I pounded my fists on the stone table, in my pain I thought of the girls on the train, chewing with difficulty on the gum of life, these three girls who pass in the world as innocent. But what is that kind of innocence worth, when we all know they’re bound to wind up guilty? That is what lies ahead for them as well as for us, they will continue this devastation, they will go on destroying the very foundation of life. They don’t give a damn, just like most of us, they won’t rest until they’ve consumed polluted squandered destroyed everything. I left the following morning. In the next valley over, the surviving ice surfaces had been shrouded with white burlap, under which an emaciated glacier was emitting its death rattle. I felt like a doctor in a hospice.
We called it “swimming”—swimming in the river of ice. When we dared drop into the moulins, the glacier mills, to use them as chutes, trusting ourselves to the twists and coils as if the glacier were obliged to protect us as we slid on the seat of our pants through pipes of the purest blue. It was dangerous, moderately dangerous, we had checked to see where and how we would emerge, even if we occasionally miscalculated the acceleration and came shooting out of the shaft like a cannonball while it thundered underneath, so that even the person who was brushing the pain off his pants had to laugh at the glacier’s acoustic commentary. Yes we gathered our share of bruises, but we really got to know the glacier, we stuck our nose in every crevasse, we even believed we could hear the icy creature sliding into the valley on a layer of its own water, and we were amazed at the multi-hued splendor within what seemed to be a monochrome universe. We opened our eyes (and not just under the polarizing microscope) to its delicate spectrum, the colors in the flatland seemed garish by contrast. Where the ice was as hard as alabaster we found blue caves which we decided to enter right then and there, afraid we might not be able to find them again when we returned. Afterwards we went our separate ways, some hurried back to the city, others retreated to the valley, in the end I was the only one who chose to shuttle between glacier and university, on solitary days I abandoned myself to the tranquility of the ice, the clang of the water, I became a stone pressing on the ice and leaving my own imprint, and one time I was surprised to feel the urge to pray inside one of the icy cavelets that served as my makeshift chapel — not to God (and how vain a deity to command his name be held so sacrosanct) but to variety and abundance (written out like that the words seem wooden, and it isn’t enough to replace “God” with “Gaia” either). All alone I searched for insight within the clearest and coldest blue, I filled the icy caves with my own variations of the eternal, just like the monks of long ago who filled their stony grottos with drawings, only why didn’t they see the stone itself as a perfect image of God, the weathered surface, the patches of moisture? Deum verum de Deo vero, can truth reside in such a phrase? Within my blue chamber, in the belly of my frosty whale, God has dispensed of every superfluous word.
Jeremy is small and rather nondescript, but his glasses make him instantly recognizable wherever he goes, they look like they were lifted from some California comic strip that transforms every polar expedition into a heroic saga, especially those of Ernest Shackleton, whom Jeremy worships above all others, he can give his lecture on Shackleton six times in one season, each one fresher and more original than the last. If they’re not on duty other lecturers will lurk near the door to the auditorium so they can listen for at least a few minutes as Jeremy hoists Sir Ernest to promethean heights (if our Californian whiz kid were looking for spiritual role models he would undoubtedly place Shackleton alongside Isaiah and Jeremiah). He’s seen me writing in my notebook with its heavyweight cover, I don’t try to hide this activity, it’s impossible to keep something like that secret, and anyone who believes otherwise will soon be disabused of the notion, because on board ship everything can be seen and anything seen can also be heard. Jeremy surprised me by placing a handwritten note under the service plate, which I manage to read sometime between hors d’oeuvres and dessert: “Since I see that you, too, are keeping a journal, I feel you should take a moment to remember Nathaniel Hawthorne, who once applied to join Charles Wilkes’ US Exploring Expedition as official historian. His hopes were thwarted, however, after a certain Congressman opposed to his appointment argued that ‘the style in which this gentleman writes is too wordy and ornate to convey a genuine, sensible impression of the atmosphere on the expedition. Furthermore a man so talented and cultivated as the said Mr. Hawthorne will never be able to grasp the national and military significance of any discoveries it may make.’ I found this tidbit in my readings. You should feel fortunate to have free rein to do what your colleague was prevented from doing, even though like him you will probably never be able to grasp the national and military significance of the Antarctic. Therefore: eschew prolixity and stylistic embellishment, and think upon Shackleton and the deprivations he endured.” When I looked up I saw that Jeremy was once again pointing his camcorder at me, I held the paper in front of my chest like a kidnapped hostage, and swore the just-invented Shackleton Oath to uphold the Unadorned Word. Jeremy grinned and panned out away from me through the glass and onto the ocean. He would be welcome on any expedition because his good mood is infectious even when he is pensive. That is a rare talent. Of course he can hardly help summoning old Shackleton, every one of us identifies with the man (all but El Albatros, that is, who can’t get over the fact that Shackleton planned to sell albatross chicks to gourmets in London and New York, his hunger had made them particularly tasty), he is the Good Man of Antarctica, the famous photo of Endurance trapped in the ice is on display in the elevator, and the explorer’s portrait is hanging on the wall in front of the dining room, he could easily be a member of our group, he’d get along well with us, he mistrusted strict hierarchies and valued communality over subordination. Above all he was the only polar explorer who traveled to the southernmost part of the planet knowing it would likely be his final destination. He could no more imagine a grave in thawed ground than he could everyday life in moderate temperatures.
Having taken our time in Grytviken the captain calls for full speed, the Hansen plows through the swells, water water everywhere, as though we were the first sailors to pass through this sea. Barely three hours off of South Georgia we see whales, very close. Beate is so excited, when the humpbacks dive she holds her breath, and inhales together with them when they resurface. Her enthusiasm is undiminished by the dozens of cameras clicking and snapping around her like whips, did you see them, she calls out to Jeremy, who has blazed a trail through the dense spectatorship, and who calls back, “Oh yes, I did, I see we’re already clicking into place, too.”
He’ll have to hell to pay that’s for sure, I’ve also kissed some French girls, what kind of crazy choreography is that, who come from Paree. All told we’re talking about 220 passengers, English, Germans, Americans, Dutch, Swiss. Oh, you must have taken a wrong turn at the big intersection, now you’ll have to go back the whole way. Norwegians, Brazilians, Canadians, New Zealanders, Austrians. We know enough but we understand little, the last spasms, not the faintest idea, to cum in the mouth costs double, the conditions there are unimaginably extreme, it’s snowing pornflakes, we’re infesting now in our future. Go ahead Foxtrot Two Niner, over. I can see people, dozens of them, standing in little groups, over. Have you tried to establish contact, over. Yes, a few are waving their arms, over. What is their condition, over. I can’t tell, over. Any signs of panic, over. No signs of panic. One group is very close together, it looks like they’ve formed a chain, over. No, cows aren’t holy, sheep goats and cattle aren’t holy and wild animals aren’t holy either, nor are the birds of the sky or the fish in the sea, pigs aren’t holy and neither are chickens, not even the lamb is holy. Foxtrot Two Niner Foxtrot Two Niner, go ahead, over. They’ve formed a circle, over. A circle? over. Something like a big zero, over. Descend as you can and fly a few 360s to calm the people, over. Wilco. Out. The experts are disputing this prognosis, today the fixed price for lithium was announced on time, thrushes are dropping dead from the sky, and so this planet Earth spins around its own axis and never stops moving. Email the passenger manifest, on top of that there are 78 crew members, we have to find out as much as we can about the experts on board, we’ll look for every missing person BREAKING NEWS RESCUE OPERATION IN EFFECT BREAKING NEWS RESCUE OPERATION IN EFFECT nothing else matters