Solomon Gursky Was Here Read Free

as quoted in The Diaries of Lady Dorothy Ogilvie-Hunt

Solomon Gursky Was Here

    One

One
    One morning—during the record cold spell of 1851 —a big menacing black bird, the likes of which had never been seen before, soared over the crude mill town of Magog, swooping low again and again. Luther Hollis brought down the bird with his Springfield. Then the men saw a team of twelve yapping dogs emerging out of the wind and swirling snows of the frozen Lake Memphremagog. The dogs were pulling a long, heavily laden sled at the stem of which stood Ephraim Gursky, a small fierce hooded man cracking a whip. Ephraim pulled close to the shore and began to trudge up and down, searching the skies, an inhuman call, some sort of sad clacking noise, at once abandoned yet charged with hope, coming from the back of his throat.
    In spite of the tree-cracking cold a number of curious gathered on the shore. They had come not so much to greet Ephraim as to establish whether or not he was an apparition. Ephraim was wearing what appeared to be sealskins and, on closer inspection, a clerical collar as well. Four fringes hung from the borders of his outermost skin, each fringe made up of twelve silken strands. Frost clung to his eyelids and nostrils. One cheek had been bitten black by the wind. His inky black beard was snarled with icicles. “Crawling with white snakes,” one of them would say too late, remembering that day. But the eyes were hot, hot and piercing. “I say,” he asked, “what happened to my raven?”
    â€œHollis shot it dead.”
    Ebenezer Watson kicked the runners of the long sled. “Hey, what are these dang things made of?” Certainly it wasn’t the usual.
    â€œChar.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œFish.”
    Ephraim stooped to slip his dogs free of their traces.
    â€œWhere are you from?”
    â€œThe north, my good fellow.”
    â€œWhere … north?”
    â€œFar,” he said.
    It was forty below on the lake and blowing. The men, knocking their throbbing feet together, their cheeks flaring crimson with cold, turned their backs to the wind. They retired to the warmth of Crosby’s Hotel, to which a first-class livery was attached. A sign posted in the window read:
    WM. CROSBY’S HOTEL
    The undersigned, thankful for past favours
    bestowed upon this
    LONG-ESTABLISHED HOTEL
    is determined to conduct this establishment in a
    manner that will meet the approbation of the public,
    and therefore begs a continuance of Public Patronage.
    REFRESHMENTS SERVED AT ANY HOUR
    OF DAY OR NIGHT
    Wm. Crosby
    Proprietor
    Ebenezer Watson took a coal-oil lamp to the window and cleared a patch of frost to keep watch.
    â€œWhat did he mean his raven?”
    Ephraim was throwing slabs of bear meat to his leaping dogs, settling them down, and starting to clear snow from a circle of ice with a board, flattening it to his satisfaction. Then he took to stacking goods from his sled on to the ice he had cleared. Animal skins. Pots and pans. A Primus stove. A soapstone bowl or koodlik . A harpoon. Books.
    â€œSee that?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œCrazy bastard’s brought reading books with him.”
    They watched him pull a rod and what appeared to be a broadsword free of the sled ropes. Then he slipped into his snow-shoes and scrambled up the sloping shore, jumping up and down there, plunging his rod into the snow like one of their wives testing a cake in the oven with a straw from a broom. Finally finding the texture of snow he wanted Ephraim began to carve out large blocks with his sword and carry them back to his flattened circle. He built an igloo with a low entry tunnel facing south. He banked the walls with snow, tended to the seams, and cut more blocks for a windbreak. Then just before he got down on his hands and knees, disappearing inside, he banged a wooden sign into the snow and ice.
    CHURCH OF THE MILLENARIANS
    Founder
    Brother Ephraim
    The men turned up