The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica

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The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica Page 19

by John Calvin Batchelor


  Germanicus went over to his captain, then returned to us. “Be ye beasties?” he asked. I did not understand. (Beasties was their word for refugees without refuge, for the washed-up remnant of the so-called fleet of the damned.) I told him we had peopie back in the inlet and also way to the south, that we had to return for them. He said, “I understand ye, I do. And thank ye for yerr help. Know this, yerr folk’re done. I need ye more, short four oars in my boat. Frazer tells God’s truth. The Patties ha%‘e gunboats down the Sound, coming up, sartain.”

  “We came up the Sound last night,” I protested, “from Mead’s Kiss.”

  “It’s done!” he said, gesturing dismissively. I was a head over him, still he was my match. His anger was not directed, was more for his wasted men than our defeat. He looked to the three of us, said, “Ye’re drafted into the Volunteers. We shoot deserters. Get in the boat, lads.”

  “We must go back,” I said. Lazarus and Otter Ransom gathered beside me.

  Germanicus softened. “If they’re alive, they’ll make east for Stanley. Ye can too. I don’t want ye shot. Are ye good Chrisdans?”

  I did not reply.

  “Thank God ye got here. Help them that need it,” he said.

  It was a fine, godly point. It carried us into Germanicus’s boat. We pushed out into the Sound, pulled hard northward against the wind to clear the tidal rip, making for the cover of the mist. There were many wounded in our boat. One throat-shot-man kept pulling wildly at my feet. More than once, Germanicus’s sergeant, a meaty, rough man named Motherwell, asked to lighten the boat by passing over the dead. Germanicus did not answer until, at one point when we came under nuisance artillery fire from the West Falkland shore, he scolded Motherwell, “E%reryone goes back with me!” The third boat, with the stricken captain, was too undermanned to keep pace with us. Germanicus had us slow down, but the captain signaled we should press on. We watched as the third boat fell farther back, until it was lost in the mist. Word was passed by signal from the eastern shore that there was a gunboat coming down the Sound to intercept us. Germanicus directed us closer to the East Falkland shore, berating us, “Pull, lads, we no quit!” We rowed, vomited, rowed, bled and wept and rowed. My hands were shredded; the cramps in my back and legs were so painful that I could relieve them only by pulling harder. By late afternoon we left the Sound for an East Falkland inlet with two forks, one back south, the other toward the mountains. How we got to shore I do not know. We were met by more guerrillas at a burned-out wharf before a row of shattered stone huts. They helped us up the hillside to a muddy plateau with a sandbag-built redoubt commanding a view of the Sound. There was also a tarpaulin-covered field hospital, where we collapsed.

  I awoke with cramps in my legs and pushed myself to a crouch to ease the pain. As I did I noticed a tall, bent, sticklike man walking among we survivors of 2 de Diciembre. He was almost deformed with his twisted posture. He offered us small bits of fruit and some whiskey from a cup, then told us with a beautiful, tired voice more compelling than the wind that he was the chaplain—Longfaeroe, he said. He then began to sing above the groans and death rattles, “Hear our cry, Jehovah. From the end of the earth I call thee with fainting heart. Lift me up and set me upon a rock. For thou be my shelter, a tower of refuge from the enemy. In thy tent will I make my home for ever, and find my shelter under the cover of thy wings. For thou, Jehovah, hast heard my vows and granted the hope of all who revere thy name. To the true king’s life add length of days, keep him, keep him!”

  He broke off with a gasp, then continued, finishing what is Psalm 61. I wondered what “king” he meant. I hurt too much to think hard. He did lighten my heart. Lazarus rolled over beside me, mumbled, “The end of the earth, did you hear him? They’re rugged, whatever they are.” Otter Ransom listened to my translation of the psalm, smiled for it. Iceberg lapped my face and, in her nursemaid way, comforted the three of us. I must have slept. It was dark when Germanicus woke me.

  “Ye’re free of us now. We’re back for my captain. I’ll not have him on their wheels, the divils. I’m grieved for yer folk. If they make Stanley, it be ours still. Keep to the high road there, east, eighty miles. The hills be bad with the beasties. My advice to ye be to go with the column the morrow.”

  “Can you give us a boat, or take us with you, when we’re rested?”

  He tightened his bandoliers, said flatly, “It’s finished here.”

  “We can walk back,” I tried.

  “So ye say. Frazer tells, what’s south of here on both sides of the Sound be Patties. Yerr chance be east, or none. If there’s trouble for ye, tell them Volunteers ye served Germanicus Frazer, Elephant Frazer’s son. He owes ye debt for yerr backs and faith.” He offered his hand; we touched as we could, raw flesh on raw flesh.

  “This is Lazarus Furore, and Otter Ransom, from America and Sweden,” I said. “And Iceberg. I’m Grim Fiddle, Peregrine Ide’s son.”

  “Luck then, Grim Fiddle,” he said, and was gone. It is crucial to note that Germanicus’s captain, whom he never found, was his older brother, the legendary and beloved Samson Frazer, whom the chaplain, Longfaeroe, referred to when he sang, “Keep him, keep him!”

  Despite Germanicus’s promise that we were free to make our own way, we were drafted as bearers into the hospital column leaving the next morning for Port Stanley. We learned something of the fighting from the guerrillas as we waited to move out. The South Georgia Volunteers, and what was left of the Falkland Irregulars, were in full retreat from a massacre at Goose Green on East Falkland’s Choiseul Sound the day before Germanicus’s raid on 2 de Diciembre (whose Falklander name was Port Howard). None of this should appear grandly military. At most a thousand men and boys were involved on Germanicus’s side—fishermen, shepherds, sealers, whale-poachers. As the guerrillas wanted us to understand, these were the vocations of Jesus’ disciples. I suspect this detail had been forced on them by their preachers, like Longfaeroe, to fuel their fight. It was not a holy war, however, even if the guerrillas saw it that way. It was primarily a blood feud between those who spoke Spanish and those who spoke English, a contest for territory and revenge, what Germanicus meant when he bellowed, “What’s ours be ours by right!”

  Once he had some facts to add to his intuition and knowledge of South American history, Lazarus insisted this was less a civil war than the remains of an imperial conflict. In the nineteenth century, Great Britain had used its fleet to acquire the Falkland archipelago, making it the chief component of what was then a sealer’s and whaler’s promised land, called the British Falkland Islands Dependencies—which included the Falklands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich, South Orkney, and South Shetland islands, the Palmer archipelago, and Graham Land, also known as the Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica. The British claim was ever in dispute by the Argentine Republic, who laid cross claim to the whole of the Falkland Dependencies, and to the Falklands in specific, calling them the Islas Malvinas. I am describing this too carefully for the information I can be sure of, but it does evidence Lazarus’s ideological mind, and does pertain to what happened to me there. Bluntly, the Falklanders, who were mostly British descendants, hated the few South Americans settled among them—a racial and religious bigotry. By the late twentieth century, revolutions and reactions on the mainland had upset the shaky political equilibrium in the Falkland Dependencies. The Argentine Republic was certainly the main sponsor of the invading Army of the End of the Earth, who were mostly from Argentina’s Patagonian steppes, those whom Germanicus called Patties.

  I have a faint heart for this. It seems as over-simple and miserable recording it now as it was living it then. In every land, for every people, the oldest wounds opened as easily as the fresh ones. Who first transgressed in the Falklands, and why, and where, is lost to me in the cycle of lies, what Israel taught me was the politics of falsehood. I know Germanicus told me the Patties struck first. I imagine a Pattie would say opposite. What matter now.-‘ Patriotism, separatism, imperialism, colonialism, adven
turism all fine words, all graves and ruin, north under fire, equator under tempest, south under ice. As Grandfather told me, there was no refuge, there was no sanctury, there was no peace. As I had seen, there was only flight and exile and abandonment and endurance until one could take no more, then standing or dying—perhaps first giving what one got. There is profoundly more to the politics and ruination of the end of the earth, but that must await further events in this chronicle without whose explanation I realize now, acutely and fully, what happened to me and mine would remain incredible, unacceptable, seemingly less history than fantasy—so dark, I worry that even the light this writing means to me might not be able to show the truth.

  I reach too far ahead. There was specific jeopardy for us in that hospital column in retreat across the high moors of East Falkland. The Army of the End of the Earth—I shall henceforth call them as did the South Georgians: Patagonians or Patties—was said to have been reinforced with a heavy-weapons company of regulars on West Falkland, was said to be rushing to obliterate the so-called loyalist resistance (Falkland Irregulars, South Georgia Volunteers) before the fall winds hampered the supply lines from the continent. The loyalists had no hope against gunboats supporting artillery. Worse, the desperate refugees cast up on the Falklands, as Angel of Death had been, whom they called beasties, were wandering the islands, killing and being killed. The Patties used the beasties as forced labor, sometimes as paramilitary labor, since many of them were originally from the Americas. The loyalists had three sorts of adversaries then, closing a claw-hand on them: Spanish-speaking Falklanders native there; the Army of the End of the Earth from Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego; and the beasties from everywhere. And how I recoiled then at the notion of calling those poor people beasties, even wince now as I write beasties; that was what they called them, what I came to calling them, and I should not hide the shame of it.

  The hospital column ordered to traverse East Falkland’s No Man s Land was commanded by a captain in the Irregulars, a nephew of the Falklander commander, Brackenbury. He was a butcher who encouraged his men to shoot at will at the beasties who showed themselves to our line of march. I thought this hideous, and also stupid. There were less than a dozen sound men in the column—the bulk wounded, with women and children tending a flock of sheep we drove before us. The treeless moors made our group helplessly naked. We marched and shot all day, up the muddy sheep runs and into the foothills of the gray-green and snowcapped central mountain range. Our line of sight was impeded only by folds in the land and a patchy ground mist. I asked one trooper if our tactics—sniping at the beasties—did not invite trouble from them, whom we could see camped in large numbers way down below us along the north shore of the island. Because of this conversation, later that day the butcher challenged my loyalty and deprived me, Otter Ransom, and Lazarus of our weapons.

  After that, we were used as cart beasts, all pain, up and down the rolling tracks, leaving the foothills to make for the big mountains to the east. On the second day, we crossed a rocky waste pitted with bogs and piles of sheep skeletons. The smell of battle drifted over us from the south, and we swung away from a pass and made for a path north of the range. With nightfall, we could see hundreds of campfires below us, above us, all about us. We three were assigned burial duty. When we finished, we were banished to the off-loaded hospital carts and given small rations. We pulled blood-soaked sheepskins over us to keep out the howling winds.

  The beasties attacked before first light. Iceberg woke me with her paw. The wind at first covered the shots and screams. The battle centered on the food carts that had been set in the middle of the main camp, fifty yards off from us. They came in waves down the hillside, men and boys and women, filthy and slowfooted, a few weapons, mostly clubs and fists. The melee was savage, awful noises—growls, snarls, whines. We three rolled under an empty cart with Iceberg. We watched the butcher command his men to form a circle around the tarpaulin, where the wounded were laid out. We watched a tide of flesh crash over a wall of flesh. It was cold-making, the wind and the dying, those beastlike noises.

  Longfaeroe appeared out of the dark. He carried a torch, led several children and women by the hand. He must have seen Iceberg’s eyes flash in reflection of the torch, because he beckoned us to him. He had the women pile crates together, which he smashed with his foot, lit for a fire. This, with all the rest continuing. We stayed under the cart. There was nothing between us and the massacre but heath, wind, and Longfaeroe. He organized the people near the fire, perhaps ten yards from us. He told them to bow their heads. He filled his lungs and sang out clearly, and as he did, first I, then Otter Ransom and Lazarus, crawled over to listen to his prayer: “Rescue me from my enemies, O Jehovah! Be my tower of strength against all who assail me! Rescue me from evildoers! Deliver me from men of blood! Savage men lie in wait for me! They lie in ambush to attack me, for no fault or guilt of mine! O Jehovah, innocent as these be, they take post against us. . . .”

  They did pass over us; at least, they let us be. We huddled there, praying with Longfaeroe as the sky lightened to the east. We fed the fire and wept. It was shock, and eventually we did respond to the cries of the wounded. I have no explanation why we were not murdered. I think of Longfaeroe’s psalm, 59 in the Fiddle Bible, which concludes with celebration “when morning comes,” and makes much of Jehovah as “the strong tower.” I assumed then that Longfaeroe saw himself as a strong tower too. He sat there, stern, wind-whipped, and faced down that murder. I put weight on him for it.

  Thinking of that psalm, I ask myself what protected me. It was certainly not true that I was without fault, or guilt, for I had likely killed that stranger in Vexbeggar. Perhaps the lesson I took most completely from that heath at the time was that it was vain of me to try to tally innocence and guilt, good and bad, pleasure and pain in a formula that can explain why some men die horribly, ripped and smashed, and others walk through slaughter unscarred. I saw that there is a divine justice that has judgments beyond my intellect. The Norse in me then, as it does now, offered luck for proof. Though that can seem inadequate, it is all I know to say of the mystery of how I survived that hospital column.

  Longfaeroe took command of the remnant. We pulled a single cart. The women led the children. It was not right to leave the dead uncovered. We had to flee, down into the ravine and up with the sun toward another mountain. There is one more aspect of that episode that I must record, for it signified for me a beginning of my understanding of Lazarus, and of myself. It was night again before Lazarus, Otter Ransom, and I could talk intelligibly. We made the fire, tended the worst of the wounded, stood our watch listening to Longfaeroe sing psalms to put the children to sleep.

  Lazarus said, “I didn’t know it would be like that. I can’t make it out. That madman, Saint Stephen, I’m sure he’s the enemy. Them and their cant, empty words in cathedrals built with blood, doing ‘God’s work,’ collecting money, while the colonels and the death merchants rob children of any chance—I thought getting them was right. That’s what that madman was doing, Grim, I swear it, blessing them while they were tortured! Luanda! Do you know what they’ve done in Luanda? I don’t know. What were those things last night? Were those people? How could it have gotten this bad? They really were beasts.”

  “They were men, like us,” I said. Otter Ransom asked me to explain what Lazarus was saying. I did so, watching Lazarus stir the fire, his eyes glazed, as if the massacre was still there to see.

  “They were not men, you are wrong, Grim Fiddle,” said Otter Ransom to me. “I have seen killing, more than either of you. My mother’s people disappeared in 1941. They never were like that.”

  Recalling Lamba Time-Thief’s portent, I sat forward, said to the fire, “They were half-men, weren’t they?” I forbade the thought with a smile that was not humor. I banished the portent, hoping the while my resistance to prophecy would last. I knew I needed Grandfather.

  Port Stanley was a smoldering fortress. The town was heaped together on the south
shore of a ten-mile-long inlet that was shaped like open scissor blades between cliffs that led up to the second highest peak on East Falkland. The remains of the naval station were scattered at the southeastern tip of the inlet; the port was marked for miles by pillars of black smoke. Pattie gunboats were running in every night to lob incendiary shells, running out again before the shore batteries on the cliff shelves north and south of the inlet could locate and reply. West and north of the loyalist wire were camps of beasties, too desperate for food for the loyalists to keep away with threats.

  Ours was not the only hospital column that arrived that afternoon, three days after I was supposed to have returned to Angel of Death with food, news, hope. Longfaeroe herded us together as we waited to be passed through the first wire into the wet fields outside the loyalist redoubts, where there was a field hospital. The most modern form of medicine I saw was amputation. We delivered our wounded, fell into a mess line for hot gruel with whale fat. We made our beds at the edge of the field kitchen and a corral of sheep, slept in the afternoon sun. When I awoke, it was twilight and Longfaeroe was gone. We three conferred, agreed we should try to get into the loyalist fortifications to hunt for Black Crane, perhaps grab a boat and escape. There was no optimism in our conspiracy. The sentries passed me and Otter Ransom readily, barred Lazarus because of his copper skin. I jumped at this; a sentry clubbed me back, cocked his rifle at Otter Ransom. Lazarus screamed, “Murdering bastards no better than the Argentines!” They forced us to our knees, called an officer. He took a look, said, “Do your duty.” One must understand how exhausted we were; it explains our carelessness, and our change of luck. I used Germanicus’s name, I invoked his name, yelling at them how we three had rescued Germanicus and his brother, Samson, from execution at 2 de Diciembre. I also said we had rescued Reverend Longfaeroe from the wheel and beasties. It did not convince them, did confuse them. We were bound and dragged by our feet through the gate, dumped in a wire-covered pit they must have used for burning sheep remains. We lay there in fetid, maggoty mud through a long night of fireballs on the cliffsides above us. The screams were distant. Port Stanley was an outpost of the kingdom of fire; we had grown accustomed, just lay there and listened to the wind rushing into the vacuum of fire, smelled that gasoline miasma. When they came for us at dawn, we were resigned. I took my last comfort in that Iceberg had guarded our pit nightlong. We were blindfolded, dragged up steps, thrown down steps, pushed against a stone wall. I thought it my end and was not ready; nor was I prepared for the surprise when they removed the blindfolds and we found ourselves in a lamplit cave in the cliff face overlooking the harbor, the headquarters of the combined commands of the Falkland Dependencies. It smelled of whale oil and defeat—crackling radios, maps like grave plots. There was a long pause when we seemed forgotten, then a short gray man, thick arms and legs, a huge hairy head, old and very tired but unbent in a great sealskin coat, turned to me, asking, “Ye them that rescued Frazer boys from Patties?”

 

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