The Surfacing (43 page)

Make a wish, came the prompt.

He remembered birthdays as a boy. The parcel waiting on the mantel. The tightness
in his chest. That morning he'd shot a seal and watched it sink. Far to the south,
through the glass, he'd watched the divers drop out of the air, like they were dropping
dead to the ground. Now, he imagined gifting Tommy – the same but somehow bigger,
older – his first gun. Imagined standing behind him, arms reaching around his shoulders,
teaching him to aim.

Come on, someone said.

Globs of wax were crawling down the side of the candle, mettle-thick and mettle-white,
and still he refused to blow it out.

July 20th. Today again I had the men transfer all our worldly belongings to the far
edge of the neighbouring floe, a distance of perhaps a furlong at best. In the men's
minds and muscles, effort equalled progress. On the page of his journal, too, his
words made it sound like an advance. On a map of the world, lined and numbered, it
was not. Afterwards, naturally, Dr DeHaven made a show of admiring the view, he wrote.
A change of scenery, he called it, and said he approved. He said it would do us good.

Every morning now there is a new skin on the pools of thaw-water that blot the floe.
It is partly this new wind, I believe, and partly proof that the sun's power is now
in decline. Today again the pieces of the puzzle seem closer than before. In perhaps
another month the general cohesion will begin, and proceed until the Arctic Ocean
is again one single solid block. Somehow, I find this a comforting thought.

One by one they stood out their empty tins to collect the rain, and one by one he
threw his sealed tins into the water, with his latest report of their progress. In
thus acquainting the reader with our endeavours, he wrote. He had not acquainted
anyone with anything yet. Thus far, not a single other soul had seen a word he'd
written. He was merely setting his words adrift in the world, hoping some friendly
force would carry them to a proper destination. He performed the ritual but no longer
believed. Screwing down the lid of the tin, he felt he was condemning it. This note
would never be read, no more than those which preceded it. As though to be rid of
the thing, he flung it as far out into the water as he could, with all his remaining
strength. He heard it drop, watched the birds lift into the air. He watched them
settle again. In the awkward canals, the water was alive, gem-like. The world was
ablaze. The air as bland as a June evening in the old world, the garden, the regiment.

Still this southerly wind has not failed, he wrote. Only he seemed to know the consequence.
The men seem blissfully ignorant of the true nature of our predicament, he wrote,
that we are being constantly carried back towards the ship, despite our Trojan labours
at pushing south. Today I totted up my columns again.
Travel
now 58 days. What is
opposite, under
Gain
, I hesitate to write a second time, but Kitty, it seems tantalizingly
near.

24th July

They had a proper fight, in a proper ring. Cabot and Banes. Morgan didn't ask why.
He didn't want to have to untangle the knot. It was cold and damp. They were hungry
and half blind. They were lost. He was surprised there was not trouble more often.

Now Cabot was sitting on a crate with his shirt front pressed to his face. Younger,
Morgan had boxed no few proper contests, and recognized Cabot's disappointment, how
fierce it was. He himself had renounced such exposure. He stood by the boat contemplating
the man. This was his turn, Morgan thought. This was the watershed. Henceforth he
would only ever put in a respectable effort, never again a phenomenal one. Henceforth
there would be some extra element of measure in everything he did. Orderly advance
or orderly retreat, in another world, where winning and losing were not quite so
far apart.

With considerable effort, Cabot was now trying to pull his shirt over his head. The
cloth was wet with sweat, almost transparent, pasted to the skin. It was too tight.
Cabot could not manage it. Suddenly he was flailing and thrashing, ripping wildly
at the thing clinging to him. There was a long wretched rip. Then another. Still
Cabot was struggling, trapped.

Morgan could stand it no longer. He stepped over, to help pull the man free. The
shirt ceded with a generous sigh. The wallop and smack, as Cabot flung it down. Afterwards
he sat sobbing, face hidden in his hands.

Someone had set soap and a bucket of water nearby. It was for both men, to work themselves
over, then work themselves over with snow. Banes was still standing a little way
off, waiting politely. He caught Morgan's eye and raised his eyebrows, but Morgan
quickly shook his head.

Cabot should have known better, of course, than to make the challenge. Morgan should
have known better than to let it run. Banes was so much the harder man. But Cabot
had nursed a reckless hope, as though anger must be ballast enough.

Morgan hunkered down in front of him, a hand on each shoulder, trying to look him
straight in the eye. Cabot was staring at the ice between his feet. Mumbling to himself.
As though he alone of all the men could not hear the kind and wise father's voice.
Listen to me, Morgan was saying, trying to sound severe. Listen to me now. It's over.
Finished. Done. You have to swallow it, that's all. He sounded like he knew what
he was talking about. As though he himself had been in the ring. As though he too,
tomorrow, would be pissing red on white.

26th July

From outside came the sound of a foghorn, and not a man so much as lifted his head.
It was not a foghorn. It was the wind in the mouth of an empty tin. Not distant but
local, and no summons, but mere noise. They knew the difference by now.

They were now in the last part of July. By now their stories were all well bled,
and they ate their breakfast without a word. It was a solid silence, but for the
sound of each spoon scraping its own little tin pot. The soup was a rude mix of barley
and bread-dust, and other scraps and sundries he tried not to recognize. They prodded
the stuff with their spoons. They bowed their heads. Obediently, the spoons ferried
the stuff to their mouths.

Cabot, DeHaven said. Yet another triumph. He had closed his eyes for ecstasy.

They sat all day in the boat, not quite sure what they were
waiting for. Officially,
they were waiting for more heat, or more cold, or more wind, or wind from some other
quarter, to melt, or freeze, or open up the floe, or properly close it.

You are Agamemnon at Aulis, DeHaven told his friend.

He was waiting to set out, Morgan said. We're trying to go home.

They tried again to shove the enormous blocks aside with their poles. This useless
porridge, he wrote, in which element we can neither properly sail nor push nor row.
The hours passed peacefully, unhindered. Only the misers had any shred of tobacco
left. For weeks now the majority had been smoking tea-leaves. The more adventurous
had taken to smoking Promethean primers, mixed with regular match-paper, rolled in
pages of the Bible. It was another of Cabot's concoctions, to which Morgan refused
to object, as long as the tarp was folded back.

They played whist. They played casino. With their catapults, the men bombarded their
former camp. Cabot sat alone in the stern mechanically bailing out onto the ice.
He looked a deeply unhappy man. He no longer knew where to rig his faith. Nothing
had changed, and their crisis was come.

What's the secret? Morgan asked.

There's no secret, DeHaven said. He was gathering. Play the cards in your hand and
the cards on the blanket, that's all. Stop trying to play everyone else's cards too.

The wind was swinging round to the east, setting them in a slow clockwise spin. The
men stood motionless, shut their eyes, but their orbit could not be felt. Morgan
told them to line up something on the boat with something much farther off.

31st July

From close by came a gnawing, mechanical sound, that seemed very nearly to be coming
from inside his own head. It was Cabot, grinding his teeth again. Morgan drew his
hand up out of his bag, groped at the dark until he found the right face, and touched
his fingertip to the jaw. It was quiet, instantly.

Afterwards he slept. In the early morning, he began to dream. In the depths of his
dream a man was shouting, but even as he dreamed he knew to pay it no mind. They
were always too ready to see a new lead, land, a water-sky. The slightest hint of
anything strange – even bear droppings – still sent them galloping across the snow.
They were too ready to be saved. It's nothing, he promised himself, already too anxious
to stay asleep. Because there was something else under the shouting, that was not
quite right. It was a softer layer – a kind of a gentle, mechanical whirr. Soon it
was a ferocious metallic clattering, boring past the tent. By the time Morgan woke
properly, it was the only sound in the world.

Rats! Cabot was screaming. Rats!

That's not rats! shouted someone else.

Morgan parted the flap, pulling on his boots. The entire floe was shimmering, like
a field of wheat. They seemed not to be advancing, merely swarming over the ground,
like bees on a bush. He could smell them, he thought. The day was noticeably darker.
That was how many they were.

He tried to fix his eyes on a single one, to follow its progress. It was impossible.
They were too many, too crowded and too busy, and all too alike. Many had stopped
to sniff at their boat, their crates, their slops. He watched one creeping along
the gunwale, at the bow. It reached its forepaw over the edge and sadly drew it back.
He watched the little whiskers working, the little claws. Soon it was testing the
air again, stretching farther. Suddenly it fell.

The men were thrashing at them with blankets, with knotted shirts, trying to keep
them away from the tent. Cabot had
hoisted the open food bags into the air, on the
steering-oar, to keep them safe. But they were scampering up the man's body, his
raised arms, and on up the wood. Morgan listened to his scream.

Within ten minutes they were gone. The ground looked trampled, soiled. In the distance,
the gulls were swooping down to carry them off. He watched one struggle in the beak,
drop and fall and bounce.

They look like they know where they're going, DeHaven said.

Do they? said Morgan. Perhaps you want to follow them?

They can't run forever without food.

Maybe they'll run till they drop.

Do you honestly imagine they've left food and land to run mindlessly over the ice,
and on into the open sea?

Morgan shrugged. Who could say? Who knew what promise they'd overheard?

They themselves had been wandering aimlessly. It was the favourite occupation of
their race. He saw it now with arrogant clarity. The lemmings showed him something
else. What that was, he did not know. But he envied their sense of urgency and purpose.

1st August

Daly stood at the door of the tent.

It's Cabot, sir, he said.

What about him?

He's out beyond the hummocks.

Doing for himself what no other man can do, Morgan said.

No, sir. He's took your fowling piece.

Morgan was suddenly interested. A bear? he said – but even as he said it he knew
the shotgun was useless against a bear. Still, in the first, nice panic he was scanning
left and right, wondering where the rifle was, thinking only of how the flesh would
be a resurrection.

You'd better come, Daly said. I believe he's a mind to use it on himself.

He was sitting on a block of ice. He held the gun by the barrel, with both hands.
He'd made a deep dent in the snow between his feet, to lodge the stock. He'd obviously
heard them coming, but did not look up.

Suddenly DeHaven stepped forward and yanked the gun from Cabot's grip. Cabot made
no special effort to keep it, to resist.

That wasn't so hard, was it? DeHaven said brightly. He balanced the thing in his
hands, and seemed to be admiring the weight. He tucked the stock to his shoulder,
held it level and wheeled slowly, as though scouting for game. The tip stopped six
inches from Cabot's face. Cabot refused to look away. He was looking right up through
the sights.

Would you like me to do it for you? DeHaven said.

Cabot showed no sign he'd heard.

You're hoping we'll beg you not to, is that it? Dear old Cabot, that we couldn't
possibly manage without? Him and his wondrous knack of splitting a tin of pork. Is
that it? Is that what's behind this whole song and dance?

Still Cabot did not react. It was a private conspiracy.

One less mouth to feed, is all it will be, DeHaven said. One less body to warm.

The barrel tip by now was right up to the mouth. As it touched the lips, both Cabot's
hands came up instinctively, to hold it off.

No dithering now, DeHaven ordered. Be quick about it, at least. You press the trigger,
you won't even hear the shot. He sounded angry. He flicked the wing. The action was
loud and clear. He shifted his weight to his front foot, shoving the barrel right
up against Cabot's teeth. Still Cabot refused to cede. In the end DeHaven stepped
back and left him holding the gun to his own face.

They watched and waited. Then Cabot was doubled over. They watched him retch and
watched it steam. Afterwards they watched the pool of vomit burrowing.

Leave him be, Morgan said. He turned and walked away, back towards the tent.

He could not feel as sorry for Cabot as he might. It was too easy to imagine the
strange buoyancy the man must now feel, the relief. Morgan himself knew it too well,
from his drinking days. This was always the best time, these first few minutes, when
you felt cleaned out and calm. This, now, was your reward. You'd done your penance,
and were ready anew to meet the world head-on.