We listen to his lecture, and to the oyster fishermen in the background, then take our leave and head off into the blooming furze, where I pick some mouse-eared chick-weed, “not for you, Paulina, it’s for the family altar in our cabin, for all the grandmothers.” On the way back we stop at one of the fence posts that has a red sign nailed to it, at closer distance we can make out a skull and crossbones below the words “Danger Mines.”
At the counter in the reception someone left a brochure which I open in passing. “The Falkland Islands are one of the few places in the world where nature reigns supreme.” A minefield as unspoiled nature? Why not, after all, Kitzbühel counts as a climatic health resort even on holidays with bumper-to-bumper traffic jams. All El Albatros has to spare for me is contradiction. If all beaches were mined we wouldn’t have to worry about bird refuges. I listen to him with one ear, at the next table over some men are talking as they spoon their crème brûlée about the charming heather moor at Yorke Bay, ideal for a golf course, a classic links, and while they let their fantasies go teeing off I imagine how in the course of construction the location of the landmines might be forgotten. A beach like that (“a spectacular par 3 shot right over the heads of our native Magellanic penguins”) could become the ultimate sand trap, one which could rightly be billed as a bunker you might never get out of.
I’ve been watching it my entire life, with passionate care and precise instruments. And if my observations will have had no impact on my chosen field and how this field views itself, then my academic career will have been a waste. Every May and September I would go a few days ahead of my students, so I could abandon myself to my senses, undisturbed, and feel the glacier’s full emotional force before we captured its data. It was my doctoral advisor who placed this particular glacier in my care, an arranged marriage that in time became a union of love, as if every measurement were an acknowledgment of its singularity. On that first morning I rose before the sun, laced up my hiking boots which initially felt strange, and then I trekked around the glacier, ascending on the left side and then after crossing the ice descending below the escarpment on the other side. Each time I visited I would first scan the glacier with my eyes, then test it with my feet. Whenever I stopped to catch my breath I would touch it, laying my hands on its flanks and then stroking my face, taking in its icy breath, its invigorating cold. I was familiar with every one of its sounds, the creaking and the clanking, every glacier has its own voice, when I visited others I would compare theirs with the one I knew. A dying glacier sounds different than a healthy one, it gives off a powerful rattle when it bursts along a crevasse, and if you listen closely you can hear the melt flowing into the underground lakes speeding the erosion of the wrinkled body. We were like an elderly couple: one of us was severely ill, and the other couldn’t do anything about it. All terms used to describe our relationship — such as “subject of study” or “mass balance measurement”—were woefully inadequate, and no column of figures could do any more justice to my devotion than could our bookkeeping, which recorded the snowfall deposit at the end of the winter as a kind of revenue, and the degree of summer thaw as a kind of expense. These credits and debits caused me greater and greater despair, and over the years I changed into a kind of doctor who had only to look into the eyes of his patient to make the proper diagnosis. I recognized that my glacier was doomed long before the declining values of its middle layer thickness pronounced their judgment. I didn’t have to wait for the results to understand the ramifications of the sustained depletion. It was no longer possible to offset the loss. We were aging together, the glacier and I, but the glacier was well ahead of me when it came to dying.
Rules, rules, and more rules. Without strict guidelines people would trample over everything, I see that, at the same time it’s humiliating for me to have to force rules on them. One of the least pleasant among my new tasks involves corralling the press. There are always a few journalists on board — the cruise line appreciates the relatively inexpensive advertising in their articles — as well as a handful of relaxed editors and pushy photographers. On the last trip of the previous season there were a dozen, the expedition leader wanted a silent partner sitting in on the meetings to bolster his authority and that’s when I first learned of this duty. Journalists don’t have any special privileges either on board the ship or on land, the idea has to be put out of their head at the start. My predecessor took a strict tone, to me it sounded like the tinny parody of a politician’s call for law and order, I had to suppress a smile and turn away, as though I were expecting something surprising out of the west-southwest. “Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked afterwards.
“Do we have to treat them like they’re educationally challenged?”
“When it comes to dealing with nature, as far as I’m concerned every person on the planet is educationally challenged,” answered the expedition leader who is now lying in a hospital room in Buenos Aires, where he is presumably studying his yachting magazines as attentively as I am studying the faces of the journalists who have gathered around me in a semicircle and who are introducing themselves one by one at my invitation. That gives me a chance to separate the chaff from the wheat, the insightful from the unruly. I form my judgments hastily, instinctively. How is it that the Roman ideal of presumed innocence has endured in our civilization so pervaded with the notion of original sin? The boisterous blonde from Hamburg won’t cause any trouble, she’s brought her boyfriend along for a working vacation, she’ll avoid anything that might make her seem unpleasant. The Colombian cameraman has eyes that suggest an easily ignited insolence, while his accompanying editor gives off an air of laziness, I’m sure he won’t be stirring up anything provocative. The striking young American is clearly nervous and this makes her also seem unapproachable. “I’m Mary from Mother Jones and please no wisecracks.” I look around, wondering what she is alluding to, but nobody seems to get the supposedly obvious joke. I’m certain that the muscular cameraman, who probably wears his dignified smile even in his sleep, will try his luck with her by sharing some hastily concocted witticism as soon as they leave the lecture room. The last in line is a smart-suited man who introduces himself as Dan Quentin’s PR manager and then pauses for a moment as if he were expecting a show of admiring smiles and glances that to my astonishment are indeed accorded, apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t fully appreciate the name. His own business requires a special discussion, as the captain has undoubtedly informed me. Evidently the man is paid to find the right words to maneuver himself into a privileged position. “No,” I answer, “the captain and I haven’t had any time to confer about Dan Quentin, but I’m certain we’ll have that opportunity, for now though I’d like to agree on a few basics. In a word, the same rules apply to journalists as to all other passengers on this cruise. Never leave the paths marked with red flags, never pull anything out of the ground, don’t take anything and don’t throw anything away, not even the tiniest shred of paper. Always keep a distance of at least five meters from all animals, penguins included, and don’t try to blame it on the poor penguins not knowing the rules, we’ve heard that excuse more than once. Like all other passengers you may spend no more than two hours on land, don’t try to carve out any more time. And follow our instructions, if you don’t then we’ll have to leave you behind and you can write a feature about surviving the winter all alone that will make you world famous.” Scarcely have I spoken these words than I begin to doubt whether my approach is any better than that of my predecessor. Then I ask if everyone understood what I just said; after all when people are speaking a second or third language there’s a greater risk of misunderstanding. Dan Quentin’s manager chews on his sunglasses, Mary writes everything down, the editor has the cameraman translate the last portion of my speech in whispered tones (shouldn’t the editor be the one with a better command of English?). Any questions? There aren’t any, because everyone is distracted by what is drifting past. “Aha, the first iceberg,” I try out a lighter tone, but now no one is paying attention, “in two weeks you’ll have seen so many icebergs you won’t even turn your head when one shows up.” As expected, just after my parting words the manager jumps up and runs over and starts speaking at me while he’s still moving, as if I were a typewriter on which he were urgently typing a letter requesting payment. He asks me to speak with the captain as soon as I can, it’s about a project that’s so colossal the logistical demands cannot be underestimated, the artistic vision is explosive and amazingly timely, the Antarctic has now become a project in the hearts of all mankind, Dan Quentin wants to create a sign, he wants to hoist an emotional flag that will be seen across the globe, a symbol for danger and endangerment, he wants to coin a highly original visual currency. Tomorrow after breakfast the manager will come to see me, he’s looking forward to our collaboration. In the meantime Mary has kept in the background, now she breaks away and asks shyly if she might ask me for an interview when I have a free hour. Gratefully I agree.