Читать книгу Fault Lines - Nicolas Billon - Страница 9

Jonathan nurses a glass filled with ice and whiskey.

He swirls the ice. Looks at it. Listens to it.

So, after he cut off my baby toe, Miteq threw it in the Arctic Ocean. It was an offering to Arnakuagsak, the mercurial goddess who lives at the bottom of the sea. How’d she react to my frostbitten toe? Disgust? Perplexity? Perhaps it was rent for spending the night alone on her island, which was now, technically, my island.

We found it while collecting ice samples, about 300 kilometres north of Kulusuk.

The island was quite large, and maybe a dozen metres off the coast? I didn’t remember it from any of the maps; Miteq was equally baffled by it, and we’re talking about someone who can draw the outline of the coast on the palm of his hand. My hypothesis – which ended up being correct – was that it used to be connected to the mainland by the ice sheet, which is why it was mapped as part of Greenland, but that because of the glacial retreat, it was no longer ‘attached’ and was an island proper. And this was a big deal – the island is roughly four square kilometres, the first significant land mass discovery since the Antarctic islands in the 1800s, probably.

And it meant I could name it.

We flew in by helicopter the next day. I felt a … an attraction? A pull towards this island. I decided to camp there overnight – a way of claiming it, perhaps? I don’t know. But it’s something I felt compelled to do, and do alone.

Jonathan rubs his forehead.

Now, before I tell you about … I think it’s important to mention that I had no romantic notions about Greenland. I was curious, yes, even excited to be finally going there. Perhaps because I knew it would be my last summer doing field work. (I’d promised Judith.) But I never thought, I never expected … to … to … Look, I went there to do research, to collect ice samples, to ask questions …

Jonathan smiles.

At my wedding, my mother joked that I was born with a silver question mark in my mouth. The story goes that the first word I spoke as a toddler was ‘Why?,’ and that I haven’t stopped since. She got the requisite laughs, and I remember grinning sheepishly at Judith. She shrugged, you know, as if to say, ‘What can you do? She’s right.’

I’m not gonna lie to you. That moment gave me pause. Because the thought that ran through my mind was, ‘You are marrying a woman who is interested in answers.’

When I was eight – maybe I was nine – my mother got fed up with my constant why-why-why. She sat me down and told me that at some point, when I was a little older maybe, I’d realize that most questions have a single answer that must not only satisfy me but fill me with solace. The first thing I said was, ‘What’s solace?’ Comfort and peace. The next thing I said was, ‘What’s the answer?’ But she wouldn’t tell me. ‘You’ll discover it on your own,’ she said. ‘It’s a three-letter word.’

‘And it’s not “Dad.”’

Unfortunately for my mother, ‘God’ wasn’t the answer I came up with.

Raises his glass and shakes it.

Ice.

Jonathan smiles.

I can explain to you the reasons why ice is a fascinating material, objectively speaking, I mean, many of its properties are unique and quite astounding, but that won’t tell you what it does to me, what it makes me feel …

Jonathan rubs his forehead.

All right. Like the time the twins asked me to describe what a mango tastes like. (They’re allergic.) And the simplicity of the question belies the conundrum that it actually is, because my only point of reference is a mango. So I can only explain it tautologically: a mango tastes like a mango.

Jonathan shrugs.

Tanya and Thomas weren’t impressed either.

Anyway, that’s how it is with ice. It’s difficult to explain it if you’ve never … been there. On a glacier.

A couple of years ago, I read this book – uh, shit, I forget the title, I didn’t like the rest that much … Anyway, the opening line was about this guy who was about to be executed and the memory, the thing he remembers right before he dies, is the first time his father took him to see ice. And I couldn’t get that image out of my mind. Because the earliest memory, well, the earliest complete memory of my father is also ice.

Indicates his glass.

My father’s three-letter solace was rye.

After dinner, he’d move to the sofa in the TV room and watch the Habs or whatever else was on. I’d go to him, eager, a little spaniel, and I’d wait. He’d pretend not to see me – it was a game, you understand – and eventually he’d look in my direction and, feigning surprise, he’d say, ‘Why don’t you fix your dad a drink?’ I’d run into the kitchen and I had to use a stool to reach the freezer, standing on my tippy toes, and I’d take three ice cubes and put them in a glass – just like this one, and bring it to my dad. He had the bottle ready, and he let me pour but always kept his hands on mine, to make sure I didn’t spill any. And I can vividly remember the sound as the alcohol hit the ice cubes.

He called them Johnny Titanics, a reference to both the drinker – John – and its fixer …

Points to himself.

Jonathan.

I’d hand him the drink, he’d tousle my hair, or pat my cheek, and on a few rare occasions, he’d kiss me on the forehead. And then he’d say, ‘Down the hatch!’ and a few years later, the Johnny Titanics caught up with him and sunk his liver.

Looks at his drink.

He would crunch the ice cubes. One by one.

So, today, whenever I open the freezer … That sound? The whoosh of the door opening, the white mist, the smell … I think of my father. Oh, and when I sneeze. We sneeze in exactly the same way.

Takes a sip from his glass. A memory resurfaces.

Jonathan chuckles.

I once explained to the twins what I did in the field, and I was telling them about boring through ice when Thomas stopped me and asked, ‘What’s boring?’ I explained to him that as a verb it meant drilling a hole through something. And he said … Actually, maybe it was Tanya who said this, I can’t remember, one of them said, ‘Is boring boring?’

Jonathan laughs.

I thought it was pretty clever for a twelve-year-old.

Anyway. Okay. So where was I?

Right, so I decided to spend the night on my island, the island I’d just discovered … And I was boiling water to make tea, thinking about what the island meant, could mean, to our family. Here, at last, was something real, something concrete about what it is I do. That Judith would understand, maybe. Something that wasn’t mired in theories and ideas.

And I thought about the twins, well, about Thomas, about how I wished he were alive to see all this … I think he would have appreciated the … the Christopher-Columbus-ness of it all, you know?

Jonathan smiles.

So I was thinking of Thomas …

And that’s when I heard it – a sudden, wet exhalation. I looked up and a narwhal had breached not ten metres from the shore, its tusk gleaming in the sun. I’d never seen one before.

They’re called the ‘unicorn of the seas,’ but the etymology of their name is fascinating. ‘Narwhal,’ it’s old Norse and it means ‘corpse whale,’ because it looks ashen, like a … well, like a corpse.

Look, I know it was a coincidence that I was thinking of Thomas when it breached. Of course. But I couldn’t help it: I felt it was a sign. It was … There was … something profound about it. I mean, I felt connected to this place, to the whole universe in a way I’d never experienced before. And I’m not talking about God. At least, not in a religious sense, this isn’t about a conversion … Let me rephrase. On that island, I found the idea of God, an understanding of what God could potentially be. That may seem strange, not only because I’m a scientist and an atheist, but also because if you wanted to argue for a country that God left behind, I think Greenland would be at the top of that list.

So, when I woke up the next morning, I found myself with a swollen foot; it was frostbitten, and I was extremely lucky that I didn’t lose the whole thing.

Takes a sip from his glass.

Since word’s gotten out about the island, I’ve been getting phone calls from journalists – lots and lots of journalists – who want to hear about the newly discovered Thomas Morrissey Island, baptized after my nephew.

The first few interviews were … difficult.

I would start with, ‘I’m a glaciologist.’ And they would ask,

‘What’s that?’

So I’d explain: ‘Well, uh, it’s complicated in the sense that it’s an interdisciplinary branch of science that pulls together aspects of geology, geophysics, climatology, geography, et cetera, to examine the natural phenomena of ice in general and glaciers in particular and … ’

Are you bored yet?

Jonathan smiles.

Judith once said to me, ‘The only thing you’re good at communicating is your passion for things no one else understands.’

Jonathan shrugs.

The next question, invariably: ‘Oh. And how did you get into that line of work?’

‘Ah!’ I would answer, ‘Well, that’s an interesting story, because I initially wanted to be a physicist, you see, but I discovered that glaciers provide a kind of unified object to explain – in a simple way – many of the complex properties of physics … ’

By this time, most interviewers are ready to hang up the phone. I could tell, mostly, from their breathing and the way they’d ask questions with a kind of fatalism, that they weren’t going to like the answer. They knew what I discovered was important, but they didn’t understand why.

This one guy, though, from the New York Times, got what I was talking about; his background was in science. At the end of the interview, he said, ‘Dr. Fahey, can I be straight with you? You’re selling the science, not the story. And journalists want you to give them a story. Don’t talk to me about glaciology in terms of geophysics and geology; I don’t know what that means. Tell me you’re the Ice Whisperer. And I don’t care about carbon dioxide levels in the ice. I want you to tell me that ice is saying to us, to humanity, that we’re royally fucked. That’s a story, that’s a story I can sell. I need the, the … ’

‘Mythology.’

‘Yes! You give me that, and your message’ll get across to people.’

I confess, my first thought was, ‘Americans!’ But he was right. Mythology was the thing that, until then, I’d not understood. So my next interview …

‘I’m a glaciologist.’

‘Can you explain to our readers what that is, Dr. Fahey?’

‘Certainly. In the same way that each of us is the product of our history – where we’ve come from, our life experience, our social context, et cetera – ice is the product of its history. It has a story to tell, and that’s my job. To figure out what ice can tell us about its past, a hundred or even a thousand years ago. Where did it come from, why is it here, how long has it been here, what’s happening to it now? Ice, like us, has its own mythology, and we can learn a lot about our past from it.’

‘What is the ice telling us, Dr. Fahey?’

‘That we’re in trouble.’

Now that’s glaciology done sexy.

Jonathan smiles, then sniffs the air.

Do you smell that?

He realizes what it is.

The crazy thing about Greenland is that in summer, it’s light twenty-four hours a day. Sleep is hard, sometimes, and one thing that started happening was that I had waking dreams … There’s one, one in particular … It was more like a fantasy, I suppose … I thought I’d meet a woman – Danish, perhaps, tall, not necessarily beautiful but pretty, buxom, bookish. She, too, would be a stranger to Greenland, a visitor. Perhaps she’s an ethnographer, or a linguist studying Greenlandic. She’d be married, or maybe have a serious boyfriend back in Copenhagen. But she’d fall in love with the landscape, with the ice, and wouldn’t want to go home. We’d talk about it – we’d commiserate – until finally we both had the courage to stay, forget our creature comforts back home and live there, on my island, and spend the evenings reading together and have children who’d sleep in our bed, raise them as Greenlanders … She and I would grow old together, until one evening I’d return home and find her dead – peacefully, of old age – and I’d take her outside, but not to bury her, no, I’d set her there to freeze so that I could bring her back in every evening, to share a meal and read to her and pray …

Registers his word choice.

… no, wish that it would be my turn soon. And when I’d feel Death nearby, I’d take my lover to the edge of the island and bind her to me – like this, like a backpack, like an air tank, and throw myself into the Arctic Ocean.

Jonathan finishes his drink. He crunches an ice cube.

I remember now. The title of that book. It was One Hundred Years of Solitude.