Julian shudders, looks around in vain for something to hold on to. Innocent words are lethal weapons in the mouths of unknowing men.
Extending her arms, Shae offers Edgar an elk fur and a bottle of Dunedin’s homemade finest. “Both are from Kiritopa,” she says. “He couldn’t come. He told me to tell you bon voyage.”
Edgar smiles. “Shae, you are a peach, you really are.” Gratefully, he takes the bottle and the fur from her hands.
“Edgar, Julian is from Wales, like you,” Shae says.
“Oh, yeah?” Edgar assesses Julian with friendly curiosity. “What part?”
“Bangor,” Julian says, praying please be far from there.
God hears his prayers.
“I’m from Rhossili myself,” Edgar says, “tiny place all the way south, near Swansea. So what’s a white man from Wales doing on Niko’s boat?”
“Sailing out to meet you,” Shae answers for Julian.
Edgar casts Shae a long indeterminate look. “What are you playing at, girl?” he says quietly.
“Nothing, Edgar. We sailed for you. Honest. To bring you the shine.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“Blubber, liquor, fur,” Shae says speedily. “We would’ve been here sooner, but we got trapped ourselves. Did you see us? For two weeks we’ve been stuck. We walked across to give you the gift and to say goodbye. To wish you luck.”
“Why is he here with you?” Edgar points to Julian.
“He’s a friend of my mother’s and Kiritopa’s,” Shae says, blushing. She stands between the two men, jittery and twitching.
Edgar nods to Shae. “I’m going to take our new friend to that dinghy over there,” he says, “and have a drink with him, Welshman to Welshman. It’s not every day I meet a kindred spirit out here. You go on now. Go back to the Hinewai. Julian will return shortly. I’ll have one of my men walk him back. Let’s hope the ice holds.”
“Edgar, there’s nothing to worry about,” Shae says. “Everything’s okay.”
“Who’s worried?” Edgar says. “But I’m going to have a drink with him anyway. Go. Thanks for the hooch. I’ll see you next autumn.”
Julian steadies his blinkless gaze on Edgar Evans. Oh, the promises men make. “Here’s the thing,” Julian says, laying a hand on Shae’s fur coat to keep her from walking away. “I promised her mother I’d look after her, and I don’t want her walking on the ice without me. She stays with me. You said yourself the ice could crack any time.”
“And I promised the captain I’d have them both back shortly,” Rangi says. “So maybe we can hurry up with that drink.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Edgar says. “I’m a naval officer and you’re a mast hand. You don’t address me.”
“I’m not a mast hand,” Rangi says. “I’m second mate.”
“Edgar, it’s fine,” Julian says. “They’ll wait for me. Let’s have our drink. Go nowhere,” he says to Shae.
“Don’t you worry,” Rangi answers for her. “We’re not leaving without you.”
Shae watches him with an intense, desperate look Julian can’t decipher as he and Edgar start toward the boat. What is she concerned about? Does she think they’re going to talk about her? That’s not what men do. They don’t talk about the women they’re with.
Julian and Edgar climb into one of the tied-up boats with harpoons and fishing lines strewn on the bottom. “We’ve been hunting for our dinner to save on supplies,” Edgar says, opening the bottle of liquor. They swig from the neck. The whisky is strong. “The Kiwis sure know how to make whisky, don’t they? It’s the volcanic ash in the soil and the silver spring water. Makes everything taste amazing.” They drink again. “I have neither the time nor the sobriety to beat around the bush,” the explorer says. “Leave them. Leave the Maori, leave the girl. You’ll find another. Especially where you are.”
“Where I am is in the middle of the subarctic ice,” Julian says, “and there is only one woman here.” He doesn’t add that there is only one woman everywhere.
“I meant, it rains women in Southland. The wind blows them in from all over.” Edgar is speaking light-hearted words, but he’s not smiling. “Climb the ladder with me.”
“Our ship is solid,” Julian says, misunderstanding. “The ice is not very thick. We’re stuck, but as you said yourself, not for long.”
“It’s not the ice I’m worried about, my friend,” Edgar says. “It’s the Maoris.”
“No, they’re good people. They didn’t come here to fight you. They’re unarmed.” Julian drinks. “Rangi is young but he’s a fine fellow. So is Kiritopa.”
“It’s not Kiritopa that worries me.”
“Who, then, the helmsman? Niko is as decent as they come.”
“Niko’s a good fisherman. A good boatman.” Edgar leans forward. “But here’s what I know. No white man without a connection to Southland has ever set foot on Niko’s boat. If they let you on their boat, it’s to make trouble.”
Julian shakes his head. “You’re wrong.”
“You sure about that?”
Julian is amused in a doleful way. It’s not that he thinks there couldn’t be trouble. But look at Edgar Evans concerned about Julian when his own life hangs in the balance.
“I’ve been around the Dunedin area many years,” Edgar says. “I’ve lived here and drunk here, I’ve fixed my ships and bought provisions. I’ve had hospitality of all kinds, if you know what I mean. I’ve had good times and bad. I’ve done it all. I’m not proud of some of the things I’ve done, but I know a few things. And I know that no whiteman from out of town comes on a Maori boat. Especially not a ship owned by the Kahurangis.”
“The ship isn’t owned by the Kahurangis,” Julian says. “It’s Niko’s boat.”
Edgar shakes his head. “Niko may helm the boat, but Tama’s family owns it. Since the prohibition, they bought out most of the whaleships in Bluff with their moonshine profits.” He points up to the Terra Nova. “Come with me,” he says. “We could use another hand on deck, and you look strong. The ship will drop me off and return to Dunedin to resupply. You’ll return with her. Summer’s just around the corner. November, December is nice around Dunedin. There’s work, drink, food, plenty of women, like I said. The albatross come to mate on the Otago Peninsula in November. Besides being an apt metaphor, it’s an unforgettable sight. You’ll be fine. You’ll live. Because I’m going to tell you something.” Edgar lowers his voice so Rangi doesn’t accidentally overhear. “If you go back with them, you’re not getting off that boat. Not in one piece anyway.” Edgar pauses. “They’ve been known to practice tribal justice out at sea.”
“Do I need justice?” Julian asks, a chill running down his spine.
“They’ll say you fell over drunk and drowned. They’ll say a million things. Who’s going to find you?” Edgar lowers his voice until he is whispering. “If they’re against you, they will kill you. They will pierce your throat and drink your blood, and cut you up. The deck will run with your blood, and they’ll say it was the blood of seals. They’ll suck the brains out of your skull. Your bones they’ll leave out in the sun to dry and hone them into hooks and spears. The Maoris use every part of the human carcass. They’ll use your skull to carry water if it’s not too leaky.”
“My skull is leaky,” Julian says, “so there’s that.”
“They are warriors, each and every one. The more tattoos, the more fierce the fighter.”
Julian’s heart beats faster. “Be honest, what part of what you just told me is hyperbole,” he asks, “and what part is whisky?”
Edgar doesn’t answer. “They would behead and disembowel the whiteman’s women.”
“Is that hyperbole? That was a long time ago, right? Hundreds of years ago?”
“Fifty years ago. As they say nowadays, flesh-eating is mostly not practiced in New Zealand anymore. Or, let’s say, rarely practiced.”
“Edgar,” Julian says, “if what you’re saying is right, how can I lea
ve her with them?”
“Then bring her on my ship. It’s safer than the Hinewai.”
Julian shakes his head. “Edgar.”
“Or let her return with them,” Edgar says. “If they don’t know she’s with you, she might be all right. She’s grown up with them. They trust her, more or less, as much as they can trust anyone outside their tribe.” The man pauses. “Do you trust her?”
“Yes.” But Julian’s voice shakes. “She is my tribe.”
“Whose idea was it to sail out in the first place? Tell me it wasn’t hers.”
A numbness creeps around Julian’s edges, as if Shae is already dying.
“Why are you causing trouble?” Julian says. “She came here for you.”
“I’m not causing trouble, mate. Trouble is here. I’m just pointing it out to you.” Edgar talks quietly. “I mention this about her because of what she told me last year. She said a man had come to see her mother, a man who wanted to take her home with him to Ireland or the Isle of Man or something. She had to bargain with him to make him leave. He saw sense in the end, and left peacefully—or so she said. But she told me that if he hadn’t vanished on his own, she would’ve vanished him.”
Julian stares inside the boat. At the bottom, the ice has melted in the sun and water is seeping into his fur-lined boots. A false syllogism runs through his mind in a baffling refrain. Other men are betrayed. But I am not other men. Therefore, I am not betrayed. Did the beast, before it was loved, set things in motion that cannot be reversed?
“She told me about the man,” Edgar says, “to please me, not scare me. She said she wanted to be with me so much she would do anything not to leave Southland. I said to her, Shae, leave if you want, I’m never here. I’m never staying. And I’m married. But she wouldn’t listen.”
“She sailed out here for you,” Julian repeats dully. “That’s what she told me, and I believe her.”
Edgar shakes his head. “I’m an excuse, Welshman. I’m not the truth.”
Julian can’t lift his gaze. Is there something he has been missing? He’s been missing a lot, chunks of his own life, fragments of others. Kiritopa wanting to walk across the ice with them and being nearly forcibly kept behind on the Hinewai. Rangi like a barnacle on their side.
Is Kiritopa insurance? To make sure Shae and Julian return?
Is Rangi security? To make sure they return?
“Rangi is not going to walk away from me in peace,” Julian says. “And while I may be able to take care of one Maori, what are you going to do when all the others run down the ice to your ship with their harpoons and clubs and tomahawks looking for her and me?”
“Not her. Just you. Let her go back with them.”
Julian shakes his head. “I can’t.” He looks steadily at Edgar. “You know I can’t.”
There is sadness in Edgar’s smile. He doesn’t speak for a moment or two. Then he lifts the bottle of whisky to the sky. “Let’s raise a glass to you and me,” Edgar says. “We’re out of time. We don’t know what awaits us. But you and I know where we’ve been. I’ve met a lot of men in my life. I can tell things about them. You’ve endured things. You’ve lost much. Yet you won’t be deterred. You would’ve made a fine polar explorer. I’ve never met tougher men than polar men. Not soldiers at war, not naval officers, no one. Let me tell you a quick story of where I’ve just been this past winter before I sneaked off on this ship for an ill-considered jaunt that’s turning into purgatory. Have you ever heard of a place called Inexpressible Island?”
Julian shakes his head.
“Yeah, no one in the world has,” says Edgar. “Except us who were there. My friend Murray Levick said that the road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but hell itself was paved after the style of Inexpressible Island. Me and four other blokes, a scientist, a surgeon, a naval officer, and a cook—sounds like a joke, doesn’t it?—got trapped by a blizzard on the Antarctic ice shelf. This island, if you could call it that, is a barren nothing, just rock covered by ice, and when we were there, we couldn’t find even the rock. We’d been walking around, exploring, looking for the Adélie penguin, and maybe to get some emperor eggs to bring home for study. We thought we had plenty of time to get back to our main party, but the storm came sudden, and the snow drifts piled up high on top of the ice. We were separated from the rest of our team by hundreds of miles of drift and couldn’t go anywhere. We couldn’t go anywhere for 80 days. At night the temperature dipped into minus 70ºF. For ten weeks straight, it never got above minus 40ºF. We built an igloo on the ice shelf and spent 80 days inside, staving off death. Weather permitting, we’d crawl out, kill a seal or a penguin, and crawl back in. When we couldn’t catch or hunt, we’d eat the blubber we had, we burned it and greased our bodies with it to keep warm. We were all sick with scurvy and dysentery and stomach poisoning from eating raw and infected meat. For six of the eleven weeks we spent together, there was no light in the sky. The only light was from our blubber lamp. How it stank! And yet every night when we made it through another day alive, we felt so happy. We drank, and read aloud, we mocked each other, told jokes, sang songs. We talked about our families, our wives, our children, our mistresses. I got closer to those four men than I ever got to anyone. Because we weren’t alone. We were in it together.” Edgar smiles. “Two together? They’re always going somewhere. Two together is always an adventure.”
Julian bows his head. His fists are in his stomach.
“And that’s what we were,” Edgar says. “Adventurers. Nobody cares how we suffered. Nobody cares if man has made the worst journey before he died, or the easiest.”
“What matters,” Julian says, quoting Bukowski from long ago, “is how you walk through the fire.” He doubles over.
“Yes!” says Edgar. “What matters is that we, who lived through it, know what we lived through. We want to let others know that we had been on a great quest together. We were gallant, and steadfast, and we didn’t waver.” Edgar points to Shae standing off in the distance, anxiously watching them. “She is in your igloo on Inexpressible Island, waiting for you.”
Julian’s head remains lowered. She’s the only one left in it.
“I understand,” Edgar says. “I never would’ve abandoned my men either.” Reaching into his boot he passes something to Julian under the elk fur. “Take it, don’t say no,” Edgar says. “You might need it.”
Julian peeks under the blanket. It’s a six-inch Bowie knife, with a razor-sharp double-edged blade and a pin-point tip. “I can’t take your knife, Edgar.”
“You can and you will. I’ll get another. I’ve had this one since the Discovery. It’s my gift to you, fellow countryman.”
They have one more swig of the nearly empty bottle, then get up unsteadily and shake hands. Julian has hidden the knife in his boot. “Take care not to cut yourself, Edgar,” Julian says. “And take care not to fall. There’s a hundred-mile glacier you must climb to get to the South Pole. You don’t want an unhealed cut and a head injury out there in the drifts and the winds.”
“How do you know about the Beardmore Glacier? You’ve been to the South Pole?”
Julian shakes his head. As Edgar has warned him, so Julian has returned the favor. Out here on the Antarctic ice, by the hull of the Terra Nova, a historic, legendary ship, Julian feels close to a break in the lining of the universe, to the fracture in the order of all things. Before he lets go of Edgar’s hand, he says, “Know this—after your trip to the South Pole, no one will attempt the journey again. Ever. So rest easy. The world will know how you walked through the fire.”
Edgar smiles, his powers of comprehension occluded by whisky.
“Thanks, Julian, my Welsh compatriot,” he says. “Kia ora. Have life. Be well.”
Edgar Evans will die. A fall down the Beardmore Glacier, a head wound, an unhealed cut, frostbite, fever. No one will know what happened to his body. It will never be found.
48
Door Number Two
JULIAN PEERS I
NTO SHAE’S CLOSED FACE BEFORE THEY START back with Rangi, trying to catch her eye, searching for the truth of what awaits him upon their return. She won’t meet his gaze. Won’t or can’t?
They do not speak as they walk back. The floes slide about, watered down by the sun and iced by the wind.
It’s a treacherous journey.
And the sun is going down.
Other men are betrayed.
But I am not other men.
Therefore, I am not betrayed.
Back on the Hinewai, the crew celebrates the success of their mission. They delivered the load, lightened their ship, and got paid without losing a man. Everyone’s optimistic the ice will melt soon and they will be able to return home. The haka chanting and stomping is remarkably loud that evening, the stories boisterous and the moonshine free-flowing.
Tama asks Julian for another story. “We like your odd little tales, whiteman. Tell us one more for the road.”
Julian takes a swill of his drink, glances at Kiritopa on one side of him, Shae on the other. The old Maori shakes his head and shrugs. “You want to provoke him some more?” Kiritopa says. “Be my guest.”
Shae doesn’t raise her eyes. She hasn’t raised her eyes since they’ve returned from the Terra Nova. She acts as if she wants to become invisible.
“Have you heard the one about the lady, or the tiger, Tama?” says Julian.
“Can’t say that I have.”
“It’s a good story. It was written thirty years ago. It’s about an ordinary man who is taken prisoner by a king.”
“You sure like these stories about kings and ordinary men.”
“I seem to, don’t I? Well, in this particular kingdom, the sovereign dispenses justice in his own way.”
“As is his right,” Tama says. “He is the king.”
“Yes,” Julian says. “He places the men accused of wrongdoing in front of two closed doors. Behind one is a beautiful woman. Behind the other is a ravenous tiger. The king asks the man to choose which door to open. If he opens door number one, he will be married to the fair maiden, and all will be well. If he chooses door number two, a vicious tiger will end his life.”
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