It crossed Bird’s mind that the storm had carried him further southwards, but for that to be the case he would have had to be carried out of the North West Passage, which seemed impossible, so he was more inclined to put the weather, which was more summery than anything he had experienced before, down to climate change. His scrap of island was now so minute that he could almost sense the shrinkage that was resulting from its thawing Furthermore he was obliged to chip on what little was left if he wanted to drink or cook, because there was no snow left on it. It was beside the point that he did not have all that much to eat, so he was forced back to hunkering down and starving. Along with that, his despair returned, and with it the oddly tender sensation of a death wish.
Translation by Tim Wilkinson
Selma Bird, a lecturer in the English Department and a biographer of Jack London, did her best to talk her brother out of making the risky trip, though in her heart of hearts she was thrilled with the idea. She had always longed to have a tough sibling who would go out to the polar regions, not that she had any problem with him as an unmarried businessman.
“I too need a little adventure for just once in my life,” young Bird spelled out to his sister. When he reached the boundary between the Beaufort Sea and Amundsen Gulf, in a filthy anorak on a dogsled packed with provisions, clothing, rifles and ammunition, his thought was: “Selma would be proud of me now.” It was indeed a fine achievement for a broker, spineless but free of bad habits, to undertake a journey that made very little sense as it did not even have a clearly defined goal. All Selma had asked was:
“Just tell me later what it was like in the wilds.”
Young Bird made meticulous preparations, learning how to shoot and to ski in the Rocky Mountains, taking an exam in hunting, completing basic training in mapping and going through two intermediate rock-climbing courses in the Julian Alps, and being sponsored for membership of the Sled Dog Club in Portland. He spent a goodly sum on the preparations and the equipment, including the camcorder on which he would make a film record of the journey for Selma, dictaphones, batteries, accumulators, a power machine needed for training purposes, a running machine and treadmill, an exercise bike, and finally a helicopter to take him, along with his dog team and luggage, from Dawson City into the wilds.
It was a new and pleasant sensation for Bird to spend money on these sorts of things. Up till then, however good his earnings, and despite picking up, from time to time, stunningly high bonuses for his carefully managed portfolio, it had never made him truly happy. He did not keep a parrot or fish or pooch; he was not such a show-off as to spend it all on himself, and at least twice a year he took a break in Cuba or Mexico; he drove a company car, his clothes and other bills were paid for by investors; and when he went out to dinner it was almost invariably a standing reception, so quite a lot was left from his salary, and work, or the money he received for it, sometimes seemed almost ancillary. Whenever a substantial sum accrued to his bank account, he would either devote it to growing his portfolio or transfer it to Selma, so she might use it to support the writing of another book or donate some of it to fund talented students and animal refuges. After the event, he would feel even that was pitiful: “That’s all I’m capable of—giving money to people who are more special than me.”
When he got out to the Beaufort Sea, though, and without either headache or partner to boot, lonesome as a lost gold-digger or shipwrecked whaler, he thought that he was the same as anyone else. He switched on the dictaphone and raised it to his mouth:
“Dear Selma, It’s hard to credit, but I’m standing here, on the shore of the Beaufort Sea, more than five thousand miles from your office. It’s a shame you were not able to come along. It’s something you really have to see! One day I’ll bring you out here; if there’s no other way, I’ll pay for you to come on a package adventure tour: no more than a few days and not the slightest danger, but at least you will see it. I think, though, it is quite different to make it here by dog sled than on a rental seaplane It’s different for just one to stand here rather than two…. I’ll tell you what I see. I’ll film it later on. The shoreline is largely free of snow. Enormous round rocks are peeking up all around; in front of me is open water, not an ice field, as the weather is a good deal warmer than expected, and although even the ground is not frozen there are gigantic ice floes floating in the sea. On my left, to the east in other words, an ice shelf is jutting out into the bay; I have no idea what is hidden beneath it: a peninsula or the sea itself… I’m sorry that the trip has reached its end, but I’ll spend a few days more here all the same. I’ll try to get further in, closer the water, but then I’ll turn back. I hope there’s going to be some more snow and colder weather, otherwise we’re going to get stuck and in the end, to my eternal shame, I’ll have to get the helicopter to take us back. I’m used to the cold now; it would not matter if the weather were to turn more severe. So much for the time being.”
By studying the map and fixing the coordinates by GPS, he tried to work out whether the ice-covered bit was a peninsula or simply a long, broad tongue of ice projecting into the sea. This did not leave him any the wiser, but he did feel that the joy of reaching his goal would be complete if he could reach the waters of the Beaufort Sea. The steep beach was not suitable for that purpose, because in the unusual warmth it had thawed, and when he tried to get any closer he just sank in the mud. So, after pondering a bit, he continued travelling eastwards, halted at the shelf, took a few bare necessities—a telescope, dictaphone and camera—and, leaving the sled, set off inland. The water was much farther away than it had appeared from the beach, but at least the ice seemed stable. Bird nevertheless remained careful; he reached the edge of the shelf after more than an hour of nosing around, and over the final yards he had paid close attention to every crack before concluding that these were old fracture lines that had frozen together an inch or two deeper. On getting out he could also see that he was not going to wash his pots in the sea, because the break was five-feet high, though it was fairly well protected. He had to be careful, maybe, but he was able to dangle his legs over the water and take a few shots of himself taking it easy at the end of the world. On the way back, retracing his steps, he was able to make speedier progress on the slightly damp snow, after which he drove the sled back to the ice shelf at precisely the point he had reached originally. There he set up the tripod, switched on the digital camera, and for Selma took some shots of himself setting up the tent. The weather was tranquil, the water lapped agreeably; Bird closed his eyes and for a few moments Cuban beaches were conjured up, the golden glitter of scorching Mexican sands, he could hear the merry laughter of bathers and Latin squeals, sunshades flapping in a southern breeze as it grew brisker. When he opened his eyes, however, there were just a few pink gulls wheeling above.
For an improvised kitchen, he set up a primus stove, using the ice break as a windbreak to substitute for a kitchen wall, so that while he drank his first cup of coffee at the gateway to the Arctic polar region he should get a good view of the ice floes floating nearby, the indigo-blue sea with its silvery swell. He left the sled and the dogs a little bit further off inland. He boiled water, waved a few times to the camera, tossed a crust of bread to some gulls which had alighted nearby, prepared a shelter, gathering together the things he needed most, swallowed some quick-brew soup from a billy that had become thoroughly battered in the course of the trip, stowed the camera, and lay down to sleep.
He dropped off to sleep late that evening, with the Sun just visible from behind the silhouettes of the distant ice fortresses, secure in the knowledge that this was the end of the journey, the adventure, even though precisely the opposite was true: what he had thought to be the finishing tape six hours later had transformed into the starting line. The reports of a crevasse cracking broke the stillness of Franklin Bay, and the ice above the shelf split horizontally. A sabre-shaped block at least three hundred feet long separated, not unlike a battleship from its dock, and slid into the sea, relatively slowly in view of its weight, but accompanied by a fearsome crashing and shuddering. Bird at first jumped to his feet, but since the crack was barely an arm’s length away he chose to throw himself onto his belly. After a few seconds, it dawned on him that the bulk of his equipment had been left over on the other side, so he leapt up again: the dogs were pulling wildly at their traces and whimpering, a rumble could be heard from the crevasse. Bird started to throw over the items which he had with him at the shelter, but barely had he managed to toss over a few of the objects, and was just grabbing his tubular-frame rucksack, when the massive sabre tipped and its movement started to speed up. Within moments the crevasse widened so much that it was now impossible to jump across. The block of ice slowly but surely floated out onto the Beaufort Sea, with Bird desperately running back and forth as if getting ready to jump but not having the nerve. Nothing characterised his confusion more tellingly than the phrase that obsessively kept running through his head during the fair length of time for which his running about lasted: “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”
Even as it was, he would be better off swimming across the cold water, possibly making several trips to carry all the gear over, rather than getting stuck there, was his almost rational reasoning, but equally that the ice floe was just too thick, so he couldn’t imagine how he was going to be able to climb out onto it, whereas the ice-free shore was now too far away, three quarters of a mile. It crossed his mind later on that it was only because of the force of the split that the floe had drifted so quickly from the shore, and the drifting would slow down after a while, perhaps even stop altogether. As the wind was blowing towards Banks Island, which is to say towards the shore, he kidded himself that this would stop it, maybe even reverse it. and bring the shore within reach once more. What he failed to take into account was that the seemingly favourable wind, which was picking up moreover, was steering only the upper layer of ice towards the fissure, but the body of water, constantly streaming in the form of waves, on coming up against the shore was plunging downwards and, deep down, turning back in the form of an huge current in the direction of the open sea, and the bulk of the iceberg was, in fact, floating in precisely that undertow. It was rather as if a ship’s sail were hoisted underwater; in other words, it was almost certainly the sneakier one, the undercurrent, that would be the winner of the contest between the two currents. Over and above that, it would not all be the same: if it were to change and the wind blow from the south, because then (given that there was no shore to reverse the upper layer of water) only the strength of the wind would be asserting itself, the island of the ice floe, whether this way or the other, was drifting away from the shore—and with it any chances that Selma’s brother had.
Desperation grew into panic when he realised that the radio had also remained on the far side. Bird drew up a quick balance. One had to reckon with the worst, he had been told by someone in the Sled Dog Club in Portland, so quite properly he supposed that the direction in which the ice floe was drifting might never change, and since those belongings which had stayed on the far side, the radio in particular, would do more to assist his getting home than the ones he had with him, he plumped for swimming across. He stripped down, therefore, and cautiously crept out to the edge of the ice, rinsed his face, splashing the nape of his neck too; he had wanted to lower himself gradually into the water but he slipped and lost balance, so he fell into the sea. He felt his heart was about to be numbed to stone. He gasped for breath and strove to hold his head above the waves, but went down all the same. The cold pierced between his ribs like a dagger of ice, the chilliness, like lead seeping into the flesh, pulling him under towards the dark seabed. When he at last fought to the surface, the fissure seemed unreachable. It again occurred to him: what if he could not even climb out? That bleak notion set off a renewed panic attack and, without thinking, he turned towards the floating island. He saw even that as being too high, but through relentless battling he nevertheless managed to clamber back. For a few moments he lay prostrate on the snow but then quickly towelled himself dry, hastily put on his clothes, jumped up and down and ran on the spot, before he finally crept, worn-out, humiliated, shivering, into his sleeping bag and passed out.
After the onslaughts of distress of the first days had died down, Selma’s brother was visited by spells of sober deliberation alternating with lethargy as the floating island drifted so far from the shore that even the fissure was no longer visible. To start with, he was unable even to sleep. The ice shelf truly was too far away to swim across, but it was close enough for him to hear very distinctly, over the water, even in his dreams, the yelps of the deserted, harnessed team of dogs. Their chorus of complaint rang out as if it were the sound of his own hopelessness. It gave him the creeps to think that the dogs’ hunger would only grow with time as there was no one to toss them rations; before long thy would be tearing each other apart. From Day 3, however, he only heard them when a south-westerly was blowing.
Before long a search for him would be started, so they would find him sooner or later, Bird supposed, and he tried to keep concentrating on that so as to get through as comfortably and safely as possible until then. Until a helicopter showed up. In his judgement his chances were fairly good. He always kept a gun by him on account of polar bears, so he had that too with him on the island. He did not have too many cartridges, but there were a few, so in principle he could hunt for game; the sea was motionless and the weather was unchanged.
Two of his three balloons had been left on the sled, but there was one on the island. He could not drink salty water, so he had to make provision for fresh water. While he had been travelling he had taken it from brooks, melted snow or ice, but here he faced his first difficulty. The ice floe was covered by a thin blanket of snow, little more than an inch or two thick, which was melting rapidly, but when he boiled water from the ice to make tea he was aghast to find that it was salty; to put it briefly, the position was that if the weather stayed so mild, he could meet his end through a shortage of drinkable water. To overcome that problem, he collected all the snow together, but that was no easy task either. The islet was barely the size of a football pitch, and over the first few days it continued to break up, so young Bird chose not to move around at all but stayed close to his tackle, dragging it along with him even when collecting snow. Within a few days, though, he had built up four sizeable piles of snow; taking the rate of thawing into account, he reckoned that these reserves might last for weeks. Given that the job was more strenuous than he had expected, he allowed himself a hot tea, though he had to be sparing with the paraffin. As he also did with the tins of preserved food, yet even so that day he had consumed two of them. But, as if the Arctic took exception to that little luxury, the next day the ice floe split in two. Bird had to make do with just one third of it, along with a single snow pile which was gradually turning into a puddle.
There was plenty of reason to panic anew, but he had a strong faith in assistance coming. He rapidly realised that he had to concentrate on the most essential things. Even if conditions seemed favourable at the moment, and there were reassuring signs and hopeful thoughts presented themselves, it would not do to relax the strictness of his rationing. When the Sun was relatively high in the sky and he could bask on the ice, he secretly harboured the idea that maybe it was all for the best this way. An adventure at last. Something to remember for life. After careful, steady reflection, he hung on to just a single thing which was, in some respects, superfluous: making the camcording. He supposed that it was worth making a record of “this survival”, and using up the batteries and XD cards would not reduce his chances of survival one scrap. For a short time he took pleasure in the job of documentation, but after ten days it was with a lugubrious expression, at some times resignedly, at others angrily, that he spoke to the camera:
“I can’t imagine where the hell they are… It’s a joke that in this satellite age people can’t get a fix on me! There’s no fog, no wind, not even a snowstorm! Soon I’m going to be in deep shit when the snow has melted; the ice is mostly salt water, the weather is marvellous, of course, I spend half the day sunbathing, and with my sleeping bag I don’t feel cold even at night, though to my way of thinking if only it were a good deal colder, then there’d be a chance for fresh snow to fall and the water problem would be solved. It would be even better if the sea were to freeze, so then I could get off this floating island, maybe even get back to the sled, though true, with no GPS I don’t know where I am, but hopefully not too far off. If the weather were to turn really cold, then sooner or later I’m going to freeze. I’ve hardly any paraffin left, the food is low, the ointments I left on the sled, so my skin has dried out and cracked, and my bunions often ooze blood. I can’t believe that people are not coming. Selma has certainly sent them to look for me. The waiting is driving me crackers. If only something would happen!”
His wish was granted. The bright, windless weather came to an end. Hurricane-strength gusts whipped up the waters of Franklin Bay, and, although he could not sense it, the resurgent sea currents also carried the island along speedily. He anxiously scratched at and tasted the ice, scrutinised the sky for signs as to whether snow was on the way, or perhaps a helicopter. He was terrified any time the island went near an ice floe substantially larger than it, even colliding with it on a few occasions; on drifting into a hefty iceberg, in the shadow of an ice wall at least twenty feet high, he shuddered to think that it could shatter and smash his island to smithereens. That was when he decided that, at the earliest opportunity which arose, he was going to transfer to another ice floe, one which was bigger, safer and, if at all possible, formed of fresh water.
Fog descended yet, despite that, the wind picked up over and over again. Bird was unable to see even the edge of his own floe and so was unable to make out if the wind was changing its direction that often, or was it just that the floe was spinning. He hoped the foggy, windy and somewhat colder weather would bring a little snow as well, but in any case he spent the whole day huddled in his sleeping bag, and whenever he was able to surmount his fear or was overcome by fatigue he would sleep. He relieved himself directly beside his lair. Thick, cotton-wool fog like this he had only read about in guide books; he was scared of slipping into the water, and as the island meanwhile grew even smaller, the slapping of the waves was audible from alarmingly close by. He thought of many things that he never had thought of before, and he also did a number of things that he had never done before, such as pray, although he had no idea to whom.
A few days later, the wind let up but the fog persisted, only dispersing when the wind picked up again, but then, as if by magic, Bird’s joy was boundless. For one thing, he could see no sign of any icebergs, so there was nothing to loom up above him, and for another, his island had wound up among other ice floes, and there appeared to be some chance of being able to switch. The massing of the blocks of ice might also be a sign that he had drifted into a bay or strait, so with some luck he might even reach the shore. To add to all that, the temperature round about him remained 15-20 degrees Centigrade and there were several hundred seagulls resting, which again could only indicate the closeness of land, to say nothing of the fact that a possible seal hunt promised to replenish his perilously low larder. The general effect, welcome as each fact was on its own, was not marred by the deplorable sight presented by Bird’s fouled-up campsite and his own appearance.
The broker-cum-Robinson Crusoe toured his tiny island to check how much was left of it, hurriedly packed and set off. He proceeded cautiously, so that after more than ten hours he had crossed no more than two dozen floes. He was delighted to find that all were composed of freshwater ice. He also got closer to the seals, which did not take any notice of him and lolled impassively on the commodious plateau, stretching out to sea, of a fascinating, rhomboid-shaped ice colossus. Bird wanted to get over onto a hill which, judging from its size, stability, and its seals and screeching seagulls, suggested that it might not be an iceberg at all but a promontory of the shoreline. Even if it was not, from its top one would certainly see a long way off. Bird hoped that he would be able to climb up to the summit without trouble on the gently rising eastern side of the plateau; the next day, however, he was in for a disappointment. On crossing several more floes, he ascertained that he was unable to get to the hill as it was part of another barrier, and between the two barriers there was a broad stretch of open water. He consoled himself with the thought that the block of ice opposite the hill was also huge and had a much greater snow-cover than the island he had abandoned, so he set up camp, in part trusting that the seals idling at the foot of the plateau would, sometime soon, show signs of life and one or another of them might come within shooting range.
He stowed the equipment tidily, cleaned this and that, taking up his new station; he recorded a report on his experiences and his plans, then, setting the rifle ready-loaded in front of him, waited for seals. A spell of tranquil, warm weather seemed in prospect. He decided that he would make a start on gathering snow the next day. In the morning he was in for a pleasant surprise: floating right before his eyes, within easy reach, was a seven-foot-long tree trunk. A further sign which made it likely that the seashore was near—and a bit of firewood to boot! From time to time the seals also livened up, swimming back and forth in the water between the barriers, frisking, sometimes disappearing for hours on end, but always returning; there were even several occasions when they swam up quite close to the broker, but by the time he had snatched up the rifle, they had dived.
The log of wood gradually dried out. To speed the process Bird set to breaking it up, splitting off smaller and larger chunks, propping them to dry on the sides of the tent, and, when he judged them to be dry enough, placing them at the bottom of his sleeping bag. This whittling calmed his nerves and engrossed him; his mind wandered and he often forgot where he happened to be. He did not scrutinise the heavens, did not scan the horizon, did not wait on tenterhooks for a helicopter; quite the reverse, he bent down close to the log, deftly struck it, pried it open, casting only an occasional glance at the water in case it had brought more wood or a seal had popped up. It may have been because of these days of soothing pottering about, alternating with periods of sleep, that, when a wrinkled seal unexpectedly broke loose onto the ice floe right where Bird was squatting, hacking away with the log in his lap, he almost fell flat on his back in fright. His rifle was not to hand—fortunately.
The seal was marvellously supple, sleek, brown, gleaming and glistening, joyful and powerful, and it was at least as surprised as Bird. In its jovial mouth, under the long strands of its whiskers, a codfish wriggled. Before jumping out onto the floe it had not been aware that a man was sitting around up above it, just as Bird, engrossed in his chipping, had no suspicion that a wrinkled seal was circling around underneath him. They stared at each other at length. For Bird it was a pleasant feeling to be able to see another being from so close, whatever it might be; the evidently young creature was not only nonplussed but clearly curious as well. After eyeing each other for a while, Bird spoke:
“So, what’s up?”
That startled the unexpected guest; it dropped its prey and with two short barks cast itself back into the sea. Bird saw the cod writhing towards the edge of the ice, but in his surprise he was unable to lift a finger, so it was only at the very last moment that he lunged after it, and then so eagerly that he all but ended up in the water himself. Resuming his place, he sat back against the tree trunk, clutching his resignedly gaping booty:
“I don’t believe it… If only Selma could see this…”
He struck the cod on the skull with the blade of his hunting knife, pulled out the camcorder, placed it on its stand, switched on and sat back.
“So, here I am on an ice floe. A few days ago it looked like I was going to die of thirst, but now I have plenty of water, or at least snow. I also picked up wood from the sea, and just beforehand a seal jumped out under my nose and has left a fish here! Come to that, it’s the first time I’ve seen a seal this close. Anyway, I can now eat a hot meal without digging into my reserves; I don’t need to open a can and I won’t use any paraffin. If things go on like this, I might even shoot a seal one day, so then I’ll have enough meat too. For now I’ll take a shot of how I set about making an authentic polar lunch.”
At that point he glanced at his wristwatch and added a correction:
“More like supper, to be more accurate. It’s four in the afternoon. Take it as being supper.”
He laid a small pyramid of wood shavings, with bark at the base, then with the teleobjective of his camera used the rays of the Sun to light a fire, and, having skewered it onto a tent peg, baked the gutted and scaled delicacy.
The next day, in the early afternoon, he was stretched out on the ground, stripped to the waist, when his brand-new acquaintance paid another visit. It leapt out just as unexpectedly as the previous day, though now a little further away, and it also stayed for a shorter time. But it was not startled; it knew Bird was there. It sprang out and jumped back in. It had companions circling all around, but at a respectful distance. Bird could see that the seal kept coming back, which made him think this was a splendid opportunity to take a shot. He was reaching for the rifle when the seal reappeared, and again with a fish in its mouth. Just as on the previous day, it sized up the somewhat emaciated man at some length, and he gazed back with no little hankering at a herring wriggling in its mouth.
“OK, be a good dear and set it down nicely.”
The animal made a movement as if it were politely bowing.
“Clever seal! Now let the bloody fish go,” young Bird spoke again and made as if to scare it. At that the seal snorted, waved its prize around, tossed it onto the island, then with two barks jumped into the sea. Without thinking, Bird snatched after the herring much more speedily and slickly than the day before, struck it, set the camcorder so that the strait and the iceberg would be in the picture, then sat down in front of it:
“It is hard to credit it, but the seal from yesterday came back again just shortly beforehand, maybe no more than five minutes ago, and again brought grub; or to be more precise, it left another fish. I don’t know quite what to make of it, but it strikes me as fairly interesting. See! here’s the proof! Some herring species, I think… They are still swimming around in the neighbourhood, most likely hunting. When they finish with that they gather on the far side of the strait, on the cap of the iceberg.,” Bird was saying when his strange friend appeared for a second directly on his right, then vanished.
“Did you see that? What did I tell you! I’m not talking out of the back of my head. Did you see? I hope it’s on the shot. I reckon it’s the same specimen; the others don’t come here. I’ll move a bit further over so you’ll get a good view, maybe it’ll jump out again,” and here young Bird moved out of the picture, leaving the camera trained only on the strait, capturing the dark-blue, barely riffled sea full of broken ice.
“Then again, it might not come again today, I just don’t know… Anyway, let’s just wait a bit; at worst there’ll just be a very long shot of the strait.”
Yet just on cue the broker’s benefactor jumped out from the sea again, right in front of the camera. With water glistening on its body like silk, it scrutinised the strange structure curiously; there were beads of ice clinging to the bristles of its vibrissae, it snorted, panted, and bobbed up and down. It repeated the skipping in and out a few times before finally swimming off to its iceberg plateau with a series of dolphin leaps. Bird settled back in the picture:
“What did I tell you!”
The next time he made a recording, whatever he might do, he could not help keeping an eye out, continually checking the water. Not without good reason. Early that afternoon the seal appeared again—in all its majestic simplicity, as Bird called it, in the same tones as if it were the last individual of a species on the verge of extinction.
“Make yourself at home, pray!” he greeted it merrily, and bowed. This time the seal got straight to the point and dropped the fish; it seemed to reciprocate the politeness, throwing back its head with an odd snaking movement and making a long sound like a bark then a whole string of yaps, so the broker bobbed. That caught the creature’s interest, as it appeared to be brooding, motionless and gazing inquiringly, before finally, as if it had come to a conclusion, jumping resolutely into the water. Bird made straight for the fish, struck it and put it to one aside. He had just finished laying a fire when he heard a splashing from close at hand; the seal had put in an appearance for a few seconds at the edge of the island; a decent-sized fish was flipped up into the air in a big arc right over to the camp site. It must have been at least six inches long and weighed half a pound. Bird stood astounded at the rim of the ice, trying to spot the seal, but to no avail because it did not show up the next day either.
Making a recording a few weeks later, a visibly stronger Bird kept looking at his watch in happy anticipation before at one point, with child-like innocence and savage joy, saying:
“It’s coming! Watch!” and the seal arrived, carrying a fairly small fish in its jaw. Unlike earlier, Bird was standing and not seated. He bowed deeply, and with an effusiveness worthy of a farce said something along the lines of:
“My heartiest welcome to the prince of the Glacial Sea. I am delighted from the bottom of my heart to receive a visit from you…”
The seal threw over a fish, Bird took it and for a moment looked at the camera:
“Now watch this! If I do this, it will bring a flatfish,” then he turned to the patiently waiting seal, spread the sleeping bag in front of him, crouched down and executed an exemplary forward roll. The seal snorted and vanished. Bird again turned to the camera:
“It’s just gone off to fetch a flatfish.”
And he waited and waited and waited.
“Just hang on. I’m not off my nut. It’s going to bring one, just wait and see!”
It was a long time, to be sure, but the seal did indeed come and, just like before, hurriedly tossed out a fish—and obviously a flatfish at that. Next Bird showed the stock of firewood he had accumulated from the pieces that the seal had brought in exchange for various kinds of displays. There were several scenes that young Bird managed to film before the batteries finally ran out, recording himself several times with an alarmingly big grin on his face as he grilled a juicy fat fish on a fairly big fire and repeated:
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. And I haven’t the faintest idea where I am.”
Still, all’s well that ends well. First of all, the air cooled; sunbathing was not possible any longer. Bird restlessly walked around the island, which had been stuck in one spot for weeks now. He could see that the water at the far end of the strait was starting to turn choppy. The sky was bluer, both darker and a deeper blue. Then the snow on the cap of the iceberg across the way flurried and, barely seconds later, a strong gust of wind blew over the strait above the jam of ice floes. The islands of greater and lesser size that hitherto had been lightly nudging each other started, all of a sudden, to jostle, the water became packed with detaching chunks of ice and gave off a sound as if a million handbells were bobbing around in it. Lowly scudding, lead-grey clouds made an appearance, with the Sun now disappearing behind them, now breaking through. The first snow flakes also fell; at first these were like soft balls of cotton wool drifting in the air, but later it hammered down more densely as smaller granules of sleet. Clouds covered the length and breadth of the sky, the wind grew in force. Each time it ratcheted up Bird thought it could get no stronger, and by the time he was hardly able to stay on his feet in it, he could not imagine it being more powerful. It was no longer coming in gusts but just blowing and blowing, ferociously, crazily, which in turn indicated that it was not going to blow over any time soon. The snowing was associated with mistiness, and the ice floes ground about for days, with Bird cowering in his sleeping bag, gathering all his things around him and entreating: “If only the wind would let up!” The snow, of course, could be happy that this did not happen because the sleet then the suffocating, powdery snow which arrived with later clouds did not remain on the ice-caps but, due to the hurricane, only drifted over them to end up in the sea. It was to be feared that the hitherto trustworthy island was going to break up, and to top it all, with the weather being so horrendous, the seal was not paying visits either.
Bird himself did not know how many days were spent in the snowstorm. Out of fear, he was unable to sleep, but finally, totally exhausted, he passed out when he had curled up, tight as a hedgehog, at the bottom of his sleeping bag. He was only awakened by an unaccustomed stillness. What he had been fearing had duly ensued: his giant island had broken up, and he found himself on an abjectly small snippet. The barriers had disappeared, and indeed most of the ice floes that were left—that is, if they were the same at all—were now a long way off and likewise very small. A few icebergs could be seen, to be sure, but immensely distant, on the confoundedly blue, open sea. As far as the eye could see, there was just water, water, some broken ice, and one or two hopelessly pitching minute islands, with listlessly rocking sea washing over even most of those; they floated about and teetered like flotsam from a shipwreck. Nothing reassuring was to be gained from them.
It crossed Bird’s mind that the storm had carried him further southwards, but for that to be the case he would have had to be carried out of the North West Passage, which seemed impossible, so he was more inclined to put the weather, which was more summery than anything he had experienced before, down to climate change. His scrap of island was now so minute that he could almost sense the shrinkage that was resulting from its thawing Furthermore he was obliged to chip on what little was left if he wanted to drink or cook, because there was no snow left on it. It was beside the point that he did not have all that much to eat, so he was forced back to hunkering down and starving. Along with that, his despair returned, and with it the oddly tender sensation of a death wish.
The next day, with his telescope he made out a polar bear. At first this terrified him, but after reflection he thought it was a bit of a godsend: he would shoot it and eat it. The debilitated bear was struggling as it was repeatedly submerged, trying to reach for ice floes here and there, but those kept on tipping over, sinking and breaking up beneath it. Bird watched the bear battling for over an hour, trying to size up the chances of his own island being able to carry the weight of a polar bear as well. The wretched brute was floundering all over the place, without any particular goal or purpose In its aimless meandering there was one point at which it came just about within shooting range, but then, as if it were having second thoughts, it turned back, though it was calamitously thin and obviously hungry, so it would have regarded Selma’s brother as fair game. Whatever the case, it swam further on and, at the price of renewed struggles, disappeared in precisely the same direction as that from which from which it had arrived. Bird sat on the ice, relieved and also sad. Two hours later, fifteen or twenty white whales, belugas, hit the surface nearby, swimming slowly in synchrony after having come up together for air. They paraded about two hundred feet away from Bird’s ice floe before silence reigned.
Bird decided to make some tea. He got to his feet and raised his sack of paraphernalia, but that caused the island to tilt over to one side, so he shuffled a bit until it was again standing even. He altered his centre of gravity several times more before he realised there was now so little ice left underneath him that it would tip in response to the least movement. He had never felt so despondent and weary in his whole life as he did while he cautiously sat back down, like an albatross nestling on its egg, taking care with every move. A mild southerly air current was streaming towards him, the Sun was scorching the nape of his neck; a few cloudlets were dawdling in the sky, high up in the heavens the glinting metal sheaths of airplanes flew over along an air corridor, leaving a trail of condensation straight as an arrow behind them, and in a few places the white dabs of gulls spotted the sea. Earlier on, too, young Bird, while basking in the Sun, had stared longingly, with mixed feelings at the distant airplanes, wondering, if the passengers were aware that right then they happened to be flying over an adventurer who was stranded on an ice floe, what they would do. What might the thinking be of those primitive jungle tribesmen who had never seen a white man but only perceived that for some time now strange objects were drawing lives in the sky? And when that well-paid bachelor travelled by air to Cuba, Beijing or London, how many shipwrecks had he flown over in the course of his life?
He came to a decision not to do what the polar bear had been doing but for preference to shoot himself in he head, even if seagulls were to pick him apart and his bones were left resting on the sea floor. Later on, he further refined that with the idea that he would rather direct the rifle shot at his heart than be lying with his brains blown out, should anyone nevertheless happen to find him. He would wait another two days, throw anything combustible onto a fire with the little wood that was still left—the sleeping bag, anorak, wind-break—sprinkle it with what remained of the paraffin and set it light. He would get warm one last time, and when he was roasting it would be time for the bullet.
He was just in the midst of choreographing his last hour when he heard a snorting and, right under his nose, the seal came to the surface then proceeded to swim around the island as if to say: “There’s not much left, to be sure! That’s one helluva mess you’re in, I reckon.” After a few circuits, and with a loud puffing, it vanished under the water. It re-emerged a few minutes later carrying a fish in its jaws, but it did not jump onto the island, for which Bird was immensely grateful, because even with the tiniest waves the ice floes around were set spinning like ball bearings, so if it were to jump out, Bird’s floe might easily overturn. The seal poked out its head with the small fish and for a long time perused the woeful human being, who now did not dare even to stand up but instead cautiously salaamed while seated. The seal snorted in annoyance, cast off the fish into the sea and swam off to return a little later with a flatfish. Bird had eaten nothing for days. Guarding his every movement, he slowly got up in order to demonstrate a forward horizontal stand or something like that, anything, but he soon saw that was impossible. He had difficulty enough even to stand up on the violently lurching island. He chose for preference to sit back down; he gazed at the seal and declared:
“I can’t, understand? Just can’t!”
But the animal did not understand a word of it, threw away the flatfish and started swimming around the block of ice. Bird did no more than twist his head, but he sometimes had a feeling that it was prodding the island from underneath. Later on it popped up with an even bigger fish, floating on its back and uttering the by now familiar series of barks, but when Bird showed no response even to this, it discarded the third fish too. Selma’s brother was at a loss what to do and got annoyed with the seal, deciding he was going to shoot it. With a bit of luck, he might be able to pull the carcass onto the island, and at his proverbial last hour organise a banquet too. He pulled two cartridges out of the side pocket of his holdall, snapped the gun barrel open, slid the cartridges in, cocked the weapon and aimed it in the direction he had last seen the seal before setting it down on his lap. Bird’s nerves were strained to the limit by fury, one finger was on the trigger, the other hand on the palm rest. He held it low and did not raise it to his eye, waiting in a sort of hip-firing position for the seal to resurface. When it finally did come up for air, right in front of him, with a larger flatfish than ever before and came to a stop for a moment, an accidental start on Bird’s part made him squeeze the trigger. The seal had no time even to be alarmed, the broker shot it in the chops. He caught a clear image of the seal’s face being torn off and sent flying, along with the flatfish.
“Screw your flatfish!” Selma’s brother declared.
The flat calm continued. The carcass floated around eight feet away but later drifted further off. The next day it swept round the island; by the third day it had been carried far off and Bird could only see a bit of it by telescope. When seagulls alighted on it, he shot off a few times at them too before lying down. By the time he woke up, the seal was again close at hand, so much so that he attempted to pull it closer with a knife tied to a baggage strap, though thanks to his unsuccessful throws the corpse floated a little further off. Bird made the decision not to shoot himself in the chest until he had fished his former benefactor out of the sea and consumed him.
The projected deadline for capitulation came and went. Bird just sat with his gaze fixed on the seal’s carcass, which around noon had again come within a rope’s length. Bird remained seated and did nothing, just watched. Inch by inch, the carcass came nearer, and by four o’clock in the afternoon its blown-open brow was nudging the island. It was then, and only then, that Bird lay down slowly, very slowly, on his belly, grabbed it by a flipper, and drew it onto the island. He hunted out some dry tinder, sprinkled it with paraffin, reloaded the gun, untied the knife from the strap, slit the seal’s carcass open, separated the pelt and blubber from the meat, skewered a nice big chunk of the flesh on the tip of the knife, then lit the fire. The dark red flames of paraffin, sizzling blubber and pelt shot up high; a thick, black smoke rose up. Selma’s brother recoiled from the heat that struck his face, and he looked up a hundred feet, following the smoke’s trail: right in the middle of the clear-blue sky a huge, jet-black helicopter was fanning —directly above him.
