Icefields

by Thomas Wharton

  Agassiz was also the first scientist to speculate that ice ages and subsequent warming periods have recurred many times in geological history. He eventually came to believe that each glacial epoch obliterated all life on earth, and that when the ice receded an entirely new creation arose. He felt this would explain the many mysterious gaps in the fossil record.

  While the idea of the utter extinction and regeneration of life has long been discredited, there is no doubt that the global climate has fluctuated greatly in the past, and that the ages of ice have greatly affected all living things, including the human race.

  Some scientists believe, in fact, that it is to the effects of the most recent ice age we owe the emergence of early civilization.

  The onset of this glacial epoch, hundreds of thousands of years ago, must have brought catastrophic change to the earth’s surface. Previously lush vegetation dwindled. Many animal species vanished, evolved, or migrated. The early tribes of humans, once simple hunters and gatherers, were forced into a nomadic existence, into the unknown, and they needed new tools for the journey. New ways of thinking. New words.

  Byrne sets down his pen. Stories. They took their stories with them, to remind them who they were. And there were the tales brought back by those who scouted ahead. They moved through stories.

  Byrne sits back in his chair. This isn’t what he was asked to write. Trask wants his tourists to have the model, a brief explanatory text, and a view of the real thing. Prehistory will come alive for them, they will commemorate the moment by buying postcards, souvenirs, film for photographs.

  In his enthusiasm for the idea Trask also considered a dome of blue, rather than transparent, glass. To illustrate fancifully how the site where the town lies was once submerged under ice. He then decided that would be too frightening, and might possibly offend the religious.

  9

  Byrne copies the words of Agassiz into his journal.

  “No one can say exactly what physical forces are responsible for the recurring ages of ice. Nor is it known how long we have before our own, perhaps brief, summer comes to an end.”

  10

  They halt for the night at the edge of the icefield, pitching camp in the lee of a rock buttress. In the wedge tent, lit by a hanging lantern, they suck pastilles to soothe their burning throats. Hal brews coffee on the portable camp stove, mixes it with a few drops of rum in aluminum cups.

  Fists of wind hammer the tent walls.

  They are alone together. Out on the mountain they were kept distanced by the rigours and discipline of climbing. Now they are inches away from each other in this tiny tent. They make halting conversation about the wind, the cold, the next day’s climb. Freya builds a wall of talk about the difficulty of photography in such vast natural landscapes. A vista that is breathtaking to the eye rarely keeps that awe-inspiring grandeur intact on film.

  —You have to know what to leave out. You have to choose some detail to . . . suggest all the rest of it.

  They are tired and the subject is soon exhausted. Freya inspects her camera, cleans the lenses.

  Rawson sits uneasily under the swinging light that seems a moving figure of their unspoken thought, crossing the silence between them. He props his journal on his knees, reads over what he has written. Notes for a poem about ice:

  Colors: blue, gray, white

  Arts: architecture, sculpture, music

  Hour: crepuscular

  Senses: vision, touch

  Organs: skin, lungs, skeleton

  Artifacts: glass, porcelain, bone, paper

  Contraries: blood, passion, Freya

  Planets: Mercury, Pluto

  Glaciers are seraphic. Think of Antarctica, embraced by a vast angel of ice.

  —The wind really wants in, she says.

  He looks up over his journal at her. She is digging in her rucksack, not looking at him.

  Freya takes out a porcelain pipe, a smoking kit from a small tin case. She fills the pipe, lights it, and leans back against her piled gear to smoke.

  —The look on your face, she laughs, handing the pipe to him. As he takes it she says with mock solemnity,

  —I should warn you, that’s not any ordinary fine cut.

  He sniffs at the sweetly pungent smoke curling out of the pipe.

  —This is what? Hashish?

  She nods.

  —I first tried it in Darjeeling. Wonderful for fatigue, depression, nervous strain.

  He allows himself an acid smile.

  —Well then, hand it over. It’s just what the doctor ordered.

  —What’s that supposed to mean?

  —Nothing. Only I think the air’s a bit thin up here for the intoxicating perfumes of the East.

  She shakes her head.

  —I thought you poets were supposed to thrive on new sensations.

  Again he is the novice. With her, his only role. He takes a drag on the pipe, the acrid smoke searing his throat. Tensing himself against the urge to cough, he glares defiantly over her head, his eyes welling with tears.

  He leans back and puffs out a perfect, redeeming smoke ring.

  —Don’t puff it, Freya says, poking a finger through the collapsing ring. Drink it. Savour it.

  —Anything for you, my love.

  —Hal. . . .

  He sucks in another mouthful of smoke, then hands the pipe back to her. He swallows the smoke, feels it burn into his lungs. He breathes out and his head reels, but in a moment the sensation fades and is gone. His mind and body remain as they were, every ache and blister in place. His gaze focuses again on Freya. She has set the pipe down and is massaging her bare feet.

  —Which father am I?

  Her eyes flick up at him, glittering.

  —Don’t. That has nothing to do with us.

  —It doesn’t? I’m sure I must remind you of one of them. The paper father. The warm milk father. How about the toast and tea father?

  —Don’t mock that, please, Hal.

  —I only want to know which one you’re leaving behind this time. So I can try to be one of the others, or even myself, if that’s possible. Just tell me how to do it.

  She sets the pipe down carefully, her hand trembling, though it may be the wavering light that plays this trick.

  Her hand. All her power over him seems concentrated there at this moment. He watches her hand with a sense of desperate urgency.

  He thinks, this is the absolute wrong place for this. There’s no room in this tent for thunderbolts.

  —It wouldn’t matter what you did, she says at last. It’s me. I don’t like hurting you, but I also know I’m not coming back. I never have before. This is how I live.

  —Then I’ll go with you.

  —No.

  —I’ll follow you. You can’t stop me from doing that.

  She looks at him with a distant smile.

  —Then I guess I’d have to shoot you.

  11

  They start across the icefield before dawn, carrying candle lanterns. Low cloud banks become visible after an hour. The greater expanse of the field is shrouded from them.

  The sky grows steadily lighter and then darkens again suddenly. The wind strengthens. Needle droplets of rain sting their faces.

  He hears a note. An unwavering high-pitched hum in the air near him. His ice-axe. He can feel the vibration through his wool gloves. He holds the axe up to examine it.

  Freya grabs it out of his hand, flings it away onto the snow.

  The electrified air crackles. Green lightning pops overhead and they crouch together as thunder smacks the field. The roar is a long time in dying.

  —The enchanted axe, Hal shouts. Sings to warn you. Freya shrugs her shoulders, points to her ear.

  Swiftly the storm cloud tumbles overhead, then breaks against the mountain wall.

  The sun appears through the thinning veil of cloud, a pale disc. For a moment Hal thinks it must be the moon.

  They help each other to their feet. Their hands grip each other’s sho
ulders for a long moment.

  Freya breaks the clasp.

  —Sorry. All the bells were ringing.

  12

  He imagines that days are passing as they cross the icefield. There are no reliable landmarks in this sea of snow. They walk in single file, Freya taking the lead. The white expanse opens out as they move forward, growing in immensity the further they penetrate into it. Hummocks that appeared to be quite close recede into distant uplands, vanish completely, or turn, by some trick of light, into hollows down which they stumble, floundering into chest-high snowdrifts.

  The world is drained of depth and colour, and he finds himself filling the empty space with phantom figures that silently watch him pass or trudge along with him. One of them is his father, who walks beside him for a while in silence and then says,

  Where is this girl taking you, Hal?

  Up a mountain, Dad.

  It won’t last, but you’ll be glad you knew her. Someday you’ll look back and be glad.

  Light bursts briefly through the cloud cover, so intense it presses down like darkness, a negative of midnight. Hal watches Freya’s shape drop below the edge of a swale ahead of him. Soon all he can see is the end of the rope that links him to her. For a moment he wonders who is really there at the other end of that swaying line. He stops. The rope pulls taut.

  She reappears, reeling in the slack. Breathing hard, he mutters an excuse about the rope getting tangled. She smiles and says something encouraging it seems, but the words are taken by the wind. He is like that now: weightless, soundless, light enough to float up with the whirling ice crystals into the white sky.

  I’ll be a ghost to her. A lesser shade, haunting some room in her memory she hardly ever enters.

  13

  A knife-edge ridge of hard, sculpted snow is the last obstacle. Climbing pure geometry. On either side the slope drops away for hundreds of feet into a gloomy cirque.

  They dig their ice axes and hobnail boots with greater confidence in this solid surface. They make good time, reaching the summit ridge at twelve-thirty, just as clouds roll in again.

  14

  They embrace at the summit. A brief, formal clasp.

  The space around them is enclosed in ice fog, muffled, like a room. They make a cursory inspection of the cornice, prodding with axe handles for weaknesses, then take turns squinting through the field glasses in an unsuccessful attempt to pick out landmarks. The wind is relentless. They know they cannot stay very long. And suddenly it seems there is very little for them to do here.

  —Should we try the mirror, Hal asks, for

  Byrne?

  Freya shakes her head.

  —There’s no sun.

  15

  Biscuits and coffee from a thermos bottle make up a quick summit meal.

  While they eat, a gap is torn in the fog. Clouds shred away in the wind. The world is unveiled.

  To the southwest stretches the rolling expanse of the icefield. They turn away from its unrelieved whiteness.

  Down in the rocky valley the bright red roof of the Hot Springs Chalet. A toy house. Below it, the river’s slender curve glitters through trees.

  Some nearby peaks they can name by sight: Ammonite, Diadem, Alberta, Stutfield. And closer to them Parnassus, Athabasca, Arcturus. Almost directly below them, hundreds of feet down, stretches the rubble-strewn track of the glacier.

  —Can you see Byrne’s place?

  —I see the nunatak, but I can’t make out the shelter. Can you?

  —I’m not sure.

  Freya begins a contest, to describe the mountains ranged around them. Olympian palaces. The heavenly host bright with all their crowns. Beethoven’s Ninth, final movement. Frozen writing desks.

  —Damn it, Freya says.

  —What?

  —I have to pee.

  —Not here.

  They give in to giddy laughter.

  —The mirror, Freya says. They make a hurried search of each other’s pack, not sure which of them was carrying it.

  Freya shakes her head.

  —Forget about it. No time.

  She sets up the collapsible tripod and begins snapping pictures with her Panoram portable.

  16

  She wants to kodak Hal for posterity. He shrugs his assent.

  —Stand over there. We’ll get the icefield in the background, for Byrne.

  —Then I’ll take one of you, Hal says. For me.

  —Step back, she says, waving a gloved hand. Way back now.

  At first he does not understand she is teasing him, so he glances behind to see how far he can safely step. When he turns again to share the joke, she is gone.

  17

  In the evening Byrne hears the crunch of footsteps over the snow and sets down his pen. He goes to the door, thinking he will greet both of them and tell them I’m sorry but I didn’t see your signal. I started writing and lost track of time.

  He opens the door. Hal is there, alone. He tries to speak and breaks down. Byrne sits him in the chair and extracts the story.

  18

  The summit cornice had collapsed.

  He crawled to the broken edge and saw only the billowing cloud of snow loosened by her fall.

  He retraced their path along the ridge, then crawled away from the trail of their boot prints onto the cliff’s sheer face.

  He descended methodically, working on each foot and hand hold. Talking to himself about his progress. After some time he realized he was chanting aloud a meaningless litany.

  —I am stone, the world is stone, everything is stone.

  19

  He found her in a gently sloping snow hollow. She was standing, he saw with a momentary rush of hope, and then thought this is impossible, she fell three hundred metres. With that thought he halted, suddenly afraid of her.

  She was brushing snow from her wool jacket, and looked vaguely perplexed, like someone who had misplaced her reading glasses.

  I’m fine, she said when she was aware of his approach. just cold.

  He saw the streak of snow stained red at her feet. She looked past his shoulder as if blind.

  Freya….

  She turned away, sinking, and he crouched with her, saw the split from temple to ear, the white of bone. She drew her legs up underneath her and settled against him.

  He carried her down the slope and onto the glacier. Her head was nestled into the front of his wool jacket. Her body warm and heavy against his. There was so much warmth.

  As he staggered down the ice the sun burned the clouds away. The air warmed. He heard the sound of rushing water and followed the winding course of a meltwater stream down-slope to the shore of Byrne’s nameless lake. A wide, calm pool, perfectly transparent.

  He set her down by the lake and looked into her open, sightless eyes.

  20

  The two men take rope and blankets back up the glacier to the lake.

  They wrap the body and carry it to the shelter, placing it gently on the stone floor. Byrne examines it briefly under the light of his spirit lamp.

  —We’ll leave her here tonight and return with help tomorrow.

  —Leave her?

  —Yes, it’s too dark now to bring her down.

  —You can find the way with your eyes closed, bastard. I’ll carry her myself.

  —You don’t have the strength left. You know that.

  Rawson gives in, steps outside.

  For the first time, Byrne closes the door of the shelter firmly behind him and blocks it up with several large stones.

  21

  Elspeth fills a kettle with water and sets it on the stove. She crouches down in front of the wood box, strikes a match, and lights a fire while rocking on her heels. She is not yet fully awake. She watches the paper crumple, the broken bits of an orange crate licked at by the flame, and then she stands up.

  Byrne and Rawson are in the front parlour, sitting in the dark. Four in the morning, the world a blue-grey shadow, they brought her the news of Freya’s death.
Waking her from deep sleep with a knock at her door. They have just come down from the glacier and they need coffee, a place to sit quietly, someone to talk to. They are sitting together, not speaking, waiting for her.

  The water in the kettle begins to hiss. Elspeth holds her hands for a few moments above the warming iron surface of the stove, and then sits down at the unvarnished kitchen table. Freya had sat here with her one evening, not long before the climb. There was something she wanted to say, something difficult. It was the first time Elspeth had seen her hesitate before speaking her mind. And then Frank had come into the room, and Freya left soon after that, without saying it. Elspeth thinks she knows what it was Freya had been about to tell her. It was about Byrne.

  In the window the blackness outside is paling to grey. Elspeth imagines the mountain will look different to her tomorrow. After three years here it has become as familiar as the wall of her own small room. Mute background.

  She stands up. The kettle is boiling. In a little while the morning staff will be coming in to make breakfast for the guests. The accident will be common knowledge soon enough, on everyone’s mind, but the work of the chalet will go on as it must. The room will fill with voices and light, the clang of pots and pans. Eggs will be cracked, flour and baking soda will be shaken out of tins, bacon will sizzle. The cooks will quickly forget to be solemn, they will chatter and joke with one another. It will become a noisy, human room. But for now it is still involved in the night.

  Years later, when she remembers Freya’s death she will see everything as if contained in this dark room.

  22

  At the end of the summer, Rawson brings Byrne two photographs, the remnants of Freya’s film cartridge. The rest of the exposures were spoiled when the camera cracked during the fall.

  —I wanted to give you these, before I left. I may not be coming back to Jasper.