by Stef Penney
If Theodor is alarmingly pragmatic, he is never gross. He seems to be that rare thing: an intelligent, cultured man who is happy. When Jakob accuses him of this, he replies that he is always happy in the mountains. His enjoyment is infectious. When Theodor hints about the recipient of the serial letter Jakob is writing, he does it so gracefully that Jakob hardly feels annoyed.
‘It is someone most dear to you? I thought so. It is in your face when you write.’ He smiles with modest triumph when Jakob assents, and turns to Otto, who looks at them, not understanding.
‘Ich hatte recht, Otto. Er ist verliebt, genauso wie du!’
Otto grins sympathetically at him.
Jakob looks down, feeling the vertigo he holds at bay on the mountains rush forward: that same mix of exhilaration and fear.
The crowning achievement of their work for the summer is to study the Gornersee. This is a phenomenon Jakob has never seen before: in spring, meltwater pools into a lake at the crux of the Gorner glacier and its tributary, the Grenz. When Jakob first sees the lake, it is little more than a pool choked with ice. He cannot resist boasting to Theodor about Melville Bay and its palatial bergs.
‘One day, my friend, we will go there,’ says Theodor. ‘But, for now – if you stay long enough – you will see something wonderful.’
Over the following weeks, the lake grows. The water takes on a milky, turquoise hue. It is so sheltered that it forms a perfect mirror to the mountains and the sky. It is their intention to study what happens when the lake, as it must, drains away. It might be gradual, seeping and tunnelling under the ice, or sudden. The glacier must move differently when such a weight of water is released. Their measurements will, for the first time, reveal how it changes. But the truly marvellous thing is what might be left behind: tunnels and caverns carved by the passage of water. Jakob cannot wait; at last, he may get right inside a glacier.
.
In the evenings, he writes a serial letter to Flora, partly because he cannot get to the post office in Zermatt often, and partly because they agreed not to write too frequently, which might raise suspicion. The disadvantage to this style of communication is that he reads over what he has written day to day, and has second thoughts. It is easy enough to write about his work and the grandeur of their surroundings; less easy to describe how he feels, without using hackneyed phrases which make him uncomfortable. He is averse to cliché, but he can no more pin down his feelings in his own words than he can capture the colours of the morning.
It doesn’t help that sometimes he feels ashamed. Looking back, it seems to him that they hardly got out of bed, and he thinks about her body so much that he worries he has done her a wrong. When dawn tips the mountains with its rosy light, he finds himself thinking of her breasts. In fact, almost any aspect of the Alpine landscape – dark wedges of pine tucked into the hillside; little pink, pea-like flowers; bergschrunds – turns out to have undreamt-of erotic potential. He is afraid she might think herself used.
As a result of this uneasiness, his letters are stiff and awkward. He wants to express feelings that are on a higher, more ethereal plane, but words are not his strong suit. He throws many attempts into the stove. And he cannot write about the nights when he gives free rein to his memories and fantasies. He doesn’t want her to think that the pleasures of the bedroom are all he thinks about, even though, when he goes to bed (or rather, climbs on to the shelf near his snoring companions) they are almost all he thinks about.
His most cherished, oft-repeated memory begins with the sea-green tiles of the Victoria’s bathroom, which lay at the end of the corridor. He can picture their exact, rather bilious colour, their gloss. Flora wanted to wash her hair, and he begged her to let him come, which he thought pleased her. As she washed, and steam from the noisy plumbing swirled around them, bedewing his clothes, he encouraged her to talk about her childhood on the Vega, a topic of never-ending fascination to him. She felt a little awkward to have him there, to be naked while he was dressed, but he knew she did not find it unpleasant. He made himself useful by sitting on a stool and trickling water from a jug to rinse her hair as she held her hands over her eyes. She glanced up at him from time to time, noting his eyes on her body as the water found pathways over shoulders and breasts. Then, when her hair was clean, he soaped his hands, leant over and slid them over her breasts. She lay back in the bath and sighed, watching him with a sleepy, amused look in her eyes.
‘I thought you wanted to talk to me.’
‘I can do both,’ he said, as he caressed her, although, as it turned out, he couldn’t. He became mesmerised by the slippery plumpness and heft of her breasts, the nipples instantly hard and teasing to his touch. Sometimes she seemed almost maddeningly alluring: flushed with heat, each line of her body a lovely convexity, as if she had been filled and plumped with water. His fingers dived under the surface and he watched her face, with closed eyes and uneven breathing, as he concentrated on rousing the red bud of her clitoris until she whimpered and threshed, unable to prevent, delightfully, water slopping over the sides of the bath. He was sure he could feel the waves clenching and rolling down her body as she struggled to stay still. Panting, she let the water in the bath grow calm again, and then stood up into his waiting arms, wet skin silvered in the light from the window. He helped her out and they kissed – he could feel her mouth smiling against his, her tongue growing abandoned, reaching for the inside of his skull. She was his shining, silver catch, soaking the front of his shirt and trousers with her hot wetness. She pressed herself against his erection; he was extremely hard, already close to bursting point. He grasped the damp flesh of her buttocks, bent at the knees until he could push his fingers up inside her and felt her breath, her moans, her tongue squirming in his ear. He took each provoking nipple in his mouth, rubbery with water and tasting of soap. Her breasts smothered him. One of her hands was rubbing his bursting groin, while the other plucked at his trouser fastening. She moaned as he turned her to face the tiled wall, but reached behind in encouragement as he wrenched open the last buttons of his fly and pushed his trousers down over his thighs. She bent forward, her back a white road in front of him, hair snaking darkly over her skin. Round white hips framed swollen flesh, made for him a triumphal arch. His cock ached, the skin tight and sore with use, but was inexorable; he found his way into her wet, welcoming cunt with a burst of delight; she was his homecoming, his hot, sweet harbour. He looked down, holding her hips just so, pulled out almost to the tip of his glans, and slid inside her again, for the pleasure of watching himself disappear, appear, disappear. Watching, feeling the heat inside her body, the way the walls of her vagina clung to him as he withdrew, the storm that seized him was violent and unstoppable. He thrust into her as hard as he could, heard her cry out, saw her clenched fists, didn’t know what they meant, was unable to stop had he wanted to. He gave himself up, was hurled upon her shore; he was shipwrecked and silent and safe.
There were tears streaking her face, he found, when at last he could see and realise something outside his own body. Worried, he stroked her hair and kissed her.
‘Darling, what is the matter?’
She looked round at him, seemed dazed and far away. She shook her head, sniffled, and smiled through the tangles of wet hair. ‘Nothing . . .’
Later, she said, when he asked her again, ‘It was as though I had left my body behind. I had no end . . . It was . . .’ Again, she shook her head.
‘Was it good?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it was good,’ she whispered, shy, smiling in that embarrassed, provocative way he loved.
Back in their room, they did not speak, but lay in each other’s arms on the rug in front of the fire, covered only with her peignoir. Jakob grew cold and uncomfortable, and the arm that pillowed her head was dead to the world, but he did not want to be the one to break the spell.
.
Burnished with repetition, the memory is more than ex
quisite; it has the power to move him like the act itself. It leaves him shuddering and emptied in the darkness of the hut. Sometimes he questions himself: had it really been like that? An experience so seismically intense it seemed not to take place on the level of his individual body, but must, surely, have thrown up a mountain range, torn a continental plate in two . . . He felt shifted, on some profound, subterranean level. And, hard to be sure, but he thinks she was similarly moved; such a violent, rapturous collision. Perhaps his memory exaggerates a little, but, in the end, does it matter? Each separate event that afternoon happened, each caress is burnt into his mind. Like Theodor’s indescribable, perfect sunrise; it happened, and nothing can ever take it away. An ur-morning. An ur-fuck. He has sometimes thought that there is one, in every relationship. Perhaps in every lifetime. Is that his?
.
He writes, I so look forward to seeing you again, my darling. I hope everything is going to plan, and that your next letter will bring me news of your arrival.
True, accurate, polite . . . bloodless, insipid, dull. Words (his words, at least) are hopeless. When he sees her, then she will know how he feels. He wants to write something vital, something that will take her breath away. He wants to say something about the future, their future, but does not know what it could be. The future only exists in words, and they have never talked about it, so there is none.
It is a warm summer, and, in late July, the Gornersee empties. It happens overnight, but they are there, having noted the gradually dropping strandline around the lake’s rim for days. On the fourth night of their vigil, while they take it in turns to watch by lantern light, it begins to sink more rapidly. Otto wakes the others and they stare, realising with excitement that the level is dropping visibly. There is, to begin with, little sound: just a muffled murmuring. They leave the lanterns burning on the ice and clamber higher up the scree slope above the lake, wedging themselves in next to large, deep-rooted boulders. Jakob stares at the points of light in the vast darkness, straining to make out the water. Then there is a low, growing growl. Then a rumbling. Without stopping, the rumble grows into a roar that goes on and on; then, in the space of a blink, the lanterns all go out together. Jakob blasphemes as, in the darkness, the roaring becomes tumultuous and they feel the deep shuddering in the mountain. They can no longer see anything – because the lanterns have fallen into the lake, because the lake has fallen into a chasm, and great blocks of ice tumble after it. Rocks and stones hurtle down the slope around them. The mountain is moving.
‘Halten Sie sich fest!’ yells Theodor, and Jakob clings to his boulder.
He wants to shout out – something, anything – and then he hears Otto yelling: a wordless scream of exhilaration. Or exhilaration mixed with fear, because the world is tumbling and roaring around them, and they cannot see what is happening. Then they are all screaming, making noise, giving out whoops of joy and terror because something as beautiful and perfect as the lake is destroying itself.
.
In the morning, grey light creeps slowly back into the valley, as though ashamed of what it reveals. A chaos of ice: sugar-white blocks the size of houses, riven with blue veins and fissures, giant spoil heaps of dirty rubble ice, boulders and scree ripped from the mountainside where they had clung – all this choking a deep ravine that yesterday did not exist. Where once was a turquoise looking-glass reflecting the still majesty of the mountains, now there is nothing but destruction.
.
‘There may be floods, downriver,’ says Theodor, as they pick a cautious way down to what was the shore of the lake. Jakob sets up his camera and starts to photograph the chaos – no one has ever photographed this before. He tries to stand in the exact places from where he previously photographed the lake, but the landscape is so changed it is nearly impossible. He lines up the skyline, the peaks as he remembers them. Exulting in the back of his mind is the thought, I will show her this: I will show her caverns of ice.
They work slowly and thoughtfully. They had shouted with glee as the glacier ripped itself apart in the night, but now there is an atmosphere of melancholy. A cold wind pours down from the Lyskamm as they plod about, measuring and recording, pausing to stamp their feet and clap their hands to ward off the cold. The change in the glacier is extraordinary: below the collapse, their numbered markers have been ripped up and thrown about, but, by plotting their positions, they can piece together the short history of the convulsion. Their experiment is a resounding success. But what was yesterday beautiful, serene, lovely, is now smashed and spoilt.
A couple of days later, as bad weather prevents them from working or climbing, Jakob and Theodor walk down to Zermatt in pouring rain. At the Monterosa Hotel, Jakob finds a letter from Flora awaiting him. Heart beating hard with joy and anticipation, he tears it open as he walks into the residents’ lounge to read it in the light of the window.
Theodor collects his own letters and exchanges pleasantries with the desk clerk. He is in no rush. He envies Jakob; he remembers the days when he would have been as excited to receive his sweetheart’s letters. A long time ago, alas.
After a minute or two, Jakob folds up the letter and puts it back in the envelope, staring fixedly out of the window at the drumming rain, while water drips from his trousers to form a puddle on the carpet.
‘Alles gut?’ says Theodor absently, because this is what he always says.
‘Ah . . . yes.’ Jakob’s voice is distant and unconvincing.
Theodor looks up from his own correspondence – a tale of minor domestic dramas, childish ailments, a social slight suffered – notices the stiffness of his colleague’s back and realises that something is wrong. He knows Jakob was hoping his inamorata would visit him in Switzerland (a prospect Theodor privately deplored; he does not mix women and mountains, himself), but perhaps not, now. She has been false to him, he thinks, and a small, jealous part of him rejoices. But when he sees Jakob’s face – that of a man paralysed by vertigo, his smile a rictus – his better nature reasserts itself. My poor young friend, Theodor reflects (women cannot help it; their nature is essentially perfidious), he is not as worldly as he thinks.
.
Flora’s letter is short and to the point. She writes that she is very sorry, but her husband is very ill and she cannot leave him. She will not be able to see Jakob again. Under the circumstances, it is impossible. She hopes he will understand.
PART SIX: THE CONCRETE SEA
Chapter 33
Washington Land, 80˚45’N, 65˚09’W
1895–6
The most expensive ship in the history of Arctic exploration sinks in Kennedy Channel on 17th August. Not a life is lost, but Lester Armitage wishes he were dead. The Polar Star, the ship in which he has invested so much – his time and ideas and energy, not to mention his own and other people’s money – has failed, and he has failed, and that is all that anyone will remember of him. The last of the crushed and mangled hull takes forever to disappear – the bowsprit remains stubbornly visible for days, poking skywards, a memorial to his ambition, and a rebuke.
His plan and his hope of the last four years – and the success of his ambitions rested precariously upon it – was to force a ship through the pack ice to the north coast of Greenland before wintering on the shore of the Arctic Ocean itself. This would enable him to begin his polar quest from significantly closer to the goal. And, in the summer, they had got so far, through Kane Basin, past Hall Basin and Thank God Harbour, right up Robeson Channel, reaching further north than any ship since the British Navy’s Alert nearly twenty years ago, all in a difficult season of heavy ice and relentless gales, and then they were nipped fast in tremendous crushing ice. Arguments raged between Lester, the head of the expedition, and the captain of the ship, Newfoundlander Thomas Chafe. At this point, they were being carried north by the winds – well, north was the way Lester wanted to go, whereas Chafe wanted to burn all the coal in his lockers trying to
ram their way out of their moving prison and find a safe harbour. When they were within a biscuit toss of the Arctic Ocean, the winds changed, and they were swept back to the south, without coming close either to freeing themselves or finding safety. They stopped arguing when they realised their arguments were moot; the ice that held them didn’t let up for a second. The ship had been doomed from the start.
Wooden splinters, empty barrels, discarded belongings, foodstuffs, filth and the general detritus of a steam ship – all those are still there. They are scattered mockingly over the pack ice, and the crew and Eskimo passengers set off over the floes to the nearest land – the Greenland coast, north of any native settlement, but far south of the Arctic Ocean.
Like any explorer, especially any Arctic explorer, Lester has to make the best of things. They build their hut on a sliver of shore under the iron-clad cliffs of Washington Land, but it is uncomfortably crowded – designed to take only the members of the expedition and some Eskimo helpers, it has to accommodate the shipwrecked crew as well. Forty-five people now live in a building meant for twenty. As winter draws in – or, rather, falls on them, like a hammer blow – resentments bubble up.
Captain Chafe – no longer captain of anything – unable to control his sailors, and unsure what to do with himself, manages daily to achieve what should, by Lester’s calculations, be impossible: he is almost continuously drunk. One of the sailors deserts to live with an Eskimo woman in the south; the others, deprived of routine and authority, grumble and whine: this is not what they signed up for. Why can’t they wander off by themselves? (Because they will get lost and die.) Will they be paid, despite the loss of the ship? (Yes.) Will they be paid extra for the hardship? (No.) What is the point in getting up at seven when it is always dark and there is, anyway, nothing to do? (A hard question to answer.) Lester worries about them, but most of his concern is focused on John Hyland, the expedition doctor.
