Swimmer Among the Stars

by Kanishk Tharoor

  The Russian captain takes the radio from the communications officer. Thank you, he says, I’ll make sure my crew are disembarked safely, I’ll keep my watch. He speaks in thin breaths and all that the Chinese hear on their end is vapor, a crackle, the possibility of speech.

  The engineers find the flattest bank of ice near the ship. They trace the markings of a helipad with red spray paint, much to the delight of the photographer, who captures this fragile conquest of ice. The helicopter thunders into view. Everybody waves as it lands, glad to be buffeted by its gale. The pilot hops out, shaking his head. Bad news, he tells the communications officer, I just got word from the bridge … it seems our boat is stuck, too.

  The best use of the helicopter that day is in a process of useful exchange, bringing DVDs and crates of vodka one way and food the other. Many of the crew on the Chinese ship are Filipinos—the Ishmaels of our time—including, thankfully, their cook. On the Russian vessel, they now feast on chicken and rice porridge, steamed lumpia filled with minced coconut and pork, and adobo lamb stewed in lemongrass. After gorging himself, the Russian cook returns to his galley and stares at his cleavers and paring knives. Of what worth are his skills with potatoes and beets when compared with the genius of the calamansi?

  The captain of the Russian icebreaker flies over to consult his counterpart. He admires the Chinese ship’s state of good repair, its clean orange lines, the state-of-the-art medical facilities, the pleasing girth of its hull and its red-cheeked crew. In the captain’s quarters he sips vodka, holding it in his mouth and letting it trickle down his throat, as if that slow fire could spread to his lungs. We are fifteen kilometers from you, the Chinese captain says, and by our latest estimate, a further fifteen from more brittle, navigable ice. We’re trapped like you, helpless like you, and all we can do is wait.

  Well, at least you have the helicopter, the Russian captain says. They speak in English, which is the language of the sea, of the air, and of space, even if it will never fully conquer the land.

  Yes, and the helicopter is as useful as two tin cans tied by string. They laugh. Neither of them has ever held tin cans tied by string.

  I’ve been told that the Australians are sending a boat to help us. I must confess, I’m embarrassed.

  Me too. We’ve given the Aussies a chance to feel generous.

  I’m sorry to have dragged you into this mess.

  We can’t know the whims of the ice. I never imagined that this could happen, that all this steel of mine could be defeated.

  It may be easier for the evacuation to the Aussie ship if I transfer most of my people to you.

  It will be. We are ready when you are.

  And please thank your cook. If the reports I’m hearing are true, he’s putting our own man out of a job.

  The Chinese captain leans over and puts a hand on the Russian’s knee. Forgive me, but I must say … are you quite well? You look really dreadful.

  Do I? The Russian captain startles. It is easy to spend days on a ship without glancing at a mirror, and he has not made much of an effort to keep up appearances. It’s the asthma, he says, sometimes it can’t take this cold.

  Let me ask my doctor to have a look at you.

  No, no, that’s all right, nothing to worry about, the captain insists, I have my own man … but thank you, that’s very kind. The captain treasures these gestures, these courtesies of life at sea, all their generosity and camaraderie, reminders that in the marine, man returns to his natural state of friendship and love for man. He leaves his counterpart with a rigid bow, a movement he thinks appropriate for the occasion. The Chinese captain responds in kind. Neither of them has bowed like that before. On the helicopter back to his own ship, the captain sits in the midst of steaming containers of lechon, roast pork stuffed with star anise and spring onion. He searches for breaks in the sea ice below, but finds none.

  When he lands, the communications officer receives him with a full update. The crew has begun boiling snow to conserve water reserves—at sea, nothing is as precious as water. The engineers plan to power down nonessential sections of the ship, though they promise to keep the auditorium open for screenings. The researchers have taken the four-wheelers for a spin on the ice. Our cook seems depressed, so he’s been tasked with making cocktails for the journalists, who—no matter where they are—think it’s their professional privilege to be drunk.

  As feared, the ice is still too thick near the ship to allow any progress. The captain breathes deeply from his inhaler. I should have known better, he thinks. Misled by weather forecasts and satellite imagery, he let his boat venture deep into the sea ice. Often, polar winds keep channels of water free, passages that Arctic and Antarctic sailors call polynyas (Russian is the language of ice). The captain steered his expedition down a known polynya, only to find it close around him. Greater dangers lie in the ice floes than scarcity and loneliness. Sea currents threaten to shear icebergs toward his pinned ship. That is the strange irony of their position; the ship is stuck, moored in place, even as the thick ice around it continues to move. The captain looks out from the bridge in the grim twilight, katabatic clouds of crystals blowing down from the glaciers, ice stretching in its infinity to meet another horizon of ice, while somewhere beneath roam the silent trunks of icebergs, blue and rootless.

  Tomorrow, he tells the communications officer, we’ll begin evacuating our passengers to the Chinese ship.

  When the sun sets, the Australian icebreaker is still several hundred kilometers away. Few of the crew on either ship have the willpower to stay awake. Like peasants in millennia of winters, they curl up in their bunks for long sleeps. The captain stays up on the bridge, poring over charts and the latest satellite imagery. The photographer also slips about. She relishes the soft rust glow of the ship’s lamps, the sky’s cushion of dark.

  The two of them stop their work to look at the aurora. It snakes across the horizon the whole night (all three hours of it), green bands thickening in ribbons and waves, shivering in ripples of purple, before it exhausts its cosmic breath and wraps the ice in a fiery fuzz. The photographer captures it all and goes to bed at dawn triumphant. The captain hears noise in the aurora, a swishing and a snap, like the crack of linens hung out to air. In the Antarctic, the silence is so total that even light carries sound.

  The next morning, as the researchers gather their things and head to the waiting Chinese helicopter, they assure the captain that the aurora australis is entirely inaudible to the human ear. What he heard was an illusion, the leakage of electrical matter from his eye into those regions of the brain responsible for sound. The captain shakes his head, incredulous, imagining the storm behind his eyes, lightning seeping into the pink stuff. It was more physical than that, he says, as if something popped beneath my skin.

  The researchers shrug. Nothing in the world, they say, is as wondrous as the human mind. They hug the crew and the captain. Later in the day, the helicopter extracts the journalists swaddled in their snow coats, rubbing their noses and burping.

  As soon as he is left with his permanent crew, the captain visits his doctor. Tell me, he says in Russian (it is a relief to speak in one’s own language), tell me why I’m having such trouble breathing. Is it my asthma?

  The doctor prods him with his stethoscope. Deep breaths, please, he says. He looks at the instrument, slaps it against his palm, then returns it to the captain’s back. I hear static, he says.

  Static? Eh? What kind of doctor are you?

  No need to be accusatory.

  Not a wheeze?

  You’re crackling.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  That I need to move you to the Chinese ship for proper diagnosis. And that you shouldn’t exert yourself at all.

  Nothing doing. You know full well I have a responsibility to this ship.

  Don’t try to play the hero.

  It’s that bad, is it.

  It could be.

  The captain slumps in his chair. I’m no hero, he
says, peering up at the doctor with his eyes watering, the tattoos on his pale chest stretched and loose.

  As the captain is strapped into the helicopter for the last evacuation of the day, the communications officer leans into his ear with news that the Australian icebreaker is stuck fast, surrounded by impenetrable sea ice. I knew it, the captain says flatly, I felt it happen inside me.

  On board the Chinese icebreaker, the journalists are already busy making names for themselves, e-mailing in their stories from the ship’s computer lab. Their plight has become the stuff of international headlines, gifted various Twitter hashtags, Photoshopped into stills of the TV show Game of Thrones (blue-eyed zombies surround the boats), even mined for clicks in lists like “16 Sexiest Captains to Be Trapped with in the Antarctic” and “Top 10 Most Edible & Expendable Antarctic Expedition Professions” (“#1 Journalists,” “#10 Mechanics”), the implication being that the crew of the three stranded ships are now only a few missed meals away from cannibalism.

  Nothing could be further from the truth. The researchers crowd the galley, feasting on the miracles of its Filipino chef: noodles steeped in orange shrimp broth, oxtail stew with banana blossoms and peanuts, papaya-stuffed empanadas. They are quietly ashamed that of everyone mired in this situation, they have the most reasons to be pleased. The new global attention on the Antarctic will make it much easier to secure funding for future expeditions. When no one else is looking, they clink their little glasses together and take secret shots of vodka.

  As the sun rises, the photographer selects her most powerful lens and climbs to the highest spot on the Chinese ship. To the north lies the Australian boat, to the south the Russian. She studies their black, now gold silhouettes. They seem disjointed, composed from random blocks, rising from the ice desert like the ruins of lost civilizations. When the sun becomes too strong, she packs her camera away and joins the journalists for a drink.

  Before the Russian captain enters the scanner, he is visited by his Chinese and Australian counterparts. They pat him on the shoulder and squeeze his hand. Did you hear, the Australian says, a little French boat coming from the west just tried to help us … it took one look at the ice and turned away.

  They laugh, but the Russian captain can only rattle his mirth.

  Many other icebreakers are on their way, the Chinese says, the world wants us all saved … that includes you.

  The Russian captain thanks them with an apology. I should never have gone this deep, he says, the words coming out so slowly that only minutes later, when alone and under the hum of the machine, does he finish speaking.

  The aurora australis returns that night, a dancing green. The researchers explain to the less learned that it is the wondrous spell of solar winds, funneling motes of sunfire into the earth’s magnetic field. The journalists quiet beneath its display. The aurora always inspires reverence and humility. Inuit people in Greenland claim that their ancestors float in the aurora, playing football with the skull of a walrus. The Sami in Scandinavia tell a story about a proud boy who chose to mock the lights, skipping about the snow in a felt cap with his tongue out; the next morning, all that remained of him was a pile of ash. There are no tales about the lights here in the south, which is populated only by empires of penguins and the occasional stranded scientist, scooping peaches out of a can.

  The captain slips in and out of lucidity. His scans are inconclusive, but the doctors fear the worst. They struggle to find a way to evacuate him to a real hospital. Katabatic winds make helicopter rescue impossible, and other ships, trying other angles of approach, also founder in the ice. On the few occasions that the captain sits up awake, he thirsts for the spray and open surge of the sea. Half sleeping, he imagines a stream of captains flowing through his room, men from around the world come to commiserate with their fellow man.

  In the haze of his condition, he only vaguely understands that numerous icebreakers—many more than just his, the Chinese, and the Australian—are now trapped. The sea ice has spread beyond the expectations of scientists, beyond the wisdom of sailors. Few visitors can get to the Chinese ship wreathed in vicious glacial winds. Helicopters cower beneath their tarps. Some crews battle the elements to reach one another. Swedish sailors ski through the haze to a Japanese vessel. A Chilean crew wakes up one morning to find South Africans knocking on their hull. Tenuous lines of exchange form on the sea ice, sashimi traded for schnapps, red wine for dried sausage.

  A dogsled team from a Canadian ship manages to make it to the Chinese boat. Snapping at their tethers, the huskies quicken as they near, licked by the aroma of pig innards stewed in garlic and oregano (the Filipino cook has run out of his more choice cuts of meat). On board, the Canadians find a chapped crew, blinking in the long daylight, the journalists tapping blearily at their screens, the researchers numb to ice, and the Russian captain asleep in his cot, his lungs moored to a pumping machine.

  The last icebreaker reaches the Antarctic. It ponders a sad diorama, other icebreakers frozen in a shrinking chain to the horizon, all tilting to one side like sleeping tramps. (This is a lesson, its captain thinks, never be on time.) The ship sounds its foghorn. People spill out from the trapped ships, little black clumps flippering on the ice. The photographer takes out her telescopic lens and tries to shoot the icebreaker as it nuzzles the continent, as chunks of blue light fall away and the ice crackles. She clicks and clicks, but realizes that her camera is out of battery. Whether the last icebreaker succeeds or fails, she will not be able to record its progress.

  Somewhere in the white beyond is the original cause, the Russian boat, the prisoner that summoned the others to become prisoners. Its skeletal crew huddle in the auditorium, eating rusks. They have watched the same Bollywood films over and over again. It feels to them that they have been counting their fingers and melting snow for weeks, or for years, or ever since they were born. Drunk under the aurora one night, the communications officer and the first mate go out onto the frozen deck and dance like lovers from another country.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I can’t help but feel that the writing of my first book was the work of many hands and minds beyond my own. Chief thanks go to my mother and my father, who submerged my upbringing in books, and to my twin brother, Ishaan, a constant support ever since he led me out into the world. I’m grateful as well to my grandparents, my uncles, my aunts, and all my cousins for their indulgence, storytelling, and affection. I’m lucky for all the teachers who have guided my imagination and craft, including Hilary Ainger, Geoffrey Worrell, Mridu Rai, Stefano Pello, Chuck Wachtel, and Jonathan Safran Foer. Thanks to David Godwin, Edward Orloff, and Mary Evans for shepherding my work into the light. Thanks to David Davidar, Ravi Mirchandani, Eric Chinski, Laird Gallagher, Simar Puneet, and all the wonderful staff at Aleph, FSG, and Picador. Thanks to Amitav Ghosh, Maryam Maruf, and Matthew Rohde for their encouragement and for reading these stories. Thanks to the NYU Creative Writing Program and the Millay Colony for supporting my work and giving me the space and time to become a better writer. And boundless thanks to Amanda, my wife, my reader, my wonder, my joy.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kanishk Tharoor is a writer based in New York City. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, VQR, and elsewhere. His short story “Tale of the Teahouse” was nominated for a National Magazine Award. He presented Museum of Lost Objects, a ten-part BBC radio series on cultural destruction in the Middle East. Tharoor is a columnist for the Hindustan Times. He studied at Yale, Columbia, and New York University, where he was a Writer in Public Schools fellow. You can sign up for email updates here.

  Thank you for buying this

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.


  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Swimmer Among the Stars

  Tale of the Teahouse

  Elephant at Sea

  A United Nations in Space

  Portrait with Coal Fire

  The Mirrors of Iskandar

  The Fall of an Eyelash

  Letters Home

  Cultural Property

  The Phalanx

  The Loss of Muzaffar

  The Astrolabe

  Icebreakers

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2016, 2017 by Kanishk Tharoor

  All rights reserved

  Originally published, in slightly different form, in 2016 by Aleph Book Company, India

  Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First American edition, 2017

  These stories previously appeared, in slightly different form, in the following publications: VQR (“Tale of the Teahouse”), A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces (“Elephant at Sea”), First Proof (“The Loss of Muzaffar”), and Scroll.in (“The Fall of an Eyelash”).

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Tharoor, Kanishk, author.

  Title: Swimmer among the stars: stories / Kanishk Tharoor.

  Description: First American edition.|New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016025615|ISBN 9780374272180 (hardcover)|ISBN 9780374715397 (ebook)

  Subjects:|BISAC: FICTION / Literary.

  Classification: LCC PS3620.H348 A6 2017|DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016025615

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.