This investigation will have to end for now, perhaps for always unless I am further tempted by it. The truth of it might be that I did not understand Cleopatra then any better than I do now. I admit my failure to render her. I wish that I had Israel to turn to, or perhaps a book of these things—crimes of the heart. That is the depth of it. I was attacked by Cleopatra. She was arresting, dangerous, fast. Perhaps I loved her in defense of my self. We fought on the battleground of our hearts for the satisfaction of revenging our parents’ wrongdoings, for the satisfaction of conquering each other’s very reason for being. We were conceived in a confusion of fate: she could have been my sister, I could have been her. How could there ever be a finish to our contest? We both lost as we both won. How I still can feel my fear of her as I feel my love for her! I wonder if she feels the same of me. The single conclusion I offer myself, after all this time, is that our love was, from the first abrupt exchange at Vexbeggar, as unlucky as it was hopeless.
Grandfather was the first of us to notice the new shame in the world of men. He had kept apart from us the first few days out of Stockholm harbor, busy commanding a makeshift crew as Angel of Death cleared the Baltic for the Kattegat and Skaggerak and then passed into the North Sea. He was indifferent to our recapitulations and peacemakings. He looked to his ship and to the sea. He gained a clear vision of certain eerie irregularities in the merchant traffic, the shoreline, the sea.
The evening he took me into his confidence was humblingly bright with stars, Castor and Pollux nearly straight above, like eyes of heaven. Wild Drumrul and Lazarus had the watch at the wheel; Orlando the Black, Babe, and Earle had the deck watch. They were bantering playfully as we came on deck. Grandfather, somber and gruff, invited me forward, making it clear he disapproved of the watch’s conduct. He sat me down by the foremast. We were soon drenched in a cold mist as Angel of Death, trimmed for slow running in a rolling sea, cut a steady course westward. Grandfather gestured above to the Milky Way. He said something odd about signs, in Old Norse. I was impressed and delighted to discover that Grandfather knew the heavens as keenly as he knew the Bible, and in the same way, a celebrant not a critic. He began loudly, “You are a prize! I see that. No man could have raised you better.”
“You will like my father. He wasn’t always like this,” I said.
“No matter now. Do you know what they have in mind?”
“Israel and Guy?”
“That heathen lot. They want me to take you halfway around the earth. To this Baja California. They do not know. I shall not tell them. I shall tell you.”
“You’re a fine teacher. We’re a better ship every day,” I started. I thought he meant that his ship’s hands were amateurs. Initially I had worried about this, but I could see that Angel of Death, even with Black Crane lashed down between her masts, was a muscular beauty; she had originally been built for weathering the brutal Gulf of Bothnia. Grandfather once boasted to me that three men and a Bible could sail Angel of Death to the moon. I discontinued my defense of the crew, however, when I felt Grandfather’s impatience. I asked, “What is it you know?”
“I am not one to quit a rough business,” he said, gesturing to the west, “but we have no chance for this Mexico.”
“It’s where the Furores live,” I tried. I was wrong again. He turned on me slowly, his hair and beard matted like stone by the sea spray, his face filled with a dreadful certainty. He wiped his eyes. He studied me. It was not then possible for me to imagine anything Grandfather could not do, or anything that was too rough for him to try.
“You think me a monster. Is that what they tell you? For what I did? My work with the League? A monster?”
I struggled to say I did not understand.
“Speak your face,” he said.
“It was ugly, what you did. Yes, you were wrong,” I said.
“What I did, what I had to do, what we did—we were saints compared to what is out there,” Grandfather said, pointing to the west. “I have served Lord God all my life. I would sooner put this knife into your heart than disobey Lord God. Understand this, Grandson. When Lord God told his servant Noah to build him an ark; and when Lord God told Noah, ‘The loathsomeness of all mankind has become plain to me, for through them the earth is full of violence, and I intend to destroy them, and the earth with them’; and when Lord God fulfilled this terrible plan; and when Lord God spared Noah and the remnant after one month and twenty-seven days; and when Lord God told Noah and his to come out again on this sanctified earth and be fruitful and increase there, I ask, then, was Lord God a monster? Is he ugly to you? Was he wrong? Speak right to me. You think Lord God a monster?”
“I do not, Grandfather,” I said.
“Then you begin to understand the power and the wisdom of Lord God, almighty and all terrible and all righteous. We of the League did his work. We tried to build us an ark. We tried to save a remnant from the wrath of Lord God for mankind’s loathsomeness. We tried and it was worth the trying. Their wickedness is alive, stronger every day. We might have succeeded. It is my failure that I was called away, that I was not strong enough to see our work to the end. It is also my failure that, for my wrong to you, I am brought low. I accept my path. I have you. I do not challenge Lord God’s wisdom. I serve it.”
“Please, Grandfather, I don’t know the Bible as you do,” I said, deep breathing, for if ever there was a first moment for me to learn moral courage, that was it, “but didn’t Lord God, didn’t he promise Noah, after the flood, that he would never send the waters again, no matter how evil man might become?”
Grandfather rumbled; the sound of a mountain moving. And I do believe that he started a smile that was erased by the wind.
“I cannot believe it was as you say,” I continued. “And I cannot believe Lord God would do that to people. At Vexbeggar they burned schools and churches. They shot at children. And those poor people drowned their own babies. I think I had to kill a man because of what your League did.”
“You fought for your own. That is not wrong. We fought for our own. That is not wrong. Their wickedness, Grim, it is everywhere. Satan takes the soul of any man who does not love Lord God completely. What I have seen! What I have done! What can a boy know of what heathen do to believers in the name of their kind of justice? Their justice. Not mine. I am prepared to admit my error. Show me where I was wrong to fight for my people. Show me, tell me. I was not wrong! I struck at darkness, as you did at Vexbeggar. You call me ugly and wrong. The darkness is worse than anything you have seen. You do not know the dark. It is not that sky. It is not that sea. It is not what I have done. It is there and there and there!” Grandfather flung his arms south, east, west.
I stood beside him, looked out in the directions he gave. I said, “I see the world, Grandfather. It frightens me. It doesn’t hate me. Why should I hate it?”
“You want to see the darkness?” he said, annoyed, ferocious. “Then use your eyes and wits. If you had, you would have seen that German wolf to starboard today.”
“What wolf?” I said.
“Do you want to know of that place of theirs, that heathen land, America? Does your father tell you? Does that woman? Have you heard of their infamy?”
“Do you mean Vietnam?”
“Done and gone! Worse than what a boy sees. See it!”
I felt I was missing a fantastic battle. I wanted to see something. I strained. There was still only the world. He put his arm around me, not friendly, a death grip.
“You!” thundered Grandfather. “I want to save you from their darkness! Come with me. We can take that karfi of yours and make northwest. I know some good men. Greenland would take us in. We could fish, keep clear for a while longer.”
“What has happened? What haven’t you told me?”
“There is no refuge. There is no sanctuary. There is no peace. This Baja, this California—lies! We cannot fight them there. We must run, and fight only when we cannot run more. See it!”
He ordered me to leave, not to
bother him again until I had made my decision about Greenland. I had no reply, could not imagine what I should say. Was Grandfather mad, as Israel said repeatedly. Or was he trying to tell me something significant in a language I could not interpret? I wanted to establish a sure relationship with him despite his thunder. Grandfather was a man with whom one could be intimate, if he permitted, without ever enjoying an intimate moment. His devotion to me was direct, captivating. He did not want to talk about it, or even show it in any normal manner. I asked myself why he seemed to believe in me so absolutely. He did say he owed me for his wrong to me, for abandoning me at birth. Perhaps his fidelity to Grim Fiddle was a way to express his dedication to the idea of his own destiny, perhaps his faith in me was part of his own discipleship. Then again, perhaps he believed in me simply because he loved me, as a grandfather should love his grandson.
If that was all of it—love—then I can puzzle out more than our bond. I can speak to what I am. For with that love Grandfather passed on to me huge parts of himself. I understand this now, that all the energy, fortitude, perseverance, daring, vision I possess, as well as the pridefulness, hypocrisy, cruelty, and plain dishonesty, springs from the fury in Grandfather; it is also mixed with what I learned from Father of the ironies of loss, surrender, helplessness. As I once learned to respect Father’s melancholy, I learned on board Angel of Death to respect Grandfather’s resolve. My situation on board Angel of Death was such that I could no more have denounced and turned from Grandfather than I could have denounced and turned from one of those wearying, mesmerizing, indefatigably brutal prophets of Judah who harassed, cursed, condemned, and finally saved their kinsmen from another period of the same sort of “darkness” Grandfather announced to me. Grandfather was mad, in the rational sense Israel meant. That must be established: Grandfather lacked reason. Yet there was grandeur and savvy in him. It should not be forgotten now, when the heat and rush of those times can seem as long ago as Noah’s flood, that those times called forth the extraordinary in creation, like a Leviathan. We aboard Angel of Death had my grandfather. I remember Israel joking to me once that if the world really was a stage, then there must be some big parts. Grandfather was a big part. For all his meanspiritedness, he was our deliverer. I learned to believe in him intrinsically. I learned to trust him as a foundation of my faith. I learned to worship him.
I thought hard on his warning, irrational as it seemed. What was Greenland to Grandfather? To the ancient Norse, it had been a desperate refuge, temporary, sad-minded, from which they had usually planned to return to action and retribution. And what of Grandfather’s talk of arks? If Sweden was an ark, were there other arks? And what of his “German wolf”?
There had been a cutter to starboard that afternoon. It might have been German. I had seen no threat. On reconsideration, it had seemed to be monitoring us as we slipped into the North Sea. Later that night, after my talk with Grandfather, we did hear thunder to the east. It might have been gunfire. The next evening, we sighted a group of large trawlers to the north, under power and in concert, suggestively belligerent. The following afternoon, we spied wreckage across a wide front, and passing south of it, thought we saw bloated animal corpses, dogs and cattle. Grandfather came to the railing at the sighting. I asked him what he saw now. Grandfather raised his voice so that Israel and Molly would hear, “There was a battle here.”
That evening, in our routine council, Grandfather tried to insert himself in our decision-making for the first time. He urged we change course, making for the Atlantic north of Scotland, what would have been a rugged sail that time of year, huge seas and ice floes. Israel was instantly opposed to Grandfather’s recommendation and said so gruffly, having me translate his English rather than himself addressing Grandfather in Swedish. It was an excessive display of disregard. This exchange is where I mark the beginning of the spiritual battle for control of Angel of Death, a contest in which I would find myself pawn, traitor, and bounty: yes, Grandfather was always in command of the ship, owner and captain; but for those first weeks out of Stockholm, Grandfather was not overlord of his passengers. And this pained him. He listened to my abridged version of Israel’s remarks, and then left the galley. I thought him frustrated; he was actually maneuvering, biding his time. The council’s resolution—approved by our ruling triumvirate of Israel, Guy, and Thord—was to continue to the English Channel.
A British patrol, two well-armed cutters, intercepted us at dawn. The lead ship sent automatic-weapon fire across our bow before hailing us. They made no attempt to communicate on ship-to-ship radio. I got topside hurriedly. I relieved Earle at the helm, sent the watch to trim us smartly. Orlando the Black was ready to uncover our fixed automatic weapon, and it was only the quickthinking intervention of Otter Ransom, screaming “No! No!” that saved us from an answering barrage. Otter Ransom had been appointed our weapons officer, and this had already caused disagreements with the Furore brothers, who had been obliged to surrender their firearms to the arsenal. Otter Ransom ordered Orlando the Black and Babe below decks, shouted into the hatch that the two convicts we had rescued with Father were to keep everyone out of sight. I note that those two convicts were not idly chosen for their part in the rescue, had once been some of Thord’s best smugglers, a Laplander named Skyeless and a grizzly little man whom Orri called Tall Troll.
Grandfather came on deck and took charge. We ran up our Swedish flag. Grandfather had Israel bring Molly and Cleopatra up to make us appear a pleasure craft; Guy came up without permission. The second cutter closed on us at high speed and sent a wake that listed us suddenly. Guy shook his fist. Grandfather said to stand easy. He then cupped his hands and boomed across that we were Swedish nationals, bound for the Americas. The lead cutter flashed a light across our length, pausing at the tarp covering our automatic weapon. A portly officer in a great blue coat appeared with a bullhorn and called across his name, rank, and ship’s nationality. He continued, in a tired way, and warned us not to attempt to land on British soil, including the Channel Islands, and that all British ports were closed to “unauthorized refugees.” Guy screamed out, “What’s authority, then?” Grandfather nodded in approval and then drowned out the sea with a condemnation of the officer’s birthright, his navy, his country, every man who would dare to support a policy that excluded him and his ship. Grandfather demanded to know what right the British Navy had to open fire on a Swedish ship in international waters.
The officer, apparently disgusted by his task, but the good seaman throughout, said one word: “Cholera.”
We lost the British when we left the Strait of Dover, but soon spied some French cutters to the southwest. We did not want to risk their accuracy across our bow, and kept far north of the Bay of the Seine while at the same time endeavoring to avoid more British patrols. Our task was grueling, given that we were also struggling with the wind and current from the west. It was an anxious Channel passage. There were nights we could see fire to the northeast, either from ships or from the English coast. And Wild Drumrul, who had the best eyes on board, swore he saw an explosion that tore the horizon with red and yellow flares in the direction of Cherbourg. Each dawn we heard the thunder, which we now had reason to assume was gunfire. There was much wreckage and spotty oil slicks that grew into black lakes which coated our bow with greasy seaweed. South of Plymouth, Guy and Orri, on deck watch, said they saw wreckage with people clinging to it. In that rolling sea, it was not possible to maintain an observation station. Soon after, a gale rose sudden and fierce from the southwest—our fifth blow since the Skaggerak, but our first serious test as seamen—and we were too pressed manning the pumps, shortening sail, making into a heavy sea for four days to care about anyone adrift out there.
What few moments we did have, between fighting the sea and sleeping poorly in that sickening pitch and roll, we used to debate the meaning of what we had seen. We agreed that all of northern Europe seemed to fear the disruptions of the Baltic refugees as much as had Stockholm. We supposed that some p
recautions were required, given the panic. We had seen enough overladen trawlers, ancient frigates with decks covered by tents, and ship wreckage to be able to surmise the deadly confusion of populations in pellmell flight.
What was not obvious to us was the extent of the exclusion. It was no simple or local policy, much more virulent. We could not see it, not the way Grandfather meant. We had been permitted to pass unharmed. We supposed our fate was common. It was luck. I can have no certain knowledge now as to how many ships went down by misadventure, how many were deliberately scuttled by hired crews, how many were sunk by those cutters. I can guess at a pan-European shame.
What fooled us, what we permitted to deceive us, was that there was nothing overwhelmingly out-of-the-ordinary on the radio, either ship-to-ship or international, to indicate there was an organized plot. At a council, we listened to Lazarus’s explanation that the larger the conspiracy the more heinous its implications and the more likely it was to be silent, indirect, bureaucratic, mundane. “Saying no doesn’t seem a threat,” said Lazarus, “but when everyone says no, it can be a death sentence.”
The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica Page 13