In Fond Remembrance of Me by Howard Norman Page B

Noah had on the ark. There was much talk about this, how they tasted, what they looked like, what their voices were—“That one was unusual—that one was unusual.” When the ice-break-up arrived, the hunters paddled kayaks back to their village. There were many holes in the ark where planks had been pried off. The ark sank away into the sea. But the hunters had left behind a kayak for Noah and he paddled it clumsily to shore. “You can stay here,” a woman said.
    â€œNo, I’m leaving,” said Noah.
    â€œDo you know how to travel without an ark?” a man said.
    â€œI can walk.”
    â€œYou no longer have a family where you came from. Stay, we’ll find you a new wife.”
    â€œI’ll try and find one where I come from.”
    The villagers walked south with Noah a ways, then turned back—a few ravens kept going, too. They were curious. Noah never returned—nobody ever knew if he got home, either. That is what happened.

THE MAN WHO HELD TWO KNIVES
    The Inuit Cultural Institute was in Eskimo Point, a community largely developed by whites, or Europeans, for administration and mining purposes and whose population in the late 1970s was growing rapidly. Eskimo Point, too, was justifiably famous for having amongst its citizens some of the most remarkable, prodigious, and skilled carvers and sculptors; work from Eskimo Point is in private collections and museums all over the world. Mark’s nephew Thomas accompanied Helen one day up to Eskimo Point, where she purchased a narrative sculpture called The Man Who Held Two Knives.
    When she returned the next day, I saw The Man Who Held Two Knives prominently displayed on her writing desk, among papers, books, and other paraphernalia of the basically makeshift situation of life in a motel. “There’s a wonderful cooperative up there,” Helen said. “I saw carvings in bone, ivory, antlers—lots of soapstone. But this one really knocked me out.”
    I picked up The Man Who Held Two Knives, not only to admire the craftsmanship but to feel its weight, its solidity, and observe its detail close-up. I referred to it as a “narrative sculpture” for two reasons. First, the sculptor, whose name
was Lucy, had told the person who sold the work to Helen, “I dreamed what the man in the carving is doing.” Of course a dream is a narrative; in this instance, however, the artist herself defined the autobiographical origin, “I dreamed …” but also, to some extent, takes responsibility for the action depicted in the sculpture because she had dreamed it.
    â€œI don’t know if Lucy believes that dreams enter a person,” Helen said, “or if dreaming’s a creative act all on one’s own. I didn’t talk with her. The salesman in the cooperative told me what Lucy said. I didn’t hear it from Lucy herself.”
    The second reason I refer to the sculpture as “narrative” is that a folded-up written story had accompanied Helen’s purchase. Therefore The Man Who Held Two Knives depicts a moment frozen in time, even though the work itself is kinetic, it has animation, a kind of life force. When you look at The Man Who Held Two Knives , you are entering the life of the figure in medias res.
    He stands about ten inches high, made of gray, grainy soapstone. His head is almost perfectly round; his eyes are etched slants, his mouth askew, there is no nose. His upper body is a triangular mass, his legs thick and short, though each of his arms is of plausible human dimensions. His feet are not clearly defined as feet; it is more that the legs widen at the ground. His right arm is angled 45 degrees upward, his left arm is angled 45 degrees downward. There are no hands to speak of, but rather knives in place of hands, so that there is no question as to whether the knives (and violent action associated with knives) are a physical extension of the body. The figure is