When the Night Comes (13 page)

CAPTAIN'S NOTE:
We have spent the past six hours in heavy ice covered in a deep layer of snow. There is no open water in sight of the vessel, just frozen leads. First officer is at the helm, but we have been unable to move more than a few meters in any direction.

I
wake to see Erik's face, blurred, above me. A pain in the side of my head.

“Bo?” he says. “Bo, it's eight
AM
.”

I jump up. I can feel the emptiness of my stomach.

“We're stuck,” he says and he points to the porthole.

I can't register what he is saying. I squint, focus. Outside, a landscape of white—only white. We are not moving.

“I have to get back,” he says. “The expeditioners are hungry.”

I stand there, afraid. How did I not wake? I always wake when the engine sound changes. All of us do. Always.

The engine sounds are the best sleeping pill. The constant sound of them cuts out all other sounds. The sound of the engine makes you feel that everything is okay, that everything is fine. You are safe. You can
sleep. But even if we just slow down, or speed up a tiny bit, if the engine noise changes, I wake.

Last night I slept like the dead.

I had been dead.

And we are stuck.

MS
Nella Dan

VOYAGE 2, 1986/1987 SEASON

18th December 1986

POSITION:
63° 26.000' S, 120° 5.000' E

CAPTAIN'S NOTE:
Vessel surrounded by ice. Dense pack ice in all directions. Icebergs in the distance.

Four weeks. Five weeks.

We are still stuck.

The work goes on.

There is food—plenty of food. It would take many months to run out, but the fresh vegetables are going. Now we are making salad with grated carrot and lemon juice. Just carrot. No one wants to eat it.

Twelve weeks since we left Hobart. A lifetime.

The winterers have already been so long without fresh fruit, fresh vegetables. They ask me if there are any bananas. They ask with such hope.

“No,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

I ask them if there is something I can make them, anything special, but they shake their heads.

“I just can't stop thinking about bananas.”

In the storeroom, cabbage, grapefruit, cauliflower, carrots, potatoes. In the coolroom, enough meat and supplies to last.

In the freezer, a body bag that we must pass every day.

Somehow we have run out of onions.

I sit on my bunk, blink against the light flooding in through my small, round porthole. The sun is relentless. It won't leave me alone—won't let me rest. The night, it never comes.

Work goes on—breakfast, lunch, dinner—only we are one man down, one man gone. Today, at lunch, I put the palm of my hand against the hot plate.

Klaus grabbed me, shook me hard.

“Are you mad?” he yelled, but then he softened. He sent me to the doctor and then to my cabin, my hand bandaged. He told me to rest.

I don't know why I did it. Maybe to see if I could feel something. I don't know. I wasn't really there.

The sun shines down outside. The sun is God.

I see movement, shadows. I stand closer to the glass and out the porthole small figures move on the ice. Men dressed in snow gear, blue, yellow, arms waving, legs running. A black-and-white ball in the air, flying.

A game of football.

I pick up the camera off my desk—Soren's camera. I wonder what's on the roll of film inside. What photos did he take? I aim the lens at the porthole, look through the viewfinder. A perfect circle of light against the black inside my cabin. I take the shot.

Such a strange thing to see. A game of football on the ice. A game of football by the side of a red ship in the middle of the frozen ocean.

I put the camera back down on my desk. I look at my bandaged hand. I have this urge to run. I put on my snow boots, my warm jacket and gloves. I get out of my cabin and walk down the passage, go up and
outside to the ladder on the cargo hold. I step down backward—down, down the rungs, down to the thick ice that holds us. Meters and meters of hard frozen water.

I move toward the game, toward the grunting and screaming. Toward the laughing. My breath is puffs of white vapor, the air cold on my face. A few of the crew are playing. I see the second mate, Carsten, and he waves me over.

I start to run.

My feet move and I keep on running. I chase the ball until there is sweat down my back—sweat on my face. I miss a shot and slip over, slide on the ice. The ball skids out away from me, but I get to my feet fast and make it to the ball before anyone else. I kick hard toward the goal—a solid shot. A lucky strike.

Someone grabs me from behind, yells out, “GOAL!” He tries to lift me up but we both fall over hard, crunching into the wet ice.

“Christ!” he says, and for a second I think it's Soren. Soren saying, “Christ!” the way he did. Soren laughing like a madman with that spark in his blue eyes. But the light lessens and the face in front of me becomes clear. Gray eyes, round face. It's Carsten.

“Goal!” he says again. “Victory!” He pumps his arm in the air and helps me to my feet.

“The Danes will not be beaten,” he says.

There are only three of us, and anyway, no one is keeping score, but it feels good to kick a goal, feel my heart beat hard, my blood pump, have my lungs pull cold air in with ease. To play this game.

We run until we are hollow, slip and skid over until our pants are sodden. We run until we are nearly sick and can no longer breathe.

The wonder of this place hits me with full force. The ice—the sun high in a blue sky—night and day. I'm here on the ice, here in this wonderland.

Lucky. And I want to be alive.

We climb up the ladder, one by one, unified by a small black-and-white ball. A team. We have beaten the frustration of being stuck for one day. One good day.

I tell the others I will go and organize brandy and some hot chocolate. I find Klaus in the galley and tell him I am fine, that I can come and work, but he shakes his head. He tells me dinner is prepared and I should go and have a drink, take the day, the evening, the night.

“Take the day,” he says. He winks at me but his voice is stern. It is an order.

I go up and sit in the passenger lounge, a place I have never been before. We pass a bottle of brandy around, drink out of coffee cups. A bottle of whiskey, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of cognac. I don't know where all the bottles came from. Someone has a bottle of port but I don't have any of that. Too sweet. Too sickly. I stay well clear.

I go down to the toilet and on the way back decide to get some beers. A small gift on my part. No one is down in our bar, the Frozen Inn, still too early. I write it up in the book—
Bo, 24 Carlsberg
.

We are almost out of beer. We will run out tomorrow or the next day. I will enjoy these last beers. I will make the most of them.

When I carry the green bottles up the stairs in a crate, everyone is grateful. The cold beer goes down so well. One of the scientists says, “Thank God it isn't the akvavit, we would be dead from that!”

It is true. I have seen passengers unable to walk after a few glasses. They seem fine, but then they can't get up off their chairs. Their legs have stopped working.

The sun is still up high with us—up high in the air in the passenger lounge.

A man called John pulls out a guitar, and he's good—knows how to play. His long, thin fingers strum strongly and he has a nice voice. I only know some of the songs, but people start to sing along with the choruses,
loudly, out of tune, and it's impossible not to join in. “We Are the Champions,” “You Can't Always Get What You Want,” “Hey Jude,” “Go Your Own Way.”

“Father and Son.”

The first notes of that song make everyone stand up. We hold on to each other's shoulders in a round, sing together. We sing with all our hearts, a family—Cat Stevens. “Father and Son.”

I feel like a boy again, my first years at sea. The wonder and hope and the boredom of long days. Laughing at the hard work. Laughing at the big seas. Being out in the world and saying,
Come on, I will take it all and more
. Missing home but thinking ahead and not behind. Keeping my eyes on the horizon.

The song ends, and we are winded. John puts down his guitar and some of us climb out onto the monkey deck. Someone hands out cigars and I take one. It feels like as good a time as any to try my first cigar. It is rough and warm and I smoke it with gusto—my arm around John's neck, like we are the oldest friends in the world. He yells out, “Goddamn you, ice!” and we all start chanting, “Let us free! Let us free! Let us free!” our feet stomping on the deck.

The bald head of Jens, the chief engineer, appears at the top of the ladder. He tells us that it is all good and well that we are asking the gods to let us free, but he thinks for now everyone needs to come inside and eat some dinner.

“And, by the way, your captain is trying to sleep below your feet, if you don't mind!”

He turns to leave, but catches my eye.

“Bo. God. I didn't see you there. Okay for some.”

It's late, 10
PM
. The sun deceptively high. Sunburn on the expeditioners' cheeks and probably on mine too. Our stomachs full of whiskey and brandy and beer and not crying out yet for food.

John turns to me, his eyes strained and red.

“My wife is having a baby any day, and I'm stuck here, bloody useless.”

“That's tough,” I say.

He shakes his head. “I'm going to bloody start digging us out tomorrow. I'm going to get a shovel and bloody dig us out.”

Down in the mess, we eat like we haven't eaten for days. The food tastes so good—the warm salty gravy and the crisp roast pork, the acid of the cabbage, all going down together well.

I wash up our dishes and put the leftover food away. I feel the need to go lie down. My feet heavy, my eyes half-closed—suddenly drunk and only thinking of bed.

I fall into my bunk, kick my boots off to the floor. Four
AM
tomorrow will be the start of a new working day. I will be myself again. But today, I had been someone else. A passenger. A boy. I had been free. Something hard and heavy fell away—crumbled, turned to dust out there on the football field.

Sleep.

Sleep.

Let me sleep.