The botanist takes over. Svalbard was chosen for the project on account of its comparative security, he says. Permafrost is one factor, but the absence of tectonic activity is also significant. The vault itself is located 130 meters above sea level, in the side of a sandstone mountain. Even if the polar ice cap were to melt, the site would remain dry. Locally mined coal provides power for the refrigeration units that cool the crop seeds to the recommended minus 18 Celsius. Four and half million seeds will eventually be stored inside the vault, to be used in the event of global catastrophe.
He hesitates. “You’re smiling.”
What he’s saying reminds me of my own origins. He might almost be describing me.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was thinking about something else.”
Worried that he’s boring me, perhaps, he changes the subject. The flora is astonishingly varied on Svalbard, he tells me, partly due to the warming influence of the Gulf Stream, and partly on account of the seabird colonies, which provide natural fertilizers. Roughly a quarter of the flowering plants are completely unknown in Scandinavia. There are twelve different species of whitlow grasses, for instance, though he has only ever spotted seven. The fair-haired man interrupts. He works as a marine biologist, he says, but his real passion is bird-watching. On Svalbard you can see king eider ducks, gray phalaropes, and fulmars. You have to be careful with fulmars. If you encroach on their territory they spit a rancid liquid at you.
The two men are enthusiasts, and eager to share their knowledge, but after a while, inevitably, the conversation shifts. They are amazed to find someone like me in such a remote place, especially at such an inhospitable time of year. They couldn’t quite believe it when I walked into the bar. Am I alone? Surely not.
I tell them I have come to Svalbard for the peace and quiet.
“Peace and quiet?” the botanist says. “That is — how do you call it in English? — an understatement, no?”
The two Danes are laughing. They’re both a little drunk. The marine biologist is curious to know how I spend my days.
“I work as a cleaner,” I say, “and I’m learning Russian in my spare time. I’m keeping a journal too.” I talk about my drawings of abandoned interiors. The pink house near the quay, the old canteen. “Now it’s dark all the time, though, I’ve started writing.”
The botanist exchanges a look with his colleague. “We must be interesting. Then she will write about us.”
“I’ll write about you anyway,” I say.
The two men find this very funny.
“Ah yes,” the botanist says, shaking his head. “The English humor.”
The marine biologist lifts the vodka bottle. “Another drink?”
I thank the men for their company, but plead tiredness and rise out of my chair.
“Can we walk you home?” the botanist says.
“That’s very kind,” I say, “but there’s no need. It’s really close.”
Outside, the night is so cold that breathing is difficult. My throat and lungs feel scoured by the air. I tip my head back and the sky towers above me, layer on layer of blackness. The moon is a round hole, small and brilliant. Light streams through it from another, brighter world.
I take my usual shortcut, behind the back of the school, then through the playground with its warped collapsing hut and its marooned blue rowboat, and up past the new canteen. The vodka simmers deep inside my body. I’m already looking forward to being home and lying in the dark with the radio on. The botanist’s words come back to me. We must be interesting. Smiling, I climb the short flight of steps that leads up to the front door of my building.
I’m standing at the foot of the stairs, by the fire extinguisher, feeling for my key, when somebody grabs me from behind and clamps a hand over my nose and mouth. Without looking, I know it’s the man in the green jacket. Bohdan. He must have been waiting in the shadows just inside the door. His palm is rough, like the heel of a foot. It smells of nicotine. He wraps his other hand round my middle, trapping my arms, and drags me away from the stairs. I kick backwards. Catch him on the shin. He twists my head so violently that colors explode before my eyes. White, then purple. I can’t cry out, though. I can hardly breathe. I think about biting his hand but it would be like sinking my teeth into cardboard or leather. It’s hard to believe that his hand and my face are made of the same thing.
He hauls me back outside, into the dark. I let myself go floppy as a doll, as if I’ve passed out or given up. My weight doesn’t seem to trouble him, though he’s breathing noisily, through his mouth. The reek of vodka hangs around him in a cloud. He’s drunk, as always. I have to use that to my advantage. He might be strong but he’s bound to be sloppy, careless, unsteady on his feet. I’m sure I’m faster than he is. More nimble. If I can just wrench free of him I don’t think he’ll be able to catch me. Where’s my door key, though? I no longer have it. I remember a chink and then a tinkle as it bounced off the fire extinguisher and landed on the floor. I see it in my mind’s eye, pewter-colored, lying on the concrete.
The sky tilts, its blackness sooty, dense. The moon is nowhere. It seems a different night to the one that hypnotized me earlier. The man drags me backwards across a stretch of wasteground. My hat has fallen off; cold air scalds my ears. Though I’ve been mapping the town for weeks, I can’t tell which way he’s going. Will anybody see us? Probably not. It’s too dark, too late. Their TVs will be turned up loud, their curtains drawn. Shouting won’t do any good. It’s the wind, they’ll say. It’s just the wind.
My heels bump and scrape over hard snow, and my neck aches from when he twisted it. I want to take a deep breath but his hand’s still clamped over my face. I glimpse a park bench, then a lamppost, then I seem to disappear into myself. Everything shrinks, and I turn inwards, crumple, drop away. I keep falling, but never land, and there’s a dragging, chain-mail sound, like waves on shingle. I can’t feel my body or the cold, and I’ve lost all sense of where I am.
I come to in a derelict room, the floor covered with sheets of paper, dust, and broken glass. A single beam of light shows me a doorway and part of a wall. At the far end of the room is an overturned piano, the rows of white hammers tightly packed as the gills on a fish. All manner of things are scattered about. A tin bowl, a boot, a dumbbell. A red book lies facedown, its spine split open. There’s nothing that isn’t incomplete or out of place, nothing that hasn’t been tampered with or damaged.
All of a sudden I’m laughing.
I have just remembered a conversation with my father. I was staying with a family in an idyllic Alpine village as part of an exchange program. I would have been sixteen at the time. During the first week my father called from Libya.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“There have been violent clashes between the security forces and the protesters,” I told him, “but we’re hoping order will be restored quite soon.”
My father sighed. “Are you learning any French?”
I notice, almost incidentally, that I’m naked below the waist, except for my socks. My trousers and boots lie in a tangled heap nearby. The man stands over me, swaying slightly. There’s no cut on his forehead, and his hair is not receding. He’s younger than Bohdan, with a bulbous nose. I have never seen him before.
It’s sometime in the future, late spring or early summer. The sky is a high hard blue, the sawtooth peaks still capped and patched with snow. The fjord is blue too, smooth and polished as a glaze. The coastal plains and tundra blaze with Arctic bell heather, purple saxifrage, and mountain avens. I have never seen a landscape that has such a clear empty beauty. People often cry at the return of the light.