Until the Night

From the Blue Notebook

I am a person given to the scientific and materialist view of existence. Not a man to dwell on concepts of fate, predetermination or tragedy. But concerning that chapter of my life that began with Rebecca’s arrival at Arcosaur, I have been drawn again and again to the medieval idea of Fortune.

And yet not the wheel of fortune, which is a neat analogy to the common situation of being on top of the world one minute and utterly cast down—or at least on a marked downward trajectory—the next. But luck, yes luck, fair or foul, shows its hand in the affairs of man far more often than, say, effort rewarded or love conquering all. We commonly see fools come out on top and good men brought low.

My scientific training is of no use in explaining what had happened to us so far, let alone what was to come. To take but one example, what were the chances of these two catastrophes—one a disaster of geodynamics (actually, ice dynamics), the other of human psychology—occurring simultaneously? Individually, either event was quite likely. Ice floes crack and fracture every hour. And the stresses of cold and isolation will torment anyone whose psyche is not securely integrated. But the chances of their co-occurring are infinitesimal, and the fact that they did is offensive to common sense, not to mention any notion of justice. But there’s nothing to be done about that. And Fortune was not done with us.

We were still standing over the bodies of Jens Dahlberg and Raymond Deville when the sun dimmed. We looked toward the approaching storm.

We need their clothes, I said, and got down to remove Ray’s jacket. I had to pull him up into a seated position and wrestle the sleeves off him. I got up and handed it to Rebecca, but she backed away.

I can’t.

Put it on. The gale will kill us. Put this on. As long as the wet doesn’t soak through, it will act as an insulator.

Kit, in God’s name.

God is not available. We need every scrap of clothing we can get.

Rebecca helped me get Ray’s trousers off, weeping the whole time.

Put them on over your jeans.

I can’t.

You must. I’ll help you.

I steadied her as she removed one of her boots and pulled on the pants. When she had that boot back on, we did the same with the other foot. Ray was a small person, but even so, the trousers were far too big. We rolled up the cuffs and, using my pocket knife, I cut a new hole in Ray’s belt. The jacket was not burned too badly, and it had a hood—a thin one meant for rain, with no drawstrings. I took Ray’s fleece and put it on over my own.

Are there any gloves in the pockets?

She shook her head. We scavenged everything else we could—the pencils, the Aero bar, the cough drops.

I’m sorry for crying, Rebecca said. I won’t panic again, I promise. What are we going to do?

We have to head into it. Movement is the only thing that will keep us warm. And that end of the floe is full of pressure ridges—they may provide some shelter. Help me cut away the rest of their clothes—anything that’s dry.

Even for someone wearing the proper gear, an Arctic gale is a terrifying experience. Winds unchecked by hill or tree and chilled by endless wastes of ice and freezing water, winds so powerful they suck the air out of your lungs. If they carry snow, one must also survive blindness and complete disorientation.

I cut pieces of cloth into strips for makeshift headbands and hand warmers, and we walked into it face first. At first the wind carried no snow. But it was a wet wind that soon rimed our eyebrows with frost. My arms, the core of my body, thanks to the double layers, conserved their heat. But my legs, the skin of my thighs, burned with the cold.

There was no question of stopping. When the wind was unbearable, we turned our backs to it and pushed against it. It was like trying to back a ship up a mountain. Then it would relent and we would turn and face it once more, moving the whole time.

We had already been fighting it for an hour when the snow hit, big flakes that clung and leached the body heat from our faces. Visibility sank to twenty, thirty metres. We had no compass. In any case, it would have been next to useless so close to the magnetic pole. We kept moving, guided by nothing but the direction of the wind itself.

The wind carried with it a massive payload of fear. You would not think mere disorientation could worsen the physical adversity we faced, but it did. When, over the course of the next few hours, the snow relented, it was replaced by fog—a fog so dense it clung to the eyeballs like blindness itself. The sun was reduced to a wash of paler grey amid the grey.

We had to tread that fine line I have already mentioned between losing heat to hypothermia or to sweat. Sometimes we had to slow our pace until we could no longer bear the cold and damp. Then we would move faster, staring at our feet the whole time (a smooth surface is extremely rare in the Arctic), until our own sweat threatened to kill us.

There was no telling how much of our ice island was left. I could not even work out what had caused it to break up—possibly a shoal on which the tides cracked us like an egg. Not that it mattered.

We walked through fog past the first edges of pain—the aches in hips, back, knees and ankles—and on toward exhaustion. We decided on a schedule of rests—three minutes every half-hour, five minutes every hour. The five minutes proved too long; we never lasted more than four. Rebecca did not complain. Neither of us voiced anything at all. We would stop, arms around each other, rubbing each other’s back and arms, pressing close. I could dimly feel her breasts, her breathing, through the layers of clothing. Her courage in those hours pierced me.

After hours of walking, nearly seven by my watch, we reached a pressure ridge offering angles and corners that made admirable windbreaks. By then the wind had died down and we had less need of them. But with the sun shrouded in fog, the temperature had dropped. We could not remain still for long.

Her arms around me. Throb of her heart a distant, invisible sun.

She pulled back a little to look at me. Exhaustion in those eyes where before I had seen only youth—youth and a thousand shades of emotion I could not have named. She told me she was sorry she had been “so mean” to me.

I thought she must be being sarcastic.

There are two things I regret, she said. One, not being honest with Kurt, and with myself. Not admitting what I knew, that I mistook admiration for love and led him into a trap he didn’t understand and couldn’t escape. And two, being mean to you.

Being mean. It sounded so teenage, the way one regrets having been harsh to a pet, to the class dimwit, or to someone who sought nothing more than friendship.

I played games, she said. I shouldn’t have. I wanted everything you had to offer but I wanted it for free. I’ve always been a selfish person.

But of course it was I who had been stupid and weak and selfish. I tried to tell her this and found I could barely speak before her purity of spirit. I should have been strong enough to admire you from a distance, I said.

It was all I could manage. I could only hope she understood there was more.

The fog clinging. We had to release each other and put our hands back in our pockets.

We have to keep moving, I said.

Yes. But which direction?

I pointed to the wash of paler grey. Given where we left Axel Heiberg, I think that must be south. There should be more ridges, if we need them. And it will take us closer to shore.

Despite the uncertainty, we headed in that direction. We were both very hungry but dared not speak of it. The fog began to thin and then we felt on our faces the first caress of sunlight.

Oh, God.

It was the first time Rebecca had spoken since we had spoken of regret. Her tone was new. A deeper level of despair. I already knew, having seen it through the field glasses, what she had just realized. I had been waiting for her to see it, couldn’t bring myself to point it out.

Oh, God, Kit. Oh, dear God.

I know.

She stopped and I thought she would weep, but the realization had taken her beyond weeping.

I stopped as well and the two of us stood side by side, a few inches of Arctic between us, and looked toward the shore. The sun now lit the snowy western slopes of the promontories—the same two promontories from which we had set out hours before.

We haven’t moved, Rebecca said.

The headwind had turned our ice island into a vast treadmill.

We haven’t moved.