Urien's Voyage (7 page)

“The hard trials are over. Far from us now are the morose banks where we thought we would die of boredom, farther still the shores with their forbidden pleasures; let us acknowledge that we are happy to have known them. For one can reach this point only through them; the loftiest cities are reached by the most perilous routes; we are going toward the divine city. Yesterday's tarnished sun is tinged with rose. Resistance first quickened our wills; nor was our idleness on the gray swards futile, for when the landscape disappeared, we were left with our wills completely free; because of our boredom, our indeterminate souls managed in those regions to become sincere. And when we act, now, it will surely be in keeping with our aims.”
*

The sun was rising as we began our prayers; the sea radiated with reflected splendors; rays shot across the waves, and the illuminated sheets of ice, vibrant and responsive, shuddered.

Toward midday some whales appeared; they were swimming in a flock; they would dive under the sheets of ice and reappear farther away; but they stayed at a distance from the ship.

It was now necessary to steer clear of mountains of ice; as their bases were slowly melted away by waters still not very cold, they would suddenly capsize; their prismatic peaks crumbled and disappeared in the agitated sea, churned the water like a tempest, shot up again with cascades all around them, and kept oscillating for a long time in the tumultuous waters, uncertain of their posture. The majestic impact of their fall echoed across the sonorous waves. Sometimes walls of ice fell into the spouts of foam, and all these moving mountains were incessantly transformed.

Toward evening we saw one so large that it was no longer transparent; at first we mistook it for a new territory covered with immense glaciers. Rivulets plummeted from its summits; white bears ran along its edges. The ship came so close to it that its main yard brushed against a snag and shattered some delicate icicles.

We saw some in which were imbedded huge stones torn from the natal glacier and which therefore carried over the waves fragments of alien rock.

We saw others which had imprisoned whales when drawn together by some mysterious force; above the level of the ocean, they seemed to be swimming in the air. Leaning over the bridge, we watched the moving icebergs.

Evening fell. At sunset the mountains were opalescent. New ones appeared; they trailed laminated algae, which, long and fine as hair, appeared first as captive sirens, then as a vast reticulation; the moon shone through as a jellyfish in a net, as nacreous holothurian; then moving freely through the open sky, the moon turned azure-colored. Pensive stars went astray, whirled, plunged into the sea.

Toward midnight appeared a gigantic vessel; the moon illuminated it mysteriously; its rigging stood motionless; the bridge was dark. It passed close beside us; there was no sound of oars, no noise from the crew. We finally realized that it was caught in the ice, between two icebergs that had closed in on it. It passed on by, silently, and disappeared.

Toward morning, a little while before dawn, a cool breeze brought alongside us an islet of purest ice; in the middle, like a globed fruit, like a magic egg, gleamed an immortal jewel. It was a morning star on the waves, and we could not tire of gazing at it. It was as pure as a ray from Lyra; it vibrated at dawn like a melody; but as soon as the sun rose, the ice that had encased it melted and allowed it to fall into the sea.

That day we fished for whales.

This marks the end of my memories and the beginning of my undated journal.

*   *   *

Into the abyss transplendent with tempest-tossed spume, where no man had ever intruded upon the savage feasts of the albatrosses and eiders, Eric descended, swinging like a diver from a thick elastic cord and brandishing at the end of his naked arm a wide swan-slaying knife. A humid current rises from the depths where the green waves writhe and the wind drives the spume. The great frightened birds wheel and deafen him with the beating of their wings. Bending over and gripping the rock to which the cord is attached, we watch: Eric is above their nests; he descends into the heart of the turmoil; in snow-colored feathers and exquisite down sleep the young eiders; Eric the bird-killer puts his hand on the covey; terrified, the little ones awaken and struggle, trying to escape; but Eric buries the knife in their feathers and laughs when he feels their warm blood on his hands. The blood streams down their feathers, and their beating wings splatter it on the rock. Their blood streams down to the water, and their blood-drenched down is scattered by the waves. The great startled birds are trying to protect their young! Eric, menaced by their claws, slashes them with his knife. And then from the waves arises a vortex of enraged spume; driven between the walls of the abyss by the sea wind, white as the swans' down, it rises, rises, rises, and driven furiously upward with its neverending spirals of feathers, disappears in the sky which we see, whirlpool blue, when we look upward.

On these schistous cliffs the guillemots build their nests. The females remain perched; the males fly around them; they cry out stridently and their cries and the noise of their wings deafen anyone who approaches. They fly in such great hordes that they darken the sky in passing; they wheel ceaselessly. Grave, motionless, never shrieking, the females stand expectantly in a row on a huge ridge where the rock overhangs slightly. They sit on their solitary eggs, deposited there furtively, like droppings, and not in nests but on the bare sloping rock. They sit there, rigid and grave, holding the eggs between their feet and tails to keep them from rolling off.

The ship ventured between the sheer cliffs, into a dark, narrow fiord; the rocks seemed to drop sharply to unknown depths in the transparent water, appearing at times to be the reflection of the cliffs; but the depths were dark and the cliffs white with birds. The males above our heads made so much noise that we could not hear each other. We were advancing slowly; they seemed not to see us. But after Eric, a skilled slinger, hurled a few stones into the opaque cloud and killed several of them with each stone, causing them to fall near the ship, then their redoubled cries enraged their mates on the cliff; leaving behind the nuptial rock and the hope of progeny, all of them took flight, emitting horribly strident screams. It was a fearsome army; we were ashamed of the commotion, especially when we saw all the doomed eggs, now forsaken and no longer held against the ridge, roll down the cliff. They rolled the entire length of the cliff, their broken shells leaving horrible white and yellow trails. Some of the more devoted brooders tried in taking flight to carry their eggs in their claws, but the eggs soon fell out and broke on the blue sea, dirtying the water. We were upset by the commotion and left in great haste, for the terrible stench of the coveys was beginning to engulf us.

… In the evening, at the time for prayers, Paride had not returned; we looked for him and called out to him until night, but we were unable to find out what had happened to him.

The Eskimos live in snow huts; their huts, stretched out across the plain, look like tombstones; but their souls are entombed with their bodies; a wisp of smoke rises from each hut. The Eskimos are ugly; they are small; there is no tenderness in their love-making; they are not voluptuous and their joy is theological; they are neither evil nor good; their cruelty is unmotivated. Inside their huts it is dark; one can hardly breathe there. They neither work nor read; nor do they slumber; a small lighted lamp mitigates the long night; as the night is motionless, they have never known the meaning of an hour; as they need not hurry, then-thoughts are slow; induction is unknown to them, but from three tenuous hypotheses they deduct a metaphysics; and the succession of their thoughts, interrupted from start to finish, devolves from God to man, while their life becomes this succession; they measure their age by the point which they have reached; some have never managed to arrive at the point of their existence; others have passed it by; still others have not noticed it. They have no common tongue; they are forever reckoning. Oh! I could say much more, for I understand them quite well. They are stunted, pug-nosed, slovenly. Their women have no diseases; they make love in the dark.

I am speaking of the more intelligent Eskimos; there are others who, at the dawning of the solemn day, cut short the succession of the syllogism and depart for the frozen sea and the melting snow in search of reindeer and moose. They also fish for whales and return with the dark, laden with a new supply of blubber.

Each climate has its rigors, each land its diseases. In the warm lands we had seen the plague; near the marshlands, lingering illnesses. Now an illness was springing up from the very absence of sensual delights. The salty provisions, the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the studied resistance in which we took such great pride; the joy of living wretchedly in unkind lands, and the strong attraction of the outside world on our enraptured souls gradually eroded our strength; and while our souls had then longed, serene, to undertake supreme conquests, scurvy was beginning to afflict all of us and we remained dejected on the deck of the ship, trembling for fear that we would die before finishing our tasks.
*
Oh, chosen tasks! Most precious tasks! For four days we remained in that condition, not far from the land of our expectation; we saw its icy peaks plunging into the slushy sea; and I believe that our voyage would indeed have come to an end at that point if not for the exquisite liquor that Eric had taken from the Eskimos' hut.

Our blood had become too thin; it was escaping from all over our bodies; it oozed from our gums, from our nostrils, from our eyelids, from under our nails; it seemed at times to be nothing more than a stagnant humor and almost to cease circulating; the slightest movement made it pour out as from a tilted cup; under the skin, in the tenderest areas it formed livid spots; our heads swam and we were overcome by a feeling of nausea; our necks ached; because our teeth were loose and shook in their alveoli, we could not eat dry sea biscuit; cooked in water it formed a thick pap in which our teeth stuck and remained. Rice tore the skin from our gums; about all we could do was drink. And lying listlessly on the deck all day long, we dreamed of ripe fruits, with fresh tasty meat, of fruits from the islands we had once known, from the pernicious islands. But even then I believe that we would have refused to taste them. We rejoiced because Paride was no longer with us and did not share our suffering. But the hemostatic liquor cured our sickness.

It was the evening of the last day; the sun that marked the season's end had disappeared on the horizon; a crepuscular glow remained long after its disappearance. The sunset was without agony, without purple on the clouds; the sun had disappeared slowly; its refracted rays still reached us. But it was already beginning to become very cold; the sea around us had frozen once more, imprisoning the ship. The ice thickened by the hour and constantly threatened to crush the ship; it offered us only the flimsiest protection, and we resolved to leave it. But I want to state clearly that our decision resulted neither from despair nor from timorous prudence but rather from a maniacal urge, for we could still break the ice, flee from the winter and follow the course of the sun; but that would have taken us backward. And so, preferring the harshest shores, provided that they were new, we moved toward the night, our day having come to an end. We knew that happiness is not simply escape from sadness; we were going, proud and strong, beyond the worst sorrows to the purest joy.

From parts of the ship we had fashioned a sled. After hitching the big reindeer to the sled, we began to load it with wood, axes and ropes. The last rays were disappearing as we set out toward the pole. On the deck of the ship was one spot, hidden by piles of cordage, which we never went near. Oh sad day's end, when before leaving the ship, I walked the full length of the deck! Behind the rolls of cordage, when I untied them to take them along, alas, what did I see?

Paride!

We had sought for him in vain; I supposed that he, too weak to stir and too sick to reply, had hidden there like a dog searching for a place to die. But was this really Paride?

He was hairless, beardless; his teeth lay white on the deck around him, where he had spat them out. His skin was mottled, like a piece of cloth on which the colors have run; it was violet and pearl; nothing was more pitiful to see. He had lost his eyelashes, and at first I was unable to determine whether he was looking at us or at something else, for he could no longer smile. His huge, swollen, mummified, spongy gums had retracted and split his lips and now bulged outward like a large fruit; protruding from the middle was one white tooth, his last. He tried to extend his hand; his bones were too fragile and broke. I wanted to grasp his hand; it fell apart in mine, leaving between my fingers blood and rotted flesh. I think that he saw tears in my eyes, for he seemed to understand then that it was he who was crying, and I think that he still nurtured some hope concerning his condition which my tears of pity dissipated, for suddenly he uttered a raucous cry which was supposed to be a sob, and with the hand that I had not crushed, in a gesture of despair, a tragic and truly hopeless gesture, seizing the tooth and his lips, ironically and as if in jest, he suddenly tore out a great strip of flesh and fell back, dead.

That evening, as a sign of mourning and farewell, we burned the ship. Night was approaching majestically, moving in slowly. The flames leapt up triumphantly; the sea was aflame; the great masts and beams burned and then, the vessel having been consumed, the purple flames sank once again. Leaving the irreparable past, we set out for the polar sea.

Silence of night on the snow. Nocturnal silence. Solitude, and you, calm relief of death. Vast timeless plain; the sun's last rays have withdrawn. All shapes are frozen; cold holds sway on the calm plain, and stillness—and stillness. And serenity. O pure rapture of our souls! Nothing stirs in the air, but a congealed radiance emanates from the glistening icebergs and hovers in the air. All is pale nocturnal blue—shall I say lunar blue?