first storms had refrozen during the night, and the crude road was slippery with frost. He was dismayed when he arrived at his friend's house and found that Thomas had taken off without him.

"The truck wouldn't start last night, so he got up a couple hours ago and took off walking," said Thomas' wife Kitty. She wore a heavy sweatshirt and sweatpants, and held a toddler on her hip. "Want some coffee?"

The Kemateeins had a mobile home with a couch, arm chairs and shag carpeting. It was fancy compared to his place, which was essentially a shack -- though no worse than what Thomas and Kitty had lived in two years ago. That was when Thomas got a construction job on a huge geothermal project on the other side of town.

"How's your place?" Kitty inquired.

"Nothin' new."

"And how's your mum?"

He chuckled. "Out on her boat. She wants to get the very last fish out of the bay before it freezes."

"You tell her I sure appreciated that canned salmon."

Namuo nodded. He took the coffee in a mug with the logo of the construction company Thomas worked for.

"What time did he leave, anyway?" Namuo asked.

She yawned a little. "I think he got up at five. He already knew the truck wouldn't start, so he got up early and took off. He said he might not even come back tonight. They're working around the clock before it really freezes and it's his last chance to pick up overtime this year." She shifted the child to the other knee, putting it between him and her. The child squirmed and whirled its fists in the air, as if it were stuck in mud.

He sipped the coffee, glanced at the child and the toys spread around the room, then up to her face. "Then can we be alone?"

She blinked at him once or twice and then allowed the child to slide to the floor. Instead of running off, it came and stood on Namuo's foot and tried to climb into his lap. "Daddy," the child said.

Kitty said "Tsk" and stood, scooping the child up to carry it over to a playpen, where it began playing with a big Ronald McDonald doll. She stood over the playpen, watching.

Namuo waited for her to come back to the table. He was conscious of his odor, smelling of his bed and of cigarettes. His place didn't have a shower and he only bathed at night, using a tub in the shack and water from melted snow. Kitty could take a shower whenever she wanted to, in the trailer's tidy fiberglass bathroom, and he pictured her naked body, sleek and steaming.

"Namuo," she said, still standing and looking down at her child.

His senses intensified, ready for her invitation. He prepared to stand up and take her in his arms.

She said, "You ever thought about doing something besides hunting and guiding?"

He paused in his fantasy of lovemaking. "Mmm...  Well. Not much else around here besides the project. And we've been through that -- I just don't think I'm cut out for construction work, that's all."

She turned but remained standing my the playpen. "So you tramp around the hills with a bunch of qallunaaq instead."

"It's a service," Namuo said. "The tourist industry is a valuable part of the local economy."

"I don't mean to criticize, but it doesn't seem like that part of the local economy is doing you much good."

"I do all right," he said, putting the coffee cup down. "I know my place isn't much. But it's enough for me."

"But is it enough for anybody else? What if you wanted to get married? Do you think a girl would want to come live in that shack?"

"Maybe we'd move into her place," he blurted, even though he knew it sounded stupid. "I mean..." He smoothed back his hair, which had become mussed and matted under his hat.

"Look, I know what's on your mind. You want to fool around." Before he could answer in the affirmative, she went on, "And not only is it not going to happen, but you need to start directing that someplace else. Preferably somebody who's not married."

He slumped on the chair. "Uh...  " he said.

She came back across the room and sat again at the table. "I like you and I like hanging out with you," she said. "There's nothing wrong with you, and if I weren't married I'd love to mess around. But I am married, and Thomas is your friend. What happens when he finds out, huh? Have you considered that?"

She raised her coffee cup and drained it. "Now I'm not saying this so you'll think you have a chance with me. You don't. But there's other girls in town who would be much more interested in you if you get out of that goddamn shack."

"Hmm," he said dubiously.

"Hell, be a guide if you can swing it. But you need to improve your living standard if you want a girl these days."

He sighed. "Season's almost over," he said. "If something doesn't happen in the next week or so, I'll be eating canned salmon and jerky all winter."

"Well, just do whatever it takes. We might be able to lend you some money if it comes to that."

He looked at her face's mysterious collection of features, the curves and proportions that added up to Kitty. If he couldn't have this face to kiss and stroke, he could at least memorize it.

"Aw, Kitty," he said. "I wish you had at least let me get as far as propositioning you."

"What good would that have done?"

"I would have got to see the look on your face." And his saying this evoked, if not that look, an echo of the look, a softening and hardening at the same time, a combination of sadness and joy which told him that at least a part of her wanted him. Which was practically what she'd said, but he liked seeing it in her face better.


The walk to town took another hour. The bare road, accented by the tires of Thomas' truck from past days, sank slowly between two low ridges. It was past 9:00 now, and the sun had not risen,  though it was light out. It would not snow; the winter hadn't gotten serious yet, despite an early storm ten days before that had canceled a potentially lucrative hunting expedition. Namuo had gotten exactly one day's pay from that gig, out of the non-refundable deposit. Nothing else had come along since then, and the season was almost over.

Namuo passed more houses as he drew closer to town, and at the main street he turned left. There were several cars in front of the small supermarket, and as usual pickup trucks were clustered in front of the new hardware store. With the boom in the economy caused by the geothermal project, more and more local people were expanding their houses or building new ones. Contrary to what he had told Kitty, he had considered learning a trade, not to work for the construction company, but for one of the local building contractors, to work on people's houses. At least he could learn to fix up his own place.

A woman approached. She wore a brand new parka, and he recognized the maker as one of several women in town who made winter clothes and sold them to both locals and outsiders. As she passed, he realized she was a foreigner from Asia -- Japanese or perhaps Chinese. She smiled brightly, and he returned the smile.

She couldn't be here alone; there must be Asian men, here for a hunt. He hurried on to the tourist offices, where the guides gathered.


The tourist center was a new wooden building next to the hotel. There was a large, common lobby with a counter where someone from the territorial tourist bureau answered visitors' questions and referred them to various guides and outfits. In the rear of the building was a loading dock and storage area and a bullpen where the guides were supposed to gather and wait for work. The guides could rarely be found inside; they preferred to sit out on the loading dock, where they could look at the sky and a patch of hills and part of the bay. Only in really bad weather did they retreat to the bullpen.

There were five others on the loading dock already, silently fiddling with boots and pieces of equipment. The other guides greeted him and went back to their tinkering, but they all wore expectant half-smiles. From this Namuo guessed they knew about the Asians and were hoping for some kind of work. He watched as one of them, named Samuel, stood up and self-consciously patted the pockets of his jacket, then headed into the supply room. Namuo followed him.

Samuel was older than Namuo and had chosen him on several occasions to accompany a large party Samuel was guiding. He sat down at a table in the center of the storage area and got out a pack of cigarettes. Namuo pretended to be looking for something in the racks of tools until Samuel said, "Namuo, have a smoke."

They lit cigarettes and Namuo waited some more. Finally Samuel said, "Some people in town from Japan."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, they got in last night. Just a man and a woman."

Namuo was silent. From where he was sitting he could still look out of the loading dock a little. The sun had risen somewhere above the thick overcast; they would not see it today.

He had had some slight experience with Japanese, a group of men who had come last year. They all deferred to one of their number, apparently their boss. This deference extended to an insistence that the boss had been the one whose shot killed the one animal they managed to hit, a black bear.

Namuo had also taken a married couple out, people from Toronto. They were enthusiastic about everything, but when the time came to shoot, they declined and simply let a beautiful polar bear meander away. This astonished him, not because he cared whether or not they shot a bear, but because if they had simply wanted to view the bears without shooting them, there were much cheaper ways to go about it. He wondered if these Japanese would do the same thing.

"I don't care how many there are," Namuo finally said. "I need one more trip this season. I need some money."

"Well, you should do something."

"'Direct solicitation by guides is not allowed inside or in front of the tourist center,'" Namuo quoted. "I don't want to screw it up. Better just wait."

Samuel nodded, but this didn't necessarily mean he agreed. He sat looking into the dark corner of the room, smiling for no reason.

"Why don't you go after it?" Namuo asked.

"I've had a good season, and my wife is working for Carlson now, you know." Carlson was the company building the geothermal project; Samuel's wife worked in their office. "I feel lazy. But you should get the work. You had bad luck the other day with that storm just as you were going to take that group out."

Namuo nodded. It was nice that Samuel supported him, but he didn't see what he could do about it.

Samuel put out his cigarette and walked back out to the loading dock, carrying a sharpening stone for a knife.

Namuo sat for a minute and finished his cigarette, then got up and went through a door at the rear of the loading dock that led to a corridor in the tourist center. Here were their restrooms, but the guides weren't supposed to go any farther. Nevertheless, he crept down the hall until he could hear conversation in the lobby. Japanese voices were speaking. Then he heard a woman's voice, no doubt the woman he had seen that morning, speak in English.

"He says something about not using the guns we brought," she said.

"Yes, well -- You're permitted to use ordinary rifles of a certain caliber," answered a voice Namuo recognized as that of the tourist bureau agent. "The rifles which you brought are of the correct caliber, but they have a sort of electronic scope that is not legal here."

Her voice could then be heard asking a question in Japanese that included the English words "guidance system." A short disagreement between the man and woman ensued. Then her voice again: "I think we will have to rent rifles, if that is possible."

"Oh, yes ma'am. The outfitter can arrange everything."

She said in English, "You have to give the bear a fair chance -- this is about risking your life, remember?"

Namuo heard the Japanese man speak. "All right, but just remember, the bear might prefer eating you to me. What's this new jacket? Are you going native?"

"It's beautiful, isn't it? They sent me to a native woman who makes them. Much better than L.L. Bean."

The man sniffed and said something in which the word "Polartec" was prominent.

Namuo took this as his cue. He came walking innocently from the hallway and saw the Japanese man, wearing a track suit with a legend that said "1962 Greek Olympics -- Try hardest youth," standing with the woman he had passed on the street. "Nice parka," he nodded.

"Namuo, why are you coming through here?" the clerk said sternly. "You know guides aren't allowed to solicit business in the lobby."

"Oh, is this young man a guide?" the woman asked. Namuo stopped, smiling even wider. "Do you guide for polar bear?"

"Yes, ma'am," He said, grinning broadly. "But ..." He nodded at the clerk and went on out through the front door.

Namuo walked up the street a few yards, then cut behind someone's house and strolled back to the rear of the tourist office building. He fixed his face in an innocent mask as the other guides looked at him suspiciously and Samuel ignored him, smiling a little at nothing in particular.

 

 


Kazuo sat on his bed in the hotel, a lit cigarette in his mouth. He held his unloaded rifle, the rifle he was not allowed to take on the hunt, and looked at his reflection in the darkened window. The evening had begun at 3:00. Now it was after dinner and darkness was complete.

He switched off the lights and opened the window. There was a screen on the outside of the window; he fumbled with it until it fell off and went sliding down the roof with a clatter. The outside temperature must have been far below freezing, but the cold air felt bracing in the overheated room. He sat at the window for a few moments, observing the overcast sky. The noise of the hotel kitchen and the smell of garbage reached him.

He raised the rifle and looked through the scope, an experimental model produced by a friend's company. It had both night vision and a radar system that allowed the user to lock on to a target -- that was how it was supposed to work. When Kazuo's friend heard of the hunting trip, he had asked Kazuo to try it out.

In the distance -- he waited for the device to calculate it -- a small shape moved slowly in a field of static. 590 meters away. At that distance he could not tell if the animal was a bear, a dog, or a rabbit, but the gun was supposed to be accurate up to 700 meters. A symbol flashed on the scope, indicating he had locked on to the target. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger. The rifle clicked.

He continued scanning the blackness. He would locate a moving creature, then lose it. He sat at the window long enough for his feet to grow icy and his hands to begin to ache.

Finally he shut the window and laid the rifle across his lap. Yukiko was right, it was stupid to hunt with high-tech devices when he was supposed to be out here to risk his life. He sat wondering what it meant, "his life" -- how could one prove a life existed in this hotel room? Electrical signals flashed from one nerve to the next, his heart beat. If someone were looking his way with a radar scope, would he register?

In preparing for the trip he had read Hemingway's story "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber." It was the story of a man who loses his nerve on a hunt, but eventually finds his courage and his manhood just before dying.

Kazuo didn't give a damn about courage and manhood, that was the trouble. What did appeal to him was Macomber's renewed excitement, the way he had grown eager to face danger, to command his wife, to rush headlong toward what life and death had to offer. That was the problem with all the careers he had tried. After learning the basics of something, he could perceive a long, extended apprenticeship in which he did the same thing over and over, making imperceptible progress toward an abstract goal of perfection. It was the same in art or farming as in a martial art: repeat the same thing endlessly until you become it. Kazuo was not interested in repetition, nor in perfection. Repetition and perfection were for the factory. Macomber had become fully alive only when he faced life and death as if for the first time.

He laid aside the rifle and reached for his coat. It was now quite cold in the room, but he was pleased to notice it for the first time and also to notice that it had not bothered him. Perhaps he would move here. He could open an agency for Japanese tourists, men like him who needed a thrill to reset their lives. He would hire guides that would take the men on dangerous expeditions, and when they came back, he would sit with them around a huge circular fireplace -- he imagined the hearth he had once seen at a certain American national park lodge -- listen to their shiny-faced tales of danger and courage, and accept their thanks for creating this opportunity for them to renew their manhood. It could be very lucrative.

He went outside and walked over to the rear of the tourist offices. There, under a floodlight next to a loading dock, he found their guide completing the work of packing the sled for the next day. The sled was at least five meters long and was heavily loaded; he could not imagine how a few dogs could pull both the sled and them riding it. The guide did not seem to recognize him, so he waited until the man paused, and said, "Hello."

The guide turned to him and said, "Just about ready. You should get a good sleep." So he did recognize Kazuo.

"I want to ask you about tomorrow." The man said nothing, waiting. "How close will we get to the bear?"

"We don't have to get close," the guide said. "The rifles are accurate to 300 yards. And in case the bear charges, I'll shoot. You don't have to worry."

"Could we get closer?"

The man's face was mostly in shadow, but Kazuo could see him glance up quizzically. "Don't want to get too close."

"How about a hundred yards?"

The guide laughed. "So you want excitement, is that it?"

"Yes," he said, smiling sheepishly.

The guide turned away and walked toward the loading dock steps. "Okay."

"Okay, a hundred yards?" Kazuo followed him up the steps; he had not put on his boots, only street shoes, and his feet were freezing. "How close does the bear get before you shoot?"

They went inside the storage area. The guide went over to a locker and took out three rifles. He handed one to Kazuo. "Do you know how to clean it?" he asked.

They sat down at a metal table, like the shop tables in his father's plant, only stained and dented. Kazuo knew how to clean a hunting rifle, but the lighting was dim. He fumbled a little but was determined to show the guide he knew what he was doing. They worked in silence for a while as a space heater hummed. When they had reassembled the rifles, Kazuo put his down and said again, "How close?"

The man kept his eyes on the rifle in his hands. "The bear," he said, "can run 100 yards in 8 seconds. These rifles can fire 5 shots in 8 seconds." He looked up, waiting for Kazuo to take this in. "So if a bear charges, I give you four seconds." He shouldered the rifle in his hands. "After that, boom." He jerked the rifle to simulate a shot.

Kazuo stared at him. Then he broke out laughing. "'Boom!'" he said. "From you, one shot! 'Boom!'"

The guide put down the rifle. "I will wait for you to shoot," he said. "But not too long."

"Of course," Kazuo said. "You have your reputation to protect."

"I have you to protect," the guide said seriously.

"What about this," Kazuo said. "If I'm here, and you're over here." He put his fingers on the table a short distance apart. "And the bear is here," he pointed to another spot.

The guide shook his head. "Please, I'll just do my job, okay?" He reached for the third rifle and began to take it apart. "I'll do this. You go to bed."

Kazuo winced inwardly. It was just the way people had dismissed him before. He recalled the vineyard in South Africa and the owner of the neighboring farm, a man Kazuo had thought he had befriended. He was someone whom Kazuo both flattered and consulted for advice; if things went well, perhaps the man could be bought out, and Kazuo's land thereby expanded. But one day Kazuo had apparently said the wrong thing and the man's face had closed down dismissively. After that their friendship seemed to be over; despite Kazuo's repeated attempts, the man remained aloof. The whole experience soured and eventually he had had to leave.

Now he sat in frustration only a moment. What would Macomber do? He tried to seize, from his heart, some of the white hunter's spirit.

He took his wallet out of his pocket and blindly pulled out several Japanese bills. "What if," he asked, "I am here, and you --" Kazuo put down the money on the table in front of the guide, "are here?"

The man put down the rifle and looked at the money. There was silence for a few moments. "How much is that?" the guide asked quietly. "I don't know this money."

Kazuo picked it up and quickly counted it. "It's more than $2000 American. That's even more in Canadian." He put it down again in front of the guide.

The man's mouth twitched once, and he picked up the money. Without looking at Kazuo, he said, "Like I said, I will wait for you to shoot the bear." He pocketed the money and took up the other rifle again. "But I will not risk your life."

After a minute, Kazuo got up and left the room.

Namuo cleaned and reassembled the other rifle. Then he checked the work of the Japanese man, and discovered that he had inserted a part backwards. The rifle could not even fire. Had the man had done it on purpose? Shaking his head, he recleaned the rifle himself.


Namuo spent the night on a bench in the hotel's kitchen, courtesy of a friend who was a dishwasher. At 5:00 he was shaken awake by one of the cooks and handed a steaming plate of reindeer and seal steaks. He ate, then taking some scraps away to offer as treats, he went to see about the dogs. They belonged to another friend who lived on the outskirts of the village, and Namuo had used them before. He acquainted himself with the one new dog while their owner laid out the hitch, and together they got the dogs on line.

Namuo drove them over to the tourist center, pulling a sled that was practically empty except for the dogs' food. At the tourist center he transferred the food to the loaded sled and hitched the dogs to it, then stood the empty sled in the corner.

The two Japanese appeared in the twilight. The woman, wearing her native parka, fawned over the dogs, while the man, dressed in orange and purple qallunaaq gear, stood off to the side. Namuo got them seated: the woman in front of the man, more or less in his lap. Then he gave a command to the lead dog and a push to the heavily loaded sled, and they began.

They quickly cleared the village, following a track that led first toward the geothermal project, then veered to the south and west toward a certain valley. Game used this valley throughout the year to travel from the interior to the bay. Now in the fall polar bears, nanuk, migrated toward the water. When the bay froze, they would disperse out onto the ice and spend the winter fishing. Until the freeze, however, the bears wandered around the shore lands, hungry and somewhat grouchy, for their own hunt to begin.

If Namuo were just hunting on his own, he would go to the mouth of the valley where it met the bay. There the game was focused into a relatively small area and there was a good chance of bagging something quickly. But for tourists, this was too easy; they wanted to feel they had been on an expedition. So he took them high up the valley, to a ridge which the bears had to surmount before descending to the bay. This gave the tourists a nice long ride, and it was in a way more fair to the bears, which could pop up just about anywhere in the hills.

The thick overcast persisted; this was fine weather. Dark overcast meant there was no glare; it was clear without fog; there was a steady land breeze he felt he could rely on, a wind with no smell of a storm. He had checked the forecast in the tourist center before setting out, but knowing the official forecast wasn't enough; one needed a native's familiarity with the weather conditions here to survive, much less cart tourists around safely. The government wouldn't even license someone as a guide unless he had been born in the region.

As the sled gradually climbed away from the village, he began to enjoy himself. He was guiding tourists, true, but at least he wasn't working for a construction company. 

The incline became steeper, and Namuo hopped off the back of the sled to lessen the weight and walked behind it, often pushing. The dogs slowed and dug into the trail as he called to them and urged them on. They were working well; they, too, liked being out in the open, doing their jobs, performing their roles.

 

Kazuo sat upright, trying to see everything around him, to accustom himself to the environment and feel a part of it. He wished the guide had told them more about the land, the weather, and the habits of the bear. He wanted to transcend the tourist experience, to fully immerse himself in the hunt. He envied the guide, who had been born into something so elemental, so deep within the human soul, so far from the world of machine parts much less his own useless job, as to make a mockery of Kazuo's entire life. Yet he was here now, sitting in the sled, breathing the cold air. He attempted to distinguish whatever subtle smells and shades of gray that might have meaning for the guide.

His fingers itched to hold the rifle again; he realized it was childish, but if he could have ridden with the rifle in his hands, he would have done so. And yet he was not even sure it would fire. The night before, while he was cleaning it, he had deliberately inserted a part backward. He had done this without planning, without thinking; he saw his fingers doing it as if he were watching a film. Afterward he had lain in his bed, wondering against the blackness of the room why he had done it, and concluded that his instinct was pushing him farther than his intellect. He was here to risk his life.

Soon they reached a ridgetop and skimmed along it. From here they could see down the other side, into another, shallower valley where there were a couple of shacks, and over the next ridge a corner of what must be the big construction project he'd heard mentioned. Even on the ridgetop, they weren't as far from humans as it had seemed.

After traveling along the ridge for a while, Kazuo noticed an outcropping ahead. They pulled up to the boulders and stopped for lunch. The guide handed them sandwiches and a canteen, and went to water the dogs.

Kazuo pulled out a topographical map and tried to make sense of it, but he had no idea which ridge they were on. When the guide was finished with the dogs, Kazuo called him over and showed him the map, but the man seemed to regard it with mistrust. Finally he pushed a gloved finger to a spot that Kazuo thought could not possibly be their location. "Ehh? Are you sure?" Kazuo said. The man shrugged and sat down with his lunch, which looked like jerky.

Yukiko smiled at Kazuo. "I'm sure we're not lost," she said cheerfully. "Are you enjoying the ride?"

"Yes, I just want to orient myself."

"There's a lot to take in, isn't there?" she sighed. "To think we'd be out here in the middle of nowhere, you and me," she proclaimed. "Eating... Namuo-san, this is very good, what is it?"

The guide swallowed and said, "Caribou. Reindeer."

"Ehh?" She looked at the sandwich. "Reindeer? Like Santa?"

Kazuo laughed. "Ha ha! You're eating Santa's reindeer. No Christmas presents for you."

She nodded and smiled weakly at the guide. "Good. Very good." She took another, smaller bite.

When they were done, the guide walked over to the sled and drew out the rifles. Handing them to the Japanese, he said, "We'll have some target practice."

Kazuo stood there uncertainly. "Target practice?"

"You need to be familiar with these rifles, with the conditions," he said. "Otherwise you won't hit a thing." He smiled at Kazuo and took up his own rifle and led them ahead on the ridge a short distance. When they were within a hundred yards of another rock outcropping, the guide stopped and pointed. "You can practice hitting that," he said. "Please notice the wind. If we find a bear, the best situation is if we are downwind from him. Here we are downwind from that rock. So pretend it's a bear."

The other two stood looking at Kazuo. He self-consciously opened the magazine of the rifle and inserted some shells and waited as Yukiko did the same. The guide just stood there, calmly monitoring them. Yukiko nodded to Kazuo, and he reluctantly turned to the target and leveled the rifle. He didn't know if it would fire, but if it didn't, the guide would certainly reclean it then and there. He squeezed the trigged slowly, and there was a report.

Yukiko had raised a pair of binoculars and was looking at the target. "I think you missed, Kazuo-san," she said. "Try again, eh?"

He sheepishly raised the rifle again, sighted and fired. "Ah!" she cried. "I think you hit the base of it."

"You hit the bottom of the rock," the guide said in English. "Not bad, try again."

This time Kazuo hit the rock, off-center but close enough. "A hit," Yukiko trilled.

"Your turn." Kazuo stepped back.

Yukiko fired six times and hit once. She stepped back. "I'm not very good," she said, but her eyes were shining.

Kazuo made as if to turn away, but the guide suggested, "Why not empty the magazine practicing? It's your only chance to practice."

Kazuo reluctantly turned and fired away. He realized now that the guide had checked the rifle after their palaver, and had discovered and fixed his sabotage attempt. The purpose of the target practice session was to demonstrate this to Kazuo without embarrassing him. "Take your time," the guide urged, but only one shot was left. Kazuo shot grimly, striking the rock in the center.

"Yatta!" Yukiko cried. She thrust the binoculars at Kazuo and took her rifle from the guide and raised it.

"Take your time," the guide said again. "Breathe slowly. Squeeze slowly."

While she fired, Kazuo detached the magazine and checked the barrel. He couldn't see the firing mechanism and wondered if the guide would suggest cleaning the rifles now anyway. Ordinarily that would be overcautious, but they were going after dangerous game and their lives conceivably could depend on whether or not the rifles were in top condition. On the other hand,  there was no place to clean weapons here.

Yukiko spent her ammunition and turned to Kazuo. "I hit it twice," she said with relish. "This is an excellent trip!"

"You're a born hunter of rocks," Kazuo said.

 

 


Namuo led the Japanese back to the sled. "Now we really begin," he said. "We will go farther up, then along another ridge to the east a little. Then we will be at the head of a certain valley where the bears come. There we will watch. We must be careful. We want to meet a bear as he's coming up the hill toward the ridge, upwind from us.

"Bears have good eyesight, better than yours. They might see us, so we have to keep down, okay? And of course the bear is the same color as the snow. So keep alert."

"How long do we have?" the woman asked.

"We have three hours before we have to go back. If we don't see a bear, I will be very surprised."

"How close will he get?" she asked eagerly.

Kazuo turned abruptly away and pretended he was looking at something up on the ridge. Namuo said, "No closer than the rock was when we were shooting, I guess." He turned to them and asked them to get on the sled, then got on the back and mushed the dogs. He stood clinging to the back of the sled, watching the dogs.

Both the man and the woman seemed to be able to handle their weapons. The woman had shot with relish; the target practice had filled her with enthusiasm. The man, however, was noticeably subdued. He knew his foolish attempt at sabotaging his own weapon had been stymied. He looked at the back of the man's head with contempt. He intended to keep his part of the bargain; he would let the bear get close, while still being cautious. With all of them blasting away, there was no danger, but the Japanese would still find it exhilarating. The key thing was for the bear not to charge, since it was harder to hit an animal head-on.

They drove for some time along the route he had indicated, then went to the left below the ridgeline and drew to a halt near another rock outcropping. Below them, the valley stretched down to the bay, but as the day had grown slightly warmer, the air had turned a little hazy, and they could not see the bay now ten miles away.

He watered the dogs and gave them a little food, then got a plastic tarp and some caribou skin blankets from the sled. He arranged them on the ridge line, then lay down and peered through binoculars. After a few minutes he came back and picked up the rifles. "Ready?" he asked.

They loaded their rifles, and bringing an extra box of shells, went up to the blankets. They lay prone and inched their way forward until they were looking over the ridge and the tops of several low hills. It was not possible to see the entire slope of the hill beneath them; after fifty yards, it dropped away more steeply, then flattened out, so there was a space of forty or fifty yards that was not visible. But Namuo knew it was unlikely a bear would pick that point, the steepest part of the hill, to climb.

A wind blew in their faces. He saw the Japanese pulling up scarves. He hoped to get this over with before they got too cold or bored. For him, this was the best part of the hunt: waiting quietly, aware of the landscape and the sky and the movement of the air. He imagined the gusts of air sweeping toward him like flights of birds, this gust carrying the scent of game, that one with the smell of snow. But there was no smell of snow in the air, he noted with relief. An emergency camp up here was no fun. He had made one once, with much less equipment, and he didn't want to repeat the experience. Even now, the wind blew unfeelingly over him as he lay scanning with the binoculars.

He was not very conscious of time passing, only of the tourists shifting from time to time. Once the man sighed deeply and turned over on his back and regarded the empty sky. Namuo ignored him, only aware of the gradual change in the light as the unseen sun approached the horizon. He checked his watch to make sure. Just under two hours left. Meanwhile the woman peered solemnly forward.

He noticed a peripheral movement and raised his glasses. At the same time the woman, also looking though binoculars, grunted. Namuo focused and scanned the rolling hills. Finally he saw it: a bear, heading their way. He nodded to the woman. "Do you see it? Keep it in sight. I'll make sure there are no others."

The man turned back on his belly again and peered ahead, his mouth open slightly. He reached for the binoculars and the woman pushed his hands away and muttered something in Japanese.

Namuo quickly scanned the area; he noticed movement behind the first bear, nothing in front. "There's something else behind this bear, several hundred meters back," he said. "But you have good eyes."

She handed the binoculars to her companion, grinning. "Your bear is coming," she said in English to him as he tried to locate the animal. Seconds ticked by, and then the man said, "Ah!" and a few excited words of Japanese. Then in English: "Po-la bear."

The bear was still a kilometer off, making its way toward them steadily. It passed out of sight behind a hillock and Namuo waited for it to emerge; when it did, Namuo could see that it would pass off to their right a good distance away. "I think he is going to pass over that way, the way we came," Namuo said. "He will cross our tracks. Probably he will keep going, but he might follow our tracks this way, or he might follow them the other way because he smells meat. But probably he'll keep going."

"He might track us to here?" the man asked. His voice was steady enough.

"It's possible, but he doesn't really want to be up here. He wants to get down to the bay. So probably he will pass. I think there is another one, though." He raised his glasses and looked into the area where he had thought he had seen the other bear. After a few minutes of looking, he could find nothing.

Now the first bear had emerged again from behind a hill. It was climbing the slope to their right, about 500 meters away. "Nice look," Namuo said quietly, "But too far to shoot. Just look, okay?" He didn't want them to merely wound the bear and have to chase a wounded animal.

The bear was fully grown, and as it reached the top of the slope, it presented itself to them in silhouette against the gray sky, its white fur frosty and almost fully grown in for the winter. Namuo handed his binoculars to the woman, and both the Japanese looked at the bear, murmuring expressions of admiration. It was a beautiful adult bear, Namuo could see, a fine prize. He kept a lookout over the ridge for the other one.

"Sugoi," the woman breathed. "Fantastic. Beautiful." The man was silent.

Now the second bear emerged, closer than Namuo expected. He nudged the man and pointed. The bear was about 300 meters away and coming in their direction. He would cross their ridge about a hundred meters to the left. "This is your chance," Namuo said. "But wait."

Behind them, the dogs whimpered a little. They could smell the bear now.

It shambled forward, its large, flat-bottomed paws acting like snowshoes. This bear looked a little younger than the first, not quite fully grown, but old enough to qualify as game. Still too far away to be heard, it plunged down a slightly steeper bank. Then it stood for a moment, looking around, sniffing the ground and the wind.

It passed behind a low rise for a few minutes, then emerged. It was now directly in the dell before them and just to their left. Namuo waited for it to climb the hill. It was good for it to get higher -- it would be closer to the sled. Its powerful shoulders and hindquarters propelled it   toward them, still making somewhat to their left.

When it was about two hundred meters away, Namuo said, "Now get ready." He looked at the man and saw to his astonishment that the man was looking past Namuo to the right. Namuo looked over quickly and saw the first bear had reached their tracks. It was still eight hundred meters away. "Don't worry about him," Namuo said with some anxiety. "Your bear is before you." He saw the woman had drawn a bead on the second bear.

The man turned toward the second bear as it came up the hill. "Take your aim," Namuo said. His own rifle was pointed right at the bear; he aimed almost unconsciously. He was already able to bring down the bear from this distance nine times out of ten, but the bear belonged to the foreigner. The man finally peered through his scope.

"Breathe now. Slowly. Do you have a shot?" There was no answer. The bear was slowly approaching, now a hundred fifty meters away. It had not spotted them. "If you have a shot, take it now."

The man did not fire. Namuo cursed him inwardly. Seconds ticked past as the bear continued to climb, now veering slightly toward them.

"Now, fire, fire," Namuo hissed. "If you do not fire, I will." He threw a quick glance over his shoulder to the first bear; it was proceeding down the slope away from them, toward the bay.

The dogs were beginning to growl. "You have five seconds," Namuo said. Still the man did not fire.

Then the woman's rifle erupted. The bear's head jerked up at the sound, but she had missed. Namuo thought the bear had not seen them yet, but now it was alerted. It paused, just under a hundred meters away.

"Now, now," Namuo cried. "Perfect shot!" He saw the bear focus on the source of his voice, but it did not matter now, for it would not charge something it couldn't see.

Then to Namuo's astonishment, the man stood up, clearly presenting himself against the sky to the bear.

Namuo let loose a string of expletives, English and Inuk. The man had shouldered his rifle. The woman lay looking up at him with astonishment. "Kazuo!" she shouted. "Yoko ni natte!  Lie down!"

The bear reared on its hind legs and began to charge, its huge paws scattering the snow as it plunged up the hill toward them. Namuo decided he would count to three. Then the man did something insane: he raised his rifle over his head and hurled it at the bear as one would throw a tree limb out of desperation. Then the woman began to fire, and Namuo joined in.

The bear was about a hundred feet away -- its size made it look closer -- when the bullets hit it. It was running at full speed, and if it had not been coming uphill, its momentum might have allowed it to reach them. But it stumbled and sank into the snow, tumbling a little to one side, then attempting to stand again and fight. Namuo fired only three times, enough to hit its heart. It was already dead, but the woman was still firing.

"That's enough!" Namuo shouted. He rose for the first time. From his knees he looked down at her; she was gasping for breath, her eyes wide; she clutched her rifle tightly. Namuo reached down and gently extracted it from her grasp, then put on the safety and laid it by his own weapon.

Then he turned to the man, who was standing on the blankets, his fists clenched, drawing huge breaths of the cold air. He had torn off his hat as if in preparation for a fist fight, and steam blew backward from his head. "I told you not to make yourself seen," Namuo said finally.

The man began to shout angrily, not at Namuo; he completely ignored the guide and directed his abuse at the bear. Namuo could not tell whether the man was celebrating, or mocking the bear as a victor would, or cursing the bear for its failure to reach him. In any case, he decided he had absolutely no understanding of this foreigner. After a minute the woman sat up and pushed at the man's legs, with a few angry words of her own, then roughly turned away. The man shut up, but remained standing, looking down at the bear.

Namuo stood up and picked up his rifle again and walked down to the bear. It was sixty feet from them. At least it would be easy to get out, this close to the sled.

The woman followed him and he motioned for her to stay back, in case the bear had any life in him, but tossing a piece of trash from his pocket at the bear got no response. It was dead. He kneeled beside the bear and drew a plastic tag from his pocket and fastened it to the bear's ear with a bit of wire. Then he rested for a moment. The woman drew a pocket camera from her coat and snapped his picture. He looked up at her and smiled slightly, and she took another one. Then he began to dress the bear for transport.

Yukiko walked back to the ridgetop. She sank down on the blanket, facing away from the wind for the moment, her adrenaline fading. She reached into her pocket for an energy bar and chewed on it blankly.

Kazuo had sat down cross-legged. He was silent, looking down at the guide working on the bear.

After a few minutes, Yukiko tossed her other energy bar into Kazuo's lap. "Eat something," she said. "You need to recover from the shock."

He obediently opened the wrapper and bit into the stuff.

"Kazuo-san, what in the world were you doing?"

"I thought, there are three against one. There is no risk. He cannot see us, and we all have rifles, and he wasn't even coming toward us. There was no risk."

"So you thought you'd risk your life, and all of ours, too?"

He chewed. "Still, no contest," he said.

She peered off into the haze, down the valley where the first polar bear was still meandering toward the bay. She said slowly, "All this was a stupid idea. I should have realized that. I should have sent you climbing rocks or something. You're right -- just to shoot a bear is no contest. Not like this." She turned and looked at the guide cutting the bear to pieces, the snow around it covered now with blood.

Kazuo bit off more of the bar. "Anyway, nice try."

She raised her fists inside their gloves and swatted at him. "You idiot!" she shouted. "Is that all you have to say? Do you realize how much money we spent? The tag for the bear alone was two million yen. It cost a million yen for the trip. And you got nothing out of it -- except to risk our lives. You're an idiot."

"Not true," he said. "I got something out of it, a good idea. I'm going to open a hunting lodge here."

"What?"

"I'm going to open a hunting lodge for other rich Japanese. It'll have a bar and a big fireplace and we'll employ the guides -- I'll make this one the head guide. We'll have package trips from Japan and make a percentage off the air tickets, the guide's fees -- not to mention the souvenirs."

"You're unbelievable."

"We could even work out some way of selling the game," he went on. "Some way of packaging it. We could change the law about not taking any part of the bear away."

"Stop," she said. "I don't want to hear any more. Not now."

He shrugged and popped the last bit of energy bar into his mouth. Below them, the guide waved them over. He was ready to start carrying the parts of the bear back to the sled.

The dusk was deepening as they rode back to town. The sled was much heavier, but going downhill the dogs had an easier time of it. At the tourist center they stopped and registered the kill; Kazuo mugged shamelessly as Yukiko grudgingly took pictures of him holding a bear paw that was almost as big as his head, or posing with the bear's head, pretending to be frightened by it. He seemed the picture of a headstrong teenage boy, still bursting with energy. Yukiko wondered just what he was cheerful about -- probably his hunting lodge idea. It would fail like all the rest, probably before he even got all the permits.

That night at the hotel, they were served some of the meat from the bear they had shot. Yukiko noticed a guarded glance from a few of the staff; no doubt the story of Namuo's bizarre behavior had spread. It would be good to get out of here.

The bear meat was cut into thin steaks and grilled. It wasn't very tender, but it had an interesting, undomesticated taste. After she had had a few bites and said a few polite things about it to Kazuo, who ate it with relish, she discretely reached into her purse and got out a small package of soy sauce. It tasted better that way.