Why did I say that? Why not, YES COME QUICK I CAN’T BEAR IT?
Because it was Gus at the other end. Gus the golden-haired prefect whom Jack the eager schoolboy is so desperate to impress.
JACK YOU’RE AMAZING! AM SO TERRIBLY GRATEFUL! EXPEDITION SCUPPERED WITHOUT YOU!
I flushed with pleasure. Gus knew what I was braving to be here on my own; he knew what he owed me. I basked in his gratitude and admiration.
Now he was asking about the dogs.
DOGS SPLENDID, I replied. AM V GLAD HAVE THEM ESP ISAAK RIPPING HOUND STOP
As I tapped out my message, my eyes began to sting. It was so wonderful talking to Gus, but it hurt. It made me miss him even more.
JACK YOU MUFF I KNEW YOU LIKED THEM STOP
YES STOP
IDIOT STOP
YES STOP
I sat there grinning through my tears. It felt so good to have him tease me. So normal and warm and human.
On and on we talked, inconsequential chat, but everything to me. At last he said he had to go. I couldn’t think of anything to delay him, so we agreed when next to speak, and said our goodbyes.
I switched off the receiver and stared at my printed notes of his words.
Talking to him had changed everything. It made me even more sharply aware of my isolation, but it also gave me strength. I was no longer the frightened obsessive who’d cowered in the storm and fought an illusory battle with a log. I was Jack Miller, the man who’s keeping the 1937 Spitsbergen Expedition alive against all the odds.
I sat straighter. I took satisfaction in the cabin’s every mundane detail. The orderly tins of powdered egg and Breakfast Cocoa on the kitchen shelves. The clean steel lines of the bicycle generator. I felt the roughness of the table beneath my palms, I sniffed the familiar smells of paraffin, woodsmoke and unwashed clothes. This is my world. Modern. Practical. Real.
Realising I was ravenous, I tore open a bar of chocolate and wolfed it down. The sweetness burned my mouth, the rush of energy made me giddy. I brewed coffee and gulped two scalding mugs. I made a vast bowl of scrambled eggs with sausages and cheese. I lit lamps and tuned the wireless to the BBC. I revelled in each prosaic task.
Just now, I went to the bunkroom window. The sea is black and dotted with icebergs, but they’re few and far between. I was right, the storm has kept the bay open. The dogs have dug their way out of the doghouse and are bounding about in the snow. Near the cabin, the drifts are almost to the window, but a few yards off it’s shallower, and their paws don’t sink in too far. When they saw me, they lashed their tails and yowled at me to come out. They wouldn’t do that if there was anything there. Animals sense these things, don’t they?
But it will be back. I know this. I carry that knowledge inside me like a stone.
What does it want? What terrible thing happened here to make it haunt with such malevolence?
I think of all the savagery I’ve ever heard about. I remember Algie’s love of killing. His indifference to that seal’s agony, his willingness to mutilate the dogs.
What happened here?
Later
I can’t believe I was so stupid.
When I was ‘talking’ to Gus, I was so overwhelmed that I forgot to ask the all-important question: when are you coming back?
And why didn’t he say anything of his own accord?
The 12th of November. By my calculation, that’s the soonest they’ll arrive. It’s three days away. But surely if they’d been about to set off, Gus would have said something. What isn’t he telling me? How much longer have I got to hold on?
I have to go out again. The sky is clear. There’s no cloud to cover the moon.
10th November
Yesterday feels like a millions years ago. I remember nerving myself with a shot of whisky and a cigarette to go outside. Then opening the door to a wall of snow.
God, I was relieved. Here was a physical task I could cope with.
The dogs heard me digging and set up an impatient clamour. I hacked my way though and they fell on me, lots of eager muzzles and flailing paws.
When at last I could look about me, I found Gruhuken transformed. The moon shone almost as bright as day. The snow was dazzling. Around me the camp lay radiant and serene. Serene. I felt not a trace of dread. No taint of that malign presence. The moon had banished it.
Buckling on my snowshoes, I made my way down to the shore, the dogs bounding along, vying for my attention. Moonlight turned the mountains to pewter. In the bay, icebergs glowed. At the water’s edge, little black waves rimmed with grey foam lapped the shore. I breathed in great lungfuls of clean, freezing air. I felt the light soaking into my consciousness, dispelling the shadows from the deepest recesses of my brain. Whatever had come in the dark couldn’t harm me in the light.
I worked for hours. First, I fetched tin after tin of pemmican for the dogs. Then I cleared the boardwalk and shovelled a path round the back of the cabin, another to the emergency store, and another to the Stevenson screen – which by some miracle has survived intact. As I worked, it occurred to me that somewhere beneath me lay the remains of the bear post. It belonged to another time. It had lost its power to terrify.
The luxury of working in light! And the moon stayed with me all the time. Gruhuken is so far north that when the moon is full, it doesn’t set, but circles endlessly in the sky, so that you never lose sight of it. It’s a miracle. A gift from the gods. Whenever you look up, there it is, watching over you.
Having finished my paths, I cleared the Stevenson screen and the other instruments, and collected my first set of data since the storm. I transmitted them to Bear Island. I got the Austin going and sent a report to England (I’d skipped that during the storm). Then I went and stood in front of the porch and smoked a cigarette, like a settler in the old American West, surveying his homestead. I had regained possession of my camp. My camp. Jack Miller’s.
The dogs had been playing on the shore, but suddenly Upik skittered to a halt and pricked her ears. One by one, the others did the same.
Had they caught the scent of a bear? I was about to fetch my gun when Svarten gave a low bark and hurtled west. The rest of the pack raced after him. As the patter of paws receded, I heard what they had heard: a scraping sound, echoing in the stillness. Scrape . . . scrape . . . scrape . . . Regular, long drawn out. But this was utterly different from the sound I’d heard at the bear post. This sound belonged to my world.
The dogs came rushing back, their eyes bright with excitement. Behind them, grey against the snow, I made out the figure of a man.
My heart leapt. That’s a cliché, but it really did leap as I watched him approach, his arms and legs moving in a slow, sure rhythm as he skied.
Waving and shouting inanely, I ran to meet him. ‘Hulloa there! Over here!’
A stocky figure in a sheepskin coat, he wore huge fur mittens, canvas boots, a shapeless fur cap. Beneath it I saw a frost-crusted beard and a walrus moustache; bristling brows and small bright eyes.
I was grinning like a madman, but I couldn’t stop. ‘Trapper Bjørvik, I presume? Welcome! You are most, most welcome!’
My visitor leaned on his ski poles in a haze of frosty breath. ‘Ja,’ he said, drawing off one mitten and taking my hand in a crushing grip. ‘Bjørvik.’
Later
I made a complete fool of myself.
I gushed, I babbled, I pawed. He was good enough not to mind, or at least not to show it. With the unpretentious formality that’s so endearing in Scandinavians, he presented me with his ‘visiting gift’: a sack of reindeer hearts, ptarmigan livers and other choice cuts, which – with his rucksack, sleeping bag and rifle – he’d carried on his back the twenty miles from his cabin.
He didn’t say why he’d come, or how long he meant to stay, and I didn’t ask. Eriksson once told me that in Spitsbergen you tend not to ask, you simply assume that your guest will stay at least a week, and that his purpose is simply to visit.
‘I know I’m talking too
much,’ I blurted out as we took off our things in the porch, ‘but I’ve been alone for nearly three weeks.’ I flushed. It occurred to me that Bjørvik must have been on his own for months.
‘Ja,’ he grunted, pulling off his boots. ‘Is good to visit.’
His boots were ‘trapper’s boots’: a double thickness of canvas with a rubber sole, worn over two pairs of socks, and stuffed with straw. He wore the blue drill overalls of a sealer, with a heavy sweater of undyed wool that smelt powerfully of sheep. Belatedly, I realised he was poor.
As flustered as a young hostess giving her first dinner, I sat him down, then bustled about lighting lamps, getting the stove going, making coffee. He planted his red hands on his knees and stared about him.
I found music on the wireless. I put together an enormous meal: tinned stewed veal and spinach, eggs, bacon, cheese, oatcakes, tinned cherries with condensed milk, pea-nut brittle, and everything else I could think of. To hell with my ration plan. This man had skied twenty miles to see me.
We ate in bashful silence. At least, I was abashed, as my conversational sallies had met with monosyllables. But Bjørvik told me later that he was simply absorbed in listening to Ivor Novello on the wireless. He doesn’t own a radio, and it’s been two years since he heard music.
After we’d eaten, I offered whisky and tobacco. Declining the whisky with grave dignity, he filled his pipe. By this time I’d stopped worrying about the monosyllables. I’ve never enjoyed a smoke as much as I did then.
Ivor Novello gave way to the news programme, and I lowered the volume.
‘Is good,’ said Bjørvik with his slow nod.
Resisting the temptation to nod back, lest he mistake it for mimicry, I agreed that it was good, very good; although I didn’t know if he meant the food, music, tobacco or me.
I said, ‘You know, in England I used to prefer being on my own. Now I think the best thing in life is having a visitor.’
Beneath his brows, his eyes glinted. Slapping his knee, he barked a laugh. ‘Ja! Is good!’
I’m writing this in my bunk. Bjørvik is in Algie’s, the bottom one nearest the window. He’s snoring softly: a wondrous sound.
I’m not alone any more.
To see the cabin windows aglow when I come in. To feel the warmth of a well-stoked stove. And when I’m inside, to hear his tread on the boardwalk, his whistling as he chops wood and fetches ice from the stream. Yesterday feels like a million years ago.
Ja. Is good.
12th November
Two days have flown by. Yesterday I had a transmission from Algie. He said all’s fine, but it’ll be ‘a few days’ before they set off. I can cope with that now because I’m not alone. No one could have a better, kinder, easier house guest. In many ways, he reminds me of Eriksson. The same rugged face, which at times undergoes a seismic shift as an earthquake of laughter rumbles to the surface. The same half-humorous, half admiring respect for young English ‘yentlemen’ with their passion for the weather. The same avuncular protectiveness: as if I were a talented but ignorant nephew who must be watched lest he blunder into trouble. I call him ‘Mister Bjørvik’ and he calls me ‘Mister Yack’.
In deference to his ways, we eat our main meal at two. After that we play cards or listen to the wireless – but never at the same time, as he thinks that’s disrespectful to the BBC. At eight we eat a simple supper of eggs and bacon, and at half past nine he bids me good night and turns in, while I sit up, relishing the security.
He’s used to plain food, mostly seal and reindeer (he calls it all ‘beef’); flour bannocks, blubber, dried apricots, and gallons of coffee. It delights me to treat him to tinned mutton and pork, Australian fruit salad, tinned vegetables, Digestive biscuits and chocolate. Yesterday he shot a reindeer (he calmly ignores their protected status) and we had huge, succulent steaks and blood pancakes – which are delicious; you don’t taste the blood. We also ate the slippery marrow from the hind legs, which was delicious too, but had me making frequent trips to the outhouse, much to Bjørvik’s amusement.
My favourite time is after supper. I read and smoke, and he smokes and carves: a pair of clogs for the cold weather to come, an antler sheath for his knife. He’s devouring Algie’s crime novels, and is particularly fond of Edgar Wallace.
Several times an hour, I go to the window and check the sky for clouds. I know it’s silly, but I can’t help myself. I resent the least haze obscuring the moon. And it happens so suddenly: one moment you’re looking at that bright, pure disc; the next it’s gone, swallowed by inky darkness. I thought Bjørvik would laugh at my anxiety, but he doesn’t even smile. I get the sense that he understands exactly why I need the light.
I haven’t mentioned the haunting, and he hasn’t spoken of it, but I’m sure that he knows. He tells me he’s been hunting on this part of the coast for years. He knows. Once, when I asked if he’s ever experienced rar, he gave me a wary look and said he’s never had any ‘trouble’ on his stretch of the coast. And this evening when I said I prefer this wind we’re having to ‘the dead stillness’, he said, ‘Ja. The stillness. When you hear yourself blink. Is terrible.’ Later he asked about the bear post, and when I told him I’d cut it down, he frowned.
That was my chance. I should have said something. Why didn’t I?
Because I don’t want to. Because I’m afraid that if I talk of it, I might somehow invoke it. Back in August, at ‘first dark’, Eriksson asked if I’d spoken to it. I understand now why he thought that was important. For the same reason, I don’t want to mention it to Bjørvik; because I feel that if I did, I’d be inviting it in.
Besides, with any luck I won’t need to. If all goes well and the sea stays clear, Gus and Algie will be back before Bjørvik leaves.
14th November
A storm blew up after I wrote that: a north wind from the Pole. It’s over now, but this morning the sky was so overcast that I couldn’t see the moon, and the bay was full of ice.
I was horrified. The sea was gone. In its place were huge chaotic slabs and tilting pinnacles, like some fantastic frozen city. I couldn’t believe it. The pack ice isn’t supposed to arrive until after New Year.
When I said so to Bjørvik, he barked a laugh. ‘Nej, nej, Mister Yack, this is not pack ice! That come in Januar, and you will know it, you will see the islyning, the ice blink, when it throw the light in the sky. This is just drift ice from the storm. Very dangery, you stay off it, Mister Yack. But don’t worry, soon the wind change and the ice it clear.’
He was right, of course. The wind has changed, and already it’s blowing the ice out to sea.
I wish I knew as much as Bjørvik. Maybe then I’d be able to cope with this place.
He leads a life of unimaginable solitude. His main cabin is on Wijdefjord, but he’s built four smaller ones a few days’ walk away, with scores of fox traps and self shooting bear traps in between. He baits his fox traps with seabird heads, his bear traps with seal blubber, and checks them every fortnight. He wouldn’t have had time to visit me if it hadn’t been for the storm. It brought the deep snow, and foxes avoid that, as they fear becoming trapped in drifts, and eaten by bears.
He says that overhunting has made the catch worse than it used to be. Last winter he only caught twelve foxes and two bears; although he got a decent price for the furs, and a chemist in Tromsø gave him twenty-four krøner for the bears’ gall bladders, which are a cure for rheumatism.
I find it odd that he can speak of those awe inspiring bears and beautiful little foxes as if they were no more than animated furs; and yet he tamed an orphaned cub as a husrev (a ‘house fox’), and grieved when it sickened and died. I suppose he’s too poor to be sentimental about animals. That’s a privilege only the middle classes can afford. I suspect he deplores my lavishing butterscotch on Isaak, although he’s too polite to show it. And certainly he disapproves of the dogs running wild. (To placate him I’ve reverted to staking them by ‘day’ and shutting them up at night, which they hate.)
I wish I knew why he always hunts alone, but he hasn’t said, and I won’t ask. Once, though, he let slip that when he was young, he wasn’t ‘God’s best disciple’. And from other things, I gather that there are aspects of his past which he regrets.
The sky is clear again and the moon is back – although I’m alarmed to see how much it’s waned. It changes all the time. Sometimes it’s pale-gold, sometimes blue-white. Sometimes it’s in a greyish halo, edged faintly with red.
But in fact it’s not any of those colours, it’s some moon colour I can’t describe. Or perhaps it’s no colour at all; perhaps the light isn’t strong enough to allow my eyes to see in colour, so that what I’m seeing is the world in black and white, as Isaak sees it.
And why do I even try to describe the colours? Is it the human compulsion to name things, to assert control? Perhaps the same compulsion drives our meteorology: all that observing, measuring, recording. Trying to render bearable this vast, silent land.
And is that, too, why I’ve been writing this journal? To set down everything clearly, make sense of it? If it can be described, it can be understood. If it can be understood, it need not be feared.
I say ‘to set down everything’, but of course, I’ve been selective. And having flicked through these pages, I’m surprised at what I’ve chosen to put in. Why did I begin with that corpse being pulled from the Thames? And why mention that black-faced polar bear guarding its kill?
No, it’s wrong to say that I’m surprised at my selection. I’m alarmed. I don’t like the pattern I’m making.
And again, why write at all?
Am I trying to make sense of what I’ve experienced, or am I trying to push it into the past, to stop it bleeding into the present?
If I was a different kind of man, I might be doing this to leave a record behind as a warning to others, in case something happens to me. But I’m not unselfish enough for that. I don’t care what happens after I’m dead. (Although I do note the contradiction: on the one hand, I don’t believe that anything of myself will survive death, while on the other, I know that Gruhuken is haunted.)
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