“How could they possibly live in the basement?” The thought of the dank, dark place was forbidding in this day and age. How inhumane to have placed them there more than a century ago, before modern plumbing, temperature control, and electric lighting.

“Not well, is the obvious answer. People came to stare at the brown-skinned curiosities. Literally, journalists and curiosity-seekers crawled on the sidewalk to peek through the grating into the basement windows.”

“Did they ever get out of the museum?”

“They had to, but not by choice. They became ill. The New York City heat was overwhelming to them. They caught colds, which developed into pneumonia for five of them. Tuberculosis for another. And all six of them wound up in Bellevue Hospital as patients. When their health improved, they were released back to the museum. Someone had the foresight to fix up more comfortable living quarters, on the sixth floor, where the caretaker was housed.”

“Were they-?”

“Within six months of their arrival, two of the adults had died. Sadly, one of them was Qisuk, the leader, which left his little boy orphaned. Alone here in a strange world with no family or friends. The child didn’t speak the language and only three other survivors spoke his.”

“Didn’t these officials think of taking the survivors, especially these children, back to their homes, to Greenland?” I asked.

“The ice and weather made it impossible to do in the middle of winter.”

“Didn’t anyone care about them?”

“Oh, yes, of course. One of the kindest was a museum employee named William Wallace. I think he was the superintendent of buildings at Natural History. He and his wife took little Mene into their home. He became part of their family. He was tutored in English, went to school with the Wallaces’ son, became quite a good athlete and a relatively happy child. But within the year, each of the other five Eskimos who had arrived with him in New York had died.”

“What did they tell the boy about his poor father?”

“Museum officials had learned a great deal about polar Eskimo funeral rites from Peary. They decided that the best thing to do, for Mene’s sake, was to reproduce the traditional burial ceremony that his tribesmen performed at home. The boy had turned eight and was old enough to understand what was being done, and to remember the dignity with which his father was to be honored.”

“So what’d they do?”

“Well, Mr. Wallace and some members of the scientific staff gathered on the museum grounds, in a lovely secluded courtyard behind one of the main buildings. The records show that the service was conducted at just about sunset.”

“The boy was there?”

“Oh, yes. And just like the tradition in my father’s village, he watched as the body was brought out from the museum, covered with animal skins and a carved mask that lay over Qisuk’s head. It was placed on a base of stones, and then layers of more stones were stacked in a mound over the dead leader.”

Clem’s hands continued to illustrate the story she told. “Then his favorite kayak and tools were arranged beside him. A very impressive ceremony, meant to show young Mene the respect everyone had for his father. It ended when the child put his mark on the grave.”

“What do you mean, his mark?”

“Another of our rituals. A loved one makes a symbol in front of the stones, between the grave site and the direction of the home in which his nearest kin lives. It stops the spirit of the dead from returning to haunt the living.”

“And Mene did that?”

“It made quite an impression on the boy. Here in this strange country, he watched over his father’s burial like the funerals of the great hunters he had seen in his homeland.”

“Coop’s a sucker for happy endings. Tell her things got better for the boy, okay?”

“They did. The Wallace family gave him a good life for a time. And because Mr. Wallace worked at the museum, Mene got to visit a lot. Upstairs, on the fifth floor, where the Eskimo artifacts were studied and cataloged.”

“I’m surprised he’d want to be there.”

“I’m sure he thought it was great fun. He had no idea he was being studied. Whenever Peary came back with specimens, over the years, whether it was an Arctic owl or native costumes and weapons, Mene could explain them to the staff. He was actually a favorite of many of the workers. Until the day he made a dreadful discovery.”

“In the museum?”

“Yes. I guess he was almost eighteen at the time. By then, Mene was allowed to walk through the great halls of the museum, studying the exhibits he had never been permitted to see before.”

Clem stood and put both hands up to her mouth, then spread them in front of her.

“He wandered around rooms filled with beasts and animals he had never imagined existed, seeing African habitats and South Seas tropical island lizards and fish, most of which weren’t even pictured in his books at school in 1906.”

I wanted to hear that the mark Mene had left at the head of his father’s grave had worked to protect him, that he wasn’t haunted by that restless spirit for the remainder of his life.

Clem had one hand out straight in front of her, the other folded over her heart. “And then he reached Room Three, which must have made him nostalgic for his home. There was an array of kayaks, sleds being led by their stuffed hunting dogs, primitive paraphernalia from Peary’s voyages, and finally-a large cabinet that was labeled ‘Exhibit Number Five. Polar Eskimo named Qisuk.’”

Imagine the impact of the betrayal, the trauma experienced by the boy who thought his father had been treated like the legendary warriors of his homeland.

“Mene was face-to-face with his father’s skeleton, which had been mounted and hung in a glass display case in the museum.”

“The young man fell to his knees and wept.”

“How did something like that ever happen? How could they have deceived the child that way?”

Mike tried to break the tension. “He’s lucky they didn’t stuff his father.”

Clem’s glance was dead sober. “The way Mene told the story, he was never sure. Next to the hanging skeleton was a life cast of Qisuk.”

“What’s that?”

“The museum has an entire collection of them in the anthropology department. Workers would make molds, applying paraffin to the face of the dead person-sometimes to their entire bodies. Completely lifelike. Mene looked up and saw the melancholy face of his beloved father. He was sure they had skinned and preserved him, just like an animal.”

“He wasn’t right about that part, was he?” I asked.

“Try finding the records. See ifyou can get an honest accounting. Franz Boas, the great anthropologist, kept a diary-and mind you, he thought the whole charade was entirely appropriate. In his writings, he claims the museum officials staged the fake burial to placate the young child, so he wouldn’t think his father’s body had been picked apart by the scientists.”

“What was actually under the animal skins the night they pretended to bury Qisuk?”

“A log. A piece of wood the size of a man.”

“But surely-”

“If you think I’m making any of this up, Alex,” Clem said, patting a notebook that she had brought with her and placed on the small desk next to her glass, “there are newspaper clips that tell the whole story. The fight for Qisuk’s body-”

“Fight? Between whom?”

“He died at Bellevue Hospital. The doctors there wanted to autopsy him, but the museum wanted the same privilege.”

“Was there a winner?”

“An agreement was reached between the two institutions. The poor fellow was to be dissected at Bellevue, and then the museum would be allowed to preserve the skeleton. Famous phrenologists inspected his brain and took measurements of his skull.”

“Why the skull?”