The Nature of Ice

by Robyn Mundy

  Freya finds herself trailing, has to quickstep to match their thundering pace as Elisia tells her about their winter crossing of the Sørsdal Glacier to the Rauer Islands. Eight of them, half the station, had set off in two Haggs and struck bad weather, the poor visibility obscuring the cane line—bamboo wands staked along the ice to mark a safe route. ‘Chad, Beacon and I drove twenty hours without stopping; pea-soup conditions all the way.’

  Chad slows to match Freya’s pace, to describe how they made ten days worth of pre-cooked dinners ready to zap in a microwave oven that they carted along in the back of theirH agg.

  ‘Meals on wheels!’ Elisia cries.

  Chad grins. ‘In the case of the Hagg, snacks on tracks. How about Beacon’s laksa, Lis? How good was that?’

  Elisia hits him. ‘What about my lasagna?’ and off they forge, reliving each meal.

  Then Elisia throws her arms to the sky. ‘The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was—minus-fucking-forty on the way home. Remember, Chad?’

  ‘Who could forget?’

  ‘We pitched the tents in a circle like a small tepee village,’ Elisia says. ‘Microwave beeping in the Hagg. I brought my sound system. The Waifs, Keb Mo, wafting over ice. And both nights, both nights, auroras to die for.’

  Chad moves back to Freya’s side. ‘It’s true.’ He lights up, as animated as she’s seen him. ‘The sky was unbelievable. Intense pink, blue, the white so strong it blotted out the stars. You would have been in seventh heaven.’

  ‘Wow,’ Freya says. Really, she’s impressed. What she would give to see just one good aurora. She feels a prickling awareness of her lower status as a summerer—one of the lightweights who blow in and blow out at the end of the season. She lets herself drop back, in a huff at God knows what.

  At the far end of Lake Stinear, Elisia waits for her to catch up. ‘How’d you fare this morning? As green around the gills as I was?’

  ‘Biliously green.’ Freya confesses, vowing never again to drink champagne. She hesitates. ‘Last night, Lis, did I do anything … stupid?’

  ‘Do you mean, was I the only one to notice you and that man over there looking cosy on the dance floor?’ Elisia turns to her. ‘Can I say something to you, as a friend?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Chad’s been very good to me. He’s one of the most genuine, honourable people I know. I’d hate to see him hurt.’

  Freya blinks. ‘He’s hardly interested in me! And I’m certainly not out—I’m married, Elisia.’

  ‘Yes,’ is all she says.

  ‘Lis!’ Chad beckons her over to the ridge where he is rummaging through a collection of rocks.

  ‘Gotta go. He could be on to Lasseter’s Reef.’

  Freya stews over Elisia’s words, distressed that the very act of speech carries the momentum to make something out of nothing. It unsettles Freya to find herself lured into even imagining the idea.

  She watches Elisia striding across the ice, her plait of fair hair bouncing on her back. Freya thinks Elisia radiates more natural beauty than any other woman on the station. She exudes an aura of calm. She never wears a scrap of makeup, even on Saturday nights when the station dresses up for dinner. Elisia is taller than Chad, her build as athletic as it is strong. She has proven photogenic too: as part of Freya’s portrait series, she set up lights in the workshop and photographed Elisia welding, sparks showering her overalls and safety glasses. Freya envies Elisia her sense of place, her practical knowledge and skill at mending broken things.

  Is there a place in Antarctica for artists like herself? Except for Chad, she can hardly align herself with the trades. Nor would the sciences claim her as their own—which is probably as well: just walking through the laboratories makes Freya tingle with unease, sends her clamouring for a breath of untainted air.

  She senses that some on station think her project frivolous, her title of artist-in-residence a sham. Freya can guess at some of the opinions expressed: The way the government wastes public money on the arts.

  One way of cadging a free ride south.

  Malcolm, she is sure, would give short shrift to any whisper of elitism. God forbid Frank Hurley or Herbert Ponting hadn’t gone along to photograph the early expeditions. Freya is adding a twenty-first-century account to the layers of Antarctic history.

  Meanwhile some from the workshops refuse to believe that photography rates as work. Come to get your playmate? Adam and the other chippies gibe when she goes to meet Chad.

  Freya waves back when Chad beckons from the brow of the hill. She races to catch up but when she reaches the crest they have already bounded ahead, snatches of their laughter scudding by on the wind.

  At the lookout Chad produces mugs from his pack. ‘Tea.’ He extracts the first thermos. ‘And coffee, strong for those who need it.’

  Freya sips her coffee, resting against her pack while Chad and Elisia fossick among the rocks below. Through Chad’s binoculars she can make out the Sørsdal Glacier’s scintillating diamonds of light. To the east the repeater mast of Tarbuck Crag glints in the sun. She has never questioned the phone in her studio, or that she can hook up to the internet any time she likes, but suddenly it strikes her that it all began a century ago in a tiny wooden hut. None of the men at winter quarters, Marcus told her in an email, were even aware that in late September 1912, a few weeks before wind felled and smashed one of their masts, they had made history—the Macquarie Island relay station picked up snippets of morse code from the radio officer at Commonwealth Bay: Having a hell of a time waiting for calm weather to put up more masts.

  Sheltered from the breeze, wrapped in her jacket, hat pulled low, she feels the sun’s glow radiating warmth through her.

  Freya stirs to Chad nudging her. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead. You’ve been out for nearly an hour.’

  Dozy, she reaches for his outstretched hand so he can help her up but fails to grasp it firmly. She reels backwards, leaving her glove behind in his grip.

  Chad winces as she lands on her pack. ‘Ouch.’

  ‘I’m okay. I’m officially awake.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ He returns her glove. ‘I was born under the sign of slapstick.’

  Only then does she register the band of waxen skin on her finger. Furtively she retrieves the wedding ring from inside her glove and hides it in her hand. ‘I’m the careless one.’

  As Marcus likes to remind her. She marvels now at a ring’s capacity to enact its marriage vows and dominion, the circle of wedding-white as good as a brand upon her skin.

  Winter Quarters

  Commonwealth Bay

  Adelie Land

  9 November 1912

  My very dear Paquita

  This is the first occasion since landing in Antarctica that I have addressed myself to you in writing, though daily a warm glow of life feels to have crept in to me coming from the far distant civilised world, and of course it can be from none but you.

  I have concluded, once again, that it is nice to be in love, even here in Antarctica with the focus of the heart strings far far away.

  Here in a primitive world, in its most rigid aspect with an expanse of tempest tossed ocean between come warm messages straight from your heart, born in earlier days when you and I were together.

  Although not writing, daily I feel to hold communion with you in dreaming reverie of all our former happiness. You see I have been reaping comfort for having spoken to you on that quiet dark evening at El Rincon, now nearly 2 years ago. (How the time flies!) How I sometimes think that you are paying compound interest on my life loaned to the ‘Wild’.

  The non-fulfilment of the expected wireless messages will have been attended with anxiety and then the Aurora might have been caught in the pack or sunk after leaving us. All is so doubtful that I know my true love must have been harrassed by a multitude of doubts and I hope never to incurr such in future. Indeed, I even look forward to making up for this offence.

  Down here, things are different. I feel that you a
re in the best keeping and I only hope that you are passing the time as pleasantly as may be.

  Dear Paquita I am writing this note in case anything may happen which will prevent me reaching you as soon as the mail from here, which is expected to be picked up next January. So many things may intervene for truly one lives from day to day here and then our sledging journey is about to commence.

  How terribly disappointing this land has been. Our only consolation is that we feel that everything has been done that could be done and that on account of the rigour of the climate the information that we have obtained will be of special value.

  Since the ship left in Jan. last, we have had but a few days of calm weather and the wind has blown with such terrific force as to completely eclipse anything previously known elsewhere in the world. Some of the men have done such remarkably good work in the hurricane wind as to call for admiration from anybody. I trust & hope that better conditions will be given us during the coming weeks.

  10 November 1912

  The weather is fine this morning though the wind still blows—we shall get away in an hours time. I have two good companions Dr Mertz and Lieut Ninnis. It is unlikely that any harm will happen to us but should I not return to you in Australia please know that I truly loved you from an admiration of your spirit. And should we meet under other circumstances please know and love me as a brother.

  In case of my non-return my total assets come to somewhere about £2000 including of course salary at the rate of £400 per annum from the expedition which is paid in lieu of my University salary. Accounts in the Bank of Australasia. I have told you of the other things including all my photos and private belongings at the University. Take what you want of all and if any remains you can give to my Mother if alive in lieu to my brother.

  I must be closing now as the others are waiting—give my admiration and love to all the Delprats, each one separately …

  Good Bye my Darling may God keep and Bless and Protect you.

  Your Douglas

  CURLICUES

  OF FILM

  THE IMAGE OF THE WEDDELL seal spills from the edges of the baseboard and sprawls across the darkroom bench. Freya takes time adjusting the lens of the enlarger until she is quite certain the focus is sharp. She slides a sheet of photographic paper from the drawer and rests it square upon the platen. With the photosensitive sheet protected by the safelight’s coloured filter, the seal’s eyes gleam, his coat sleek with the tangerine glow. Below his whiskered snout he wears a perpetual grin.

  Freya fires up the enlarger’s soft light that slowly floods the emulsion with life. She lifts the photographic sheet by its two brittle edges, carries it carefully to the sink and rests it in the first tray. A fragile thing, this future she holds in her hands.

  As she rocks the print through the liquid, the developing agent laps mesmerisingly from corner to corner. The jowls of the weddell seal rise through the emulsion as if rolled with washes of ink. Freya works beneath the fruity glow of light unfazed by the cramped quarters. She feels a familial comfort—the vapour of developer, the constancy of warm air on her skin, curlicues of film suspended from an overhead line of clips. When she pictures her father it is not the heavy-set, suit-and-tie man he was at the end, his darkroom business powered by a bank of employees, but a younger man in a home-built darkroom no larger than this, his shirt sleeves rolled up past his elbows, the fair hair of his arms tinged red by the safelight’s glow.

  Freya lifts the softened paper with rubber tongs and slides it into the stop bath. She winds the timer to thirty seconds, each ratcheted click a fraction of time waiting to pass. As an eight-year-old, a newcomer to a continent where seasons came topsy-turvy, Freya would linger in the darkroom after her father finished his work. She would stand on the footstool and wind the timer forward, the orbit of iridescent lines glowing in her hand. Clickety-click, clickety-click, watching right down to the last moments, her fingers halting the dial just before the jingle of the alarm tickled her ears. So long as she kept winding the dial forward, never allowing it to complete a full circuit, Freya could keep the future on hold.

  She transfers the print into the fixing solution to rid the emulsion of undeveloped salts. Freya eases the handle of the tap to open and lays the hose of running water in the rinse tray.

  The darkroom is where she first fell in love with the magic of image. When she grew tall enough to reach the developing sink she was allowed to rinse the prints, careful not to scratch the surface of the fragile paper with sharp little nails, mindful not to wind the tap too fast in case the water sprays. By the time she was eleven she had learned each darkroom process from mixing chemicals, to black and white printing, to developing film, to cibachrome colour, until she acquired her very first camera. From behind boxes on the top shelf of the closet she pulled out a Leicaflex SL, J. Jorgensen stamped in gold leaf on the leather case. The flourish of her father’s J, she thought, could as easily be read as an F. At twelve, printing her own black and white photographs, she happened upon her first composite through an error of double-exposure. She rocked a print in a tray of developer, waiting for the texture of granite to appear, and spied, through the pattern of rock, the faintest image of her sister’s eyes. Astrid’s face looked moulded from stone—as if the granite was the keeper of an ancient secret only the darkroom’s sorcery held the power to reveal.

  Freya flicks on the main light and surveys the black and white print. She is pleased with the density in the shadows, the spread of midtones, double highlights gleaming life into the weddell seal’s eyes.

  She pulls on cotton gloves and removes the negative from the enlarger’s carrier. She runs a lupe over the remaining strips of film spread across the lightbox. Already two and a half Antarctic months have clicked past; Christmas is only a week away, the tree brought out of storage and dressed. The kitchen has taken on a festive feel, bringing forth an uncanny cheerfulness in Tommo, the older chef. Sandy, too, stands at the large mixer whistling a tune as he breaks dozens of eggs into an oversized bowl. The kitchen exudes the buttery richness of baking. Slushies box Christmas treats to be flown out to science parties working in the field. The station is alive with the fervour of gift making. Each evening a trail is blazed to the workshops by amateur craftsmen and -women. Latecomers scour the off-cut bins for workable lengths. The carpentry shop buzzes with the grinding of the router; the belt sander whines, wood shavings coat the floor around the lathe. In the plumbers’ shop, scrap metal has been picked over, and someone has gathered ribbons of copper sheeting into a posy with sculptural intent. Beads of melted solder drip to the floor, the arc of a welding gun sparks like a green flash at sunset. Gift-makers shield their projects from the keen eyes of passers-by. Freya, too, took her turn at reaching into the Kris Kringle hat and drawing out a name; she immediately decided to print out this photo of the weddell seal to give to Radio Officer Charlie.

  That Davis Station still maintains a darkroom is tribute to a bygone time. In the last decade, with the uprise of digital, Freya has seen all but one of Perth’s darkrooms reinvent itself or close its doors. What would have become of her father’s business had he lived long enough to see the full impact of digital photography? She likes to imagine he would have seized it as a chance to return to his first love, to the viewfinder of a camera, and for no other gain than pleasure. And what of her, had she followed the path her parents mapped out?

  At nineteen, she resisted a career that would have limited her to developing other photographers’ work. She didn’t care how good the prospects were for her father’s business. When her mother’s voice rose in pitch, reminding her of the hundreds, hundreds, of aspiring artists waitressing in restaurants, she wouldn’t be swayed. Instead she watched her father’s downcast stare while her mother’s voice slid into a whiny litany of professional photographers having to serve at petrol bowsers weekends and nights simply to put food on the table. Finally Papa pushed back his chair and left the room as silent as a stone.

  Why? Freya would
ask her father if she had a second chance. How could you throw it all away?

  She had determined never to relinquish her camera as he had done. She would go to Melbourne to study at the photography college—adding with all the bravado she could muster, whether you help me or not. Couldn’t they understand? Can’t you see, Papa? It was the same driving want that had once emboldened him to cross hemispheres and turn seasons upside down.

  Freya chooses two negatives, the first of Chad at Rookery Lake, the second a study of the photographer he insisted on taking with her camera.

  Gone are the weighted silences. They spend their days in a pattern of easy quiet, broken by bursts of chatter. Chad makes her laugh. She laughs at herself. Freya has her gear ready the night before, but it still takes an age—three times longer than it would at home—to get ready in the morning to leave. Those who have been south before are resigned to this aspect of Antarctic life. She likens the time in a day spent dressing, lacing boots, pulling at velcrose and zips—all to venture outdoors—to an armoured warrior preparing for battle. Out in the field, Chad seems content to wander off and leave her to her work, checking in with her by radio from time to time. After twice inadvertently jettisoning her emergency pack from her bike rack—spare socks and thermals sodden thanks to a broken thermos, her chocolate smashed to smithereens—she has taught herself to tie a clove hitch over the good old granny knot. Thankfully he has gained some faith in her abilities while she, in turn, better understands the map, can read contour lines and pinpoint corresponding hills. She trusts herself to find the way. Down here she is not, as Marcus would have her, a girl in need of rescue.

  These last weeks they have driven hundreds of kilometres over sea ice, following the coast, returning weary-bodied to the station late at night, their faces raw. Clear sky or cloud, nothing short of an impervious foundation of white zinc cream—disagreeably claustrophobic—can protect skin from the glare thrown up by snow and ice. However, in a few more weeks, Chad says, the sea ice will be gone.