Farthest South & Other Stories
Page 13
—These woods, he said, are thicker than I remember.
—We’ve fallen down with our cutting, their father said.
The doctor nodded. He asked for water and their father returned with a cup. He drank in one long pull and set the cup on the table. He spoke nothing of the village, or of his reason for visiting, but he didn’t need to. Angus knew his father, whose eyes were alert, had sent for him and brought him here.
—I’ve had little rest, the doctor finally said. He sighed. I remember this house. This living room. Your mother, he said, turning to Angus. She lay right here. He gestured carefully with both gloved hands, articulating the area where they’d placed the small mattress on the floor, the sweat-soaked pillow. And you, above her.
—We’ve done as you suggested, their father said. This home is bare and scrubbed.
The doctor looked at Annabel, then back to the fire.
—Three separate farms in the last month, he said. No crops grow. In the village it is no better. Children refuse to eat.
—Until two days ago, I had seen nothing, their father said. And I have been watchful.
—And strict?
—We read every day, their father replied.
—No more could be asked, the doctor said. He walked the room slowly, examining windows, running his finger along the frame. Angus watched as Annabel began to shift her weight back and forth. Her eyes remained on the fire.
—I will ask for some privacy with the children, the doctor finally said.
Angus saw his father’s expression turn. His eyes darkened. He made no move to leave.
—If you don’t mind, the doctor said.
—No, their father finally said. He left and shut the door behind him.
The doctor turned to the fire. Finally, he asked if they’d seen the swallows, and when Angus answered no, he turned and smiled. That’s right, he said. There are no swallows. His teeth were crowded atop one another. He picked his hat from the stool and handed it to Angus.
—Please, he said, sit.
Angus did as he was told. Annabel remained standing.
—Your father, he began, has traveled a great distance, and is still traveling. But he is concerned. And he loves you very much. You are dear to him.
Neither Angus nor his sister lifted their eyes from the floor.
—This is delicate, the doctor finally said. I will speak to your sister first, and then I will call for you.
Angus remembered no delicacy from this man, but he could think of nothing to do for his sister that would not bring more suspicion. When their mother had been examined, Angus had paced the entryway until the doctor demanded he stop. His sister had cried out and had to be held by their father. They’d made things worse by becoming upset.
Now the doctor sighed and, carrying his small case, moved with Annabel into their bedroom and shut the door.
He heard no sound from their room, no thrashing, no cries. Stillness was required in the presence of this man. The fire cracked, splintered, burned itself, glowing, down to embers. At first Angus had been afraid to move, and now, with the doctor’s heavy hat on his lap, he found he no longer wished to move at all. He was aware of time passing. The silence in the house deepened. He tried to imagine his sister and he called to her in his head, but then his mind settled and emptied. At some point, he sensed he was no longer alone in the room and he saw his father’s pale face at the window, pressed to the glass. He eyes were like burning pieces of coal. His mouth hung open. He looked to Angus like anger itself, and he was afraid; but soon his father’s features blended with the darkness and his face became a blank mask: an image of his father, but not he. Angus looked away. When he looked again, his father had disappeared.
Finally, the door opened and the doctor stood in front of him.
—She needs rest, he said, and closed the bedroom door. He walked to Angus and set his small case on the floor. Does that door have a lock? he asked, and Angus shook his head. No matter, he said. He instructed Angus to stoke the fire, and Angus stood as if suddenly released.
—What have you seen, the doctor said when Angus sat back down.
—Nothing, Angus said.
Now the doctor moved very close and stretched his gloved hands in front of him. He began using his thick fingers on Angus’s arm. It’s all right, he said. Angus said nothing. Roll up your sleeve, he said. Angus did, and when the doctor touched him again, he felt the air leave his body. Your sister is in an unusual state, the doctor said. And I need your help. He took a small glass vial from his case and held it to Angus’s forearm. Angus felt a pressure, as though the glass were a small mouth sucking at his skin.
—Has she been calling out? the doctor said.
Angus shook his head.
—I don’t believe you, the doctor said. Angus began to feel a small circle of heat form on his arm where the vial touched his skin. You can tell me, the doctor said.
—She is in pain, Angus said.
—I know.
Angus’s vision blurred. He wiped at his eyes with his free hand and was suddenly cold.
—My father’s watching, he said.
The doctor stiffened. He looked up from his small case and clasped his hands together, thick fingers knitted in front of his chest. The vial that held on Angus’s arm did not release. He felt his throat go warm.
—He’s everywhere.
—Then tell it to me in my ear, the doctor said and leaned close.
It seemed to Angus that the two of them were no longer talking to each other. Or, they were talking, but without sound. The small doctor tilted his head so that his eyes fixed on the floor and Angus leaned forward so there was no distance between them.
—You poor child, the doctor finally said. He reached out and put a gloved hand over Angus’s ear, then dropped it. He packed his case. And when he stood to leave, Angus saw his sister in the doorway to their room, hidden behind the half-shut door.
THEY HAD NO DINNER. When their father returned to the house, he pulled the book from the shelf and they read together. He asked them no questions about the visit, and as the night went on and true darkness took hold of the woods outside, Angus found himself wondering if the doctor had been there at all. Nothing in the house had changed. There had been no yelling, no crying like last time. But when he saw the red circle on his forearm he knew. When he looked at his sister and saw she had withdrawn, completely, into herself, he knew. The doctor had come and had pulled them both to him, as he had before.
Finally, their father closed the book. He stood and embraced his children. When he held Angus, it felt to Angus as though he were leaning into the trunk of a large tree. With Annabel, he was more tentative, but he enveloped her nonetheless and held her tightly.
—Tomorrow will come, he finally said, and sent them away.
ANGUS KNEW THAT neither he nor his sister would sleep, but for a long time they did not speak. They waited in their room until their father stopped his pacing, until the light from the fire dimmed under the door, and they were sure he had taken himself to bed.
—She’s here, Annabel finally said. She was with me.
Angus said nothing.
—And she forgives us.
—What did you tell him? Angus said.
—I don’t remember, she said. It felt like I wasn’t even there. Then she said, Are you afraid?
—I am, Angus said.
—Don’t be, she told him. I’m not.
The wind tore briefly at the shingles of the house, then relented. The night spun out and wove itself around the two of them.
AND WHEN THEY DID COME, Angus saw them from the small window in their room. Ten to twelve lanterns swung up the path, a slow and deliberate constellation that lit the woods. He called his sister. He heard the latch on the front door and knew their father had left them.
He went to their bed, made it, and returned to the window.
—Annabel, he said.
—No, she said.
—Annabel, he said.
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br /> —It’s what I wanted, she said.
The lanterns were closer now, and gave shape to the night outside. Someone was singing, a low sound that cut through the house and pressed across the field. She held out her hand, and Angus took it. Her hand was warm, and in his he sensed a deep heat blooming. The moon shone through the branches of the elm in their yard. When they were younger, Annabel had always been the first to laugh, his mother’s favorite. Images came to him, some he couldn’t place. The dark path through the woods; frost on the leaves; a robin drying its wings. His mother, in light, applying pressure to his fevered head. The heat from his sister’s touch moved up his arm and spread across his shoulders. He had her hand and she would not let go. Behind him came a sound like water rushing over rocks. He stood in the room, but it was no longer theirs. You know what’s coming next, his mother said. But Angus didn’t know. Annabel, he said, but she wouldn’t answer. It was easier this way, and it was like nothing he’d felt before.
FARTHEST SOUTH
EACH DAY HE WAKES to cold light, dark waves, and a shifting horizon line, the flap of canvas sails, the creak of a keeling ship. There has been nothing else for weeks. He’s ill and cannot get comfortable. His eyes are deep blue, piercing, red-rimmed, expressively empty, and they’ve refused to adjust to the gloom of his cabin. Below deck there is only darkness, but topside, he knows, there is limitless white light. He hauls himself up the aft companion-way and from the deck looks at the ice shelf ahead of him. It rises from the ocean like a set of giant’s teeth. You are where you are, he thinks, and his heart leaps, settles, flattens out.
“GOOD MORNING.” AT HIS SIDE stands an emperor penguin, cheerful companion, loyal friend. My grandfather has named him Franklin, after one of his favorite dogs from home. When he waddles across the deck, he reminds my grandfather of a black and white channel buoy that bobbed near his home cove when he was a child. “Shall I tell the children we’ve arrived?” Franklin asks.
“Not yet,” says my grandfather. A thought forms in his skull and evaporates. The ship dips with the swell, and he steadies himself against the roll. His mind is shorting out. He thinks: the sea is like … is like … is like … the sea.
A bolt of freezing sea wind bores an acid tunnel to the back of his throat. He coughs into a handkerchief. Blood.
“On second thought,” he says, “yes.”
Once his companion leaves, he folds the handkerchief twice, remembers it was a gift from his own children, from his wife, and throws it overside. No need to worry anyone. The stained piece of cloth flutters and dips on the wind like an enormous white butterfly before settling atop the leaden water, saturating, and sinking. Onward, he thinks.
THE CHILDREN APPEAR ON DECK. There are twenty-five of them, little blond Norsemen. They’ve read my grandfather’s books; they are excited to be a part of this expedition. Below deck, they’ve made dolls out of sticks and sailcloth, pulled clothes from the communal chest, staged elaborate plays. They’ve helped with dinner and cleaned their plates; they’ll do whatever Franklin asks of them. They’ve shown no greenness on the waves. Looking at them now, however, my grandfather realizes he cannot tell them apart. The only name he can remember is Hjalmar. But which one is Hjalmar? He was one of the smaller boys. Not here, now. Or is he?
“THAT,” MY GRANDFATHER SAYS, and gestures over the bow toward the ice shelf, “is McMurdo Bay. If you follow my finger’s line, you will see Mount Erebus and Mount Terror. They are ice volcanoes, named for ships.”
The children cheer, punch their fists, and look excitedly in the direction he is pointing. If all goes well, their expedition will go like this: depot, depot, depot, rookery, depot, pole. They will cross the barrier ice with Victoria Land rising to the west; they will climb the pressure ridge abutting the Queen Maud Mountains, traverse the white and brown glacier, and return under the watchful eye of Mount Helmer Hanssen. The weather will be bleak and howling, the journey miserable, but the sled dogs will help them, and the reward will be great. They will write their own books. Some of the children, he notices, are hugging one another.
My grandfather sweeps his hands wide, then returns them to the deep pockets of his heavy woolen coat. He gazes at his young crew and works to bury the expression he feels forming. The children peek out at him from their drawn hoods. They are a blessing, not a burden, he thinks. He coughs once, twice. It’s productive. He spits. “Our journey begins,” he says, and Franklin pats his hand.
THEIR SHIP IS A THREE-MASTED, four-hundred-ton schooner, outfitted with a retractable rudder and propeller, a windmill for energy production, and a small camp stove in the galley. Her hull is wrapped in greenheart wood and she draws power from a triple-expansion steam engine. She is his own design, commissioned and built over two years in Larvik, a ship of astonishing beauty. He will be sad to leave her.
As they move farther into the floes, the Ross Ice Shelf forms a basin and all ocean sound drops away. There are no birds. They see neither walrus nor seal. The only noise comes from their small engine, lunging along. It feels to my grandfather like they are gliding into the frozen mouth of the world.
ONCE ANCHORED, THEY SPEND the day moving supplies from ship to ice, harnessing sled dogs, tuning sledge runners. In the evening, everyone gathers in the ship’s main cabin for supper. It will be the last comfortable meal, my grandfather knows, and he’s pleased to see everyone in such good spirits on the eve of their departure. Once the feast is over, the children tidy up, and Franklin lowers the lamp to begin one of his lessons. The children, in their shared sleeping bags, strain to listen. “Do not think of the cold,” he says. “Instead, think of a moment that has brought you great happiness, and let that be the lantern that warms you. And as we progress, I’d like to remind you that penguins are the link between reptiles and the mainland birds you are familiar with. Evolutionary-wise, that is.”
Outside it is –27 degrees Celsius, but inside, in the close and cramped ship’s cabin, it’s as warm as a bakery oven.
“Goodnight, young explorers,” Franklin says, and extinguishes the lamp.
DARK NIGHT. LONG NIGHT. MY grandfather tightens the mouth of his sleeping bag. The wind picks up and rasps at the ship’s rigging, asking to be let in. Not good. Not good. The pain in his ribs has returned, his tongue feels wooly. Maybe, my grandfather thinks, they won’t show up this time. But his mind is a dark engine, and show up they do: a parade of floating heads, coming down the ship’s corridor, bobbing toward him like paper lanterns on a string. Some wear balaclavas, some are hatless, some scurvied and bleeding from exposure and sour gums. Their dark eyes are filled with accusatory wonder. They do not blink. My grandfather nervously greets each frozen face as it floats around his cabin, some familiar, some not. Finally, the heads collect themselves in a pile near the foot of his bed.
“What do you want?” my grandfather says. The heads whisper quietly to one another—they seem amused by his predicament—and they do not answer.
Franklin, sleeping next to him, has not stirred. Finally, the heads begin to quiet down. They close their eyes for the night, they shut their incomprehensible mouths. They roll one by one out of the door and down the hallway and allow my grandfather to drift into his own heavying limbs and journey as he wishes to the small clapboard home of his youth, in Svalbard, and then to blacker sleep.
IN THE MORNING, he takes stock. Twenty-five children, twenty-two dogs, Franklin the penguin, and himself. Five sledges, each weighing two hundred and thirty-seven pounds. The dogs will take two, the children two, he and Franklin one. In a fur-lined pouch affixed to his hip, he has tucked the medical supplies, his sextant, a chronometer, his journal and pencils, and a roughly folded map detailing their projected route, known elevations, unexpected crevasses.
It is –32 degrees, with no wind from the south. It will only get colder as they trek across the barrier ice.
The children stand ready in their hats and harnesses. They are looking to my grandfather for some words of inspiration, encouragement, or
perhaps even love, but his mind has gone elsewhere, it’s a blank shimmering thing. Franklin clears his throat and gruffs with his beak at his preened feathers. The dogs are restless and yip to one another. Finally, my grandfather turns and says, “The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.”
The children look perplexed.
Franklin sighs, gathers himself, secures his towline over his shoulder. “Gid-up,” he says to the children, and they throw their hats in the air.
Across the ice they are pulling pemmican, sugar, butter, tents, plank wood for an igloo door, hoosh, rudimentary first-aid kits, amputation instruments, limes, lamps, socks, brandy, whisky, rum, matches.
In my grandfather’s fur pouch is a photograph of Fridtjof Nansen and Frederick Jackson shaking hands at Franz Josef Land. It is the very moment they knew their winter on that infernal frozen island was over.
“Frederick Jackson,” says my grandfather. Low light bounds off the ice directly in front of him. “Heavenly days.”
THE FIRST WEEK IS SLOW GOING. Towlines get tangled, and, as they plod farther across the barrier ice, the snow becomes deeper, heavier; each step is met with an audible granular give. Each step is a sinking. Each step is like a rasping cough. The sun is a gel smear, dim on the horizon. The ice, in constant adjustment, cracks and groans; the sound is like tree limbs bending, breaking in heavy wind. Mount Erebus looms to the west, gently sloped, and in front of them they see the pressure ridge, jagged, licked and shaped by polar weather.
“Enchantment, wonder,” says Franklin happily, pulling next to my grandfather. “Uncharted, limitless white.”
“And,” my grandfather says, “no more floating visitors, thank God.”
“Hmmm?” Franklin says, but my grandfather is adjusting his harness, it’s been biting his shoulder all morning, and doesn’t reply.