The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica

by John Calvin Batchelor

  “That is a war out there,” said Cleopatra Furore.

  “You mean the fires?” I tried.

  “Are you ready? Where’s the ship?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s not time for this. The King collapsed to their demands. They’re marching on the prison in the morning.”

  “Father?”

  “We have to move. Where’s our crew? We’ll need provisions for thirty days for a dozen.”

  “What? I have some food. But my crew,” I paused, calling the Turks. They crept downstairs, crouching in peasant fashion as the pups licked their faces. Cleopatra sighed. She did not have to reprimand me. I felt my failure and tried to explain.

  Cleopatra listened to me patiently, nodded, then stooped to stroke Iceberg, saying, “They’re what we have. We have all been caught short. Thord Horshead is our last hope. We must be there by morning.”

  She did not invite debate. The squat one tapped the doorjamb, pointed up the pier. He used his right hand to make sign language. The black drew a pistol. The four of them moved together fluidly, and I reconsidered my assumption that they were mistress and hirelings. I would learn that the three men were Cleopatra’s foster-brothers: wiry, copper-skinned Lazarus; mountainous Orlando the Black; deaf-and-dumb Babe—all half-bred bastards like me, sharing the Furore patronym and the fact that at some point in their lineage they had Cuban progenitors.

  I walked over to the door to look up the pier. A dark mass of people moved along the main street toward the camp. It was another refugee column. I assumed the troops had cut the south road, had started closing a pincer on both rioters and refugees. This was a roundup. The refugees were in a panic to escape. And I had one of the last ways out of Vexbeggar—the ketch.

  Cleopatra touched my arm. “We have to go.”

  I barked to the Turks to get to the ketch and make ready. I got upstairs to collect my best fatigues, to toss Israel’s letters into the sea, to gather the pups. One bolted and fled. I left Goldberg in charge of the other two and chased him with his mother, Iceberg. Orlando the Black stopped me at the door.

  “Have you got weapons?”

  “I have to get my dog.”

  “Forget it. We have to fight.”

  “I’ve got this,” I said, snapping the two-handed, double-edged war-ax that Thord had given me from the wall.

  “He is a bloody Viking,” said Lazarus.

  “I’m going to get my dog,” I said to Cleopatra. “You get your people and that stuff there to the ketch.” I was out the door and up the pier, Iceberg beside me. Babe was positioned behind a dead horse, his automatic weapon fixed. He had turned loose the team to slow the mob, and though it had helped, the mob had shot down three. The driver had run off or perhaps been killed. I prepared to vault the carcass to pursue the pup, when Babe took me down with a leg hook. I cursed him just as he opened fire, short burst, long burst, short burst.

  “Those are families!” I cried. Orlando the Black pounced on me, pinning me down.

  “We need you,” he screamed. “Those aren’t people anymore.”

  “No! Get off!” He slammed my head.

  “Hear what I say. We have to get out,” he said. The air was acrid. I sagged. The mob readied to charge. My pup was gone. I thought of Father. I kept Father in mind as I agreed to a retreat, Babe as the rearguard, Orlando the Black and I gathering Lazarus and Cleopatra in the shack. I took up my war-ax and hacked through the back window. I dropped to the floating deck. Iceberg and Goldberg and the two pups followed me. Orlando the Black passed down Cleopatra, then he and Lazarus swung free. Cleopatra started for the ketch.

  “There isn’t time!” I cried.

  “We have to try!” she returned.

  “I’m in charge,” I said, turning to Orlando the Black. “Get them in that boat there.” I pointed to the imitation six-meter Viking karfi, Black Crane, which had not been at sea for six years. I yelled to the Turks to cut the lines on the ketch and to get to Black Crane. I scrambled back to the shack for the sailbag and rudder, finding Babe grappling at the door with two insane Asians. I killed one—I suppose now that I killed him—and Babe bashed down the other. What was it like, my first murder? It was darkness, first and last, all darkness. I struck with the war-ax and can still feel the sensation that ran down the handle into my arm, my heart. It was like nothing. There is no adequate metaphor.

  I pushed Babe through the window, tossed the sailbag and rudder down to him, soaked the floor with coal oil. The next moment I was in the stern of Black Crane, calling orders. The Turks unshipped the oars. I balanced the craft with people and dogs. I lowered the rudder and kicked off the pier. The mob roared above us. Babe fired two short bursts at the bait shack. I grabbed the gun barrel, tossed the weapon into the sea. Orlando the Black watched me closely but did not move. The bait shack exploded in flames. Once into the inlet we used the oars to fend off the partially submerged hulks. We came about sloppily, and I had to roll half overboard to keep us upright. I could see the pier over my shoulder, the mob stampeding past the fire and onto the drifting ketch. It listed with their sudden weight and crashed back into the pier, tearing loose a pylon, the bait shack toppling over to spread flames onto the rigging. The last I wanted to look, mothers and fathers were heaving their children toward the sinking ketch. No one can swim in the November Baltic.

  The next morning, I found Stockholm harbor choked with ships and foreboding. Stockholm is built on islands and peninsulas bunched between an inland lake and a tongue of the Baltic. The channels are crisscrossed with bridges and dikes; heavy traffic was customary there in spring and summer. With the first bad weather, only the main channels were navigable into the markets. That morning, however, the lanes were so jammed there seemed no safe conduct. There were rafts, boats, barges, sailing ships, all manner of steamers and derelicts, some at anchor, or adrift, or aground on the mud flats. It was chaos, no one obeying port rules. I saw strange flags, stranger ships’ names. On the barges, badly dressed children surrounded cooking pots. Their faces had looks of sleepiness, upset, also curiosity.

  I knew as we cleared the harbor light that the congestion ahead would add two hours to my estimation of arrival at the King’s prison island on the inland lake. I shouted this to Cleopatra as she emerged from the sailbag, where she had passed the night. Our crossing had been rough. Black Crane was an open boat, machine built, with a shallow draft; she wallowed under sail, did not answer to the helm quickly in even moderately heavy seas. We had bad moments. We had got to Stockholm, but it was much later than she had demanded of me, midmorning. I took the rudder from Wild Drumrul in order to avoid a barge that started to drift into our path. By the time I got us clear, Cleopatra sat conferring with Lazarus.

  “Go there,” she said, waving weakly into the thick of the main channel. She was seasick, troubled.

  “I can make better there,” I said.

  “Obey her,” said Lazarus. I had seen him wince when I had told Cleopatra, on the pier at Vexbeggar, that I was in charge. As he watched for my reaction, I realized that Lazarus resented any authority from me. In the daylight he was stone-faced, his red hair and copper skin making him appear rusted. He seemed knowing, secretive, calculated. Cleopatra gagged then; he comforted her. He nodded some sort of fraternal message to Orlando the Black and to Babe. I had surmised enough of them during the night to know that Lazarus was the one to suspect; Cleopatra, to placate; the other two to avoid. Their high-handedness did annoy me. I had rescued them, yet they treated me as a convenience. I ordered the Turks to get down the sail, unship the oars. Our route was tricky; we repeatedly had to fend off small craft as we pushed deeper into the heart of the city. I discovered that the people on the sailing ships in particular were not Swedes, were instead Finns, Poles, Latvians. It made no sense to me. The large steamers had Asians and Africans hanging from the railings. They heaved debris down on us. Cleopatra kept waving toward the inner quays, below the opera house, by the fish markets. I navigated by keep
ing quick sight of a church steeple. Once out of the main channel, I saw that the quay road was lined with troops. At various points on the piers, King’s Spies, in their crimson coats, shouted down to gangs of glum men in longboats. There were multicolored tags (probably identification papers) on the coats of the men in the boats.

  We were ignored from the shore as I poled us toward an opening between two sleek, well-guarded schooners flying Swedish flags. I asked Cleopatra if this was the place; she backed me off with a scowl. Lazarus nodded assent. Orlando the Black and Babe released the safeties on their pistols. Wild Drumrul looked to me for reassurance. I took the rudder and sent Little Dede Gone forward with the line. Three men in black, priestly clothes called to us from the pier and motioned toward a pylon, Little Dede Gone throwing the line, Wild Drumrul playing off the sea wall with an oar. A soldier came to the rail above and peered down, shouting something to one of the Norsemen, who waved a badge that seemed to satisfy him.

  The three men handed Cleopatra out, and she ran up the stone steps, followed by her brothers. We waited uneasily in Black Crane: the dogs were hungry; the Turks were mournful; I was exhausted and regretful, staring at the dried blood on my sleeve. I tried not to think of Vexbeggar. I thought of Father and what Cleopatra had said of “their scheming.”

  “Grim!” called Thord from above. “Hurry, Grim!” called Earle.

  “Stay with them,” I said to Goldberg, meaning the pups and the Turks, as Iceberg and I shot out of Black Crane and up to my family. Earle lifted me like a child. He seemed much slower, heavier, although still the brown bear. I turned to get a big wet kiss from Thord, who clutched me close and said, “Forgive me, if you can, please. I did not realize.”

  I ignored Thord’s look of guilt—like a penitent awaiting judgment—and tried to question them as they pulled me across the quay road, past sentries and two waiting carriages, into a small stone cottage. “Are we too late? What is this place? Where’s Father?”

  “He’s alive,” said Charity Bentham. She was seated on a couch in the foyer, between a very pregnant Molly Rogers and Cleopatra Furore. Babe stood like a bulbous mastodon behind his mother. I could understand his protectiveness. Charity Bentham seemed to have aged twenty years in five. She looked ruined. She started to speak to me, instead smoothed her skirt, reached out to take Cleopatra’s hand. Cleopatra moved closer to her mother in an odd way, more condescending than consoling, as if she were the senior. As I reached for Molly, Cleopatra glared.

  “Well timed, eh?” said Molly, mussing my mane, patting her stomach. That was Molly’s second pregnancy; her first had ended with an abortion at twenty-four (and was much discussed in her verse). I said there was never a better time; Molly twisted her face and pulled me so close that I had to brace myself.

  “Come away, now, Grim,” said Thord, pulling me back.

  We went to the right, down a short hall, where a petite, beautiful young man stood beaming, beckoning me, taking my hand, saying, “Dear Grim, you are very much welcome. I have missed you. You cannot remember me. I am Radar Fiddle. Your uncle. Lamba’s brother. Your mother, you see.” He kissed my hand.

  It was the first I ever heard my mother’s name. I did not have a moment to react, as Thord ushered me through sliding doors into a book-lined study. There, commanding the room, stood a gigantic Norseman, white-bearded, intense, overwhelming, his face fixed with surprise.

  “It is true! Lord God, it is true!” boomed Grandfather. Iceberg stiffened; her nape hair rippled; she growled, ready for attack.

  “Now keep your bargain!” shouted Israel, moving to Grandfather’s far right. He was enraged, desperate.

  “Israel, it’s me,” I said.

  Israel moved over and tapped me, saying, “I introduce you to your grandfather, the Reverend Mord Fiddle, leading candidate for despot of the new Sweden.”

  “Easy, Izzie,” said Guy.

  “He brought the karfi, not the ketch,” said Thord.

  “There was a riot,” I said. “Soldiers. And they rushed us. They threw their children. I had to fight. There was a fire.”

  “It’s okay, Grim,” said Guy.

  “Yeah, okay, we’re getting out,” said Israel.

  “Tonight,” said Guy.

  “We need a ship. You said we’d have a ship,” said Lazarus. He and Orlando the Black were seated by the window.

  “Is there anything?” Israel asked Thord.

  “Perhaps, with time,” he said. “I can call favors, but there are so many gone.”

  “We haven’t got time,” said Guy.

  “Oh, Israel, please, please, forgive me,” sobbed Thord. “This is my fault. I have been idiotic.”

  While my family argued among themselves, one of the black-suited men (they were seminarians) stood near Grandfather and translated the English banter. The whole confrontation was likely more disconnected than I recall—Israel’s Swedish poor and colloquial, Grandfather ignorant of English—but because I spoke both easily, I have it in my mind as of a piece.

  Grandfather raised his arm and pointed at Israel. “You shall have your ship.” He spoke with such power and assurance that all turned to him, transfixed. Grandfather was too large for that room, my height and Orlando the Black’s breadth, yet massive in more than physical dimension—monumental, a pagan vision of an inexplicable god. He continued, “Leave me alone with my grandson. You shall have what you ask.”

  “What ship, you murdering liar? Where? When?” demanded Israel, the veins of his temples dark blue, his cheeks puffed red and blotchy.

  “Izzie, no, come on,” said Guy, reaching out.

  “Damn you, Jew, do you know who I am?” said Grandfather.

  “Old man,” said Israel, even-voiced and utterly contemptuous, “you forget who we are. We raised him. He is ours. What you did twenty-one, twenty-two years ago, is unforgivable, by my God, his God, any God. You degrade all faith to claim yourself a man of God. You turned out your own daughter and you abandoned your own grandson. You sicken me. I won’t pity you. No one will.”

  “Izzie, we need him,” said Guy, this time gripping Israel.

  “I came here to get my father. That is what I want. If we need these people, then we need them.” I paused, realizing I was over my head. “Israel, tell me what I should do.”

  “What must be done right now is to establish order,” said Lazarus, walking to the center of the room. He seemed mannered, aloof, cold. We shuffled in place as Lazarus, with that measured, condescending voice of his, continued, “Now, what ship, gentlemen, and where is it?”

  “We can’t trust that madman,” said Israel.

  “We have to trust everyone now,” said Lazarus.

  “And no one,” said Israel bitterly, starting to laugh. Lazarus smiled at that, not as if happy, rather as if amused by the gloom.

  “My ship, damn you, out there!” spoke up Grandfather. “I shall sail her for you. Wherever you want to go. Anything you want. What I want is the boy. Now go and leave me with him for a moment. I do not ask for pity, or for anything you have. Only the boy. I gave my word. I shall keep it, as Lord God is my judge. Go!”

  When we were alone together, Grandfather put his right hand on the Fiddle Bible and went to one knee. Without explanation, he began a version of my birth and abandonment, the whole of which I have already recounted from several sources. I do not recall him using my mother’s name. What most distinguished Grandfather’s tale was that he was merciless in his criticism of his own part. He spoke as if in a dream, exhorting, whispering, thundering. I was enchanted, and frightened, and gripped. He had a magic tongue. And he used it to heap dark, lurid metaphors on the name of Mord Fiddle. Yet all through his confession, he kept that demagogic hubris of his at the fore. Grandfather was a man who could curse himself in a bold, heroic way, so that his humility seemed illusory, unearthly; it was certainly not entirely believable. In truth, he was proud of his fury and what it had wrought.

  As Grandfather’s confession closed, it occurred to me that he
was not really regretful about what he had done. This was all the discernment I could bring to Grandfather’s performance at twenty-one, a boy before a force of nature. I know now that he was without sorrow for anyone, especially himself. His self-abnegation was more ritual than revelation. Kneeling there, one hand on the Bible and the other alternately touching me or reaching upward for emphasis, Grandfather brandished the weapon he made of theological rhetoric. He was negotiating beneath the eyes of heaven, or, to be blunt, he was scheming for what was before his own eyes.

  “This is the truth!” he said after half an hour, more, it was a timeless speech. “I have been wrong about you! I shall not make apology! I shall not! I repent, yes, I call on Lord God to forgive me. I shall atone. I know what I have done.” He halted then, studied me. I tried to think, tried not to avert my eyes. He broke the silence with a resolved tone, “You are a fine boy, Grim Fiddle. All that I have achieved is nothing compared to you. You are my grandson. Mine. I shall give all this up if I can have you back. I shall do that! I have earned this. I must have my grandson!” “You are my grandfather?” I managed to get out.

  “Tell me, boy, tell me, Grim Fiddle, that you will stay with me.”