When I got cold I started rolling the chair back and forth, back and forth. The sun was taking a long time to come up. I decided to go for it: the other shore, I wanted to be there, to see the takeoff up close. I rolled down to the Lange Nek, to the red-and-white-striped barrier gate where the road disappeared under the ice, and out onto the river there. I’d never wheeled on ice before. No wonder it made me a little nervous at first, but once you got out there it was no big deal — just the feeling that you could skid at any moment, and your tyres slipping every time you yanked on the handle. In the almost complete absence of friction, progress was easy. A fuzzy strip of purple light was rising behind the Bethlehem Asphalt grounds, and I was all alone on that huge expanse. I might as well have been a downed aviator in the desert. The silence was bewitching, and I was in no hurry to get to the shed.
Lately I’d noticed a few more signs of life in my own body; I’d even made a deal with myself to get out of the chair and start learning to walk a little. It may sound strange, but my plan was to jump-start this old wreck of a locomotor apparatus — I was about to turn seventeen, had an erection now and then, but I was so damned spastic that self-gratification was almost out of the question. Somehow, though, I sensed that my body held a certain potential — limited though it might be — for finer motor development and, who knows, maybe even a form of non-wheeled propulsion. I had actually started a secret exercise program a while back that consisted of holding onto the table or my bed with my right hand while shuffling across the floor on my knees, keeping my torso upright all the while. That may not seem like much to you, but it’s important to realize that what I was doing here, in fact, was re-enacting the entire course of evolution, all by my lonesome — this was what one might call the amphibious phase. I had just emerged from the primal ooze and could start thinking about holding my head up higher.
When I moved around the room like that it looked like I was doing some kind of penance; if Ma had seen me I know she would have rejoiced at another of her prayers being answered, quoting Isaiah and saying, ‘Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing,’ and so on, because some people would rather see wonders than willpower.
Whatever muscles I had left had to be revitalized. For years my body had been lying around in bed and slouching in its chair with no idea whether it was capable of more. My rehabilitation specialist hadn’t held out much hope, it’s true, but that was such a long time ago. I was older now, and sometimes you have to hand yourself an assignment. And when unreasoned optimism starts coursing through your bloodstream, that’s the time to do it.
The ice was fantastic. The light on the horizon grew steadily brighter, and I was going where I had never been before. All around me was glassy blue light, the turquoise heart of a glacier. So smooth and so vast, why hadn’t I tried this a long time ago?
Jet-black ice was sliding by beneath my wheels now, my sights were set on the extreme northerly point of Ferry Island.
But allow me, if you will, to withdraw the earlier image of the glacier’s heart: what I was in was the heart of a winter-wonderland paperweight, one of those fluid-filled plastic universes that start snowing after you turn them upside-down. We had one on top of the dresser at home, it contained a rearing unicorn against a royal-blue background. Whenever you shook it it snowed all around the unicorn, whose mouth was open in a whinny.
Beneath the ice floor were the fields of summer and the winding road to the riverside. Down there the grass swayed in the slow current.
I was steaming like a workhorse; somewhere an engine coughed and roared. My ice palace fell into tinkling shards.
I turned and saw the plane moving across the ice. It was still more night than day, and from this distance the airplane looked like a sinister vehicle from the workshop of darkness. Two shadows that could only have been Christof and Engel ran out onto the ice. The plane had stopped and they were talking to Joe, whose head was all I could see above the fuselage. They slid the plane around until its nose was pointed at the village. Once the two of them had retreated a respectful distance from the prop, Joe revved it. I loved that sound, which grew higher and angrier the harder the engine was torqued. Joe shot off across the ice. As soon as he hit top speed he tried to lift the nose into the air. Every time he pulled up, the plane would leave the ice for a moment, then bounce back down. And again. Barely rising each time, then falling back. Like it was skipping.
Just short of the winter dyke Joe braked, swung around and came back in our direction. Now I was only a couple of yards from Engel and Christof, who stood riveted to the ice, watching every move Joe made. The airplane barrelled across the frozen flats, it was a joy to behold. There he was, coming straight at us, doing eighty or ninety now. Christof murmured, ‘Come on, man,’ and Engel flicked away a cigarette butt that sparked once and died. Behind us the curtain of dawn slid open further and further, lighting the sky in an orange and purple glow.
It must have been ten below zero that morning, but I don’t remember the cold. Right before he got to us Joe swerved to the left, eased back on the throttle and cut the engine. The silence felt good. Engel and Christof ran to the plane, where Joe was shaking his head and peering at the controls; the hand throttle, the brake, the oil pressure, the fuel gauge and the thermostat. He still had the joystick clenched between his knees.
‘It won’t nose up,’ he said when they got there. It was hard to make out exactly what he was saying, though, his lips had turned blue.
‘I think I need more flaps, I’m not getting enough lift.’
Wearing those ski goggles and that old-fashioned red-white-and-blue-striped skater’s cap, Joe looked like some kind of insect. Placing his hands on both sides of the cockpit, he wriggled his way up out of the plane’s embrace. Before jumping onto the ice he squatted for a moment on the edge of the fuselage. On his back I could see a dark, wet spot about the size of a bicycle seat. The sweat had gone right through his layer of sweaters and his coat. Joe was too cold to stand up straight, all he could do was ask for a cigarette. Engel handed him his smokes and a lighter and they talked about what the problem might be. All three of them had been working toward this moment for so long, and now it wasn’t happening. Engel walked around the plane, cursing quietly. Joe puffed on his cigarette like an old-fashioned flying ace on some remote north African air strip. Then he spit on the ice and climbed onto the wing and back into the plane, the cigarette still dangling from his lips. The engine fired, the prop began to spin, and an icy cold wind hit us in the face. Joe turned the plane around and taxied back to the shed. He saw me, and grinned.
‘Happy New Year, Frankie!’
The next attempt was made on 4 January. They’d changed the angle of the flaps and adjusted the rudder. That didn’t help either.
The weather was about to turn. By the weekend the cold front would make way for warmer air, and they worked non-stop; without the ice they would be lost. It was a race against the clock. January 10 arrived and with it the thaw; my tyres left wet tracks on the ice. For the umpteenth time Joe rolled out onto the frozen river, and now it was do or die. I joined Engel and Christof, watching tensely as the plane picked up speed in the distance. Faster and faster it went until, at top speed, it traced a flat line between the town and the old factory grounds.