The cinema : 1952 (1952)

Il8 THE CINEMA home perhaps with a seal, and Annunglung would say : ' It's a poor man, Comock, who shares your igloo and eats your seal and does not do his share of hunting.' And then I would say: 'Why do you not come out with us hunting?' And for a long time we would be silent though all our eyes would be upon him and waiting to hear what he would say, but it would be as if his mouth had been frozen he would not move it again. This would happen many times, and when we came home there would be Annunglung sitting in the igloo and my wife would say: 'He has not moved all day long/ One night we came home with two big seals — we had been away two days and there was Annunglung sitting and saying nothing, and I saw by my wife's face that she was frightened. My wife took me into the tunnel to be away from his hearing, and my wife made her voice very small and she said: 'Comock, you must not leave me and my young children here alone again I am frightened. Have you seen his eyes?' 'No,' I said. 'You must see his eyes,' she said. As soon as the dogs were fed, my eldest son fastened the snow block door for the night. And then we gathered round our seal and sat dowrn to our eating, and we could not help looking at Annunglung who did not sit with us but sat near the lamp, not even eating the seal meat we had put into his hand. My wife, who sat near me, kept touching my arm. 'Annunglung, are you not hungry?' I asked, hoping he would look up in the way that there would be light in his eyes. He looked and the light of the lamp was in his eyes, and then the meat in my mouth stood still, and truly I was frightened the little black balls of his eyes they had grown so small. Then I told my sons to go alone to the hunt. I found and hid Annunglung's spears and harpoons. His knives, my wife said, he always keeps under his sleeping-mat. I found them and hid them too. There were many days of storms. My