The Navigator of New York

by Wayne Johnston

  I could manage no suspension of disbelief when I looked at those photographs, could not help seeing the out-of-frame camera or the shutter release in his unseen hand.

  “Self-portrait, 1898.” Glass-plate negative, the method used in studio portraits—a studio being the only place other explorers would have their portraits taken, for in a portrait one is meant to look one’s polished best. Like Peary, who in his portraits always looked so forthright, so earnest, so unashamed of wanting to create a good impression. But not Dr. Cook. In one photograph he faced away from the camera, almost at a right angle, turned just enough towards it that both eyes were in the picture, the far one hardly more than a glint of light on the bridge of his nose, the near one partially obscured by a lock of hair he could not have bothered brushing back. He looked as though no one would see the photographs but him, as if the camera was a means of self-examination, as if his intention was to produce a picture of himself that he could study in detachment, pore over to see what this individual could tell him of his species.

  None of the photographs showed enough of his surroundings to give a sense of context. Some snow on a rock behind him, over his shoulder a glimpse of what only someone who knew the circumstances of the photograph would recognize as cloud or ice. One photo of him indoors, in profile to a bare wall. Another, captioned “Cook the photographer, by Dr. Cook,” must have been a photograph of his reflection in a mirror, taken so close to the mirror you could not see any of its border, Dr. Cook holding in his hands a large box camera and smiling: a photograph of a man staring into his own eyes. A clever trick. And perhaps, therefore, that smile.

  The only hint to the uninformed of what was taking place when these photographs were snapped was his dishevelment: his long hair, uneven beard, sunken eyes, gaunt complexion; the frayed edges of his coat and shirt. He looked resigned to the fact that by the time the world saw these images of him, he would be no more.

  I scrutinized Dr. Cook’s face in the photographs, searching for ways that he resembled me. I stood in front of a mirror that hung on the wall of my bedroom and compared my face to the face in one of the photographs from Century, which I had pasted on the glass (and which I took down afterwards so that no one else would see it). I looked at my reflected face. I looked at Dr. Cook’s face. I felt foolish. The mirror was no help. I had fancied that, using it, I would be able to see both of our images at once, but the only way to see Dr. Cook’s was to look away from mine and vice versa. I had never examined my face in this manner before, assessing every feature, staring into my own eyes. I felt self-conscious and at a disadvantage to Dr. Cook in his time-stopped, static world, his face composed, frozen, while mine changed from one moment to the next. It was not until I placed a recent photograph of myself beside the photographs of him that I was able to make a proper comparison, though still I did not find what I was hoping for. We did not look completely unalike, but nor was there an unmistakable resemblance.

  I took from my bureau drawer a photograph of Francis Stead that I had cut from the newspaper, the photograph that had run with the story of his disappearance. I placed the three photographs side by side on my dresser. I looked as much like Francis Stead as I did like Dr. Cook. Or rather, I bore no particular resemblance to either. I placed a photograph of my mother (“Amelia, the wicked one”) in between those of my father and Dr. Cook, and the one of me directly below hers. My mother with Dr. Stead on one side and Dr. Cook on the other. (I did not, it seemed to me, even resemble my mother. I hoped this meant that in other, less superficial ways, we were also unalike.) Judging by how old she looked, the photograph must have been taken just before or just after her trip to New York, on one side or the other of her meeting with Dr. Cook.

  I tried to imagine a blending of my mother’s features with those of Dr. Cook, but I could not. They were of opposite physical types, she delicate and small-boned to the point of near translucency, while he was generally large-featured. His hair was straight but thick, his forehead high. He had full lips, sharp cheekbones and a nose that looked thinner in profile than it did from the front. He had let his hair grow long on the expedition, though it looked as if he had washed and brushed it frequently. His beard was unkempt, but affectedly so, as if he was cultivating a certain look, as if he did not trust being an explorer to make him look like one.

  Perhaps, when I was older, I would look more like Dr. Cook, I thought, until I realized that no one who did not have eyes like his could ever really look like him.

  Though he almost never looked at the camera, the first thing I noticed in all the photographs were his eyes. Whether he was at the centre of the photograph or just within the frame—if his face made up the entire photograph or just a fraction of it—my eyes went instantly to his and would have, I was certain, even if I had never heard of him before. However much my face changed as I matured, I would never have eyes like his. It was partly because of their shape: the whites were so large that the asymmetric lids did not reach the irises, either above or below, so the irises were wholly visible. But there was something else about them, an impression they conveyed for which I could find no words.

  • CHAPTER TEN •

  My dearest Devlin:

  In my second letter to you, I spoke of redressing the harm I have done. What, if these letters are the first step on the path to atonement, is to be the second step?

  I decided, during my long confinement in the Antarctic, that I owe you nothing less than to be your father. I also decided that a public acknowledgment of my patrimony would be folly for both of us, not only for the reasons I set forth in my first letter, but because it would deprive me of my most valued possession, and therefore would prevent me from giving or leaving it to you.

  I am an explorer. Before all else—doctor, brother, husband (should it be God’s will that I become one)—but excepting father, I am an explorer. What greater thing, therefore, can I offer than to make you one? What greater thing can I offer you but my vocation?

  When you are old enough, and strong enough, will you go with me on my expeditions? It would mean a great deal to me, more than you can possibly imagine, if one day you said yes.

  As I wrote to you before, I have often taken the sons of rich men with me on my journeys to the Arctic. They think that by sailing to the North with Dr. Cook, they make their passage into manhood. At the same time, I am under instruction from their fee-paying fathers to satisfy their every need and make sure they endure just enough hardship to convince them that they are having an “adventure.” A trip north with me has been the graduation present of many a student from Harvard and Yale.

  I mention these young men only to allay any concerns you may have about your lack of experience in Arctic travel. I am quite adept at taking young men to the Arctic and bringing them back home alive and well again. With the Arctic, as with all things, there has to be a first time. Even to those of us who know it best, it was once unknown.

  It must seem strange to you, my extending this invitation, in light of what happened to Francis Stead and the part in it that, however inadvertently, I played.

  I must confess that it is not only by way of discharging my debt to you, not only so that, as father and son, we might assay a common goal, that I am making this request. Nor am I unaware of how presumptuous it is of me to ask that you commit to such an undertaking with a man whose hand you have yet to shake, whose face in the real light of existence you have yet to see, who has forbidden you to write to him.

  If you were to join me on my expeditions, I would make you my protégé. And if, under any circumstances, it becomes apparent that I will never realize my life’s ambition, you, my son, if by then you felt I had prepared you well enough, could take up my quest.

  I have felt more oppressively than ever lately, in the wake of the Antarctic expedition, what the Eskimos call piblocto, the weight of the world, pressing down upon me. The strain of standing alone beneath that weight, supporting it without even the hope of being relieved of it at some point in the futur
e now seems more than I can bear. Often, during the long wait in the Antarctic for a deliverance that for all I knew might never come, I thought of you, took solace in knowing that even if I died, I would leave behind a son who might himself have sons and daughters. I thought of my first wife, Libby, and our unnamed baby girl, and of how, when Francis Stead told me that the boy whom all the world thought was his was really mine, it seemed that both of my lost children had been restored to me.

  Not even if he had sons old enough to play the part could Robert Peary see the point of protégés. The only success that will please Peary is his own. But I, too, it seems, am trapped. No one but you can free me from the isolation of ambition. Nor would renouncing my ambition free me, even if I could renounce it, for I believe that I was called to my vocation as priests and ministers are called to theirs. I believe that, as I once wrote of Francis Stead, I labour not only for myself, but in the service of mankind.

  It may seem to you that there are any number of young men who would be willing to pledge themselves to me—men in their twenties who, unlike you, are now old enough to go with me on my expeditions; men I could now be tutoring instead of waiting for you to come of age, thus increasing the likelihood that I or someone of my tutelage will gain the prize. But none of them is my son.

  You are only twenty years old. It may be that you are too young to understand the implications of saying yes or no. For yourself and for me. It would not be fair to exact from you a promise that years from now you might regret but would hold yourself to anyway because you gave your word.

  You could say no and think that your doing so was the cause of some misfortune I might suffer in the years to come, some mishap in the Arctic that, if not for my preoccupying doubt, would not have happened.

  So let me be clear about what it is that I am asking of you. First, any feelings of guilt on your part would be unwarranted. You should not accept my invitation out of fear of what will happen to me if you do not. I have described my condition only so that you could better understand my nature, not to extort from you the answer that would please me most.

  I am sure that your aunt and uncle, for obvious reasons, would not want you to take up exploration. Weighed against the consideration of whatever distress you might cause them are things for which I and no man I have ever met can find the words.

  One either feels in one’s heart and in one’s soul a desire for the sort of life I lead or one does not. It is my hope that you do. If you do, if, as I suspect, the lure of the Old Ice runs as surely in your blood as it does in mine, no litany of the hazards you would face would deter you. If I am wrong and you do not feel as I do, then such a litany would likewise be unnecessary.

  But you are young. And therefore, the only answer that I will not accept, at least not now, is yes. You may tell me no, or you may tell me perhaps, but you may not tell me yes. (Write your answer on this envelope and leave it for your uncle Edward as you did with the other letters I sent you.) If your answer is perhaps, then we will leave it so until you are old enough to fully understand what saying yes or no might mean. If your answer is no, I will understand and will make no further efforts to convince you. But I will go on writing to you.

  If, by the time you are old enough to travel in the Arctic, I have not reached the pole, I will take you with me and teach you everything I know, things that fewer than half a dozen men alive could teach you.

  And if, at some point, I am forced to renounce exploration, I would not be sorry if you attained the pole instead of me.

  If, with my help, you reach the pole first, I will have ensured that no man who does not deserve it wins the prize.

  Dr. Frederick Cook

  April 19, 1900

  He had forbidden me to tell him yes? “YES,” I wished I could have written in large letters on the envelope. What would he do if I wrote “Yes”? Would it please him or make him wonder if I was so excitable that he could not count on me to be discreet? I wrote “Maybe,” wishing more fervently than I ever had before that I could write to him directly and tell him that any time he said the word, I would follow his instructions, whatever they might be. Next week, next month.

  I felt no apprehension at the prospect of exploration. On the contrary, it was life as I would live it unless I went exploring that I dreaded, a life like Uncle Edward’s. To become a man who could take no joy in being married to such a woman as Aunt Daphne, that was what I dreaded.

  Exploration. How appealing, in spite of all its dangers and its desolation, in spite of Francis Stead, it seemed to me. There was a lesson to be learned from the life of Francis Stead. It was not because of the rigours of life in the Arctic that he had walked out across the glacier that night. It was the rigours of the life he could not put behind him that made him do it. From the life and death of my mother, too, there was something, if not to be learned, then at least to be remembered: it was not because her husband took up exploration that she died.

  To Dr. Cook and all others who wrote about it, no greater life could be imagined than that of an explorer. I was certain that the hardships and risks involved in it would not deter me. I would much rather have been on board the Belgica for thirteen months with him than home here fretting for the safety of a man I’d never met.

  It didn’t matter that nothing in my life so far had prepared me for polar exploration, that I had yet to set foot on a boat or fire a gun or sleep outdoors. It didn’t matter that I had never seen a dog sled, let alone a team of dogs. Expeditionaries relied on their crews, their ships’ captains, their manservants, their native guides to perform the thankless task of keeping them safe so they could make their bids for glory.

  How different was my upbringing from Dr. Cook’s, of whom I was half composed; he was a city man, as most explorers were, who, relatively speaking, came late to exploration. As Dr. Cook had learned from men like Peary, I would learn from Dr. Cook. “Even to those of us who know it best, it was once unknown.”

  The wisdom, the reflectiveness, his sceptical but sympathetic view of life as it was lived in cities, the desire to accomplish something he would be remembered for and thereby set himself apart from the common run of men, but only if that something was truly worthwhile—all these qualities, I felt certain, he had acquired or refined since he took up exploration. “Whoever reaches the pole first will do so in the name of humankind, cause a worldwide enlivenment of spirit, wonder, awe and fellowship,” he had written in a magazine article. I had believed it when I read it, but not like I believed it now.

  “Will you go with me on my expeditions?” The instant I read those words, it seemed to me that I had been waiting for that invitation all my life, hoping for it. As Dr. Cook on the ice-trapped ship had awaited his deliverance, not knowing when or if it would ever come, so had I been waiting. I believed that I had as much cause as anyone to be sceptical of civilization. At the same time, I did not wish to renounce it altogether.

  Civilization. Except by becoming an explorer or by doing what my mother had, one could not escape from it. Exploration was certainly the only escape that did not involve surrender or retreat. Men who simply ran away and spent their lives in service to a succession of masters accomplished nothing.

  He had said nothing to me of how our association would come about, what we would tell others of how we came to be associates, what reasons he would give the public for conferring upon me, a stranger, an honour that many young men of his acquaintance would have eagerly accepted.

  Most important, he had said nothing to me of when he would send for me, of how, without ever having met me, he would deem me “old enough and strong enough” for exploration. I was still drifting like the Belgica in the pack ice, still waiting for my deliverance, which though it seemed assured now, might not seem so six months or a year from now.

  • CHAPTER ELEVEN •

  IN ONE OF HIS LETTERS TO ME, Dr. COOK WROTE THAT FRANCIS Stead had told him that as a boy, he liked to go up on Signal Hill in the spring to “see the ice.” I knew of nowhere else t
o see it from, but I had not gone up there since I went with Aunt Daphne when I was a boy, because I did not want to be reminded of my mother’s fate.

  “The ice” was pack ice drifting south from Labrador and bringing with it icebergs from the sea-level glaciers of Greenland. Its southward drift past the east coast of Newfoundland in spring was as regular as the changing of the leaves in fall.

  I had “seen” it before, glimpsed it through the Narrows from some height on the north side of the city, seen it in the harbour after it had been forced in through the Narrows by a storm, filth-ridden after bobbing there among the soot and bilge for weeks. These, I thought, these all-but-black bobbing chunks of matter, were what people meant when they talked about “the ice.”

  For weeks after reading of Francis Stead’s sojourns to see the ice, I watched the horizon, knowing the ice was coming, waiting for a change in the line where the sea met the sky. Finally, one morning, I saw it from the window off the landing, saw what might have been the teeth of a jagged, uneven saw blade. The leading edge was still fifty or sixty miles away.

  It was another two weeks before I made the ascent, sharing the road one Sunday afternoon with other pedestrians and people in carriages, other pilgrims, as Uncle Edward called anyone who thought the ice “worth gaping at.”

  When the ice was in this close, there was not much shipping. Today, no flag flew from the signal pole. A stream of smoke made almost horizontal by the wind poured from the chimney of the blockhouse.

  Even had I been with someone else when I got my first look at the ice, I could not have spoken. Not even the sight of the sea had brought home to me the existence of “elsewhere” or stirred in me the urge to travel as the ice did. The ocean disappeared as if the ice extended all the way to England. Pack ice, slob ice, raftered ice—all of it was crammed and smashed together. I went up there often between that day and early summer, and the only indication that there was water underneath the ice was the change in the location of the icebergs, whose southward drift was imperceptible except at intervals of days or weeks.