A Victim of the Aurora

by Thomas Keneally

  As the Leader and Mulroy approached him round the end of the mess table, Alexandrei let out an even shriller threnody and threw the harpoon with expert force but at no particular target. It would in fact have entered some part of Percy Mulroy’s upper body. It seems there are tennis players who can actually see a tennis ball, its defined edges, at ninety miles an hour. Likewise baseball batters and batsmen in cricket, a Britannic sport in which some modern Australian bowlers can project a ball at speeds close to a hundred miles an hour. Mulroy must have been one of these high-speed sighters, because he lifted a chair, holding it legs first towards Alexandrei, and fielded the harpoon with it. The barbed point punched into the underside of the seat and impaled it as far as the wooden haft.

  His missile released, the Siberian knelt, folding himself up smaller than seemed naturally possible. Then he fell on his side, moaning. He had become too pitiable for anyone to want to punish him. Alec Dryden felt his pulse.

  ‘Is it rabies?’ Stewart asked, thinking of the horses and the dogs.

  ‘None of the dogs has rabies,’ Alec said. ‘We took swabs from each of them.’

  When Alexandrei had been sedated, three sailors lifted him on to his bunk. I remember how they always lifted the weak or injured with a certain tenderness. But that day they had had too many shocks and toted Alexandrei unlovingly.

  Nikolai, the dog-handler, still sat at the table. In his quiet and absolute grief he didn’t even seem to notice what had happened to his friend. Mead had now arrived and sat beside him, murmuring to him in Russian. It seemed that every member of the expedition was around the doorway or milling in the sailors’ sleeping area, watching the dialogue. At last Mead seemed satisfied and patted Nikolai’s shoulder. Then he came to Stewart.

  ‘They are afraid of the darkness,’ he told Stewart. ‘That’s basically what it is.’

  Stewart said, ‘I think you should explain that to the men. They must be angry.’

  Mead coughed and instantly obeyed. ‘Nikolai and Alexandrei were afraid the night would never end. It’s as simple as that. I beg for your tolerance and I promise you nothing like this will happen again.’ He hesitated, half-turned back to Stewart, but then began speaking again. ‘I think we might all be more understanding of the two of them. We lump them together as The Russians. In fact Alexandrei is a Chukchee from the far north-east corner of Siberia. He grew up in a sod shanty roofed with walrus hide. He didn’t hear Russian spoken until he was thirteen. Nikolai is the son of a Russian father and an Evenki mother from near Magadan, far to the south. They both have separate languuages – Russian is their second language. They have different songs and dances and customs. They are friends only because no one else is their friend.’

  Mulroy, who had fielded the harpoon, was going red in the face beside the impaled chair.

  ‘Permission to speak, sir,’ he said. ‘The men in here have been very kind to the two Russ – Asiatic persons. Language is a problem, sir.’

  The way he said it, respectfully aggrieved, you could read a submerged question: if you like them so bloody much why don’t you take them in next door?

  Mead stared him in the eyes, aloof, un-chagrined.

  ‘I am sure both men have received consideration from you, Petty Officer Mulroy. But we can all get on better with people if we are aware of their backgrounds.’

  The emergency had ended. We sauntered to our places in the hut. It seemed the air of our habitation had changed. Until today, the hut had represented an agreeable life. The one quarter-acre where your breath, your sentience, the integrity of your skin, were all guaranteed. Now we all wondered, would I be safer outside?

  Ten minutes later, as I stood bemused by the mess table, Alec Dryden asked me back into the Leader’s alcove. Here I found both Sir Eugene and Warren Mead seated, and Warren began speaking even before the curtain was pulled.

  ‘You have to remember,’ he began shyly, ‘these two Siberians are primitives. Until Christianity reached that corner of Siberia, its peoples were sun-worshippers. Naturally enough. Like most primitives they used to believe that every season was a miracle, that you couldn’t depend on the sun returning in strength in the spring unless you performed certain ceremonies.’ He then seemed to be afraid we might feel superior to Nikolai and Alexandrei. ‘It used to be exactly the same with peasants in Western Europe. In fact some of our popular festivals today have their origins in that kind of belief.’

  ‘We understand,’ Sir Eugene assured him.

  ‘Now even after Christianity arrived, the priests had to perform certain rites to guarantee the return of the sun. That’s a common experience Nikolai and Alexandrei have shared all their life. A priest comes into the village at the beginning of winter. He wears a silken cope and carries a golden disc. It’s just what the sun-priests used to do, centuries ago, except that the golden disc now has Christian symbols engraved on it. The priest blesses the people with the disc, then he conceals it in the folds of his cope and takes it away to the church. The idea is that the strong summer sun is in God’s keeping and God will send it back at the proper time.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Sir Eugene, his avid face characteristically tilted.

  ‘It’s a very important ceremony up where Alexandrei comes from. The polar night is deep, though not quite as deep as this. Just the same, the Chukchee know they will die if the sun doesn’t return to them.’ Now Mead winced as if he’d come to the most painful part of his story. ‘Victor Henneker was a correspondent with the Russian High Command during the war between Russia and Japan some years back. The war petered out in the summer of 1905 and Victor must have visited Siberia on his way home and obtained a sun disc there, because I’ve never seen them on the open curio market in England.’

  ‘Victor owned one of these discs?’

  ‘You know what Victor was like,’ said Warren. ‘He was a sort of teasing uncle. He liked to have something to tease everyone with. He would have heard about Nikolai and Alexandrei and thought a sun-disc would divert or tease them. That was his nature.’

  My respect for this votary of pack-horses was increasing as I listened.

  ‘Nikolai said that about the time the sun was vanishing Victor suddenly produced this disc in front of them. He teased them with it, threatening to drop it down an ice crack. You have to understand, to Nikolai and Alexandrei it was a cosmic threat, even if it might have been no more than a good joke to Victor. Here was the sun in Victor’s care and he was threatening to sink it to the bottom of the sound. Anyhow, when Victor went missing, both the Siberians began fearing for the sun. You see, in Siberia priest passes the sun-disc on to priest, but here was this man they considered dubious and he had no one to pass it on to. When he died, the sun was lost for ever. I believe, Tony, that fear of that loss set Nikolai wailing this afternoon. They’re good men, both of them. They thought the world had changed beyond repair.’

  ‘Just to torment them,’ Sir Eugene murmured. ‘He did it just to torment them.’

  ‘No. It seems a time came … I don’t know when the time was … that he wanted certain favours. From Alexandrei.’

  Saying this, Warren Mead’s face, sooty from blubber smoke, yet managed to take on a supreme pallor. In the alcove there was a silence for ten seconds, and ten seconds is a wide and intimidating time.

  ‘Favours?’ Sir Eugene said. But I could see him realize then that it was unfair to make Warren specify further. He filled in the picture himself. ‘Do you mean homosexual favours?’

  ‘According to Nikolai, sir.’

  Sir Eugene thought for a while. There was a grunt from him as if he’d been hit in the stomach. Everyone seemed compelled to comfort him.

  Mead said, ‘This sort of thing can happen anywhere.’

  Alec Dryden said, ‘Henneker wasn’t exactly chosen by you, sir. He was thrust on you by the expedition’s need.’

  The phrases of comfort did not dent Sir Eugene’s bewilderment. It took him some seconds more to drag his mental and moral forces together. When
he did he said, ‘Did any of you have any inkling of this matter?’

  ‘Not of Alexandrei’s case,’ I admitted painfully. ‘I had heard two rumours of Victor’s – tendencies.’

  ‘My God, what sort of man would do this to a Russian peasant?’ He turned to me. ‘Why didn’t you say something, Tony?’

  ‘One prefers not to believe rumours of that kind, Sir Eugene,’ I answered, an acceptable answer for those days.

  ‘I suppose not. Alec, did you have any intimation?’

  ‘I saw … certain indications. Sir Eugene, I refuse to believe the greatest polar expedition of its day could be destroyed by … by homosexual undermining.’

  Such a sentiment would today be considered a line from comedy, from the same sort of comedy that would make a joke of a journey in search of an egg, yet I saw the total belief with which the sentiment was delivered. The consummate British Antarctic expedition could not be harmed by sexual abnormality. God would not permit it. Alec Dryden knew God would not permit it.

  Mead went back to inspect Tulip’s underjaw. If her breathing was congested he would sit up all night with her.

  As soon as Mead was gone Sir Eugene asked Alec to search again for the sun-disc, and when Alec bad gone out of the alcove the Leader turned to me and asked me to specify the rumours I had heard concerning Victor.

  I gave him the information about Victor and the Mulroys I had got from Barry in his state of sexual grievance. Sir Eugene made notes.

  At last Alec returned and put a golden disc on the table. It looked old and was engraved with a Byzantine Christ, a Messiah promising summer from his cross.

  ‘It’s exquisite,’ said Sir Eugene. ‘Come.’

  We followed him as he carried the disc through into the men’s quarters, more or less concealing it under his sweater. He stopped at the lower bunk where Alexandrei lay, eyes nearly closed. Nikolai leaned over from the upper bunk. We could hear the hiss of breath he let out when Sir Eugene produced the disc. Even the comatose Alexandrei saw it. His eyes grew wide.

  ‘Alexandrei, Nikolai,’ said Sir Eugene in the English language they could not understand. ‘I have the disc. I will keep it safe. The sun will return.’

  Alexandrei smiled, turned on his side and went instantly to sleep.

  5

  I woke at 8 a.m. in a severe stillness I could not at first define. After some seconds of frowning, I understood that the blizzard had passed. I became aware that Quincy was already sitting on his bunk reading and saw Sir Eugene tip-toeing towards him.

  ‘Brian,’ I heard Sir Eugene say to Quincy, ‘I would be obliged if you read the memorial service at eleven.’

  ‘Around the mess table, Sir Eugene?’

  ‘That would be altogether too homely. In the open, I think.’

  As I made my way to the latrines after breakfast I saw Sir Eugene walk up to Mead in the stable. Mead sat dozing – cold pipe in mouth – on a butter box by the stove. It was a strange atmosphere he worked in, the air narcotically heavy from the blubber heat and the floor of the stable solid perma-frost.

  ‘Warren, we’re having a memorial service for Victor this morning. I want you to tell the Russians that they are to attend and that their behaviour is to be perfect. When that is over we can all settle again.’

  We can all settle again … Shivering in the latrines I considered the mandate Sir Eugene and Alec Dryden had given me. To raise the question of Forbes-Chalmers, since there might have been many reports of sightings suppressed when Sir Eugene, in the autumn, labelled the vision an illusion of light. I was also to listen to and observe the sailors. I didn’t know how to deal with this last duty. It wasn’t a problem of class. I wasn’t a product of the great public school system. One of my uncles had been a petty officer in the Royal Navy and I had no trouble talking to him. But it was the task of speaking to them obliquely, without having them guess the truth.

  When I mentioned this to Sir Eugene, he smiled paternally. ‘Don’t approach anyone if you believe that might happen. We’re in a unique position. It is far less dangerous to let the criminal escape than to admit the existence of the criminal.’

  That was his principle. He had stated it to me twice before I went to my bunk.

  What a wondrous day-night it was in which we stood officially remembering Victor. As a congregation, we faced that brilliant prospect of the sound and the far Victoria Land Mountains. The starlight was bright as moonlight on those far glaciers and the moonlight bright as moonlight in any desert. Unlike yesterday, no aurora fluttered above the sound but its absence drew our eyes to the volcano called Erebus, rising on our left, three miles high and trailing a spume of smoke above its frozen lip. Closer to our south we could see the convulsed and rugged ice shapes of the Barne Glacier, feeding itself from the higher slopes of Erebus, grinding as a slow and barely plastic river down to the frozen sound. I could talk of the ice shelf beyond that, but I don’t want to press your patience. We will come in any case to the ice shelf. Enough to say this, to stand in McMurdo Sound in the clear dead of winter was to step beyond the normal laws of perception, to stretch the senses, to threaten perspective. It depended on your temperament whether it enchanted, or frightened the pants off you.

  We stood in a semicircle at the base of the weather-vane hill to the north of the hut. On the lower slopes of the little rise stood Quincy, the priest, and Sir Eugene, the panegyrist. Quincy prayed that although Victor had fallen subject to the corruption of the grave he would one day rise glorious. I find such hopes hard to share. Even if Victor had not been a seducer of Mulroys and Chukchees, the idea of this waspish journalist rising glorious in the fields of judgment day would not have seemed plausible.

  Besides, Antarctica being what it is, Victor had not become subject to the corruption of the grave. He lay ice solid and impermeable in a pouch of sailcloth in the ice-cave behind the hut. Even in the summer it would be impossible to bury him in the frozen earth around the foreshores and, perhaps for the sake of some future civilized trial, Sir Eugene did not wish to commit the body through an ice-hole into the depths of the sound.

  Now that I am close to the last dark cave myself, I think of Antarctica as the consummate burial place. A lot of people aren’t afraid of the oblivion of death. A lot are frightened of the awesome choice of subjecting their flesh either to the rot of interment or the blast-furnace of cremation. About ten years ago, one of my favourite grand-daughters was living with a likeable young man, an unemployed pilot who was sniffing about for a way to make a fortune. I got him alone one night at a party.

  ‘Do you know that Antarctica is an ice mass of six million square miles?’ I asked him.

  ‘I didn’t, sir,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose then you also hadn’t realized that seven million cubic miles – miles, mark you – of ice lie atop the six million square miles of continent? There’s a fortune to be made in Antarctica, from all that ice.’

  ‘I suppose so, sir,’ he muttered politely, evasive around the eyes in a way that said, all too obviously, why don’t they can this old dingaling?

  ‘I mean, a fortune for a pilot.’ I explained to him how some people worry about corruption, although no human should need to have that explained to him. ‘If you offered to drop corpses by parachute into that great ice mass, the wealthy would know that their bodies could ride in the ice for hundreds of years. People would pay a great deal to be dropped in a dignified manner on to the polar ice cap or even on to one of the glaciers. You could initiate a famous service, and as long as you did it well, no one could interfere with you, because all governments have – by the Twelve Nation Treaty of 1959 – suspended territorial claims over Antarctica.’

  ‘What about Greenland?’ he asked. I could tell by the way he said it that he was not taking me seriously. ‘Greenland has an ice cap.’

  ‘It belongs to Denmark,’ I told him.

  I was disappointed. I thought that if I put up the money for this quite serious undertaking I would be able in my turn to sleep above
the Beardmore Glacier or lie in state in Victoria Land.

  Despite his belief in the resurrection, there was a tension of distress in Brian Quincy’s voice that morning. That tautness of grief, missing in most parsons at most such ceremonies, was good for all of us. We began to feel it ourselves – that fruitful grief that lies just this side of the moment when you say, yes there has been a death, yes he is gone and we must keep the stove going, mend our long-johns, eat our lunch.

  Quincy would, before the war began, give up the priestly life, and that morning the vestments hung on him in the manner of clothes hastily donned and about to be hastily taken off. He had spent the first part of the morning unsuccessfully helping Byram Hoosick to break a hole in the ice of the sound. They had used augers and picks at a point at which they knew the ice was thinner, perhaps only five feet thick. For this work they had had to wear windproofs and smear their faces with seal grease against frost-bite. Quincy’s face still looked greasy above the cassock, stole and surplice. At the same time, the bulk of windproofs beneath his robes made him thicker, massive, a Druid, a magic priest in the way few Anglican clergymen ever are, and therefore – somehow – an outsider to his profession.

  Yet he stepped back so humbly when he had finished, yielding up to the vast sound and to the forces that had terribly shaped it, the spirit of his brother, Victor. I had no doubt that he knew nothing of friend Victor’s secret tendencies.

  Sir Eugene’s elegy was brief. ‘Victor Henneker,’ he said, ‘was a famous figure and a challenging man to work with. Others more eloquent than I will utter panegyrics for him when the wide world hears of his death. If only we could have him back to ask him why he went out alone on such a day. I will not discuss the metaphysics of this event. I think of banal matters. Such as: that I do not want to repeat this ceremony for any more of my men. Whenever anyone leaves the hut, no matter how benign the weather, he must take someone else with him. I know that is an awkward rule to make. Mr Webb often has to come out to the dogs, Dr Warwick often comes out to the weather screen or Lt Beck to ski cross-country. I must make it a rule however until further notice.’