by Stef Penney
Clarion readers will no doubt recall the Hall, de Long, and Greely expeditions, which led to terrible loss of life in the de Long and Greely cases, and to a miraculous escape from disaster in the other. Mr Armitage was keen to point out that problems on previous expeditions stemmed from poor planning, and from having overlarge parties of men, many of whom were not Americans, which led to serious disagreement. Mr Armitage, in taking a small party of ‘red-blooded Americans,’ intends to avoid such schisms, and, furthermore, believes that meticulous planning will reduce the risks to almost nothing. His ambition is to map, explore and unlock the secrets of the North, and thus advance the sum of human knowledge – and do it in the name of the United States of America.
Brooklyn Clarion, 1st March, 1891
Despite the recommendation, Lester Armitage’s first impression of the new candidate is not favourable. He is failing to digest yet another hurried lunch, and returns, chewing a dyspepsia tablet, to his office in Gramercy Park, whereupon, hearing a cough, he pauses inside the door and shuts it noiselessly. Whenever possible, Lester likes to watch people while they think themselves unobserved. The reason he gives himself is that he is only too aware of the disasters of previous expeditions, which arose largely, his reading suggests, from a poor choice of men. Given the hurried nature of these interviews, Lester needs all the help he can get.
The young man now awaiting him in the corridor is reading from a small volume (reading indicates mental resource), a hand-rolled cigarette clipped between his fingers. Stalk-like limbs crossed, the toe of one boot jittering (nervous type), his face is lean, hair unruly – a dandelion clock, all the more so for being liberally sprinkled with grey (congenital weakness?). Despite the grey hairs, he has the slenderness and energy of youth.
He opens and closes the door again, and walks out of the shadows. The man looks up, unfolds his legs, closes the book with a snap – it is Tyndall’s Glaciers of the Alps, Lester notices – and stands up. He is shorter and slighter than Lester, but most men are. A smile of great charm creases his face. ‘I’m here to meet Mr Armitage – is that you?’ he says, with a guileless confidence Lester envies and therefore distrusts, but which somehow, on this occasion, disarms him. ‘I’m the geologist. Jakob de Beyn.’
‘I’m Armitage. Come in.’
He leads the way into his office. His desk is piled with stacks of paper and cardboard files. Wooden crates are stacked against the walls. There is barely room to pick a way to the desk. Lester sighs with the impatience of the terminally busy, and waves to a chair piled with papers. Jakob picks up the papers and, not finding any free space, sits with them on his knee, waiting. His countenance is open, his features expressive of intelligence and good humour. Lester allows a long pause to develop before speaking.
‘Why did the Greely expedition fail?’
Jakob was warned to expect a grilling. He has recently read Greely’s account of the expedition, as well as all other Arctic works he could get his hands on. Theoretically, there is not a great deal to absorb, but he ploughed manfully through his share of crystalline palaces and faerie cathedrals afloat on the deep. He has names and facts at his fingertips. He very much wants to go to the Arctic.
‘Scientifically, I would say it did not fail. It . . . they amassed more data and mapped more new land than any previous expedition at that latitude. Of course, an expedition can only be said to be truly successful if every member returns alive. But it seems to me that most of the problems were in the organisation of relief. They planned to rely on supplies being brought in from the south, and those supplies failed for reasons outside their control. The key must be to be self-sufficient, as the Eskimos are, and as Hall demonstrated is possible in his first years in the Arctic.’
Lester stares at him from disconcertingly pale eyes. Jakob searches for something else to say.
‘Smaller numbers would help – and forming good relations with the local Eskimos.’
‘You have read up on the subject?’
‘As much as I could, yes.’
Lester seems to unbend a little.
‘So why do you want to go to such a place?’
.
As the interview progresses, Lester finds himself revising his initial impression of a slight, nervy weakling. Though not an obvious athlete, the man seems tough. He has recently returned from a third geological survey in the Rockies and has climbed several peaks, trekked through virgin country, in the mountains, in winter. He has walked on glaciers and come up with an improved design for footwear to prevent slipping on an icy surface. His qualifications and experience are more relevant than that of most of the candidates he has met. As importantly, he establishes that the man’s family is Dutch Calvinist, which is acceptable. In fact, Lester forms the opinion – not due to anything Jakob says, more wishful thinking – that he is associated with one of the old patroon families; a minor branch, perhaps, of one of the clans of merchants who built New Amsterdam. Being the right sort is of equal importance with athletic, scientific and moral prowess; in fact, it entails them. The other men he has chosen are all, in their different ways, impressive, and roughly – as he would put it – of the same caste.
Of his party, Armitage is particularly pleased with the inclusion of Jefferson Shull. The former college athlete is blond, strapping, affable, and has the confidence of old money. Even ignoring the Shull family’s donation to the expedition coffers, Lester would have found it hard to turn him down, as he is so much the type Lester wants around him. Shull recently graduated from Harvard with a degree in law, which will be neither here nor there in the Arctic, but he has a marvellous physique, has hunted, sailed and travelled from a young age, is a crack shot and gives the impression that nothing and nowhere on earth is beyond him.
Louis Erdinger, the physicist from Philadelphia, is stocky and tireless. He is not exactly affable. In fact, he is humourless and socially awkward, but then he is a genius; everyone says so. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell and is already, at the age of twenty-six, widely published. He is in line for a professorship. Everyone says (those same people who proclaim his genius) that his participation is a coup for the expedition.
And the most recent recruit, Frank Urbino, who is to be their doctor, is a giant of a man. He was famous at City College for having run four miles with a full firkin on his back. Despite his name, he is a thoroughgoing American; Lester’s wife Emma was at school with Urbino’s sister Angela (a charmingly attractive woman). He is a first-rate doctor and a man it seems impossible for anyone to dislike. He is also energetic and unstintingly full of intelligent suggestions, whether they be for an improved design of sled packing-cases, or approaching a certain man on the New York Board of Trade, or the idea of a mountaineering Dutch geologist.
As for Jakob, his first impressions of Lester Armitage are positive. Frank described him as a bit of a cold fish, but impressively driven and organised. All true, but Jakob suspects the coldness is due more to extreme personal reserve than a lack of feeling. He is certainly driven – he works fifteen hours a day, either in the office, or giving lectures and attending functions where those with money to spare may be persuaded to spare it in his direction.
Physically, he is imposing: tall and broad-shouldered, with a lean face, full moustache and a military, even an ascetic, demeanour. His appearance is a huge point in his favour: he looks like an explorer, or perhaps he fits people’s idea of what an explorer should be like. Even his stiffness with potential funders is an asset. They find him serious and credible, and that lack of ease means that he does not seem to be begging, or manipulating them. They listen, impressed by his awkward sincerity, his intense patriotism. They open their wallets.
Interview concluded, Jakob leaves the office cautiously confident that he has made a good impression. He concealed his nervousness, he thinks, displaying his experience and enthusiasm, and restraining his impulse to smile too readily – he thinks it makes him l
ook weak. The ever-present fear of being questioned about his father went unrealised; Armitage seemed content to hear that his family was Protestant. Jakob told him, as he tells everyone who asks, that both his parents are dead.
.
The idea of the north is hugely appealing to him, even more than the mountains of the west, which he loves, but knows his work is helping to tame. Prospectors and mining surveyors like himself are everywhere, scraping and poking at the wilderness, and they are followed by entrepreneurs, builders, saloon-keepers, prostitutes and countless others. He knows one town, in an exquisite valley encircled by snow-capped mountains, which in four years has swelled from a single street into a rambunctious Sodom full of underscrupled profiteers, the streets a welter of mud, the mountains scarred by mining and logging, reduced to a source of precious metals, timber and hiding-places.
Jakob has been back at his brother’s house only a few weeks, but he feels as though the city contains twice as many people as it did last year; the streets are crowded with ever more horses and vehicles. After the vastness and silences of Montana, the constant noise irritates him; fumes from a million fires scratch his throat and threaten to choke him. The sky, which stretches forever over the mountains, is chopped into narrowing rectangles and vanishing squares; it seems pallid, dirty, confined. And, not to put too fine a point on it, he needs a job. He has not saved much out of his last fee, due to an unconscionable stupidity that he doesn’t like to think about, and he is chafing at the lack of funds. He wore his travelling clothes to the interview, not because he wanted to pose as the rugged frontiersman, but because he has no others that do not make him feel shabby, or out of date, or both.
Jakob and Frank have not set eyes on each other for a year. They have exchanged letters – with increasing frequency since Frank mentioned the Arctic expedition he was joining, and recommending Jakob for – but the last time they met was a hurried lunch before Jakob left for Montana the previous spring.
It is the day after the interview. The lunch counter hasn’t changed, except that a new generation of students eats the grilled cheese. Jakob walks over to Frank, limping slightly; looks him up and down, and feels Frank do the same to him. As they shake hands, both burst out laughing. Frank grimaces.
‘I know, I’m as fat as a pig! It’s all the damned paperwork. I don’t get a chance to do anything else.’
‘You’ll be well set up for a starvation winter. Or perhaps not – we’d eat you first.’
‘What’s up with the leg?’
‘I fell off a glacier. Cracked a bone in my ankle.’
Frank’s mouth opens slightly.
‘What did Armitage have to say about that?’
Jakob grins. ‘I didn’t tell him. It’ll be fine in a week or two. So, when did you get involved in this business? I must say, I was surprised when you told me you had joined an expedition; I didn’t know you were interested in this sort of thing.’
‘Ah, well . . . Things change.’ Frank waves his hand airily: a gesture that strikes Jakob as uncharacteristic. ‘Practice work is all very fine, but there isn’t enough of a challenge. I got bored, I suppose. I’m not like you – I’m sure, in future, it will be enough for me – but right now, I want to prove myself. I want to do something I can be proud of, tell my grandchildren.’
He says the last phrase a little self-consciously. Jakob raises his eyebrows.
‘You’re thinking about posterity?’
Frank laughs shyly and looks down at his hands. ‘I didn’t want to tell you in a letter, but . . . I’m engaged to be married!’
‘Congratulations!’
‘You look shocked.’
‘Not shocked, just . . . surprised. You could have written me!’
‘Well, you know it’s been such a whirl. So sudden . . .’
‘That’s wonderful. When did this happen?’
‘Not long ago. I first met Marion, my fiancée, ah, last autumn, and when I was offered a place on the expedition, I thought, either I don’t go, or I go, but I don’t want to leave things uncertain, because, when you have met someone who is just perfect . . .’
He shakes his head, grinning bashfully. Jakob feels ashamed of his first reaction.
.
As Frank tells, rather incoherently, the tale of meeting Miss Marion Rutherford at a neighbour’s dinner, or tea, or at any rate at someone’s house, Jakob experiences an unfamiliar twinge of envy. In college, he was used to being the one envied. He himself has recently escaped a sentimental encounter that left him not only bruised but ashamed – the whole thing so ridiculous it doesn’t bear thinking about.
‘You’ll meet her at lunch on Sunday – you’ll come, won’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t miss it.’
‘Anna and Clara will be thrilled to see you – my parents too. And what about you?’
‘What about me, what?’
‘Come on . . . Are you still seeing that actress – she was an actress, wasn’t she? – from before you left, last year?’
‘Oh . . . no. I’ve been away nearly a year. You know my work; it’s not exactly compatible with any kind of . . . settled life.’
‘Don’t you sometimes think it would be nice to have a home of your own, and someone waiting there for you, warming your slippers?’
Jakob laughs. ‘I don’t possess slippers.’
‘Wait till you meet Marion . . . We’ll find someone for you.’
There must have been something in Jakob’s face, because Frank’s assumes a knowing leer.
‘Or have you fallen for a respectable girl at last?’
There is another reason, beyond the nobility of a quest for knowledge; beyond even Hendrik’s silent reproaches when he leaves for the asylum to visit their father, that the idea of a long, remote journey appeals to him.
The previous spring, Jakob went to Montana to work for a mining company. He hired a guide and spent the summer surveying in glorious mountain scenery. He was captivated by the peaks, the lakes and, most of all, by the glaciers he glimpsed from the high passes, and once his survey was finished, he decided to stay. He could write his report as well there as back east, and he had an urge to climb in winter, to test himself against the ice. He also itched to experiment with his latest passion: he had bought a new, lightweight camera, and wanted to photograph the winter landscape in some way – as yet unknown to him – that did not diminish its chaste splendour.
Jakob bribed a guide to accompany him on a trek up a modest glacier. They proceeded slowly – neither having done such a thing before – with the guide threatening to turn back at every step. Jakob, who had been congratulating himself on the efficacy of his improvised footwear, became incensed by the man’s whining. He turned round to tell him to shut up, slipped, fell, slid, thought, Oh, hell, and was brought up short by his foot striking a rock that stuck out of the ice like a purplish thumb. He lay on his back, dizzily aware of pain, noted that the rock was a Precambrian mudstone erratic, speculated how it had ended up on top of the ice, and heard the guide laugh. He tramped over to Jakob and said, in tones ripe with satisfaction, ‘You gone done’t now.’
When he tried to stand, he found his ankle was too damaged to walk on. The guide helped him down off the glacier and then left him to fetch a mule. Jakob spent a sleepless, very cold, night by the side of the glacier, cursing himself for his folly, but also working out how to adapt his footwear so that such an accident was unlikely to happen again. A day later, his leg splinted with pine branches, and in a lot of pain, he was carried by mule into the nearest place that boasted a hotel and a doctor. The doctor made him pay his fee up front, then looked at the ankle and told him it was broken, which he already knew. He set it in plaster of Paris (Jakob had to pay extra for this) and said he would need to rest it for two weeks before attempting the journey home, or it might never heal properly.
Highlandville was a gaudy, gimcr
ack place: a town that had mushroomed out of nothing on the strength of placer gold. It had little choice in the matter of lodgings, all of them ruinously expensive. Bad-tempered and bored, Jakob sat in his room – small and noisy (but still costing a railroad king’s ransom) – with his foot raised on a cushion, and worked on his report, or stared at the mountains he couldn’t climb. In the evenings, he hobbled downstairs to sit at the bar and drink a couple of beers, while watching the miners and whores come and go. Several of the women approached him, touting for business, but lost interest when he explained that he was not a miner and had no gold.
One whore came to sit beside him more than once, asking if he wanted company, and, more than once, he smiled regretfully, but she didn’t go away. Her name was Swedish Kate. She was a good-looking girl of thirty, with chestnut hair and an accent that made him want to laugh. Despite his protestations of poverty, she would join him to talk for a while before going off to find herself a paying client, looking over her shoulder with a teasing smile.
Jakob, worried about money, resolved not to give in to the temptation on offer, but self-pity and loneliness bore down on him, and seeing Kate come swishing into the bar in yet another low-cut dress made it harder and harder to hold on to his resolution. Over the course of a few days, he found himself hobbling down to the bar in the hope of seeing Kate – just for the company, because she was smart and sympathetic, as well as pretty. His report bored him; he ran out of prints to develop. When, one evening, he saw her with a particularly obnoxious miner, he was run through with a lance of jealous fury, and realised his resolution was going to fail.