“And the island we just passed, you know the one I mean, I’m sure it has a magnificent name as well?” the pianist asks. He knows the answer but I do him the favor and play along.
“It’s called Fury Island.”
Another mistrustful look.
“Yes, of course, Fury Island, and here I’d done such a nice job of suppressing that one. Come, my dear, let’s not trouble our expedition leader any longer, incidentally I ought to warn you now so you don’t find out from some unreliable source that sometime in the middle of the night, when I trust we’ll all be sound asleep, our ship is going to sail past Last Hope Bay.”
His laughter rises and floats away like steam from an exhaust pipe.
That first evening Paulina’s shift ends before midnight. The guests haven’t had any time to get to know one another, the habitual drinkers and loungers quit the bar and bistro earlier than usual, Paulina hastens the last call and ushers an elderly American to his bed, she’s looking forward to our more spacious cabin (befitting the post of expedition leader), and to me as well, we haven’t yet had a chance to celebrate our reunion. I’ve been promoted to Deck 6, where the commanding elite is housed, my cabin is next door to the first officer and the chief navigator, and not far from the bridge, in fact a little earlier I stepped into the passageway and ran smack into the captain, whose office and refuge are just a few doors down and across the hall.
“Our captain’s literally within striking distance,” I tell Paulina.
“Well don’t hurt him,” she laughs. And I laugh back. I’m always amazed at how easily we make each other laugh, time and time again. I used to be thought a killjoy, and with good reason: what others considered hilarious I found obnoxious, I would hear them snicker and cluck, but never really laugh, my former spouse used to giggle and cackle her way through an evening, she could be loud and brash, but there was no real exuberance, no jollity. Paulina on the other hand gets me to laugh as she’s taking off my clothes, stripping me down to a pure good mood. For her, laughter and libido are very much intertwined.
When our bodies have been so long apart, rediscovery follows conquest, and in between forays she lies next to me, feet crossed, her vulva gently vaulted, and chatters away as I listen to her lapping voice. It’s the most calming human sound I know. So much has happened in the months we’ve been apart, a waterfall of events, the Mayon volcano erupting, the neighbors’ child and his cleft lip surgery, the massacre of more than two dozen journalists on the next island over, the old fisherman whose right hand was blown off, her mother’s worsening blindness, her brother’s increasing dull-mindedness, her sister’s infertility, the lecherous priest caught red-handed in the presbytery just after mass, his cassock tossed over the back of the receptive widow, and the rest of the story is drowned in laughter. But what should I tell her? About my weekly visits to my father and how he spews at anyone who takes pains to deal with him: the nurse, the doctor, the cook, his acquaintances from home (he hasn’t had any friends since the end of the last war) — even the taxi driver who takes him to the cemetery three times a week so he can reassure himself that his place is still there next to my long-deceased mother, his “wee patch of earth” which he claims to look forward to. When I separated from my institute and my wife separated from me, I invited him to move in and take over Helene’s gapingly empty bedroom. Now and then he’d wake me up at three in the morning with his yelling, and I’d get out of bed and see him shuffling across the hall holding a candle and shouting at every shadow cast by his shaky hand: “I’m a heretic too.” It took a while for him to calm down, sometimes until morning, he never let on what accusation he was refuting. He’s been considered a hardheaded heckler and contrarian his whole life, and the reputation has proved convenient. He banged on the table but never budged it. Roared but never bit. Now that his life force is trickling away, his vituperation has shriveled into a chronic dry cough. Should I burden Paulina by telling her my father has missed the right time to die? I’d rather take refuge in the stories she tells, they’re much less pathetic than my own.
For months Paulina and I inhabit this ship together, sharing our cabin, and then we go our separate ways for half a year, losing sight of each other completely. It wouldn’t even bother me to learn that during our time apart she’d gotten together with the Coca-Cola dealer from Legazpi City (the man never tires of fawning over her, though to date he hasn’t offered anything better than an invitation to become his mistress). I feel about Paulina the way old Amundsen felt about the sun, I look forward to seeing her again but do not suffer terribly by her absence. On occasion we have tried to shorten the intervaclass="underline" after our first season in the eternal ice Paulina came to visit me, but it didn’t go well. One neighbor congratulated me on my “catch” and another asked her if she’d clean for him, too. Paulina couldn’t understand why I didn’t own a car even though I could afford one, a deficiency that during the course of a very rainy April became increasingly conspicuous, my native country was only tolerable when viewed from the top of the Zugspitze (for the first time in my life I took the cable car, she wouldn’t even try a descent), and so we slogged through the days, and our voices began to grate on each other while our desire passed faster than our time together. My own guest performance on Luzon had a number of sour notes as well, almost overnight she turned into an obedient little cog, was no longer Paulina but the eldest daughter, the wealthy sister, while I was a souvenir from a foreign land proudly put on display. But sooner or later the novelty wears off and the knickknack’s merely in the way and winds up getting moved from one corner to the other until it’s finally ignored completely. I didn’t want to wait for that to happen, so I went to the market and hopped on a bus with the promising name Inland Trailways. I drove across the country, searching every face for a hint of Paulina but finding only strangers. When I flew home everyone at the airport was wearing mouth protectors, like so many idolatrous masks.
But as the northern summer draws to an end we reunite far in the south, happy and together. Here in the Antarctic we are made for each other, and Paulina is a blessing I had no right to expect.
“How was the ice mass balance last season?” a passenger who’s traveled with us before asks the captain over our first dinner. “I’ve never seen so much pack ice at the start of a season,” the captain replies, “and never seen so much green at the end of one.”
Sparrows chirp it from the roofs, we fled to the south where dollars drop from the sky like snowflakes, everyone must be called upon to sacrifice, place your order while supplies last, the museum is closed, water damage, the roof was old and decrepit, and now for the high point of our evening, I can’t stand these fat-asses in their gas guzzlers, these turbo-charged jerk-offs in their Escalades. There’s a problem with one of our ships, the MS Hansen, we’ve lost radio contact. Now it’s your turn, Charlie, that belt really suits you, you go goldfingers, and a one and a two and a three unzip that mini watch it drop feel your balls about to pop, lights webcam action. I can affirm that the MS Hansen is on the wrong course, moving northwest at top speed, that’s right we still don’t have radio contact, we don’t have any explanation, we’ll have to be on standby for every possible emergency situation. Now that’s what I call one efficient move, lol, our next contestants will face the fun task of making a meaningful sentence out of the words “folderol” and “poppycock,” the first one to meet the challenge will receive our coveted Triple Twaddle Prize, we insist on having an international commission, that has to be examined very closely, in London unexplained delays held up today’s fixed price for nickel, that’s a great solution, all bad things come in threes and fours and twos. No, no mayday, no indication of any problems, no mention of disturbances in the daily report. I say let’s cordon off the streets, and haul out every one of those turbo-charged jerk-offs and make them choose, your Cadillac or your cock, well underway, a little joke on the side, Christians view the desert as a place of evil, it’s really the ultimate place of good, how could all your intuitions be so far off the mark your Grace, hey that’s one shaved pussy, we’re moving our webcumcam in for a better view, oom bop bop I’m pickin’ up good vibrations, Charlie which of our legs are you trying to pull, what are you sniffing at, what I’m gonna pull is between those thighs, the difference between earthworms and chimpanzees, between punks and porters is purely a matter of cultural determinism, attention attention BREAKING NEWS NATURE NOT IN DANGER, PEOPLE FEARED DEAD BREAKING NEWS NATURE NOT IN DANGER, PEOPLE FEARED DEAD keep it up