The Surfacing (28 page)

That afternoon he shuffled across the ice and stood panting at the edge of the world.
He studied the horizon. One day he would spot a lone figure far out on the ice. Staggering.
Starving. Blind. One of Franklin's men, come to reproach him for having given up
hope. But not today. Today it was too cold. Directly behind him, on a pole planted
fifty yards from the ship, the mercury stood at 27°, in the negative. Under his furs,
his lungs were tingling, almost pleasantly. In his mouth was the fine taste of blood.
He stood a long time trying to fix what he saw. It was noon. The day seemed to be
growing clearer, the silt settling, and he thought he saw something sharper pushing
through, far to the south. A gargantuan black mass. A bottomless shaft in a violet
sky. It was the mountains of their unknown island, he supposed. He would not see
it again. Once again – as if corrected – the course of their drift was west and northwest.
Meekly, they submitted themselves to the vast, mindless plan.

14th February

On the 14th of February, returning from his walk, Morgan spotted two ravens rummaging
in their rubbish heap. He refused to shoot. He was already too fond of them. It was
four months since they'd seen another living thing.

Inside, the stoves were kept going day and night, gave off a furious marmalade glow.
Apart from meal times and watch duty, most of the men now kept to their beds.

Cabot! they roared. What's on the menu?

By now Cabot knew the routine. He knew their need to torture themselves. Tonight,
he announced grandly, for our Saint Valentine's Feast, we start with oyster soup.
Followed by roast beef and gravy. Followed by trotters with a white wine sauce. To
finish, whipped cream and jelly cake.

Morgan spent hours sketching them. He had them sit. He scrutinized the faces for
flaws.

Why don't you draw me? she asked.

She stood naked before the mirror. She turned full face, three-quarter, profile.
The distance from that other woman – the rivalry – was narrowing daily. She no longer
minded his stare.

Staring, he found he could admire the transformation, but not the thing itself. The
breasts were now a preposterous size, shone like polished wood. Her body was ripening.
It had become even more pregnant, somehow. She was the only one aboard not visibly
in decline.

He remembered DeHaven boasting, a few days after they'd returned to Disko, of his
bargain with one of the native girls. Fresh meat, DeHaven said, at once confiding
and taunting. When you haven't had it for a few weeks, there's nothing on God's green
earth half as good. Think of it, he said. Red, raw, staring up at you. The feel of
it, warm, in your mouth. The juices running down your chin. I'm telling you, Dick,
it was pure sin.

He's kicking! she said, turning to face him. Look!

There was no need, he was already staring, but the bald
fact of it was too big for
his mind to fit around. A young child, fully formed, somehow living inside her, that
was one day going to come out. Many times he'd imagined a slow deflation. The protuberance,
instead of pushing ever farther into his world, would slowly recede. The thing was
not impossible. His own clothes hung on him looser than ever. That very morning he
had punched a new hole in his belt.

Look! she said again. She meant the skin, stretched bright and shining, and the world
within. You can feel it, she said. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, she
stepped towards him, and pulled up his shirt. She was crushing herself against him,
flesh against flesh, as hard as she could. She wanted him to feel it as she did.
As though she herself, like a Russian doll, were somehow inside him, Morgan, and
inside her something smaller again.

20th February

From the Crow's Nest, he was surveying the ruins again. To the west, a ragged horizon,
an iron sky. Overhead, he had never seen aurora so bright, meteors so finely etched.
But all too brief for comfort. Only the moon was constant, refused to die. Many an
hour Morgan had spent studying her through the glass. Under her stare, the world
was the colour of ash. That noon, to the south, it had looked to be soaked in piss.
That was the sun, he told himself, every day now closer to the horizon. That was
what the calendar said, yet it was colder than ever before. On the 18th they had
touched minus 40°. And now the wind, he thought, was shuffling about a bit to the
east. He stood there swaying, his eyes closed, listening
to the voices again. He
would not be surprised if tonight the mercury froze.

All night, it sounded like the carpenters gone mad. It sounded like the plates being
popped, or bolted home. It was the ice splintering. It was the porcelain cold. Morgan
told anyone who would listen that this was a good thing. It was a wonderful way of
dispersing the old, tough ice. It would be easier to navigate, he said, when the
break-up came. He was smiling, but the hammering had frightened him, knocked something
loose. He did not know why he suddenly felt so close to disaster, to shame. He lay
awake most of the night. He woke with the taste of fear in his mouth. He felt not
weaker but lighter. Something had drained away.

After breakfast he rounded up the other officers, and Petersen. He wanted to be told
what to do, when finally they were crushed.

No one spoke.

DeHaven? Morgan said. You've never been shy with suggestions.

DeHaven said he wanted to go home. But it would be better if the thing could be managed
without them all freezing or starving to death.

Mr MacDonald, Morgan said. You have some rather strong views, which you have been
honest enough to share with me, with regard to the suggestion, my suggestion, that
the best course of action may simply be patience.

It is true that I personally believe it unwise to place our hopes in the ship.

Go on, Morgan said. Tell us why.

In my opinion, in view of her construction and current disposition, it is unlikely
she will last very much longer. The longer we wait to abandon, the more our health
and stores decline. Unless we act promptly, my fear is that when finally the crisis
comes, we may be unable to face it.

Mr MacDonald, Morgan said, let us imagine that, on quitting the ship, we want to
make for land. In what direction, at
what distance? We do not know, but set that
consideration aside. Let us imagine we make land due south. There is nothing to
suggest animal life ever ranges so far north so early in the year –

Present company excepted, DeHaven said.

By animal life, you mean the natives? said MacDonald.

I don't, but what if I did?

They can feed us, MacDonald said.

Mr MacDonald, let's try not to forget just who and where we are. Do you honestly
believe people so far north, so early in the year, could have food enough for strangers,
and if so, that they would be willing to share it, and if so, that they could have
enough to feed our entire party for anything but the shortest period, before their
surplus stocks, and then their essential stocks are run down? Our very best hope,
by that plan, is to prolong a little while our misery, and involve others in it to
boot. Then what?

The presence of a woman and a child might well encourage the natives' sympathies,
MacDonald said. Or a woman with child, according to our schedule.

Do you really think so?

They are not Christian, but by all accounts they are a noble race.

They all glanced at Petersen. He was asleep, as usual, on MacDonald's bunk.

In any case, Mr Morgan, I think you are taking rather the bleakest view of our prospects,
MacDonald said. God is good, as Captain Myer liked to say.

No, Mr MacDonald, I am not taking the bleakest view. I am simply trying to determine
our ability to overcome the obstacles we are likely to encounter if we all now set
out together over the ice, as you so blithely suggest. And having spent four weeks
hauling in better weather, with the lightest sledge, and the fittest men, I believe
I can judge the matter at least as well as any man aboard.

As you say, that's your own personal opinion, MacDonald said.

Just how much do you think we can haul? Morgan said, almost shouting. How long do
you think we can last? How many weeks or months of tremendous toil, over uncertain
ice, at inhuman temperatures, day after day, until – what? Until the miraculous apparition
of an expedition ship, along a stretch of coast where no ship but our own has ever
passed? And all this with a woman and newborn baby in tow?

It may be that Franklin's ships preceded us. Is that not why we are here?

We're to be saved by Sir John Franklin? That's your plan? Gentlemen, I rest his case.

You seem to have everything calculated to perfection, MacDonald said. A pity there
is no room in your plan for hope.

I hate to agree with my friend, DeHaven told MacDonald, but he's not wrong, as to
the child's prospects. The thing is simply not possible, in such cold. Not for the
first year, at any rate.

That settles it then, MacDonald said. We wait aboard until we freeze or crush, then
we stand out on the ice and wait to freeze or starve. That's our plan. To go on what
we're doing now, indefinitely.

Let me ask you a simple question, Morgan said. Why, if you think life aboard so perilous,
did you encourage Miss Rink to come along?

MacDonald said nothing.

He thought it would force us to turn back, DeHaven said. He wasn't thinking of you,
or her, or even the child. He was thinking of himself.

27th February

He watched her lick her forefinger. It flicked the charts back and forth. The latitudes
were marked in red. Afterwards they stared at a map of Denmark. She trailed her finger
across the page, pronouncing the names. For no reason he could think of, he showed
her a drawing he'd done of his father's house.

You're disappointed, he said. You expected something bigger. Something more substantial.

Let's say, had it been bigger, I wouldn't have been surprised.

That doesn't say much for how I present myself, does it?

Quite the contrary.

That afternoon there had been a light fall of snow. The ice was stuttering dryly
against the hull. She'd thought he was out of her range, was what she meant.

At the dinner-table she produced his picture again. MacDonald and Brooks leaned in
for a closer look, and he made no effort to parry their insults.

Nice little stables, DeHaven said. But where's the main house?

He remembered the summers there. August. Parties in the garden. Sunsets. Bonfires
blazing on top of the maple trees. The swallows shooting overhead, their shadows
dripping down the white walls like molten lead. The years had passed. He'd never
before felt much attached to the old place. Now he found he was no longer prepared
to run it down as he always had. Since his father's death, it was now his own.

Some days the thing was no more than a rumour, that in a week or two or four there
would be a child aboard. He had to force himself, consciously, to remember who that
child was. Who would one day look to him for attention and affection. Considering
the matter as coldly as he could, he did not think he had any to give. Were the choice
his alone, he decided, he would not entrust a child to his own care. Taking care
of himself already felt an endless chore. It would be sheer presumption to take
on another charge. These were sane, measured
considerations, he thought. A showcase
of self-knowledge and humility. He would muster something, he supposed, to meet the
need. All his life, he'd watched other men at it – uncles, cousins, friends. He'd
seen his own father try. He might have the measure of the role, as much as they.
The child might not be quite so wise as he feared. In certain roles, Morgan knew,
he was more convincing than he expected to be. In spite of everything he might find
himself adored.

28th February

She was standing up in the bath. The water slid off her like oil. The wet hair was
plotted carelessly. She dried herself off. They went together to her room, but as
they were going through the doorway she seemed to stumble, propped herself against
the jamb. She stood with her eyes closed, looking inwards. Something was wrong, something
new. Her entire body had somehow tightened, as though preparing to be hit. Eventually
she opened her eyes and found him. He helped her onto the bed. She lay in the heat,
in her underthings, and stiffened and softened and stiffened again. There was a new
urgency in it now. He locked the door. A minute later she let out a sigh, a little
moan, not unlike the protests of pleasure he'd heard so long ago. It had passed.

She hoisted her nightdress. By now the skin seemed dangerously tight, ready to rip.
But it had not ripped, it had continued to stretch, week after week. It had a near-transparent
quality now. Week after week, he said, as though he had some sense of progress, which
he did not. The thing was as new as it had ever been.

Look! she said. Hiccups!

The skin was moving, blatantly. Times he had stared baffled at the artery pulsing
happily in his own neck, beating time to a tune he would never hear. This was not
the same. The thing was not merely repeating its lessons by rote. Something was in
there, trying to get out.

Touch it, she said. Quick!

So far he had always refused. He wanted to take her aside and spell it out brutally
– that they were each on their own in this thing. She would disagree. She had the
perfect contradiction right under her hands, answering her constantly. She seemed
to think he could have it too, had only to do as she did – place the flat of his
hand against the warm, tight flesh.

Are you afraid? she said.

He had refused so often that a refusal now could add no offence. But she had accused
him of cowardice, and for once he let the notion in. It was his way out. If he accepted
the challenge, the threat of a slight, he could surmount it. And so, with a boy's
bravery, he reached out his hand.