3. 53°22′5″S, 61°02″W
FROM THE BEGINNING, it was the chance to talk about ice that inclined me to take the assignment, which fluttered into my home out of an overcast sky when my colleague Hölbl came to the door masquerading as a harbinger of good news. He closed his umbrella and asked if he should take off his shoes before entering. I can’t remember whether he said, “I’m planning an attempt on your life” or “Can you do me a favor?” if he grinned at me or scrutinized me. At that point the institute was seething with rumors that I was going to pot without work without marriage without anything I could obsess about, I was notoriously easy to get worked up, have you noticed he’s no longer accepting any invitations, but then he never was very sociable to begin with (I’ve always been suspicious of words that begin with the letters “S-O-C–I”—society is a mirage, sociable makes me think of chattering skulls, sociology is more a bog than a field), he’s mutating into a complete recluse, he’s on the verge of losing it, those are the rumors according to Hölbl, but in spite of his sarcastically upbeat report it was impossible not to hear a genuine note of concern in his voice and see the honest wrinkles of worry in his face — it all moved and angered me at the same time. When it comes to the countless people who grind away for wages that are less than inspiring, who get sores on their fingers and scabs in their brains, the Hölbls of this world never suspect mental or spiritual decline. From his viewpoint I was sick, an acute case of ice deprivation. But he was cunning and did not disclose the therapeutic motive for his visit on this rainy autumn day, instead he begged me to help him out of a mess he’d gotten himself into, he’d made conflicting commitments, accepted one thing without canceling the other, the usual polygamist trap (Hölbl was trying his best to cheer me up). He tempted me with everything he could, including the amorous adventures to be found on the high seas, which he touted so vividly as though I’d just been released from the convent boarding school, on a ship it was easier to catch a playmate than a cold, and I could enjoy things without any complications, because what happened at sea stayed at sea, my recuperation was guaranteed, there were no students (Hölbl was lowering himself somewhat with these efforts at humor), just a few lectures, some trips out to the penguin colonies, and that was basically it, all in all a lucrative form of sloth, “busy working holiday” is what they call it on board, you’ll master the nautical language in two shakes, you know the subject matter in your sleep, your English is down pat, I have to pull out, meanwhile take a look at the pictures I brought. Hölbl was too stingy to print real photos, he’d run off some cheap copies on regular paper, the color looked very artificial. I spread them out on the coffee table, next to each other, on top of each other, completely covering the wooden border. They all seemed familiar — the snow-polished ice, the ribs and furrows gleaming in the sun, the crystalline undulations — and yet I was looking at an unknown world, where glaciers calved into an ocean instead of a valley. Taken together, the photos conjured some benevolent spell that had been spun outside of time, every word that the Antarctic water was whispering to me was frozen, I picked up one of the photos as carefully as I could but still left a fingerprint on one of the icebergs. “Pretty intense, isn’t it?” Hölbl stood beside me, with an almost lewd grin, “Damned intense is what it is,” he said, his laugh exploding like a firecracker as he slapped his right hand on the back of the chair. There are moments when you have no choice but to laugh along whether you want to or not, if you don’t want to lose your common language. Weeks later I was standing on somewhat shaky legs in the auditorium of a cruise ship, amazed at how many passengers showed up for my first lecture (9:30 AM in English and 11 AM for the German version), my biggest audience ever, what I had lost in terms of younger listeners was more than compensated for by the overdose of seniors. These passengers feel an obligation to ground themselves, to learn what they can about the Antarctic, they board the ship knowing little but truly desire to learn more, that suits me just fine, by all means permit me to influence your vision of the unknown. On this trip which is unlike any other, they delve into the literature to further their education instead of devouring thrillers as they do elsewhere, for relaxation they prefer The Worst Journey in the World, such close encounters with the Eternal Ice causes even the civilizationally autistic to feel a certain lack within themselves. I hear myself talking and wonder at my chatty tone: when Africa slammed into Europe, Antarctica went skidding as far south as it could and got covered with ice, the crumple zone that resulted forms what we call the Alps. Antarctic means “anti-arctic,” the name derived from Aristotle’s postulation that for philosophical harmony and geographical symmetry there had to be a counterpart to the icy land in the north (the only such land then known to the Europeans). Anyone who claims never to have mixed up Arctic and Antarctic is a boldfaced liar, but there’s a mnemonic device that can come to your aid, actually two devices, a bear and a penguin, since as we all know penguins are found only in the Antarctic and polar bears only in the Arctic regions. And this all makes sense because the word “arctic” comes from the ancient Greek arktos, having to do with Ursa Major — the big bear. So if you can just hold on to that you’ll never mix up north and south again, in contrast to all of your friends at home, whose first question will be how things are going down there in the Arctic. Of course if polar bears become extinct, the name “Arctic” will no longer apply and we’ll need something else, I’m happy to take suggestions beginning today and for the rest of our journey. But have no fear, even if the Arctic should cease to exist (something all of you sitting in this room will live to see if you keep taking your blood thinners and beta blockers — I don’t speak this last thought out loud), the Antarctic will remain as an antipode for as long as humans inhabit the Earth. A few passengers smile, some smirk. Together we wander through the history of ice and stone with the help of a timetable where Homo sapiens barely appears, some days I have to really work to make sure the passengers don’t faint from all the zeroes. Arctic and Antarctic, ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about extreme contrasts: seasonal ice in one place and terra firma in the other, unstoppable melting in one place, and in the other an icy shield up to four thousand meters deep. One place doomed to collapse, the other somewhat protected and not yet lost. One place a sign of our capacity for destruction, the other a symbol of our understanding. In a nutshelclass="underline" above is bad, below is good, above is hell, below is heaven. Ladies and gentlemen, what we are talking about are the two poles of our future. Before opening the second PowerPoint presentation, I pause longer than necessary to let my ominous emphasis take effect before substantiating my claims with pictures, just like Hölbl did on my coffee table, but whether they’re printed on cheap copy paper or displayed on a high-definition screen, the ice landscapes possess such force that the entire audience is rendered coughless, and together we plunge into the high-sea silence of the albatross.