I’m about to turn away when a shift in the shadows to my right distracts me. A polar bear shambles down the slope, moving like an athlete, with a loose easy muscularity, its coat a musty yellow white. The breath stalls in my throat. Once on level ground, the animal rears up on its hind legs. Head swaying on its powerful neck, it lifts its muzzle and sniffs and scours at the air. Then it drops lightly back on all fours and disappears into the darkness beyond the football pitch, and I’m left standing at the window, buds opening inside my body, a tingling on the surface of my skin. Torgrim told me that polar bears do most of their hunting on drift ice. From April onwards, though, the ice begins to melt. Polar bears can survive without eating for eight months, but they are so hungry by late autumn that they will go almost anywhere in search of food. All the same, I can’t quite believe what I’ve seen. Back in bed I reach for the radio and turn the volume up again. The symphony isn’t over yet. The music has an insistent rhythmic quality — risks are being taken, avenues explored — and I lie awake until it finishes.
When I walk into the library the following morning Zhenya’s eyes are swollen and I suspect she has been crying. I ask if she’s all right. She shrugs and doesn’t answer. Later, over a cup of dark sweet tea, she tells me that she and Gleb had an argument the previous night, and that she couldn’t sleep for hours afterwards. It was about money, and about their son. She wants to return to Ukraine but Gleb thinks they should stay on, perhaps beyond the summer. He claims it would be an investment in the future. If you don’t have a present, she told him, there isn’t any future. After that he said cruel things, hateful things. He’d been drinking, of course.
“It’s hard to be in this place.” Zhenya gives me a direct, almost accusing look. “Sometimes I don’t understand why you are here.”
“I don’t have a husband,” I say, “or any children either. I’m free to go where I want.”
“You have no boyfriend?”
“There was someone.” I sigh, then look away. “It’s over now.”
“Your heart is broken? That is why you came?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
Zhenya’s eyes are still fixed on me. “Strange you have no boyfriend,” she says, “a girl who looks like you.”
Outside, the darkness is absolute, even though it’s the middle of the day. It has been like this since November 12, when the last of the light disappeared. I pick at a loose thread on Mrs. Kovalenka’s sweater, then reach for my cup. The thin clean smell of tea.
“I can’t tell you why I’m here,” I say, “not now.” I hesitate. “Perhaps if I get to know you better.” And then, in an attempt to lighten the mood: “If you stay for long enough.”
“So that will be my reward,” Zhenya says matter-of-factly, and without a trace of sarcasm. “To hear your story.”
“It’s a long story. I’m not sure how to tell it yet.”
“Does it have an end?”
“No. But it has two beginnings.”
“A story with two beginnings and no end.” She looks beyond me, into the library, where all the books sit undisturbed. “That’s something new.”
Her dry delivery makes me laugh. “You’re very funny, Zhenya.”
“Really? No one’s ever told me that.”
“It’s true.”
“My husband doesn’t think I’m funny.”
“Well, he’s wrong.”
She takes her cup over to the sink and stands with her back to me for a few moments, not doing anything, and I worry that I might have caused offense. Then she looks at me, over her shoulder. “I feel better. Thank you.”
I finish my tea and join her at the sink.
“Guess what I saw last night,” I say.
/
Winter grips. Satellite images show the town from above, blurred, buried, close to being obliterated by whiteness. A southeasterly rushes between the buildings, shrill and relentless, and the cloud cover is dense and low. I ask Zhenya if the wind has a name. In most countries, I tell her, winds have names. Chinook, meltemi. Tramontana. Maybe it does, Zhenya says, but she isn’t aware of it. The streets are deserted except for when the miners return from their shifts, lights shining on the front of their orange helmets, faces wrapped in scarves or balaclavas. The temperature has plummeted twenty degrees since my arrival, though the wind-chill factor makes it feel more like thirty. In the evenings I make endless cups of tea and coffee and sit in bed with my hot-water bottle, learning Russian or listening to the radio. If Bohdan’s keeping vigil in the corridor I haven’t heard him.
On the first Saturday in December I arrange to have dinner in the bar of the hotel. It’s an extravagance — I will have to pay in Norwegian kroner, like a tourist — but I’m tired of cooking for myself and I feel like a change from the canteen. That night, as I pass the half-open door to the kitchen, Ivonna looks round. We say good evening to each other, but Ivonna’s expression is neutral, as always. Everything is the same as I remember it — the dark-red tablecloths, the pine-clad walls that gleam like glass, the vodka and Toblerone behind the bar. What I’m unprepared for is the presence of two middle-aged men, seated where the doctor used to sit. One of them is balding, with a beard. The other has fair hair and pink cheeks. They’re deep in conversation, though they fall silent and look round when I walk in. My old table is set up for me, with three or four pirozhki, some sliced white bread, and a jug of processed apple juice. As soon as I sit down Ivonna brings the hot part of the meal — a small plate of cannelloni and a piece of grilled meat.
Later, when I’m standing by the electric kettle, waiting for it to boil, the man with the beard asks if I’d like to join them. They are scientists, he says. From Denmark. I thank him, then introduce myself and take a seat.
The fair-haired man pours me a vodka. “You’re American?”
“No, English.”
“Bottoms up!” He raises his glass. “That’s what you say in English, no?”
“Not very often,” I tell him. “Usually we just say ‘Cheers.’ ”
“Oh.” He smiles ruefully, then drinks.
“But it’s not wrong,” I say.
The man with the beard tells me he works as a botanist. The two men have been to Svalbard on many occasions, though this is their first visit to Ugolgrad. I’m surprised to see them, I say, transport being virtually nonexistent at this time of year. They were lucky, the bearded man tells me. Their university contacts in Longyearbyen managed to secure them a lift on the Russian helicopter. They are regular visitors to Ny-Ålesund, he goes on, the scientific community that acts as a center for research into climate change. I ask if it’s true that the Norwegian government have built a doomsday vault on Svalbard.
The fair-haired man breaks in. “It’s near the airport. You didn’t see it?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t know it was there.”
“That’s a shame. It’s beautiful.”
Since the materials used in the top half of the vault include mirrors, stainless steel, and prisms, he tells me, it reflects light throughout the summer, acting as a kind of beacon or focal point in an otherwise bleak landscape. In the winter it’s even more spectacular. A network of two hundred fiber-optic cables means it gives off a constant, muted white-and-turquoise glow. A Norwegian artist by the name of Sanne designed the installation.