So I looked him in the face. Stared him right in his beard. All first impressions confirmed. This was him. As far as I was concerned. And made a little welcoming curtsy in his direction, losing my footing, almost dislodging the pines, only at the last minute recovering myself, running in place on the logs like a lumberjack.
“I was wondering,” said the great teacher when I had my balance again, “do you think there might be room for me in your airplane? I’m not looking for something for nothing and would make it worth your while. A wealthy man I’m not, but I’m willing to pay.”
(“I’ve heard about this character,” Philip told me. “There are legends about him from Valdez to the Pribilofs. From Natchez to Mobile, from Memphis to St. Joe. He scares the shit out of the natives. Everywhere he goes there’s trouble.”) He turned to the man. “Oh, sure,” Philip said, “that’s how we do it. We collect our party as we go along like Dorothy loose in Oz. What do we look like, mister, a taxi rank?”
“Philip,” I cautioned him, and thought, My God, a fellow like this, with heightened, sky-high senses that can not only pick up men’s scents but evidently rehabilitate them out of the very air right back into the compost for his beard, this is somebody to whom you give lip? “I am Rabbi Jerry Goldkorn of New Jersey,” I said, wiping my hand off on my parka, extending it. “I am honored to meet you, sir.”
“I’ve been meditating for almost an entire winter solstice now. From ice field to ice floe. From glacier to iceberg. I’m getting a little antsy — may Shaper-of-the-World, Blessed-Be-He, take it in His Head to forgive me — waiting for spring to come on.” (So, I’m thinking, who is this guy? He seems to have ruled out Shaper-of-the-World, Blessed-Be-He. Maybe he ain’t God either. And ha ha, I’m joking, relieved, because as I always say, I/Thou or no I/Thou, you don’t want to go one on one with Him.) “Too much darkness just isn’t good for you,” he said. “Let there be light. Know what I mean?”
“And what’s all this ‘almost human odor’ of our crap crap? He still hasn’t said.”
(“Philip,” I said, “please.”)
“No, no,” Philip said, “I mean it. I don’t have to take this kind of garbage from a hitchhiker. Boy,” he said, “you run into these guys every time you set your plane down in this country. I don’t know where they come from. You could be lost, you could be behind the beyond, wherever, and there they are. Waiting for you. Cadging rides. Oh,” he said, even more agitated now than when he’d lost control of the plane and we were about to crash, “always hair-trigger and up-front with their worth-your-while’s and willing-to-pay’s. But drop the fare off on his turf and you find out quick enough just what their worth-your-while is worth.”
(“Philip, please, did you see his beard?”)
“A fad.”
(“Philip, his whiskers are flowers!”)
“So? A passing fancy. Once crew cuts were in, then it was sideburns down to your lips.”
“No,” said the man with the beard made out of flowers, speaking as if he hadn’t heard a word of Philip’s pouted rant, my own whispered admonitions. As if they’d never happened. “So much dark … After a while you forget why you’re out there. On the ice, on the glaciers, ice fields, ice floes and icebergs. Why you came in the first place. Exercising the fancy-shmancies, holy adaptations and dreamy propitiaries that it takes to live. The kill-only-what-you-eat commandments, practicing, I mean, all the waste-not/want-nots and wearing your food for fur and leather too. Doing the live-off-the-land economies — feathering your nest with the rare sea-bird’s jewelry, the ptarmigan’s, the jaeger’s, the eider’s cushy down. At one with the seal and musk ox, with otter and bear and whale modalities, recycling very calcium itself to scratch a scrimshaw into teeth, into shell and bone. Habituating yourself to all the conservationist’s far-fetched recommended daily allowances, the cosmetics of environment, giving yourself over, I mean, to the elements — the flavors of air and temperature, the shading of salmon and the bushel-per-acre yield of the tundra.”
“These are among my favorite things,” Philip said.
(Philip!)
“But it wears you out,” he said. “Concentration breaks down, breaks up in the dark. (The dark! Not some proper, heroic blackness you could rub yourself against like braille.) You can’t remember color. You’re too busy yogi-ing over your bloodstream and rearranging your metabolics so you can see what it feels like to move at a glacier’s pace, a few inches a day with the wind in your face. Isn’t this so, Rabbi?”
“Well, I …”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s so. I stake my reputation it’s so. So, when I caught that first, unmistakable whiff of what was almost certainly ka-ka and quite possibly human ka-ka, I perked up pretty quick, I’m here to tell you.”
“Yeah, well,” Philip said uncomfortably, making the first shuffled, awkward cues of leave-taking, the preliminary gutturals and throat-clearings of departure, though clearly there was nowhere to go in that wilderness.
“I started out three days ago,” said the man with the beard made out of flowers.
“Three days ago. You’ve been tracking our scent for three days? That’s some discriminating whiffer you’ve got.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m anxious to get back to civilization.”
“Oh,” Philip said, “civilization. Sorry. We’re not headed in that direction.”
“Because,” he said, “I’d had enough of darkness now, and of found frozen shelters carved right out of the very bottom of wind and temperature. Of my fur and leather ways and deprivations and being perched in such high-up altitudes of the world like a stylite on a column. So naturally when I first smelled your feces, Rabbi Goldkorn”—he pointed to the side of the plane where I’d been relieving myself—“and yours, Philip”—he pointed to the pilot’s little mound—“I asked myself: ‘Human? Is it human? Could it be human? It smells human.’ Oh, there were trace elements of digested fish and game, of course, but you’d expect that up here. So I broke camp and started out. I followed your trail and, sure enough, the closer I came the stronger the spoor, until I thought I could make out the freeze-dried vegetables, cashew mix, dried, high-energy fruits, beef jerky and chocolate of your emergency, survivalist meals. And, what do you know?” he said. “Here we are!”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“Tell me,” he said, “Rabbi, you observe kashruth?”
“No,” I said, “why?”
“Nothing. The Checkerboard Square’s all right, but most other survival chow’s trayf.”
“We don’t keep kosher even in New Jersey.”
“Well,” he said, “you’re consistent. It’s a point in your favor.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“It depends,” he said. “It’s also a point against you.”
“Are you,” I asked, “are you kosher?”
“Oh, me,” he said, “I keep house on an iceberg. Well,” he said, “fellas, I’m looking forward to getting back. What’s with the airplane?”
“We crashed in the trees,” Philip said. “The engine won’t turn over.”
“Maybe the battery’s dead.”
Philip rolled his eyes.
“Give it a while. Maybe the engine’s flooded.”
“Sure,” said the pilot, “and maybe it got all bent out of shape when we crashed. Here,” he said, “look,” and raised the cowl to reveal the bashed, stricken metal underneath. “That lake ice isn’t firm enough to hold us anyway.”