Cold People, page 1
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To Suzanne Baboneau, my editor of fifteen years
PART ONE EVENTS PRECEDING
TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO THE FIRST SIGHTING OF ANTARCTICA
LOOKING UP AT THE NIGHT sky Ui saw only unfamiliar stars. These weren’t the constellations that guided him between the Polynesian islands of his homeland; these were stars from the sky’s outer edge, the stars his people had never bothered to name since they were no use to navigate by, dismissed as the petuu vare – the foolish stars. Tonight, he imagined them looking down upon him and asking who was foolish now, this man all alone, so far from home. His vessel made excellent speed as a strong wind filled the sails plaited from pandanus leaves. The two hulls shaped like canoes, harnessed together with a lattice of bamboo, skimmed gracefully across the ocean, carved from the oldest calophyllum tree on their home island. His father, a master shipbuilder, had toiled on them for many months using mud paste to test every seal, dabbing the joins, fitting them together then pulling them apart, searching for even the smallest patch where water might find a way through. His father’s skills were in such demand that sailors from faraway islands bartered for his services and yet he’d refused all offers, working exclusively on his son’s ship, the finest ever built.
Many in their community considered both the ship’s construction and the expedition itself an indulgence of Ui’s vanity, since this journey into the unknown brought no benefits to their patagonia. It was already agreed that his abilities at sea were unmatched and his navigational skills unrivalled. He had nothing to prove. He was adored by many lovers and envied by many friends. To them, this adventure was folly, an obsession with the mythical land they called Iraro.
The first time he’d heard the word Iraro was as a young boy when his father had drawn a map on the sand to teach him the geography of Polynesia. Studying the islands, Ui had jabbed his finger at the ocean on the outskirts and asked:
‘What is this?’
‘We call those waters Iraro.’
‘What is Iraro?’
‘The place we know nothing about.’
‘Why do we know nothing about it?’
‘Because no one has ever sailed there.’
‘One day I will sail there.’
His father hadn’t laughed or brushed off the claim as the mere boasting of a child. He’d crouched down and wiped away the markings, fearful that he’d sown the seed of a dangerous idea in an impressionable mind:
‘And if you sail there, my son, who I love very much, and who I could not live without, will you also sail home?’
Ui brought the vessel to a stop, dropping the sails, standing on deck and searching the horizon. If he didn’t discover land soon, he’d be forced to turn back. The hollow hulls had been loaded with supplies, parcels of fermented vegetables, bundles of sugar cane, but mostly with drinking coconuts since the ocean provided a ready supply of food. On his voyage he’d seen ocean life of an undiscovered kind, shoals of elegant fish unfathomable in number bursting out of the water like birds with milk-coloured scales and eyes like pearls. Having always presumed that warmth meant life and cold meant death, he now accepted this assumption was wrong. Cold was merely a different way of life.
He cut a notch on the mast to mark his sixty-ninth day at sea without sight of land. The air was cold in Iraro and he was wrapped up in the thickest of furs, clothes created especially for this journey. As he sipped some of the precious coconut water, drinking only enough to stop his mind and muscles weakening, he contemplated the prospect of returning home without a discovery. Aware of his own vanity, when confronted with the expectations of his Patagonia he might lie, concealing his failure by inventing stories of strange lands populated with strange creatures. Most of the people back home would believe him no matter what fanciful stories he told, listening with hushed reverence, but his father would know since he’d never been able to lie to his father. It would mean that this magnificent vessel, carved from the oldest tree on the island, had brought back only dishonour and deceit. His father’s heart would break with shame. Better not to return, better to die, than to lie.
Sitting on deck, he lowered his hand to the water, pressing his palm against the surface. Reading waves was a gift many considered a kind of magic, possessed only by those touched with the spirit of the sea. Deep ocean waves had a powerful voice, a backwards and forwards motion unlike waves reflected from land, which spoke in a softer, upward-downward movement, a voice that became inaudible the further they travelled from the shore. His body shivering with the cold, he implored the ocean to speak to him and guide him. To his relief, this time the ocean answered – whispering that land was near.
Ui scampered across the bamboo lattice, rooting through the supplies where he found a timber cage containing a frigatebird, her chest puffed out in distress at her confinement. This breed of bird wouldn’t land on water since her feathers easily became waterlogged and she’d lose her ability to fly. By necessity she’d return to the vessel unless she found dry land. He fed her some scraps of dried fish skin and set her free. After so many days of being trapped, she didn’t understand her freedom, remaining motionless until he nudged her, and she flew into the sky. He stood at the bow, studying her direction of flight. She slowly circled the boat and then set off. She must have seen land. She must have seen Iraro.
After many hours following the bird he entered a strange ocean consisting of countless small islands, smooth and white as the clouds. The air was so cold his breath turned to mist. He dropped the sail and, using the steering paddle, brought himself to the nearest island. There were no plants or trees, no creatures of any kind. Scraping the surface with the edge of his paddle produced a fine white dust which turned to water between his fingers. Ui dabbed the dust on his tongue. It wasn’t salty ocean water; it was fresh like rain, as though these islands were clouds that had crashed into the sea. Perhaps this was the place where clouds crashed after they’d finished flying, or perhaps this was where clouds were born and if he stayed here long enough, he’d see these islands puff up and rise into the sky.
Ui climbed the mast and perched at the top, perfectly balanced, assessing the view. Far away he saw white cliffs, high and smooth, stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. He wondered how they’d come to be this way. Perhaps set back from the white cliffs, there were white volcanoes, and instead of red, hot lava they spewed cold, white lava. Perhaps there were white forests with white tree trunks and white leaves. Perhaps there were herds of white-fur animals and tribes of white-skinned men and women. He wondered what kind of person could live in a land like this. It must be a different kind of people – a savage tribe; only a savage people could survive in such cold.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO SOUTH GEORGIA ISLAND
TWO THOUSAND KILOMETRES
NORTH OF ANTARCTICA
ONLY SOCIETY’S OUTCASTS COULD SURVIVE in these freezing waters and over the years Captain Moray had concluded there were no exceptions to this rule. Some of his crew could pass among civilized society for a while, they could entertain a room with tales of their adventures, but they’d pull a knife if they took a dislike to someone, and they took a dislike to a great many people. As the captain of the most successful sealing vessel operating off South Georgia Island, Moray was an expert in choosing his crew from the variety of outcasts on offer, his preference being for the melancholic, the sexual deviants and the thieves. For the thieves there was nothing to steal, for the melancholic there was the ocean to meditate upon and for the deviants there were other deviants. Moray never shared the secrets of his own past, cultivating the appearance of a forceful but fair man, a bastion of order in this otherwise barbarous industry. There was room for only one murderer on this ship.
The ship’s name was Red Rose, a two-hundred-tonne steam and sail vessel anchored outside King Edward Cove. Moray intended to make one last trip to shore before setting sail for Canton, China, where a buyer had been arranged for his cargo of seal furs, a price set for three dollars fifty cents a skin, significantly below his record price of nine dollars, achieved when he’d been one of the few sealing vessels daring to venture so far south. Today there were over sixty vessels anchored around the South Georgia Island, and with the market inundated with furs, his ability to secure even three dollars depended on his reputation for quality.
Before setting sail for Canton, his final task was a dinner with His Majesty’s Stipendiary Magistrate, representing the Government of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, the authority over this far-flung outpost. Without the magistrate’s blessing it would be impossible to operate in these waters. The customs inspector would levy unaffordable charges, the police officer stationed on this island would arrest his crew for infractions real or imagined and business would grind to a halt. Four of his crew rowed the captain to shore in a shallop – a nimble and flat-bottomed vessel used for hunting and excursions. Arriving at the newly constructed docks, he remembered a time not so long ago when this island had been untouched by man, the shores so densely populated with seals he had struggled to see the pebble beaches underneath their fat bellies. Now all that remained on the rocks were seal skulls picked clean by the petre
As he approached the magistrate’s residence, Moray observed the incongruous picket fence around a garden of black soil and tussock grass. The magistrate’s wife loathed this island and had tried to transform their home into something that might exist in the British countryside. She’d brought rabbits for comfort, but rats from the ships had eaten them. She’d planted meadow flowers, but the sea salt spray had killed them. Fearful of the debauched sealers, the magistrate insisted she carry a Beaumont–Adams revolver with her whenever she left the confines of their picket fence, not concealed under her clothes, but clearly visible and clasped in her hand. To Moray’s knowledge, she’d fired it only once and her aim had been true.
The butler, another British import, opened the front door, his expression set to a permanent grimace as a way of signalling that he didn’t belong here either. After taking off his leather boots, exchanged for a pair of silk Savile Row slippers, Moray followed the butler through to the sitting room decorated with fashionable mahogany furniture carved from felled Caribbean forests and walls covered with oil paintings of bucolic English landscapes. A fire crackled in the hearth and with the curtains closed to block out the bleak reality of their location, it was a shabby approximation of a stately drawing room.
The magistrate entered, accepting the bottle of Chateau Margaux the captain had brought as a gift without so much as a thank you. Dinner was poached tongue of elephant seal, sliced in wedges, served with assorted steamed sea vegetables. None of the magistrate’s imported provisions were used. Moray wasn’t offended, although offence was intended. In the hierarchy of ocean professions, sealers were the lowest, far below Her Majesty’s naval officers or the merchant traders, below even the deep-sea fishermen and the whalers. No stories were ever written about the sealers, for it was a shameful occupation. Even in these distant waters a class system had sprung up, as though there was nowhere on this earth where a class system of some kind wouldn’t take root. Moray hastened the conversation to the business at hand.
‘I’ve come to enquire what outstanding duties might be owed.’
Normally the magistrate would gladly discuss his bribe but today he seemed uninterested in these details, pressing the captain on another matter:
‘I’ve heard this is to be your last year. That you have your eye on a town house in Cavendish Square. Can it be true?’
Moray sliced off a small piece of seal tongue and chewed thoughtfully. It was true. The seals were on the brink of extinction due to undisciplined crews hunting pups and pregnant cows. The island’s once limitless resource was limitless no more. The sealing industry wouldn’t last another five years. The magistrate was to blame. He didn’t enforce the laws, preferring his bribes. If the sealing industry collapsed, not even the remote location could protect this man from the scrutiny of officials in London.
‘This island is over, sir. We’ve ruined it.’
‘Ruins are merely the end of one opportunity and the beginnings of another.’
The magistrate clapped his hands and the butler entered. Moray sat back, surprised as the butler served the bottle of wine that he’d brought as a gift, an act of generosity that had never happened before.
‘Last week I saw a hunting crew on the cliffs above Cumberland Bay. They’d trapped a group of female elephant seals and their pups. There was no escape, and the crew were killing them at a leisurely pace, beating them back with clubs if any tried to break away. In despair, one of the females broke rank and jumped off the cliff – she fell a hundred yards, bounced a little into the air, and survived, blundering in the sea. In order to escape the massacre, another jumped, and another, the entire colony following her over the cliff face. Many died in the fall, but some survived, their blubbery mass protecting them. The pups followed their mothers, but they were too small, and none survived.’
The magistrate sipped his fine wine and regarded Moray.
‘Do you imagine London society will look upon you as the gentleman you’ll pretend to be? That they’ll invite you into their homes or desire your company? Naturally you’ll lie about your past. You’ll tell them you worked as a trader on the high seas, dealing in fine spices. You’ll talk of saffron and cinnamon. You’ll wear the finest clothes and hang art on the walls. But they will smell the blubber on your skin and see the sordid stories under your fingernails. You’ll be a butcher in their eyes. A savage in a silk shirt.’
Moray pondered the magistrate’s comments.
‘That may be true. But the seals are gone, sir. Soon the only trade will consist of pulling teeth from the skulls of elephant seals and polishing them for jewellery. That is no business for a man, even a savage one.’
The magistrate was ahead of him.
‘South, Moray, you must go south, to the great expanse of ice – the unexplored continent where there are undiscovered creatures and untouched wealth beyond our imagination.’
He placed an artist’s folder on the table full of sketches of extraordinary creatures glimpsed on the undiscovered ice. There were seals with a unicorn’s horn of ocean ivory. There was a walrus with a glittering silver pelt. There were birds with feathers of such beauty they’d be coveted by the finest fashion houses of Paris.
‘The ice is impassable.’
‘No, there are ways through; you will find them. Dangerous, but worth the risk.’
‘And you?’
‘I’ll protect your trade. You’ll use this island as your base. You’ll eat at this table. You cannot be a gentleman in London but you can be one here. You’ll be important and respected. You’ll never be that man in England. Moray, we cannot go back. We can never go back. This place has branded us. We belong here, whether we like it or not.’
The butler returned, bringing out a tray with desserts, Egyptian dates, lavender blossom honey, dark chocolate and brandy-infused cream. Soon Moray was drunk on dreams of cold creatures with tusks of twisted pearl and skins as soft as snow. With port-stained teeth the magistrate said:
‘The ice, captain, we shall plunder the ice!’
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO ANTARCTICA
MCMURDO STATION
DOUG REYNOLDS HAD A HABIT of repeating wisdoms to new arrivals at McMurdo Station, such as:
The hardest part of surviving in Antarctica isn’t the cold; it’s the people.
As an Antarctica veteran, having lived on the continent for eight years, he enjoyed their bewilderment as they tried to figure out what this could mean. After all, Antarctica was the coldest, windiest and most hostile continent on the planet. It seemed bizarre to suggest that the hardest part of living here was the people. For a start, there weren’t that many of them. In the summer there were a thousand scientists and support staff at McMurdo Station; in the winter that number shrank to under two hundred. Moreover, this was a prestigious place to work; those chosen to be stationed here were at the top of their profession, selected by the US Antarctica Program after a highly competitive application process. On paper these were some of the most well-adjusted people ever assembled in one place, with all of them having undergone rigorous mental health evaluations that included answering the following:
Have you ever been clinically depressed?
Have you ever had issues with drink or substance abuse?
Have you ever displayed violent tendencies?
The psychiatric evaluators went beyond the basics, asking questions such as:
What conspiracy theories interest you?
Has a sexual situation ever made you angry?
You notice a group of people laughing and you ask what they’re laughing about but they’re laughing so hard that they can’t answer. How does this situation make you feel?
