He turned around, still holding his cup, looked up and down the stairs, looked up and down, stopped, lifted the cup to his lips with both hands and slurped his tea.
“And who did they first worship in Delphi? The goddess Gaia. Her priestesses would sink into an ethylene-induced trance in order to look into the future. So what about us? We produce vast quantities of ethylene, it’s everywhere, in our clothes, in everyday objects, it’s even in our bodies. We’re all on narcotics, we’re all so addled by this drug of consumerism that we’ve lost any and all clairvoyant ability.”
The Antarctic overwinterer took another slurp. He was standing just inches away and speaking from his heart, but a real conversation seemed impossible.
“Have we even asked ourselves who should we turn to now? What oracle should we consult? Some higher instance, that much is clear, but which? The one we call Nature? Gaia? Maybe even God? Have our questions become any more precise? Perhaps. Do they lead to new answers? We assume so. And we were so certain that the more we figured out the better we would act. Ridiculous. And you, what are you doing on this ship?”
It took a moment to realize he was talking to me because he was still facing away, and his voice hadn’t changed at all, the words kept limping at the end of every sentence like a bad leg.
“Have we veered off track? Just a little bit? Very much? False, once again, false. We’ve completely missed the mark, we’ve been playing the wrong hand, we were holding onto our projections and meanwhile it turns out that prophecies were trumps. The projections proved as irrelevant as last week’s weather forecast. Admit it, you didn’t think it possible that they’d simply cast a deaf ear to all your warnings.”
“How do you know that?”
“You told me yourself.”
“We’ve never met before.”
“You explained it all to me in great detail.”
“Where was that?”
“At some congress.”
“I don’t remember.”
“So you turned away from science? You gave up?”
“On the contrary, I’m just planning to give my next warning in a different way.”
We are hemmed in by sameness, we sense that nature is staring at us blindly but that is all. The water has a greasy sheen, a little ways from the ship the surface forms an opaque screen separating two metallic visual horizons. All cameras have been lowered, the lounge is quieter than usual. Paulina and I exchange glances above the glass display stand with the marble cake. When we reunite I plead with my own desire, desperately searching for some sign of favor. Gradually we come to a standstill as we rock back and forth on a false promise.
You can’t really say that, the ladies of Calcutta, why didn’t you fill up at the last station, didn’t you see the sign, no more gas for 500 miles, you mean you miscalculated? That was very rash of you, I can’t give you any gasoline, here’s a bottle of water, I can’t do any more to help. Will steal your heart away, at present we can only confirm that Zeno H. was the perpetrator, but we still don’t know whether he was acting alone or with accomplices, we can only speculate about his motives. The older the better, when I kissed you and called you sweetheart, if you’re still feeling fine have some more wine, do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare. We don’t know anything about his whereabouts, he waited until the helicopter was gone, then he took the captain, the first officer and the security officer prisoner, a command sounded in the engine room: all hands on deck, what’s going on? Get up here quickly. Do you gaze at the doorstep and picture me there, when does MILF turn to GILF? When the money runs out we’ll slaughter a billionaire, oh-kaaay, the rich are the piggy bank of the nation, oh-yessss. One day he stormed outside and started screaming like a holy terror, it was impossible to tell what he was saying, he was completely unintelligible, the neighbors opened their windows. Is there anything else you can add? It wasn’t a normal scream, it gave people the shivers, you could tell, and deep down inside I was terribly afraid. When we have to choose between preserving nature or earning money, trip the trannies in a trap, it could be worse, robins are dropping dead from the sky, the troop’s all poop, you can’t really say that, ciao ciao bambino, Robotnik gets it on with Futanari, we like to grope in the dark, twiddle twaddle, it’s easy to remember, Shotacon is stalagmite, Lolicon is stalactite BREAKING NEWS FATE OF HANSEN STILL UNKNOWN BREAKING NEWS FATE OF HANSEN STILL UNKNOWN now it’s time to roll up your sleeves again
9. 62°58′9″S, 60°33′6″W
If we were pirates — and we’re not, we’re privateers with letters of marque that we call standard form contracts, we no longer slit throats, these days we do our murdering with unmanned drones — this would be our hiding place. If we were in a pirate film we would put in at our secret island on just a day like today. The ocean is slate gray, the sky ash gray, our ship is sailing straight into a closed mass of anthracite-colored cliffs, if “open sesame” turns out to be the wrong password we’ll get smashed to pieces, the captain has throttled back the engines, we are barely making headway, as though a hobbyist were tweezing us through the neck of a bottle. Everyone is crowding onto the weather deck with their binoculars, scanning for a solution to the riddle. The secret passage appears, the hidden opening which sailors of old called Neptune’s Bellows. “Do you want to go in the water?” Paulina had asked before we fell asleep. Of course I do. The basalt cliffs are perilously close, rigid and unyielding, like frozen fury, it’s easy to see where the volcano left its mark, the flow lines from the lava. Ahead is a black sandy beach covered with lapilli and divided by half-sunken ruins, behind that a rise shadowed with snow-caps, the rocky cliffs in between are glossy black and flecked with oxidized iron. Our ship drops anchor in the middle of a caldera. Even here humans established themselves, and soon the volcanic bay ran red due to the rising demand for baleen, used at the time as corset boning, and for whale oil, which went into nitroglycerin so people could blow each other up in the trenches of World War I. What wondrous innovation to make explosives out of whales, what a vibrant symbol of progress: destroying the essential to create the superfluous. Decades later, the volcano took belated revenge, singeing away all human presence. Deception Island is a demanding port of call, we all have our hands full, not only do we ferry the passengers ashore, we also take everyone medically fit on a longish hike. We used to dig a pit in the sand so the Antarctic tourists could bathe in the sulfurous warm water, but that’s no longer allowed, now the passengers have to jump into the ice-cold sea (and jump out quickly if they want to survive, the Brazilian doctor stands by with stopwatch in hand, making sure no one stays in longer than forty-five seconds). Afterwards we distribute certificates testifying that they took the plunge. When the doctor goes back on board I jump in, the last to do so, and let myself be revived by the icy water.
As soon as you’ve finished your second spell in the sauna you have to go in the cold water, Hölbl instructed, and I mean really in the water, a cold shower just won’t do it. Even though I always loathed saunas I followed his recommendation, because the near-naked ladies were lounging on the barstools and if you spend too long ogling you get depressed. Well, is it just as I promised or not? Didn’t I tell you I’d take care of you? Patronizing as he was — he even insisted on helping me tie my bathrobe — thanks to Hölbl I got to know the institution of the bordello and its fleeting encounters. I also appreciated some things he hadn’t mentioned, such as the matter-of-fact parting from the woman I had just thrust myself into scarcely half an hour earlier with a simple “see you around,” before her backside disappeared around the corner and out of my memory, superseded by others swaying past, and the happy, relaxed exhaustion that settled inside me as the sediment of a new experience. After a few more visits, some even without Hölbl, I managed to dispense with any preliminary conversation at all, it seemed inappropriately binding. In the club he introduced me to, which we frequented during the interregnum between divorce and Antarctic because of its favorable value-for-money ratio, there was a small “cinema” with a “playground” instead of chairs or sofas, where the clients could relax, naked but for a towel wrapped around the loins, and watch a ridiculously bad porno film, or if they were so inclined, the uninhibited goings-on around them. Now and then an unclothed woman would stroll past with an affected “Would you like a little company, honey?” To my ears that sounded like a threat, which is why I only accepted more original solicitations. Apart from such siren calls the encounters were entirely to my liking, reduced as they were to the bare minimum. Without a word I would motion for her to remove my towel and start to work. As if I were sitting high on a Ferris wheel, looking down at the life below, in miniature, with no idea how I was supposed to return to Earth. Now and then I managed to avoid the exchange of invented names, those were the happiest occasions, my bodily needs were satisfied and the whole process had nothing to do with me.