A Question of Provenance and Identity

The cab rattled off down the alley, leaving us at the side entrant to Huber’s Dime Museum on 14th Street. Mr. Jimmy held my right arm, the Blue Man Tooke held my left. Despite everything – the abduction, the threats – I was more curious than scared.

Mr. Jimmy unbolted and opened the door of the horse stable. The stench was terrible. “Meet Bosco the lion”.

The lion roared, the ground shook, I recoiled at the sound, the smell, and the sight of the mangy beast that was standing in the corner of the one-stall stable.

“What the…”

“Language… Finn, language,” said Tooke.

“You brought me to Huber’s through a lion’s den!”

“We didn’t want to make a fuss and attract any attention. “

“A Lion just roared at me and shook the whole neighborhood. You don’t think that might attract some attention!”

“Huber’s don’t open for another hour. We can’t risk that you get recognized by the afternoon crowd,” said Mr. Jimmy.

“You should have thought about that before you kidnapped me from my mother’s graveside, drugged me and threw me into the back of a taxi cab in broad daylight.”

Buffoons. I’d been kidnapped by idiots.

Posters of Bosco, The Man-Eating Lion and Swami Rama Sami, the Hindoo Wild Man, were posted all over down-town Manhattan. Bosco and Swami were one of several vulgar and very popular attractions at Huber’s Dime Museum, which included snake-charmers, sword-swallowers, dancing girls and fortune tellers. Huber’s also hosted lectures and exhibition intended to educate and inform, but it was not the kind of place I would ever visit, long on lurid sensationalism, and short on educational merit. A high-minded vaudeville for low-brows.

“Oy, what’s going on here!” A hollow-chested, half naked little man, dressed in a grubby white toga suddenly rose from a bed of straw in the rafters, apparently awoken from his nap.

“What the bleeding blazes is goin on ‘ere. Bosco needs his beauty sleep. You Crow boys are ruining this place. The sooner you’re gone the better.” It was Swami the Hindoo Wildman. “Who’s the spiff?” said the side-show huckster in a heavy cockney accent.

““How dare you call me a spiff…” I had no idea what a “spiff” might be, but I did not appreciate being addressed as one.

“Oooh. La-di-da.” The man nibbled at his dirty finger nails.

“Come.” It was Mr. Jimmy. “Gustafsson’s waiting for us.”

Gustafsson! Crow Boys? Eskimaux. I was on the outside of things, looking in, but I sensed things were about to change.

We were in a long corridor, with floor-to-ceiling glass cabinets filled with stuffed animals and other curiosities. At one end of the corridor a sea of faces were pressed up against the lobby doors, children and adults waiting to get into the emporium.

In the other direction, the corridor led to a dimly-lit penny-arcade, but we turned left, down a hallway lined with photographs of naked savages. Three shrunken heads from the distant Pacific Islands, hung from the picture rail, suspended like coconuts at a fairground. Huber’s was a carnival version of the American Natural History museum and, I admit, more engrossing for the guileless celebration of the strange and weird.

We to folding doors and a sign that read, “Cook’s Blond Eskimaux, ” and entered a room the size of a tennis court, dimly lit by a single electric light-bulb which cast polar twilight at a panoramic tromp l’oeil painting of Arctic tundra on the opposing wall. Three igloos were erected in a life-size diorama on a platform strewn with white sand, artfully decorated with spears and axes, racks of dried fish, and a broken toboggan that looked like the skeleton of a dead animal.

I’d seen the photos of these “blond” Eskimaux and was unimpressed. To my better-informed eye, they were not much different from the Inuit of my Mother’s tribe and certainly lacking “Caucasian” and “Noble” features of the kind that I had inherited from Piet DeBoort. Truthfully, a living exhibit of Eskimaux was a cruel affront to my dignity. Cook’s exhibit was the last thing on earth that I wanted to be associated with because it made me seem ridiculous.

“If you brought me into this place to humiliate me, then you have failed.” I stopped before entering the twilight gloom. “ My mother may have been an Eskimaux, but she married into the highest echelon of American society. I have nothing in common with this squalor.” I thought to storm off and end this nonsense, reminding myself that I’d been abducted from my mother’s burial service and that I was being forcibly detained by these lunatics.

From out of the gloom there stepped a giant creature, more like a white bear on rear legs than a man. The figure was taller than the top of the door, and almost as wide, and it took me a moment to realize I was looking at a man, not a Polar bear.

Professor Erich Gustafsson stood six feet eight inches tall, weighed over three hundred pounds. He had a large high-domed head, bushy eyebrows that hung over brooding far-away eyes, a craggy Nordic face, the lower part obscured by a long and thick beard. Gustafsson was a man in full and overflowing, a force of nature, and a popular, caricatured, figure owing to his dare-devil Arctic exploits (which included the self-administered amputation of his left foot, and his escape from an ice-cave using his own frozen feces as a hand chisel). He was a proxy hero for every paper-pushing office worker, every machine operator stuck oiling the cogs of an automobile assembly line.

“At last!” said Gustafsson. “This must be young Quicksilver!” His voice boomed.

I was, of course, very curious as to understand why he addressed me as “Quicksilver”, but the greeting diminished me in front of his accomplices. I would not be bullied or badgered by this man, even if I was intrigued by his intentions.

“Actually, my name is Finn DeBoort, I am son of Piet DeBoort, whom you know.”

Gustafsson raised his eyebrows in surprise, so I pressed my advantage.

“Why did you call me Quicksilver?”

“You are the son of Ada Quicksilver, are you not?”

“I am, but DeBoort is my father’s name. I go by father’s name.” I had always taken that name as fact—never as something that might be disputed. I recalled the conversation with my father in the back of the DAC electric automobile. He warned me that the Quicksilver name might get me mixed up in things that I don’t understand.

The Professor looked over at Tooke. “Are you sure this is the right boy?”

“Aye, Professor. I seen the seven stars on his wrist, just like his mother,” said Tooke. “I reckon he is the Skrael-lard.”

Skrael-lard. It sounded like animal intestines or industrial waste.

“Calls himself DeBoort though” said Mr. Jimmy, spitting out my surname like sour tobacco.

My identity was bouncing around like a rubber ball - Quicksilver, DeBoort, Skrael-lard. They spoke as if I were something catalogued and understood, while I stood there trying to assemble myself from their fragments.

“Excuse me! Would someone kindly tell me what is going on? I don’t appreciate being here under duress and I especially dislike the way you are talking about me like I am a pet dog.”

Gustafsson looked contrite. “I can see how you might feel that way, my boy. You deserve a full explanation, but I think it might be a good idea if we get out of this appalling… crypt.” He gestured at the exhibit. “Why it is necessary to degrade our Inuit brother in this manner is beyond me… Where are they anyway? Where is Natkusiak? He’s needs to meet Quicksilver.”

“Nat and his family are in the cafeteria,” said Mr. Jimmy.

Gustafsson turned back to me. “Do you have the pendant?”

In the rush and confusion of my abduction, I’d forgotten about the velvet purse that Jenny gave me. I patted my pocket.

“I’ve got the pendant in my pocket, but where’s Jenny Sorensen? What’s happened to Jenny Sorensen? Why did you bring me here?”

“It’s a long story, young Quicksilver, and we don’t have much time.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“We have a boat waiting for us at the Seaport. We’re leaving for the Arctic this evening.”

“It’s the SS Crow”, said Mr. Jimmy.

“And we need to find Jenny before we leave,” said Tooke.

A mosaic coalesced in my mind.

The cafeteria at the back of Hubers Dime Museum, was modeled on a European conservatory, the tables bathed in bright light under a wrought-iron latticework. The kitchen staff were preparing candies and cakes for when the doors opened to the public at 2.00 pm. There was a long counter offering sodas and ices, end-capped with a giant copper espresso machine. The aroma of coffee made me thirsty and hungry.

Four Eskimaux were in the cafeteria, sitting on cane stools at a marble-topped table. They were dressed in seal skin parkas and rough-sewn Caribou pants, and they were eating bagels and lox, sipping at cups of cappuccino. They did not look like in zoological specimens, as I’d feared, but they seemed desultory; the death of two close kin might do that to you, even if you are from a culture where grief is an alien concept.

When they saw me, they became animated. An elderly male stood and greeted Gustafsson in Inuit, which I could not understand, of course. I was offered a seat next to a young woman, about my age. Tooke pulled up a second table, where he, Mr. Jimmy and Gustafsson sat down. I was worried that the cane chair might collapse under the Professor’s weight.

Gustafsson made the introductions. Natkusiak was the elder. The two younger males, hunter trackers, were called Inuk and Tulu, the girl was called Asiaq, and translation was down to Gustafsson and Tooke. Inuk, a handsome youth, grinned at me, and held his hand as if he was an acquaintance passing me by in Harvard Yard.

The four Eskimaux were as I expected, “blond” only superficially; their hair seemed more copper-colored, and they were neither tall nor fair-skinned. I saw a kinship of a distant kind. Inuk offered me a half-eaten bagel, which I declined for obvious reasons. They became excited at seeing my wrist tattoo, which Tooke insisted that I show them.

“The skrael-lard!” said Natkusiak, eyes wide with wonder. The Eskimaux were talking excitedly in their native tongue, they were nodding in agreement. The girl smiled at me, enigmatically, looking through me with dark brown eyes. Her chin was tattooed with three thick vertical stripes.

“Asiaq, she like you Skrael-lard,” said Inuk, still grinning. Tulu, his brother (I guessed) slapped him playfully on the back.

“This is the son of Quicksilver!” said Tooke, to which Natkusiak teared up.

“He knew your mother,” said Tooke.

“Natkusiak accompanied me on the 1886 expedition,” said Gustafsson, “he is a pathfinder too, though not as talented as your mother… was.”.

The Eskimaux elder understood what was being said. He pointed at me, tapped his heart and then touched his head and bowed slightly. He then held out his own arm, pulled up the sleeve of his heavy parka, and turned his arm outwards. Etched on the wrist were seven stars, though in a different pattern!

I was overwhelmed and almost forgot why and how I was in Huber’s in the presence of this queer group.

Gustafsson removed a foot-long cannister from his inner pocket. It was made of a finely-etched white metal depicting mountains, the sea, aquatic animals, resembling Tooke’s south-sea tattoos. A parchment scroll fell onto the table. Gustafsson spread it flat and weighed down the corners with four green pebbles. They were made of the same stone as my mother’s pendant was made.

“This is the Vinland Map,” said Gustafsson.

I was unable to contain my astonishment when he oriented it in my direction, and I realized that I’d seen it - or something very like it - before!

“You recognize it, don’t you?” said Gustafsson with a tremor of excitement. Tooke and Mr. Jimmy leaned in close, studying my reaction. Inuk, the boy hunter, reached tentatively for my wrist. In one corner of the map, drawn in fading sepia ink, the seven stars were superimposed on an island archipelago. Their seven-star arrangement exactly matched my tattooed wrist.

The map, the stars, the tattoos on my forearm were not separate things, but parts of the same design.

“Your tattoo a key to understanding this map. Just as a nautical map is useless without a compass, this archipelago cannot be navigated without the key,” said Gustafsson. “It is how your mother was able to lead us to the North.”

“What about Natkusiak?” I pointed at the Inuit man. “Why is his tattoo different?

Gustafsson frowned. “We were hoping you might be able to solve that puzzle.”

I was being drawn into Gustafsson’s world.

Natkusiak pointed at triangle etched into the corner of one of the small islands in the archipelago, a crude representation of the Gateway Cairn, discovered on Gustafsson’s 1886 expedition. The Cairn was an anomaly, like Stonehenge, or like the Pyramids, a massive cone-shaped structure made of smooth green boulders, each too big for a human to move.

The seven stars were somehow a key to interpreting the map… But it was not the seven stars that made the map so instantly familiar. There was something else.

“Where did you get this map?” I asked.

Gustafsson explained that a farmer discovered the stone buried in a field outside the village of Kensington in Minnesota. The stone, inscribed with ancient letters, glyphs was authenticated proof that Erik the Red’s Vinland colony of Vikings survived and explored the American content. The map was a subsequent discovery but at the same location. .

The map was therefore at least seven-hundred-year-old. An island archipelago occupied the bottom left corner of the document; it was a small part of a larger story. The larger map depicted a fantastic world populated by giants and beasts, lakes and rivers teemed with fish. It was a world within a world’ a roughly circular island continent, with a crenelated shoreline that looked like giant cogwheel, inside a larger circle of jagged mountains. In the bottom right corner was an articulated sea-seal with a serpentine head and neck, etched against a background of geometric shapes.

Something, besides the seven stars, was pulling me into the world depicted by this map.

I gasped when I understood what that something was.

I reached into my pocket and took out the pendant and placed it on the map, near the serpent. There was a collective in-take of breath. Asiaq’s eyes seemed to flare with an internal light.

My mother’s pendant was of a circular design, much like a gyro or a navigational compass, and like a compass, there was a needle that span freely in a clear fluid contained between two crystal plates, held in place by a ring of gold. On closer inspection, the ‘needle’ was revealed to be a small green serpent exactly matching that of the map; it was a delicate and beautiful object, made of the same precious green stone as the pebbles. I’d seen the pendant many times but never examined the behavior of the free-floating serpent. I held the pendant horizontal, like a compass, and it behaved in the same way as magnetic wayfinder.

“The serpent and the pebbles are made from the same stone as the Gateway Cairn,” said Gustafsson.

Elements of the map revealed themselves. The large circle of jagged mountains were a ring around a fantastic world.

“These are the Tiara mountains?” I asked.

“We think so,” said Gustafsson. “But if they are, they have only ever been seen by two people, as far as we know. Your mother and your father”

“That’s ridiculous. If my father had seen the Tiara Mountains, he’d have laid claim to them like a Californian gold-digger and populated with an army of Blackshirts!” I was sure that something of this magnitude would have become part of my father’s mythology. “By now they’d be known as the Deboort Mountains!”

Natkusiak flinched.

Mr. Jimmy glared at me. “DeBoort ruins everything. The land beyond the Tiara Mountains does not belong to another thieving white man! If it is home to a lost civilization, then it should be left in peace,”

At this Mr. Jimmy glared at Gustafsson, “and not destroyed by colonists, well-meaning or not.” Mr. Jimmy returned his attention to me. “And besides, DeBoort is not your father…”

DeBoort is not your father.

A man rushed into the cafeteria through a mirrored door and crashed into a table near the entrance. It was Swami Rama Sami, the Hindoo wild man.

“Holy muvver of God, I fought I’d never find you. Troubles brewing. You’d better make yourselves scarce and, in a hurry,” The wild man’s cockney accent was difficult to take seriously. “There’s a Blackshirt mob out on Union Square, wiv sticks and guns, and they’re in a right old mood.”

Mr. Jimmy slammed the table, stood, and ran out of the cafeteria with a handgun drawn. Gustafsson rolled up the map and shoved it and the pebbles into the cylinder. Tooke flicked his wrist to reveal an open switchblade.

“There’s bleedin’ army of the bastards and they’re on to you Crow boys.” Swami Rama Sami was scared out of his mind.

I heard feet running in the corridor, then a gunshot boomed through the museum. There was a moment of silence, broken by an echoing shout from Mr. Jimmy. “They’re swarming through the lobby. Run for your lives!”.

The Blackshirt thugs moved fast—faster than soldiers, faster than police—as if the building already belonged to them.

The Blackshirts were there to take me back.

Back to DeBoort.

My father—

or the man I had been taught to believe was my father.

I ran.