They ride south on their ocean horse in high spirits and with high hopes, but on their sixth morning, having effortlessly covered over five hundred miles, having sailed eight degrees of latitude straight south, having passed the uninhabited high-cliffed Campbell Island and encountered no trouble except for occasionally rough seas, the Hinewai awakens to find itself adrift in ship-sized fragments of ice. She pushes through, hoping for the sun to melt the rest. That day, they travel barely thirty miles. And the next morning, the ice gets thicker. The floes stretch for miles in every direction, including the one they came from, and the one they’re going to.
It rains, which is a blessing, for not only does it melt the ice slightly, but they catch the rain in barrels and now have drinking water. Fresh water on a ship is like painite, the world’s rarest mineral. The ship sails another sixty miles, and by sunset, Niko finally spots the three tall masts of the Terra Nova, matchsticks on the horizon, still at least ten miles away. The crew gets loudly excited. The end of their mission is literally in sight.
But at night, there’s a blizzard and the next day an opal thunderstorm, and the night after that, the rainwater freezes over the ice, and the sea becomes like the surface of the moon, rock solid and ragged with peaks and glaciers. They have been boxed in by the floes, and the ship can’t move in any direction. And ten miles away, like a mirage, a tiny dot of ink with three thin mast lines, stands the Terra Nova.
There’s nothing to do but wait for the pack to break. This sets the entire crew on edge, except for Niko. He rations the food and water, orders Rangi to spot for seals, and remains on deck, silent and stoic, staring at the horizon through his field glasses. To conserve coal, he stops firing up the furnace, and Julian’s cabin goes from sauna to The Shining overnight. He sleeps in all his clothes, in all his skins, under an elk sleeping bag and sheep fur. He hangs blankets over his bed and sleeps underneath them as in a tent. He is still cold.
The Antarctic ice is in the air, and there is frost on every breath. As far as the eye can see there is nothing but white sky and white land. The clouds descend and pour into every ice sculpture. In the mornings, petrels and fulmars squawk and fly over the ship through the fog that rolls in all the way down to the hard surface of the sea.
Julian’s eyelashes freeze in the ferocious wind. Often it feels as if he can’t breathe. Yet it’s so beautiful out, and at dawn, before the rest of the ship awakens, Julian climbs on deck despite the cold, and in deepest solitude stands witness to the heavens and the moon and the stars and the paths of all the seas. There is nothing subtle about his pain. He is at the bottom of the earth, heading toward the ice continent where the world stops spinning. Above him, the planet still turns, turns someone else’s years, turns someone else’s life. Above his black head whirls the infinite before and the infinite after. Inside him everything stands still.
If only you could see this, Ashton, my friend.
What’s the point of mourning what if when Julian can’t stop mourning what is.
∞
Mercifully, a sunrise later it gets warmer, and the ice melts from Julian’s beard, though not from the ocean, and the wind dies down at night. But when the wind subsides, other things rise up at night by the fire.
Unmindful of the cold, the men build a blaze in the tryworks out of blubber and wood. After supper and a substantial amount of moonshine, there is music and dance, and even cosplay, some of it sourced from local tribes, some of it from tribal practices of other South Pacific islands like Fiji and New Guinea. The young men, some Maori, some not, led by Tama, strip naked and strap on three-foot-long kotekas to their loins. Kotekas are penis sheaths, made of dried-out gourds, and are kept in place by a thin piece of string looped around the scrotum. For hours a dozen tattooed naked men outfitted with gourds boisterously perform the haka, a war dance that must scare the shit out of all the whales and seals in the sea, what with the rhythmic feet banging in marching unison, with the chants and songs, with the long bone spears in their hands pounding the deck. They bulge their eyes and stick out their tongues, and other things. It’s quite a sight.
Rangi helpfully explains to Julian that the size of the koteka has nothing to do with the size of the man, “otherwise I’d be wearing the longest koteka here, all the way to the stern,” the grinning Rangi says. “No, the koteka is short for work and long for festive occasions.”
“Festive occasions like when your ship is icebound?” says Julian.
“Yes!” Rangi is good-humored and nice. Rangi is like a male Hula.
“Yes!” Aata agrees. Aata is a slow, round man who never leaves Rangi’s side and who repeats everything Rangi says, including, “No, I’d be wearing the longest koteka here.”
“There’s only one way to determine that for sure, Aata,” Rangi says. “Bring Hula-Hoop here and let her hand be our judge.”
“Bring Hula-Hoop here and let her hand be our judge!” Aata repeats.
Hula, being one hell of a woman, instead of slapping Rangi upside the head, smiles and says she will do it only if Julian enters the fray. She actually makes him laugh. He politely declines, making an effort not to substitute politely with unfortunately.
∞
The twelve days allotted to the entire trip come and go, and there is no release from the ice. Early one morning, Niko commands Rangi and Aata to go out to hunt for seals because he doesn’t want to open any more barrels of blubber designated for sale to the Terra Nova. Rangi asks if Julian wants to come along, and Julian gladly accepts. It’s been a long week without motion.
Rangi gives Julian a pair of fur-lined sea boots to use on the ice. He gives him an axe, a pick and hammer, a pocket knife, snow goggles, a whistle, and a water bottle. He gives him a harpoon and a mincing knife.
It takes four long hours, to spot a leopard seal sunning on one of the floes, a mile away from the ship.
Rangi has been hunting seals since he was a small boy. He is the most experienced and accurate hunter on the Hinewai. But, as he’s about to throw the harpoon, he reconsiders and hands the weapon to Julian. “You might as well learn, whiteman,” Rangi says. “I’m not always going to be by your side.”
“You might as well learn, whiteman,” Aata repeats.
“Make sure the rope at the end of the spear is not tangled or the harpoon won’t fly,” Rangi says. “Aim for its head, or if that’s too small a target for you, for the fleshiest part of its back. Steady as she goes and don’t twitch. Focus, then fire.”
Without a preamble, Julian winds and throws the harpoon as he would a football or a fastball. The spear sails through the air and pierces the seal’s head.
Rangi and Aata cheer quietly while yanking on the rope to get the seal to stop thrashing. After they get close to the animal, Rangi barely needs to stick in a long blade to bleed the seal out. Julian’s well-aimed harpoon has already done most of the work.
It takes three men two hooks, thirty yards of rope, and two more hours to drag the heavy carcass back to the ship over the uneven surface of the ice. The ten-foot seal must weigh four hundred pounds.
They’re greeted like conquering heroes.
The crew lowers the winch, attaching it to the seal’s tail, and they hoist the carcass up to deck level, leaving it hanging upside down.
“Who killed the seal?” Tama asks.
“Julian!” Rangi says proudly. “He’s a good student, Tama. He would make a fine fisherman. He’s taken to the sea as if he was born to it.”
“Yes, he does work hard,” Tama says. “And so silently.”
Julian throws off his bloodied outer skin and wipes the blade against his trouser leg. “What’s there to say, Tama? I let my actions speak for me.”
The entire crew—everyone but Niko—gets their hands dirty in flensing the seal, or removing its blubber. Rangi lends Julian one of the monkey belts and Julian attaches himself to the ballast at the back of the ship and uses his super sharp knife to slice the seal open from stem to stern. They’re in luck because in the be
lly of the seal they find nearly two dozen undigested fish, whole and perfectly edible.
The cook grabs a net full of them and vanishes into the galley with Kiritopa, while Julian and Rangi, hanging off the ballast, use spades to slice off the seal blubber and throw the long strips onto the deck.
The brick tryworks has been fired up, the huge cast-iron trypots are ready to melt the blubber, or to render it. Julian’s heart thumps a heavy beat when he hears Rangi use the word render. He doesn’t look up on deck to seek out Shae, her face, her cold yet achingly familiar eyes, doesn’t seek out the soul from hundreds of years of travels past, Shae who once stood next to him as Mary, while he rendered the suet for the candles, saying to him do not address me, do not look at me, yet who so wanted to be addressed, so wanted to be looked at. Who so wanted to be loved.
Not this soul.
The women use their own knives, shaped like push daggers—the blade perpendicular to the handle—to separate the blubber from the skin by slicing it off in thin layers called bible leaves. The thinner the layer of blubber, the faster it renders inside the trypot and the better the quality of the oil. They all work ceaselessly before the sun sets. It takes ten men and three women all the hours until dark to cut the blubber into layers and then into chunks, to boil the chunks in the trypots, and to pour out the oil into the lined-up casks.
When they’re finally done, and it’s dark, the deck, the pots, the knives, the spades, the boots, the clothes, everyone’s faces, hands, hair, and mouths are slippery in dripping, reeking blubber grease. And there was wet-behind-the-ears Julian, thinking that making candles from suet was the worst thing he ever had to do and smell. Two crewmen slip and fall on the deck, afterward enduring some lengthy mocking.
There is no haka that night because the deck is too slick. It will be cleaned tomorrow morning, but for now, the crew eats, drinks, and sits on skins around the fire pit, having wiped the blubber off themselves as best they could.
Even Niko joins them this evening for the fish feast.
After hours of bonhomie, Niko loosens up and attempts to make Julian understand the circle of life. As if Julian’s silence somehow means he doesn’t understand it.
“The fish of the sea eat one another, whiteman,” Niko says. “You understand that, don’t you? The large fish eat the small, and the small eat the insects, the wolves eat men, and the men eat the dogs, and the dogs eat one another, and the gods devour other gods. So tell me, why should we not eat our enemies?”
They laugh. Everyone laughs, even Niko.
Everyone but Julian.
“Pardon him, Lord,” Julian says, quoting Shaw, “who thinks the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature.”
Kiritopa shoves him, whispering, “Now is the time you decide to speak? Silence!”
“Are you saying they are not the laws of nature, whiteman?” Tama says.
Kiritopa’s elbow at his ribs keeps Julian from replying.
“Oh, but they are,” Niko says. “In some cultures, death by eating is still law. Not ours, of course, but other cultures. As punishment for adultery, for robbery, for treacherous attacks—death by eating is still law.”
“Many things were once law, so what?” Julian says. “Blood sacrifice of children was once law.”
“I asked you a question, son of Cruz, a guest on my boat,” Niko says. “Answer me. What is the harm of killing and eating your enemy? Would they not do the same to you if they could?”
Is that a rhetorical question? It is not an easy thing, to wean a warrior nation of its ancient rites. “I suppose they might,” Julian says, to be agreeable, to end the conversation.
“There are worse things than being eaten,” Niko says pleasantly. “Living as a slave, for one. And like I said, we wouldn’t eat all men. Only our enemies.”
“And you’re not our enemy, are you, son of Cruz?” says Tama.
“I am not.”
“So why do you look so worried, all of a sudden?”
Everyone laughs. Julian, sitting on the deck with his knees drawn up, fiddling with a short piece of rope, making and remaking it into knots, does not look up. The whaleship is a theatre for mortal combat because everything on the ship can be turned into a deadly weapon. There is ready access to spades with short handles and razor-sharp blades, access to spades with long heavy handles and heavy steel blades. There are hooks of infinite variety, attached to wooden handles that are built to fit perfectly into the human hand. There are pitchforks.
There are metal chains, steel cables, iron winches.
There is blubber oil, usually hot, often boiling.
There are bone spears of all sizes.
There’s the harpoon.
There’s the hand-held chopper the women carry, used mainly for flensing. If that blade is brought down, it’s like the guillotine. Anything it touches will be amputated.
There is the ice axe.
You go out on a whaleboat with men, you better make sure you’re going with men who have your back. Because one place you don’t want to be on is a boat in the middle of the sea with men who harbor you ill-will.
“I’m not worried, nor do I look worried,” Julian replies to Tama. “Tell me, Niko, would you eat the heads, too?”
Niko laughs, and the men laugh with him. “Of the head, we would eat only the brain,” Niko replies with a warm smile. “To make us smarter.”
But Tama has stopped smiling. “Son of Cruz,” he says, “we sit around the fire at night, we tell stories, we sing, we dance, we pass the time. Yet you sit, you listen, and you say nothing.”
“I just said a whole mess of things.”
“You eat when we eat,” Tama says. “You drink when we drink. You answer questions, yes. But you offer us nothing of your own. Why?”
“Where I come from, we have a saying,” Julian says. “Only speak when it’s time to say checkmate.”
“What’s checkmate?”
Julian takes a breath. “Sometimes a man must know when he is the main act or the audience,” he says. “I’m happy to sit and listen. You are excellent entertainment, Tama.”
“My question remains,” Tama says. “Either you got no stories, or you have too many. Which is it? Shae, what do you think? Does son of Cruz have any stories he’d like to tell?”
“No,” Shae says. “He’s got nothing.”
Julian stares into the knots in his hands.
“By the grim look on the whiteman’s face, I’d say he disagrees with you, Shae,” Tama says. “Don’t you, son of Cruz?”
“No,” Julian says. “The woman is right. I’ve got nothing.” He doesn’t so much as glance at her. He makes an effort not to clench his jaw.
“Kiritopa disagrees,” Tama says. “I can see he thinks you are full of stories.”
“I think no such thing,” Kiritopa says.
“Next to Niko, Kiritopa is the hardest man on this boat to impress,” Tama says. “Yet he is always by your side as if he is quite impressed by you.”
“I think you’re reading too much into it, Tama,” Julian says. “The man just sits by my side.”
“He is right, Tama,” Kiritopa says. “I’m not that impressed by him. He doesn’t know how to listen, for one.” Kiritopa elbows Julian again.
“Kiritopa hates the boat,” Tama continues. “Yet he’s come on Niko’s boat with you and Shae—who, by the way is not that impressed with you, it’s true, but she is a woman, so it doesn’t count. A man can always make a woman impressed with him if he really wants to, if you know what I mean, and clearly, you do not want to. Or can’t.” Tama smiles. “But my point is, Shae’s been on this boat before, but Kiritopa never. Yet you are here and suddenly he is here.”
“Yes,” Julian says. “That is quite observant of you, Tama. We are all here.”
“Come on, son of Cruz. I’m tired of listening to the sound of my own voice.”
“You know what I do when I’m tired of listening to the sound of my voice?” Julian says. “I stop talking.”
“You heard our stories. Our moko tell the rest. Now you tell us something, for a change.”
“What do you want to know?”
“There you go again, answering my questions with nothing. You have the body of a fighter, yet you carry almost no marks on you except for the two knife scars on your arm, your tiny dots, and your girl names. Shae’s mother has been waiting for you for years. Isn’t that right, Shae? So you must be somebody. You certainly carry yourself as if you think you are somebody. I’ll tell you the truth, whiteman, your silence unsettles me. Friendly people talk to each other to pass the time, especially on ships when they’re out at sea. Only animals lie mutely.” Tama pauses. “Animals or enemies. Not friends. Your choice, whiteman. Are you a friend, or an enemy? Are you a human being, or are you an elk whose skin you wear? What are you?”
Julian glances at the stoic Kiritopa, sitting between him and the unreceptive Shae. He glances at the impassive Niko, at Rangi and Aata’s friendly faces, at Hula and Tia’s smiling, captivated faces. Tama’s forbidding expression flickers in the high-contrast light of the blubber oil poured out onto the logs in the fire pit.
“You have your ancestors, Tama,” Julian says. “And I have mine. My father’s people were the Aztecs. Have you heard of them? A tribe of nomadic warriors who wandered for two hundred years in search of a home and fought everything that stood between them and their destination. While your family was settling in Southland and growing berries, my family was settling in Tenochtitlan, which became Mexico. They also had tattoos. They also had weapons. They also had blood sacrifice. They believed nothing was better than the tears of dying babies to bring about the rains and the harvests. And what about my mother’s ancestors, you ask? They were from Norway. They were Vikings. My mother is a Norse woman. Her people were seafarers, warriors, and pirates. They built longships and traversed the globe. The Vikings were the first to make ships, and they showed everyone else how to survive at sea. The ship you are on is only as good as it is because my ancestors taught the world how to build it. The Norse men have a few tales of their own they tell around the fire. Have you heard the one about Volund? No? Let me tell it to you now. Volund falls in love with a fair maiden who one day vanishes from him. While he is turning the world upside down searching for her, he is taken prisoner by an enemy king who is angry with him for refusing to marry his daughter. In revenge, Volund murders all the king’s sons and makes their body parts into jewelry which he presents to the king as a grisly gift. He escapes by forging a pair of golden wings, on which he flies away and continues searching for his lost Hinewai.”
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