The White Voyage

by John Christopher

  They walked into the sunrise. The wind dropped, and soon they were quite hot from their exertions. The sun itself, even when fully clear of the horizon, gave little warmth. It barely cleared the hills and almost immediately began to sink back below them.

  Hunger was something that came in waves: on the crests it was a gnawing pain, in the troughs no more than a dull, nauseous ache. They rested for a time, about one o’clock in the afternoon, and Nadya chewed snow. The ice was quite flat there, and not far away there were signs of the domed seal-holes. Once Mouritzen saw a small jet of water spurt up, presumably as a seal came up to breathe. He was tempted to try hunting them again; the spears had been left behind but he and Thorsen both had knives. Or he could stun it, perhaps, with a shot from the flare pistol – Olsen had given it to him so that he could signal when they reached the hut.

  Hunger sank back into nausea, and he realized the absurdity of his speculations. He stood up.

  ‘It is time to move on.’

  Thorsen objected, but Nadya moved off even before he did. They were now in the middle of the fjord estuary. There had been no further sign of smoke from the headland towards which they were moving. The contours, too, seemed different as they got nearer. It was important that they should get into that region while there was still a reasonable light.

  They got clear of the ice before three. In front of them the ground stretched up in quite a steep slope towards the point where, as well as Mouritzen could judge, they had seen smoke in the morning. Thorsen objected again when they started up that way.

  ‘We should go round,’ he said. ‘The smoke was coming over from behind the hill. Up there the hill curves round to the south. That will be the way the trail goes.’

  ‘We will go straight,’ Mouritzen said. ‘If we turn away, we may get lost.’

  Thorsen gasped. ‘We are wasting what little strength we have left.’

  ‘You waste more by talking.’

  But as they forced their way upwards, Mouritzen began to think that Thorsen’s view might have been the right one. A sledging trail would keep to the lowest possible level, and the hut, if there were a hut, must be visible from it. His parenthetic doubt clutched at him again, with a surer, more vicious grip. They were finding themselves stumbling into drifts of loose snow, from which extrication was difficult and exhausting; and the light was fading.

  Nadya showed the least sign of flagging. Gradually she was taking the lead. Ten or twelve paces ahead of the others, she paused and called to them mockingly to come on.

  She set off again before they were up to her. In front, Mouritzen saw, there was a slight depression in the surface of the snow. When he first saw her legs sink into it he thought she was in another drift. Then, with a soft echoing roar, several square yards of the surface collapsed. A cloud of fine snow lifted and hung briefly in the air. There was no sign of Nadya.

  Mouritzen called to Thorsen, and made his way forward, warily. He stopped at the edge of the crevasse, and looked down. Where the snow had slipped the brown face of the frozen earth was exposed. There was a steep slope down to a ledge, about twenty feet below. Just below the ledge, Nadya was lying in snow.

  ‘Nadya!’ he called. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice echoed up from the cleft. ‘Only shaken a little.’

  ‘If you can reach the ledge,’ he said, ‘I think it is possible to climb up the slope.’

  She said: ‘I have tried. It is too high, and when I stretch up, this snow goes down. See.’

  Her hand reached up, and clawed at the side.

  ‘It went more,’ Nadya said.

  The movement had been imperceptible from above, but Mouritzen now saw something which, since his gaze had been concentrated on Nadya, he had not seen earlier: not many feet from her there was a gap in the snow, and below the gap a drop of ungaugeable depth. She lay on a bridge of snow, perilously spanning a crevasse much deeper than either of them had thought. A sudden movement, a transfer of weight from one point to another, might well send the whole lot cascading down.

  He called urgently: ‘Do not move! Lie still – quite still.’

  Katerina was padding up and down beside the crevasse, aimless and bewildered. The vibration, he realized, could start the snow moving. He shooed at the bear to make her go away but she paid no attention to him. She looked down in a puzzled fashion to where Nadya lay. When she started padding back along the edge Mouritzen, in desperation, unhooked the flare pistol and fired it past her. The rocket streaked over the snow and Katerina, with a howl of fear, fled from it.

  Thorsen had come up. Mouritzen said to him:

  ‘Move gently. There is nothing under her but a few feet of snow wedged between the sides of the crevasse.’

  ‘So?’ Thorsen gazed down. ‘She is unlucky, our Nadya.’

  ‘If we had a rope … The only other thing is for us to get down to that ledge. I think we can get a hand to her from there. But we will have to go carefully. Some of those boulders look as though they might be loose.’

  Thorsen continued to stare into the crevasse. Nadya called up:

  ‘It is still sinking.’

  ‘We must lose no time,’ Mouritzen said. ‘I will go first. You come after me, by the same route.’

  He eased himself backwards over the edge and felt for footholds as he made his way down. The slope was steeper than he had expected and twice he had to stop and change direction. The second time, he called to Thorsen:

  ‘You can start coming now.’

  Thorsen stood there, unmoving. He did not reply. Perhaps he was scared of heights, Mouritzen thought. It might be possible to get Nadya and pull her clear without him, anyway.

  The ledge was about three feet wide and had an irregular downward slope. Mouritzen knelt and tried to reach down to Nadya, but there were several inches between their stretching fingers. He would have to lie on the ledge and reach down; but for that he would need Thorsen with him as an anchor.

  He called, sharply, urgently: ‘Jorgen! I need you down here. You will not find it difficult.’

  Thorsen said: ‘It is strange how one finds a pleasure by accident.’

  ‘For God’s sake! What are you talking about? I’m telling you to come down.’

  ‘I want to talk to Nadya,’ Thorsen said, ‘not you. But you can listen, if you like. I am not ashamed any longer.’

  ‘What are you not ashamed of?’ Mouritzen felt a cold weight of concern on his mind, but he did not want to look closely at it. ‘Come down now.’

  ‘In Dieppe,’ Thorsen said, ‘you pulled my hair, and the tears came to my eyes, as though I were a baby, and ran down my cheeks. On the Kreya, you held me down and slapped me and poured whisky into my mouth and all over my clothes. I think maybe you are sorry now, little Nadya.’

  Mouritzen said: ‘It is no time to talk like this, Jorgen. It is dangerous, I tell you. Help first, and make complaints afterwards.’

  ‘Nadya,’ Thorsen said, ‘say you are sorry – beg for your life.’

  Nadya said: ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Some of these stones are loose,’ Thorsen said. ‘Niels was right about that. This one.’ A boulder, a couple of feet across, jutted out from the edge of the cleft; Thorsen put his foot on it and rocked it. ‘I can kick you into Hell, little Nadya, and not even hurt my foot.’

  Mouritzen whispered to Nadya: ‘Yes, he is mad. And there is no shame in pandering to a maniac. Say you are sorry. Quickly.’

  There was a moment’s pause. Then Nadya said in a clear, unstrained voice:

  ‘I am sorry, Jorgen. I was wrong to act as I did.’

  ‘Better,’ Thorsen said. ‘And if I help you, you will behave differently? You will kiss me nicely and offer me your body?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nadya said, ‘I will do that. Come down and help.’

  Thorsen laughed. ‘I am not coming down!’

  Getting her on to the ledge, Mouritzen thought, would relieve the immediate peril; after that, they would have to see what could be d
one. He had put the remaining flare into the pistol while Thorsen was talking: it might be necessary to use it. He lay flat along the ledge, excruciatingly aware of the outward slope which inclined his body towards the drop below, and stretched down his right hand. He felt Nadya grip his wrist, as Thorsen spoke again.

  ‘I do not want your body. This is what I want. Do not try to pull her up yet, Niels, or my foot will jerk against this stone. You think I am a fool, but you are wrong. I always work out consequences before I do things. Once you are up here with me, what is the saying sorry worth? The same as the promise – nothing!’

  Mouritzen felt the cold of the frozen earth against his face. He dared not move.

  ‘I was always bullied,’ Thorsen said. ‘At home, at school – all my life. Always there were Nadyas, the strong ones, the clever ones, who tormented me and laughed at me. I was ashamed to admit this before, but I am not ashamed now. Because this is worth all of it – this makes up for everything.’

  If he could reach the flare pistol with his free hand, Mouritzen thought … But it was almost impossible to aim it, prone as he was. It was short range, but from this position, with his left hand … He craned his head, racking the muscles of his neck, to look up at Thorsen. He stood at the top of the slope, his legs braced apart.

  ‘If there was any human pity in you,’ Thorsen said, ‘you would feel sorry for me. But in your kind there is not pity, and that is why you deserve none. You also, Mouritzen – the big man, the man who can get into any bed he chooses. How do you like the bed you have now? How …’

  He broke off and Mouritzen saw him whirl round to look behind him. He shouted something indistinguishable. He moved back, as though to avoid a blow, and his foot scattered snow into the crevasse. He cried out again, this time for help, in Danish. Mouritzen thought he would recover himself, but then his body was black against the dark blue sky as he hurtled down. Mouritzen closed his eyes and tightened his hold on Nadya. He heard her cry something also, but what she said was swallowed up in the sound of a mass of snow shifting, falling.

  He hung on as the echoes died away, conscious only of the rough ledge beneath him and the extra weight on his arm. But it could not be Nadya’s full weight. He said:

  ‘Nadya! How is it with you?’

  She said: ‘I have a toe hold. If you stick tight, I think I can get up.’

  The weight increased. He felt his body pulling sideways towards the cleft, and forced himself downwards, anchoring himself with all his strength. There was a moment’s almost unendurable strain and she scrambled up over him. She helped to pull him upright. They sat side by side on the ledge, panting.

  ‘I don’t know how you did that,’ Mouritzen said.

  ‘I work the trapeze, remember.’ She rubbed her shoulder. ‘He hit me as he fell.’

  Mouritzen looked over the edge. The mass of snow had fallen, and he could see they were on an overhang. The drop below them was fifty or sixty feet, with rocks at the bottom. It was just possible to see a figure splayed out on the rocks, to see that it did not move and, from the disposition of the limbs, was unlikely to move again.

  ‘Something frightened him,’ Mouritzen said. ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe Katerina?’

  ‘He was not frightened of Katerina.’

  ‘Whatever it was, we must get up there. You first. I will catch you if you fall.’

  It was not an easy climb. Mouritzen, tired and hungry, his muscles aching from the recent experience, found it taxed him to the limit. Nadya came up after him quite easily. She stood up, looking around.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Katerina. You frightened her away.’ She cupped her hands round her mouth and called: ‘Katerina!’

  ‘It is more important to find the hut,’ Mouritzen said. ‘Katerina can wait till morning. We do not know how this rift lies under the show. So I think we go downwards and to the left. Down across that ridge.’

  Beyond the ridge the ground dropped sharply; to the left there was the surface of the fjord which they had crossed earlier. Nadya was looking to the right. She cried happily:

  ‘There she is, my true one, my faithful bear. Katerina!’

  Katerina’s large brown shape was conspicuous, even in the dusk, against the snow: she was shambling unhurriedly towards them. Mouritzen looked back towards the fjord. Something was moving in that direction also – something still larger, but less easily seen, white against white. He knew now what had come up behind Thorsen and scared him into falling.

  ‘I go to meet her,’ Nadya said, ‘my Katerina.’

  Mouritzen remembered something he had once read somewhere: that the polar bear never normally sees an animal that does not run from him, and that, for this reason, a man who stands his ground, or advances towards the bear, may scare it into retreat. The one thing deadly is to seem to run.

  He said to Nadya: ‘Stand still. Don’t move!’

  She was already running. The two bears were closing to meet each other, and Nadya was between them. The white bear began to lope forward at a faster pace; for all its great bulk and height, overshadowing Mouritzen’s own, it travelled easily, lightly. Mouritzen lifted the flare pistol. When the bear was level with him and about ten yards away, he fired.

  The bear checked, and he thought he had hit it. It roared, with shock or pain or anger, and then went on. Nadya had got to Katerina. She stood watching, in apparent fascination, as the polar bear came towards them. When it was a few paces away, Katerina moved forward. The roaring had stopped. The two animals closed on each other in silence.

  This was the time to get away. Mouritzen called to Nadya:

  ‘This way! We will escape while they are fighting.’

  But instead of coming towards him, she threw herself against the flank of the polar bear, her hands grappling for its neck.

  ‘You silly bitch!’ Mouritzen said.

  He pulled his knife free as he ran. Katerina had gone down under the white bear; Nadya, as well as he could see, had her arms round its neck trying to pull it off. A stretch of white, furry back was exposed. Mouritzen threw himself at it, stabbing wildly.

  He felt the bear roll back against him and wrenched the knife free to plunge it in again. His actions were unplanned, directed only by random instinct. He remembered a time at school when he had tackled a bully in much this fashion, though without a knife. The bully had lived to bully again, and Mouritzen’s nose had never been the same.

  This time he was more fortunate. He stabbed a third time, as wildly, and felt the large, furry body shudder and grow limp. Mouritzen lay with the snow stinging his face, savouring the fact that he was still alive. After a moment, he said:

  ‘Nadya, help me to pull it off.’

  His legs were trapped underneath; she helped to lift the bear’s body slightly and he heaved himself free. He saw that she was crying, that tears were pouring down her cheeks.

  ‘We are all right now,’ Mouritzen said.

  ‘Katerina,’ she said.

  Mouritzen stood up. On the other side of the polar bear, Katerina was lying, half on her back and half on her side. Her head was thrown back and her throat torn and bloody. Blood stained the snow between the two bears, the streams joining and mingling.

  ‘She was a good bear,’ Mouritzen said.

  Nadya knelt down beside the dead animal. She put her face to Katerina’s and kissed the nose that was already cold. After she had knelt there a few moments, she stood up.

  ‘We must find the hut,’ she said. ‘It is getting late.’

  * * *

  They went on in silence. Mouritzen himself was in poor shape – the dead weight of tiredness had fallen back on him and each successive moment cost him greater effort – and Nadya was now in as bad a state. They staggered down the slope, at times reeling against each other, slipping and sliding in the snow. Mouritzen fell once – Nadya a number of times. He had to help her up, to urge her to make an effort. Overhead the stars were coming out. If they did not find food and shelter soon th
ey would have no hope of surviving the night.

  Nadya slipped and went down again. He tried to lift her, but he could not. She murmured something about resting and he said something equally incoherent about the importance of moving on. It was a futile argument: the conclusive point was Nadya’s inability to get up, and his to make her. In the end he slumped beside her on the snow. A little rest, he thought – a few minutes, a night, eternity …

  He looked up at the stars and then along the slope down which they had come. A world with too much white in it. All white. Except the darker patch up there. They must have come past it, not seeing it, their eyes fixed on their stumbling feet. Dark, upright, regular against Nature’s lavish curves …

  ‘The hut!’ he said. ‘Back there. We almost missed it.’

  It was strange how, with an accession of hope and purpose, strength flooded back into exhausted limbs. The door of the hut had a heavy, old-fashioned fastener, such as Mouritzen had not seen since childhood in the country. There was a porch, with pegs for clothes and a rack for boots and skis, leading into the one main room. Doors at either end only opened on a pantry and the latrine. The room was snug, with small windows and a pot-bellied iron stove in the centre. It was sparsely furnished: there were two truckle beds, with half a dozen blankets stacked on each, a large cooking pot, a zinc bath for melting snow, and a picture calendar on the wall. The picture was of Copenhagen’s little mermaid.

  The stove had been made ready for lighting, and there was a box of matches on top of it. Mouritzen struck one, and watched paper flare into orange flame. He lit the hanging paraffin lamp also, then he followed Nadya to the pantry.

  Cans were stacked in neat rows; sacks, and frozen hunks of meat, hung from hooks in the ceiling.

  ‘Supper,’ Mouritzen said. ‘Tonight we will eat, Nadya – really eat, not nibble a biscuit or chew dry oats. Tonight we will have a banquet.’

  ‘And I will be your servant,’ she said, ‘just tonight. Go and rest. I will prepare the food.’