faced. She thought of avalanches and polar bears, but both were things it would have been easy to discuss in simple terms, instead of going on about the area being ‘cursed’ or ‘evil’.
Thora’s question clearly irritated Oqqapia. ‘Of course we do. That’s why we don’t go there and we try to warn others not to. That was the first thing I learned as a small child.’
‘I didn’t mean everyone who lives here, I meant the police and other authorities. Don’t they make enquiries when people disappear?’
The woman shook her head and gave Thora a puzzled look. ‘How would they hear about it?’
At the other end of the sofa Matthew sighed and took a break from his attempts to contact the police. It was perhaps not surprising that people round here were disinclined to report missing persons.
‘So was the death of this woman never reported?’ Thora asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t live with Naruana at the time.’ She licked her lips again but the blood had stopped flowing. Perhaps the memory of the violence was starting to heal as well. ‘We got together after all of this had happened. He was on the street and I had inherited this house from my mother.’ She saw from Thora’s expression that she didn’t think much of the arrangement, and added: ‘He sometimes works down at the dock and comes home with seals and fish.’
This man would have to contribute a lot more to the household if Thora were to allow him to even so much as rent her garage, but this perhaps more than anything else shed light on their different circumstances. ‘How many people have disappeared up there?’
‘Not many. I don’t remember anyone else but Usinna and then your people. We’re careful to keep away from the place, so there’s never any activity there. Tourists hardly ever come here.’
‘What about the daughter of the hunter that you told me about. This Igimaq?’ Every wrinkle in the man’s face was engraved on Thora’s mind; eyes that were so brown they were nearly black, and his maimed hand. Usually she had a lot of difficulty remembering people’s faces.
‘Usinna was Igimaq’s daughter. Naruana is his son.’
So they were one and the same person. ‘What do you think is going on? Do you believe that the souls of the people who died of starvation all those years ago are killing others?’ That couldn’t be it. The bank’s performance bond wouldn’t be saved by an explanation like that.
‘Yes, I do. It’s an evil place, but exactly what happens I don’t know, nor do I want to. Maybe the spirits drag people into the rock or transform them into animals. Those kinds of things happen here. Maybe not in your country, but they do here.’
‘I think there is a different, more down-to-earth explanation.’ Thora wished that Matthew could understand them. He would certainly be less irritable about the phone if he could follow the discussion. She felt for him and knew that she would personally have started beating the receiver on the arm of the sofa in anger if she were in his shoes. ‘How did Usinna end up going to the area if it’s instilled in everyone from childhood to avoid it? And what was she actually doing there?’
‘She had probably forgotten it was dangerous. She moved away from here as a teenager, went to school in Nuuk, and from there to Copenhagen for college. She was really clever.’
‘So she was just visiting?’
‘She didn’t come often – maybe once a year. She was fond of the village and the people here even though everyone knew that she would never move back again. When she went missing, she was doing some kind of research related to the mine. I think it was in biology.’
Usinna had been doing research in this locally notorious area? Thora tried to ask her questions carefully for fear of belittling the folklore in which Oqqapia seemed to believe. ‘Was she studying polar bears or something else that could have led her to the forbidden area?’
Oqqapia shook her head and looked indignantly at Thora. ‘No, she was studying births here in the village and another village farther north of here.’
‘Births?’ There were hardly many of those out on the snow-banks around the work site. ‘Human births?’ Thora’s Danish wasn’t good enough for her to know what words were used for animal litters. It could well be that the research had involved seals or other mammals.
‘Yes. No boys have been born here for many, many years. She wanted to find out why.’
Thora thought this over for a moment. It suddenly occurred to her that they had only seen girls out and about in the village. Of course it could have been a coincidence, but she found no reason to doubt the woman’s statement. ‘Did Usinna have a theory about the reasons?’
‘No doubt, but I don’t know what it was.’ The woman stared at her lap. ‘I’m not going to have children, so I don’t really care what the explanation is.’
Matthew slammed down the receiver and turned to Thora. ‘Do you have the notebook? I’m going to try the number in there.’ Thora pulled the book from the pocket of her coverall, which lay partly on the sofa. They hadn’t been invited to take them off; nevertheless Thora had unzipped hers and pulled off the top part. Matthew lifted the receiver and dialled the number. He suddenly smiled victoriously. ‘It works. It’s engaged, though.’
‘Who is he calling?’ Oqqapia had been watching them but hadn’t understood what they’d said to each other. Thora reached for the open notebook and handed it to the woman. She pointed to the number and asked whether she recognized it. Oqqapia did not reply immediately, then asked, suspiciously: ‘Where did you get this number?’
‘It’s the notebook belonging to the woman who went missing. Do you recognize the number?’ Thora took the book back and handed it to Matthew once more, so that he could keep trying.
‘Yes.’ The woman’s trust in Thora seemed to evaporate before her eyes. ‘It’s my number.’
‘Still busy,’ said Matthew, who had cheered up quite remarkably.
‘That’s not surprising. You’re calling the same number that you’re phoning from.’
Matthew was dumbfounded. ‘You’re kidding.’ He hung up, closed his eyes and leaned back his head. Then he appeared to recover and wrote the number from the notebook on the slip of paper containing the number of the police. When he had finished he picked up the receiver again and kept trying to reach the authorities.
Thora couldn’t help but smile at him, but instead of responding she turned back to Oqqapia. ‘How did your number find its way into this book? Did you meet her, perhaps?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ Oqqapia looked sheepish and avoided Thora’s gaze as she spoke. ‘I don’t even know what she looked like. The one who went missing.’
‘So you met a woman from the camp?’ Thora tried to suppress the irritation that suddenly washed over her. The sofa was uncomfortable and her legs were boiling hot in the coverall. Her patience with Oqqapia’s vague responses was at an end as well.
‘Yes, but I can’t remember what she was called. I only met her once.’ Oqqapia’s face brightened. ‘I remember the name of the man who brought her here. He can probably tell you who she was.’
‘Man? What man?’
‘The AA man. Arnar.’ The woman pronounced the name incredibly well considering that she knew no Icelandic. ‘He often visited Naruana. He was going to help him stop drinking. He brought books and pamphlets that were supposed to make it easier. Once a woman came with him, maybe the one who disappeared. It was maybe six months ago? They didn’t just talk about alcohol, because their conversation was partly about Usinna, I remember. I’m not quite sure how she came up but I remember that the woman had asked about a girl who was on board an ambulance flight. She wanted to know how she was doing, and from that the conversation led on to the subject of only girls being born here. The woman said she was planning to have children herself; maybe she thought that she would be infected by this strange phenomenon. No one wants just girls. Not Greenlanders, and obviously not strangers either.’
Thora felt it likely that Oddny Hildur would have been concerned about more than just the gender of the foetus. If Thora were planning to have another child she was sure she’d be interested in anything unusual about births in her immediate vicinity. ‘And Naruana discussed his sister with those two without losing it like he did with us?’
‘Naruana considered this Arnar to be his friend. He enjoyed his visits and he trusted him. I think he wanted to spend time with Arnar, even if he had no plans to stop drinking. He just felt comfortable talking to him, since he was friendly and seemed not to judge us for our lifestyle.’ She shifted in her seat and took a folded piece of paper from her back pocket. ‘I’m still thinking of trying it. I want to make something of myself, like Usinna did. I’m sure I could do it if I stopped drinking. I’m clever too.’ She looked at the brochure as if it contained a magic spell that
