The Age of Ice: A Novel (21 page)

It was Dr. Merck who familiarized me with all those publications of the Royal Society of London—while wading in deep snow, pinching needle tufts off
Pinus cembra
for a tincture against scurvy or making note of elk teeth marks on a larch trunk. Scientists had been trying the limits of resilience of living creatures to heating or cooling. Some of these studies were merely thermometrical experiences of a group of gentlemen relaxing in a hot chamber of the London Hospital. In others—more astute explorations—authors had inserted a thermometer
inside
a human volunteer.

All of them pointed to the truth, which as yet lurked half discernible, like an eelpout in deep water: the temperature of living creatures played its own tune no matter what the cold or heat of the world urged it to be. I dreamed of a thermometer as a magic flute in the lips of the living—on they skipped, blowing their happy tune of animal heat. But as every magic comes with a sacrifice, so did this one: a note too high, or too low—life turned into death in a snap, and no amount of heat or cold could reverse it.

Every creature’s high and low were different. One for an eelpout, another for a ground squirrel. What about human beings? What about
me
?

• • •

What about a horse? The answer: +35º when she dropped of exhaustion. +27º when her heart could no longer be heard beating. Only eight degrees of separation between life and death.

It happened on a trail that led from the forest, where they felled trees,
to the shipbuilding dock. The log she pulled jammed the trail. The young fellow who led her tugged at the bridle, then came to her side and pushed. “Get up, mama!”

I came in to help push and pull, but it was no use. The fellow produced a small ax; I misunderstood his intention at first. “What for?”

“Cut the harness off her,” he said, “or it’ll freeze in.”

I said, “Give me the ax.” The hide on her back and shoulders was all ice crust and scabs, old sores, new sores, grooves made by the rough rope of the harness. Under one leg I made the cut, where she had a fold of loose skin. Almost no blood came out. “Er . . .” the fellow said. I told him to fetch another horse. He obliged.

The dying horse sighed and rested her head when I inserted my thermometer. I kept one hand under her cheek, where her pulse was ticking, my ear to her chest. There was a measure of peace that stayed between me and the beast, a measure of serenity.

Then Captain Sarychev came upon us. “Alexander Mikhailovich dear, what are you doing, my friend?”

I did not want to lift my head. “Gavril Sergeevich, good day, sir. I’m measuring her heartbeat. The lad called you up, didn’t he?”

“He did.” Sarychev hovered over, hesitant.

“Just another few moments,” I said.

A couple of crew hands came up the trail, with another beast of burden. Now we were in everyone’s way. Sarychev insisted, “Alexander Mikhailovich—” I put my free hand over my ear so I could hear the beast’s heartbeat better. It was slackening. Weakening. Stammering out of rhythm—and then silence. I looked at the thermometer, I rose. “That’s all.”

I followed Sarychev back to the fort. “If I asked you to order the men to submit to my temperature checks? Nothing more than holding a thermometer in their hand or their armpit?”

“I am afraid this is not a good time,” he said.

“I see.”

“I know you’re a
man of science,
Alexander Mikhailovich. It’s just that some of your pursuits are—they bestir the crew. Must you insist on them?”

I wondered if he knew more about me than anyone else. What if Commodore Loginov had hinted that I was more than I seemed? And now the poor second-in-command was stuck with the burden of an eccentric
nobleman, in addition to all his other burdens. I felt pity for him and embarrassment for myself. I said, “Is it true that we are completely at Feodor’s mercy as far as our victuals are concerned?”

He stopped and looked at me, then walked on. “We keep looking for other ways.”

“Can I help?”

He stopped again and now measured my whole person—together with the bloodied thermometer, still in my hand. “No, Alexander Mikhailovich, I don’t suppose so.”

He resumed walking and I followed. He spoke out in stops and starts. “We are sending inquiries. There are enough folks living in the neighborhood, and we can pay in good rubles. You’d think—” Another stop and start—“You’d think this would be enough to get the ground moving, only there seems to be—they all are Feodor’s debtors. Why, hostages, more like. Slaves! They do as he says. What kind of satrapy is he running here?!”

• • •

Sawyer returned catarrhal and despondent from his visit to the Yukagiri. “They used to be thousands strong. They used to go on a chase and run down elks—that’s on foot! And look at them now! Their chief is such a bufflehead, he doesn’t even know—or care—how many sons and daughters he has. They had smallpox last year, a good third of them perished. Miserable life, miserable people!”

Merck noted with a degree of bitterness, “A wasted trip, it would appear. Such a pity it took priority over recovering a mammoth. I can just see how we’ll be procrastinating till spring, until the whole skeleton will be washed away in a deluge. A pity and a waste.”

“Enough with your skeletons!” cried out Sawyer.

I remember being surprised about Sawyer’s souring character. I was—as yet—clueless.

• • •

At no other time is the difference between Gregorian and Julian calendars felt as acutely as around Christmas. If before it hardly mattered who kept what date—all was dark either way and it was still months before we’d finish the ships and the river would open to navigation and let us out of here—now suddenly Merck and the Britons were ready to celebrate the Lord’s birth a fortnight earlier than we were. The Julian reckoning prevailed by majority, and the command pinned the fortwide observance
of Christmas Day to
our
date, and the staunch Gregorians were left to celebrate in private and to contemplate the relativity of time.

In the days before Christmas, we received good news. A Yakuti chief stepped forth and promised to deliver some reindeer meat. Captain Sarychev’s efforts to bypass Feodor must have met with success. There was rejoicing as the near future became pleasantly fixed with a worship and a feast.

A day before Christmas Eve a blizzard started. It howled and roared like the horns of Jericho, it wiped and blotted away what little distinction there remained between night and day. It threatened to suspend time, to blur the calendar, to take a swipe even at our Gregorian-Julian time warp. It made it so easy to lose track of people. Robeck went out, came in. Then he was gone again, and so was his tool chest.
Semyon?—Aye.
But who would hold Semyon down? Robeck didn’t ask for my help and I assumed he had it covered. I lay on my pallet, lazy, dipping in and out of sleep.

 . . . And where was Mr. Sawyer? Interpreting perhaps, for Robeck? Or elsewhere? Learning marvels about three layers and four corners of the earth, and how deities lived in each layer and two saviors and two saints held up the corners, as the blizzard howled and wailed . . . Or was he learning something else perhaps, something sweeter—or bittersweeter? Messier? If Sawyer and Ouchapin
did it,
I wondered, where could they be doing it? In her mother’s yurt? I dozed off, resurfaced. I saw Merck, but no Sawyer.

Now my back was sore from all the repose. Perhaps I could take a stroll to the barracks and see how Robeck was doing. Shouldn’t he be back by now? How long could an amputation take, for the love of God?

I came upon them by the storehouse next to Feodor’s izba. The snow was flying every which way as if the fabric of reality itself was fraying, the wind was howling, but I saw them, I heard them—if only because they did not stay still and they were shouting at each other. A hasty, vexed English I could barely understand. Robeck:
Awoife isamons propety. Hedo whatepleases!
Sawyer:
Not this! Lemme by!
He shoved Robeck in the chest but Robeck stood his ground;
Tiserword gainst his,
he insisted. His arms were spread wide as if to catch Sawyer should he try to dodge. Sawyer’s outstretched arm shook, and so did his voice, his whole body:
Blind me, I saw enough!

“Not what I mean. I mean you a foreigner. She the man’s wife. Captain told you. When in Rome, do as the Romans.”

“Blast your Rome! Blast it!” Sawyer sounded drunk.

I stumbled over Robeck’s tool chest, already half buried in snow, then a canvas bag, blotchy with dark spots. Blood? Robeck’s face, when he turned to me, was made ferocious and wild by the blizzard—snow filled his beard and soaked up the dark stain across the bridge of his nose. “What is the matter?”

Sawyer was not drunk. Just very, very cold. How long had he stood here, under the eaves of the storehouse? He grabbed me by my greatcoat.

“Mr. Velitzyn, please! He gags her and orders her mum so she makes no noise so Captain won’t wake and he welts her ghastly ’cause he likes it. He
likes
it! That’s how he is!” Snow was flying into his mouth. “It’s not about cuckoldry, he’d hurt her anyway and we didn’t—”

He had forgotten to speak Russian to me and just realized it. Or else it was the look on my face that made him stop. “Sorry,” I said. “Who?”

“Good Lord,” Sawyer said shakily and sat into snow. Robeck grumbled, “Feodor, that’s who.” He rubbed his face and inspected what came off. “Oh. Semyon squirted me right in the dial, poor fidget.” He then addressed me, speaking twice as loud and slow. “Mr. Sawyer wants to kill Feodor, that’s what’s the matter. Explain to him, if you will please, that he can’t.”

And with that, everything fell into an order of clarity.
Oh, my good Mr. Sawyer.
The blizzard was already building a snow mound on his wind side. I walked over to him, helped him rise. “Naturally, you can’t. How long have you stood here for?”
I don’t know,
he said. “Let’s go inside for a moment. There
have
to be other ways.”
No there aren’t.

We led Sawyer back to our hut and watched over him the rest of the night. We listened:
What did you see?
How? When? With a smoldering log. With a fist. With a kettle of boiling water. We said that there were authorities out there somewhere, they could be notified. There was the expedition’s priest, Father Vassili, perhaps he could put the fear of God into Feodor? Soothing, diluting words, while inside me, an extreme cold was spreading in a slow chain reaction, chain link by chain link.
There are no wondrous adventures for us, Mr. Sawyer. No giants or Lilliputians, no one-eyed folk, no flying islands, no warlike Amazons, no Mandeville, no Fénelon, no picture-perfect Utopias, no wisdom-uttering horses. There is just Feodor and the world he thrives in, and the rest of the parts are for us to fill in. We are the giants. We are the Lilliputians.

The blizzard raged for another day.

• • •

On Christmas Day, the barracks were reclaimed as a chapel. Every face was washed, every head finger-combed. Semyon sported a brand-new dressing on the stubs of his hands. Father Vassili served the prayer Orthodox-style, yet every one of our Anglicans and Protestants partook hungrily, for great was the need. The Lord’s Prayer
is
the same after all, no matter which language :
О
ТЧ
е
Н
а
Ш
,
ИЖ
е ес
И
на небесех! Да с
ВЯТИТ
с
Я
ИМЯ
Т
ВО
е
.
Our Father, which art in heaven! Hallowed be thy Name.
Every single one of us sang—or mouthed—the canticles, every single one jammed his fingers—or bandaged stumps—into his forehead, shoulders, navel, and teared up, and felt the Holy Spirit upon him. We prayed for our deliverance through the change of season, prayed to succeed, by the Lord’s grace, in escaping from this place via the river Kolyma in the ships of our making. We thanked the Lord for our provisions. The promised reindeer meat had been brought in, the feast awaited, the fires were burning.

And yet there he was, Feodor, tidied up and solemn, playing an altar boy, shuffling, scraping his feet behind Father Vassily, and the ground was not opening before him, the hellfire was not shooting up his body.

After the worship we had a civil ceremony. Captain Billings publicly presented a silver medal to the Yakuti chief who sold us meat, and the awardee looked as proud as a twelve-year-old cadet.

And then—the smell of roast was sweetening the air, a brandy barrel replaced the altar, the chapel became a mess hall. The celebration ran the course of a bonfire, single and big at first, then separating into many clumps of embers, each glowing in its own merriment, its own oblivion. I was out and about, unwilling to go indoors, restless, brooding with thoughts of cruelty and cold. I saw Sawyer staring after Ouchapin. I saw her standing by her mother’s yurt. I saw the Yakuti chief, the one we just awarded, stumble out of Feodor’s izba, drunk and favoring his right arm, our silver medal no longer around his neck. I saw the beautiful ribbon ice still gracing the larch by the izba. I wanted to spread my arms and stretch, I felt pins and needles in my whole body. I felt sadness.

A man becomes a master of another’s life the moment he loses all regard to his own,
says Fénelon. Still, if Feodor hadn’t wobbled out riotously drunk later in the night and headed to the yurt, nothing would have happened. Or I wouldn’t have been able to overpower him. Maybe he felt safe in his kingdom. Maybe he did not believe in me as a threat. The
tempa-chura
man. I redirected him to the smithy merely by holding him
by the collar. He trudged there on his own two feet, encumbered only by his urge to stomp and twist to the song he was slurring out, “The noble masters—will go into nooses! And deacons and merchants—into iron collars! And factory bosses—onto birch trees!”

All was dark and cold inside the shed. There were snowdrifts and cinder, and a stale leftover reek of the recent fire. I struck him across the back with forge tongs, and then, when he turned, enraged more than injured, in the sternum. He kept coming. I kept swinging. Luckily his rage was too unruly to target me with any precision. He raged at everything at once. He managed to uproot and heft the anvil at me—but lost balance and toppled over. He turned his back to scramble off, and I hit him one, two—many times, I beat him flat to the ground. He insulted me even as he pleaded. “
Пус
ТИ
, су
К
а
—Let go, bitch!”