“That’s right.”
“You’re pretty dumb, you know.”
“Agreed.”
“You’re putting us at risk is what you’re doing, and what for? For nothing.”
I would defend myself if I could find the words to match the anger I felt when I ran up to the smoking smirking soldier and he stood there shrugging his shoulders. Everything I can think of is after the fact, flowers on the grave. Paulina is sitting on the bed across from me. My silence proves her right. With my hand on her shoulder I draw her to me, her hair touches my chest. She buries her face in my shirt. I feel the cloth getting wet. The day will come when I will make her unhappy without being able to console her. A first kiss, a pause for thinking, a second kiss. We take off only what we have to and I push inside her, over and over, with throbbing futility. We are silent, stirred and embarrassed at once because we are misusing our bodies. I feel impatience welling within me, I want to finish as quickly as possible. I hear Emma’s voice calling my name over the PA system. I am being summoned. Someone wants to ask me an urgent question. I have to go back to work, says Paulina. We are both pent-up. I come with pinched lips.
A few years ago, two summers before the catastrophe, Helene and I went to Lisbon for a long weekend, another attempt to salvage our marriage with sightseeing, late dinners by dim light and mutual smearing of sunscreen. We strolled along the avenues and climbed the steep narrow streets, taking advantage of every delight Lisbon has to offer, venturing into alleys unmarked in any guide, we savored warm pastéis de Belém at the bakery of the same name (touristy, very touristy, but when I am a tourist I appreciate what is staged for tourists), drank Alentejo wine, admired azulejo tiles, and even boarded a catamaran to watch dolphins in the Tagus Estuary. But no matter what we encountered, nothing moved us both at the same time. We could have spent days in the souvenir shops without finding anything that would have the same appeal for the two of us. We stumbled into a church that had earned a mere three lines in the tour guide, fully expecting to step back out after a fleeting glance at ceiling and nave, so we wouldn’t have to spend too long in a place where we were the only people. But I found myself mesmerized by the interior, by its imperfection, the signs of destruction sparked in me an unhoped-for feeling of devotion, for the first time inside a house of worship I felt I was in a real space and not simply a temple to human megalomania. Traces of the fire were still visible on the columns, a blood-orange vault stretched out overhead like a broad sky above a battlefield. In this igreja the promise of salvation carried a credible patina of soot. The wilting flowers and flickering candles seemed like last vain hopes. It took me a few minutes to notice a pillow-soft song wafting from some narrow loudspeakers, children’s voices that seemed to come from the other side of a wall that can never be surmounted. In a small apsis I saw the most moving Virgin Mother I had ever seen, all alone in a gapingly empty niche. She radiated an air of uncertainty, as though she were afraid of not being able to satisfy all the petitions presented to her. She was an injured soul who had been driven out of her home. I felt her pain. Not only because her son had been tortured to death, but because her torment had been immortalized. I studied her a long time. “And can you tell me what it was about that dilapidated church you found so fascinating?” a grumpy Helene asked when we were outside the portal. I said that the church should really be called the Igreja de Gaia—a sanctuary one visits to cast aside all human hubris.
Dan Quentin is aboard the Hansen. He never moves without an entourage, which is why his presence cannot be discerned but only deduced from all the blowflies swarming around him. Now and then his tousled mop of hair can be seen drifting by. His manager offered me the prospect of an audience, he didn’t use the word “audience” but his tone of voice and choice of words suggested some form of homage. The excitement on board ship is palpable, the passengers are in high spirits ever since I called them together — in two sections according to language, first English and then German — and announced they would have a historic opportunity to play an active part in a work of art. I described the necessary safety training, Quentin’s manager outlined the basic artistic plan. To my amazement the passengers did not feel at all bothered by the slogan “Art needs you,” in fact they felt flattered and discovered their inner activists. “If I’m being called on to do something for the environment then count me in,” a businessman from St. Louis declared, setting the tone for the others. “The young man has imagination and that’s exactly what we need,” acknowledged an elderly lady, “instead of all those protests all the time, they do nothing but undermine the cause.” “I’m assuming our participation is worth at least a signed photograph,” a retired high school principal from Paderborn demanded. “Naturally each of you will receive a signed copy,” the manager reassured them, “and what’s more every single one of you will be listed by name on our website. And if you’d like a limited edition print for someone you left back home — and what a gift that would be, right — naturally you would qualify for our special participant rate, which is quite generous.” The passengers left the room in little groups, chatting away, to go sign the lists that had been set out for those who chose to take part. Finally there was only one person left, a haggard, unshaven man with a black woolen cap, who had boarded at the same time as Dan Quentin. He had spent the winter at the Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station and was now on his way home after nearly twelve months on King George Island. He was sitting in the next to last row, one chair away from the passageway, his hands resting on his thighs, fingers splayed, a smile pressed on his lips. He fixed his eyes on me, evidently expecting a reaction. I sat down beside him, still holding the microphone.
“I should speak about wintering over.”
“You’d like to give a lecture?”
“Everyone wants to know what it’s like to spend the winter in the Antarctic.”
“Like being in a tunnel, right? That’s how I’ve heard people describe it, except at least you know exactly how long the tunnel will be.”
He grabbed the microphone from my hand and shouted into it, “That’s false!” Then he let the microphone drop to the floor. “You have no idea how long the tunnel is. With every passing day you start to doubt more and more whether the sun’s ever going to come back up, whether you’ll ever be able to move about freely again, whether you’ll see more of the world than a few floodlit measuring instruments, whether the tunnel has an end at all.”
I picked up the microphone and turned the red switch to off. Live mics usually lead to embarrassing situations.
“You’d go crazy if it weren’t for the books. Are you surprised? Such a banal idea, books in a tunnel. Did you know that Amundsen took three thousand?”
“Should we sit down over a cup of tea?”
Trusting in the saving power of imagination while stuck in a seemingly endless tunnel made sense to me. I accompanied the Pole to the coffee machine, which also dispensed hot water. He went on talking while he awkwardly unpacked a tea bag.
“Science has become our modern oracle, I sensed that early on, but it wasn’t until I was in the tunnel that I really understood”—he dumped several spoonfuls of sugar into his mint tea. “It used to be that knowledge was gained with the help of a medium. And meanwhile we assumed we were well beyond that, we dismissed soothsaying and prophecy as hocus-pocus, we were convinced that we could complete our calculations and our future would be revealed, that we would provide sober proof,”—the Pole tapped his spoon on the edge of his cup—“evidence obtained through precise research, that’s the sign of our time, the blueprint for future behavior. All we have to do to convince people is show them the appropriate data. Isn’t that right?”